A Gentleman’s Position(59)

Advantage.

He next went to find Zoë, Jon Shakespeare’s sister, who had done her time on her back in Belle Millay’s service and now ran an assignation house where gentlemen met one another or occasional paid partners. She was still in bed at noon, and it was a foolhardy man who woke Zoë before she was ready, but David had no time to lose, and a basket of expensive sweet pastries with ten guineas discreetly tucked in one corner went some way to improving her morning mood.

“So what’s going on?” Zoë asked. They sat across a table from each other drinking coffee, she swathed in a flannel gown, her tight-curled hair scrunched up into a gravity-defying bun on her head. “Because I heard from a certain pretty Tory that you’d resigned Lord Richard’s service, and if that’s so, you can go bugger yourself, you interfering slyboots ginger bastard.”

“I did. And now I’m back.”

“In that case, it’s a pleasure to see you, sir.”

“You too,” David said. “How was Frey as a flashman in my absence?”

“Oh, he’s got a gift for it.” Zoë fluttered her eyelashes. She was noisily fond of Dominic Frey, mostly because it irritated Silas, but David knew her well enough to suspect she actually liked the man.

“He may be in trouble. Mr. Frey, Silas, the pack of them. It’s to be hoped not you, but I don’t know how far this could spread if I don’t deal with it.”

Zoë’s eyes narrowed. “What’s going on?”

“Lord Maltravers.”

She turned in her chair, hawked, and spat, quite deliberately, on her own floor.

“Like that, is it?”

“Great bullying brawn,” Zoë said. “I remember that one from Seymour Street back in the day. If he can’t get a cock-stand, that’s the whore’s fault. You know the sort. Slapped a girl who laughed at him so hard, she couldn’t do anyone but sailors for a week because nobody wants to look at bruises. And he was tight as a gnat’s arse about it. Other gentlemen pay for damage done, or some of ’em do anyway.” She made a face. “Fucking gentlemen and their pleasures, and their tantrums when they’re thwarted. It’s why I picked the assignation house when old Belle was dividing up the empire, you know. Give me sods and mollies any day.”

“Why, because they’re gentler souls?” David asked with some sarcasm. “Like Silas and your Mr. Frey?”

“They’re not hurting the girls. Fuck my eye if I care what they do to each other. I’d stay away from Lord Maltravers if I was you. He’s a nasty piece of work, and if you cross him, he’ll come back at you till he’s got his stick up.”

“Yes, I know,” David said. “Unfortunately, he’s after Silas again, and after Lord Richard’s set as well. I’m going to have to cross him. And as Belle used to say, ‘If you’re obliged to cross a man at all—’ ”

“ ‘Nail him to one while you’re at it,’ ” Zoë finished. “You going to nail Lord Maltravers?”

“By the balls. Want to help?”

“You know me, Foxy. I’ll do anything for our beloved gentlemen. Here to serve, that’s me.” Zoë grinned at him. “How much?”

They spent a fair part of the afternoon in brothels. David hadn’t kept up his acquaintance with game women after his mother had left Millay’s, and had not needed to visit those types of houses in his work for Lord Richard, so the women who ran the various establishments would have no reason to trust him. Zoë was widely known in the business and widely liked; she could vouch for him. It took trips to a fair few houses and a certain investment of Lord Richard’s money in gin, but at last, they found the place Maltravers frequented.

“His lordship comes here, yes,” agreed the aged bawd who ran this particular temple of hymen under the name Mother Knab. “Domine do-little.”

“Impotent?” David said hopefully.

“Oh, not a gelding, but no stallion either. I dessay he’d be very well with a bit of patience, but my lord the duke’s brat doesn’t have to be patient, does he? Drinks any amount of quack’s potions. Dr. Vanbutchell’s Nostrum and whatnot. And he likes the old…” She put a hand to her scrawny neck, stuck out her tongue sideways, and crossed her eyes.

“The what now, Mother?” David asked.

“Self-strangling,” Zoë said. “What, you never heard of that? You put a rope round a fellow’s neck and it brings his ramrod up like nobody’s business.”

“I did know that. Wasn’t there a fellow killed that way, a foreign musician?”