Briskly dismissing the thought, she said to the chairmen, "You had best wait for me here."

The lead chairman tipped his hat and adjusted the pads on his shoulders where the poles had rested. His companion ran up the steps to hammer on the knocker. Juliana followed him with the same haughty air of before, silently challenging them to question what she could be doing in such a place.

Mr. Garston opened the door and looked for a moment completely startled. Then he bowed as he'd never bowed to Juliana Ridge. "Pray step within, m'lady."

Juliana did so. "I've come to see Miss Lilly and the others." She tapped her closed fan in her palm and looked pointedly around the hall, as if finding its furnishings wanting in some way. To her secret delight Mr. Garston seemed a little intimidated, a little unsure of how to treat her. It was small revenge for their first meeting, and the subsequent occasions when he'd barred the door to her.

"Would ye care to wait in the salon, m'lady?" He moved with stately step to the room she remembered so vividly, flinging open the double doors.

The salon had been cleaned and polished, but the smell of wine and tobacco, and the girls' perfume, still lingered from the previous evening, despite the wide-open windows. It was a decadent combination of odors. Juliana wandered to the window and stared out at the scene in the street outside. Sunshine did much to mute the grimness: the one-legged child, hobbling on a crutch, thrusting his upturned cap at passersby with a whining, singsong plea for a penny; the woman asleep or unconscious in the gutter, a bottle clutched to her breast. Two gentlemen emerged from Thomas Davies's bookshop opposite, at Number 8. They had the air of learned men, with their flowing wigs and rusty black frock coats. Both carried leather-bound volumes, and they were talking earnestly. They stepped over the woman without so much as looking down and brushed past the crippled child, ignoring his pathetic pleas as he followed them down the street. Pleas that turned rapidly into curses when it became clear they were not going to put a penny in his cap.

As the child hopped, muttering, back to his position in the shadow of the bookshop doorway, Juliana frowned in puzzlement. There was something not quite right about him. She stared, leaning out of the window into the narrow street. Then she saw it. The child's leg was bent up at the knee and fastened with twine around his thigh. He was not one-legged at all. But he must be in the most awful discomfort, she thought, compassion instantly chasing away the moment of distaste at the fraud. Presumably he had a beggars' master, who had hit upon this cheat. Perhaps he was fortunate he hadn't been mutilated permanently.

Shuddering, she turned from the window as the door opened on a babble of excited voices.

"How is Lucy, Juliana?" Rosamund, her pretty face grave with concern, was the first into the room. The others followed in a gay flutter of filmy wrappers and lace-edged caps. They were still in dishabille, as Juliana remembered from her own days in the house. They wouldn't dress formally until just before dinner.

"She was sleeping when I left. But I think she's recovering quickly. Henny is looking after her." Juliana perched on the arm of a brocade sofa. "His Grace will not permit her to have visitors, because she needs to rest," she explained tactfully. "So I'll have to act as your messenger."

Fortunately no one questioned this polite fabrication, and Lilly launched into a description of the Dennisons' reaction to Lucy's plight and the request that they consider taking her in when she was well enough to work again.

"Mistress Dennison was pleased to say that since Lucy appeared to have His Grace's favor, then they would consider it," Emma said, sitting on the sofa and patting Juliana's arm confidingly.

"What a difference it makes to have an influential patron." sighed Rosamund, shaking her curls vigorously.

"Actually, I don't think it has much to do with the duke," Lilly declared acerbically. "It's just that Mistress Dennison would be delighted to thwart Mother Haddock."

There was a chuckle at this; then Lilly said, "So what was this plan you had, Juliana?"

"Ah." She opened and closed her fan restlessly. "Well, I thought that if we all banded together, we could look after each other. Protect each other so that what happened to Lucy couldn't happen again."

"How?" asked one of the girls with a mop of dark-brown curls and a sharp chin.

"If everyone in the various houses agreed to contribute a small sum every week from their earnings, we could have a rescue fund. We could pay debts like Lucy's . . . bail people out of debtors' prison."

The circle of faces looked at her in dubious silence. Then someone said, "That might be all right for us . . . and for girls in some of the better houses, but for most of them, they don't earn enough to keep body and soul together after they've paid their whoremasters for the drink and the candles, and coal, and a gown, and linen. Molly Higgins told me she spent over five pounds last week because she had to have wax candles for her clients and new ribbons for her nightcap because she can't look shabby if she's to attract the right kind of customers. And the five pounds didn't include the present she had to give to madam to keep her sweet."

"But if they didn't have to buy all those things from their masters, then they would be better off,'' Juliana pointed out.

"But those are the terms on which they rent the places where they do business," Emma pointed out with an air of patience, as if explaining self-evident truths to an infant.

"But if they all refused to accept those terms, and if we managed to collect enough money to lend them for those necessary supplies, then they wouldn't be dependent on the whoremasters and bawds."

"It seems to me that you're talking of a vast deal of money," a dark girl said, nibbling a fingernail.

"Money's the key to everything," Rosamund replied gloomily. "I don't see how we can do it, Juliana."

"It's not money so much as solidarity," Juliana persisted. "If everyone agrees to put in what they can, you'd be surprised how it will mount up. But everyone has to take part. Everyone has to agree to stand by each other. If we do that, then we can stand up to the bawds and whoremasters."

There was another doubtful silence, and Juliana realized she had her work cut out. These women were so accustomed to a life of exploitation and powerlessness that they couldn't grasp the idea of taking their lives back. She opened her reticule and drew out her remaining twenty-pound note.

"I'll start the fund with this." She put the note on the table in front of her.

"But, Juliana, why should you contribute?" Lilly asked. "You're not one of us. In fact, you never have been."

"Oh, but I am," she said firmly. "My position is a little different, a little more secure, but I'm still in a situation I didn't choose, because I was alone and friendless and vulnerable. I was as much exploited as any one of you. And I'm as much dependent on the goodwill of a man who wouldn't call himself my whoremaster, but in essence that's exactly what he is."

Juliana glanced involuntarily toward the window as she said this, suddenly afraid that she might see the Duke of Redmayne standing there. If he heard himself described in such terms, his reaction didn't bear thinking about. But, then, he wasn't a man to appreciate the unvarnished truth when applied to his own actions.

"We should discuss it with the girls in the other houses," Lilly said. "If no one else wants to take part, then it won't work. We couldn't do it all ourselves."

"No," Juliana agreed. "It must be a real sisterhood."

"Sisterhood," mused Rosamund. "I like that word. I like what it means. Will you come with us to talk to the others, Juliana? You sound so convincing … so certain. And it was your idea."