A Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follett Page B

one of the men around the table. Hugh daydreamed about a sexual encounter with almost every girl he met—he was ashamed of how much and how often he thought about it—but normally it could only happen after courtship, engagement and marriage. Whereas Maisie might do it tonight!
    She caught his eye again, and he had that embarrassing feeling that Rachel Bodwin sometimes gave him, that she knew what he was thinking. He searched around desperately for something to say, and finally blurted out: “Have you always lived in London, Miss Robinson?”
    “Only for three days,” she said.
    It might be mundane, he thought, but at least they were talking. “So recently!” he said. “Where were you before?”
    “Traveling,” she said, and turned away to speak to Solly.
    “Ah,” Hugh said. That seemed to put an end to the conversation, and he felt disappointed. Maisie acted almost as if she had a grudge against him.
    But April took pity on him and explained. “Maisie’s been with a circus for four years.”
    “Heavens! Doing what?”
    Maisie turned around again. “Bareback horse-riding,” she said. “Standing on the horses, jumping from one to another, all those tricks.”
    April added: “In tights, of course.”
    The thought of Maisie in tights was unbearably tantalizing. Hugh crossed his legs and said: “How did you get into that line of work?”
    She hesitated, then seemed to make up her mind about something. She turned around in her chair to face Hugh directly, and a dangerous glint came into her eyes. “It was like this,” she said. “My father worked for Tobias Pilaster and Co. Your father cheated my father out of a week’s wages. At that time my mother was sick. Without that money, either I would starve or she would die. So I ran away from home. I was eleven years old at the time.”
    Hugh felt his face flush. “I don’t believe my father cheated anyone,” he said. “And if you were eleven you can’t possibly have understood what happened.”
    “I understood hunger and cold!”
    “Perhaps your father was at fault,” Hugh persisted, though he knew it was unwise. “He shouldn’t have had children if he couldn’t afford to feed them.”
    “He could feed them!” Maisie blazed. “He worked like a slave—and then you stole his money!”
    “My father went bankrupt, but he never stole.”
    “It’s the same thing when you’re the loser!”
    “It’s not the same, and you’re foolish and insolent to pretend that it is.”
    The others obviously felt he had gone too far, and several people began to speak at the same time. Tonio said: “Let’s not quarrel about something that happened so long ago.”
    Hugh knew he should stop but he was still angry. “Ever since I was thirteen years old I’ve had to listen to the Pilaster family running my father down but I’m not going to take it from a circus performer.”
    Maisie stood up, her eyes flashing like cut emeralds. For a moment Hugh thought she was going to slap him. Then she said: “Dance with me, Solly. Perhaps your rude friend will have gone when the music stops.”
    3
    HUGH’S QUARREL WITH MAISIE broke up the party. Solly and Maisie went off on their own, and the others decided to go ratting. Ratting was against the law, but there were half a dozen regular pits within five minutes of Piccadilly Circus, and Micky Miranda knew them all.
    It was dark when they emerged from the Argyll into the district of London known as Babylon. Here, out of sight of the palaces of Mayfair, but conveniently close to the gentlemen’s clubs of St. James’s, was a warren of narrow streets dedicated to gambling, blood sports, opium smoking, pornography, and—most of all—prostitution. It was a hot, sweaty night, and the air was heavy with the smells of cooking, beer and drains. Micky and his friends moved slowly down the middle of the crowded street. Within the first minute an old man in a battered top hat offered to sell him a book of lewd verses, a young man with