Dancing in Red (a Wear Black novella) by Heather Hiestand, Eilis Flynn Page B

ordered and she was given a share.
    In for a penny, in for a pound. If
nothing else, she couldn’t trust any of these drunken hoity toits to be clean
after a night of pub-hopping. They had money, they had connections, they had
breeding. They just had no common sense, no manners, and they couldn’t keep
their parts in their pants. And it wasn’t just the English soldiers, because
the Irish lads she’d met had pretty much the same problems. Idjits all.
    “I am someone not to be forgotten,” she
said with a demure smile, widening her eyes just a little to emphasize her
words. Their attention had been wandering away from the matter of her work, and
more important, her price. “Fit for a…king, even.”
    There, she’d said it. She smiled a
little more, making sure her dimples were visible. Men loved those.
    “Bertie’s due for a break,” Mills said,
tilting his head and trying to judge the time. But then he’d been drinking so
long that he had probably lost track. She said nothing, of course.
    “He needs one, that’s for sure,” the
youngest of them muttered.
    That did it for the drunken louts.
“Bertie’s due for a break!” the drunkest subaltern repeated, shouting at the
top of his lungs, slapping his hand down. Then, having had quite enough, his
head dropped straight onto the table and smacked the wood smartly. Before
anyone had the chance to even worry about his health, however, he started to
snore, and so thereafter the others went back to their conversation. The heart
of the English nobility.
    “I think—when he goes to eat. And when
he comes back, he’ll find her in his bed,” Mills, the only one among them still
able to think, suggested. He glanced at Nellie, who made a point of not looking
at him, instead casting her eyes downward and keeping a slight smile on her
face. She was getting bored of their dithering, but she wanted this chance. She
needed it for herself, for Dulsine, for her younger siblings. So she fluttered
her eyelashes and looked to the side and forced herself to wait, dreaming of
what a prince could do for her. A house, servants, a carriage, pretty dresses
to dance in, even.
    “Yes!” the subaltern still awake said.
He tried to drink his beer and when he realized his mug was empty, he slumped
back in his chair.
    The only one awake before too long was
Mills, and he seemed to be remarkably sober. Nellie suspected he played the
drunkard more often than he truly drank. “So what do you think?” he finally
asked, a glint in his eye. “Ready now? You’re going to be introduced to a great
man, the son of the queen.”
    She smiled for the last time and
straightened her back, making sure her assets were there to be admired. “I am
indeed,” she said. “And I am worth every shilling.” She named her price and was
pleased to see Mills didn’t object too much.
     
    In the end, Nellie and the man came to
terms, so when he crossed her palm with coin, she accepted it and her new
career was launched. She would have felt sorry for it, but she knew what she
needed to do. Her future, and her sister’s, could be made this night. The man
roused one of his friends for accompaniment, and the three of them headed
toward Prince Albert’s quarters to change her life, the older, sober man
virtually carrying the dead-drunk subaltern as Nellie walked beside them. She
felt as though she were being escorted to her execution, and there was some
truth to that. Comfort lay in having the men walk with her, since there were
rumors of odd-looking creatures that had been seen on the roads at dusk and at
night. Almost human, or maybe not. No reports of injury or death, but…odd
creatures.
    In any case, she was deemed clean
enough, so she let down her hair and stripped naked as the man and his sozzled
companion watched and leered. She crawled into the prince’s bed, to rest with linens
softer and more sumptuous than she had ever felt. If only for that the pact
might have been worth it, but it didn’t much