David Lord of Honor

Nine




Four weeks into his affair with Letty Banks, David had come to dread Tuesday mornings. On Mondays, Letty would do her accounts—muttering all the while that something was off—or read in the library while David tended to correspondence. If she had errands to run, he’d take her about in the coach, bringing his letters with him so he might read while she shopped. And while desire was ever present for David, the first firestorm of lust had burned down to pleasures that could be paced, savored, and enjoyed.

As always, on Tuesday mornings, David made slow, sweet love with Letty in that dark, quiet hour before they rose.

“Do you fence today?” Letty asked, her fingers drifting through David’s hair.

“At ten, and I’m to meet Greymoor, Heathgate, and Amery for luncheon.”

“You should enjoy that.” She caressed his ears, a touch he particularly enjoyed. “You haven’t seen them for some time.”

She would never accuse him, never ask a difficult question directly, and yet David knew exactly where the conversation was heading.

He lifted himself away from her, disentangling their bodies. “I have neglected my family.” And because he could not face her as he made that admission, David rose from the bed and busied himself with the sheath he’d used, only to find the damn thing had a small tear near the tip.

“Then you must make time for them,” Letty replied as he washed off with cold water. “Though as to that, David, they don’t seem to find much time to check in on you.”

She chided in hints and innuendo, and he hated it. “They are avoiding me.”

“I see.”

“What do you see, Letty-love?” He tossed the sheath onto the hearth, where it crackled, then smoked, then burned.

“David, you need not reserve your weekends for me. You love your family, and I’m sure they miss you.”

But I love you too.

The sheath turned to ash, and David returned to the bed, arranging himself over his Puritan mistress who wasn’t his mistress or his Puritan. “Why won’t you marry me?”

Beneath him, she shrank away. Not a physical withdrawal, for in fact she lay still, but every other part of her went away from him.

“David, not now.”

“Did you honestly think I wouldn’t ask again? I want to marry you, to sleep with you every night, not merely twice a week. I want our children to be legitimate. I want to raise them with you, not visit on birthdays or Yuletide, assuming I can sneak away from my other obligations. I want to take you out on my arm. I want my family to love you as much as I do. I do not think”—he dropped his forehead to hers—“that I am asking too much, to have the woman I love for my wife, and devote the remaining years of my life to her happiness.”

The woman I love… Oh, he was in for it now.

Letty jerked silently under him, an odd hitching of her body, as if he’d slapped her. He gathered her in his arms and rolled them so she was sprawled on his chest, an embodiment of the weight his heart carried everywhere of late. “I am so sorry. Don’t cry, Letty, please don’t cry…”

She did cry. As he rocked her and soothed and crooned and comforted, Letty cried as if she’d lost her best friend, which was both disturbing and frustrating, because David could not fathom her stubbornness.

He hurt for her, and he hurt for himself, for the future he wanted to share with her that she rejected, again, and for no reason. When she lay quiet in his arms, he put the question to her.

“Can you at least tell me why, Letty?” Had he ever held a woman this closely and felt her struggling this hard to keep him at a distance?

“You know how much you love your nieces and nephews? How you dote on them all, remember their birthdays, miss them?”

“Yes.” Even Jennings had their birthdays memorized.

“I love children that much too.”

This was apparently all the reason she would give him, and when they parted that morning, David tried to tell himself that all couples went through rough patches and spats, that not every weekend could be sunshine and roses, that time could heal many problems.

But his renewed proposal had opened a breach between them, and he knew it.

***

“Good evening, sir.” Letty smiled and curtsied at the gentleman who’d just swept in the front door. “Welcome to The Pleasure House.” Though he looked vaguely familiar, Letty was certain she hadn’t seen him before. He was tall, with damp reddish-brown hair, green eyes, and features that would be handsome were they not scowling so fiercely.

“It is decidedly not a good evening,” he bit out, diction more crisp than the night air. “I am looking for Mrs. Letitia Banks.”

“You have found her,” Letty said, keeping her smile in place. “And what may I do for you?”

“You will please fetch Lord Valentine Windham to me,” the man said, slapping his gloves against a muscular thigh. “I can hear him playing the piano, so don’t attempt to dissemble and tell me he’s not on the premises.”

The fellow was big, agitated, and rude.

“If you will follow me to my office, we can summon Lord Valentine to attend you there.”

He looked like he wanted to argue, so Letty marched off in the direction of the servants’ passage that would spare her grouchy guest a trip through the parlors. She left him pacing her sitting room while she ordered tea, brandy, and sustenance.

“Mrs. Banks,” her visitor growled, “I do not have time to observe the niceties. If you will please fetch Lord Valentine?”

“And your business with him would be?”

“Personal.”

The food and drink arrived, and rather than allow her footman to gawk, Letty took the tray at the door and sent him off in search of reinforcements.

“Lord Valentine will join us when he has completed the sonata he is playing. He’s on the slow movement, so it shouldn’t be that much longer.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, if it’s that damned Schubert, it could go on another half hour or more.”

“Then you have time to eat something and enjoy a hot cup of tea.” Though Letty’s visitor looked like he’d rather be smashing the parlor furniture over Lord Valentine’s head.

“Mrs. Banks, when my father may be dying, I do not have time for tea and crumpets.” He ran his hand through damp chestnut hair in a gesture reminiscent of Lord Valentine.

The puzzle pieces snapped together.

“Lord Westhaven,” she said gently, “particularly if your father is dying, you need to be mindful of your own care. Eat, please, and your brother will be here soon enough.”


He eyed the door, and looked for one moment as if he might go storming through the house, grab his errant brother by the scruff of the neck, and haul him bodily into the night.

And wouldn’t the gossips have a holiday then?

“No one saw you come in,” Letty said, for Lord Valentine had never described this brother as anything less than hopelessly proper. “Nobody except Watkins, and he is very, very discreet.”

“Watkins?”

“My head footman. How do you like your tea?”

“Strong, plenty of cream and sugar,” Westhaven said, managing to sound peevish about even this admission.

Letty held out a hand. “Give me your cape. There’s a fire going in the next room as well, and we can at least start on drying you out.”

When he’d surrendered his sodden cape—a sumptuous black garment woven of lambs’ wool—Letty handed him a mug, not a delicate little cup, but a mug, of hot tea.

“You might as well eat,” she said when she’d dealt with his cape. “Your brother will be here shortly, and the food is good.”

He gave her a curious look, and picked up the bowl and spoon. “You aren’t joining me?” he asked, taking a seat before her hearth.

“It’s a little late for manners, your lordship. I’m sorry your father is ill.”

“God, so am I,” he said, sounding not at all imperious. “This is good.” In the ensuing minutes, the soup disappeared, as did bread, butter, cheese, and slices of pear.

“Shall I ring for more?”

“No, thank you.” He sat back, having left not one scrap of food on the plate. He was a ducal heir—a largish, restless ducal heir, for pity’s sake—but he ate as if nobody fed him regularly.

“Has he been unwell for long?” Letty asked, refilling Westhaven’s mug of tea.

“No.” Westhaven watched her hands, something in his appraisal male without being disrespectful. “Moreland is hunt mad, and because winter was late this year, he thought to get in one more week with the hounds before the ground softened. A chest cold became lung fever, and he isn’t rallying. The physicians have been bleeding him regularly, but I see no improvement.”

And clearly, Westhaven wanted desperately for his father to rally. “If he dies, you are left with the dukedom.”

“And may God help me,” Westhaven muttered, scrubbing a hand over his face.

“Letty?” David’s voice cut in softly from the door. “Have you a visitor?”

She hadn’t seen David in days, and the mere sound of his voice set her insides fluttering. He’d spent the previous weekend with his sisters, and had left Letty to her own devices since. They’d kept in touch by writing notes, though Letty was trying hard to let something unspeakably precious die.

David came to stand beside her, which was telling, when a duke’s son lounged by the hearth.

“Lord Westhaven awaits his brother,” Letty explained. “There is illness in the family, and Lord Valentine is needed.”

“Not the duchess, I hope?” David said.

“His Grace,” Westhaven replied. “Lung fever, and as stubborn as Moreland is, he isn’t getting any better.”

“Who attends him?” David’s hand had slipped into Letty’s, while she stood beside him, relishing the small contact and wishing ducal heirs to perdition.

“Perry, assisted by Stephens,” Westhaven replied wearily. “They are underfoot constantly.”

“And utterly useless,” David shot back. “They will bleed him to death, Westhaven. Get rid of them, or at least forbid any more bloodletting.”

“They are his personal physicians. I couldn’t get rid of them if I tried.” Which must have been brutally frustrating for a man so taken with his own consequence.

“Then try harder, unless you crave the dukedom that badly.”

“That’s the last thing I want.”

David left Letty’s side to rifle her escritoire. He scrawled something on a piece of paper and shoved it at Westhaven. “These men are competent. They won’t talk to your mother like she’s three years old, they won’t let your father bully them, and they will offer effective treatment. Other than bleeding him, what are Perry and Stephens doing?”

“Drinking vast amounts of brandy, cluttering up the sickroom.” Westhaven helped himself to a third cup of tea, then offered Letty a look that was probably the ducal version of sheepish. “They mutter about humors and vapors and such, but I haven’t really seen them do anything.”

“The congestion should be treated with steam and poultices,” David said, making more notes. “The inflammation and pain with willow bark tea. Use laudanum sparingly, and only if he isn’t getting any rest, and for God’s sake, keep offering him food and drink.”

“Westhaven?” Lord Valentine Windham stood in the doorway, looking handsome and bewildered. “What on earth could bring you to a brothel?”

“His Grace,” Westhaven said, draining his mug of tea. “Moreland has taken a turn for the worse. I thought you would want to know.”

“Of course I want to know, and might I say, you look like hell yourself.”

“Valentine,” Westhaven growled, one fist going to a hip. “I did not jeopardize my own health and that of my horse for the privilege of trading insults—”

“Now, children,” David interjected, “you have more important things to do than scrap in front of the neighbors. My coach and team are waiting in the mews, and you, Westhaven, may borrow my cloak.” He swept it from his shoulders and settled it around Westhaven’s shoulders in an oddly fraternal gesture. “It’s pouring out there, and cold as Hades. Watkins!”

The footman came on the run, then left to fetch Lord Valentine’s cloak as well.

“Letty.” David turned a smile on her that featured a number of perfect teeth. “Have we any of the medicinal stuff on hand?”

“Of course.” She left the room, knowing full well David was being more than hospitable to a pair of ducal offspring. He’d conjured this errand to give him privacy with the Windham brothers, though Letty was at a loss to fathom why.

***

David turned back to his guests in time to see Westhaven’s gaze following Letty’s retreating figure, and the poor sod wasn’t even subtle about it.

“That,” Westhaven said pensively, “is one particularly fine woman. She has…”

“Grace,” Lord Valentine said wistfully.

“Not only grace,” his brother mused. “It’s more—”

“It’s more,” David said, “that she’s spoken for, and you can’t have her.” Westhaven would never stoop to the company of a woman who wasn’t at least nominally associated with the peerage, in any case—would he?

“At least for now,” Westhaven concluded.

They were very civilly glaring at each other when Letty returned moments later with two silver flasks and Windham’s coat. Oblivious to the undercurrents, she handed the brandy to David and held up the cloak for Lord Val, who slipped into it, buttoned up, and tucked a brandy flask in the inside pocket.

David handed Westhaven the second flask. “You will heed my advice regarding your father?”

“I will talk to Her Grace first, but I will be blunt. And as for the other topic…” He paused and studied the silver flask before slipping it into a pocket of David’s borrowed cape. “The word I was searching for was gentility, gentility deserving of far more than this.”

Westhaven might be overly impressed with himself, a dull stick, and duty bound to the exclusion of anything resembling fun, but the blasted man wasn’t wrong.

“No argument there,” David said. “Watkins, see their lordships to the porte cochere.”

Lest one of them come sneaking back to make calf eyes at David’s… madam.

David closed the door and turned to the lady. “Mrs. Banks, I am stranded here for the nonce. Have you dined?”

And have you missed me as much as I’ve missed you?

“I have not had supper,” Letty said, smiling at him pleasantly. And how David hated that smile, for she used it on every patron to cross the threshold. “It is good to see you again.”

“And you.” Good and awful. “You look tired, Letty. Have things here been that busy?”

And so they dined together, talking about the business, about ledgers that didn’t balance, about how the suspicious expenditures came from the kitchen, which made the matter complicated. David spoke of his visit with his sisters and their families, about the never-ending rain that had replaced the never-ending snow, and finally about nothing at all.

“The coach should be returning shortly.” David crossed his utensils over his plate. “I’ll see how things go in the parlors, then be on my way.”

Letty folded her serviette in tidy quarters by her plate. “You are welcome to stay here tonight.”

He’d never slept at this establishment, hadn’t felt he had the right. “Is that what you want, Letty?”

Now her wineglass had to be lined up two inches from her plate and serviette, both. “It is who I want.”


“And you’re who I want, but this is not how I want you.”

She clutched the serviette in a tight ball. “David…”

“Pax, Letty.” He smoothed his fingers over her knuckles, needing any touch he could have from her. “I apologize. I will stay with you and be glad of your company.”

Before David permitted himself what Letty offered, he made the rounds in the front rooms, pausing to chat with almost every patron and flirt with most of the ladies. He found his way back to Letty’s office after midnight, coming upon her curled on the fainting couch, fast asleep. Silently, he removed his coat, cravat, and cuff links, regarding Letty critically as he did.

She had lost flesh, and she had been too slender to begin with. Faint bruises shadowed her eyes, and when he’d joined her earlier, she’d held his hand almost desperately. While visiting his sisters, David had tried to reason through his situation with Letty, to no avail. Quite simply, he could not force her to marry him.

And yet their brief separation had been hard on her, if her appearance was any indication. He’d sent her several notes, to which she’d replied, though the contents had been business related. The only personal aspect to them had been that Letty signed hers with an E, something only David would have understood.

“Sweetheart?” He sat at Letty’s hip and kissed her forehead, but she didn’t stir. “Letty?”

Still no response.

David crossed into the bedroom, turned down the covers, stoked and screened the fire, ran the warmer over every corner of the sheets and pillows, then returned to his sleeping beauty.

“Up you go, love,” he whispered as he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed. She stirred, but didn’t even open her eyes until David sat her on the bed and bent her forward so he could unhook her dress.

“You stayed,” she murmured. “I thought you’d left.”

Had she wanted him to go?

“Hush. Let’s get you into bed.” It was scant effort to pull off her dress and stays and untie her chemise. When she was naked and curled under the covers, David took off his clothes, locked the door, and climbed in beside her.

He wrapped himself around her, which provoked a soft sigh as Letty linked her fingers through his. Otherwise, she didn’t move.

As Letty slipped back into slumber, David felt… bereft rather than sexually frustrated. He’d gone about his evening anticipating intimacies with Letty, and now…

Aroused as he was, it didn’t seem right to impose on her. He’d tried to stay away from her, to get his thoughts in order, to see if he even could stay away from her, and ten days later, his thoughts were not in order, and he’d proven nothing.

As he was drifting off, Letty shifted, and then he was gently pushed onto his back. She settled herself on top of him, her breasts pressed to his chest, her sex caressing his cock with a slow, rocking glide of her hips. She brought him patiently back to full arousal, and then slipped her body over him, shallowly at first, then to a deeper penetration.

“I have missed you so,” Letty murmured against his throat.

For David, almost lost to sleep, the loving was dreamlike, a languid, sweet joining in the warm, silent darkness. On and on, Letty loved him, stroked him with her body, kissed him, and let her hands wander over his chest, neck, face, and arms. Pleasure stole upon him in delicate, shimmering increments, and then a trickle turned into a quiet, relentless torrent of erotic satisfaction.

As the pleasure ebbed, David held Letty close, his hands tracing patterns on her back.

She was crying again, her tears wetting his chest. He had been cruel to create a separation without discussing it with her, and she was obviously close to exhaustion.

“It it’s any comfort,” he murmured, “I haven’t been sleeping either, and I’ve started at least a dozen letters to you each day. I make art of your name on my blotter, and wonder what you’re doing at each moment of the day and night. I long for you when we’re apart, and when we’re together, Letty…”

She kissed him to silence.

“When we’re together,” she said, “I am so full of feelings that I don’t know where to start should I try to express them, and I want to touch you and touch you and touch you…”

“And touch you,” David concluded. “Letty, it can’t go on like this.”

“I know. David, I know.”

He let her drift back to sleep, their limbs entwined, still no closer to a solution than they had been weeks ago, but more heartsore than he could ever recall being.

And yet he suspected his suffering was nothing compared to Letty’s.

***

“I’ve become pathetic,” David said, offering the short version of events.

“You?” Douglas Allen, Viscount Amery, countered. “My role model for all matters involving savoir faire and grace under fire?”

“I’ve asked Letty Banks to marry me, Douglas. If you tell my sisters or their spouses, I will denounce you in public.” They were in the stables at Douglas’s new property, saddling up for a ride about the grounds, so Douglas might show off his land.

“And how does proposing make you pathetic?” Douglas asked, patting the shoulder of a sturdy bay gelding.

“She turned me down.” David rested an arm across his mare’s broad rump, though it would mean a crop of gray horse hairs adorned his fine wool riding jacket. “More than once.”

The sturdy bay investigated his master’s left breeches pocket. “It’s a lady’s prerogative.” Douglas produced a bit of carrot for his horse. “We ask, they decide. If they say yes, they legally become our property. It behooves a woman to be choosy, I should think.”

A lady. Douglas knew Letty was a lady; no one had had to tell him. “Spoken like the father of a six-year-old daughter.” Also like an honest friend.

“Which daughter, thank God, is not in love with anybody other than Sir George,” Douglas said, referring to the pony Rose’s ducal grandfather had given her. “But you, I think, are in love with Mrs. Banks—need I say, I told you so?—which means we must ask if she is in love with you.”

Yes, we must, at least a hundred times a day, and more often at night.

“She doesn’t say,” David replied, hefting a saddle onto his horse. “But Douglas—”

“Sometimes,” Douglas interrupted, which was fortunate for David’s tattered dignity, “a woman expresses herself without using words.”

“Letty can be very articulate without saying a thing. She cares for me, and I almost think if she didn’t, she’d have married me.”

“You are not going to accept that she simply doesn’t love you,” Douglas concluded, feeding his horse a second treat. “Your instincts, which are legendarily canny, tell you otherwise. While my own are nowhere near so reliable, I note that you seem to be in much the same position I was with Guinevere.”

“How so?” David asked as he fastened the girth.

A third bite of carrot was crunched out of existence. “I proposed to her, knowing we cared for each other, and she turned me down. Her refusal did not comport with her expressed sentiments regarding me; ergo, it wasn’t that she wouldn’t marry me, it was that she could not.”

Ergo? A syllogism of some sort. David’s heart was breaking, and Douglas was spouting logic. “Mrs. Banks, despite her title, is not married.”

“Do you know that for a certainty?” Douglas snugged up the girth on his gelding and ran the stirrup irons down the leathers.

“I have only Letty’s word regarding her unwed state.”

“How much do you know about her?” Douglas asked as he slipped a bit into his horse’s mouth.

I know I love her, which ought to be all that matters. “Not nearly enough. I know her real name is Elizabeth Temperance Banks, she was raised as the daughter of a dogmatic, humorless vicar, and her mother died before she came of age. She came to London after a curate dishonored her. When she refused him further favors, he confessed their sins to her father, making her situation at home intolerable.”

“Came to London from where?” Douglas asked, fastening the bridle straps. “Raised the daughter of whom, whose living was provided how, and to what extent was she truly dishonored, or was she guilty of breach of promise? Or promiscuity? And where is the evil curate now? Wasn’t it you who told me good decisions are based on good information? How can you decide your next steps when you have so few facts to predicate your future upon?”

David petted his mare when he wanted to launch himself fists first at his best friend. “How does Gwen tolerate being married to a man who has an abacus where his heart should be?”

“She loves me,” Douglas said without a hint of arrogance, “and that abacus is part of what will make this property prosperous, eventually. Guinevere claims I’m also quite the passionate fellow under appropriate circumstances, though the woman is given to occasional flights on certain topics.”

“Of course you are, and Gwen is a very appropriate circumstance, which is why a blessed event is in the offing, less than nine months after the wedding.”


Douglas didn’t exactly smile, but the humor in his eyes was smug as he swung up onto his horse.

As they rode out through the muddy, greening fields, Douglas’s words stuck with David. What did he know of Letty? Douglas prattled on about the land, about Gwen’s plans to run it jointly with the adjacent property, Enfield, which was owned by Greymoor.

“What do we hear about Rose’s grandpapa?” David asked as they turned back toward the stables.

“That His Grace was damned lucky,” Douglas replied. “Moreland is tough, but from what Lord Valentine told Guinevere, the duke had been bled nearly dry by those quacks attending him. He’s still recovering, albeit slowly. The duchess is insistent that he give up riding to hounds, and he’s adamant that he won’t.”

Oh, to be able to insist on anything with Letty. “If Westhaven sells the hunting box, then the question is all but moot.”

“The duke has any number of cronies owing him favors, in Parliament and otherwise. He can cadge a mount for a week in the shires,” Douglas replied. “And I almost wish he would. Guinevere purely hates him for trying to keep us apart. I can’t say I blame her.”

“How did you manage it, Douglas? When you thought there was no hope at all—what sustained you?”

Douglas leaned low over his horse’s neck to duck beneath a branch of oak just leafing out. “What sustained me when I feared losing the love of my life? I struggle to answer you. I suppose on one level it’s a kind of religious conviction, a sense that a just God would not permit any other outcome than the one I felt myself born for. Guinevere was meant for me, and I for her. I could not accept any other reality, and would not even try.”

“So it was stubbornness?”

“In part,” Douglas allowed, pausing while David ducked the same sturdy branch. “A stubborn belief that we were meant to be together, not so much because that was the easy option, but because I would not survive any other. I suppose one might term it sheer animal desperation.”

And how typical of Douglas, that he could discuss such a notion calmly.

“That concept has the ring of authenticity. When Letty turns me down, citing the need for my viscountess to have a spotless reputation, then what I feel is sheer animal desperation to convince her otherwise.”

Douglas halted his horse outside the stable and remained in the saddle rather than dismount.

“You have finally fallen, my friend,” he said gently, “and as Guinevere has predicted, you have fallen very hard indeed. So it might interest you to know that the housekeeper we hired from Mrs. Banks’s household has received at least three letters while in our employ, and every one has been posted from a place called Little Weldon, Oxfordshire.”

Had they not been mounted, David would have hugged his friend. “Douglas, you are a prince among abacuses. Now, shall we go up to the house so that I might flirt with Rose, annoy Gwen, and admire her great, gravid dimensions?”

Douglas swung off his horse. “My wife is a sylph, Fairly. A wraith, a delicate creature whose husband will blacken your eyes if you so much as mention words like gravid in her presence.”

David slung an arm across Douglas’s shoulders. “Getting cranky, is she? Can’t stand to lie on her back for even five minutes? Ducking out to use the chamber pot every time you turn around?”

“And sending me murderous glares all the while,” Douglas said. “Heathgate claims it will all settle down in the last month, but we have a way to go yet before I can test his theory.”

Douglas was not one to worry needlessly, and yet, he was worried. “Honestly, Douglas, how is Gwen? Are her feet or ankles swollen? Can she eat and drink normally? Is she inordinately vertiginous, has she fainted?”

Douglas’s steps slowed, as if what awaited him at the house was not entirely a cheering prospect. “Physically, Guinevere seems hale, but she is frightened, and while the fellows you recommended are reassuring and competent, they are two hours away, and they are not you.”

“I deserved that,” David said as they gained the back terrace. Pots of daffodils lent a note of cheer, though they thrived only because the location was sheltered.

Douglas snapped off a single bloom, then a second, very likely one for Rose and one for Gwen. “Guinevere trusts me, you, Greymoor, and Heathgate, but the idea of having some strange fellow attend her has no appeal. She dreads the thought of giving birth.” Douglas stopped outside the back door. “I would do it for her if I could.”

This was Douglas’s version of love, of being in love, and to David, who’d brought children into the world—and seen some of them leave shortly thereafter—it was true love, indeed. “Wait to make that offer until you see what the ordeal consists of.”

“I remember my mother,” Douglas said, looking haunted, “screaming for hours when Henry was born. My father went to his club, and Herbert and I were left in the nursery to manage as best we could.”

“I’ll talk to Gwen,” David said slowly. “I’m not promising anything, but I will talk to her. You and Gwen and Rose are…”

And abruptly, he couldn’t form words as a lump rose in his throat and the wind got in his eyes.

“I know,” Douglas said, opening the door and leading the way through. “To us, you are too, and if we have Letty Banks to thank for your willingness to consider using your medical knowledge again, then she is too.”

***

Letty spotted Fanny Newcomb wending her way up the walk toward their favorite tea shop off The Strand. If a new walking dress and a cheery smile were any indication, Fanny was enjoying her position as housekeeper for Viscount Amery’s little-used town residence.

“Oh, my dear.” Fanny took both of Letty’s hands in hers. “How I have missed you this age. You are entirely too thin, Letty, and you have no color at all.”

“I’m a bit tired, but it’s good to see you. I can’t stay long, though. A war was brewing among the chefs in the kitchen when I left.”

“Men,” Fanny scoffed as they were led to a table. “They must make everything a battle. What a body was thinking to hire not one but three men for the same kitchen is beyond me. You be careful, my dear, lest you be caught up in the affray.”

“I am careful. I have no authority regarding the business of the kitchen. I am merely a diplomatic presence.” And that was thanks only to a vicarage upbringing, oddly enough.

Fanny tugged off a pair of crocheted gloves—also new—the same shade as her green walking dress. “Your viscount should be the one knocking heads and enforcing order, though he doesn’t seem the kind to get his hands dirty.”

Letty saw an image of David’s hand, covered with Portia’s blood.

“He isn’t my viscount, Fanny, but you’re right: he enforces order by lifting an eyebrow or making a joke.”

Fanny peered at her over the menu. “Do I detect a note of admiration in your voice?”

And was that a new bonnet to go with the new dress and new gloves? Amery must believe in paying his help well, which notion pleased Letty. “I admire whoever is paying my salary, Fanny, particularly when I’m allowed to keep my clothes on into the bargain.”

“Hush, my dear. You may be beyond shame, but I am not.”

“My apologies,” Letty replied in a sheepish whisper. As they placed and then received their orders, the topic shifted to pleasantries, the weather, and the magnificence of London’s parks in the spring. Not for the first time, Letty wondered why she continued to keep these weekly appointments with somebody whom she no longer had anything in common with.

What would the Viscountess Amery say about her housekeeper taking tea with a madam? Did Fanny care so little for the goodwill of her employer?

“How much longer do you think you will hold your current position?” Fanny asked, swishing the dregs about in her cup.

And just like that, Letty was grateful for a sympathetic ear. “I don’t know. I enjoy much about the position—including the generous wages—but it is not decent employment, and I can’t get my mind past that fact.” Then too, his lordship was looking to sell the place, and like livestock conveyed with a rural property, the ladies—and Letty—would likely be considered part of that transaction.

“You should get the viscount into your bed,” Fanny suggested quietly. “He has the coin, and he’s clean. He fancies you, Letty.”

Letty stared at her empty cup and wished she’d stayed home. Fanny might be beyond shame, but she wasn’t above handing out shameful advice.

“He’s a good man, Fanny. A better man than I deserve.”

“So don’t deserve him,” Fanny rejoined, patting Letty’s knuckles. “Take his money and lead him a dance or two.”

“I’m doing well enough for now, better than I was last year at this time, and without leading anybody any dances. I must be getting back, so I’ll leave you until next week.”

Fanny slipped on her new gloves and bonnet, said nothing while Letty paid the bill, and parted from her at the corner.

Fanny had been housekeeper at the vicarage for a few years as Letty had grown up. She was a link with home and a familiar face, but Letty couldn’t help but feel ashamed when Fanny alluded to leading the viscount in a dance or two. And those remarks, encouraging Letty to find a new protector, to prostitute herself again, always made their way into the conversation, even as Fanny chided Letty on small lapses in propriety.


Next Wednesday, I am going to develop a megrim, and this time I mean it.