Annie Burrows - Devilish Lord, Mysterious Miss

‘Anyhow, Madame ought to let us have an hour or two off, once in a while, and then we wouldn’t have to sneak off on the sly!’

No, she would not say one word to Madame about where they had been.

She would not need to.

She looked round uneasily as Molly towed her into the overheated and evil-smelling den in which her Joe liked to take a heavy wet of an evening, with the other drivers who worked for the same firm as him. Madame would only have to breathe in as they walked past to know exactly where they had been.

Molly soon spotted her beau, who got his pals to make room for the two of them at the table where they were sitting. A slovenly-looking girl deposited two beakers on the sticky tabletop in front of them, and Joe flipped her a coin.

Molly dug Mary in the ribs.

‘Say thank you to Joe for buying us both a draught of jacky, girl. Ever so generous of him, ain’t it?’ Molly beamed at him, and his eyes lit up. Sliding closer to her, he slid his arm round her waist, and gave her a squeeze. Molly giggled, turning pink with pleasure. Mary might as well not have existed for all the notice he took of her.

She reached for her beaker, and bent her eyes resolutely on the liquid it contained, feeling slightly nauseous. She could not understand what Mary saw in Joe Higgis. He had sloping shoulders and a thick neck. His fingernails were dirty, and, given the nature of his job, he probably smelt of horses. How could Molly let such a man paw at her like that, never mind encourage it?

Molly had explained that he made her laugh, and that in this miserable world, you didn’t turn your nose up at a man who could make you laugh, no matter what.

For Molly’s sake, and to avoid hurting Joe’s feelings, she supposed she ought to try to look as though she was grateful for the drink he had bought her. Besides, she thought, glancing about her nervously, if she appeared to be concentrating on her drink, she would not look so out of place as she felt.

Tentatively, she tasted it, and was surprised to find it had a lightly perfumed flavour. Gin was not unpleasant, she grudgingly admitted, taking another sip.

‘Friend of Molly’s, are yer?’ asked the man beside her, who had been eyeing her speculatively ever since she had sat down.

Mary bit down a scathing retort. She had come in with Molly. She was sitting next to Molly. What else would she be, but a friend of Molly’s?

‘Now, none of your cheek, Fred!’ Molly suddenly stirred herself to say. ‘Nor none of you others, neither,’ she addressed the other men who were sitting at their table. ‘I won’t have none of you taking advantage of Mary, just coz she’s too simple to do it for herself. I’ll darken the daylights of anyone who so much as lays a finger on her!’ she declared belligerently.

Fred raised his hands in surrender. ‘I was just being friendly,’ he protested.

‘Well, stop it!’ snapped Molly. ‘She don’t like men. They make her…’She paused, considering her choice of words. Mary stared fixedly into the depths of her drink, torn between gratitude to Molly for defending her, and sickening dread at what she might be about to reveal.

‘Jumpy!Yes,’Molly declared, ‘that’s what she is round men what don’t mind their manners. So just watch it!’

Having settled the point to her satisfaction, Molly climbed on to Joe’s lap, and took up where she had left off.

Mary felt like a coin that had been tossed in the air, unsure whether she was going to come down heads, humiliated at having her deficiencies broadcast, or tails, grateful for Molly’s spirited defence. Though Molly had only spoken the truth. Men did make her jumpy. She had not wanted Fred to speak to her, and she certainly did not want to have to answer him. In fact, she wished she could just shrink down into her coat and disappear. To conceal her confusion, she took another, longer pull at her drink.

Once it had gone down, she found her initial surge of contrasting emotions had settled down into a sort of dull resentment.

Molly had just told all these people that she was simple, and she did not think she was, not really. It was true that when she first came to London she had been confused about a lot of things. But she had been ill. She had still been getting the headaches for months after Madame took her in.

But now she wondered if some of those headaches had been due to the fact she had slept so poorly back then. For one thing, the streets were so noisy, at all hours of the day and night, and for another, she was not used to sharing a bed…

Though how she was so sure of that, when so many other things that other people took for granted were complete mysteries to her…She sighed despondently. Perhaps Madame and Molly and the others were right about her. Perhaps she was a simpleton.

In an effort to distract herself from the perplexing muddle of her thoughts, she applied herself to her gin. Gradually she felt the knot of anxiety that was normally lodged somewhere beneath her breastbone melt away. What did it matter, really, if there was something wrong with her mind? She had a good position, where the skills she did have were put to good use. And she had friends.

Joe’s friends, too, she realised, raising her head to look about the table, were not such a bad bunch, for all that they were so repulsive looking. She felt a giggle rising up inside as it occurred to her that if she had to come into a dirty, smelly drinking den, she could not have better companions than a group of hackney-cab drivers. Experienced as they were with handling highly strung creatures for a living, they had taken Molly’s words to heart, and acted on them. Oh, not overtly. But they were not speaking so loudly now as they had been doing before. They were not crowding her with their big, male bodies, and they seemed to be trying not to make any sudden movements, that might startle her.

It was…quite touching.

London, she mused, cradling her cup of gin to her chest, was turning out not to be such a dreadful place at all. It had taken her a long time, but she was slowly growing accustomed to it. The more she explored its alleys and byways, the more familiar it became, the fewer terrors it held.

She would be all right.

One day, she would…

‘Why did you do it, Cora?’ A man’s harsh voice rudely interrupted her reverie.

She looked up to see a gentleman standing over her. The gentleman. The one who had chased her clear across Berkeley Square. Same dark clothes, same forbidding expression, same angry voice.

She sucked in a sharp breath, waiting to feel the onset of that fear that usually surged through her whenever she felt threatened by something unfamiliar.

It did not materialise.

She peered into her beaker, wondering if this was why so many women grew so fond of gin. It seemed to be making her uncharacteristically brave.

Or maybe, she pondered, it was knowing that this man was outnumbered by Joe’s pals. That she was, in effect, surrounded by a burly, bewhiskered, badly dressed cohort of bodyguards.

And so she didn’t tremble. She did not shrink away. She just sat there, calmly looking up at him.

His face grew darker.

‘You have to make me understand it, Cora,’ he grated. ‘Why did you run away?’

Cora? Ah, so that was it! She must resemble…her. That was why he had chased her, shouting so angrily. He must have been waiting for…Cora…and been completely perplexed when she had taken fright and run away.

‘You have mistaken me for someone else, I think, sir,’she said gently. For she could see that he was really upset, and had no wish to add to his distress.

Yet he looked at her as though she had slapped his face.

If he had been mistaken in her, it had been seven years ago, not seven days!