David Lord of Honor

Four




“If it warms up, we’ll get another damned snowstorm,” David observed, poking at the logs in his madam’s sitting-room fireplace. Logs were an extravagance he hoped she would not scold him for, though Jennings certainly had. “Do you prefer brandy, or perhaps a cordial?”

Because after hours of trying to remain close to Letty without hovering, of touching her hand, her hair, her anything with an appearance of casual affection, he needed a drink.

“May I please have a hot chocolate?”

So polite, in this most impolite of venues. “Of course you may.” David opened the door and gave their request to the footman at the end of the corridor. “You may swill hot chocolate the whole night through if it’s what you prefer. You mustn’t spare the small indulgences, Letty. The nights are too long and the pleasures too few.”

Sometime in the course of the evening, he’d gained the privilege of calling her Letty, though she did not call him David.

“What you require of me isn’t that difficult,” she replied, closing her eyes and resting her head against the back of the couch. “One smiles, greets, chats, and moves on to the next for more of same. One mustn’t flirt too hard or give offense to any party, or be overly boisterous or overly withdrawn. One mustn’t imbibe to excess or comment uncharitably on the social habits of others. Rather like a village assembly.”

Not a comparison David would have ever thought to make. “You sound like you’re reciting a catechism.” And like she’d been to many, many village assemblies.

“I nearly am, the point being that superficial social interaction isn’t that demanding when one has been trained to manage it. The gathering does take on a different air when couples are disappearing up the steps from time to time and grinning fellows are coming down.”

“Noticed that, did you?” And she’d tried not to be obvious about her noticing too, while David had tried not to obviously watch her.

Perhaps he’d have two drinks. He took a place beside her, got his cravat off without swearing audibly, and began to wrench at a boot.

“You are disrobing.”

“Partially,” David said through gritted teeth. “You are welcome to do likewise.”

“Would you like some help with that boot?” she asked, pushing to her feet.

He stuck his boot out, the same as he would have were she his valet or his… wife, while wondering whose boots she’d tugged off in the past.

“Do not,” she warned, “think of putting your foot on my person, sir. Or any other part of you on any other part of me.”

“Duly warned.” Did her defenses never waver? He rather hoped, for her sake, they did not.

Letty stepped over his shin and presented him with the fetching prospect of her derriere at eye level. With a strong tug, she had his boot off, dropped his foot, and stepped back to allow him to raise the other leg.

When the second boot was off, she held up both. “Where do you want these?”

“Outside the door. The bootboy will see to them while we have our nightcap.”

A knock on the door heralded the arrival of their drinks, and David took the boots from her, putting them in the corridor before he took the tray proffered by the waiting footman.

“Your chocolate, madam.” He bowed before Letty where she’d once again ensconced herself on the couch, then grabbed a pillow, slapped it down on the hearth, and lowered himself onto it.

Lest some part of him be tempted to touch some part of her.

He took a sip. “Chocolate is a good idea, but it needs something.” He went to the sideboard, where he searched out a brown bottle with a label in Italian, and sloshed a goodly portion from the bottle into his hot chocolate.

“Try mine,” he suggested. “If you like it, we’ll doctor yours as well.”

She reached for the bottle and sniffed. “Nuts?”

“Hazelnut liqueur. I came across it in Italy.” He held out his drink, and she brought it to her lips. Perhaps she thought he’d surrender it into her keeping, but instead—because he was a tired fool suffering an inconvenient attack of adolescence—kept his hand wrapped around the glass, so she had to wrap her fingers over his.

He was offering spirits to a lady in a bordello after midnight, and feeling both naughty and hopeful about the prospects.

Pathetic—or, perhaps, sweet. David held up the bottle. “Shall you?”

“A bit. I’m not used to spirits.”

She attended rural assemblies, wasn’t used to spirits, and kissed with all the wonderment and innocence of a new bride. David poured a sparing amount into her drink, though it was tempting to get her tipsy and himself drunk.

“So you’re just going to sit there,” David asked from his perch on the hearth, “all dressed?”

“Why would I remove clothing in your presence?” Letty replied, taking another sip of her drink.

She was baiting him—he was almost sure of it. “Because it’s more comfortable and leaves less to do when one eventually succumbs to the arms of Morpheus? You are staying here tonight, I hope?”

“I could.” Euridyce had taken lodgings in the underworld with more enthusiasm.

“Until the weather improves, I wish you would. The only people abroad at this hour of the night when it’s this cold are up to no good. And we’ve an appointment with Madame Baptiste in the morning anyway. Would you like more hot chocolate?”

“I taste spices in this too—nutmeg, maybe, or cinnamon. I’m probably going to fall asleep halfway through if I have another. The longer I sit here, the heavier my eyes get.”

David gathered up their empty glasses a few moments later and used the bellpull, but didn’t immediately sit back down on the hearth. Instead, he paused to shed his cuff links and turn up his cuffs. The room was cozy, and Letty ought not to have an apoplexy at the sight of his forearms.

“I’m taking your shoes off, Letty Banks, and you will permit this, seeing as you did, after all, wrest mine from me.”

“I asked, your lordship, I didn’t order,” she said peevishly, but she made no protest as David eased her half boots off. Emboldened by her passivity, he slid his hands up her calf to untie the garter of each stocking.

“You are taking liberties.” She sounded unsure, and not pleased.

“Your feet are safe with me, Letty. You can hiss and arch your back all you want, but you were on your feet for hours. Those boots of yours are an abomination against nature and fashion both, and I am going to ease your discomfort.”

While increasing his own. He took her foot in his hands, and as the medical part of his brain noted a high arch and a second toe longer than her great toe—there was a name for this condition—the masculine part of him rejoiced to hold even this most humble part of her.

“Oh, my,” she breathed, trying to sit up.

“None of that. You relax, and don’t give me any trouble, or I’ll peek at your ankles, or do something equally dreadful.”

“Peek at my ankles, will you?” Letty eyed him dubiously then subsided on a sigh. “Where did you learn to do this, and what is it exactly you are doing?”

“I am simply rubbing your feet, as I like to have my feet rubbed at certain times.”

Another tired, peevish glower. “Is this one of those times?”

“No. And don’t you ask, Letty Banks, lest I shock you with the details. You did well tonight, by the way.”

“You are changing the subject, but thank you. I was nervous, especially when I realized how many of those fellows scampering up your stairs are titled or in expectation of a title. You have an exclusive clientele.”

She flinched as David dug his thumbs into a particularly stubborn knot of muscle in her arch.

“I don’t think the titles matter much.” He held her foot, using his thumbs to apply gentle, relentless pressure to the knot of muscle. How was it he’d never realized a woman’s foot could be pretty? “What matters to me is that the patrons treat the girls—ladies—well, and certain standards of behavior are observed by all.”

“What standards?” And then, as the knot in her foot relaxed, “Moses in the bulrushes…”

Moses in the bulrushes? An Old Testament oath, accompanied by the vision of Letty Banks sprawled on the couch, eyes closed, head back against the pillows, had David temporarily losing the thread of the conversation.

“I expect… I expect of the men simple decency,” David said. “Manners, civility, discretion, the English virtues available to anyone who passes through the doors. I expect the men to hold their liquor and their tempers when they’re under my roof, and those who don’t aren’t welcome back.”

“And the women?” Letty asked, opening her eyes to regard him levelly.

“The women.” What women? “They must act like ladies when they’re downstairs, albeit particularly friendly ladies. Give me your other foot.”

Another knock signaled the next round of hot chocolate. David added a dollop of liqueur to Letty’s and a portion of the entire bottle to his.


“Now where was I?” He frowned at Letty, whose pink tongue was delicately swiping chocolate off her upper lip. “Ah, I was taking off your clothes.”

“You most assuredly were not. You were going to tend to my other foot.”

“That I was,” David said, resuming his post so he could grasp her foot and ease the stocking off. “We are going to dress you from the inside out, you know. These sausage casings that you use for stockings are a thing of the past, Letty.”

“You can say anything nasty you want. Just don’t stop doing what you’re doing to my foot.”

Exhaustion and tipsiness were making inroads on her dignity when his charm and persistence had not. “Would you beat me if I were to stop?”

“Not if you’d enjoy it, and I think you would, particularly if I used one of my sausage casings to tie your hands first, and the other to gag you.”

“Letty, you shock me.” And would she please spout Bible verses while she beat him? “Such adventurous behaviors are foreign to my nature.”

“I don’t think it’s possible to shock you, my lord.” She’d adopted the contemplative tone of the overly observant—or the mildly inebriated, which shouldn’t have been possible based on how minimally he’d dosed her drink. “For that I almost pity you.”

His hands went still on her foot, and his simmering, unruly lust got doused in a cold bath of indignation. The shift must have registered on his face, because Letty laid a hand on his shoulder.

“I am sorry, David. I must be getting bosky, for I shouldn’t have said such a thing.”

No, she should not have, but she’d called him David. He resumed his attentions to her foot, one shaped exactly like its twin but for a small white scar near her little toe.

“You are correct,” he said. “Little shocks me, particularly in matters between men and women. But your pity is unneeded. Finish your chocolate—I’ve kept you up past your bedtime.”

His voice was admirably pleasant. When he glanced up to find Letty regarding him from dark, unhappy eyes, he revised that opinion. “I did not mean to sound peevish, my dear. Perhaps I’m the one up past his bedtime.”

Letty withdrew her foot, leaving his hands empty.

“You perhaps cannot be shocked, David, but you can still be disappointed,” she said quietly. “It is for me to apologize.”

Her words, offered sincerely, soothed him, for she was right again: in his travels, he’d seen and done things most people went their whole lives without even imagining, but he could be disappointed still by his fellow creatures, and each disappointment carried with it a small, jarring element of sorrow, of outrage.

He rose and turned to sit on the couch beside Letty, looping an arm around her. She surprised him by allowing her head to rest against his shoulder.

She had called him David, not once, but twice.

“I should be shooing you out the door, sir. You’re appallingly comfortable, though.”

“I am not at all sure you’ve paid me a compliment.”

“I have. If you’d told me two weeks ago I’d be cuddled up with you at midnight in a brothel, I would have slapped you soundly as soon as I stopped laughing.”

Two weeks ago, she’d been too cold and hungry to laugh, and now, he would love to make her laugh. He was more likely to make her cry.

“Perhaps you would have slapped me.” And perhaps she should have. That thought and the Old Testament oath and a recitation involving assemblies stirred David’s snoring diagnostic abilities—and his conscience—to life.

She had been a good girl once, probably a better girl than many of his employees.

A good girl never saw the mischief headed her way until it was too late, and so David issued a warning. “You are cuddled up with me, as you put it, because you think I’m safe, and while I want the women upstairs to know they are safe from me, you are not.”

There—cards on the table, every man, woman, or madam for themselves.

“You are not a rapist.” She seemed sure of her point, a nominal consolation.

“True. I am, however, much to my surprise, a seducer.”

“I’ve been seduced before, my lord, and it doesn’t have anything to do with hot chocolate and rubbing feet and cozy little chats at midnight.”

“Then you’ve been seduced by an incompetent, Letty Banks.” A damned, unworthy incompetent not fit to hold her… foot. “You want comforting, and I apparently want swiving. I’ll offer you a world of comforts to get the swiving I want, and I’ve resources you can’t even imagine when it comes to getting what I want. You are not safe with me.”

She raised her head to smile at him indulgently. “You are no good at this seducing business, my lord. Were you truly bent on seduction, you’d be fumbling at my clothes and making impossible promises, not issuing these warnings and assassinations of your own character.”

“Do you want me kissing you?” And could kissing please be a euphemism for greater intimacies?

“You kiss…” She sighed and covered his hand with her own. She didn’t hold his hand, didn’t lace their fingers, she just rested her palm over his knuckles. “You kiss me to accustom me to your attentions, but…”

“But what? You’re an experienced courtesan, Letty. You’ve been kissed at length by different men. I can’t believe I have anything special to offer you in that regard.”

Though if he were particularly foolish, he could hope—in the naughty, lonely part of him—he could hope he might be a little special to this woman.

“You are one of few men I’ve met who can withstand regular doses of honesty, so I will tell you you’ve made incorrect assumptions.”

“Incorrect how?” he asked, turning slightly so Letty’s head rested more against his chest. She didn’t exactly snuggle up, but she remained relaxed against him.

“I am not so wickedly experienced as you might think,” she said. “I came to London as a girl of eighteen, but found it very, very difficult to make my way. I was raised to be useless. I know my Bible, I can manage a small household, I can make small talk and turn a dress, but I lack employable skills. The agencies couldn’t help much when I had no references, but I did manage to find work as a governess.”

“And your employer seduced you,” David guessed. “His wife found out, and you were turned off without a character.”

“I quit without notice before his attempts at seduction got that far, and then, of course, employment was very hard to find indeed.”

“Go on,” David urged, taking her hand in his. Somewhere in London, a rutting cit deserved evisceration. More significantly, Letty deserved to have someone to confide in.

“I became destitute and took to sitting in the park just to be near people. I struck up a conversation with Lord Amery around the topic of duck hunting, and when he accidentally bumped into me for the third morning in a row, we had a very blunt and productive conversation. In his way, he was not unkind.”

Not unkind. The bastard had ruined her, and he was not unkind. “Was it Herbert who took your virginity?” Because she needed to tell this story, David resisted the urge to nuzzle her temple.

“No,” Letty said, a hint of regret in her voice. “I was naive enough to permit someone in the village to take liberties, with the result that I felt uncomfortable back home. I chose to come to London, if that’s what you’re asking. Considering the many pitfalls awaiting the unwary here, I have been very lucky. I could have been picked up by an abbess, addicted to drugs, sold, or worse.”

“You have been very lucky indeed.”

He wrapped his arms around her, cradled her against his body, and tried not to recall that this house was full of women, good, formerly decent women, who could have told him similar tales and worse.

Perhaps sensing the shift of his thoughts, she did snuggle up then, letting him carefully untangle her coiffure and hold her while the fire burned down.

“Letty,” David murmured against her hair, “when Herbert was with you, what did you feel?” This was a safer topic than what she might be feeling at the moment, and a far safer topic than the emotions rioting through David.

He thought she would not answer at first. Just because a woman decided to take off her clothes for money didn’t mean she was equally comfortable revealing her feelings.

“At first I felt too much. I felt dirty, angry, hopeless, and betrayed—though by whom or by what, I know not. Then, I learned to not feel anything. When Herbert came around, I would simply stop feeling, shed my clothes, and leave my body in that bed. Life was bearable after that. I wasn’t at all sorry when he died though, and for that I feel guilty and ashamed.”

As a decent, God-fearing woman would feel guilty.

And now David wanted that decent, God-fearing, fallen woman with an intensity that made no sense. He had a house full of women available to him, in pairs and trios, if he so chose. Why did his errant lust have to settle on Letty Banks, recently of Rural Nowhere, and apparently, against all odds and anything approaching convenience, the next thing to an innocent?


***

“How did it go last night?”

His lordship had joined Letty for breakfast in her office-sitting room, which suited his schedule better than hers. Letty was a heavy sleeper and did not awaken with the same boundless energy and mental acuity her employer appeared to enjoy. Still, in the two weeks she’d worked for him, he had yet to show her anything approaching rudeness.

He wasn’t the same affectionate, attentive friend he’d been her first night on the job—nor did Letty permit herself any more reprises of tipsiness—but he was considerate, in his way. Letty was pleased to note, however, that he was dressed for riding, which implied he wouldn’t be underfoot for long.

“Last night was quiet,” Letty reported, pouring two cups of tea. She added a fat portion of cream and two sugars to his, and passed it to him before tending to her own.

Before she took a sip, she said a silent prayer of gratitude. For the tea, for the man who provided the tea, for the time he’d given her to find her balance in this new degree of fallenness.

“Custom is wanting because of this cold snap,” he observed. “If it doesn’t break soon, we’ll lose the early flowers altogether.”

Which to him was probably as significant as any diminution in trade or revenue.

“It’s February, my lord. February falls during winter. Now that we’ve discussed the weather, you will allow me some quiet in which to consume my tea.”

He smiled at that, a bashful expression that preceded a respectful silence while Letty had her first cup. She was in a wonderfully warm chocolate-brown velvet dressing gown edged in red piping, and her hair was still in a thick, mussed braid. His lordship did not stand on ceremony with her, which, considering the early hour, was wise of him.

“Better now?” he asked when she’d set her cup down.

“There’s hope,” she allowed, reaching for the teapot. “But not if you want to harangue me at any length. I’m starting on the account books for the month this morning, and I expect I’ll have questions for you.”

“Good, because I have a few things I wanted to discuss with you too, the first being your penchant for repairing to your own domicile in the afternoons. It’s inefficient and inconvenient.”

Letty took her time fixing her second cup, rather than toss the contents in his lordship’s handsome face. He had gradually ceased his escort of her during the evenings. Most nights, he still dropped in, making a casual display of kissing her cheek in greeting, and otherwise treating her as an intimate before others—a respected intimate. But he’d more or less left her alone otherwise, except for these random breakfast meetings.

The man provided her a job where she kept her clothes on—not a blessing she’d ever take for granted again—and so she marshaled her patience.

“I go home, your lordship, because it is home, because my clothing is there, my effects are there, and my privacy is there. I go home to give the ladies a break from me, and myself a respite from this house. I go home for Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday morning for the same reasons.”

“Letty?” He’d called her Letty ever since kissing her, which made a sort of sense. “Are you enjoying adequate rest? You are crabby, and it isn’t like you.”

Letty wrapped the embroidered towel around the teapot. “You own this establishment, my lord, you do not own me. Where I spend my hours of leisure is none of your concern.”

If anything, he looked more curious, or perhaps—confound the man—concerned. “What is so important about that cold, cramped, rented house, Letty, that you must return to it, day after day, when you don’t even sleep there anymore? Have you such fond memories of the place?”

By the convoluted rules of honor to which he held himself with her, Letty supposed his lordship would consider the question fair. At that moment, she considered hating him a fair response. She hunched over her cup of tea and swallowed back miserable memories.

Fairly put a hand on her arm. “I am sorry, sweetheart, very sorry. I don’t mean to be a beast. I must leave Town, and wanted to ask if you’d move here for the nonce. What was it you wanted to ask of me?”

Damn him and his charm, and why hadn’t he offered to rub her feet after that first night?

“You insulted me,” she said evenly, “with your reference to my memories at my present address. If their husbands said such cruel things to your sisters, you would be enraged on their behalves. I have no one to become enraged on my behalf, your lordship, but my feelings can still be hurt, though I am just a whore.”

He probably thought the women in his employ survived on his coin. Letty knew better: most of them survived on their rage.

“As far as I know, Letitia Banks,” he said carefully, “you take no coin for your favors, so whatever else you might be, you are not a prostitute. My words were thoughtless, and I do apologize.”

She still had ammunition, and fired it because he apologized too easily. “When you taunt me about the time I spent… in that front bedroom, you disappoint me.”

Saying that, and seeing the consternation crossing Fairly’s handsome features, eased her hurt.

“I am sorry,” he said again, picking up her hand and pressing a kiss to her knuckles, then keeping their hands joined. “Is this why you keep the house, Letty? Because I might disappoint once too often?” He freshened her tea, using his free hand to stir in cream and sugar. “You want an insurance policy in case matters here don’t work out?”

Of course she did. “I am also responsible for Mrs. Newcomb, and this is hardly the type of establishment she’d fit into easily.”

He visibly relaxed at the notion of a Problem He Could Solve. “Would Mrs. Newcombe be willing to keep house here in Town for one of my relations?”

“She might.” She would, if she were prudent. To the extent prudence was another name for practical self-interest, Fanny Newcombe was quite prudent.

“One doesn’t get much more decent than Douglas Allen. He is the surviving brother of your former protector, but cut from entirely different cloth. He has a modest residence here in Town in a decent, quiet neighborhood. The wages won’t be lavish, but neither will the duties be extensive.”

Fanny wasn’t earning her wages, with no one to do for and not much of a house to keep. Then too, Letty’s fortunes could shift again on his lordship’s whim.

He split a raisin scone and buttered both halves, holding one up for Letty to nibble. She bit off a morsel and chewed, because a fallen woman allowed a man to feed her, in every sense, and because his very lack of pretension appealed to her.

“You, my lord, are charming, considerate, and everything that is pleasant, while you are getting your way.”

“And when I’m not?” He was rattled enough by her observation to take a bite of the scone from the same place she’d sampled.

“You have a mean streak, a ruthless streak, more accurately. Most of us do. Please, finish the scone.”

Fairly looked down as if surprised to find one in his hand. “Etienne has a way with them, though I could do without the raisins.”

“I’ll have a word with him, and then perhaps I can have my breakfast and finish waking up. In peace.” For she would not have peace while Fairly was with her. She would feel safe, though, which was a puzzle.

“You will have a significant amount of peace, my dear. I am, as noted, off to spend some time with my sisters, then I’ll hie myself to Kent, where I’m told the estates are going to ruin without my guiding hand. I expect I’ll be gone for at least three weeks, probably longer, and I wanted to leave you my directions in case you have need of me.”

Well, good. He drove her to distraction with his cheek kissing and scone sharing. “Won’t Mr. Jennings be about to deal with emergencies?”

“No, he will not.” He peeled raisins off the scone one by one and made even that undertaking look elegant. “Jennings has some leave coming, and then he’ll join me in Kent. Watkins will be on hand, and I’ll leave a messenger here for emergencies.”

“We’ll manage adequately without you.” Pray God, they would.

“It is my fondest hope that you will. I’m overdue for a family visit.”

Maybe it was the way he denuded his scone of raisins, like a small boy, or maybe it was because she was finally waking up, but Letty didn’t want him to leave yet.

“Tell me about them. Your sisters, their children, where they live…”

She hadn’t realized, when she’d asked the question, how his reply would torture her. He warmed to the topic easily, prosing on at length about sisters, in-laws, nieces, and nephews, until scones, raisins, and even the tea in his cup were apparently forgotten.

“You love these people,” Letty said, “and you love to be with them. Why haven’t you set up your own nursery? Surely there’s some competitive, male part of you that’s tempted to jump into the race?”

He swept the discarded raisins into a pile on his plate and dusted his hands. “Felicity and Astrid regard my marriage as inevitable, and my brothers-in-law think duty to the title will also see me to the altar, but some of us were meant to be parents, and some of us were meant to be only uncles.”


Thinking of Danny, Letty nodded.

“You just went far away, Letty-love. I did not mean to be grim.”

“You don’t sound grim; you sound resigned.” As she was resigned.

His brows rose, though Letty was learning to read the warning signs. She stole three raisins off his plate lest he ask an inconvenient question.

“Was there something you wanted to ask me about other than my growing family?” he inquired.

“Yes, but it’s… delicate.”

He nudged the plate with its raisins a few inches toward her and crossed his arms, while somebody back in the kitchen started singing a naughty song in French. “If it’s about money, Letty, be blunt.”

“It isn’t about money,” Letty said, stealing three more raisins lest they go to waste. “It’s about the ladies. They all… Their menses all occur… They’re nearly synchronized, somehow, all of them.”

“What?” He looked not appalled, but interested, the way a biologist would be fascinated with symptoms of a new lethal disease.

“Every woman in this house has started getting her menses the very same week, most of them on the same day.”

“Fascinating.”

And the week before this fascinating phenomenon, the household was treated to felony assaults, hysterics, sulks, fights, and endless raids on the kitchen.

“Fascinating, if we’re talking about a convent or a girls’ school, but we’re not.”

“What do the women say?” He still looked intrigued, which tickled a fact from the back of Letty’s mind: prior to assuming the title, his lordship had first apprenticed to a ship’s surgeon and then trained as a physician. His employees hoarded up such details about him, which would probably make him uncomfortable if he knew.

“It’s common, apparently,” Letty said, arranging her cutlery so she’d be less tempted to sneak more raisins. “If a woman stays in one brothel for any period of time, eventually her cycle synchronizes with the prevailing schedule. Lord Valentine told Portia he’d heard of the same thing happening in harems.”

“All of which is to say, you’ve presented me another reason to divest myself of this establishment at the soonest opportunity.”

Letty stopped refolding her serviette. “Divest yourself?”

The song in the kitchen turned into a duet, Etienne and Musette, singing something about the cock crowing at dawn. His lordship eyed the remaining pile of raisins, his expression one of distaste.

“I’d sell this establishment in a trice, if I could be confident the next owner would take good care of the employees.”

He was reluctant to call them ladies, and at that moment, Letty was reluctant to refer to him as a gentleman. “I see.”

“I’ve made no secret of wanting to be free of this place.”

“You also failed to disclose that the business was for sale when you offered me employment here.” And this made her want not simply to go back to bed, but to pull the covers up over her head and remain there until spring. She had liked David Worthington, and—more fool her—she had also trusted him.

When would she learn that her instincts regarding men had betrayed her most bitterly?

“The property is not for sale, Letty, but would you have come to work here if it were?”

Damn him. “I had no options, if you’ll recall.”

“You had options,” he countered softly. He pushed his plate with the half scone and the pile of raisins on it directly before her. “Have you more to discuss with me, Letty? If not, then I’m off to spoil children, tease my sisters, and twit their husbands, but tell me something, Letty Banks.”

Fairly’s love for his family resonated with every cheerful, merry word, and Letty would have told him anything to get him on his horse.

“What do you wish to know?”

He picked up a single raisin and offered it to her on the end of an elegant index finger. “Are you happy with this position, Letty? Is there anything you would change, do differently?”

The dratted, confounded, bothersome man wanted her to enjoy the job he might sell out from under her, but somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to lie to him.

Not about this too.

“I enjoy this position far more than its predecessor. I am grateful not to make my living on my back.”

His expression was pained, but he could hardly chide her for plain speaking. “But?”

She was going to tell him this because he’d asked, and because she’d missed the man who’d been such a friend to her on her first night as a madam.

“In some ways, I am lonelier here than I was in my own household. There, I had much more privacy, whereas here, I am made familiar with the bodily cycles of a dozen women, who between them, might have one shred of modesty or tact. This is an adjustment.”

“And?” His lordship’s expression was hooded now, because he was hearing things he didn’t expect to hear—didn’t want to hear. Letty’s feelings likely came under the heading of A Problem He Could Not Solve.

A problem nobody could solve. The lyrical duet in the kitchen was replaced by shouting—Musette was threatening to put Etienne’s precious knives to a creative use. So much for the cock crowing at dawn.

“And I am a madam. I may not be any one man’s plaything, but I am viewed as worse than simply fallen. I traffic in fallen women, or manage your traffic in fallen women, which makes me doubly outcast. Your patrons are polite to me, and the ladies are mostly delightful, but I am a pariah nonetheless. Your sisters could not acknowledge me, ever, and in all likelihood, they could not comprehend how I’ve ended up where I am.”

Most nights, Letty could barely comprehend it herself.

“This is complicated for you. I am sorry for that.”

Consumed with contrition, he was not. She hadn’t expected he would be, and yet, Letty still felt a touch of… disappointment.

“It is complicated, and it is simple,” she said. “Whatever else is true, I must eat. The regular meals, those I quite simply adore.”

“Not enough,” his lordship remarked, rising. “You are still too thin, and when I return, I expect to see that you’ve gained flesh, my girl. People will think I’m working you too hard.”

I am not a girl. More to the point, she was not his girl, his woman, or his lady.

Letty rose as Fairly did, simple manners suggesting she should see him off on his journey. Other than Musette, who’d apparently convinced Etienne to come back to bed, the other ladies weren’t up yet, affording Letty some privacy as she walked with her employer through the kitchen.

“Safe journey, then,” Letty said, lifting his greatcoat off a peg and holding it up for him. She waited as he buttoned up in preparation for travel through another cold, gray, blustery day. “You must want to see your sisters very badly.”

“I should make it out to Willowdale before the weather does anything too miserable. You have my directions, feel free to use them.”

His tone was brisk, as if his mind had already departed, anticipating the time spent with family and the matters to be seen to in Kent. Men of means were comfortable operating in different spheres, driving out with their mistress one day, their sisters the next, while Letty feared a lightning bolt would strike her every time she set foot in her brother’s vicarage.

She was completely unprepared, then, when Fairly turned back to her and tugged the collar of her robe up around her throat.

“You’ll be all right?” he asked, peering down at her.

“We’ll be fine,” Letty said, deliberately using the plural pronoun.

“So you’re royalty now?”

“Be off with you. Safe journey home.”

“Thank you,” he said before dipping his head and taking her mouth in a kiss.

What on earth could he be thanking her for?

For him, he behaved, only tracing her lips with his tongue, tasting her mouth gently, nibbling at her lower lip, and pressing his mouth softly to hers. Letty slipped her arms around his neck and rose up on tiptoe to hug herself to him. When she eased her mouth from his, Fairly let her go, but his arms settled around her waist in a gentle form of contradiction.

“I will miss you, your lordship.” She was not at her best this early in the morning, and kisses apparently magnified the muddling of her wits.

His hold shifted, became closer. “No, you will not. You will attract the notice of some fine fellow, lead him by his nose into a liaison that’s both lucrative and enjoyable for you, and forget I ever inveigled you into working here.”

She stepped back, let him go without any more words, and through the window watched him cross to the stables, where a gray mare stood patiently at the mounting block.

He hadn’t sounded like he was teasing with that last little speech. He’d sounded in desperate earnest, like a man offering up a fervent prayer.