The Lord I Left Read online

  This ebook is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only.

  This ebook may not be sold, shared, or given away.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  The Lord I Left

  Copyright © 2020 by Scarlett Peckham

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-64197-124-9

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  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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  NYLA Publishing

  121 W 27th St., Suite 1201, New York, NY 10001

  http://www.nyliterary.com

  Contents

  Praise for Scarlett Peckham

  About This Book

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Historical Notes

  Thank You & Where To Find More

  And now for a whole new romance series!

  Sneak Peek at The Rakess

  Acknowledgments

  Also By Scarlett Peckham

  About the Author

  Praise for Scarlett Peckham

  "An astonishingly good debut...The whole book is a breath of fresh air, both a complex, layered story and a soaring romance with two very real people at its heart." — The New York Times Book Review on THE DUKE I TEMPTED

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  "Peckham’s meticulous character work pays off in spectacular, grandly romantic fashion and The Duke I Tempted ends with particularly cathartic and hard-won happily ever after." — BookPage on THE DUKE I TEMPTED

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  “If you want something to speed your heart and stop your breath as you read beneath the covers, with only the meager flashlight beam warding off the enveloping night — then you have a rare treat in store." — The Seattle Review of Books on THE DUKE I TEMPTED

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  "With her ability to tread the line between the most diverting of historical circumstances and a progressive level of sex positivity that makes me want to sing her praises from the rooftops, Peckham proves herself one of the most exciting romance authors on the rise." — Entertainment Weekly on THE EARL I RUINED

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  "A beautifully written, character-driven story that expertly unravels a big misunderstanding, and surprises with its twists and turns and wicked secrets right up until the end." — NPR on THE EARL I RUINED

  About This Book

  He’s a minister to whores… She’s a fallen woman…

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  Lord Lieutenant Henry Evesham is an evangelical reformer charged with investigating the flesh trade in London. His visits to bawdy houses leave him with a burning desire to help sinners who’ve lost their innocence to vice—even if the temptations of their world test his vow not to lose his moral compass…again.

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  As apprentice to London’s most notorious whipping governess, Alice Hull is on the cusp of abandoning her quiet, rural roots for the city’s swirl of provocative ideas and pleasures—until a family tragedy upends her dreams and leaves her desperate to get home. When the handsome, pious Lord Lieutenant offers her a ride despite the coming blizzard, she knows he is her best chance to reach her ailing mother—even if she doesn’t trust him.

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  He has the power to destroy her… She has the power to undo him…

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  As they struggle to travel the snow-swept countryside, they find their suspicion of each other thawing into a longing that leaves them both shaken. Alice stirs Henry’s deepest fantasies, and he awakens parts of her she thought she’d foresworn years ago. But Henry is considering new regulations that threaten the people Alice holds dear, and association with a woman like Alice would threaten Henry’s reputation if he allowed himself to get too close.

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  Is falling for the wrong person a test of faith …or a chance at unimagined grace?

  Author’s Note

  A note on content, for sensitive readers who like to know.

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  (If you prefer to be surprised, skip this part.)

  This book contains the following: explicit sex; kink and hierophilia (look it up!); feelings of guilt and shame concerning sex; prostitution (both practitioners of and debates about the legality of); parental mortality; toxic families of origin; religious faith, including questioning of and alienation from; allusions to body image issues; and quite a lot of truly despicable cursing.

  Dedication

  For Sarah E. Younger, whose faith in me—and in this series—is one of my great blessings.

  Chapter 1

  Mary-le-Bone, London

  January 1758

  The London morning smelled of smoke and had the look of a sketch crudely rendered in blunt charcoal. Icy sludge dripped from sodden eaves into the rivulets of muck that passed for streets, sloshing Henry Evesham’s newly polished boots.

  It was an ominous morning to begin a journey. Which was appropriate, given Henry’s destination.

  “I’ll just be a moment,” he told Elena Brearley’s groom, handing off the reins of his too-fine, borrowed curricle. He walked briskly from the mews to Charlotte Street, stopping at the solemn door of the house marked twenty-three.

  It still struck him how little Mistress Brearley’s townhouse resembled its forbidding reputation. When he’d first come here, he’d imagined a spired fortress acrid with the stink of brimstone and noisy with wails of pain. Not this quiet, stately residence, more like an exclusive members club than the lurid whipping house of his imagination.

  Henry flicked his knuckle against the door, tense at who might open it. He exhaled when, small mercy, the tall, black footman in the powdered wig appeared, rather than the petite, white woman with the intense brown eyes.

  Dove’s eyes, he’d thought when he’d first seen her. Dove’s eyes, he’d thought again when she’d glared at him as he left this place last week.

  But no, alas, that was not accurate. If he was being honest with himself—and he’d vowed to be rigorously honest with himself—Alice, for it was untruthful to pretend he did not recall her name—had glared not because he’d left but because he’d fled, bolting up the stairs and out the door as if his life depended on it.

  (No. Not his life. His soul.)

  “Good morning, Stoker,” he said brightly to the footman. By now, they k
new each other, the denizens of Charlotte Street and Lord Lieutenant Henry Evesham.

  Still, the servant went through the customary stiff-lipped ceremony that bartered entrance to the door.

  “Your key?” Stoker asked, holding out his hand.

  Henry rummaged in his overcoat for the elaborately worked iron, its end marking his identity with a sigil of a cross affixed in thorns. The fearsome whipping governess Elena Brearley, he had discovered, was not above a joke.

  “Keep it,” Henry said. “I shan’t be back after today.”

  If this announcement meant anything to Stoker, the man did not betray it, only stepped aside, allowing Henry entry. “You’re not expected,” Stoker said in his usual hushed tone. “The establishment is closed today.”

  Henry smiled cheerfully, for this was precisely the reason he’d chosen today to come. “I hoped that since you’re closed Mistress Brearley might be free for a brief word. In private.”

  He followed Stoker at a distance down the corridor into the bowels of the house, inhaling its scent of vinegar and polished wood. It was nothing like the way most brothels smelled, an odor of stale gin and pomander masking the livelier, human scents of lust. He’d visited enough bagnios in the past two years—fine ones with half-dressed painted ladies offering entertainment and strong spirts, low ones offering little more than dirty cots for rutting—to know that this place was as unusual as its mistress claimed.

  He was aware of her particularities by now—the codes of discipline and discretion Mistress Brearley believed made this place safer than others of its kind. It was her mission to persuade him that wider adoption of her ways would reduce the dangers of the flesh trade for whores and culls alike.

  He was not sure he was convinced. But he recognized in her a seriousness of purpose that beat in his own breast.

  They were both evangelists.

  Stoker led him up a flight of stairs to a large parlor. Velvet curtains blocked the daylight and a fire roaring in a man-sized hearth gave the double-vaulted room its only light. It was, as always, midnight in this room, though outside the morning bells had just struck eight.

  Elena Brearley sat still and regal, writing at her desk. She paused and lifted her eyes in greeting. “Henry.”

  “Lord Lieutenant,” he corrected, with a wink. It was a little joke between them, his insistence on a title that he knew Elena Brearley would never utter. Her establishment observed a different hierarchy than the one outside its walls. The only title honored here was Mistress Brearley.

  A touch of wry amusement curled around the edges of her mouth. “I did not expect to see you here again.” She looked at him directly, her gaze expansive and forgiving, like she knew the precise makings of his soul—every virtue, sin, and limitation.

  He did the only thing he could before such a gaze, which was to pretend he did not notice it, that it did not make him want to flinch.

  “Ah, yes, my apologies for my haste in taking leave last week,” he said. “I belatedly remembered I was overdue for an appointment at the Lords. I hope your girl was not alarmed at my abruptness. Thank you for seeing me, nevertheless.”

  She smiled at his lie, saving him the trouble of mentally reproving himself for it. “Of course. You know it delights me to find myself of service to an emissary of His Majesty’s government.”

  She always spoke to him in this mordant tone, as though they were on opposite sides of an irony so vast that it could only be amusing, and they both knew it. It made him want to tell her all his secrets, though that would be perverse—the man of God confessing to a whore.

  “I am grateful for all of your assistance,” he said. “It has been immensely helpful in preparing my report to the Lords.”

  “I wait in suspense to learn your recommendations.”

  “I’m delivering the report in a few weeks. I’ll see to it you receive a printing.”

  His remit as Lord Lieutenant was to investigate the toll of vice upon the innocents of London and propose ways to fight the scourge. He’d done careful research for two years, haunting houses of ill repute and interviewing everyone from palace courtesans to alley trollops to those who bought their wares. All that was left was to weigh the evidence and decide whether stricter punishment or progressive reform would best serve London’s streets. Whatever he decided would make enemies of half the city—either the brothel-keeps and harlots who wished to ply their trade in safety or the moralists who hoped to drive them out of sight.

  Mistress Brearley continued to look closely at him, as if she might make out from his posture whether his report would prove him to be an ally or an adversary. “I do hope you will consider all that we discussed as you form your conclusions,” she said, searching his eyes.

  He dodged her gaze. Despite his prayers for moral guidance, he did not yet know what he would do.

  He was conscious of the city’s factions watching him for clues. But he had swum in ambiguity so long that his own beliefs—once so unshakable he had made his name espousing them in fiery print—had become murky and disordered. He was a man divided.

  “Your proposed reforms will certainly be among my considerations,” he said blandly.

  “That is heartening. But do also remember what we spoke about last week.”

  He stiffened. He had inquired as to her prices—a standard question he’d forgotten to ask on earlier visits, given her insistence on speaking of condoms and physicians and license fees and guilds—and she’d replied that the price would depend on the nature of his desires.

  “I have no desires,” he’d said briskly. (Liar, he’d dutifully accounted to himself as he’d done so.)

  “I was speaking rhetorically,” she’d answered, using a tone that was not so different from the one he’d used on the men whose lives he’d upended during his time at Saints & Satyrs. A tone that said we both know what you are.

  “But if that is true, Henry,” she’d gone on thoughtfully, “I do wonder if it’s just. A man tasked with reforming the flesh trade, one would think, has a responsibility to understand the yearnings at the heart of it. Does he not?”

  “One can judge a crime without committing it.”

  “And one can possess a desire without indulging it,” she’d replied, staring at him entirely too long. “As a man of God, I’d assume you value empathy.”

  He’d been silent, unwilling to engage her on this point, for he was here to ask questions, not proffer whatever lesions dotted the purity of his relationship with sin for her inspection.

  He’d been relieved when she’d dropped the matter and summoned her girl to give him a tour of the premises.

  But he’d been wrong to be relieved. For if Mistress Brearley had sensed the secrets buried in his guts, Alice had brought them roiling to the surface by doing no more than entering the room. Ever since he’d first set eyes on her, with her petite frame and faraway expression and enormous, doleful eyes—

  Yes, he knew what yearning was.

  Elena cleared her throat, reminding him that she was waiting for an answer. “Of course I recall our conversation. And I appreciate your advice.”

  “Then I won’t repeat myself. But I urge you to think of the good that you can do. The suffering you might prevent.”

  On this, they agreed. It was a call from God, his mission, and he was grateful for the chance to do work of lasting moral consequence. That he’d found the work to be a trial—that it tested his ethics and compassion, necessitated he walk the tempting pathways of a sinner—made him certain the sacrifice was worthy.

  He sighed, and ceased the effort of trying to look official. “I rarely think of anything else, of late. That, I promise you.”

  She nodded. She always seemed to believe his good intentions despite the threats he’d made against her in his previous line of work. He admired this about her—her capacity for forgiveness. He was not sure he would be so charitable, were their positions reversed.

  “How can I help you today, Henry?” Elena asked.

  He t
ried to look extremely casual, though this was difficult, in her hard-backed wooden chair. “In my haste to leave on my last visit I wonder if I misplaced a book. I must travel to the country to write my report and I hoped to retrieve it before I left, if you’ve come across it.”

  “A book?”

  “Yes—leather, bound, handwritten. It contained my notes.”

  It was his journal, actually, but he could not bring himself to admit to Mistress Brearley that he had left such an intimate personal artifact here, where anyone might read it. He suspected it had fallen from his satchel when he’d gone running out the door the week before.

  Mistress Brearley shook her head. “I would have sent it back to you had I discovered it. Our respect for discretion extends to exotic creatures like Methodists, same as it does to flagellants and whores.” She smiled.