Letty Banks was too slender. The physician in David, an aspect of himself he’d often resented, took note of shoulder blades, nape, and wrist bones, all too much in evidence.
The man in him comforted her anyway, pressed her face to his shoulder, and stroked his hands over her back until she leaned against him.
She had apparently needed to cry, because minutes passed with him holding her thus. At no point did she slide her arms around him, but David didn’t need her to. He could feel the heat rising from her body, and with it, a faint fragrance of roses. He’d caught the scent briefly before, when he’d bounced up to her full of flattery and ready to kill her detractors in the jeweler’s shop.
The fragrance teased him now: subtle, feminine, sweet, and enticing.
She was skinny, and he also had the impression that she was exhausted in body and spirit. Something in the way her weight rested against him, something that sought shelter despite her dignity gave away her fatigue.
Her tears quieted, and still he held her.
“Don’t apologize. A lady is entitled to her tears.” He fished a handkerchief from a pocket without letting her go, and handed it to her, knowing she’d want to use it before allowing him to see her face.
Though Desdemona, Musette, or any other woman in David’s employ would exploit a tearstained countenance to make him feel guilty—and do so quite successfully.
“I’m going to fix you another cup of tea,” he said, walking her back to the couch with an arm around her shoulders. “You will drink it. You will also finish the food on your plate, if you please, lest I conclude my company has put you off your appetite.”
A physician learned how to cajole like this—teasing and stern, both.
He took a seat beside her, their hips touching, and kept an arm around her back as he prepared her tea with one hand. He didn’t look at her face all the while, though he wanted to. He wanted to see her eyes, wanted to know that the vacant, hopeless mask of the Covent Garden streetwalker would not gaze back at him.
“You must not be shy with me, Mrs. Banks. I have two sisters, both of whom are breeding—again—and I have many lovely employees of the female persuasion. Women cry, I assure you, and you have more to cry about than most.”
She clutched the warm teacup with both hands, obediently sipping. When she put her tea down, he piled more food on his own plate and held it for her.
“Eat. Every bite, if you please.”
“I am not that hungry,” she said, a spark of dignity returning.
“You will hurt my feelings if you deny me the right to push sustenance at you after having provoked your tears.” This was an understatement. She’d make him crazy if she refused his hospitality after he’d made her cry.
She regarded him dubiously then bit into a chocolate tea cake with raspberry icing, closing her eyes and making David’s mouth abruptly go dry. She was not such a Puritan as she’d have him think—maybe not such a Puritan as she tried to believe herself.
“I really did need a woman’s opinion on a certain personal matter. I wasn’t making that up.” The hell he hadn’t been.
She paused in the consumption of her sweet, very much a lady interrupted at her pleasures. “I beg your pardon?”
“In the jewelry shop,” David clarified. “I needed a woman’s inspiration.”
She eyed him warily as she slowly chewed on her second cake. “Regarding?”
Mrs. Banks was not long on charm—or guile—and what a pleasant change that was. “I must buy a present for a lady about whom I care greatly.”
“A family member?”
“No. She isn’t related to me, though I hold her in very great affection.” Would cheerfully die for her, in fact.
Mrs. Banks brushed at her lap, as if crumbs might have had the temerity to fall there, but he could see she was also grateful for a change in topic.
As was David.
“I trust, my lord, you are not asking me to help you choose a present for your current amour?”
“I don’t have a current amour, Mrs. Banks. I own a brothel, if you will recall.” About which, he was not whining. “What would make a suitable gift for a little girl’s birthday?”
Dark brows flew up, and she stopped fussing imaginary crumbs. He’d surprised his reluctant courtesan, which was more gratifying than it ought to be.
“Tell me about this little girl.”
“Her name is Rose, and to her I am Cousin David, though the family connection is attenuated. She is earnest and shy, loyal, affectionate, and very busy. Her best friend is Mr. Bear, and she has recently become the owner of a stalwart steed named George. She has knighted him, however, so he goes by the sobriquet Sir George.”
“You are serious. This matters to you.” And that impressed her. David’s wealth had not, his charm had not, his steady nerves in the face of female tears had not, his fine tailoring and mismatched eyes had not, but his effort to find a present for Rose had. Mrs. Banks chewed a short nail, eyeing him. “A puppy?”
Why hadn’t he thought of that? “Too obvious, and the girl’s parents might not appreciate the resulting mess.”
“So a kitten is out too, or a caged songbird, though I’ve never approved of caging wild creatures. What does she like to do?”
“She thrives on movement,” David said, and he, too, disapproved of taking wild creatures captive. “Rose loves to be outside, and because she has neither siblings nor cousins her own age, she’s usually in her mother’s company. She has a terrific imagination, loves animals, and can draw with uncanny skill.”
“Her first set of watercolors, in a wooden case engraved with her name and the date.”
Far better than the set of grooming tools the girl’s ducal grandpapa was rumored to have had made. David resisted the impulse to kiss Mrs. Banks on both cheeks. “Well done, Mrs. Banks. An excellent suggestion.”
“Books,” she went on, “inscribed by you, books of fairy tales about knights and princesses and dragons.”
“Splendid. Even her step-papa will be impressed, and he is her knight in shining armor.” The wretch.
“Gardening tools, because she likes to be out of doors, sized to her hand, inscribed. Some Holland bulbs, though it’s not the proper time of year to plant them.”
“Capital!”
“Her own stationery.”
“You are a genius, Mrs. Banks. My troubles are solved.”
She smiled at him, a true, open, winsome smile such as might send a man off on great quests and keep him warm on cold nights. “Which one will you get her?”
“All of the above, of course.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Whyever not? I am Cousin David, and I can do no wrong. Besides, she liked me best until she met her step-papa. He stole a march on me by wooing her mama. Sneak-thief tactics, if you ask me.”
His indignation was intended to sustain her smile, though that smile became… muted. Sad, even. “Do you know what your Rose would really like?”
He passed her two more tea cakes. “You must tell me.”
“A friend. You mentioned she has neither cousins nor siblings her own age, and when she’s out and about, it’s with her mother.”
Well, hell. “Her parents took her with them to Sussex not long ago, and there Rose had playmates for the first time in her life. When her mama told me that, I wanted to cry, to think of a five-year-old never having once had a playmate.” Memories of his own childhood had risen up, though he felt no need to expound on that in present company.
“Then you be her friend,” Mrs. Banks said, nibbling a lavender cake with lemon icing. “You take her on a picnic; you take her to Astley’s; you read to her; you take her out on her pony. It isn’t complicated.”
She was more animated on this topic than she’d been about her miseries as a mistress.
“You are… right on the mark, Mrs. Banks. Have you raised children, then?”
He posed the question casually—too casually. The way she dispatched the second tea cake said she was not fooled.
“You might be surprised to know, my lord, once long ago, I myself was a little girl looking forward to her birthdays.”
“Not so long ago,” David corrected her. Her hand had no tremor now, suggesting she’d needed badly to eat.
Mrs. Banks dusted her palms, rose, and stood with her back to the fire screen. “Such a day—it is pretty.” Big, fat, lazy snowflakes drifted down through the late-afternoon gloom.
“Your housekeeper’s rheumatism was correct,” David said from her side. “And this weather looks like it could worsen into something inconvenient. Let me send for a coach and see you home.”
“That won’t be necessary, my lord,” she said, turning and warming her hands over the fire screen. “I need to stretch my legs, and it’s not that far.”
At least a mile, in bitter cold with failing light. She didn’t want to be seen emerging from his town coach, or she didn’t want to tarry with him here while they waited for the vehicle to be brought from his residence.
A man who owned a profitable brothel—and property on three continents—could always order another pair of boots. “I’ll walk you then, and no argument, please.”
“If you insist.”
“I do,” David said, marveling that any female other than his horse on a good day should acquiesce so easily. “I spend much of my time dealing with my employees at The Pleasure House, and it’s like herding cats. Nothing is more fractious than a determined woman, unless it’s seventeen of them coming at you at once. If you’d oblige me, I’d appreciate it.”
He was whining. Only a dozen women worked at his brothel, but the chefs counted for additional aggravation, as did the patrons.
David walked his guest to the front hallway and fetched her cloak from the brass hooks. He settled it about her shoulders then donned his greatcoat, gloves, and hat. He wanted to wrap his gray merino wool scarf around her neck but didn’t dare.
Before he opened the door for Mrs. Banks, he recalled she’d been carrying a reticule, and retrieved it from the side table in the hallway. “Mustn’t forget this.”
“Thank you very much. Shall we be off before the light fades further?”
He offered his arm and matched his steps to hers with the automatic consideration of a gentleman. As they ambled along in the frigid air, his mind was occupied with a puzzle: the beaded reticule he’d handed to her contained the cloth bag from the jeweler’s. The little sack should have held earbobs, a bracelet, a necklace, or perhaps a brooch with a clasp that had needed mending. What David had felt as he’d handled the reticule, however, had been the unmistakable clink of coins, and not all that many coins.
Why was Letitia Banks pawning her jewelry even as she turned down an offer of protection from a perfectly acceptable, attractive, pleasant young gentleman?
***
Walking along beside Lord Fairly was a surprisingly painful business, for the handsome, blond viscount was everything Letty had given up.
No… He was everything she’d never had and would never have. Sophisticated, wealthy, good-humored, well-mannered, and with a bred-in-the-bone sense of consideration that made her want things she had once dreamed could be hers.
“Penny for them,” he said when he’d escorted Letty halfway home.
“I have enjoyed this visit with you.” Which ought to occasion pleasure rather than an inexplicable melancholy—her belly was full, after all, and she hadn’t had to part with a single petticoat.
And for a few minutes, despite all her determination to the contrary, she’d cried on a man’s shoulder and been… comforted.
With that thought, Letty slipped on the dusting of snow underfoot, the soles of her boots being worn smooth, though her escort righted her with no effort at all.
“I am almost sure I hear a but coming,” he said, “perhaps of the same variety you inflicted on poor Windham.”
Poor Windham, the handsome, wealthy, talented, musical prodigy of a duke’s son. “I discouraged Lord Valentine out of motives other than spite, my lord.”
“Befriend him,” Fairly urged her. “He’s recently lost a second brother, this one to consumption, the heir having died several years ago on the Peninsula. If your terms are clearly stated, he won’t trespass.”
“I will consider it.” When the English put Napoleon on the throne.
“May I be honest?” Fairly asked, some of the pleasantness leaving his tone.
“Of course.” Though she wished he wouldn’t be. For two hours, his parlor hadn’t been merely bearable, it had been warm. Fairly wasn’t merely polite to her, he was gracious. The food had been plentiful and fresh, and the tea hot and strong. She’d put as much sugar in hers as she liked, not doled herself out a miserly serving and pretended it tasted just as good.
“I am quite frankly puzzled, Mrs. Banks. You appear to have no source of income, and yet you refused Windham. How do you sustain your household, if not by bartering your favors?”
She forced herself to continue walking, to keep to herself how mortifying his inquiry was. Perhaps by literally crying on his shoulder—in his arms, into his monogrammed silk handkerchief—she had granted him permission to presume this far.
“You needn’t answer, of course.” His tone was concerned rather than curious. “But your circumstances worry me.”
“I appreciate the thought, though I am not your worry.” She had lost the right to be anybody’s worry years ago. Lost it in the vicarage rose arbor, within sight of the peacefully moonlit gravestones.
“You appear to be nobody’s worry. Thus I am anxious, because you are a woman without protection, and my extended family had a hand in authoring difficulties for you.”
“How do you reason that?”
“Your last protector was my brother-by-marriage. I have the sense Herbert did not comport himself well with respect to you, and sometimes it isn’t finances needed to redress a wrong.”
True chivalry, rather than pretty manners, empty flattery, or even the lure of coin, was a courtesan’s worst, most beguiling enemy.
Letty increased her pace, despite the slick footing, and Fairly kept up—easily. “I had choices, my lord.” How often had Olivia reminded her of that very truth?
“Somehow, Mrs. Banks, I doubt you had choices in any meaningful sense. When the girls leave my employ, my most stern admonition to them is to always have their own money, somewhere, and to keep its existence and whereabouts a complete secret. Even so, I worry. A woman who has placed herself outside the protections of decent Society is always at risk for disrespect and worse.”
For all his kindness, Fairly implied a fallen woman attained that precarious position all by herself, without aid from anybody else. The ire Letty felt at his judgment was pathetically welcome.
“You think I do not know the risk I’ve invited into my life?”
“No, you do not, not the way a streetwalker knows that risk when the pox gets so bad she can’t ply her trade anymore. Not the way my employees know it when they end up with a baby in their belly. Not the way the actresses and opera dancers know it when their looks begin to fade.”
How fierce he had become, and yet, Letty was not afraid of him. “Are you scolding me?”
“I am worrying about you,” he replied, a thread of exasperation in his voice.
“Why?”
“You need someone to worry about you.”
He could not know the pain his well-meant observation caused. “I most assuredly do not.”
Fairly stopped and stared down at her as the snow swirled around them. For all they weren’t the same color, his eyes were beautiful and… compelling. “You pawned your jewelry, you have no current patron, you turn away business, and you ate like you were starving. You are pale and skinny. I apologize profusely, and for the last time, but I noticed these things.”
“I wish you had not.” She wished he had ignored her altogether, and was so glad he hadn’t.
“What is so awful about a simple show of concern?”
“Is that what this is?” She dropped his arm, when what she wanted to do was cling to him. “Or, having ascertained my direction, will you come by Tuesday next and start ogling my bosom, dropping hints, and standing too close to me? Will you begin to pepper our conversation with double meanings and sly, lascivious innuendo as you serve me more and more wine? Will your exquisite manners desert you when your passions rise? And when I refuse your overtures, will you tell me I am a tease, a slut, and undeserving of your worry after all?”
Letty fell silent, trying to recall any other time when she’d lost her composure twice in the same day. A life of sin had not agreed with her, though a life of short rations didn’t have much to recommend it either, for both caused her a sort of weary, hopeless shame.
Her tirade, so completely out of character with the rest of her interactions with Fairly, appeared to leave his lordship stunned, offended, and at a loss. He picked up her gloved hand by the wrist, put it back on his arm, and resumed walking through the thickening snow at a deliberate pace.
While Letty battled back another bout of tears.
“I have never,” he said at length, “given anyone cause to doubt my honor, and I do not intend to start with you. Will you receive me, Tuesday next?”
She didn’t answer, though he was observing the courtesies, when in truth, he could barge into her home at any time and appropriate what she had given others more or less willingly.
“I am not propositioning you, Mrs. Banks. I am asking permission to call on you, nothing more.”
His lovely voice was as cold as the snowflakes melting against Letty’s cheeks.
He would call on her Tuesday next no matter what she said, so Letty remained silent until they’d reached her door. He led her up the steps of her house, onto a covered front porch. The housekeeper had lit a lantern for her, but in the increasingly dense snow, it cast little real light.
“Thank you, my lord,” she managed, though that didn’t seem adequate when her belly was full for the first time in days. “Thank you for bearing me company on my way home and for your conversation.” She sensed he’d be offended if she thanked him for rescuing her in the jeweler’s shop—more offended. “You will call on me next week?”
One way or another, she needed to know what his plans were.
“I will call. Whether you receive me is entirely for you to decide. Good night, Mrs. Banks.” He bowed over her gloved hand, and waited politely while she opened the door and turned to leave him.
“Until next we meet, my lord,” she said, her back mostly to him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Until Tuesday.” She stepped into the house and closed the door without further comment. Blast the man and his lovely eyes; she was already wondering how much he might pay a woman to tolerate his intimate attentions.
Though that woman would not be her. That woman would never be her again.
***
From behind the window of her front parlor, Letty watched Viscount Fairly walk away, his long-legged pace far more brisk than it had been at her side. He gave off a sense of energy and purpose rather than the exuberant high spirits of the young men newly down from university. David Worthington was not a boy, had probably never been a boy. He was in every sense a man, and that made him… tricky.
“Your tea, love.” Fanny Newcomb put the tray on the low table before the settee, then straightened and regarded the falling snow dourly. “Won’t be fit for man nor beast out there before too much longer.”
She was a plump, gray woman, her face lined with the passing years and with concern for her employer. Fanny was also a connection with home, and for that reason alone, Letty would sell off the last bucket of household ashes before she’d let Fanny go.
“You are too good to me,” Letty said, sinking down onto the sofa. Beside the tea lay two fresh, buttery pieces of shortbread—which they could not afford.
“Those boots have to be cold and wet. Best get them off if you’re not to take a chill.” Fanny’s concern was served with a dash of scold, as usual.
“I did well at the jeweler’s. Still, you need not have used new leaves for the tea.” The scent of the tea was marvelous, and steam curled from the spout into the chilly parlor air.
“This is not a night for weak tea,” Fanny said, tugging the curtains closed. “You were gone quite a while, and I was getting that worried about you.”
“I met someone,” Letty admitted, glad for a chance to parse the encounter with a friendly ear.
Fanny gave up trying to drape the curtains so they entirely blocked the fading afternoon light. “Not a female someone,” she concluded with some interest.
“I met him once before.” Letty bent to unlace her boots, knowing the women at Fairly’s establishment had ladies’ maids for such a task—also coal for their parlor grates. “David Worthington, Viscount Fairly. He called on me when Herbert died.”
“Is he related to Herbert?”
“No.” Letty slipped her feet from her boots and tucked her legs under her on the sofa, because the parlor floor was positively frigid. “Not directly. There’s some connection now through the in-laws to the surviving brother, but Fairly was not close to the deceased.”
Thank heavens.
They fell silent as Fanny perched on the edge of an upholstered chair, fixed Letty a cup of tea, and passed it to her. Maybe some fallen women could observe strict propriety with their last and only employee; Letty was not among them.
“Just shy of bitter,” Letty murmured, closing her eyes with the small bliss of it.
“Did this viscount fellow suggest he’d be interested in further dealings?”
Letty put down her teacup. “Must we discuss that, Fanny? I understand how strained my finances have become, but your wages are up-to-date, there’s food in the larder for your meals, and the thought… I don’t know if I can.”
Worse, she was nearly certain she could not.
“Well, ducks, you have to do something, and sooner rather than later. Needs must. And certain burdens are a woman’s lot whether she’s married or not. There are fellows who can make the business bearable. Find one of ’em, or find another way to pay the bills, lest you spend next winter on a street corner or on your brother’s charity.”
On that mercifully brief summation of the relevant truths, Fanny withdrew.
Letty’s reticule lay next to the tea tray, the beaded bag another small reminder of home, for it had been a gift from Daniel on Letty’s sixteenth birthday.
She picked up the bag, hearing coins clink within—not enough coins, of course. Never enough.
In the cold, dark parlor, Letty ignored the coins, took out Viscount Fairly’s silk handkerchief, and held it to her nose.
***
When Tuesday came around, David nearly missed the time for his call on Mrs. Banks. Desdemona and Portia had gone at each other over Portia’s decision to accept carte blanche from young Lord Ridgely. Desdemona had also entertained the man on occasion, and made comments disparaging his skills.
“Hell hath no ability to hurl the breakables,” David observed, “like a pair of women after a few glasses of wine. And all over some young twit’s ability to keep it up.”
Jennings put the bottom half of a porcelain angel on the mantel. “Or over Portia’s ability to snag the twit’s heart, while Des is left behind. That has to hurt.”
David found the angel’s wings under the piano and set them on the mantel among the collected shrapnel. “Yes, but Portia has to tolerate a steady diet of the twit, who doesn’t strike me as any great bargain.” Certainly not worth shattering hundred-year-old Meissen over.
“None of us are great bargains,” Jennings said, surveying the wreckage in the main parlor. “At least not enough to merit this kind of display. Maybe they’re angry as hell on general principles, and so they squabble with each other over the small things.”
“Angry or scared. You’ll have it cleaned up before this evening?”
“Of course, though Des has a black eye, and Portia’s lip is split. We’ll be a little shorthanded.”
Such violence, and in a residence supposedly devoted to pleasure. “Then tell the ladies not to linger above stairs. Fortunately, the weather has turned cold as hell. Maybe that will keep things quieter tonight.”
“Or make everybody want to snuggle up.” Jennings glanced at the clock—mercifully unscathed—on the mantel. “You’d better toddle along if you’re to pay a call on Mrs. Banks.”
“Mrs…?” David was momentarily at a loss, though this appointment had loomed large in his awareness for days. “Mrs. Banks. Blessed saints, I’ll be off then—dock the damages from the offenders’ pay, and tell them I’ll expect written apologies by week’s end.”
“You’re cruel, Fairly. A nasty, heartless, cruel man.”
In fact, the written apologies were not going to be easy, not when some of the women in David’s employ were all but illiterate. He offered them the chance to learn to read, and without exception, they took advantage of it.
Mrs. Banks, he was sure, could read English, French, and Latin—fat lot of good it seemed to be doing her. When he knocked, her door was opened by an older woman in an apron and cap, who apparently couldn’t be bothered to greet visitors with a smile.
David handed her his card, and she disappeared without offering to take his hat, coat, or gloves. He used the time to study what he could see of the house, and had to agree with Jennings that the place seemed subtly less well-appointed than it had months ago.
Cobwebs grew in the hallway corners, the rug running down the hallway was long overdue for a sound beating, and the air was so cold in the foyer David could see his breath. Perhaps leaving him in his greatcoat had been more consideration than rudeness.
“This way, if you please,” the unsmiling woman said. She led David to a small informal parlor at the back of the house. The hearth sported a coal fire, though by no means would David have called it a cheery blaze.
“Mrs. Banks will be down shortly,” David was informed. “Shall I be getting the tea, then?” The accent was Midlands rural, and the tone entirely put-upon.
“Why don’t you wait until Mrs. Banks joins me, and she can decide whether libation is in order? I doubt I’ll be staying long.” Because even a tea tray was a luxury in this household.
David earned the barest indication of a curtsy for that remark, and was left alone in the little room to remove his coat, hat, and gloves unassisted. The last time he’d been here, Mrs. Banks had received company in the front parlor, a roomier, graciously appointed space at the front of the house.
Why was Mrs. Banks seeing him in this oversized broom closet now, and why was she making him wait?
“My lord.” His hostess stepped into the room, carrying a tea service on a lacquered tray. “I would curtsy, but one of us might end up with a scalding, and I am looking forward to my tea.” She smiled at him, a pleasant if not quite gracious greeting.
“Mrs. Banks.” David bowed then took the tray from her. “A pleasure to see you again, particularly bearing the tea tray on a day such as this.”
“The winters since I’ve come to London have been colder than any I can recall as a child. Shall we be seated?”
David was struck again by Letitia Banks’s quiet loveliness. Here in her own home, she was more comfortable than she had been at his unrented town house. Her attire was simple—a brown velvet skirt, white shirtwaist, brown shawl, and wide red sash—but with her coloring, the shade and texture of the velvet were elegant rather than plain.
He sat at right angles to her perch on the couch, the better to enjoy simply beholding her.
“You must forgive me for using the family parlor,” Mrs. Banks said, passing him a steaming cup of tea. “It is easier to heat, and gets more light. This room also has the advantage of being closer to the kitchen.”
“I had wondered if you weren’t making a comment on my station, though this is cozy, which given the weather, is a mercy.” There. They had discussed the weather quite thoroughly, and avoided the notion that she had secreted him in the back parlor to hide the very fact that he was calling on her. “Have you considered the topics we discussed last week?”
He might have made more small talk, except he’d held this woman in his arms and brushed his thumb over the too-prominent bone in her wrist.
She paused in the middle of fixing her own cup of tea. “My lord?”
“Your finances merit some attention, Mrs. Banks.” Panic might be a better word than attention, there being not a single tea cake on the tray, and the service being arranged to obscure, but not quite hide, chips in the lacquer.
She sat back, cradling the teacup in her palms, likely the better to treasure any source of warmth. “One should always mind one’s finances.”
She sounded as if she were quoting from Proverbs, though her teapot was wrapped in a thin, dingy towel that might once have sported some embroidery, and she looked paler than she had last week. David did not ask his hostess to pour him a second cup.
“I have need of a competent housekeeper for my estates in Kent,” he said. “I own three, and I use only the one. You could have your pick of the other two.” This was a stupid plan—a stupid idea, for David hadn’t planned much of anything about this encounter, except that he’d see Letty Banks again. If she were in Kent, he’d find reasons to drop in on those other estates, reasons to stay there from time to time.
Perhaps remove there entirely, because this reluctant courtesan intrigued him inordinately.
“My thanks, but I cannot remove to Kent, my lord. I have obligations that require I bide in London.”
He could not offer her a domestic post in London, for his family would drop in from time to time, and Letty Banks was likely known to at least his brothers-in-law.
As he considered a niggardly piece of shortbread that could not possibly be fresh, inspiration struck.
“You could instead be madam at The Pleasure House. The place is driving me to Bedlam, and if I don’t do something with it soon, I’m likely to burn it down.” And then, lest he appear desperate, “You could, in the alternative, ensconce yourself as chatelaine at my estate in County Galway, though it is remote as only rural Ireland can be.”
“I cannot remove to Ireland, but why ensconce me anywhere at all?” she asked in a bewildered tone. “You hardly know me.”
He knew her, despite short acquaintance. Knew she’d been saving those last few bites of shortbread, likely for days, in anticipation of his visit, knew were he not with her, she’d be wearing a second shawl for warmth, one that did not go at all with her ensemble. Yet more inspiration came to his rescue, the kind of honest inspiration she might appreciate.
“I have sisters. When our father died, he expected me to provide for them, but there were hostilities with Bonaparte, and I was prevented from returning to England. My sisters faced dire circumstances by the time I reached them, and they could easily have ended up living… as you do. My younger sister was barely out of the schoolroom.”
Rather than comment on a recitation that surprised the man making it, she got up and poked at the fire, though she added no fuel to it, and her efforts sent a sulfurous cloud of coal smoke into the room. “What does a madam do? Specifically.”
Mrs. Banks wasn’t rejecting him out of hand, not yet, though clearly she wanted to.
“You do not entertain men.” To her, that would be most important. “Not unless you choose to bestow your favors from time to time for your own pleasure. You are a combination hostess, mother hen, gunnery sergeant, and steward. The position is demanding. Mr. Jennings and I, between us, barely keep up with it. You wouldn’t have to live on the premises, but there are private quarters for that purpose if you need them. The nights, particularly on weekends, can be quite late.”
And the mornings early, when the girls were out of sorts and prone to squabbling, which was to say—always.
Mrs. Banks studied a small orange flame flickering above the coals, while the idea of depositing the burden of the damned brothel on her elegant shoulders gained appeal with each moment David considered it. She had the presence for it, the self-possession, the ability to manage unruly boys in perpetual rut and unhappy women.
“Please be more specific, my lord. Do I keep the books, decide who is to spend the evening with whom, choose menus, collect money? What exactly would I do, and for what kind of compensation?”
David badly wanted her to agree to this. He hated—yes, hated—seeing that smirk on Jennings’s face almost every morning, and the headaches it presaged. He hated the way his in-laws teased him, and the way Douglas Allen, the present Viscount Amery, had simply admonished him weeks ago to find a madam, as if women willing and able to manage such a human circus could be found beneath any hedge.
So he schooled himself to apply his strongest negotiating tactics, and let the silence between them grow.
“The compensation, my lord?”
“Mrs. Banks, you have subdued that fire halfway to next spring. I beg you to resume your seat while we converse.”
Get your opponent to give you something small.
She took her seat and unwrapped the teapot, revealing a predictably chipped article of imitation jasperware.
“Thank you,” David said softly, the state of her tea service providing him needed encouragement. “Your duties can be somewhat flexible. If you detest bookkeeping, we can hire you a bookkeeper. If you are indifferent to wines, you may rely on the good offices of my sommelier. If you prefer not to interact directly with the domestics, we can hire you a house steward.”
“Lord Fairly,” she interrupted him through gritted teeth. “What are my duties?”
Something militant in her eye caught his attention, and abruptly, the discussion went from encouraging to… fascinating.
“Are you asking if one of your duties would be… me?”