“You do remember that you were intending to visit the theater with the Duke of Beaufoy tomorrow night?”
A humphing noise sounded from beneath the bedcovers. “Beaufoy can wait,” Paris said. She was very annoyed with the young duke. He was fathoms deep in love with her but when she had told him she would settle for nothing but marriage, he had turned very white and muttered something about his trustees disapproving.
“It will do him good,” she added. “He should have had the courage to elope with me by now. I have had my portmanteaus packed this sennight past.”
Edna smiled. “Indeed, madam. But you do remember that Wednesday night is the ball at Carlton House?”
Lady Paris shot up in bed. “The Prince Regent’s Ball? Damnation!”
Edna placed a soothing hand against her forehead. “You are running a temperature, pet. Lie still. I shall call Dr. Long.”
Paris pushed her away and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I cannot miss the Prince Regent’s Ball. I have been angling for an invitation these five months past. I must be seen there! Everybody who is anybody will be present.” She hurried back to the mirror. “If it is a masked ball perhaps we may do something about this excrescence—” She stopped on a wail of anguish. “Oh! Look!”
Her flimsy peignoir had fallen open and there, on Lady Paris’s famously ample bosom, was another large spot exactly like the first.
Edna pursed her lips. “Perhaps if you were to wear a high-necked gown…”
“Do not be absurd,” Paris snapped. “I never wear anything like that! People must be able to see my—” She broke off again and this time her wail was more muted, almost resigned. “There is another one, and another…I am infested! Do we have fleas in this house?”
“I do believe,” Edna said, head on one side, “that you have the chicken pox, my poppet.”
Lady Paris stared at her. “That is impossible. I simply cannot afford to be ill.”
Edna pulled a face and carried on stolidly folding the garments.
Paris swung back to the mirror as though to convince herself that the spots were not there. For a long moment she stared at her reflection and then she gave a small whimper.
“How long does it last, Edna?”
“Two weeks,” the maid said. “Maybe three if it’s really bad.”
“And does it hurt?”
“It itches like a torment but you cannot scratch,” the maid said cheerfully, “for if you do, you will be left with ugly scars.”
Paris stared at her creamy-white skin, which seemed to be erupting before her very eyes. “I must not cry,” she said between her teeth. “Crying lines my face.”
Edna patted her arm. “Go to bed, madam. I will send for the doctor and fetch you a soothing cup of milk.”
Paris’s big blue eyes were still full of unshed tears. “But the Prince Regent—”
“I’m sure he will understand that you are indisposed.”
Paris shook her head fiercely. “No, Edna! We cannot tell anyone I am ill. It is too embarrassing.” She gripped the maid’s arm. “Can you imagine the scandal sheets—Lady Paris de Moine has the chicken pox! That is not the sort of story I can permit to circulate.”
For the first time, Edna looked dubious. “But madam, how will you prevent it?”
Paris rubbed her aching head and then remembered not to spoil her hair. If she was to receive anyone—even in her bed—she must look her best.
“Never mind the doctor,” she said. “He charges too much anyway. First thing in the morning I wish you to send for Ben Hawksmoor. I need him. He will know what to do.” She frowned, bit her lip, then released it as she remembered that it was disfiguring. “That is, if he can manage to tear himself away from that puling chit he seemed taken with at Crockford’s,” she added viciously. “I cannot be certain, but I think he meant to bed her.”
“Who is she, madam?” Edna inquired.
Paris made a sharp gesture. Truth to tell, she was worried. She had been ever since Ben had disappeared from Crockford’s in company with the girl he had addressed as Catherine.
When Catherine had first arrived to take Maggie Fenton home, Paris had barely been interested. She knew Maggie slightly from the occasional social event where their paths had overlapped. She had heard that Maggie was flighty and lived dangerously, cuckolding her rich husband and seeking excitement wherever she could find it. Paris felt no sisterly interest and no compassion for her. She had very little time for women.
But Catherine had been a different matter. Catherine was dangerous. Paris could feel it.
Paris had never repined over the fact that Ben was her lover in word but not in deed. They had met in Portugal when she had been down on her luck and Ben had helped her find a rich protector. When they had first met, Paris had propositioned Ben to sleep with her and he had turned her down. He had done it lightly, charmingly, but very finally. Paris had eventually conquered her anger and had had the sense to see that Ben’s friendship was too valuable to lose. Unlike her lovers, he was always there when she needed him and he never tried to tell her what to do.
Ben had been injured two years before at Salamanca, and Paris had been tired of an itinerant life by then and had just parted from her latest protector. She and Ben had planned a dazzling return to London together. They had woven a wonderful fiction about themselves. The pretense had been worth as much to Paris as the substance of an affair would have been.
Paris was not particularly interested in sex and certainly not interested in love. Once, when she was young, she had thought herself in love with her husband, Alex de Moine. She had been swiftly disillusioned, had left him, and later heard that he had gone missing in the wars, presumed dead. These days, sex was just a means to an end for Paris—the way to achieve riches and security. Paris knew that she and Ben looked good together. They were feted, courted, flattered, two halves of a dazzling whole. It mattered nothing that the whole thing was an invention. She would use it until she could persuade Beaufoy or another nobleman to marry her and then she would kiss Ben goodbye.
But now she feared she might lose everything prematurely, because Ben had been looking at Catherine in a way Paris had never seen him look at a woman before.
She turned her head to see that Edna was watching her with a curiously pitying look. Paris glared at her. “She is a nobody! She is a friend of that featherhead Maggie Fenton, that is all. But I…” Paris hesitated. “I need to make some inquiries. I will find out who she really is.”
“A rival, madam?” Edna spoke softly.
“Don’t be stupid,” Paris snapped. She snatched up one of her fans and started to rip the colored feathers from its tips, dropping them to the carpet. “You know as well as I that I have the upper hand. If I can land Beaufoy then I will tell Ben Hawksmoor to go hang!”
“So—” Edna prompted.
“So there is nothing to fear.” Paris was speaking so softly now it was as though she spoke only to convince herself. “All the same I will find this little trollop who catches his eye. And I will bring Beaufoy to heel. But not—” she looked down in disgust at the spotty expanse of her bosom “—not like this! Damnation!”
And she swept the pots from her dressing table in a fit of rage.
MRS. DESMOND’S HOUSE of Enchantment was one of the more salubrious brothels in Covent Garden. Catherine went up a shallow flight of steps to an imposing door flanked by two bay trees in pots. On the doorstep, she hesitated, but there was a gentleman ascending the steps behind her who seemed particularly interested in making her acquaintance, so she knocked twice, decisively, and prayed hard for the door to open. She was shaking, breathing quickly and lightly, and she was not at all sure what she would do—something very violent, though—if the gentleman actually laid a hand on her.
When she had run past the butler in Ben Hawksmoor’s hall and out into the street, the cold, foggy air had been like a slap across the face and had made her gasp with shock. She had stopped then, confused, utterly disori
ented by everything that had happened to her that evening. She had wanted to run away somewhere and hide but she knew she could not go home. The emptiness of the house in Guilford Street would be too much to bear. She needed to talk to someone.
She had become vaguely aware that the butler had come out of the house and taken her arm gently. He was speaking to her but she was not aware of his words. And then the hackney carriage had appeared, wrapped in a shroud of fog, and she had given Lily’s address and climbed inside. She had huddled into a corner for the whole journey and she had tried to think about nothing at all. But her perfidious body, still aching with the aftermath of her discomfort, had reminded her of the pleasure that had preceded it and she quivered a little with sensual discovery.
Then she had remembered Ben’s words and had closed her eyes to blot out the harsh and painful truth. He had known who she was all along. He had thought that she had thrown herself at him like a whore so he had treated her like one. He had believed her to be involved in some scrubby little plot with Withers to bring him down so he had used her for revenge and for amusement and then dismissed her, thinking her Withers’s harlot as well as his own. And even though he now knew the truth, it meant nothing to him. All the tenderness she had thought she had seen in him had been part of his calculated seduction. She had been caught up in the fantasy of her feelings for him while he had merely been amusing himself. That was his opinion of her. That was what she could not bear.
What was done was done. She could not undo it but she bitterly regretted the feelings that had led her astray that night. She was a fool. She faced the fact squarely.
She was a grown woman, and though she was inexperienced she was not usually so stupid. She knew enough of the ways of the world to know that if one strayed into a gentleman’s chamber and showed little interest in retreating he might show scant regard in behaving as a gentleman arguably should.
As the hack had made its tortuously slow journey through the foggy streets, Catherine had opened her eyes and stared into the dark. She knew she had stayed with Ben because she had wanted to. Curiosity, attraction, fascination and that damnable desire to fill the void in her life with an intimacy she craved…Those had all been her undoing.
Her fingernails had dug into her palms. She wanted to escape the match with Withers even more now. Intolerable to think of submitting to his kisses when her mind was full of another man entirely, a man whose merest touch could completely seduce her, whose kisses had been so tempting. But Catherine knew she was a fool to think of Ben Hawksmoor in that way, and no doubt, she had reflected bitterly, she was not the first woman to think it. Nor would she be the last.
The door of the brothel opened and a huge man stood in the aperture. He was at least six foot tall and almost as wide, and looked built to withstand a military siege. Catherine gulped.
“I wish to see Miss Lily St. Clare, if you please,” she said.
The man seemed unimpressed. “Do you now?” His voice had a faint brogue. He opened the door a little wider to permit the gentleman who had followed Catherine to enter the house with no more than a nod of acknowledgment. Then he turned back to Catherine and shook his head.
“I’d say you were in the wrong place, miss. Best to go home. Good night, now.”
Catherine peered past him into the hall. The light hurt her eyes. There were candles flaring in all the sconces, illuminating a scene of tasteful opulence. It could be any house in the most respectable part of town, except that upstairs Lily and her colleagues plied their trade.
“Wait!” she said, as the door started to close.
The man paused, then laughed. “I said go home, little girl.”
Catherine put her foot in the door. “I can pay.”
The man paused. This was a currency he understood. He opened the door wider. “Is that so? Then you had better come in.”
Catherine perched on one of the tall gilt-colored chairs in the hall. The house was quiet. The candlelight illuminated the high white walls and threw shadows across the marble-checkered floor. She could hear the faint sound of voices and masculine laughter from behind one of the closed doors. The air smelled of cigar smoke and fresh flowers. Catherine’s hands were clenched very tightly in her lap. She was seeing everything as though it were a long distance away and held herself upright, tense, tight as a drawn bow.
There was the tap of heels on the marble of the floor and then Lily was coming toward her, pulling a gauzy spencer about her shoulders over a gown of quite staggeringly low décolletage. Catherine had been troubled about disturbing her friend at work and now was relieved to see that Lily looked exactly as she had always done, aside from the décolletage. Her blue eyes were worried and she rushed forward, hands outstretched.
“Catherine!”
Catherine tried to smile but it came out in a rather wobbly way. She stood up. Behind Lily was the burly man and a statuesque woman with striking auburn hair and hard green eyes, who was arguing fiercely with him.
“This is a schoolgirl, Connor. What the devil are you doing, allowing debutantes into my house?”
“Catherine?” Lily said her name again, her tone troubled as she surveyed her friend’s face. “What has happened? What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry!” Catherine gulped. “I needed to talk to someone—” She caught Lily’s hands. “Lord Hawksmoor—” She was finding it increasingly difficult to put the words together.
Over her head, Lily’s startled eyes met those of the other woman. A strange, rather watchful silence fell over the group. The huge man shifted uncomfortably.
“Hawksmoor?” Lily repeated. “Oh, Catherine, I warned you—”
“In here,” Sarah Desmond said, bundling them both through a doorway as another knock came at the front door. “Connor, make sure no one comes in.”
After the bright lights of the hall, the drawing room was dimly lit, the candles throwing long shadows. There was a merry fire burning in the grate but Catherine could not feel its warmth. She was shivering and shivering.
“She is suffering from shock, Sarah,” she heard Lily say, and she pulled away abruptly, dimly aware that she did not want anyone thinking Ben Hawksmoor had physically hurt her.
“No I am not!” The words came out far too loudly and Catherine collected herself with an effort. “That is, I have done such a stupid thing—” Her anger at her own folly burst out. “Oh, Lily, I am such a fool!”
Lily put her arm about Catherine and guided her to the sofa. “That is enough of that,” she said, pulling Catherine down to sit beside her. “Tell me what has happened, Catherine.”
“Your little friend looks as though she could do with a drink,” Sarah Desmond said, walking over to a beautiful cherry escritoire. Catherine heard the clink of glass. Sarah Desmond put it into her hand. Her teeth chattered against the rim.
“I have done such a stupid thing,” she repeated.
Lily smiled. “You always did.”
“Those were schoolgirl things. This is serious.” Catherine’s hands shook. She spilled some of the liquid in the glass.
“Drink up,” Sarah Desmond said. “You look as though you need it.”
Catherine obeyed. She did not recognize the spirit but it was so strong it almost took her throat out. She coughed, felt it burn her stomach and then, miraculously, everything seemed to settle down.
“That’s better,” Sarah said with satisfaction. “So what have you done, Miss—”
“Fenton,” Catherine said. “My name is Catherine Fenton.”
Sarah raised her brows. “Lily’s schoolmate.”
“That’s right.”
Lily took Catherine’s cold hand in hers again. “Tell me what has happened, Catherine.”
“I seduced Ben Hawksmoor,” Catherine said bluntly.
She heard Lily catch her breath and Sarah Desmond give a low whistle of surprise. “No one does that, Miss Fenton,” the courtesan said. “It just doesn’t happen.”
“Well,” Catherine said, “I
did it.”
Sarah sat down with a soft swish of midnight-blue silk. “Well, upon my word, if it’s true you can have a job here whenever you want, darling.”
“Don’t,” Lily said quickly. “Can’t you see she’s not one of us, Sarah?” She turned urgently back to Catherine.
“Kate…” The pet name was an unconscious echo of what Ben had called her, and Catherine flinched a little.
“Are you sure?” Lily said. “I mean, you may think that you did, but—”
Catherine was torn between a desire to laugh and a strong urge to cry. “I know what happened, Lily. I am not a complete innocent.”
“Not anymore, by the sounds of it,” Sarah said.
Lily shot her a look. “But…But how? I mean, I thought you were going to keep out of his way?”
“I went to his house tonight,” Catherine said, and saw the despair and the horror deepen in Lily’s eyes. “It wasn’t what you think!” she added quickly, unable to bear her friend believing that she had been stupid enough to throw herself in Ben’s way.
“Then what was it?” Lily asked quietly.
“It was for Maggie,” Catherine said, the tears thickening her voice. “She had an affair with Ned Clarencieux and took a picture from Lord Hawksmoor’s house as a memento.”
“The miniature mentioned in the paper?” Lily said.
“That’s right.” Catherine bit her lip painfully. “She asked me to take it back for her. So I did.”
Lily was shaking her head. “Oh, Catherine, why? Why must you do these foolish things for other people?”
“Maggie was afraid that Papa would find out,” Catherine said. “I had to help her, Lily! For the sake of our family…And the runners were on her trail….”
“Your family is not what you think it, Miss Fenton,” Sarah said, in a hard voice. “Your father keeps another establishment in Chelsea and your stepmother is given to affaires with handsome young men. There is nothing to save other than appearances. You must open your eyes.”
Catherine felt sick. The world she had wanted to preserve was splintered already and only the surface remained. Her family life was as empty and meaningless as a puppet show.
Lord of Scandal Page 13