Pearls

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Brick and brass defined the narrow shopfront, the former regularly brushed to remove the omnipresent city soot, the latter carefully polished on a frequent basis. The presentation exuded confidence, quality, a meticulous attention to detail. The shelves inside the barred display window had been emptied for the evening and part of the interior of the shop could be dimly seen beyond. Gold letters above the window proclaimed Marks & Son, Jewellers,  with, in smaller letters, Estb 1827.   It was, in the trade, a name to be reckoned with.

The slim, furtive form outside the door looked through the fog in both directions before reaching out with a gloved hand to ring the bell. From somewhere, church bells began to toll their hour.

The bell rang inside the small shop, insistently, persistently. After a moment, the heavy door swung open an inch, stopped by a heavy security chain. She could feel herself being examined through the gap.

There was a low gasp from within and the door closed suddenly. She could hear the chain rattle inside and the door was suddenly yanked all the way open. Inside was a tall man, a lit paraffin lamp in his hand.

"Lady Darby!" the man inside said anxiously, "Are you all right? Is there anything the matter? The time..." The man seemed shaken with surprise. He tried to peer past her into the darkness.

"May I come in, Mr. Marks?" The voice was soft, low in volume.

"Oh! Of course, my lady, of course!" The man pressed himself against the wall as she slipped past him.

Closing the door, Marks held up the lantern in his hand. Hurriedly, he scurried about, lighting other lamps. She was amused to see him dressed in slippers and a housecoat, although respectable black trousers could be seen underneath.

Turning, he saw the woman standing in the middle of the shop, her hands at her waist.

"Please, my lady, please sit down. Forgive my confusion; I had not expected any... patrons at this hour."

Under his apparent confusion, the man was quietly appreciating the woman's dress. He could trust this woman to follow the dictates of fashion. No, not follow; people of her quality rarely followed. They led, they created  the trend. Marks would never understand recent changes in women's fashion, but he approved of what he was seeing.

The woman's dress was in one sense more ornate than those in past years, in another much simpler. The preposterous bustle of former years had been shed, the shoulders and sleeves were narrower. The fabric was different, too, complex and heavily embroidered. Blue silk flowed like a waterfall from neck to ankles, clinging to the feminine form beneath it, emphasizing a proud bosom and proper womanly hips. For her waist to be that small, he mused, the woman had to be wearing a corset, but, still, the design looked far more comfortable than those of preceding decades. While yielding to the dictates of Victorian morality, it was feminine, delicate and definitely showed off its wearer to best advantage.

A small smile on her face, the woman settled gently into a chair left just for such visitors.

"Please, my dear Mr. Marks, do sit down. I must apologize for intruding without notice."

"The presence of a lady such as yourself can never be an intrusion," he said. The woman smiled at the sincerity in his voice.

Looking about, the man settled in another chair, then remembered his manners.

"Would your ladyship care for some tea? Some port, perhaps? I have..."

She held up her hand. "No, thank you, Mr. Marks. You are most kind, but my business is urgent and I only have a short while."

A shadow fell on the shop window, a policeman on his patrol perhaps. The woman turned her head away, looked at a clock on the shop wall.

"It is indeed late!" she exclaimed. "I am sorry."

"It is of no importance. How may I be of assistance to your ladyship?"

The woman rose, placed a leather case on his desk.

"I wish to sell these," she said, thumbing open the catches.

Marks' eyebrows rose at the sight of its contents. "You will forgive me," he said, moving to behind the desk to sit and examine them properly.

Pearls. There were hundreds of pearls, maybe thousands. There were pearl bracelets, pearl broaches and what seemed to be endless strings of necklaces. To some, all pearls seem the same, but a trained eye sees each individually, as individual people make up a crowd. He smiled to himself.

"Ah!" he breathed. "Spectacular." He fitted a loupe to one eye, brought two lamps in closer, pored through the bag. The woman waited patiently for him to finish his inspection.

"A remarkable collection, if I may say so. If your ladyship could give me a fortnight, even a week to organize things, one of the very reputable auction houses here in the city can..."

"I haven't a week, Mr. Marks," the woman interrupted. "I must be on the Dover ferry at dawn tomorrow. It must be tonight."

He shrugged. It was a token of his perplexity that he would so gesture in front of a woman of her rank.

"Lady Darby," he said, apologetically, "pray forgive me, but if your noble family is in need of cash tonight, a note from your esteemed father to one of the directors of his bank would surely..."

"My father!" she said scornfully. "It is my father's mad, ceaseless gambling that has brought our house to this state! No, Mr. Marks, I implore you, it must be tonight."

"But..."

Her voice was bitter in tone and not much above a whisper. "My father has agreed to settle his debts by giving me in marriage to a manufacturing magnate, a tradesman! He has sold me, his only child! No, Mr. Marks, I must to the continent, someplace out of his reach. And it must be tonight."

"I do have some funds here, of course," he said, "but I doubt I could, tonight, give your ladyship more than 10 per cent of what such finery is fairly worth."

"I will take whatever you can give me, Mr. Marks."

The man thought for a second. He peered at the bounty on the desk, leaned forward, frowned.

"Odd," he said.

He leaned forward to examine the pearls.

"This one, my lady," he said, "Can you see it?"

Uncertain, bending forward over the other side of the desk, the woman put her hands on the desktop to balance herself.

Swift as a snake, his hands lashed out. His strong left hand held her hands together, palm to palm, while his right hand swirled a long string of pearls two, three, then four times around her wrists, then one again between her palms. It had taken but a second, but the girl could not have been more securely held by police handcuffs. As he sat back in his chair, a small revolver appeared in his hand.

So small as to be almost swallowed up in his hand, the thing was clearly still a lethal threat. Its muzzle seemed to her to be as large as a manhole; her eyes were drawn to it as into the depths of a deep valley.

Shocked, her slender wrists fought for an instant with the improvised manacles before her eyes swept from the gun up to his face. There was a look of wary satisfaction on his face.

"Are you insane?" she hissed, her face pale with outrage. "Do you forget who you are dealing with?"

"Only partially," he said, quietly, seriously.

"I do know who I am not  dealing with." He smiled now at the look on her face, continued. "I am very certain that I am not  dealing with Lady Patricia Alexandria Margaret Darby de Clare."

The young woman started to sputter a protest, became silent. He could see her indignation seething, but tightly controlled.

"I have two interesting bits of trivia for you," he smiled.

"The first was a titteration of not-quite-scandal in the gossip papers perhaps 18 months ago. Do you remember that?"

He leaned back into his chair. His eyes fell on the weapon still in his hand. Almost as an afterthought, he eased the hammer down to a half-cock position and dropped it into a voluminous pocket.

The girl sat glaring at him, fury on her face, her tethered hands in her lap.

"No? Well, let me remind you. Lady Darby had quite by chance learned of an impoverished widow, a very distant relative of an almost-forgotten cadet branch of the de Clare family. The most remarkable thing about this woman was her almost fairy-tale resemblance to the enchantingly lovely Lady Darby herself. Height, weight, form, hair, the shape of nose and chin - even gait and posture - all were identical. And Lady Darby, generous, sentimental gentlewoman that she is, could hardly bear to see, in effect, herself reduced to such straights."

"And thus engaged her as personal attendant and companion," the girl said. "I remember."

"Their similarity," he continued, "was such that Lady Darby actually starting sending the woman to her seamstress for fittings instead of spending the time it took in person. Quite an extraordinary resemblance."

His smile became still brighter. "It was that small titbit that brought the second woman's existence to the attention of the press. Needless to say, that revelation cost the seamstress her position in Lady Darby's household."

The girl, her face seemingly calmer, said nothing.

"The second thing," he continued, more confidently now, "is something the yellow press overlooked, one subtle difference between two otherwise-identical women."

The girl just stared at him, caught now but hardly surrendering.

"You see," he said, "I myself restrung these very pearls for Lady Darby two years ago. At the time, I was struck quite forcefully by the amazing blue colour of her eyes. And yet here I am, again face to face with the beauteous Lady Darby, but this time with grey eyes.

"Curious, don't you think?

The woman lifted her chin a little in defiance.

"Even more curious, our not-quite-right Lady Darby is, unannounced and in the still of the night, trying to sell me £50,000 worth of pearls, on the flimsiest of reasons. Moreover, despite knowing the heavy loss a hurried sale will bring, she is still demanding an immediate cash payment."

Silence filled the air for a long minute. She twisted her hands, as if seeking release.

"You'll not break them," he said, casually. "Just so you know, when I restrung them for her, Lady Darby instructed me to make them as strong as possible to avoid any possible breakage. I used braided spider silk; very costly, far too expensive for normal use, but five times stronger than steel."

The girl tried again, gave up and started to sag slightly before pulled herself erect. She had her pride.

"Guinevere Stockford, at your service," she said softly.

"Ah,' he said. "I'd forgotten the name. Thank you."

It felt so very odd, the woman thought, so very strange, to be shackled with such priceless beauty. She lifted her wrists to her nose, sniffed, expecting to smell something strange, but there was nothing. Her eyes lifted to his.

"Now what?"

The man smiled.

"That's pretty much up to you," he said. "But I suppose it's expected that I should call for the police."

Glumly, she watched him rise, walk around her to the door. Producing a silver-plated whistle from a pocket, he put it between his lips. Keeping his eyes on the seated figure before him, he carefully opened the heavy door a bare fingerbreadth before blowing very gently through the whistle. Just six feet away, the girl had to strain to hear the resulting sound.

The man put his ear to the barely-open door, apparently listening. A moment later, he straightened up.

"Nothing," he, shaking his head. "The bobby's probably on the other end of his beat. Too bad."

He ostentatiously turned the key in a massive lock on the door, withdrew it and placed it in a trouser pocket,

"Hard luck," he said again, almost sympathetically. This time, she could see his eyes openly examine her body, lingering over full bosom and tiny waist, the slender ankles just visible under the hem of her dress.

She sat very still, very silent, a small rabbit hoping the attention of a fox will pass her by.

"I will be candid," he said, returning to his chair. "Forgive my lowering the character of our pleasant evening conversation, but time and circumstance force me to be blunt.

"In the two brief business meetings I had with Lady Darby, I will confess that I became utterly enchanted with her."

The woman's face was pale now, but not with anger.

"Well," he continued, "perhaps not romantically  enchanted. A man of my class falling in love with a lady of her high station... it's simply preposterous."

"Of course," she said softly, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Yet I had never seen such a lovely woman," he said, his eyes half-closed as if lost in sweet memories. "I yearned, with my entire soul, to..."

His eyes flipped to hers, locked them in his gaze. "I longed to, let me be blunt, to possess  her. Physically, that is. To be frank, I wanted her under me in my bed, writhing and moaning with her own pleasure."

"Sir!" she protested hotly, her colour rising. "No gentleman...!"

He waved a palm at her, cut her off.

"I am no gentleman; you have already made that clear. No matter how successful, no matter how prosperous I may ever be, I am - as you have already put it - a mere 'tradesman'. But, equally, let there be no misunderstanding between us, for you yourself are no lady."

She flushed scarlet now, knowing it was true yet resenting the truth so openly voiced.

"We are well-matched, my girl, for you are a thief and an imposter."

Shaken, she shook her head in pointless denial as he continued.

"So, my Lady Lightfingers, we are thus faced with two problems. One is how to deal with the theft of these gems. The other is my own personal..."

He stopped talking, stared at her. She shivered as his eyes again openly explored her body and face before continuing.

"On one hand, you see, I have a solid artistic talent and a reputation for scrupulous honesty. I own a highly reputable establishment, one patronized by the greatest names in the nation. I could summon that bobby, earn his gratitude, raise my public reputation for integrity still more and, no doubt, receive a substantial reward from the real Lady Darby. That is, of course, also that action expected of me both by law and by every ethical moral and philosophical code."

His voice fell to a mere whisper. "Against all that, in the balance, rest my very natural, very strong urges as a man in the prime of his life when confronted with an utterly beautiful, infinitely desirable woman."

She stared at him now, grey eyes in the lamplight.

"A woman, I might add, now entirely in my power."

She did not flinch at the implicit threat.

"You perceive my dilemma," he said. "But I see now that we might find a simple enough solution, one not involving the authorities." Here he permitted himself a thin smile. It faded and the man seemed lost in thought.

The girl thought she could see him come to a decision.

"Let down your hair," he commanded.

"I beg your pardon?" Her indignation was clear.

"I suppose the Matron at the Yard could do it," he said, producing the whistle again. His voice sounded flat, seemingly without mercy or pity.

"They've stopped transporting convicts to the Australian colonies, my lass, so you'll not face that. On the other hand, I hear they're reconsidering opening the Brixton Prison treadmill to female prisoners."

It was clear that the implications of that shook her. He pressed on.

"That matters, you see, for these,  he said, running his hands over the iridescent strands in front of him, "are not just any  pearls. These are the de Clare  pearls, brought back from India two hundred years ago, the personal dowries of generations of de Clare women. The theft of these gems will be taken as an unforgivable insult to not only Lady Darby, but to the memories of every woman of her family.

"That the theft took place after she had personally rescued you from poverty, brought you into her service, put you in a position of trust...?" He shook his head, his face bleak.

"Mrs. Stockford, the de Clares will use every ounce of their considerable political influence to see you put away for the rest of your days in the deepest, most wretched, rat-infested dungeon in Her Majesty's service. Tasmania would have been a more pleasant alternative."

He let that sink in only for a second, then spoke, harsher now.

"I will not tell you again, girl - let down your hair!

Her eyes locked with his for a long moment, then, fumbling with clumsy, pearl-wrapped hands, she pulled out pin after pin, removed her hat, placed it carefully on the desk. Her locks had been carefully braided and rebraided into a complex arrangement on top of her head; it took her several minutes to break it down. Finally, she shook her head, releasing a tumbling cascade of honey. She shook her hair again; its ends reached her lap. She pushed a cage of hair off her face and sat very still again, her face expressionless.

"So beautiful," he mused. He got up, came to stand beside where she sat.

"I've dreamed of this," he said, hoarsely. He crouched down, wrapped his hand in her hair, buried his face in it, inhaled soap and sandalwood.

His hands deep in the mass, he drew her head, gently but inexorably, to his. She tried to turn her head, but his grasp of her hair gave him leverage enough to draw their faces together. Their mouths met and she felt his tongue sweep gently over her lips. Just one touch, then he released her.

"It's over," he whispered. "Accept that. You're mine - accept that, too."

The girl's head was downturned, her face hidden by her hair.

Softly, so softly she could barely hear him, came the command.

"Take off your dress."

Tears came to her eyes. Finding his handkerchief, he lifted her chin and wiped them away gently, a gesture which surprised the woman.

"Take off your dress," he said again, pulling her to her feet. This time there could be no resistance.

He watched as trembling fingers rose to her throat, but her tethered wrists made it impossible for her to reach the buttons behind her neck.

Now she sagged against him, a torrent of tears flooding her eyes.

His finger came under her chin, again lifted her face to look at him. Again, he dried her eyes.

"It's not that bad," he said. "You're a widow, so let's not waste time talking of 'a fate worse than death'. It won't be that."

She nodded in acknowledgement; her surrender almost complete.

"Understand something, Guinevere," he said softly. "To be perfectly clear, I don't want to force you. I want your cooperation, your full  cooperation. It will be easier, better for us both.

"Listen to me. You do indeed need to flee the country for, yes, the wrath of the de Clares is legendary. But I am a jeweller, from a long family of jewellers, and it's not just whisky which moves out of sight of the authorities, Gwen. In three days, I can have you in Amsterdam, safe and sound.

"Let me sweeten the deal. I will in any case return the pearls to their rightful owner. I suspect there will be a reward, but I'll take a chance and send you on your way with £500, more than the average woman will see in a decade. Moreover, once the gems are back in the hands of the real Lady Darby, the de Clare thirst for revenge will die down soon enough.