Lady of Pleasure (9 page)

Hawksford’s gaze snapped to his. “Don’t be stupid.” Leaning forward in the chair, Hawksford confided, “I’ll have you know, the woman propositioned me –
me
– from a hackney on the street. In broad daylight. She didn’t even look the sort, either. She was dressed in this—this…mourning garb and had the face of an angel about to deliver Jesus himself. I didn’t know what to make of it.”

“So what happened?”

Falling back against the chair, Hawksford hit the arm of the chair with a fist. “I escorted her home.”

“And?”

“And nothing.”

“As in
nothing
?”

“As in absolutely
nothing
.” Hawksford puffed out a breath. “Now I’m smacking myself knowing I should have at least kissed her. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so restless.” He rolled his eyes. “It’s like I’m losing myself to this thing called respectability.” Hawksford stared. “Speaking of respectable, you wouldn’t happen to know of any good men on the market, would you?”

Ronan smirked. That was rather random. “Why? Are you looking?”

Hawksford swiped an agitated hand toward him and glared. “No, you knothead. I’m trying to make a decent match for Caroline. I want her off my hands by the end of the Season. The girl is too much work. She wags her tongue at me all the bloody time, and doesn’t want to go to half the places I tell her to. The only thing she does enjoy about the Season is riding out on Rotten Row. Annoyingly, the
ton
has actually been twitching and calling her old because she turns twenty this summer. She wouldn’t have started so late, but we were all in mourning this time last year so it was out of the question.”

Ronan shifted in his seat again. Whoever thought that thirteen-year-old girl he’d met in the library would have caught up to him by being almost twenty? It was unbelievable. Fucking unbelievable. And to think. She still had his ‘lucky’ sovereign.

Hawksford squinted. “Are you all right?”

Ronan glanced toward him. “Yes. Why?”

“You’re unusually quiet. And only women ever make you quiet. Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

Even though Hawksford was his closest friend, there were many things Hawksford didn’t know and would never know. Like how he took money from women in return for certain favors. And how he’d been doing it since he was fourteen.

Once upon a time, he had felt shame in it. The older he got, however, the more he realized he wasn’t the one who ought to be shamed by what he was doing, but rather, the women who were coming to him in the name of pleasure. It eventually turned into a way of life in which he only dealt with women who
paid
to be in his life.

Everything else was a waste of time.

That is…until Caroline came into his life seven years to the breath and made him realize there didn’t have to be anything sexual between men and women. There could be intelligence, compassion, laughter and above all, companionship that wasn’t tainted by lust or the gormless games women played with men. But seeing Caroline again, after three years of being apart from her, made him realize none of that applied anymore. Because he
was
attracted to her. And it wasn’t a simple oh-she-is-pretty sort of attraction. No. It was a shred-all-of-the-clothes-from-her-body-and-bang-her-into-every-wall sort of attraction.

It was something he didn’t want or need. Spraying lust on what they shared would only mar her, and the last thing he wanted was to hurt her. Which he would. It was best to avoid her. In fact, it was best to never look her way again.

Friday evening

The Hawksford Residence

The damn thing really was cursed.

Hitching up her moonstone gown from around her stockinged legs, Caroline kicked off her satin slippers and frantically climbed up and onto her massive bed. Whipping aside the lone remaining pillow that hung from the edge of the bed, she crawled across the cleared mattress, patting and sliding her gloved hands along the smooth linen around her. She had tucked Caldwell’s sovereign beneath her pillow just this morning. Where did it go?!

A gargled male laugh drifted toward her from the open doorway. “Dare I even ask what you’re doing?”

Caroline froze, her hands and knees still planted atop the mattress, her evening gown billowing up to her elbows. She cringed and peered toward Alex who had quirked an inquisitive brow from beneath the rim of his top hat.

His green eyes mocked her as he crossed his arms over his chest, causing his evening coat to tighten around his shoulders. “And I thought I was fond of my bed.”

Always the court jester and always at her expense. “Cease. I’m looking for something between the linens.”

“Aren’t we all.” He dropped his hands back to his sides. “Get off the bed. We’re late. The Whittle ball already commenced twenty minutes ago.”

Caroline grudgingly scooted herself toward the edge of the bed and hopped down onto the floor, landing beside her overturned satin slippers. “I can’t leave until I find my
lucky
sovereign. I don’t know where it is.”

He groaned. “Caroline, don’t do this to me. It’s not like I enjoy going to these festivities. I’m only going because of you.”

Using her right foot, she positioned her slippers upright, shoved her feet back inside, and hurried around the bed toward him. “And I’m only going because of you. Imagine that. You think I like associating with superficial tarts who all gossip about us when we aren’t listening?” She waved him aside from the doorway he was blocking. “Please step aside. An unspeakable crime has been committed and I have no doubt the four culprits better known as our sisters are responsible for it.”

Alex pedaled back into the corridor, allowing her passage. “They have probably ceased announcing people by now.”

“I know, I know. I will do my best to hurry. Just let me find it.” Of all nights. Caldwell was going to be there. She couldn’t engage him without his sovereign tucked away in her dress. It would be like walking up to him without her heart. She had gotten so used to carrying it with her these past three years. “Wait for me downstairs, Alex,” she called. “I’ll be right there.”

“Five minutes,” he called back. “Or I leave without you!”

One would think the man was getting married. Caroline hurried down the length of the candlelit corridor. She eventually paused before the first of the four bedchamber doors. Seemingly innocent silence hummed, but she knew better. None of her sisters ever settled into bed before nine. They were congregating somewhere.

Methodically moving from one closed door to the next, Caroline keenly listened for any suspicious movements, until she arrived at the last door leading into the bedchamber of her youngest sister, Mary.

A flurry of anxious, hushed voices met her ears.

Caroline threw open the door, hoping for an element of surprise and whisked into the shadow-ridden bedchamber.

Candles flickered in response to her entrance, shifting light and shadows across the length of the hardwood floor and the bed.

Anne, Elizabeth and Victoria, who were gathered at the foot of Mary’s bed, all in nightgowns and ruffled nightcaps, froze and turned in unison to gawk at Caroline.

Their similar green-blue eyes appeared dark against the dull light of the candle. Guilt was deeply etched into every single one of those freckled faces.

Caroline set her hands on her hips. “Out with it. Where is it? Who has it?”

Anne, who was newly thirteen and a bit too proud of it, snapped an accusatory forefinger toward Mary.

Caroline lifted an inquisitive brow. “Mary? Did you take my coin?”

Mary lay regally outstretched atop her bombazine coverlet. She didn’t respond.

It appeared another funeral was in progress. One of only several dozen to have taken place since the passing of their father.

Those slender arms had been serenely crossed at the wrists over her chest, her eyes peacefully shut in complete submission. Mary didn’t even appear to be breathing, but then again, Mary had practiced the art of dying far too often for Caroline to be concerned.

“Little Miss Morbid has it,” Anne retorted, dropping her hand back to her side. “She claims it’s the only way to summon Charon. Whoever that is.”

“Charon?” Caroline glanced toward Mary in exasperation. “As in the Greek deity who escorts dead souls into the pits of Hades on a boat?”

Mary sat up from her burial position, shoving her golden chestnut braid back over the shoulder of her bombazine gown and spit something soundly into her hand. The gold sovereign Caroline had been looking for promptly appeared in Mary’s cupped hand, glistening with an unsavory amount of wetness.

Caroline wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I hope you at least washed it.”

Mary glared at them from beneath thin, furrowed brows. “Why is everyone always congregating in
my
room? There are ten other bedchambers in this house. No wonder Charon never visits! Because it’s not like any of you are dead. You have to be dead or have a coin in your mouth so you can pay him and get on the boat. Or he won’t come. Don’t you know
anything
about Greek mythology? Get a coin or leave.”

Anne slowly shook her head, wobbling her floppy-rimmed nightcap. “I’m beginning to think she is deranged. Is there an asylum we can drop her off at?”

Caroline glared at Anne. Anne seemed to forget it was Mary who had found their dead father. And it was Mary who had clung to that dead body until one of the footmen had dashed outside to follow her screams. “Stop teasing her. It’s all you ever do.”

Mary regally set her small chin. “Yes. Stop teasing me. Because I will have you know,
Anne
, that Charon
is
real. If God can exist in our realm, why can’t Charon exist in our realm?” She notably quieted her voice. “It’s the only way I’ll ever get a chance to see Papa again without actually dying. So if you think that is deranged, I’m more than fine with it.” Mary quietly wedged the sovereign back into her mouth and settled herself back onto the bed. Crossing her arms once again, at the center of her chest, she closed her eyes.

Anne lowered her gaze, as if finally knowing she had overstepped her bounds and murmured, “I’m sorry. I’m going to bed.” She turned, walking out the open door with bare feet.

Victoria and Elizabeth quietly turned and also left the room.

There were so many times Caroline still missed Bath. She missed her long walks with her grandfather, which had always been so beautifully quiet and peaceful. Unlike her life now. With a sigh, she made her way toward Mary. It was achingly obvious, despite their time of mourning being over, she showed no signs of wanting to rejoin the living. It was like the girl was still trying to understand what had happened.

Pausing beside her sister, Caroline reached over the bed and smoothed a gloved hand over her sister’s forehead. “I miss Papa too,” she whispered. “We all do. But you ought to be comforted knowing that he lived a very long life. Most men never see a breath past seventy. Yet he did.”

Mary pinched her eyes more tightly shut, scrunching her features together all the more.

Caroline leaned in closer, stroking that cheek. “Do you think Papa would have approved of you acting like this?”

Mary continued to remain perfectly still except for the rapid breathing through that little freckled nose and the rise of her flat chest just beneath her crossed arms.

“Mary.” Caroline leaned in as close as the bed and her gown would allow. “You know full well what that coin means to me. Why would you take it without asking?”

Except for an exaggerated, closed-eyed pout, Mary still didn’t respond.

Fortunately, she knew a thing or two about mythology. “You need an obolós made out of silver if you plan on summoning Charon. A British sovereign will only offend the undead chap.” She wasn’t even going to mention that if he did exist, one really had to be dead in order to meet him.

Mary’s eyes popped wide open. She jerked her braided head toward Caroline, her large green-blue eyes staring up at her. “So he won’t be coming? At all?”

Who was she to ruin the vast imaginings of a child still in mourning? “Do you want to keep it and see if he comes?”

Mary rolled the coin aside in her mouth, clicking it against her teeth. “Can I?”

The sound of that coin clicking against teeth made Caroline instinctively shudder. “Yes. You can. But only for this one night. And you are charged to take very good care of it. And above all, don’t do anything half-witted like…swallow it and die.”

“I won’t.” Mary scrambled into an upright position, spit out the coin into her hand and shifted toward her. “Are you going to ask Lord Caldwell to marry you tonight?”

Caroline tweaked that freckled nose. “A lady usually waits for the gentleman to ask. But if keeps me waiting, I’ll have no choice, will I?” She smiled, stepped away from the bed and pointed at Mary. “Now get some sleep.” She hurried toward the door.

Mary scrambled across the bed after her. “I know our time of mourning is over, but why am I the only one still wearing bombazine? I cannot help but feel as though this entire family has already carried on. As if Papa never mattered merely because he moved into a cottage due to his health for a year. Did you not love him?”