David Lord of Honor

Ten




Letty returned to her office through the side entrance off the kitchens, and indeed, pandemonium reigned. Etienne accused Pietro of using his knives, and Manuel insisted that Etienne was poaching on his recipes—as best Letty could tell from the polyglot shouting match that included sufficient quantities of English cursing. Musette’s name popped up a time or two—Etienne’s “angry little Frenchwoman”—as did the names of several other ladies.

Letty wasted the better part of an hour sorting through the details, smoothing ruffled feathers, and ensuring preparations for the evening were under way. Dealing with kitchen politics in a brothel bore a startling resemblance to parish politics in Oxfordshire.

The evening passed easily enough, the moderating weather ensuring that the parlors were more often full and the ladies kept busy. Letty had become so used to mingling with the patrons that she did so by second nature—also like a parish assembly—even as she kept her eye on the ashtrays in the smoking parlor, the clutter of dirty glasses to be cleared, and the dishes on the buffet to be replenished.

“That,” Lord Valentine Windham said, taking a place beside her in the main parlor, “is not an expression of pleasure. My dear, you look positively woebegone.”

His green eyes missed little. Letty tried for a smile anyway. “Hello, your lordship. I am lost in thought, and because the hour grows late, a bit tired.”

Lost in thoughts of David. Again.

Windham fussed the lace at his cuffs. “The hour is not late for you, Letty Banks. And you’ve been looking peaked for the past two weeks, if you ask me. Of course, I am not a physician, am I?” The last question was offered in such bland, conversational tones, that Letty abruptly felt very tired, indeed.

“Was there some significance to that remark?”

“You’re missing your Lord Fairly,” Windham said. “I don’t suppose you’d consider finding solace in my arms, would you?”

His grin said he was teasing, though Letty had the uncomfortable sense that perhaps he wasn’t merely teasing.

“Things run more smoothly when he’s here.” She ran more smoothly. “I spent much of my afternoon listening to three grown men argue—in several languages—over recipes for hollandaise and the sharpness of their knives. They need to know someone takes them seriously, and they would rather that someone be Lord Fairly.”

“As would you, I gather?”

Valentine Windham was the Duke of Moreland’s son, which might explain why Letty didn’t tell him to take his too insightful questions and go make music with them.

“I manage the patrons well enough, and the ladies are comfortable with me. The account books are gradually getting straightened out, and the various merchants accept me adequately.”

“But?”

“But we all know I’m not Fairly. And he is the owner.” Though David was no more suited to owning a brothel than Letty was to running one.

“Have you considered buying him out?” Lord Valentine asked, casually sipping his drink. “He’s grumbled about this place endlessly, and because he must eventually take a wife, he’ll someday need to get rid of it.”

The observation wasn’t unkind, though it was bracingly, painfully honest. “How could I afford to buy him out? I am paid well, but I have obligations. I can put some by, though nowhere near enough to purchase a business as profitable as this.”

Windham raised a dark eyebrow, looking very much a duke’s son and more like Westhaven’s sibling.

“What obligations could you possibly have? Aging parents living in a cave by Hampstead Heath? A crippled, blind sister begging with a tin cup in Greater Mud Puddle? A brother who gambled away the family farm near Cow Crossing Wells?”

Letty gave up on smiling altogether, resenting the mockery a titled man could make of what was reality for too many people. “It’s Little Weldon, Oxfordshire, and nothing so dramatic as that. I need my gowns to wear, don’t I?”

He leaned two inches closer. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

Sometimes, Letty missed the vicarage. Perhaps that was why she’d ended up in a brothel, because she’d been ungrateful for her upbringing. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“Do what? Flirt with you? I should think it simply another meaningless exchange in an evening that is filled with them, for you at least.”

Letty closed her eyes, fatigue and a howlingly inconvenient case of the weeps dragging at her. A real madam would have known what to say to such comments—or she might have slapped his lordship soundly.

A real madam might, in the alternative, have taken his handsome young lordship to bed and swived the smirk right off his face.

“In the first place,” she began, “while the flirtation may be meaningless, you are not meaningless. In the second, I am not comfortable flirting in a venue where it is expected that flirting with me could lead to something… more.”

“You see my flirting as a renewed attempt to gain your favors?”

“I fear that’s what you’re about.” Or did she hope he was, because then the puzzle of what to do when David lost interest in her would be solved.

“Put your fears to rest,” Lord Valentine said, offering her a genuine, if wistful, smile. “I merely want you to know, Letty Banks, that even though Fairly can’t seem to pay you sufficient attention, I do enjoy your company.”

He laced their fingers, making the gesture more than a drawing-room gallantry. “You have been a friend to me, my dear, and there are few others about whom I could say the same. Please remember that you have a friend, too. Short of calling Fairly out, there’s little I wouldn’t do, should you ask it. And that includes making you a loan sufficient to buy this place, if that’s what you decide you want.”

What on earth should she say to that? Fanny Newcomb, who’d known her since birth, encouraged her to further vice, while this lordling offered her a casual fortune out of simple… decency.

“Try not to look surprised.” Windham kissed her knuckles. “Much to my father’s consternation, I own companies that specialize in the importation of fine musical instruments from the Continent, and manufactories that build pianofortes here in England. Though my social life is sadly impoverished, my personal coffers are not.”

“Your offer is generous, also surprising, my lord.”

“Think about it,” he said, patting her hand and returning it to her. “And now I will take my leave of you, to put yonder fine instrument through its paces once again. Would you like to hear anything particular?”

She would like to hear again that she had a well-placed, wealthy friend—except all of Lord Valentine’s wealth and charm might simply be a patient version of pursuit.

“What I like most is when you play without written music, your own compositions that you make up as you go. Such a talent leaves me in awe, your lordship. The beauty you create with your hands is almost too much to bear.”

Windham bowed as properly as if he’d met her at a village assembly. “For flattery such as that, I will play for hours.”

He would play until he’d exorcised whatever demons were tormenting him, and sometimes he did play for hours. Lord Valentine had an uncanny knack for making the music that suited the hour and the mood of the evening, too. Tonight, he spun a slow, lyrical melody, one that drifted from the treble, to the tenor, accompaniment flowing under, over, and around it as he crossed hands to follow his muse.

Perfect music for putting her in the mood for bed.

A bed she’d rather be sharing, but only with David Worthington.

***

“I didn’t know you’d come in.” Letty stood by the door, her smile friendly without being personal. “Have you had supper?”

“I have,” David said, rising from the fainting couch in her office and wrapping his arms around her. Letty hadn’t flown across the room to embrace him; she’d hovered by the door, a pleasant, noncommittal greeting in place of the leap of enthusiasm she might have shown him.

He had done this to her, put her on her guard, wary and mistrustful.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said, leaning into him and resting her forehead on his shoulder. “So glad.”

Something inside David eased. “How was the evening? I confess I’m hiding back here, and I have no intention of leaving the private quarters, Letty.”

“You’ve been hiding a lot lately,” Letty said, straightening the folds of his cravat. The gesture was wifely; the observation was pure Letty. “I mean, you haven’t been much in evidence here, and your staff is remarking your absence.”

His staff was indeed remarking something. He dropped his arms, the better to see her eyes when she flayed him with guilt. “Who is giving you trouble?”

Besides her employer.

“Etienne, Manuel, and Pietro went at it in high dudgeon this afternoon and Musette chimed in with various threats of violence.” Letty knelt to poke at a perfectly cheery blaze. “There’s jealousy afoot, both personal and professional. The ladies could hear them on the third floor, and the footmen were placing bets regarding the likelihood of bloodshed. Somebody in that kitchen is stealing from you, possibly several someones. It grows… tiresome.”


“I can believe that,” David said, wondering if—should he crouch down beside her—she’d let him tumble her on the hearthrug, and then disapproving of himself heartily for the notion. “You’ve spared me and Thomas Jennings both the pleasure of attempting to intercede, though I understand it’s hardly a chore you enjoy.”

“They’re fretful, David,” Letty said, shifting to sit on the fainting couch, the poker across her knees. “They need to know you appreciate their efforts. And the ladies miss you as well.”

He sat beside her, hip to hip, set the poker on the hearth stand, and brought a hand up to gently massage the nape of her neck.

Not because she enjoyed it—though she clearly did—but because the pad of his thumb ached to stroke that soft flesh and to tease the downy hair that escaped her tidy coiffure.

“And what about you, Letty Banks? Do you miss me, too? Or do you more often wish me to perdition these days?”

“I wish you with me,” Letty said softly, “and I wish this house full of flirting, drinking, swiving fellows somewhere else.”

The good news, and the bad. She wished herself elsewhere.

“They are paying your salary, those flirting, drinking, and particularly those swiving fellows.” He was paying her salary, but the swiving fellows allowed him pretenses to the contrary.

She curled over to lean against his shoulder. “Do you ever think of closing this place?”

No, he did not. Not any longer, because this place of immoral commerce meant he had some connection to her beyond what she allowed him in bed.

“And doing what with the property?” he asked, taking pins from her hair. “The building is almost too big to be a town house, unless, like Devonshire, you have various children, a wife, a mistress, and the ability to manage them all under one roof.”

“You could do anything you pleased with the property: sell it, turn it into gentlemen’s rooms to let, use it to house some of your businesses. The house is pleasant and pretty enough.”

And gentlemen’s rooms in a former brothel would have a wonderful cachet. Jennings had made the very same point, damn him. David undid the single thick braid Letty had wound into a coronet, then spread her hair in long, loose skeins down her back.

“I’ve thought about closing the business, Letty,” he said, trailing his fingers down the silky length of her mahogany tresses. “And then where would the ladies be? I’ve considered selling the place as well, and the same concern makes me hesitate.”

Lately, it made him hesitate. Three months ago, he’d been ready to give the place away.

“You would have to sell it to someone you trusted. Do you suppose Valentine Windham might buy it?”

She had an answer for everything, also beautiful hair, and the most beguiling rosy scent.

“I doubt he has the means, and neither Westhaven nor His Grace would approve.” And for the first time, David honestly appreciated old Moreland’s propensity for meddling in his children’s lives.

“Lord Valentine has the means. Tonight, he offered to lend me the money to buy it from you.”

Utter glee at the prospect of shedding the property warred with… terror at the idea that Letty might buy him out. “Are you considering it?”

“I am not.”

Relief burned through him at her words, though for the life of him, he ought to sell her the place. Selling the brothel to Letty would accomplish three dearly sought outcomes: First, it would relieve David of the enterprise entirely. Second, it would ensure Letty had financial security for the rest of her life. Third, it would ensure the ladies were well taken care of.

“So you don’t want to own this establishment?” Something they had in common. “Why not?”

Letty kissed his jaw. “I never aspired to be a madam.”

Oh, that.

David shifted so he could undo the hooks on the back of her dress. “You aspired to eat, to have a roof over your head, to put a little bit by.” He swept her hair aside in a slow caress and kissed her nape, and even there, she bore the scent of roses. “I can’t say the prospect of years of squabbling chefs, violent altercations among the employees, lecherous young lords, and the rest has great appeal as a steady diet.”

He fell silent for a few moments, content to kiss the juncture of her shoulder and neck, and the soft, soft skin between her shoulder blades. Next, he peeled back her dress and rested his forehead on her nape, a man condemned to protect her best interests, such as those might survive in her present situation.

“Letty, you could make enough in five years here to retire outright, if you lived frugally off in the shires. You could be the one selling this business at an enormous profit, and spending the rest of your life in relative peace.”

Without him. He wanted to bite her, to hold her in place the way a stallion pinned a mare in season with his teeth.

“Do you want me to buy it?”

She sounded breathless, and that was wonderful, because it meant this awful conversation would soon be over. David pushed her gown from her shoulders and went to work on her chemise and stays.

“What I want,” he said, “is not under discussion. If you want this business, I am sure we could come to terms. Why do you wear so many clothes, my love? The hour grows late, and I am on fire for you.”

“I wear so many clothes because my employer insists that I be properly attired from the skin out.”

She was taunting him with reason, which was most unfair. David pulled her to him, her back to his chest. “I could bend you over this chaise, hoist your skirts, and pleasure you witless with you half undressed. Nobody need shed a single additional piece of clothing.”

Though they would, at least temporarily, let this vexing topic drop.

“You could, or you could let me relieve you of every stitch of your fine evening attire, lie naked with me on the big, soft bed in the next room, and spend hours castaway with pleasure.”

David swept her hair aside again, let his hand drift up to cup her breast, and brought his lips close to her ear.

“Let’s do both.”

***

“Are you haunting your own establishment?”

Windham posed the question from the piano bench, where he was still quietly plying the keyboard, though the hour neared three in the morning. David paused by the decanter, poured them each a healthy tot of brandy, and brought one glass over to the pianoforte, where he set it on an ornate silver coaster.

“I might be. What of you?”

“Thinking,” Windham murmured. “I always do my best thinking when I’m playing through the night.”

“You won’t be playing through the night here, old man.” David sipped his drink and dropped onto the bench beside Windham, so they were shoulder to shoulder, facing opposite directions. “The ladies have all gone to their beds, the staff is nearly done cleaning up, and it’s long since time you were toddling off to your own quarters.”

“You’re kicking me out then?” Windham asked, bringing his music to a gentle cadence. “Letty usually trusts me to see myself out.”

“My dear Letty,” David said quite pleasantly, “is adrift in the arms of Morpheus, so I’ll be the one seeing you out.”

Rather than get up and take himself off, Windham reached for his drink and took a slow, savoring—taunting?—sip.

“Between the quality of this instrument and the caliber of the liquor served, you make it damned difficult to recall exactly where home is and why one would want to frequent the place.”

“Clean linens,” David said, wondering where Windham was biding these days. “Solitude. The chair that has conformed itself exquisitely to one’s anatomy. One’s cat, exactly where one’s cat should be. The ability to navigate the premises in complete darkness without bruising one’s shins. A comfortable place to become inebriated without having to face the elements at the end of the evening. Need I go on?”

“Gracious God. Is that all home is to you?”

Windham was intent on mischief tonight. Perhaps his father had been bedeviling him—or his mother. Moreland’s duchess was not to be underestimated.

David shifted so they were both facing the keyboard. “My home is also the location of my personal business records and various artifacts and curios that have sentimental value. My country seat is entailed with the viscountcy, but a comfortable enough place to visit.”

“You are impoverished,” Windham said, closing the cover over the keys and caressing the wood with an index finger. “Though your wealth is the envy of your peers.”

“I try not to let my peers know the extent of my wealth, but what is home to you, then, if you’re so disdainful of my definition?”

He knew better than to ask that question, but somewhere, Letty had had a home, and it hadn’t been where she’d kept her personal business records or become cozily drunk of a frigid evening.

Windham’s version of thinking meant he opened the cover and ran his left hand over an F-major scale, descending two octaves, then ascending.

“Home is where my late brother Bart taught me how to make a flatulent noise with my armpit,” he began. “We laughed so hard we were soon… Well, never mind. Home is where Westhaven will always make time for our sisters’ concerns and needs, no matter how tired, distracted, or upset he is with my father’s latest misbehavior. Home is where my brother Victor finally succumbed to the peace of death. Home is where those I love most dearly in all the world will always be safe and warm and welcomed.”


This recitation required that David finish his drink. “So you are a poet as well as a musician?”

“Letty Banks would be home to you,” Windham said quietly. “Night after night, she makes this business of yours what it says it is: a pleasure house, a place where a man can indulge his petty vices, safe from the judging eyes of the world. All the while, she watches for you, hour after hour, and she waits for you. I honestly don’t know what makes her more upset: when you join us here, or when you don’t.”

“Your concern, Lord Valentine, is touching. Are you offering to succeed me in her affections?”

Windham closed the cover and shoved off the piano bench. “Nobody will succeed you in her affections. She will grow old and lonely, and what you’ve offered her will be all she knows of love, pleasure, or human companionship. The woman loves you, and you are taking more from her than if you’d robbed her blind and left her bleeding in a ditch.”

“And would your tirade,” David asked, rising as well, “be directed otherwise if you knew I’d repeatedly offered our Letty marriage?”

Even in the flickering candlelight, David could see his companion was astonished.

“I am shocked, not that you would make the offer, but that she would refuse you,” Windham said. “I have five sisters and a brace of female cousins. Letty Banks lives for the sight of you.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” David said, settling into a comfortable chair near the hearth. “She enjoys my company, as I do hers.”

As understatements went, that one would round out the evening nicely.

Windham remained standing over him, like some angel of judgment. “She hasn’t your ability to mask her feelings. For anyone who knows her, her eyes give away her emotions. You, by contrast, are not much more familiar with her than you are with the other women here, and you’ve been coming around this place less and less.”

“I would do Letty no good whatsoever were I to fawn over her more than is needed to ensure she doesn’t suffer unwanted advances.”

Silence stretched while David felt a tidal pull from the private apartment at the back of the house, where he’d left Letty in an exhausted, well-loved slumber.

“I wonder,” Windham said musingly, “if she has a husband stashed away back in Little Weldon.”

Husband? The very word dashed across David’s fatigue like cold water.

“Where?” Douglas had said the housekeeper—Mrs. Newcomb—had received letters from Little Weldon, and Letty had said she’d come to London with Mrs. Newcomb.

“Little Weldon, Oxfordshire,” Windham said. “I offered to undertake a business arrangement with Mrs. Banks earlier this evening, when she said she had obligations back in Little Weldon that tied up her capital.”

“A business arrangement?”

“For God’s sake, Fairly, I’m not offering her carte blanche. She’d make a terrible mistress.”

“She would?” David asked, bristling for reasons he didn’t want to consider. Windham had proved entirely insightful enough for one evening.

“Of course she would,” Windham scoffed. “I see that now. She loves too deeply. A little affection, some friendship between a man and his mistress is fine, but Letty Banks is made for loving, not swiving.”

The same conclusion David had been hammering his conscience with for weeks.

“For a man who hasn’t gone up the front stairs once in all the time you’ve been bivouacking here,” David observed, “you’ve made a thorough study of matters between men and women.”

“I most certainly have not,” Windham said, his gaze going to the damned piano the way some men might watch the love of their lives walk away. “At the risk of burdening you with confidences, I understand Letty’s demeanor because in certain regards it reflects my own.”

“You have obligations back in Little Weldon too?” And would another drink truly be a bad idea?

“Of course not, but I am more comfortable making love than swiving. It’s hardly well done of me, and more inconvenient than you can imagine—particularly for a man who is trying to elude parson’s mousetrap. But there it is, probably part of my artistic temperament.”

Whatever that meant. “Did Letty happen to mention the nature of her obligations in Little Weldon?”

“My love life doesn’t fascinate you,” Windham said, picking up an empty pink Sevres vase from a spot on the mantel formerly occupied by a porcelain angel. “I am devastated. The only thing I could surmise about Letty’s obligations is that they affect her finances. Should you wish to learn more, I suggest you ask her.” He set the vase down and aimed an equally curious look at his host.

Who was not half so worth examining as antique porcelain.

“She keeps secrets, Windham, and those secrets are part of why she won’t consider my suit.”

“Part of why?”

In for a penny… “Neither she nor I care that we would not be welcomed at Court, and I doubt Letty gives a fig for being accepted among the beau monde. A quiet life would, in fact, suit us both. I suspect she is unwilling to marry me mostly because she knows our children may not be received by the best families.”

“You will have to convince her then, that being loved is more important than being received,” Windham replied. “And unearth her secrets if convincing doesn’t work.”

Convincing had already failed repeatedly. “Bring the decanter over here, Windham, and have a seat. There’s a small task you might be willing to undertake for me. A small task requiring significant discretion.”

***

Cold, wet seaweed wrapped itself around Letty’s waist. She’d been to the seacoast only once, and had no idea what seaweed wrapped about one’s middle felt like, but this was her dream, so reality was of no moment.

The seaweed gradually warmed and became David’s hands, stroking themselves over her breasts, her arms, her back. On and on his hands drifted, caressed, teased, and brought her to arousal. When he slid into her gently from behind, Letty felt her body contracting around him—not a dramatic, earthshaking cataclysm, but rather a pleasurable greeting between lovers.

David thrust into her, prolonging her pleasure generously, but not attempting to force it to any greater intensity—which he could do and often did. Letty laced her fingers through his where they kneaded the fullness of her breast.

“Missed you.”

“Missed you too,” David whispered back. “Relax, Letty, and dream on.”

She almost could, so undemanding was he. Lately, each night he joined her in bed, his approach was different, as if he’d show her all the pleasures she would miss when they parted. One night, Letty had awakened to find that he was penetrating her body with a jade phallus, and to her shock, she had been on the verge of satisfaction before she’d become aware enough to sense her pleasure came from an object. When she had scooted away in indignation, David had seemed bewildered, even hurt.

“I want to make love with you,” she’d tried to explain.

“There’s nobody here except me.”

“But you are not inside my body. That thing is.”

“And what of this thing,” David argued, sliding a finger inside her. “Is this thing unacceptable to you, Letty? I fail to see the difference between my hand and what is wielded by my hand.”

“It isn’t a difference you see,” Letty said, feeling tears threaten for no definable reason. “It’s a difference you feel”—she tapped her chest—“here.”

He’d desisted, of course, and given her a very traditional, pleasurable loving, but it had reminded Letty how ill-suited she was to the role of mistress, and how much broader David’s experience was than hers. The ever present anxieties—that she bored him, that he would grow tired of her, that she was too difficult, that they simply did not belong together—had undergone considerable growth since that night.

Another time she’d awakened to find her wrists tied to the bedposts. Again, she’d been less than pleased, but she had kept her complaints to herself, and found, in David’s hands, restraints could heighten pleasure.

Still another night, David had suggested she might take him in her mouth, and that, she had to admit, had been fascinating, pleasurable, and the fulfillment of some very private daydreams, probably for both of them.

Tonight, it seemed, would be less adventurous. David stroked into her from behind, Letty’s head resting on his arm. He took his time and built Letty’s arousal slowly. She’d already found pleasure once, however, so her fuse was short.

“Will you come again for me?” The dratted man had somehow divined that Letty liked his naughty talk. “I want to feel you come, Letty. You caught me by surprise the first time.”

And because he was never content to torment her with only words, he gently rolled first one nipple then the other between his fingers.

Desire coiled beneath Letty’s womb, as well as the same sense of desperation that likely fueled David’s sexual devotions.

“Letty, will you answer me?” He slowed his thrusting, as if listening for her response. “Do you want to come again?”


“I do.” If she tried to wiggle against him, he’d only tease her more.

“You want me to make you come now?” David asked again, nudging at her with his cock.

“I want you to make me come now,” she confirmed, sighing on the penetration. “And hard. So hard I scream for you.” Because I will surely cry for you.

“I can do that.” His tone held approval—he liked it when Letty was demanding, and he liked it better when she was beyond even pleading. He didn’t move any more quickly or deeply. He lazed along, all languid patience and slow, soft caresses.

Letty was on the verge of offering him some very clear direction, when he withdrew on a gentle retreat, rolled her to her back, and without warning thrust into her hard, and kept on thrusting. After a startled moment, Letty locked her legs around his waist, got her teeth into his shoulder, and braced herself for an explosion of pleasure.

“Oh, God, David… Merciful heavens, David… David…”

He was getting worse, in some sense. Letty was nearly certain he hadn’t spent—he never did anymore unless he wore a sheath, but what he visited upon her had become much more intense in recent weeks. Unbearably intense, and unbearably precious.

“You kill me,” Letty said against his chest when she could talk again. “The pleasure approaches violence, David, and to be honest—”

“Yes, Letty-love?” He was all tenderness again, a placid, golden lion, content to caress her with indulgent gentleness. “The pleasure approaches violence… For me too, you know.”

“I am almost afraid of you sometimes. What are you trying to prove in this bed, David?”

He was silent for a long moment, and Letty was concerned that she might, again, have offended him intimately. His touch didn’t change, however, it remained… sweet.

“Maybe I am trying to prove that I am still myself. That I haven’t changed for loving you.”

Loving her. Letty weathered that blow as best she could, cradled in his arms, his body sheltering hers, even as her heart went howling into an internal wilderness.

“And why would it be such a bad thing to change a bit, to adjust, or grow?”

He kissed her nose, probably to make sure she wasn’t crying. “You hoist me on my own petard, Letty, for I see now that when one changes, even for the better, one loses something of one’s old self, doesn’t one? You tried to make this point with me some time ago, I think.”

Letty snuggled the covers up around them, even as David slipped away in some sense that had nothing to do with the physical. “What part of yourself do you think you will lose?”

David extricated himself from her embrace and from her bed, firelight gilding him as he tossed away the sheath and tended to his ablutions. The dimensions he sported confirmed that he had not spent inside her, which Letty took for a consideration toward her, and a form of self-torment for him.

“You do trust me,” David said, climbing back into the bed and wrapping his arms around her.

Which in no way answered her question. “I do. In this bed, at least. I trust you more than I trust any other person, you may depend on that.”

He lay back, hands laced behind his head, not touching her because, Letty knew, he had his own issues with trust. “You don’t trust me enough.”

She thought he’d leave the conversation there, on that sad, if honest, note, but David wasn’t finished.

“The part of me I am afraid to lose,” he said quietly, “is the part that believes affection between paramours is quite sufficient, and any further degree of entanglement purely a bother. That part of me is a sensible fellow, and he’s spared me much heartache.”

And that part of him was still trying to make him think he could happily own a brothel.

Letty tucked herself against his side and rested her knee on his hairy, muscular thigh. She remained cuddled next to him, listening to his heart beat, until sleep tugged at her.

“I love you, you know,” she murmured long, quiet minutes later. He made no response, assuring her, as his steady heartbeat had, that her words would be held safely in the darkness while her lover slept.