"Are you sure you're well enough to go out?"
"Don't be a fool!" He threw back his head and in one movement poured the remaining liquid in his glass down his throat. "I'm fit as a flea. And I've no intention of spending the evening in this mausoleum." He weaved his way toward her where she stood in the doorway and rudely pushed past her.
Frowning, she followed him out of the house and into a passing hackney.
Five minutes later Tarquin emerged from the drawing room. He had decided to go to White's Chocolate House on St. James's Street for an evening's political discussion and a game of faro. Taking his cloak and gloves from the footman, he told him to leave the front door in the charge of the night watchman since he expected to be back late. He then went forth into the balmy evening. It didn't occur to him to ask where Juliana might be. He assumed she was in her parlor, or sitting with the invalid in the yellow bedchamber.
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Juliana, swathed in her cloak, sat back in a corner of the hackney, watching the scene through the window as the vehicle stopped and started through streets as thronged as if it were midmorning. The main thoroughfares were lit with oil lamps, but when they turned onto a side street, the only light came from a link boy's lantern as he escorted a pair of gentlemen, who walked with their hands on their sword hilts.
Covent Garden was as lively as it had been the previous evening. The theater doors were already closed, the play having begun, but the hackney took them to the steps of St. Paul's Church and halted. Juliana alighted, drawing her cloak tightly around her. Lucien followed somewhat unsteadily and tossed a coin up to the jarvey, who, judging by his scowl, considered it less than adequate payment.
A noisy crowd was gathered before the steps of the church; a man played a fife barely heard above the ribald yells and drunken curses as the throng swayed and surged.
"What's going on over there?"
Lucien shrugged. "How should I know? Go and look."
Juliana made her way to the outskirts of the crowd, standing on tiptoe to see over the heads.
"Push your way to the front," Lucien said at her shoulder. "Politeness won't get you anywhere in this place." He began to shove his way through the throng, and Juliana followed, trying to keep at his heels before the path closed behind him. She remembered how Tarquin and Quentin had cleared a way through the crowd at the theater; but they'd done it almost by magic, never raising their voices or appearing to push at all. Lucien cursed vilely, using his thin body like a battering ram, and he received as many curses as he threw out. Somehow they reached the front of the crowd.
A man in rough laborer's clothes stood on the steps, beside him a woman in a coarse linen smock and apron, her hair hidden beneath a kerchief. Her hands were bound and she had a rope halter around her neck. She kept her eyes on the ground, her shoulders hunched as it she could make herself invisible. The crowd roared with approval when the man caught her chin and forced her to look up.
"So what am I bid?" he called loudly above the noise. "She's good about the 'ouse. Sound in wind and limb . . . good, strong legs and wide 'ips." He touched the parts in question and the woman shivered and tried to draw back. But the man grabbed the loose end of the halter and jerked her forward again.
Lucien laughed with the crowd. Juliana, horror-struck, glanced up at him and saw such naked, malevolent enjoyment on his face that she felt nauseated. "What's going on?"
"A wife-selling. Isn't it obvious?" Lucien didn't take his eyes off the scene on the steps as the husband enumerated the wretched woman's various good points.
Suddenly a voice bellowed above the crowd. "Ye've 'ad yer fun, Dick Begg. Now, let's be done with this." A brawny man pushed his way to the steps and jumped up beside the couple. The woman flushed deepest crimson and tried to turn aside, but her husband jerked again on the halter he still held, and she was able only to avert her head.
"Ten pound," the newcomer declared. "An' ye leave 'er alone from now on."
"Done," the husband announced. Both men spat on their palms and clapped them together to seal the bargain. The second man counted ten coins into the other's hand while the crowd roared its approval again; then he took the end of the halter and led the now weeping woman away from the crowd, toward the rear of the church.
Dick Begg pocketed his coins. "Good riddance to bad rubbish," he stated, grinning. "Niver did get on wi' the bitch anyways."
"How disgusting!" Juliana muttered. She'd heard of such auctions but had never seen one before. The crowd was dispersing now that the entertainment was over, until a fight started up between two burly costermongers. They were going at each other with bare fists, and swiftly a cheering, catcalling circle formed around them.
It was Lucien's turn to look disgusted. "Animals," he said with a curling lip. He strode away toward the Green Man tavern, not troubling to wait for Juliana.
She followed him into the low-ceilinged taproom, her eyes immediately beginning to water with the tobacco smoke that hung in a thick blue haze in the air.
"Blue ruin!" Lucien bellowed at a passing potboy as he pulled out a bench at a long table and sat down. The bench was as filthy as the stained encrusted planking of the table. Juliana brushed ineffectually at the grime and then sat down with an internal shrug. Her cloak was dark and would keep most of it off her gown.
"Not too nice in your tastes, I trust," Lucien said with a sneer.
"Not overly," Juliana responded evenly. "But this place is a pig sty."
"Don't let mine host hear you saying that." Lucien chuckled. "Very proud of his establishment is Tom King." He slapped a sixpence on the table when the potboy appeared with a stone jar and two tankards. "Fill 'em up."
The lad did so, wiping the drips from the table with his finger, which he then licked. His hands were as filthy as his apron, and his hair hung in lank, greasy locks to his shoulders. He took the sixpence and vanished into the crowd as someone else yelled for him. He didn't arrive quickly enough, apparently, because he was greeted with a mighty clout that sent him reeling against the wall.
Juliana gazed at the scene in horrified fascination, blinking her watering eyes. When Lucien pushed a tankard toward her with the brisk injunction "Drink," she carried it to her lips and absently took a large gulp.
Her throat was on fire, her belly burning as if with hot coals. She doubled over the table, choking, her eyes streaming.
"Gad, what a milksop you are!" Lucien thumped her back with his flat palm, using considerable force. "Can't stomach a drop of gin!" But she could bear his malicious amusement as he continued to pound her back. Presumably, she was reacting exactly as he'd intended.
"Leave me alone!" she said furiously, straightening and shaking off his hand. "Why didn't you warn me?"
"And spoil my fun?" He clicked his tongue reprovingly.
Juliana set her lips and pushed the tankard as far from her as she could. She wanted a glass of milk to take away the taste, but the thought of asking for such a thing in this place was clearly absurd.
"Gad, it's Edgecombe!" A voice called from the mists of smoke. "Hey, dear fellow, what brings you here? Heard you'd become leg-shackled."
Three men weaved their way through the room toward them, each carrying a tankard. Their wigs were askew, their faces flushed with drink, their gait distinctly unsteady. They Were young, in their early twenties, but the dissipation behind the raddled complexions and bloodshot, hollowed eyes had vanquished all the bloom of youth.
Lucien raised a hand in greeting. "Come and meet my lady wife, gentlemen." He rose from the bench and bowed with mock formality as he indicated Juliana. "Lady Edgecombe, m'dear fellows. Madam wife, pray make your curtsy to Captain Frank Carson, the Honorable Bertrand Peters, and the dearest fellow of them all, Freddie Binkton." He flung his arm around the last named and hugged him before kissing him soundly.