From upstairs came a thump and a woman’s startled scream, quickly cut off. None of the women in the room even turned her head.
“Your friend must have made the acquaintance of Rose Fletcher,” said the abbess, handing him a glass of wine. Her fingers when they brushed his hand were unnaturally cold, as if the woman never saw the sun. “Unfortunately, Rose is not here this evening. But I think you’ll find Becky an entertaining substitute.”
Sebastian took a slow sip of the wine. It was surprisingly good. “If I come back tomorrow will Rose be here?”
Sebastian was aware of the dark-skinned woman, Tasmin, studying him with a fixed expression. But not a breath of emotion showed on the abbess’s carefully made-up face. She stretched her lips into a smile. “I’m afraid Rose has left us. You know how restless some girls are: never content to stay in one place. If Becky doesn’t capture your fancy, then I’m sure you’ll enjoy Tasmin.”
Sebastian raised his wine to his lips again. “Any idea where Rose might have gone?”
Miss Lil’s smile stayed plastered across her face. “I’m afraid not.” For one brief instant, the abbess’s steely gaze flickered to the Jamaican. The girl rose gracefully to slip from the room.
“What a pity. I quite had my heart set on the girl.” Sebastian cast a searching glance around the parlor. “My friend also asked me to give Mr. Kane his regards. Is he here?”
“Mr. Kane?”
“That’s right. Mr. Ian Kane.”
Miss Lil’s pale blue eyes held his. The tension in the room had suddenly become palpable. She set aside her wineglass with a snap. She was no longer smiling. “It seems none of our girls strikes your fancy. I think the time has come for you to leave.”
Sebastian stretched to his feet. From somewhere overhead came the sound of a door slamming and a woman’s drunken laughter. “Thank you for joining me for a glass of wine,” he said. He dropped a coin on the table to pay for the bottle and inclined his head to the two remaining Cyprians. “Ladies.”
Outside, Sebastian paused at the top of the house’s steps and let the cool breeze blow away the lingering, suffocating odors of the place. A couple of linkboys darted past, lighting the way for a carriage drawn by a nicely matched team of grays, their torches filling the air with the scent of hot pitch.
He had learned three things from his visit to the house. That Rose “Jones” had indeed practiced her métier at the Orchard Street Academy. That she had once called herself Rose Fletcher. And that the circumstances surrounding her precipitous departure from the house were of such a nature that the very mention of her name was enough to throw the house’s remaining inhabitants into a state of consternation.
Idly swinging his walking stick, he descended the steps to the cobbled street. As he turned toward Portman Square, a large, burly man detached himself from the shadowy alley beside the house and walked right up to him.
“Why ye nosin’ around ’ere, askin’ all them questions?”’ the man demanded, his grizzled face shoved close enough that Sebastian breathed in raw gin fumes. “And what’s yer business with Mr. Kane?”
The man had the look of an ex-prizefighter, with a broken nose and a cauliflower ear. In his late thirties or early forties now, he was beginning to run to fat. But he was still a powerful mountain of a man, standing a good half a head taller than Sebastian and with nearly half again his weight.
“I have a message for Mr. Kane from an old friend,” said Sebastian, tightening his grip on his walking stick.
The man’s lips pulled back to reveal broken brown teeth. “Mr. Kane don’t associate with the clientele. What is it ye really want? If ye ain’t ’ere to sample the merchandise, you’ve no business ’ere. It’s my job to make sure there’s no trouble in the ’ouse, and yer kind’s always trouble.” He reached out to crush Sebastian’s lapel in one meaty fist. “Don’t ye be comin’ back, ye ’ear? We don’t want yer kinda business ’ere.”
“You are creasing my coat,” said Sebastian.
“Yeah?” The man’s smile widened. “Maybe I ought to crease yer skull instead.”
Moving calmly and deliberately, Sebastian swung his walking stick back and then up, driving the full force of his body behind it. The ebony stick sliced up between the bouncer’s legs to whack against his testicles. The thug’s eyes bugged out, his breath wooshing out of his body as he released his hold on Sebastian’s coat to bend over and cradle his genitals in both hands. Reaching down, Sebastian grabbed the man by the front of his greasy waistcoat and shoved him backward until his shoulder blades whacked up against the alley’s brick wall. “Maybe you ought to consider answering a few questions.”
Gritting his teeth, the bouncer groped his right hand toward a long blade sheathed in leather at his side. Sebastian whacked the man’s wrist with the walking stick. The man howled and dropped the knife.
“That was not smart,” said Sebastian, shoving the length of the walking stick against the man’s throat, pinning him to the wall. “It’s also not a very nice way to treat a customer. I’ve a good mind to complain to Mr. Kane.” Sebastian tightened the pressure of the stick against the man’s windpipe. “Where can I find him?”
The man’s mouth hung open, slack with fear. “I cain’t tell ye that!”
Sebastian withdrew the walking stick from the man’s throat and swung it down to whack him across the right knee. The bouncer went down in a crooked, crumpled heap. “You might want to reconsider your reticence.”
The man lay with one hand splayed over his knee, the other hand still cupped protectively around his genitals. “I tell you, I don’t know!”
Sebastian lightly tapped the man’s other knee with the stick’s silver tip. “That’s not a very clever answer.”
The bouncer licked his lips. “He’s at the Black Dragon. In Dyot Street, near Meux’s Brewery.”
“How will I know him?”
“ ’E’s a good-looking cove. Copper-colored ’air. Spends most o’ ’is evenin’s in ’is office on the ’alf landing, paintin’.”
“Painting?”
“You know. Pictures. ’E likes paintin’ pictures o’ whores and o’ the river and the city.”
“I’d like my visit to Mr. Kane to be a surprise,” said Sebastian. “Let’s make a deal, shall we? You don’t tell him I’m coming, and I won’t tell him you’re the one who spilled the information that enabled me to find him. Do we understand each other?”
The bouncer wiped the back of one hand across his loose lips. “You bloody bastard—”
Sebastian thrust the tip of his walking stick beneath the man’s chin, forcing him to tilt his head back at an awkward angle. “Do we understand each other?”
“Aye, aye. Jist git that bloody stick away from me, will ye?”
Sebastian dropped the tip of his walking stick to the knife lying on the wet cobbles and, with a flick of his wrist, sent the blade clattering into the darkness of the alley. “Pull steel on me again and you’re dead.”