Mabel frowned. “What do you mean, cared too much?”
Honora paused. “Do…do you remember Reverend Whittaker?”
Comprehension dawned on Mabel’s face. “Ah, that kind of cared too much.”
“He wanted to be my savior,” said Honora sadly. “He thought he could save me from all of this, but he wanted it so much he could barely see me for who I really was. For what I really was. As soon as he realized what being a courtesan not a bride actually meant, he took to the hills.”
“Every now and again, we do get a knight in shining armor type, though I will admit I had forgotten Reverend Whittaker. Poor man. He wanted so much to take me away from this, but not before he had his fill of me first.”
Honora frowned. She had a particular distaste for Reverend Whittaker, the old hypocrite. Coming here every week to ‘preach to the lost,’ but only after Ellen had made him cry out with blasphemy.
“They want to save us from ourselves, but they do not realize we are already lost.” Mabel spoke calmly, with no malice, but Honora was all the more despondent for it.
“Do you honestly believe that?”
Mabel opened her arms. “Look at me. Prostitute for ten years, a daughter out there somewhere, a daughter I desperately hope is being cared for, and another one on the way. Who is Lizzie’s father? I don’t know. Who is the sire of this one? I cannot possibly tell. I am more lost to the world than I ever belonged to it. Who is going to want me?”
Honora sighed. Truth dripped from every word Mabel said. There were few true escapes from this life, and for one of them, she had to be carried out in a coffin. Perhaps she would manage to escape by a different route, one day—but then where would she go? Who would be interested in even associating with a courtesan, a woman who had sold herself again and again?
No, she would always be the courtesan and never the bride, and it was time to accept that.
Mabel had been watching her, and as their eyes met, she smiled gently. “Now I warn you, Honora. Men have their own make-believe about the way the world works, and it is a nice way for them to believe they have more say than they actually do. But when they realize the world is not what they think, it is dangerous.”
“It is all so painful.”
Mabel’s smile was sad. “It is. Life is pain, Honora. The sooner we accept that, the easier it will be. Get some rest.”
Replacing the chair to the side of the room, she closed the door behind her quietly and left Honora alone with her thoughts. They were confused and muddled in her mind, and no matter how much she attempted to dwell on Mabel’s kindness, one phrase kept bobbing to the surface of her mind.
You will not have to worry about me distracting you from your work ever again.
Chapter Seventeen
Josiah stomped into the card room in a towering temper. Peering through the room and blinking against the brilliance of the candlelight, he was sure there would be someone he knew at the York Club.
It was his home away from home. All his acquaintances were members here, and he would have thought on a Friday evening there would be at least three or four of them about.
But no. There were few faces he recognized. One gentleman whose name he had forgotten waved at him and indicated he could join their game.
Josiah’s heart sank. The last thing he wanted was the company of strangers—perhaps it was better to go home and stew in his misery.
“Chester—is that you, Chester?”
A voice echoed behind him. Josiah blinked through the smoke, and his shoulders slumped with relief as he saw a friend at a table, standing to say goodbye to two gentlemen.
“Chester, it is you,” grinned William Lennox, Duke of Mercia. “Come over here, will you? Parker and Longstaff were just leaving.”
Perfect. He could sit and drink with Mercia, discuss all the tittle-tattle of the day, and ignore his heartache for another evening. How long had it been since he had last seen Hannah?
No. Josiah forced himself to push away the thought of her as he wove through the crowded tables.
Mercia and he had met a year ago, but they had grown close in that short time. He was a sensible man, head unturned by name and title from falling into it at a late age—what was it, three years ago since he had inherited his title? Four years? But Mercia had kept the grit of a soldier, and it was a soldier, not a gentleman, that Josiah wanted to be with this evening.
After all, he didn’t ask stupid questions.
Josiah pushed past a gentleman who didn’t move out of his way quickly enough.
“I say, be careful, sir!”
He ignored him. What did he matter, what did anything matter? The whole world could go hang for all he cared. He fell into the chair beside Mercia.
“You,” he barked at a wandering footman who jumped. “Whisky, bottle, four glasses. Charge to Chester.”
The footman bowed and swept away.
Mercia raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair. “Good day?”
Josiah scowled but allowed the tension to drain away as he saw the grin on his friend’s face. There was no maliciousness in that look.
“Deal the cards,” he said with a sigh.
Mercia pulled the deck toward him and started to shuffle them without taking his eyes from Josiah. “You would probably feel much better if you told me what happened.”
Josiah glared. “You do not want to know.”
“You underestimate my curiosity,” laughed Mercia. “Ask anyone, I am incurably curious and so will continue to ask impertinent questions until I receive an answer.”
There was something familiar about his laugh, reminiscent of someone else he knew. Someone he knew well. He couldn’t put his finger on who.
The footman returned with a bottle of exorbitantly expensive whisky in one hand and four crystal-cut glasses in the other. He placed the glasses on the table carefully and unstopped the bottle.
Josiah grabbed the bottle. “You can leave that with us. Thank you.”
He knew he was being ridiculous, ungentlemanly, unbecoming of his name and title—but what did it matter? Who was going to argue with him?
Josiah poured whisky into each of the four glasses and pushed one toward Mercia.
Mercia accepted the glass, looking curiously at the other two. “Who are they for?”
Josiah did not answer immediately. Throwing back his head and pouring the sweet burning liquid down his throat, he coughed. He wanted to stay angry, keep that burning frustration alive in his stomach.
“This way, no one disturbs us,” Josiah said, slamming his glass onto the table. In one swift movement, he placed the other glasses before the two empty chairs.
Mercia looked at them, and then slowly looked back at his friend. “What, so no one joins us?”
“How can they? Our two friends are about to return to their seats,” said Josiah dully, pouring out another measure for himself. “Do you want…?”
Mercia examined him closely. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
Josiah shrugged as a raucous cheer rose on the other side of the room, one celebrating, one protesting loudly that he had been cheated. “Four days. Five? Not much difference.”
He looked lazily around the room. All these gentlemen, they did not know how good they had it. Safe from the temptations of women, safe from the judgment of the world. Maybe he would stay here—the York Club had a few rooms. He could stay here forever in this pantheon of manhood and never have to worry about a woman ever again.
Mercia was shaking his head. “I was about to throw in the towel and head back to Charlotte, but it is clear there is something painful on your mind.”
Josiah did not answer. What was there to say? No one would understand the pain he was in, and he was certainly not going to admit it to Mercia, for all his niceties.
“I was a soldier. I have done and seen more terrible things than you have had hot dinners.” Mercia spoke matter-of-factly, lowering his voice so only Josiah could hear him. “And I k
now you, Chester. If I am any judge of character, nothing gets on your nerves quite like a woman.”
Josiah’s knuckles turned white around his glass. Men at a nearby table were having a spirited argument about whether aces were high or low, and a footman snaked through the noise, carefully replacing cigars and removing empty bottles.
“Who is she?”
“Just deal the cards, Mercia,” Josiah spat.
Mercia held up his hands in mock surrender and started to deal out Vingt-un.
God’s teeth, he was being unreasonable. His friend was more than understanding about his bad temper, and he had no justification for taking it out on him. Poor Mercia, the old sod, he’d had more than enough troubles with women to last him a lifetime—that sister who went missing, who knew when she would turn up! It was a tale that fascinated him, and he had probably been wrong to share it with Hannah. It was not his place to gossip like that.
His heart clenched at the thought of her. He must not think of her; he could not. That part of his life, short and sweet as it had been, was over.
Josiah picked up the cards dealt him, then threw them down in disgust.
“Fine,” he admitted, breathing out heavily. “’Tis a woman.
Plenty of Josiah’s other acquaintances—Devonshire, perhaps, and certainly Braedon—would have crowed over his confession. They would have laughed, said they had known all along, and then prodded him for more details.
Not Mercia. He was better than that, and Josiah’s respect for him grudgingly grew. That is what happens when a duke is made, not born. He doesn’t treat the world as though it owes you something.
“What is the difficulty?” Mercia asked, pulling together the cards and shuffling them. “No dowry?”
Josiah shook his head.
“Not interested in you? Too interested in you?”
Josiah snorted and picked up the whisky bottle. “I wish it was that easy.”
Mercia reached out and plucked the bottle out of his hand. “I think that is enough, Chester. For now. Take a deep breath and tell me about her.”
Mercia would not laugh. Had he not but six months ago married Lady Charlotte St. Maur, the sister of the Duke of Axwick? How society had laughed; poor dupe, they had thought, marrying an old lady like that. And she had been what, five and thirty?
Old, they had said, old and no longer able to provide a man with heirs. A chaperone, not a bride. And Mercia had heard them all, even the objections of his own brother, and he had ignored them all. Because he loved her.
And Lady Charlotte would be confined in a few months, they said, and all the naysayers were put to rest. There would be an heir to the dukedom of Mercia, and he had held his head high and said even if they had never had children, Charlotte was enough. More than enough. Everything.
He could tell Chester.
Josiah sighed. “I…I told myself I would not fall in love with her. I convinced myself I would not feel anything for her, and despite all my cleverness, I have fallen head over heels in love with her, and there is naught I can do about it. Deal the cards.”
Mercia split the pack and merged the two halves carefully before dealing. “You know, there is always something you can do about it.”
Josiah snorted and glanced at his cards. “You don’t know the half of it, Mercia, or you would not suggest such a thing.”
“God’s teeth, man,” said Mercia, looking genuinely surprised. “You are Josiah Stanhope, Earl of Chester. Who could possibly be beyond your reach?”
Was he man enough to admit the embarrassing truth of it all? Christ, it was shaming to even think about speaking the truth aloud, least of all to Mercia. How do you explain to a duke who married a duke’s sister that he, an earl, had fallen in love with a courtesan?
But then, it had been Mercia’s wedding where it had all started, Josiah remembered. Their wedding when he had decided, after that public row with Miss Ashbrooke, that his solution was a courtesan? The only way for him to have the pleasure and company he wanted without any of the complications?
Josiah shook his head bitterly. Look how that has ended up!
Hardly believing he was about to say this and cringing internally, Josiah sighed and looked directly into his friend’s face. “She is a courtesan, Mercia.”
Mercia did not react immediately. His face remained impassive, and then he reached for the bottle and poured them both a large measure. “A courtesan,” he repeated.
Josiah nodded. What other way was there to explain it? She was more than life itself to him, and yet a courtesan, not a bride for an earl.
Sipping from his glass, Mercia asked, “How did you manage to get into this mess?”
Josiah tasted bile in his throat. “You do not know of what you speak! She is not like the rest, not like…not like any woman I have ever met. She is pretty, charming, kind…” His voice trailed off as he attempted to control it. “Beautiful.”
“Fine, she is wonderful,” Mercia said dismissively. “I cannot see the problem then. Why not keep visiting her, get her out of your system?”
Josiah blinked. This was not the advice he would have expected from Mercia. “Says you, a married man?”
A footman meandered past with a bottle of champagne, which soon enough popped on the other side of the room. The smoke was growing, creating clouds toward the ceiling and giving them even more privacy than before.
Mercia sighed. “I have not always been married. When I was Major Lennox, fighting for king and country out there in France, there was one easy way to relax after a battle. You celebrate still being alive, and you mourn those who aren’t there beside you. So, yes. Do what you have to do with this girl, then forget her.”
“She is not just a girl,” shot back Josiah, fury building in his stomach. “She is most likely a gentleman’s daughter, the things she comes out with—she has spoken of Bath, and the Assembly Rooms, and—”
“Anyone could do that,” Mercia interrupted with a smile. “Do you not see the magazines some of these young girls read now? They have all the lists, all the names of the best society. She has probably never been to Bath.”
Josiah swallowed. He had not thought of that. But then a memory surfaced, and he blurted out, “She knew about Axwick Lodge!”
Mercia raised an eyebrow. “Now, that is different. Few guests are welcomed there. How did she account for it?”
Josiah sagged in his chair. “She said…she said she had been in service there for a time.”
And she had sounded certain, he remembered. Embarrassed, perhaps, that she had let that detail slip. She was always so careful not to speak of any personal facts.
Mercia held out his hands. “Well, I ask you.”
“She does not want to be there,” Josiah protested. “I thought I could—”
“Rescue her? With gold perhaps—a lot of gold, even?” Mercia shook his head. “Oh, Chester, I thought you were beyond all of that. You have been sold another sob story, and ’tis true they do not get more sorry than that. But think. Does any courtesan want to be doing what she does? Is that not the point? They would prefer to be mistresses or mothers, but instead, they are just…there.”
Josiah allowed Mercia’s words to wash over him. Hannah had seemed so earnest in her story. She seemed genuinely fearful of her life, devastated to be there. At times, she was so well spoken he would have believed she was a gentleman’s daughter.
“She is so very convincing,” he muttered.
Mercia sighed and poured another glass of whisky for himself. “They always are. You should have heard some of the tales woven for me in France. But Chester, you cannot marry her. The Countess of Chester, a courtesan? Perhaps it would be easier if you forgot her and never went back.”
The idea of never going back to Madam’s brothel was terrible. It could not be countenanced. Josiah’s stomach turned, and he pushed the glass away.
He swallowed. “The thought of never seeing her again…Mercia, it makes me want to die.”
“Christ aliv
e, man, you have it bad,” Mercia laughed sadly.
A flicker of irritation caught at Josiah’s heart. “How would you feel if you could never see Lady Charlotte again?”
Was it the flicker of a dying candle, or did a dark shadow cross over Mercia’s face?
“It would be the end of my life,” Mercia said gruffly. “But she is my wife, not a common whore.”
Josiah’s chair fell to the floor as he stood hastily, fists raised.
“Pax, you fool,” Mercia held up his hands in surrender for the second time that evening. “That was not fair. But despite all your fine words and finer feelings, I struggle to believe this courtesan is worth all this agonizing. What makes this woman different from all the others?”
Josiah’s glare vanished to be replaced by a slow smile. Picking up his chair, he sat down heavily at the table.
“I do not know if I even have the words,” he admitted. “She is so beautiful, Mercia, and not in that horrendous way young ladies do where they plaster themselves in God knows what. Every inch of her is a story, and I want to know all of it.”
Mercia raised an eyebrow.
Josiah grinned. “Not like that—well, not just like that. I mean, how did she get that scar? Every time she smiles, you can see this tiny scar right under her chin, and—”
His sentence was broken by several things happening at once. Mercia roared, stood, and upended the card table. Glasses, whisky bottle, and cards flew across the floor as the entire room stopped speaking to stare at Josiah—thrust heavily against the wall, Mercia’s hand around his throat. Utterly helpless, Josiah blinked at his friend and raised his hands to try and loosen his hold around his neck.
“Mercia,” he gasped, confused and struggling to breathe. “Mercia—”
“Where is she?” It was a snarl, not a question as Mercia’s piercing blue eyes bored into him.
Josiah could barely think. He needed air to think and speak. “W-What?”
Always the Courtesan (Never the Bride Book 3) Page 14