“I will admit no such thing as long as it’s keeping eyes off the true culprit, and ensuring that the truth shall be the best kept secret in London.”
“I suppose that’s fine,” Sesily replied. “And so? What’s next, now that we’ve closed the book on Rotting?”
“There’s a moneylender preying on widows in St. Giles,” Imogen said. “I wouldn’t mind seeing him the victim of bad luck.”
“And Coleford,” Adelaide interjected, cool loathing in her voice as she invoked the viscount from the ball. “I am not ashamed to say I’m willing to do fairly anything to destroy him.”
Rumor had it that Lord Coleford was using his position as a benefactor of the Foundling Hospital to help a pair of monstrous brothers take clothes from mothers’ backs with the promise of finding the children they’d long-ago surrendered to the orphanage.
“It just so happens that I’ve something arranged for you on that front. I believe you’ll be receiving a dinner invitation from the new viscountess. I urge you to accept,” the duchess said, before adding to Sesily, “You, as well.”
Sesily nodded, more than agreeable to whatever plan would bring down the awful man. “Any news on the raids?”
In the last several months, there’d been a number of raids around London—gaming hells, taverns, pleasure clubs, and more, all with a common thread: they were largely owned and frequented by women.
What had begun as a handful of brawls, a rough-up here and there, had become more serious in the last few months. A secret, high-end brothel in Kensington, owned and operated by the women who worked it, had been burned to the ground. Even 72 Shelton Street—one of the best protected clubs in London—had been raided and wrecked, and was now in the process of being rebuilt. The same had happened to a nearby casino with a women-only membership.
They were places where women held power. And wherever women held power, be it a throne, a club, or a labyrinth, there were men wishing to seize it.
“Brutes are easy to hire,” said the duchess with a shake of her head, “but their heads grow back when they are severed from the body. Right now, the muscle appears to be The Bully Boys.”
Sesily grimaced at the name—street thugs who hired themselves out to the highest bidder. “They’re not the money.”
“No,” the duchess agreed. “I expect there’s money from the House of Lords in the mix. No one likes the freedom a woman on the throne inspires—least of all the men who benefit from keeping women under their thumbs. We’re working on it.”
Sesily groaned her frustration. The foursome had been tracing the source of the raids for months, and she was growing impatient for a proper lead on the identity of the men terrorizing the city.
In the meantime, they busied themselves with men like Totting, who deserved his own punishment.
“Sesily,” the duchess said, as though she could hear Sesily’s thoughts.
She looked up. “Yes?”
“It is only the four of us who know what happened in my gardens, is it not?”
Sesily’s heart began to pound. The duchess was concerned about their identities being revealed. She drank, ignoring the thrum of memory that came with the question. Caleb Calhoun, tall and broad, putting himself between Sesily and danger.
“Well. Us and Miss Fenwick.”
Silence fell, punctuated by shouts and laughter beyond, somehow quieter than the sound of her friends’ gazes, rapt upon her.
She looked away, toward the rest of the room. “Oh, there’s Maggie,” she said, brightly, knowing that it was a properly ridiculous observation. Of course there was Maggie.
To be at The Place was to be with Maggie O’Tiernen, owner and proprietress—a Black woman who’d left Ireland for London the moment she was able to build a new life, where she could live freely and embody her authentic self. In doing so, she had built one of London’s most welcoming spaces. Whoever you were, whomever you loved, whatever your journey to yourself, there was a seat for all women at The Place.
Sesily desperately attempted to catch the eye of the bold and boisterous Maggie, who would absolutely come to rescue her from the prying eyes of her companions—if she wasn’t busy recounting one of her delicious stories to a rapt audience.
“Hang on, now.” Imogen had noticed something was off in the conversation, which meant something was very off in the conversation. “What’s happened?”
“Tell us,” the duchess said, casually and not at all casually, helping herself to another glass of champagne. “How did you avoid discovery in my gardens?”
“Well,” she hedged. “It was dark.”
Three sets of brows rose around the table.
“You are, and I say this with all affection, the worst liar I’ve ever known,” Adelaide said.
“We can’t all spend our lives lying to nobs and stealing their secrets, Adelaide.”
“And why not?” Adelaide retorted.
The duchess sighed. “Who knows, Sesily?”
Sesily looked to the other woman—the woman who had brought them all together. “I have a feeling you are asking that question for effect.”
The other woman’s red lips curved. “Of course I am. You think I sent you off to deal with that particular problem without ensuring your safety?”
Irritation flared. “You had watchmen in the garden?”
“Had I known you’d be so … well taken care of …” The duchess trailed off, but Adelaide and Imogen leapt upon the tail of the words like cats with a mouse.
“Hang on!”
“Taken care of, how?”
Dammit. She’d have to tell them. They were relentless.
“Nothing!”
“I wouldn’t call it nothing,” the duchess replied.
Sesily shot her a look. “He’d never tell anyone what happened.”
“Who’d never tell?”
“And what happened?”
Sesily flattened her lips at the duchess idly tracing the rim of her champagne glass. “Everyone thinks you’re above gossip and excitement, but you positively thrive on it.”
The duchess’s face broke into a wide smile. “In fact I do.” Sesily groaned. “And you’d best tell them the truth, before Imogen decides to deploy whatever weapon she’s most recently concocted to hurry you along.”
On cue, Imogen replied, “Did you know that if you set a handkerchief aflame once it is properly inserted into a bottle of alcohol, you’ve all you need for a lovely explosion?”
“I did not, as a matter of fact,” Sesily said.
“Might be useful in dealing with whoever saw you in the garden, is all I am saying.”
“There is no need to explode him,” she said. “Caleb Calhoun is in business with my sister. And if he weren’t, he’d still be her friend. That alone ensures that he’d never reveal what he saw in the gardens.”
“He didn’t see her in the gardens,” Imogen pointed out.
“We barely know the man,” Adelaide added.
Sesily didn’t like how defensive she was feeling about Caleb, who hadn’t really done much to deserve her defense in the last two years. He was barely ever in London, and when he was, he seemed to do all he could to avoid her, which grated, if she was honest. But some men were simply decent. And he was one of them.