Nicola Cornick Collection: The Last Rake In London / Notorious / Desired. Nicola Cornick
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as though it belonged to her alone. This morning all her senses seemed to be more acute; she could smell the rich beeswax and lavender furniture polish, see the way in which the early sunlight gleamed on the wood and hear the sounds of the carts outside in the street. The Strand never slept. Even this early there was the rumble of wheels and the sounds of raised voices. But here in the club there was no noise but the splash of the little waterfall in the atrium as it played amidst the spiky palm fronds and cool marble statuary.
There was a letter on the mat by the door. It had been hand delivered and must have arrived at some point in the night. Sally recognised her sister Petronella’s scribble on the envelope. She picked it up and sat down on the stairs to read it.
Please, dear Sal, please, please help me! Clarrie and Anne are in Holloway Prison because they refused to pay their fines and their families are without support and have nowhere to turn. I need money for food and lodging and medicines. My own little ones are sick with the fever. If you could but loan me two hundred pounds …
The feeling of well being drained abruptly from Sally’s body and she read the letter again carefully. Two hundred pounds … A cold, cold shiver touched her spine. She let the letter drift from her fingers. Two hundred pounds was a fortune, enough to buy a house, more than enough comfortably to keep a family for a whole year. But she knew medicine was prohibitively expensive and fever could sweep through crowded tenements like a fire, destroying all in its path. She also knew that Nell would not ask for money unless she was absolutely desperate. Like Sally herself, Nell was too proud for charity and was determined to earn her own money.
Sally leaned her head against the banister and closed her eyes. She did not have two hundred pounds to spare. She had overreached herself with the refurbishment of the Blue Parrot and was already in debt. Yet she had always looked after Nell and Connie, trying to help them if she possibly could. It was part of the pact she had made with herself because of her guilt about their father’s death. She thought of Nell struggling to look after her own and other women’s children when their men folk were dead or had deserted them and they were in prison. Her throat locked with pity and distress.
I do not know how I may manage if you cannot help me, Nell had written. I have my own fines to pay for breach of the peace and sometimes I feel it is not worth the struggle, and yet I cannot abandon the principle of universal suffrage. But if the choice is between that and Lucy and George starving, then I do not know what I can do. Please help me, Sally. You are my only hope.
Sally sighed. She did not support the suffrage movement through militant action as Nell did and felt a terrible guilt that she professed the politics and yet did so little to help her sister. And now there were children suffering and dying of the fever for want of the money to buy medicines. Sally could not bear for anything to happen to them.
She picked up the letter and went back upstairs, her mind running over ways in which she might raise the money to help. She could not borrow further from the bank unless she mortgaged the house, a course of action she was loath to take. There were perhaps a few people whom she could approach for a loan—Gregory Holt, an investor in the club and an old friend of her family, had always offered himself as a shoulder to cry on, but Sally knew he wanted more than friendship from her and did not wish to take advantage of him and put herself in his debt. She could not ask Jack. She barely knew him and that would put their relationship on quite a different footing. She was determined to maintain her independence.
She knocked on Connie’s door as she passed along the landing, but there was no answer; peeping around the door, she saw that the bed had not been slept in. With another sigh she went back to her room and rang the bell for the maid to bring her morning tea. The day did not seem quite so bright with promise now. She knew she had to find a solution to Nell’s problems and find it fast. She had no idea what to do.
‘What do you think?’ Jack said. He was watching Sally’s face as he waited for her reaction. They had dined at White City, in the Grand Restaurant at the Franco-British Exhibition, and now they were poised two hundred feet above the ground in the fairground amusement called the Flip Flap. Beneath them the white-stuccoed buildings of the exhibition were spread out like a magical world that gleamed in the moonlight. The cascade was lit by a thousand coloured lanterns that were reflected in rainbow colours in the waters of the lagoon. Sally gave a sigh of pure enjoyment and Jack felt a surprising rush of pleasure to see her happiness.
‘It is quite, quite beautiful.’ She turned to him, smiling. ‘And quite absurd of you to pay for us to have the entire carriage to ourselves.’
Jack shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to have to share the experience with anyone but you,’ he said.
Sally turned away, resting her elbows on the side of the carriage and looking out across the lights of the capital.
‘They say you can see as far as Windsor on a fine day,’ she said. ‘We came when the exhibition first opened. It was a terrible crush. I brought my sister Nell and her children.’ She laughed. ‘Connie refused to come because she said that, although it was fashionable to be seen here, there were too many ordinary people. Her loss, I suppose. We had a splendid time.’
Jack was not surprised at this insight into Connie Bowes. The more he got to know her sister, the more different they appeared. He’d had someone out looking for both Connie and his cousin Bertie Basset all day, ever since he had received a message from Sally that morning informing him that Connie had not returned home the previous night. He was not sure which of them irritated him the more, Bertie for causing his family so much distress at a time when his father was dangerously ill, or Connie for undoubtedly having an eye to the main chance.
It had been an unsatisfactory day. Jack was not accustomed to finding his attention wandering in business meetings, a fact directly attributable to the woman now standing beside him enraptured by the view. His concentration had been severely affected all day. He had a pile of work requiring his consideration, several urgent decisions to be made and a diary full of appointments to keep, yet he had chosen to take Sally Bowes to the exhibition rather than using the evening for the business dinner he had originally planned. His sanity must be in question.
He had been shaken when he had awoken that morning to realise that he did not want to leave Sally’s bed. He had wanted to stay with her so strongly that the impulse had completely perplexed him. He had never wanted to stay with a woman any longer than it took to say goodbye. But Sally had been warm and soft curled up beside him in the big bed, her body satiated from the passion of their lovemaking. He had found himself holding her as though he never wanted to let her go.
Somehow he had found the strength to leave, but then he had lost the advantage by spending the entire day thinking about her anyway. He smiled ruefully to himself. He had thought that to take her to bed would drive this need for her from body and his mind, only to find that his desire was more acute than ever.
Just as disturbing as his unquenched lust was the guilt he felt on seducing an innocent. Jack played the game by the rules and ravishing virgins was not his style. He knew that Sally would say she was as much seducer as seduced, that his scruples were unnecessary, and that she could take care of herself, but he still felt that what he had done was wrong. Perhaps he was more old fashioned and conventional than he had imagined, for despite the fact that he had known her three days, and despite his deep-rooted rejection of marriage, he wanted to do the right thing. His instinct to propose to Sally was very strong and he assured himself it was nothing to do with the pleasure he took in her company, but simply because he had been brought up a gentleman.
‘Jack?’ Sally was standing looking at him, her face tilted up towards him, eyes bright with excitement. Tonight she was wearing a gown of deep green silk that seemed to flow fluidly over her body. It was embroidered with flowers and decorated with lace at the neck, a concealment that only served to emphasise the lush curve of her breasts. The night was warm and so she had only a diaphanous shawl about her shoulders. Beneath it her skin gleamed pale and tempting.
‘I wondered,’ she said, as the Flip Flap started to descend to the ground again, ‘if you would care to take a swan boat on the lagoon with me before we go back?’
Jack’s preference would