The Lace Balcony by Johanna Nicholls Read Free Book Online Page A

everything easy came at a price. Time was running out. She had no illusions about how easy it was to slide into prostitution. What other solution was there?
    I could throw myself into the harbour and make a quick end to it all. They say drowning is effortless, a not unpleasant way to die. But who knows anyone who has come back from the grave to confirm it?
    She recalled an old salt on the City of Edinburgh who had warned her against swimming in the harbour. ‘Port Jackson’s alive with sharks, lass. They don’t trouble them blacks, none. Sharks must prefer tasty white flesh – like thine!’
    Fanny shuddered at the memory of his tobacco-stained teeth as he laughed at her horror. Eyeing the harbour, she suddenly found the romantic idea of drowning distinctly less appealing. Her shame at her selfish suicidal fantasies was short-lived. She was overwhelmed by a wave of nausea worse even than the seasickness suffered during the voyage. Her head throbbed in confusion. Was it from heat, hunger or fever?
    She heard an echo of Madame Amora’s warning, ‘Be careful what you wish for, Fanny!’
    A minute ago I wanted to die! God help me, I want to live!
    The memory of that last night in her Mistress’s townhouse in St John’s Wood returned with the clarity of a scene in a play at Drury Lane . . .
    . . . the clock in the vestibule sounded a single chime. Fanny sat in the corridor outside Madame Amora’s bedchamber, overcome by weariness but unable to desert her post. A courtesan’s whims were unpredictable. Her current protector, the Duke, had leased thishouse for her, but during his absence, visiting his wife in the country, Madame had broken her own iron-clad rule – never to allow her heart to rule her head.
    Tonight Madame had taken a new lover to her bed. Kit had all the confidence of a handsome young stud who knows how to enchant older women. From behind closed doors Fanny recognised that Madame’s silvery laughter and cries of joy were not part of a courtesan’s counterfeit stock-in-trade.
    Fanny gave a sigh of resignation. Kit was the perfect antidote to Madame’s ennui. ‘Oh dear, no rest for me tonight.’
    She was startled awake by the sight of the figure in front of her. Kit was clearly naked beneath the brocade dressing robe that belonged to the Duke.
    â€˜Is something wrong, Sir? Does Madame need me?’ she stammered.
    â€˜Not at all. Your mistress is dead to the world. I am the one in need.’
    His smile was disarming, his palms open in a gesture that implied, ‘What’s a man to do?’
    But as he moved towards her she read the expression in his eyes.
    â€˜I’m bored,’ he said. ‘Pray stay and entertain me.’
    â€˜You mistake me, Sir. I take orders from none but my mistress.’
    â€˜And my mistress takes orders from me.’
    He drew her into the shadows, pressing her against the wall, his tongue, his hands swiftly gaining their objective.
    Fanny struggled violently as one of his hands freed her breasts, the other thrust between her thighs. Biting his tongue, she realised her mistake. The danger and her resistance clearly excited him. He gasped with pleasure and pain – then froze.
    A vision in a flowing Grecian robe, Madame Amora stood framed in the doorway, her unnaturally white face devoid of all expression.
    Fanny broke free, clutching at her torn bodice. ‘Madame, believe me, I –’
    â€˜I have no further need of you, Fanny. Go to your room.’
    Shaken, Fanny fled to her attic chamber. From the window she watched Kit cross the snow-covered street to hail a hansom cab. So Madame had sent him packing. But where did that leave her?
    Retribution had been swift. Too proud to reveal her humiliation at what she saw as a double betrayal, Madame Amora had given instructions for Fanny to be shown the door. Denied both a month’s back wages and a written character reference,