The Queen’s Spade
Chapter One
Rochester, England – June 27, 1862
A YOUNG LADY can take only so many injuries before humiliation and insult forge a vow of revenge.
The story I’m about to tell you may make you uncomfortable. Greater still the shock may be for those of you bound by quaint rules of morality. I won’t judge you. In fact, I give you permission to hate me.
I’m no heroine. I feel no inner struggle over any supposed codes of ethics, nor have I lost sleep over the “wrongness” of my decisions.
You’ll understand why soon.
Or maybe you won’t.
You’ve been warned.
Revenge takes time, you see. And I have been patient. Today, on June 27, 1862, in Rochester, England, Mr. Bellamy, the former editor of the Illustrated London News, danced like the famous drunkard he was in his foyer while his wife was with family in Yorkshire. Tripping over the expensive Turkish rug, he took another swig of whiskey through his thin lips and held out one chubby white hand for me to take. I did, with a smile, and we danced together. I suspected it was what he’d been waiting for all these years. For me to finally cast off the costume of civil British society and become the wild “animal” he thought I truly was.
“Dance, Sally, dance, my dear!” The slobbering Mr. Bellamy demanded it of me even as the scowling portrait of his wife glared down on us from the floral-patterned wallpaper.
His breath was as foul as rotted eggs. Just as I expected, the balding man was still prone to the wiles of “exotic” young girls. “Dance now, Sally!”
I obliged. My legs were trained in many genres. They could perform a waltz to perfection. Ten years ago, when I was presented to him in that wretched woman’s cold drawing room, he couldn’t stop looking at those legs with his lecherous eyes. If only he’d realized then why they were shaking. If only he’d realized that they were the quivering limbs of a frightened child newly stolen from Africa.
“Queen Victoria’s goddaughter,” Bellamy said as he intertwined his fingers with mine. “The enslaved African princess given sanctuary by the Queen. How I’ve wanted you for so long . . .”
My stomach churned as I thought of his sickening looks and not-sosubtle advances, never returned for a decade until now.
“Why, Mr. Bellamy!” In the editor’s foyer, I jumped a little and bit back my anger when the stupid drunkard’s free hand reached lower than the crease of my back. His pants tightened as he stared at the teasing glimpse of my breasts tightly bound in a laced off-white corset. Now that I was freshly eighteen, there was no reason for him to hide his carnal desires.
Yanking his hands off me, I grabbed the whiskey and poured it down his throat, making sure he downed this bottle, the third he’d managed in my presence due to my insistence. “Tell me again what it was like to climb the Duke of York’s tower with the famous Antoine Claudet.”
My voice was pleasing to the ear, melodic like music. I’d learned how to make it this way. It was how I survived. I rubbed the bald spot on his head because I knew British men like him loved to be flattered like children.
“Or better yet,” I added with a wink, “perhaps you can tell me in your bedchambers?”
There was a term used among the British men who expressed their deepest fears and most hypocritical, insatiable desires concerning girls like me, the reason why so many of their wives feared when their husbands would travel overseas to lands unknown: “going native.” It was as if there was something all too alluring about the possibility of breaking every fetter of Victorian codes of conduct and plunging deep into the dark bosom of devilry. For Bellamy, I had been too carefully watched by Queen Victoria and her royal lot for him to make a move. But now his wife was away. I was here. A secret meeting. No one would ever know. The history books would certainly never tell the tale.
Mr. Bellamy’s unfocused eyes rolled to the back of his head and his laughter echoed across the flower-patterned wallpaper as he let me take his hand and lead him up the winding staircase. He was already hastily unfastening the buttons on his breeches with the other.
I stifled an irritated sigh. Not everyone on my list would be this easy, but I’d studied them well.
Everyone had a weak point.
Once Mr. Bellamy reached the top of the stairs, I made sure the sweep of my foot was quick and quiet.
And then he tumbled down the stairs.
With his scream stuck in his throat, his soft flesh silently collided with the wood with dull thumps, except when his elbows knocked against the walls. I looked away. Bellamy died when his neck twisted with a crunch on the floor.
As saliva trickled from his open mouth, I stayed my trembling hand against my heaving chest. The memories of his advances throughout the years calmed my breaths. I shut my eyes and forced myself to think of them: the way he’d grab my flesh after licking his fingers. The sickening words he’d whisper in my ear at social events when he thought no one was watching. He wanted to defile my body and so now his lay crumpled upon the wretched ground.
The police would rule this a foolish accident. A former editor fired from his newspaper for his boozing ways. Wife away. Empty bottles of alcohol strewn about. The story wrote itself.
Mr. Bellamy’s head bled across the smooth wooden floor.
Don’t dare judge me. I was a princess before I was a slave. Rulers have done worse for lesser injustices. And to a royal, insult is the greatest injustice of all.
Make no mistake about my intentions. Bellamy’s death at my hands wasn’t the end but the means to it. Indeed, death wouldn’t be nearly satisfying enough of a goal. Sometimes I wondered if the British even feared it. Those “civilized” people seemed to have an oddly ghoulish fascination with la mort if their rituals and superstitions were anything to go by. Mrs. Bellamy would soon be covering her mirrors to make sure her husband’s spirit wouldn’t become trapped inside them, lusting after younger women for all eternity.
No, Bellamy’s death was not the goal. There was one fate the British elite feared more than they ever could the afterlife.
From behind a tree just outside the compound, I watched a carriage slow to a stop outside Bellamy’s open gate.
Right on time. Punctuality was such an admirable trait.
A young man stepped out of the carriage first. “Mr. Reynolds, the gate’s open, just like the letter told us it’d be.” It swung wide with a creak at his touch. “Blimey. The door’s probably unlocked too.”
Another man followed him out of the carriage. It was George Reynolds, editor of the Reynolds Weekly Newspaper, who held the anonymous letter I’d sent him, taking it out of the breast pocket of his tan overcoat. After checking the contents again, he waved his assistant over, and together they entered the house. And I knew once they found Bellamy dead on the ground, surrounded by bottles of booze with his pants down, they’d leave with the story of the year.
The Illustrated London News had many rivals. What better than a salacious story with accompanying pictures, not-so-tastefully drawn, to raise the sales of a competing paper lagging in profit? And if the printed story would bloody the nose of their advisory, all the better. Two birds. One stone. George Reynolds knew this as well as I knew of his lack of scruples.
A destroyed reputation. A rotted legacy. Humiliation and ruin. This is what the elite feared more than death. And this was precisely the fate I aimed to unleash upon them.
Useful, how everyone seemed comfortable underestimating me.
On the carriage ride back to my home on the outskirts of London, I stared at the card between my two fingers: the Queen of Spades. I’d considered leaving it at the crime scene. But I’d only begun. I didn’t want to be caught just yet.
I’d once read somewhere that a wrong is unredressed when the avenger fails to make herself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.
I wouldn’t make that mistake.
