A Courtesan’s Guide to Getting Your Man (8 page)

“Madam, I must speak with you,” I whispered. “It is a matter of the direst urgency!”

She turned her shoulder to me and pretended to examine the draperies. Unwilling to admit defeat, I presumed to reach my hand to pluck at her sleeve. When I heard a hiss and then an astonished giggle from the elegant pair lingering in the receiving room, I saw the Swan twitch with annoyance.

Then I noted the twin blotches of color staining her elegant cheekbones and realized that I was wreaking some sort of damage to her graceful dignity. I thrust my hands behind my back and clenched them there, but I did not move from her side.

The beautiful boy returned and bowed the other ladies from the chamber and into their ostentatious carriage outside. When he returned, he began to approach us. I glared him away with every ounce of desperation I possessed. I can be quite intimidating when I choose to be, though I stand less than five and one half feet. His eyes widened and his gaze flicked between myself and the Swan. I added a scowl from my arsenal. His eyes narrowed and his suspicion grew very apparent, but he turned to retire into another chamber.

The moment he disappeared, the Swan turned to me with her blue eyes blazing with fury. Beautifully, of course.

“What is the meaning of this?” she hissed. “Who are you?”

I had prepared quite an earnest and poetic plea for this moment. However, in the urgency of my need, I quite forgot it. “I want to be a courtesan!” I blurted.

The Swan drew back in surprise. Despite my desperation, a part of my mind took the time to sigh over the perfect symmetry of her features, even when blank with shock. Admiration aside, however, I was never one to pass up someone else’s silence.

“I am being forced to wed a loathsome fellow,” I continued, my words firing at her like bullets. “I have no recourse but complete ruination!”

She narrowed her gaze at me. “Then go ruin yourself on some hapless horse groom and leave me out of it.” She began to turn away.

I grabbed her hand in desperation. “My relations would only conceal it and sell me off anyway! You have no idea of the power of their ambitions!”

She hesitated. “Sell you?”

I swallowed. “I am naught but a
transaction,
” I said bitterly. Though I was prepared to endow my performance with further theatrics, it turned out to be unnecessary. My voice broke down entirely as my throat closed tight. Hot tears threatened and I thought I might wish to vomit soon.

Until that moment I had hidden my true grief from even myself.

The Swan withdrew her hand gently from my grasp, but she did not turn away again. “This loathsome fellow—who is he?”

I wrapped my arms about my belly. Only with such firm support could I still my trembling enough to speak again. “I am to wed Lord Malcolm Ashford.”

“Ah. Malcolm.” Her brows rose and her lips pursed. “Loathsome, indeed.” Her irony was not lost on me, even in my distracted state.

My chin rose defiantly. “I know he is considered a handsome catch, but he does not love me. He doesn’t even know me. He likes my face and my lineage—”

The Swan’s gaze roved over me. “I daresay that is not all he likes,” she murmured.

I dismissed that notion with a toss of my head. “I do not wish to be some lord’s plaything against my will, nor even his lady wife. I wish to live in my own way, to reside where I choose, to eat and drink and sleep where I choose!”

I heard another carriage roll to a stop before the shop. The Swan straightened. The cool distance returned to her expression. “While I might sympathize with your situation, I cannot help you. I should not even be speaking to a girl such as you!”

I shook my head. “I care nothing for my reputation,” I cried.

The Swan flicked a glance toward the shop door. “I, however, care a great deal for
mine.
It would not do for the mamas of Society to suspect me of luring their daughters from their virtue.”

I looked away, near tears. “I have no mama,” I said. “I have only the keepers of the keys to my prison.”

The young man, apparently having expected the carriage, strode through the room toward the door. The Swan moved as if to turn away from me before the new customer could enter. I clutched at her hand once more, for I truly had nothing to lose. Flagrant coercion seemed like the tiniest of sins.

“Please! You must help me! I have nowhere else to turn!”

“Let me go!” She tugged at her hand and glanced worriedly at the door.

“No! Let them see!” I was not my mother’s daughter for nothing. “What will they think when I fall at your feet and beg at your hem?”

She paled. “You wouldn’t!”

I bent my knees, prepared to wail away.

“Very well!” The Swan pulled away violently. “You may come to me tomorrow morning, early. You must come before the rest of Society begins to make calls.” She took a calling card from her reticule and handed it to me.

“Thank you! Oh, thank you, Swan!” I wanted to embrace her, but feared alienating her entirely. I settled for smiling and, I confess, jumping up and down a bit.

Her eyes narrowed. “This is not agreement. This is merely permission to begin a discussion.” She pressed her lips together. “Although I suspect I shall regret conceding even that much.”

I nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes. Thank you!” With that, I let her slip away and allowed the handsome young man to show me from the shop. I left with my chin high, my heart flying.

I had won the first round. Everyone knew that the first round was the most important.

Except, of course, for the last.

Six

The Seven Delights of the Courtesan

The freedom to dance

To make music

To compose poetry

To paint

To contemplate literature

To converse

To perform

To delight oneself with one’s own mind and soul.

Were it not for Sylla’s discretion and heretofore unbeknownst talent for deceit, I should never have been able to make my way to the Mayfair home of the Swan without my aunt’s interference. Aunt Beryl had decided that it was high time for me to begin planning my triumphant wedding celebration. I demurred, but she would not listen. On my prompting, it was Sylla who begged that I should be permitted to accompany her to visit the house of Baroness G
____
, who kept a cousin of Sylla’s as one of her many maids.

Aunt Beryl immediately turned about and insisted that I wear my best day gown and take the carriage for our excursion, and to leave my calling card, though we visited a lowly maid, and most important of all, to be sure to drop the news of my impending marriage in the hearing of the baroness’s butler.

I murmured my assent and slipped away before she could offer any further advice. Sylla and I giggled as we jolted away in the glossy but ill-hung carriage, giddy with our brief taste of freedom.

Someday soon, I hoped, that freedom would be a permanent flavor upon my tongue.

When my uncle’s sullen driver pulled the carriage to a halt before the baroness’s house, we hopped down before he stirred himself to open the door and waved him on his way. “We shall be hours inside,” I told him breezily. “I have coin to hire a hack for the way home.”

With an indifferent grunt, he nodded and drove away. When we turned, we saw that the baroness’s door stood open and that a gaunt, supercilious fellow in livery regarded us suspiciously from the top step. I grabbed Sylla’s hand and we fled, laughing like naughty children. The baroness would have to do without my intrusion today! I had no fear of discovery, for Aunt Beryl would never dare question her.

The Swan lived a scant few blocks and a million degrees of Society away. Even I knew that outside the streets and squares of the elite lay the small, intimate corners of the demimonde. Her home was every bit as luxurious as the baroness’s and quite a bit more tasteful, I imagined.

The Swan’s housekeeper led us to sit in a very pretty parlor done up in the colors of ivory and palest periwinkle. I thought to myself that if I ever had a home of my own, I should like it to be exactly like the Swan’s. With a few more cushions and a dash of brighter color, of course.

The Swan met us there in a matter of moments. After greeting us graciously, if coolly, she sent the housekeeper away to prepare a tea tray and directed Sylla to await me in the kitchens if she liked.

Sylla glanced at me and I nodded. When she was gone, the Swan seated herself across from me and regarded me with cynical appreciation. “I did not expect you to come.”

I felt as though I had passed some sort of test. “I mean what I say, madam—er, miss…”

“I fancy ‘Your Grace,’ myself,” the Swan said dryly.

I raised a brow. “Why not ride full canter? Why not ‘Your Highness’?”

Her cool reserve faltered as her lips twitched. I knew then that the relentlessly elegant woman before me possessed that most prized of virtues—a sense of humor.

She sat back then, lounging with feline grace upon her sofa. “I allowed you here to plead your case,” she reminded me. “Go on, then. Convince me.”

I took a deep breath and recounted every single rationale that had brought me to her parlor. I wished independence, freedom, a life of my choosing, a destiny of my own.

At length, she held up a hand. “You are forgetting something,” she told me.

I reconsidered every reason and argument I had prepared for this moment. Yes, I had expressed them all.

The Swan smiled softly at my confusion. “My dear little girl, what of love?”

I frankly gaped, I fear to say. “Love?”

She laughed outright then and the exquisite illusion shattered. I realized at that moment that the Swan was no more than a few short years older than myself.

“You might be missing the point, just a bit,” she said, still chuckling. “Or am I mistaken? You do wish to become a courtesan?”

I frowned, blinking at her. “But men pay you for sexual favors. What has love to do with such a cold contract?”

She twinkled at me. “Done properly, there is naught cold about it. In fact, my lover finds me quite warm, indeed.”

“But you are a prost—”

Her hand came up as quickly as a slap, but she simply held it before me, palm outward. “That word has nothing to do with me. A courtesan is not a commodity, she is an artist of love.”

I lifted my chin. “I do not believe in love.”

Relaxing back into her lazy sophistication, the Swan smiled benevolently at me. “Ah, but love believes in you, little girl.”

“I am not a child.” I bridled. “I am eighteen years of age.”

“Ah, you are practically a spinster. Perhaps you had best take that loathsome gentleman up on his offer before you shrivel away.”

Her teasing did not upset me for nothing could deter me from my course. “I have every intention of taking a lover as required,” I told her. “I simply wish a straightforward business arrangement.”

She leaned forward then, completely serious. “You are an ignorant snippet from an ignorant world, so I will not throw you from my house. However, if you call me a prostitute one more time I shall strangle you with your own prissy little bonnet strings! Have I made myself perfectly clear?”

I felt those ice-blue eyes burning me, so I put my cup down and returned the Swan’s gaze. “Are you rethinking your decision to help me?”

She didn’t smile or avert her intense gaze. I began to feel a bit nervous. I had thought myself becoming inured to her eerie beauty, but sitting in silence before her now, I rather felt as though I were being judged by a Faerie Court. Still, stubbornness might be thought a flaw in Society, but it had always served me well. I raised my chin and held that gaze with my spine straight.

And waited.

I felt a small flash of triumph when she finally broke, looking down to stir her tea with a silvery ringing of the spoon against the china. I had no idea what I had won from her. A modicum of respect, perhaps? At the very least, when she looked back up at me it was with a smile. It was nothing like her regal benevolence of before, but more like the shy smile of a young girl who thinks she might have found a friend.

“You are a most unusual girl, Miss Harrington.”

I dared a saucy grin. “You are not but three years my senior, my dear Swan.”

Her smile widened. “I certainly strive to make everyone think so.” Then she tilted her head as she gazed at me. “Why are you doing this? I know you wish independence, but
why
? You could stay the course you’re on and all the world would envy your good fortune.”

I had known the question would come but I felt helpless before the pressure of my feelings. “I cannot explain it. It is as … as if my skin is too small for my spirit. I feel as though I must be free or I should explode! Or worse, shrivel day by day until I disappear. Both ends terrify me more than notoriety or scandal.”

She raised a brow. “Perhaps because you have never experienced such things. You have no idea what it is like to be rejected by your peers.”

I gave a short laugh. “I have no idea what it is like to be accepted by my peers. I have ever been the oddity, the ill-fit piece to the puzzle. I wear a red rose in my hair when the other girls wear white ones. I think too much, I say too little … except for now, apparently. With you I seem to have no trouble speaking my mind with ease.”

“As opposed to?”

I shrugged. “As opposed to speaking my mind and causing chaos.”

She gave a secret little smile. “Hmm. Chaos. One of my favorite flavors.”

“Really?” I asked faintly. “I prefer mayhem myself.”

Her lips quirked. “You would.” She lifted her gaze and stared thoughtfully at some point over my shoulder. After a moment, she smiled slightly and shook her head. “I have no doubt whatsoever that I shall live to regret this but … it is time for your lessons to begin.”

I felt my heart give a leap of fear, yet I was equally thrilled. My pleas were to be granted.

I would be a courtesan.

I watched the Swan stand and move gracefully to the door. “If you will come with me?”