A Courtesan’s Guide to Getting Your Man (7 page)

That was going to leave a stain.

I bit my lower lip, trying to keep the hysterical laughter hidden deep where it belonged. Then, pair by pair, all eyes turned back to stare at me. The giddy explosion of absurdity faded, leaving me with nothing in my belly but fury and a little nauseous regret.

I lifted my chin and gazed back at my aunt and uncle. Uncle Webster’s jowly face was growing redder by the moment. He tossed his napkin down onto his plate in disgust. “Ungrateful girl!” He stood, then turned his glare upon his wife. “She’s your responsibility. You talk some sense into her! I’m going to my club, where the food stays on the table and not on the bloody wall!”

With a last growl at the forlorn pile of juicy rare beef on the carpet, Uncle Webster strode from the room.

Aunt Beryl fixed me with a baleful gaze. “Idiot child!”

I folded my shaking hands before me and tried to keep my fair skin from blushing with shame. It was no use, of course, but I refused to give my flaming cheeks any notice.

“Aunt, I am not a child. I am eighteen and I am legally allowed to choose my own husband.”
Or not at all,
but best not to say that out loud. Boiled potatoes might not be much of a dinner without the beef, but they would make handy projectiles and I had never seen my aunt so enraged.

Her cold eyes narrowed. “You are our ward. You will do as you are told and you will wed Lord Malcolm Ashford!”

“But I do not know him!”

My aunt waved a hand in dismissal. “Everyone knows him. He’s rich and well-born and his holdings will turn your uncle’s business prospects around by summer’s end!”

The truth was out. My belly chilled at that pragmatic reasoning. There would be no appealing to my guardians’ finer feelings, not where Uncle Webster’s business was involved. My uncle liked to think of himself as a gentleman, but he had invested every penny of his expectations in trade, hoping to make himself wealthy as well. Aunt Beryl kept a fine and impressive home, at least to the outside observer, but she ran it on a narrow budget. Her industry would have been admirable if not for the fact that it was spent entirely on keeping up appearances in Society. Furthermore, she and Uncle Webster were unkind and exacting employers who paid their staff late if at all.

It was probably a good thing that my own small inheritance was untouchable by anyone but myself.

Unless I wed. In which case it would of course become the property of my husband.

But if this suitor was so very wealthy, what did he need with my poor little six hundred pounds? That would scarcely run a grand house for a year!

“Aunt, don’t you think I should at least meet him first? After all, I am English, not some daughter of India! No one here weds sight unseen!”

Aunt Beryl, who couldn’t find India on a map, scowled blackly. She did not appreciate having her ignorance pointed out to her.

I worried. My relatives were not highly educated people, at least not by my standards. They knew nothing of the world past their social ambitions and the acquisition of wealth. There was no philosophy spoken in these halls, nor any intellectual conversation at all! Gossip and trade were the only approved topics, and neither interested me whatsoever.

How could they ever understand that I had dreams of a much larger sort of life?

*   *   *

Later that evening, having locked myself away in my room, I dug out my hidden trove of sweets for my dinner. However, I could scarcely touch them for the roiling in my belly.

Instead, I paced my chamber in fury and the beginnings of serious fear. Could I truly be so helpless? I had never thought of myself so, yet in this new world, my world since the passing of my beloved parents two years past, I was no one. I had a pretty face and a figure somewhat more bountiful than was fashionable. My mind meant nothing in the ranking of my value.

So this was all that I was to them, a commodity in their hands, a mere offering to be sacrificed on the altar of their social greed.

I ached for my parents, for the love and support and respect I had always known.

They were not here. They would never be here again. I was entirely alone.

“A commitment once made cannot be broken, sir!”

The gruff voice from down on the lawn drew me to my window. Bracing my hands upon the sill, I leaned as far out as I could. Below me, on the walk up to the steps of the house, I could see a man, large and looming, facing down my shorter, stouter uncle.

The stranger continued, his tone arch and scathing. Although his hat shielded his features, I hated him quite completely for his voice alone. “I do not understand your difficulty, Harrington. I made careful selection based on appearance and associations. I told you what I wanted. You promised to deliver her, willing and happy, to my hand. I have already spoken to the bishop. I was prepared to post the banns in a matter of weeks!”

My breath left me. Weeks?

“You have to give us more time!” Uncle Webster insisted. “The girl will soon come around. I shall make sure of it!”

That voice again, clipped and scornful: “Can you not keep your own house, sir? I must wonder at your inability to manage such a simple transaction.”

I closed my eyes against the blow.
Transaction.

If I had held any romantic hope that this fellow actually loved me from afar, this cleared up that little misconception quite nicely. I was a purchase. I was a horse added to his stables, a painting added to his gallery. I was a thing, to be bought and sold.

There were more words between them but with their voices lowered in more peaceful consultation, I could not hear them, no matter how I dangled my upper body from the window. Agreeing on the price, perhaps? Asking for the groom to check my teeth? Would I be weighed and measured, placed on the scales opposite a pile of gold?

Helpless fury overwhelmed me. I ought not to be in this position! My parents would be appalled and revolted if they lived. Of course, if they lived, then I would not reside in this house with these people who thought I should behave like an ordinary girl.

I knew what my relations wanted of me, but I had not been brought up to be obedient and unthinking. My mother, an unrepentant bluestocking, had wed quite late to a quiet bookish man, a philosopher and scholar, who found her unconventional notions delightful and stimulating. I was raised on freedom of thought and lively debate. If I wished to refuse my supper and only eat my cake, I might be allowed if I was able to put forth a case convincing enough to either make my parents laugh or even to begin a discussion between them so distracting that they took no notice of my sugar-coated fingertips.

Perhaps it was no mystery that my relatives found me to be foreign and bizarre. Now, alone in my room, alone in my heart, even I wavered. I did not fit in to this world. I did not understand why I should hide behind my fan. I could not conceive of shutting my lips and closing my mind.

Perhaps there was something wrong with me, not with them. I seemed to be the only one who did not wish to play by these rules …

Or was I?

There were women in the world, beautiful, elegant creatures who slipped through the rigid stratifications of Society like silk-clad wraiths. They had no husbands, no fathers, no high-handed uncles who sought to twist their lives into restrictive knots.

The first time I ever saw the Swan was at Mrs. H
____
’s musicale. It was quite an eclectic gathering, daringly including those who were rising in Society as well as those who fell just a bit outside it. To welcome a notorious courtesan to one’s home was entirely outré.

I’d wager that half the women there wished they’d thought of it first.

The other half were violently offended. Mrs. H
____
is a patroness of the arts and quite influential in certain circles, and so Aunt Beryl dared not offend her by insulting one of her guests. It was only I who was subjected to Aunt Beryl’s vitriolic opinions.

“Filthy, abandoned creature” was the mildest of those insults. “Untamed independent” and “ungoverned wanton” only piqued my interest at the time.

Hereby came my conviction that Aunt Beryl was something of an imbecile, for it was quite obvious to me that the Swan was everything that was elegant and gracious. She swept into the room, tall and golden and smiling so sweetly that I could not help but smile back, though she beamed her charm indiscriminately about the room.

The whispers ran about the perimeter of the hall, scurrying like vermin, carried mouth to ear, but the Swan smiled as if she heard none of it and held out her gloved hand to greet the soprano who had so entertained us.

The Swan had beautiful features, of course, but it was more than mere symmetry and hair of gold that fixed everyone’s attention so. She moved through the room with the confidence of a duchess, surely knowing that men admired and desired her even as their wives admired and despised her.

And envied her.

But perhaps that was only me.

It simply seemed to my eyes that the Swan had a rather marvelous existence. She was cosseted and spoiled and adored as much as any cherished bride, but if the love grew stale or the man became unbearable—as I was beginning to suspect that many men did, in time—then the Swan was free to sail as grandly out the door as she had sailed in.

The Swan was a woman with
options.

If only I could be like her.

I wrapped my shawl about my shoulders and sat in my open window, gazing unseeing into the deepening night. It was very late but the chill kept me awake. There was a notion swirling in my mind and I wished to capture it and make it hold still for examination.

No matter how I argued and pleaded, I knew I could not win against my relatives’ determination. Their self-interest far outweighed any sense of responsibility to me. In fact, they likely felt they were indeed charting the correct course for my future.

Merely fleeing would serve no purpose. I had no refuge but this one. I had no doubt that I would soon be found and brought back in disgrace, bound for a convent or a sanitarium, a common end for girls who refused to conform. My mother had railed against such practices enough times for me to have a depressingly realistic vision of such a future.

Therefore, my rebellion must be extreme. It must shatter all ties. It must be so scandalous, so entirely and completely unacceptable, that my aunt and uncle would rather touch a hot coal than associate themselves with me.

I lifted my gaze to the sky, though the stars were hidden behind the sooty London clouds. “If I am to be bought and sold,” I whispered to the sky, “then I should profit from the
transaction.
I should be the merchant and the banker, as well as the livestock.”

*   *   *

I have never been one to dawdle once having made a decision, so I began to put my plan into motion the very next day.

All of Society knew that the Swan wore only the most beautiful gowns. Since it was widely understood that the most beautiful gowns were those crafted by the great Lementeur, I knew that I might find the wearer of such gowns by attending her dressmaker.

Lementeur kept a very exclusive shop on the Strand. It was discreetly announced by a sign containing only a scripted, flowing
L.
It might as well have been heralded by a military brass band, for there was not a woman in London who did not sigh upon passing the mysterious entrance to the most elite arbiter of style in all of England.

That next afternoon, I lingered across the road with my aunt’s maid, Sylla. I had been allowed out of the house due to the realistic tenor of my heartfelt and sincere apologies to my relations. Once I had explained my childish qualms at being worthy of such an overwhelming honor and profusely thanked them for their most industrious efforts on my behalf, I was given back my freedom. I was even, as long as I was accompanied, permitted to venture to the Strand in order to peruse the shop windows. After all, I had to acquaint myself with the costly accoutrements that would soon be part of my new, glorious existence as Lady Ashford.

I daresay that my aunt and uncle thought I was quite mad, but they were far too interested in their own advancement to question my motives in changing my mind. They simply went on planning the wedding that they had never canceled.

For my part, I pled shyness and maidenly nerves and hoped to avoid meeting with Lord Malcolm even once.

This did not prevent him from showering me with costly gifts. The first day was velvet, in the form of a cloak that swept the floor with the length of it but was so fine that it weighed quite perfectly for a summer evening.

I gave it to Sylla.

Aunt Beryl discovered my deed and forced poor Sylla to give it back. How the cloak ended up in the coal chute I’m sure I don’t know.

Sylla was scarcely older than I, so I contented her with a lemon ice and the bribe of my pink-trimmed bonnet if she did not convey my doings to Aunt Beryl.

Now Sylla, who bore no personal love for my exacting aunt, accepted the bribe with glee and settled into a doorway with her ice.

I had feared it might take days or even weeks to catch sight of my prey, yet we had scarcely loitered an hour before a very distinctive carriage pulled to a stop before the boutique entrance. Who but the notorious Swan would ride about town in a dainty white-lacquered carriage emblazoned with a graceful golden swan upon the door? I was in awe at the flagrant lack of discretion. The Swan was a woman after my own heart.

I fear I followed her directly into the shop, like a hound upon her heels. The elegant fellow who held the door gazed at me curiously but I merely lifted my chin and strode into the establishment as if I had every right to be there. The Swan shot a single startled glance over her shoulder, then pointedly looked away from me.

Another pair of ladies stood in the elegant receiving room. They eyed the Swan with regal disdain, yet they did acknowledge her presence with cool nods. The Swan dipped a gracious but impenitent curtsy back. I copied her motion out of pure instinct and their narrowed gazes shot to me. The Swan stepped away from me and moved to the grand window, leaving me standing quite alone. Disregarding the watching ladies, I scurried after the Swan.