David Lord of Honor

Six




David awoke to warmth and the certainty that he was not at any of his various domiciles. The scent of roses came to him next, and a vague worry—

Portia. Though if she’d worsened in the night, Desdemona would have fetched him.

As the relief of that realization warred with the temptation to let sleep reclaim him, David’s gaze fell on a copy of Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue on the night table, and the rest of the puzzle snapped into place.

He was sharing a bed with Letty, her knee casually pressed against his thigh. And just as he knew he’d at various times cuddled her close during the night, he also knew he ought to get out of that bed, find his clothes, and check on his patient.

“Don’t go.” Letty hadn’t moved, hadn’t given herself away by so much as a change in her breathing, but she regarded him from her pillows, her gaze solemn and alert in the gloom. “The sun’s not even up yet.”

Staying in bed with her while she slept was stupid; staying in bed with her when she was awake was… stupider. What came out of David’s mouth next was stupidest of all.

“I should tend the fire.” Because if the coals went out, somebody would have to start the thing all over, and David did not trust the lazy housekeeper to do it. Then too, cold air could dampen arousal more effectively than could stern lectures about common sense.

Letty reached past him for a glass of water, took a sip, then offered it to him. When he’d accepted her offering, she pushed his hair off his brow and settled back against the pillows, their exchange having all the familiarity of a couple long married.

“You banked the coals thoroughly before you came to bed.”

She’d been peeking the previous night, then. The knowledge cheered him. “Letty, if I stay in this bed—”

They’d make love. Share a little pleasure, scratch the itch adults of both genders enjoyed scratching. His cock could think of no better way to start the day. So why was he hesitating?

“You could have any fellow at The Pleasure House, you know. All of them. A different title for every night of the week. Why me?”

When he feared she might laugh at his question or mock the insecurity trying to mask itself as curiosity, Letty instead shifted closer, draping a leg over his hips. “You will think me ridiculous.”

He scooted to the middle of the bed, near enough to tuck her crown under his chin. “Never. Not about this.”

Letty’s nose was cold. David knew this because she buried her face against his throat, and used the leg she’d hitched around his hips to draw herself closer.

“I have never understood desire. As a girl, I understood that to leave my father’s house, I’d have to engage in certain acts with my husband, and I was curious. I understand curiosity. When I got to London, I was no longer curious, though I became resigned. I thought perhaps loneliness had something to do with it, and then too, one must eat—”

David kissed her, lest her confessions become more heartbreaking. “You deserve desire, Letty Banks. You’ve parted with your innocence and nearly starved as a result. The goddamned least you deserve is desire, pleasure, and satisfaction.”

And she trusted him—him—to give them to her.

“I am a madam,” she said, in the same tones she might have said, I have given my kingdom for a mess of pottage. “I would learn something of desire.”


“Right now, you are the woman sharing a bed with me. The woman who will share pleasure with me.”

David trailed his palm over her nipple, letting that movement be the only caress he offered. He would accustom her to his touch and to the pleasures it could yield rather than distract her with more kisses—for now.

Letty’s fingers came up to encircle David’s wrist where his hand poised over her breast, her touch was neither restraining nor encouraging.

“You will enjoy this, Letty-love.” A mandate, instead of a prediction. David enjoyed it, liked the ease and warmth of being snuggled up with her, the sense of wonder and intimacy.

“I might.”

“You might enjoy this too, then,” he murmured, closing his fingers gently over her nipple and offering her the slightest pressure. She closed her eyes in response, while David detected the barest arching up against his hand, the smallest token of encouragement.

This should have felt like work. To move so slowly, one caress, one sigh, one touch at a time—it should have been frustrating, and even tedious, but encouraging Letty’s passion was no more work than unwrapping a long-anticipated gift. Even a casual partner deserved the courtesy of arousal, but David was also learning Letty, learning her responses even as she was learning them herself.

The realization was humbling and exhilarating, and even greater than the gift of Letty’s responses was the gift of her trust.

“Kiss me?” she whispered.

Satisfaction rose up, fueling greater arousal. She had asked him for something, a small something, by arching her back slightly. A not-so-small something by asking for his kisses.

To his utter pleasure, she followed up her request by taking a small kiss for herself.

And we’re off.

But it was the most languid start to an erotic race David had ever known. Letty’s lips trailed over his, her tongue shyly inviting his into the kiss. She did arch her back then, pressing the fullness of her breast against his hand with unmistakable entreaty. He obliged, letting his caress become a gloriously sensual exploration of the weight, contours, and responsiveness of her breasts. And even as he provoked more arching and sighing from her, he deepened the kisses, using lips, breath, and tongue to orally mimic the act of copulation.

“I wasn’t going to allow this,” she whispered.

He had to focus on her admission, another gift that surpassed the mere, predictable endearments the situation might have merited. “You weren’t going to allow me to touch you?”

“I wasn’t going to allow myself to want.”

Maybe a woman who’d lost her innocence had to learn the art of not wanting, because much, much, was no longer hers to even wish for. That conclusion brought with it anger and sadness, which had no place in the same bed with a man who sought to bring his lady pleasure.

David trailed his mouth down her neck, then along her sternum. He pillowed his cheek on the swell of one exposed breast and paused deliberately.

He wanted Letty to anticipate his next touch, and wanted time to gather his wits. The last thing he could afford was to rush her, to give her any excuse to marshal her defenses or to direct her practical, thinking mind to what happened when intimacies became meaningful.

She wanted to know about desire, about intimate and pleasurable bodily sensations.

Lest his own mind hare off in the direction of desires of the heart, David raised himself over her, and slowly—giving her time to anticipate—lowered his mouth to her nipple. Her hands came around the back of his head, again neither pulling him to her nor thrusting him away, as if her fingers and palms could eavesdrop on the pleasure he was visiting on her breast.

And pleasure it was. When he drew on her nipple, he surrendered to bliss shot through with bright streaks of something hotter and more intense. A sigh that edged toward a groan escaped Letty, and David paused, treasuring even that sound, before resuming his pleasuring. Her fingers moved on his nape, massaging, and eventually, holding him to her.

But so lightly, only a hint of an embrace, the merest suggestion of an invitation. The pace of their caresses, like the deliberate steps of an old pavane, forced David’s own arousal to unbearable intensity, but still he held back. Letty was becoming interested, but she was not yet in pursuit of a goal. She was letting David lead her, because a need for her own gratification hadn’t yet begun to drive her.

David moved his mouth to the second breast, which allowed him to lean more of his weight onto his lover. In response to his cock’s insistent demands, he flexed against the crest of Letty’s hip. Moving felt good, not good enough, but better than completely ignoring his own wants, so he set up a slow, lazy rhythm, pressing himself to her hip, then easing back, only to press in again.

Letty’s hands went on a quest, slipping down his back, around his hips, then back up, into his hair, over his face, and off again. She had the most provocative touch: light, curious, and increasingly bold. When her fingers feathered over David’s throat, chest, and face, pausing to explore his lips, it was his turn to sigh and moan.

“Easy, love,” he murmured, “or we’ll finish too soon.”

Her hand stilled over his heart. He covered it with his own and dropped his forehead to her collarbone. Their position was a variation on the embrace of the waltz, with her arm around his back and their hands joined. Letty waited unmoving, and again, David had the sense she was trusting him, willing to follow his lead for yet a few more steps.

Because he’d managed to find the most innocent madam ever to preside over immoral commerce in the history of London.

He glossed his palm down her breastbone, taking his time, exploring the contours of her ribs, then the smooth, flat plane of her belly and her hip bones. She remained still as his hand trailed lower, holding her breath physically and perhaps emotionally as well.

“Let me pleasure you,” he whispered, kissing her neck below her ear, where her rosy scent was sweet and strong. “Let me ease the ache for you.”

He entreated, because what she wanted was an experience of pleasure, and what David wanted was to give that to her, and in a way her previous paramours had sadly neglected to do. For reasons novel and unexamined, he needed to be different from his predecessors, and was curiously grateful for their ineptitude.

He shifted up, enough to kiss Letty properly, and found to his horror that tears had gathered in her eyes. The sight pierced him with a profound sadness, and worse, a tenderness for Letty, who should have been beyond the reach of tears when sharing intimacies.

“I want only to pleasure you, Letty,” he said, sifting his fingers through the curls shielding her sex. “We needn’t do more.”

As it turned out, he hardly needed to do anything. His fingers learned the soft, damp contours of her intimate flesh, and explored the responses he could inspire by attention to the seat of her pleasure.

“I’ll go softly,” he whispered, kissing the corner of her mouth when she wrapped her grip around his wrist. “Close your eyes and trust me.”

She would never entirely trust him, but she might tolerate him as a lover. That thought made him patient, determined, and attentive, such that her every little sigh and hitched breath informed his fingers, his mouth—and his self-restraint.

Pleasure took her silently and beautifully. She turned her face into David’s throat while her body convulsed, the contractions of sufficient strength he could feel them as he palmed her sex.

She remained against him when it was over, burrowed into his embrace, her restraint and misgivings nowhere in evidence.

Something peculiar turned over in David’s chest. She’d trusted him, just as he’d asked. Maybe not quite as much as he’d wished—and when had he ever courted a woman’s trust?—but she had. He would not betray that trust with selfishness now.

They remained thus for several minutes, Letty’s breathing gradually returning to normal. When David levered his body over hers, she allowed it, her hands finding their way to his hair, and then in slow strokes, to the long muscles of his back. He settled his weight on her, hoping it brought comfort, at least.

“May I ease myself on you, Letty?” He punctuated the question with a slide of his hips that had his cock gliding along Letty’s damp flesh. In reply, she brushed her lips across his, then wrapped her arms tightly around his waist.

Acceptance, then, of a request, if not of him.

David repeated the movement, a slow hitch of his hips that moved his cock tightly against her.

For long moments, he was content with that pleasure. He toyed with the knowledge that he could change the angle ever so slightly and be inside her. She was a madam and assuredly not a virgin, so she knew well the risks she ran with what she allowed.

If he’d asked for more, she might have granted it, but as arousal rose in David’s blood, he also knew that permission was not going to be enough. When—not if—when Letty took him as her lover, it would be because she wanted him for herself, not because she permitted him liberties.

So he rocked against her slowly, savoring the heat and feel of her beneath him. She held him closely, not the embrace of a woman tolerating an obligation, but the embrace of one who could become his lover.

He lifted his hips to trap his cock against her belly, and thrust a few more slow, powerful strokes. As he came in hard, hot spasms, Letty kissed him on the mouth.


The relief David tasted in that kiss eradicated any lingering sense of frustration. It vindicated his judgment that Letty hadn’t been ready to take him as a lover in the fullest sense of the word, though that mattered little compared to how much intimacy she was willing to grant him.

David’s satisfaction was more than sexual as he returned Letty’s kiss. He was content, for now, to have given her as much pleasure as he could, to have shared pleasure with her. The contentment surprised him, but there it was.

He straightened his arms, fished on the night table for his handkerchief, and used it to swipe gently at Letty’s stomach and then at himself. He tossed the handkerchief aside and rolled onto his back, wrestling Letty into lying against him.

He should probably offer her some conversation, but he was too content for words, the sexual lassitude blending with a sweetness words might disturb.

He was thus inordinately pleased when Letty’s hand stole over his chest to cover his heart. She rustled around in the covers until her head rested on his shoulder and her leg lay across his thighs. David wrapped her hand in his, and his arm around her shoulders, a feeling of such peace and rightness enveloping him that he almost told her about it.

Sleep, fortunately, came to the aid of his common sense, and he and Letty both drifted off, warm, content, and for the present, not lonely at all.

***

Letty woke alone, the covers tucked in around her and a pot of tea under a towel on a tray beside her bed. Her body was rested, contented, and pleased with its new knowledge of satisfaction and desire, but her mind was groggy and overwhelmed. David, no doubt the bearer of the tea tray, was likely downstairs, ordering Mrs. Newcomb about, and making himself at home in yet another household of women.

How could Letty face him? She’d invited him to share intimate pleasure with her, invited him to remain in her bed. Fatigue and pragmatism might account for ending up in the same bed with him, but loneliness, foolishness, and even wickedness had been involved in the passion that had followed.

Tea before further self-castigation seemed a good idea.

Letty sat up to pour herself a strong, aromatic cup. She was pleased to find the room uncharacteristically warm because David had also built up the fire. Oh, to be taken care of… David’s thoughtfulness was as seductive as his kisses, as his arms, warm and strong around her, as his voice, rumbling beneath her ear in the darkness.

Her musings were interrupted by a hard rap on the door, followed by David’s smiling presence in her bedchamber. He bore another tray, and wore a towel over his shoulder.

“I’ve brought you sustenance.” He set the tray on the night table, went to the window and pushed back the drapes to let in a gray, wintery light. “The weather is still foul, but the snow has slowed down. I expect you are hungry?”

“I am.” For food, too.

He sat on the bed at her side and shifted the tray to her lap. “I made you some pancakes, and there’s jam and butter, as well as a coddled egg. I couldn’t find the pepper, but salt should do. You have no fruit in your pantry, Letty. That will not serve.”

He was nervous. He had the peculiar competence to whip up pancakes and coddled eggs, he exuded his usual casual charm even unshaven and sporting a towel over one shoulder, and yet, Letty was certain he was nervous. “Thank you for breakfast, for the tea, and for building up the fire and for…”

Heaven defend her. She was nervous, too. More nervous than she was hungry.

“Hush,” David said, putting two fingers over her lips. “Eat your breakfast and drink your tea.”

No awkward discussions, then, which was fine with her. Letty began by slathering butter on her pancakes. “Where did you learn to cook? I didn’t think culinary skills were a prerequisite for becoming a viscount.”

“They aren’t.” David settled himself cross-legged at the foot of the bed, a posture Letty had not seen another grown male adopt. “But for the first quarter century of my existence, the viscountcy was the last thing on my mind. I traveled extensively and often had only myself or Thomas Jennings to rely on. One learns to make do, or to do without under those circumstances. And badly prepared food can kill as effectively as a bullet, and much more slowly.”

“Is that why you have three professional chefs at The Pleasure House?” Letty asked, adding strawberry jam—her favorite—to her pancakes.

“In part, also because I am self-indulgent with my wealth, and unlike most of my station, my palate craves variety. Then too, had I only one chef, that one would think he ruled the kitchen, and by extension, a part of me.”

Letty shied away from the ramifications of having one woman in his bed.

“You wouldn’t tolerate that very well,” she said. Nor would Letty, though chatting her up over pancakes didn’t bear much relation to controlling her—did it? She set aside philosophy long enough to take a bite of hot, scrumptious, buttery pancake. “I would say, based on my breakfast, that you could let all three chefs go and still make shift quite nicely. This has to be the best breakfast I can remember having.”

He glowered, like an enormous cat not pleased with his bedmate. “Does the kitchen really take such poor care of you when my back is turned, Letty? You could use more flesh, you know, not that I’m complaining.”

No discussion, but some innuendo at least. She misaimed the knife and got a smear of preserves on her wrist.

David uncoiled himself to prowl up the bed on all fours and kissed her cheek. “Letty, you mustn’t be self-conscious. Not with me. We’ve moved beyond that, haven’t we? I want us to move beyond that.”

His action and his tone suggested that in his mind, they’d arrived to some new arrangement, one that allowed him to prepare her breakfast and to give her orders.

“I am self-conscious.” She lifted her wrist to lick the jam away, then thought better of it and used the serviette. “A madam I can be, David, but this business of moving beyond… You’ve given me much to consider. I do not think I am suited to what you have in mind.”

“I beg to differ.”

Letty smoothed her hand over the blankets, and sought words both honest and placatory, because his lordship was likely already picking out the house where he’d keep her, and the coach he’d make available for her use—all without meaning her the smallest insult.

The very opposite, in fact.

So she tried to meet his version of respect with her version of truth.

“You are too much of a gentleman to say it, but we can both admit I don’t know what I’m doing. Having spent time with you in this bed, I must admit I am more confused regarding… copulation than ever.”

David’s expression became unreadable, and Letty hated that every bit as much she hated the blush creeping up her neck.

“Yet copulation is your stock in trade.”

She was apparently going to offend, nonetheless. “Not by my choice. I want to eat, to have a roof over my head, to put a bit by. That is a different agenda entirely from wanting men to desire me, and knowing what to do with that desire.”

Which competence, she doubted she would ever acquire.

David scooped up a half-eaten pancake with his bare fingers, took a bite, then put the remainder on Letty’s plate and sat back.

“But I do desire you, Letty-love. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I believe you desire me as well.”

“I won’t argue that.” More than ever, she could not argue that.

“Is it, Letty,” David said slowly, “that you think I will cast you aside? I always part friends from my liaisons, I can assure you, and I am generous, both in bed and out.”

The issue was now overtly under discussion, and David’s expression was perplexed. Very likely nobody, nobody ever, had declined an invitation to share erotic pleasure with David Worthington.

And for such good reason.

“You will cast me aside, or I will cast you aside,” Letty said, swallowing past a lump of pancake. “And I believe you are being honest when you attribute amicability and generosity to your partings, but I am not prepared to… to…”

And yet she nearly had, with no forethought at all. If he’d wanted to visit the risk of conception on her, she would have permitted it. Eagerly.

“I am trying to understand your reservations, Letty, and so far all I can come up with is that you are shy. I rather like that about you, but it hardly signifies as a reason to deny yourself the pleasure you deserve.”

“I don’t want to whore for you.” A pathetic, honest sentiment.

“Letty,” David said gently, “as young as you are, you would have to hold the post of madam at The Pleasure House for years before you have enough put by, as you say, and if someone else should own the business, you haven’t even that prospect to rely on. Would you not rather earn a comfortable life, sharing pleasure with a man who holds you in affection and a certain respect?”

A certain respect—a certain private, socially irrelevant respect. His argument boiled down to a miserable truth: she could whore for him, or whore for somebody else, but if she wanted to keep body and soul together, she’d whore for somebody.

Maybe many somebodies.


They’d attempted this conversation once before, in this very house, and had made little progress with it. But now, thanks to David’s single visit to Letty’s bed—at her not-very-well-advised-in-hindsight invitation—she had a glimpse of what he was truly offering her. Her reputation was gone, and her future precarious, as David had delicately reminded her.

But when she was in his arms, held, cherished, desired… the chill of that future receded. Letty sent up a short, heartfelt prayer for wisdom, and failing that, self-restraint.

“The issue, my lord, is perhaps that I hold you in a certain affection and respect, and that I would like to continue to do so. What if there’s a child? Have you children, that you can answer that question from experience, or will you simply make me more promises?”

He helped himself to a sip of her tea this time, which Letty took to be a prevarication rather than a presumption.

“You were subjected to Herbert Allen’s attentions on a regular basis for a long period, and you did not conceive. Perhaps children need not concern you greatly.”

“That is an ignorant answer.” Also mean, though he wouldn’t have intended it as such. “Particularly from a man with medical training. The problem could well have lain with Herbert, and you know it.”

The unassailability of her riposte, or perhaps the vehemence of it, had him rising from the bed.

“So we’d have children. I love children, and even had a child.” He crouched before a fire that was already blazing merrily. With his back to her, he poked at the coals, making sparks dance up the chimney. When he’d bludgeoned the fire thoroughly, he replaced the fireplace screen but kept his back to her.

“What became of the child?” She did not need to ask, because any extant child of his would have had his loving devotion, but he apparently needed to tell somebody.

“The child lived but a few hours. I will admit that I cared little for the mother, at least by that point, but for the child… In the few short hours of that child’s life, Letty, I found out what real heartbreak means. This business, as you refer to it, between men and women, it has never affected me the way that one tiny, wretched baby did. I don’t often speak of it.”

“But you tell me this now.” Inflicted it on her, more like. “Why?”

David turned to face her, the poker grasped in his fist like an old-fashioned claymore. “Were you to give me a child, I would treasure that child. Your baby would know no want, no deprivation, no hurt that a wealthy, titled father’s love and care could prevent.”

He had merely stated the obvious, for a man of his means would be expected to provide well for a love child.

“And would your love for that baby entail ensuring that his or her wicked mama have no contact with her own child?” Letty asked gently.

The intensity in David’s eyes cooled, and disappointment sank like a stone in Letty’s gut. Generosity he could well afford; nonetheless, he hadn’t thought through the consequences of his lust to any save himself, no different from any other man driven by the dictates of his cock.

David set the poker aside and leaned a shoulder against the bedpost. “Your question is valid. I will consider it.”

A more honest response than many other men would have given, and much less than Letty’s heart demanded.

“Well, don’t stand there glaring at me as you do,” Letty muttered, turning back to her breakfast. “You cooked enough for an army, and I can’t possibly finish these pancakes. I will take on the egg, if you’ll attempt to clean up the pancakes.”

He stayed leaning against the bedpost for a moment, while Letty hoped he wouldn’t refuse the only olive branch she’d been able to find.

“You are a good sport, Letty.” He accepted the plate from her and resumed a place at the foot of her bed.

“And you are a good cook. We must still work together, regardless of what else goes on between us—unless, of course, you fire the women who eschew your attentions?”

Her question was far from casual, though it merited her a smile.

“I wouldn’t know. None have ever refused me, except present company.” He put a forkful of pancake into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “I really am a competent cook, aren’t I?”

“You are frightfully competent at any number of endeavors,” Letty muttered.

“Am I, now?” he said softly before taking another bite of pancake.

He kept his attention on his pancakes, though Letty had the sense her comment had pleased him. As they concluded breakfast in companionable silence, it occurred to her that even a man as competent as David Worthington could still have insecurities.

The thought was equal parts intriguing and confusing.

***

David took himself home that afternoon, dealt with some correspondence, slept fitfully, achieved no clarity of thought whatsoever regarding his madam and her place in his life, and then—after a detour to Lord Ridgely’s rooms—came back to Letty’s to check on his patient. And if he happened to run into the lady of the house, and happened to blame her for his night of poor rest, that was pure coincidence.

“Is Portia going to be all right?” Desdemona asked when she’d closed the sickroom door.

The concern on Desdemona’s face had been absent on young Ridgely’s, though David had made sure his handsome lordship had worries aplenty before parting company with him.

“She’s holding her own,” David said, “but infection could yet take her. Every hour she doesn’t run a fever, doesn’t start bleeding more heavily, or otherwise get worse, is an hour closer to restored health. You can stay with her, Des, but don’t agitate her.”

Desdemona slipped back into the sickroom without another word.

David saw no evidence of Letty’s excuse for a housekeeper, so he took himself to Letty’s private parlor and found Letty ensconced on the sofa, a tea tray before her.

“May I have a cup?” he asked, dropping down beside her. May he have her intimate attentions for an hour, a day, or a lifetime? Because that question now haunted his every waking hour, driven by equal needs to safeguard her welfare and secure her interest.

“Of course.” She fixed his tea, while he kept to himself an uncomfortable truth: he’d slept better when he’d shared a bed with her.

Well, damn and drat the luck.

“Am I a managing, overbearing, interfering lordship?” David asked when he’d taken a bracing sip of strong tea.

“Very.” Letty tucked a brown-and-red knit afghan more closely around her. “But well motivated and charming about it. I doubt most people even know you’re manipulating them.”

Manipulation was worse than managing—more honest. “Portia said the way I go about looking after people is as bad as a fat customer who can’t finish… As smothering and annoying.”

She didn’t laugh, which suggested Portia had expressed herself delicately. David hadn’t laughed either, because if he was not to manipul—manage Letty into accepting his protection, then how was he to overcome her reservations?

For he assuredly wanted to. A man needed his rest.

“I don’t see your tendencies as a bad thing, necessarily,” Letty said. “You are frightfully intelligent, generous to those under your protection, generally practical, and reasonable. Why shouldn’t your world be ordered to your preferences?”

“Because I apparently don’t limit myself to ordering my world,” David replied, and why did tea have to taste better when consumed in her company? “You may scold me for further interfering in Portia’s affairs. I’ve had a chat with Ridgely, and he’ll be sending along some funds to assist Portia in opening her dress shop.”

“Recovered his sense of Christian charity and decided to support free enterprise, did he?”

Letty approved of David’s actions, which was a relief. “Either that or he wasn’t keen to meet me at twenty paces. I award the boy a few points for prudence, for I would have felt no compunction whatsoever about blowing his feeble brains out.”

Yes, over a whore. David had taken particular pleasure in emphasizing that point, for Ridgely had given Portia the funds to go to Old Meg, and her direction—after making plain that Portia’s offer of carte blanche depended on making use of Ridgely’s funds in the manner prescribed.

“If he ever sets foot at your establishment again,” Letty said, “our dear little Musette will gut him like a fish. You, however, would have blown a hole through his hat, David Worthington, or at worst winged him, and you know it. More tea?”

“Thank you, no,” David said, rising. “I will take my leave of you, and return on the morrow to endure more verbal beatings from my patient.”

And frustration regarding his madam, whom he wanted to bed, protect, and scold in equal measure.

“Before you go,” Letty said, her expression becoming guarded.

He did not want to argue with her, and he did want to sleep with her. Also to swive her silly. The sooner he was on his horse, the better. “Just tell me, whatever it is.”

“It’s about money.” Letty remained seated, and rearranged the tea service on its tray. “I am having trouble with your books. I cannot be sure, but I think some expenditures are overstated for the quantities purchased.”


He had hired her to manage his establishment. That she’d take this aspect of her position seriously should not have surprised him. “Are you certain?”

“No. I have totted things up for this month only. I want to go back through January and create a budget for March. We keep a file for receipts, you see, but everything is crammed in there, no order, no method. I’ll have to sort through all of that before I can say if the problem is simply a matter of misfiling or mislabeling an expense.”

“Then sort away. Neither Jennings nor I have had time to properly look over the books for the last quarter at least. I wouldn’t put it past any of the three chefs to skim, though I would expect them to be clever about it. Look into it, but don’t spend too much time searching for lost pennies. Sometimes the effort to recover what’s gone missing exceeds the pleasure of having it restored.”

His words left innuendo hanging in the air, and not the sort of innuendo that would land a man in bed with his madam. Before he could misstep further, David kissed Letty’s cheek and took himself back out into the frigid, windy day.

Becoming intimate with Letty had not been a mistake, but rather, a revelation. She was the least qualified mistress he could have chosen, and for that reason, the woman he was most determined to have under his protection. On that befuddling thought, he turned his steps in the direction of his solicitors’ office, and dared the sullen sky to dump more snow on him.