Saving Grace: Hot Down Under by Beverley Oakley

Saving Grace
     
     
    London, 1878
    Reclining on the red plush sofa, Grace sipped the sickly sweet orgeat Madame Chambon insisted her girls drink and tried not to think about the night ahead. The others were gathered in companionable groups on the fashionable Egyptian sofas, their heavy scent perfuming the air.
    As usual, no one gravitated towards her, though of course later, when their clients came calling, that would no longer be the case. Grace would have preferred the company of a like-minded female rather than the alternative.
    An expectant hush fell as the heavy draped and tasselled curtain was drawn aside and Madame Chambon arranged herself theatrically in the opening, ready to address her
petites choux.
    “
Ravissement
!” she complimented them in a thick accent, clapping her hands. Grace suspected the elegantly ravaged Madame came from Lambeth rather than the Left Bank. Not that it mattered. No one in this business was who they said they were.
    Least of all Grace.
    The girls, awed and anxious, straightened their rich, colourful gowns nervously. Despite her appearance of bonhomie Madame Chambon could turn on a coin. And it was she who ensured the girls did not return to where most of them had been plucked from—the gutter.
    “A great opportunity awaits one of you tomorrow,” she addressed them, “for I have just been honoured by the visit of a woman of great discernment …”
    A couple of the girls tittered. “A woman?”
    They closed their mouths at Madame Chambon’s beady stare, attending as she went on, “Who has requested I supply her with one of my loveliest …”
    She drew out the pause as several of the brothel’s most popular young ladies preened.
    “… and most hard-hearted girls.”
    All heads turned towards Grace. She blinked. Is that how they regarded her? Hard-hearted?
    She simply had nothing left to offer anyone once she’d earned enough to pay her keep and just survive.
    Madame Chambon levelled an expectant look upon Grace, whose mouth dropped open in protest. “A woman? But—”
    “The woman wants to give her
son
a present to remember for his twenty-first birthday. She is obviously a very fond mother—” Madame Chambon allowed herself to share the girls’ amusement, adding, “with very good sense in choosing our select establishment to provide him with the very best initiation—” Her smile grew cloying as she continued to look at Grace—“without fear of him being lured into a transfer of affections amidst all the other … ahem … transfers that take place.” Though she made a gesture with her hands to indicate the transfer of money, the girls tittered at the double entendre.
    The redhead closest to Grace dug her co-worker in the ribs. “Grace doesn’t have a heart to lose.” Her whisper resonated.
    Nor did Grace have the heart to participate in the banter that followed.
    So what if she’d been selected? It was just another job and a good thing she need not worry about eliciting the emotions of a twenty-one-year-old virgin. Pleasing, also, was the knowledge that it would inevitably be over in less than five minutes.
    ***
     
    Madame Chambon selected Grace's dress for her, in royal blue and silver stripes to complement her dark hair and pale skin. Grace’s slender form lent itself to the silhouette of the day: a close-fitting cuirass ending in a draped fan train emphasised with knife pleat ruching. The expensive gown was at the forefront of fashion and made Grace feel she was rubbing shoulders with those she’d once served. The only problem was the price tag and the fact she could take only mincing six-inch steps. Madame Chambon required that her girls pay for the clothes she insisted they wear. And that they deport themselves with grace.
    Another job in another grand, fashionable West End townhouse, she thought wearily as she paused on the step of the hansom cab the jarvey put down for her. Until desperation had forced her to London she’d spent her entire life