Dauntsey Park: The Last Rake In London

Sally stared at him, two bright spots of angry colour vivid in her cheeks. She had no doubt that he could put his threat into practice. He was rich and well connected, a member of King Edward’s exclusive, excessive circle of friends, able to turn the fickle monarch’s attention in other directions. At present the Blue Parrot was fashionable, but how long would that last if the gilded crowds who thronged its doors chose to take their business elsewhere? And she had just taken a huge loan from the bank in order to improve her business. She was dependent on her investors. It would be all too easy to ruin her financially …

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and opened them again. Jack Kestrel was standing looking at her with the same quizzical expression in his eyes that she had seen there before. Her heart thumped once, then settled to its normal beat.

‘You are harsh in your threats, Mr Kestrel,’ she said, as steadily as she could. ‘This is nothing to do with me and yet you seek to make me pay for it. It is not the behaviour of a gentleman.’

Jack shrugged. ‘I play the game by the rules that are set for me, Miss Bowes. It was your sister who raised the stakes.’

Sally pressed her hands together. She could see no point in arguing. She knew he would make no concessions. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘If you would give me a couple of hours to deal with this matter—’

‘One hour. I will give you one hour only.’

‘But I need longer that that! I don’t know where Connie—’ Sally caught herself a moment too late.

‘So it is Connie who is the Beautiful Miss Bowes?’ Jack raised his brows. ‘Of course.’ He took a letter from the pocket of his coat and unfolded it. ‘I see that the initial in the signature is a C. How slow of me. I should have spotted that.’

‘You should certainly be surer of your ground before you make wild accusations,’ Sally said. ‘You are extremely discourteous, Mr Kestrel.’

Jack laughed, refolded the letter and put it away. ‘I am direct, Sally. It is a quality of mine.’

The warm tone in his voice, the way he said her name, made Sally’s heart turn over even as she deplored his familiarity. ‘I did not give you leave to use my name, Mr Kestrel,’ she snapped.

‘No?’ Jack gave her a mocking glance. ‘I must admit that you do seem given to formality. Do your clients have to address you as Miss Bowes as well?’ He looked thoughtful. ‘Actually, I suppose a touch of severity probably appeals to some of them, if it comes accompanied by a cane and some chastisement.’

Sally felt the bright red colour sting her cheeks again. Jack Kestrel was not alone in assuming that the Blue Parrot Club was a high-class brothel; indeed, Sally herself often suspected that some of the girls made their own arrangements with their clients. In the early days her concern for their safety had made her try to stop them selling their bodies as well as their company, but in the end she knew they would go their own way and only stipulated that they made no such arrangements on the premises. Nevertheless she worried about them and she knew that, though they were touched at her concern, they thought her naïve. Sally sometimes thought so herself. She lived in a world of glittering sophistication and racy excitement and her sister maintained she had the morals of a Victorian maiden aunt.

‘You are labouring under several false assumptions, Mr Kestrel,’ she said icily. ‘On these premises the only expensive commodity that the customers can buy is the champagne. I have my licence to think of. I am the owner of the Blue Parrot, Mr Kestrel, which means that I am no more than a glorified office clerk.’ Once again she gestured to the pile of bills and orders on her desk. ‘As you see.’

Jack Kestrel laughed sardonically. ‘I am more than happy to accept your protestations of virtue, Miss Bowes.’

‘You misunderstand me,’ Sally snapped. ‘I do not feel the need to justify myself to you, Mr Kestrel, merely to explain matters.’

Jack inclined his head. ‘And your sister, Miss Bowes? Surely she cannot also work in the office?’

‘Connie is a hostess,’ Sally said. ‘Their task is to entertain the customers with their conversation, Mr Kestrel, and to help them to part with their money.’

‘A task which your sister seems eminently qualified for, given the evidence of her letter to my uncle,’ Jack said.

Sally gritted her teeth. She could not really argue with that.

‘Is your sister working tonight?’ Jack asked. ‘I will go and speak with her immediately.’ He started to move towards the door.

Panic flared within Sally. She knew he would go and demand answers from Connie and he was high-handed enough not to care whether he disrupted the business of the entire club in doing so. A public row would cause the sort of scene she could not really afford.

‘Wait!’ she said, hurrying after him. To her relief, he stopped. ‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if Connie is working tonight or not. I will go and find out.’

She was very conscious of Jack at her shoulder as she walked up the stairs from the basement. One of the waiters passed them, a tray piled high with empty plates balanced on his arm. The Blue Parrot had a dining room to rival any gentleman’s club and a French chef as temperamental as any employed in the great country houses. Tonight, however, Monsieur Claydon sounded to be relatively calm and Sally gave silent thanks for small mercies. She did not think she could bear a kitchen disaster on top of everything else.

Jack held the green baize door open for her with scrupulous courtesy and Sally went out into the hall. The entrance to the Blue Parrot had been designed to be like a private house and had a black-and-white marble floor with potted palms and tastefully draped statuary. By the main door were two men in livery who, at first glance, might have been taken for footmen. A second glance, however, showed that they had the physique of prizefighters and the expressions to match. The elder of the two was Sally’s general manager, Dan O’Neill, who had in fact been an Irish champion boxer and now ran the Blue Parrot on a day-to-day basis and was in charge of the floor when the club was open. His pugilist qualifications were extremely useful. It was not unheard of for some of the clients at the Blue Parrot to have a little too much champagne, play a little too deep at chemin defer and need to be encouraged to leave quietly.

On seeing Sally, both men straightened up automatically.

‘Good evening, Miss Bowes,’ Dan said respectfully.

‘Good evening, Dan,’ Sally said, smiling. ‘Evening, Alfred.’

‘Miss Sally.’ The second man shuffled a little bashfully, blushing like a schoolboy with a crush.

‘Do either of you know whether Miss Connie is working this evening?’ Sally asked.

The men exchanged glances. ‘She went out earlier,’ Alfred volunteered. ‘I called a hansom for her.’

‘Said it was her night off,’ Dan added.

‘Do you know where she went?’ Jack Kestrel asked. Sally was very aware of him beside her, could feel his tension and sense the way he was watching the other men very closely.

Dan looked at Sally for guidance and then cleared his throat as she nodded. ‘I think she was dining with Mr Basset,’ he said.

Sally heard Jack’s swift, indrawn breath. ‘Well, well,’ he said pleasantly, ‘how interesting. Perhaps she is hedging her bets in case her blackmail doesn’t work?’

Sally bit her lip, trying to ignore his insinuation. ‘My apologies, Mr Kestrel,’ she said. ‘It seems you will have to wait a while to speak with my sister—unless you are party to the places where your cousin would take a lady to dine.’

‘I am quite happy to wait,’ Jack drawled. He looked at her. ‘As long as you are sure your sister will come home tonight, Miss Bowes.’

Sally flushed at this thinly veiled slur on Connie’s virtue. She saw Dan take a step forward, his face flushed with anger, and Jack Kestrel square his shoulders as though preparing for a fight. She waved her manager back. She did not want a brawl, especially one that for once she was not sure that Dan would win. Jack Kestrel looked as though he might be a useful man in a fight. And, in truth, she could not be certain that Connie would come home. There had been times when her sister had been out all night, but after the first, terrible scene when Connie had screamed at her that she was not their mother, Sally had tried not to interfere. Her heart ached that she did not seem able to reach Connie, who went her own wayward path.

‘Then perhaps,’ Sally said, ‘you would like to take dinner whilst you wait, Mr Kestrel? On the house, of course.’

Jack smiled a challenge. ‘I will gladly take dinner if you will join me, Miss Bowes.’

Sally was shocked. If he had asked her the previous night, then she would not have been surprised, but now she could not imagine why Jack would want her company. Then she realised, with an odd little jolt of disappointment, that it was probably because he wanted to keep an eye on her and make sure that she did not slip away to warn Connie of what was going on. He did not trust her.

And she did not feel like indulging him.

‘I do not dine with the guests, Mr Kestrel,’ she said coldly.

Jack held her gaze. ‘Humour me,’ he said.

The air between them fizzed with confrontation. Sally hesitated. She never dined with the customers at the Blue Parrot in order that there should be no misunderstandings about her role at the club. It was the job of the hostesses to mix with the patrons and to entertain them. The owner might mingle with her guests, but she preserved a distance from them. But if Jack Kestrel did not get what he wanted, she knew he could cause a great deal of trouble for her, and one dinner seemed a small price to pay whilst they waited for Connie to return. Then, she hoped against hope, she would be able to deal with this matter and remove the unexpected and wholly unwelcome threat to her business that Jack Kestrel posed.

‘Very well,’ she said reluctantly. ‘But you will need to give me time to change my gown.’

Jack bowed. ‘I am happy to wait for you.’

Sally saw Alfred’s brows shoot up towards his hairline. The staff had never seen her break her own rules before.

‘Dan,’ she said, ‘please show Mr Kestrel to my table in the blue dining room.’ She paused, her gaze sweeping over Jack. He might not be in evening dress, but she could not deny that he looked pretty good. Many men would kill for a physique like Jack Kestrel’s and the elegance of his tailoring could not be faulted. ‘We have a dress code, Mr Kestrel,’ she said, ‘but I suppose we can waive it on this occasion. Dan, make sure that Mr Kestrel has anything he asks for.’

Jack inclined his head. ‘Thank you, Miss Bowes.’