“Yes. You see, finally here was a way we could repay her. She had taken care of us, and taken nothing in return. But she needed blood to heal, and we could give her that. When Mary asked, Dree admitted she needed to feed on blood regularly and hunted to get it, and again, we could give her that and save her the need to hunt. It could be an exchange instead of us being beholden to her and terrified she might up and leave one day. Dree would continue to keep us safe and we would keep her fed. Everyone was happy,” Beth said as if it was simple logic. “And so we went for the next nearly twenty-five years.”
“Ye were happy selling yerselves?” Scotty asked with a sort of bewilderment. That hardly seemed to fit with a woman who had repeatedly risked being beaten to death to escape.
Beth hesitated, but then blew her breath out and finally said, “No. I mean, it was not the life I expected to lead. As a child I thought I’d be like my mother, grow up, marry and have children,” she admitted and Scotty suspected from her expression that it might have been the first time she’d ever admitted that, even to herself.
“But of course,” Beth assured him, “I’d marry a good man, not someone like my father. I’d marry someone like our neighbor Mr. Hardy, who was always ever so kind.”
“Then why did you not do that once Dree had saved ye from Danny?” he asked with confusion. “Dear God, ye risked being beaten to death to escape, and then simply settled into the life afterward. Why?”
“Because, as you know, no good man would want a whore for a wife.”
Fifteen
Beth’s words echoed in his brain. “Because, as you know, no good man would want a whore for a wife.”
She’d sounded neither angry nor sorry for herself. She had said it as a simple statement of fact, and Scotty felt like she’d punched him. After all, it was exactly why he had hesitated to claim her, wasn’t it? And they weren’t merely two mortals who’d fallen in love. They were life mates with all that encompassed, and yet he had struggled with it. He was such an idiot.
“Yes. I tried to escape over and over,” Beth said now. “But I knew I couldn’t. I knew he’d drag me back. There was really nowhere for me to go. I think in truth I hoped he’d beat me to death, because I—no, not even just I—all of us felt like we were damaged goods. We were the refuse of society. We had been sold like cattle, abused and treated like trash. We felt sullied, not fit for a respectable life anymore, and everyone around us seemed to agree and made sure we knew it. The family members who sold us, the brothel owners and Danny who peddled us, the men who bought our time and then used and abused us, even the children who spat on us in passing for fun. And then there were the ‘good women.’ With never once a kind word or smile, they’d move as far to the side as they could in passing, sneering down their noses and gathering their skirts close as if we were diseased and whoredom was catchy.”
She smiled sadly. “How could we even imagine that anyone would hire us for a respectable position? Or that a good man like Mr. Hardy would want a woman everyone else despised? Hell, after all of that, it was even hard to believe that Mr. Hardy was as good as he seemed. Perhaps he too beat and choked his wife at night because it was the only way he could perform.”
Scotty cursed under his breath, wishing he could find and punish every single man, woman, and child who had made her feel this way. And then he closed his eyes in shame as he realized he was one of them.
“Besides,” Beth said more cheerfully, “it did change. Now we could choose whom we accepted as our clients and were free to say no if we wished. And we did. We all worked much less than we had before. Dree somehow managed to have Danny’s house put into our names, so we never needed to worry about a roof over our heads. All we needed to concern ourselves with was coin for coal, candles, clothing, and food and such. And without Danny or anyone else taking all our money, we didn’t have to work as hard or as often. I myself was able to drop down to just two clients. Two of my regulars, who were kind men I liked, who were generous and who I knew would never hurt me.”
“Why two?” Scotty asked carefully. “Why not one?”
“Because both wanted to move me to my own lodgings and take care of me,” she admitted quietly.
“And ye didn’t want that?” he asked.
“I . . . What if they changed their minds and threw me out?” Beth asked instead of answering directly. “Or what if, once they had me all to themselves, they became cruel and abusive?”
“Ye didn’t trust them,” Scotty said solemnly, and then added, “And why should ye, when yer own father sold ye into such a business.”
Beth nodded solemnly.
“So ye kept two, so that . . .”
“Neither could think they owned me,” she said quietly. “But those two were enough. For fifteen years I was basically a mistress to two men, but then one died and the other had a change in fortune, so I started making penny pies and going out to sell them as I had with my mother. I’d learned to make proper pastry by then,” she added with a smile. “Mouthy Mary showed me.”
“Penny pies in the market,” he murmured.
Beth nodded. “That’s where I found out that my father was dead. Our neighbor Mrs. Hardy still sold warm peas by the market, and she told me. He died just days after he sold me. He’d taken the money from the brothel owner and drunk himself to death.” Her mouth hardened. “I didn’t mourn him.”
Scotty nodded in understanding, but simply waited. He knew how this story ended, just not all of the particulars.
“Life went on like that for another decade. A couple of the girls saved every penny they made, pooled it together and managed to buy a small pub to run together. Two more married and moved out of the house, and one died of pneumonia, but eventually all of us began to slow down. The girls took in less business, and I went to market less, especially in the winter. And then Dree convinced us to retire. She bought a house on the other side of London in an area where no one knew us and we could introduce ourselves as respectable widows, or simply old spinsters . . . whatever we chose. We could make friends and play gin and do needlepoint and be little old ladies.
“Dree put the house in our name. She said she’d recoup the money for the new house from selling the brothel, but she didn’t sell it for years, and I suspect she probably only got half her money back when she finally did. Though, I didn’t know it at the time. None of us had any idea how expensive that new house must have been. But we were so pleased with it,” she said with a smile. “Charming it was, and beautiful. Dree had it decorated magnificently. She had come to love each and every one of us over the years and spared no expense.
“Once we were settling nicely into our new respectable lives, we suspected she might start to feel at loose ends, so we suggested she take a vacation. Have a nice long visit with her family in Spain, and maybe take a tour of the Continent or the like. It was something she hadn’t been able to do while we needed her protection. She had hired a man named Cyrus to help protect us so that she could take short trips here and there over the years, but she’d never been gone for more than a couple days or a week or two before that. We felt she deserved a long vacation. So Dree decided she would go. She’d visit her family in Spain first and then perhaps take a short tour . . . but she wouldn’t be gone long, she assured us. She’d come back to check on us soon.”
Beth chuckled softly. “Now that I am immortal, I understand that time passes differently. Those decades she spent with us, while the better part of our lives and long in our minds, were not so long to her. But we didn’t know that then, and Dree’s short tour seemed interminable to us, though it only lasted a little less than two years. She wrote often, about once every week or two, and we wrote back if she said she would be somewhere for more than a couple of weeks. Anything shorter and she would be gone before our letters arrived,” Beth explained.
Scotty nodded, but asked with curiosity, “In all the time ye’d known her, had none o’ ye ever thought ye’d like to be immortal yerselves?”
“Oh nay,” Beth said at once, and then frowned and considered it for a moment more before admitting, “Well, mayhap. On those mornings when I woke up sore and achy with age, or when I noticed I just wasn’t as strong as I used to be and it wasn’t as easy to lift that bucket of water, or cart those logs to the fireplace. And sure, once or twice when I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror on passing and blinked in surprise at the gray hair sprouting and the wrinkles multiplying and then turned to look at Dree who was still as young, strong, and beautiful as the day we met her . . .” She smiled wryly. “Mayhap I considered it for a moment or two then, but the whole drinking blood thing quickly made me shake my head.”