“The time has come when it should be said that those responsible for our country now stand on the very threshold of eternal glory or eternal shame. The wages of sin is death: What are the wages of those who fail in an hour like this?”
The mistress of 5 Gulliver Place is at home & breakfasting a most singular gent, the maid (an adolescent child new blossomed into womanhood), serves her mistress silently, her eyes alighting from time to time on the handsome looking cove whose twinkling gaze from time to time flickers toward her bustle, alights on the gabled window and then flickers back.
“Are they not sick of the sight of the battlefield with its poor suffering wounded, for I myself confess that victory has no charms for me when purchased at such a price!”
“You’ve lost a mere ten guineas by it, why ponder the consequence?”
Mrs Fard fingers a slip of toast which she has elegantly buttered with a mere sliver of a knife, ponders it then lets it fall uneaten upon a a beautifully wrought porcelain plate (recently brought to her from Florence), she has her figure to think of after all. Why is he here at this time? It is so early in the day that not even twittering of larks may be heard. His consciense can’t be troubling him can it? Why the man has sundered many a lake incarnadine to get this far & now, on the cusp of governing the Thames itself will he lose nowse? She doubts it, there must be some other reason for his sitting here, relating the latest humiliations brought on by the Crimea War.
“You err Amelia! So certain was I that we’d defeat the blighters I wagered thirty!”
“More fool you Lauri, finis origine pendet, the end depends wholly on the beginning, I forget which lord told me that, save that he was a-tween the sheets when he did so. Why are you here dearest?”
“An officer of the law was spotted at Mile End Chapel, I thought you had them under your control dearest?”
“As I speak two slumber upstairs, I’ve boarded many an officer in my time, but the Mile End Peelers? My dear they are beyond the pale! Who was it sighted an officer taking the air in a graveyard my darling? Mayhap he was in his cups when he did so!”
Amelia snorted with derision, she’d been a bawd for twenty five year (a brothel madam for ten of those) and she’d yet to meet an officer worth his salt save one, and his kingdom lay at Spitalsfield’s gates.
“Tush dear! Careful with that mouth! Az you forgot what you crawled from to come so far? Them as brought you thus far on the wings of their bedsheets can as easily toss you back az you forgot that? Az you forgot what we iz ‘melia? I ain’t! There’s not an inch of this matter left uncovered by me, not one!”
“Who was spotted? I know all there is!”
“Aven’t I tole yer? Aven’t I said? An officer! A Bow Street officer!”
To be continued……
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