Stroke of Genius by Mia Marlowe Read Free Book Online Page B

gems stuck in Madame’s bracelet were only paste, he thought it a thing of beauty. A bright spot of color in a world of gray.
    “The boy’s only five or maybe six.”
    “But big for his age,” the man said. “And so very comely.”
    There was a long pause and the boy in question leaned closer to the crack in the door to Madame’s private chamber.
    “You’re only against it because you figure the mollies cut into your business with some of the upper crust,” the man said with a laugh. “You’d be well compensated for the boy.”
    In the silence that followed, Crispin didn’t dare breathe. Something inside him shivered once and then went perfectly still, a wild young thing hiding from the predator sniffing nearby.
    “No,” she finally said.
    He released the breath he’d been holding.
    But even a lad of five or six knew Madame Peel’s ‘no’ was only a deferred ‘yes.’ If Peel’s Abbey had a few lean weeks, the answer would change in a heartbeat. He knew it as surely as he knew his own name.
    Crispin knew lots of things. He’d lived at the Abbey all his life. After the pale, dark-haired woman he called mother died of a fever there, Crispin toddled around the pleasure house, growing up wild as a thistle, with little help from the adults around him. The girls who worked there took little notice of him. They wandered about the house in various stages of undress, thinking it didn’t matter to such a youngster.
    But he noticed and it did matter. He knew the line of a long feminine leg and the curve of a breast almost before he could talk. And they meant something to him. Enough for him to be sure he wouldn’t be happy as a molly’s pet.
    The girls talked over his head while he played with little wooden soldiers he’d carved himself. He knew which of the ‘gentlemen’ were kind and which were rough, who had a short sword and who was gifted with a long one, but was loutish in his bedplay. He learned about every whore’s trick and every possible manner of coupling before he could read his first word. 
    If Madame Peel was set on selling him, he’d have to run away. But he didn’t want to leave the Abbey . It was all he knew.
    So Crispin made himself useful at every opportunity. He spit-shined Madame’s black boots till she could see herself in the glossy leather. He ran errands for the girls while they slept in the mornings. He’d always been clever with his hands, so he drew pictures that pleased them, making the thin ones more plump and giving the chubby girls one chin less.
    He gave Madame no excuse to rid herself of him.
    And every evening when the ‘gentlemen’ came, he crept up to the garret and hid himself away.

Chapter 6

    Pygmalion shunned the society of others, but that didn’t mean he had no need of it. Almost against his will, he found himself drawn into the paean of life.
     
    The gas lamps of Vauxhall winked on throughout the pleasure garden like a long strand of glowing pearls. They cast the pavilions and statuary into a beguiling half-light, teasing the eye and tempting the senses. Strains of a sprightly tune wafted over the murky water of the Thames.
    “It’s like a magical kingdom,” Grace exclaimed as their boat docked at the garden’s stairs. The park was now accessible by land, thanks to the new Westminster Bridge, but her mother had wanted to ride one of the little ferries across the river from Whitehall.
    “There you see, Homer. It’s just as I remember it.”
    Minerva had spent time in London with her English cousins as a child and Grace suspected she frequently embellished her memories. At her first sight of Vauxhall, Grace knew this was not one of those times.
    “The water trip adds so much to the experience.” Minerva clapped her gloved hands together in satisfaction.
    “It might if I were a duck,” her father said gruffly.
    Grace cast a quick glance at her earth-bound father. All ledgers and schedules, Homer Makepeace was not one for flights of fancy. Even the