Ladies in Waiting Read Online Free Page B

adding a musky note to the heady medley of stink.
    How do they live like this? Zabby wondered as she picked her way along the wharf to the inn suggested by the captain (an agent of her father’s) as reputable and clean—the King’s Arms. She already felt oppressed by the noise and crowds, and this was only Dover. Imagine how London must smell, and sound. She coughed, feeling the grain of coal on her tongue. And taste!
    Thank heaven she’d be going to her godmother’s country estate, not her London home. Zabby didn’t think she could bear it after the freedom—and clean air—of her Barbados plantation.
    She let herself into the inn, and a dozen faces looked up from their mugs and tankards.
    “God’s cods!” one cried. “What will the whores think of next? Lacing in the front!”
    “Mighty convenient,” said another, a young rake who perhaps had more experience with the genuine article. “Keeps the goods locked up till the shilling’s paid. That miss can let her udders bounce out at will, and no maid needed to lace ’em up again.”
    Another argued she’d sell her wares better if her bodice was right way round, giving them an advertisement of what was to come. Yet another claimed all the business was lower down, that only a fool would pay a whore for the top half.
    Nurtured by a loving father, surrounded by a virtual city of people beholden to her, Zabby had never felt the sudden rude mortification of being the butt of the crowd’s joke. She looked at them angrily, but wasn’t quite strong enough to tell them off. Just as well—pertness in a prostitute is an invitation, and the men might well have offered more intimate insult. She stalked to the rear of the public house, a quiet nook where only two men sat in the shadows, and waited for the captain to join her. Once she secured a room she could change out of these ridiculous clothes. It went against reason to lock herself up, backward or forward, in such impractical garb.
    “Pick another seat, sweetheart,” one of the men said, not unkindly, but she was too deep in her humiliation to hear him, and sat at the next table, staring sulkily at the polished grain of the heavy oak slabs.
    The man half rose and, before she could think to stop him, slipped (not without difficulty) something cold down the front, which was really the back, of her bodice. “We’ve business to discuss, mistress, and would be alone.”
    She met his eye with a scowl. It was hard to make out his features in the flickering candlelight at the back of the inn, but he seemed almost a gentleman, large and dark, with neat curling mustachios and heavy-lidded black eyes. He was dressed, as far as she could tell, as a merchant, but there was something majestic and confident in his mien. A student of nature wild and domestic, she had spent many hours watching Papa’s herd of horses. One male led them all, not always the biggest or strongest, but certainly the most self-assured. Larger, wilder stallions would defer to him, let him have his way with all the mares, though they could easily defeat him in open battle. This man had the same fine carriage, the same haughty eyes, as the herd stallion. He was accustomed to obedience.
    Zabby was in no mood to be obedient, particularly when the only alternative was sitting by the men who thought her a whore, after parading by for their pleasure.
    “Sir, I will not move,” she said, lifting her chin.
    The man’s eyes glittered. She saw now that they were bloodshot. A sheen of sweat slicked his ruddy face. Perfect—he was drunk.
    “I am newly come to England, but I am told every person is free the moment he steps upon English soil. This is not a land of slaves, sir. There is only one man in this country I would be obliged to obey, and I do not think even he could compel me to change seats at this moment. Leave me be, sir. I’ll not trouble you.”
    She tried to fish for the coin to return it, but it was lodged too deeply down her bodice. It stayed