“You have to trust me,” Esme said, trying to sound confident. “Didn’t I arrange for Carola to bed her husband? Not to mention Henrietta and Darby!”
“You sound like some sort of vulgar matchmaker,” Helene said, not turning around.
“I do not!”
“Yes, you do.”
Esme pressed her lips together. She had a policy of courtesy toward sobbing women, although she was willing to bend the rule if needed.
Helene wheeled about and walked aimlessly to the other side of the room. “I will not be party to one of your absurd schemes. You think that you can manage everyone and everything, just because you’re beautiful and you’ve always had your way and got whatever you wanted—”
“I? I have got whatever I wanted?” Esme threw policy to the wind. “You’re the one who married for love, Helene, remember? So you made a bad bargain. At least you chose the man! I was married off to a man I’d danced with once and with whom I had exchanged exactly five words. A plump, balding man who may have been sweet but he certainly wasn’t the answer to a young girl’s romantic dream. You thought yourself in love with Rees when you eloped, if you remember!”
“Who cares how we got into our marriages?” Helene said, just as hotly. “If I was idiotic enough to elope with Rees, I’ve paid for that mistake in humiliation! Whereas you simply went your own way, and took whatever lovers you wished, and Miles never caused you a moment’s worry. And then when you decided on a whim to have a child, he accommodated you immediately—not to mention Sebastian Bonnington’s contribution!”
Esme could hardly remember being as enraged as she was at this moment. She jumped up and pointed a finger at her friend. “Don’t you dare say that I decided to have my child on a whim! Don’t you dare say that! I desperately wanted William. Otherwise I would never, ever have stooped to ask Miles to visit my bed, not when he was telling all and sundry that Lady Childe was the love of his life. I would never have done it!”
Helene narrowed her eyes. “I would undergo any humiliation to have a child—any! And you dare to complain because Miles loved Lady Childe more than you? Why the devil should he have loved you? You were unfaithful to him the very night before you reconciled! There was a whole nine months when you didn’t even know whose child you carried, if you remember!”
Esme took a deep breath. She and Helene were friends; they had been friends for years. But all friendships end at some point. “I see no reason to discuss your views of my behavior further,” she said. “I fully understand your opinion of me.” She had gone from being burningly angry to icy cold. “Please do not hesitate to finish your tea. I am afraid that I have a headache and shall retire to my chamber.”
“I didn’t mean—” Helene said.
Esme cut her off. “Yes, you did mean it. And you clearly have been thinking it for a long time. I’m glad that you expressed yourself so clearly. Now we both know where we stand.”
“No,” Helene said flatly. She walked around Esme and sat down again. “I won’t leave.”
“In that case, I will.” Esme walked toward the door.
“I apologize if I offended you.”
Esme paused for a moment and then turned. “I am sorry as well, but forgiveness is hardly the issue, is it?”
“What did I say that was so terrible?” Helene said, looking her straight in the eyes. “One of the things I have always loved about you, Esme, is that you don’t lie to yourself. You have never hidden from me the fact that you bedded Sebastian Bonnington the night before you reconciled with your husband, and therefore you initially had no idea who fathered William. Why would it wound you to hear that fact repeated by me?”
“You called my wish to have children a whim,” Esme said, feeling as if Helene were stealing the ground out from under her feet. Just a moment ago she had been righteously furious and now—
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Helene said, her voice wavering a bit. “I only said it because I have so desperately wanted a child for years. I am sure that no one has ever wanted a child as much as I. I spoke out of jealousy. I’m sorry. You’re my closest friend, and if you throw me over, I might as well jump in the river because—because—”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Esme said, walking back and plumping down next to her. “All right, I forgive you, you sharp-tongued viper!” She wrapped an arm around her.
“Rees always said I had the temper of a devil,” Helene said with a wobbly smile.
“What temper? We’ve been friends for years, and you have always been calm, to my memory,” Esme said in honest bewilderment.
“I have to be in control because I’m a true witch otherwise. Rees couldn’t live with me. I threw a chamberpot at his head.”
“You what?”
“I emptied a chamberpot over his head.”
“My goodness,” Esme said with some fascination. “I presume it was…in use?”
“He keeps a chamberpot in the sitting room so that if he has the urge to use it, he doesn’t have to waste time visiting the water closet,” Helene said wearily.
Esme shuddered. “That is truly revolting. Rees got what he deserved.”
“So I try to remain collected. Otherwise I might throw plates at people’s heads regularly.”
“Thank you for the warning,” Esme said with some amusement, moving the lemon tarts to the far side of the table.
“Not at you. But I doubt that I could live with a man at this stage in my life. I’m all of twenty-seven years old. I don’t think I could put up with their disgusting habits.”
“Sebastian hasn’t any disgusting habits. And what does that make me, an old woman? I have twenty-eight years myself. Are you telling me that I’m too old to live with a man? Or that men aren’t attracted to me due to my advanced years?”
“Don’t be silly! You will always be enticing. I expect that men are even more attracted to your figure now that you’ve had a child.”
“You’ve bats in your belfry,” Esme replied. “I’m plump, and I know it.”
“I’m like a board, all flat and dried up, whereas you are even more curvy than before.”
“As you said earlier, cut bait. If my body curves, it only curves out!”
Helene stood up again and walked over to the window, wrapping her arms tightly around her chest. Finally she said, “I have to do something. I cannot go on like this.”
The raw misery in her voice caught at Esme’s heart. Sunlight was falling on Helene’s hair, making it look like spun sugar, gleaming white-blond.
“I can’t bear this life anymore,” she said. “I’m warning you, Esme, I am about to create a far bigger scandal than Rees ever did with his tawdry little singer and his Russian dancing troupe. And it will all be his fault, the utter unmitigated bastard.”
Esme blinked. “What are you thinking of?” she asked cautiously. “Do sit down, Helene.”
“I’m going to have a child,” Helene said, setting her jaw so that she looked as bullish as a Norse goddess. “I’m going to have a child, with or without a divorce. I’ve been thinking of nothing else for months.”
“Are you certain that Rees won’t—”
“Absolutely,” Helene said, cutting her off. “I’ve spoken to him about divorce repeatedly. And why would he ever change his mind? He’s cosily tucked up with that singer of his. Rees was never one to consult a book of etiquette on any matter, let alone in questions of marriage.”
“I suspect you’re right, but—”
“I have two choices, Esme: I can wither on the vine asking my husband for a divorce that he won’t give me, or I can simply have the baby I desire, and let the devil take the consequences.”
“It will be a terrible scandal,” Esme warned her.
“I don’t care. I literally don’t care.”
Esme took a deep breath and nodded. “In that case, we’ll forget the whole idea of divorce and simply select an available man to father your child.” Her imagination was already jumping to the task. “Neville Ch
arlton has lovely hair. Or there’s Lord Brooks. He has that gorgeous Roman nose.”
“I wouldn’t wish my child to have a father whose first name is Busick,” Helene put in wryly.
“Excellent point,” Esme agreed. “We’ll just pick exactly the facial features and names that you would appreciate, and there we are.”
Helene shook her head but didn’t say anything, so Esme rattled on.
“Lord Bellamy has very broad shoulders, Helene. What do you think of him? And he has black hair as well. I’ll make a list. For goodness’ sake, it’s not so hard to have a child. It only took me one night. Rees won’t repudiate you once you’re with child. He’s a decent sort.”
Helene snorted. “Decent? Rees?”
“Well, at any rate, he’s far too lazy to repudiate you,” Esme amended.
“He wants to make my life a misery for some reason,” Helene said flatly. “It’s the only explanation for his continued behavior toward me.”
“Well, Rees is not a skinflint,” Esme said. “He’s one of the richest men in England, and he would hardly leave you and the babe to starve.”
“The greater problem is that someone has to father the babe,” Helene said. “With me.” Helene’s eyes were swollen and red; her skin was patchy from crying.
“This isn’t your finest hour,” Esme said consolingly, “but—”
Helene plucked at the front of her gown. “Esme, there’s nothing here!” She waved her hand in front of Esme’s chest. “Just compare you and me.”
There was no question that Esme won that sweepstakes. Helene was wearing a very tightly buttoned walking costume that emphasized the fact that she had only the faintest, faintest curve in the front.
“Admit it,” Helene demanded. “You haven’t looked like me since you were fourteen years old!”
“More like twelve,” Esme admitted. “But gentlemen are not only attracted to large bosoms, you know.”
“They like curves. I don’t want to get excited about impossibilities. I don’t have curves. I can’t flirt in that way you have, as if you were—”
“As if I were what?” Esme asked, bristling a little.
“Oh, you know, Esme. Promising them things. I can’t do that. I loathed being in bed with Rees, what I remember of it. I can hardly look at a man as if I would want to do such a thing voluntarily!”
Esme bit her lip. Helene’s marital relations had obviously been unpleasant. “You’ll have to feign desire,” she said bluntly. “Because it matters far more to a man that you desire him, than that you have a large chest.”
“I’m not sure I even know how to do that. Stephen Fairfax-Lacy wasn’t fooled for more than a few moments, to be honest. He could tell that I didn’t really want to go forward with it.”
“We’ll work on that part later,” Esme promised. “It’s not hard to fool a man into thinking that you think he’s Adonis himself, if you go about it the right way.” She looked over Helene again. “First we have to order some new clothing.”
Helene smiled, a tiny curl of her lips. “You can turn me into a blaze of fashion and it won’t make any man wish to bed me.”
“Nonsense! You are ravishing, darling. There’s many a woman who would be more than grateful for that lovely hair of yours, not to mention your cheekbones. What we’re going to do is advertise the fact that you are available for bedding. I’m afraid that men are rather slow and foolish when it comes to these things, and they rely on obvious signals, such as clothing.”
Helene sighed and began wrapping her braids back into a stack on her head. “I’ll have to just cover up my chest with a sign, then. Available tonight. Please inquire within.”
Four
Of Song Birds and Strumpets
Number 15, Rothsfeld Square
Alina McKenna was bored. Lord, who would have thought that the life of a courtesan was so tedious? There were more and more days when she would give anything for the frantic hither-and-yon of the opera house, to be back there, knowing that a line of gentlemen were at the stage door, just hoping for a glimpse of her. Of course, she hadn’t been a prima donna, and she’d had less attention than the leads, but even so…Her eyes softened, remembering a certain Hervey Bittle who gave her a pair of blush-colored gloves and took her for a ride around Hyde Park. It was rather sad to think that these days she would never wear such poorly made garments.
Which reminded her precisely of her own situation. Naturally Hervey Bittle couldn’t compete with a genuine earl, once Godwin had made it clear he was interested. All the other girls were mortified with jealousy, properly mortified. Especially when Rees whisked her off to his grand house on Rothsfeld Square and said she could have whatever she wanted in the way of new gowns, just as long as she’d sing for him when he wished. And bed him, naturally.
She brooded over that for a moment. He wasn’t the first gentleman in her life, although it was hard to know if Hugh Sutherland, back in Scotland, really counted as a gentleman. Probably not. He was the son of a butcher, and people had called him Cow when he was a boy. But Hugh grew up well enough to catch the eye of a bored vicar’s daughter longing to take her fine voice and flee to the city.
Ah well, Hugh was far in the past now. There was no need to wonder what her father would think of her now. He was surely praying every night for the safety of her soul, even without knowing she’d become a fancy woman. Lina pressed her lips together hard. She didn’t like to think of her mama crying, but life was what it was. She wasn’t made to live in that dreary old vicarage.
She glanced around her bedchamber. The only relief she had from the tedium of it all was when she summoned decorators. Perhaps she should change the appointments again. At the moment her bedchamber was hung entirely in blush silks, the color of the faintest damask rose. No, she’d leave it for at least a month or so.
She sat down at the dressing table, virtually the only piece of furniture left in the room from when Rees’s wife lived in the house, and dragged a brush through her already shining hair. She felt dreary, properly dreary. Rees did most of his writing at night, and so he refused to go anywhere, not to a concert, not to a ball, not even to Vauxhall. It must have been months since he had taken her out of an evening. She couldn’t go back and talk to the girls at the opera because she ended up feeling embarrassed by her circumstances, for all they envied her. And she missed it, oh, she did. All those cosy conversations about who had a pair of stockings without a run, and who had lost a garter on a dark night, and who might be chosen to sing….
Lina’s eyes darkened. He had taken her away from there. He could bloody well accompany her out the door.
Rees was in the sitting room, naturally. Lina walked in, distastefully aware of the papers brushing her ankles. It reminded her of walking down a street filled with rubbish. But Rees would no more allow one of those sheets of papers to be discarded than he would dress in a gown. The thought of burly Rees in a petticoat made her giggle and he looked up.
“Lina!” he said in that abrupt fashion he had. “Sing this phrase for me, will you?”
“Are these the words?” she asked ungraciously. “I trip through the green woods, all covered with dew. What is Fen thinking? That trip through is going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to sing.”
“I don’t give a damn about the words, or what you think of them,” he said impatiently. “Just sing until you get to the end of the second page.”
“I don’t like the melody either,” she said with some satisfaction, a few moments later. “The way that line drops to a lower register is a disgrace. It makes me sound like a hymn-singer.”
Rees’s lips set. “I particularly like that section of the line.”
She was about to poke fun at the melody when she remembered that she wanted to go shopping. So she leaned against his shoulder instead. “Perhaps I sang it too quickly. Here, let me have another go.”
This time she gave it her best effort. And since Lina had a voice that rivaled that of Francesca Cuzzoni, the best o
peratic voice of the last century, her best was very good indeed. In fact, Lina pretty much thought that she could make any plunking old tune sound better than it really was.
He looked happier now, which was all to the good. “It’s lovely. I was wrong,” she cooed into his ear. “Rees, I should like you to accompany me to Madame Rocque’s French Trimming shop on Bond Street.”
He twitched away from her kiss and was scribbling on paper again.
“I’ll do whatever you wish…tonight,” she whispered throatily, leaning against him again.
This time he gave her a little shove. “I’m busy, for God’s sake, Lina. Go practice your tricks on someone else, will you?”
She narrowed her eyes. Madame Rocque made the most ravishing creations in all London but to Lina’s fury, she had discovered that if Earl Godwin did not accompany her to the modiste, she was treated like ditch water.
“I’ll sing the entire aria for you after we return,” she said, not bothering to add a throaty intonation. He hardly ever visited her bed anyway. In fact, it had been months since he darkened her bedroom door, now she thought of it. Rees’s skills in that area weren’t of a sort to keep a girl awake at night wondering where he was.
He didn’t say anything, just kept scribbling on his sheet.
“Three times,” she said. “I’ll sing that”—she swallowed the word stupid—“I’ll sing your lovely new aria three times, Rees.”
He shoved back from the piano and stood up with a sardonic look on his face. “Since I’m obviously not going to be allowed to work until you’ve gotten your way, we might as well go. Did you call the carriage?”
“How could I? Leke is nowhere to be seen,” she pointed out. Rees had a great deal of difficulty keeping servants. The butler, Leke, was the only servant who never left, but he kept his own hours and couldn’t always be found.