Keeping Faith (Fair Cyprians of London 3)

“Yes, Lady Vernon.” Faith took the newspaper and hurried out of the room and up the stairs, snatching her carpetbag from her bed and shoving in the newspaper as she pushed aside the curtains and saw her hackney waiting in the cobbled street below.

Freedom.

It was exhilarating. Crispin would be pacing the floorboards at The Green Whistle at nine o’ clock, as agreed. They’d parted with regret but excitement too, eager for the new adventure that awaited them both.

With the coins Lady Vernon had given her, Faith paid the driver and pulled her veil down over her face as she entered the premises through the back entrance. Her heart clutched as she remembered the last time she’d come here less than 48 hours before. The night of loving she and Crispin had shared had helped her survive the impatience to be with him.

“Crispin,” she whispered, as she slipped through the open door and into what turned out to be an empty parlour.

She was too impatient to sit, so she went to the window and stared down at the traffic below. London had overwhelmed her when Mrs Gedge had brought her here as little more than a child. She’d grown used to it, though, and come to like the anonymity.

What would Germany be like? She couldn’t wait to explore it with Crispin.

Catching sight of her reflection in the mirror above the mantelpiece, she saw the tenseness in her eyes. Little wonder. She’d put her future in Crispin’s hands, and given up her opportunity to find independence through what Mrs Gedge would have been willing to pay her had she chosen a path of revenge rather than love.

The clock on the landing struck the half hour.

Where was Crispin?

Worry niggled at her as she walked restlessly to the window and back. She’d seek occupation in tidying her hair perhaps. Scrabbling in her carpetbag for the ivory brush, she encountered instead the newspaper she’d forgotten she’d taken to give to Madame Chambon. That would divert her.

She pulled it out and lowered herself on a spindly chair at the round table by the window where she could supplement the fading light by lighting the reading lamp.

It was a respectable newspaper, but as Faith glanced at the front page, she decided it must be filled with enough scandal to entertain Madame Chambon.

The old bawd would be titillated by such salacious pickings as the story behind the scandalous young woman who’d clearly been featured on the front page for parading herself as something pure when her heart was full of sin, if the headline was anything to go by. Faith did not even consider a parallel until Crispin’s name caught her eye.

She put her hand over her mouth and gasped. Crispin? What connection did Crispin have to a woman clearly reviled in the press as someone shameless?

And then, as a sensation of stepping into an icy bath passed over her, Faith realised that it was she, herself, who was the subject of the article.

Faith Montague, named and shamed, by a major newspaper. Not only that, photographed in the arms of none other than Lord Harkom. The photograph had been lined up beside a photograph of Crispin’s painting of Faith.

She thought she was going to be sick.

It was the picture taken just before Lord Harkom had tried to force himself on her. Just before Faith had been all but forsaken by Lady Vernon for her failure to win Crispin’s affections before Mrs Gedge had given Faith her reprieve.

Regardless of what Faith might have been, there was no mistaking the kind of company she kept. The revealing costumes of the other prostitutes at Madame Chambon’s proclaimed it brazenly to the world.

Hunched over, she read the article more closely in all its tawdry detail. It detailed her supposed life in scathing detail. Faith had come to London as a penniless country girl; beautiful and cunning. She had fallen quickly into vice, but her exceptional looks and talent for mimicry had earned her the interest of Lord Harkom, who had made her his mistress and, when he’d given her her congè, seen her taken under the wing of a female benefactress who’d set about equipping her with the skills needed to insinuate her way into Mr Westaway’s heart.

And all for what?

For revenge.

Revenge for the loss of a daughter whose death this so-called benefactress laid squarely at Mr Westway’s door.

So close to the truth, in fact, but so far in its most essential details—Faith had never intended to follow through with a plan that would destroy Crispin.

And Faith had never taken up with anyone before she’d met Crispin. Her beloved Crispin had won her entire loyalty. She’d given up her only chance of independence to be with him.

Panic swirled about her as she digested the implications.

She placed her palms down on the newspaper as if to obliterate the pictures and the content while she stared about the room that would remain empty—but for her.

Crispin had read this. Lady Vernon had given it to her as a sign.

What could Faith do now? She was exposed.