Page 55 of A Duke's Keeper
It couldn’t have been.
Chapter Sixteen
Syd was waitingon Camille’s steps when she arrived back at home. Her friend’s gaping mouth as she’d approached from the wrong direction would have been comical if the ensuing lecture hadn’t laden her with such heavy guilt.
“You went to the Ring?The Ring!Are you insane?!”
Camille took the lecture quietly, her mind and body in tumultuous battle. Hamish in the Underground. Bodies in the street.
Her stomach gave a twist that had her retching in the alley.
“Camille, what’s wrong?” Syd was instantly there, her anger postponed to offer comforting pats on the back.
Camille stared down at the stones at her feet, at the pool of sick she rarely succumbed to, even as a child. The chaos of her thoughts cleared for a single devastating understanding to wash through her, along with the ever-present teachings of her childhood.
“A good girl does not complain of illness.” “A good girl does not eat more than what’s proper.” “A good girl does not encourage affection without the promise of marriage.”
Syd fluttered behind her. “Do you need a physician?”
Camille glanced unseeing at the young woman beside her, recognizing the panic in her friend’s voice but unable to quell the feelings when her own gripped so tightly. She should soothe Syd’s fears, no doubt as she whirled through a list of fataldiseases more tragic than the next. Cholera, typhus... The rookeries were a breeding ground of internal battle.
Camille would take a quick death over the long-suffering future to follow. She managed a simple “Yes” to Syd’s question before she took off in the direction of the free clinic, and an answer to a question she feared she already knew.
*
Camille returned tothe Pony before dawn, with a quiet Syd in tow.
Humming to herself, she left her friend to scale the building and perch on the roof. Camille worked vivaciously on the file before her, a new urgency driving her to perfect her proposal to Madam. The violence in the streets and the Underground had proven one thing for certain: the Merry Men’s presence wasn’t enough to keep violence off the streets.
The Den, as Syd had so affectionately coined their base, was a refuge for men looking for righteous justice and honorable means to put food on the table. The free clinic too was a means of safe and clean rest and reinvigoration for those who knew of its existence, usually factory fathers and brothers whose families relied on their contributions when an untended injury could spell infection and starvation.
Working-class women and girls had one of two options for honorable employment, and none at all if the dangerous conditions residedinthe home and not at work. Attempts had been made by the government for compulsory schools for the children, but boys’ education took precedence no matter the station. Changes had been made the farther out in the country one went, the agricultural and rural areas attempting to teach not only intellectual skills, but practical ones as well.
Here, the need for child labor abounded, and the feminine mind and body, forever inferior in the eyes of society to that of their male counterparts, got the mangle.
A knock on the inner door into the club gave Camille pause. Having elected to work in the main office with its cozy fire and cheerier colors, she’d forgotten she’d be at the mercy of the other Ponies’ company.
Sliding her proposal into a bottom drawer of Madam’s desk, she turned in her chair and said, “Come in.”
Sensa opened the door, her cheeks flushed and eyes bright from her last appointment. “Oh, hello, Angel. Where’s Madam?”
Camille didn’t have the energy to rebuke the pet name, nor did she have the interest in using Sensa’s rather misleading stage name, Mistress. “Up in her apartments, I suspect. She has yet to come down. Did you need something?”
Sensa handed her a session file. “Lord Trager wishes to increase his visits from two times a week to three. I need to confer with my schedule before I give him an answer.”
Already calculating the days in her mind, Camille nodded, pleased to have something else to occupy her thoughts. “There’s an hour block of time on Thursday afternoons you can designate, between one and two.”
“It’s astounding how you can do that.” Sensa smiled at her, a pretty expression it was a shame her ‘character’ wasn’t allowed. “I’ll let him know.” She turned to leave but hesitated at the door.
“Yes?” Camille asked.
“Maybe you could help Victoria too. Mr. Richmund is here and going over his time.”
Camille groaned. “Sonnets as awful as we remember?”
“Worse. He was likening her beauty to the purity and majesty of minx hide when I passed by,” Sensa said. “I’d get Madam, but I have two clients waiting in the cursory room.”
“And Victoria has Mr. White waiting.” Camille stood, making a note to add more padding to the Ponies’ schedules in the event of overtime play. “I’ll encourage the gentleman to move along.”
