6. The Education Begins
THE EDUCATION BEGINS
She folded her hands on her lap, her posture easy, though he suspected the stillness was more of a… readiness. She was prepared to argue. Prepared to be dismissed. Prepared, perhaps, to be hurt.
The thought sat poorly with him.
After just a moment, her mouth softened, although she wasn’t smiling. “The Domus is not a typical brothel.”
His jaw tightened at the word on her lips.
Though he had no right to object to her using it. He had called such places worse things in his own mind.
“Your men will learn that soon enough,” she continued, calmly. “And not all of what they will learn has to do with physical pleasure.”
He looked up, dubious already. “No?”
“No.” A faint, private amusement touched her expression. “Though I should not pretend pleasure is unimportant. It is merely not the entirety of it.”
“What else, then?”
“Habits,” she said. “Beliefs. Consideration.”
Reginald barely kept himself from letting out a laugh of disbelief.
But she continued. “Many of our gentlemen clients have never been taught to ask what a woman wants. They have only been taught what their money, rank, family, or marriage allows them to claim.”
“You’re telling me the women of The Domus disabuse such gentlemen of their entitlement?” Delusional.
“We try.” Her gaze held his. “Some so, in fact, leave with better habits than they brought. They learn that women are more than bodies made for a gentleman’s amusement. That we possess thoughts and opinions of our own. That we may be valued for more than a tumble.”
He did not answer.
Miss Darling’s voice gentled. “And later, when they go on to marry, perhaps they carry that knowledge into their union. If they do not marry, perhaps they are less likely to dismiss the thoughts of a sister, a mother, a servant, or any woman who has less power than they do.”
“You’re saying a visit to a brothel improves upon a man’s character.” This time, he didn’t even try hiding his laugh of disbelief.
Miss Darling barely flinched.
“Not exactly.” Her honesty startled him. “We do not flatter ourselves that we are reforming the gentlemen of London. Some men are simply too devoted to themselves to learn anything useful. However.” She paused meaningfully. “Those men lose the privilege of patronizing this house.”
“And the rest?”
“They learn that decent behavior is… rewarded.” She met his gaze boldly.
Reginald glanced down at the ledgers again.
The figures swam beneath his gaze. Individual earnings. Household expenses. Payments to physicians. Staff salaries.
“You make this place sound like some bloody academy for teaching society’s finest basic decency.”
Rose’s mouth curved. “Hardly. The occasional evening here and there doesn’t cure a lifetime of taking advantage.”
So, she wasn’t completely deluded, then.
Only mostly.
Because none of that changed the transactional nature of what The Domus offered.
“You said the women have choices.”
“We do.”
We.
Pointing out her part in all of this affected him. It was accurate.
But with it, he was forced to imagine Rose Darling with other men.
Not one. Not merely a handful.
Dozens, perhaps. Hundreds?
The thought struck him with a force he found both unreasonable and deeply unpleasant. Men purchasing access to her mouth, her laughter, her softness—things Reginald had no business wanting for himself.
He didn’t like it.
He forced the thought down.
“It cannot be that simple,” he said. He knew men all too well.
Miss Darling didn’t answer at once.
“You aren’t wrong,” she conceded. “Some men deceive us for months. Then one evening, after losing heavily at cards, or suffering some private humiliation, he reveals his bad temper, shows us who he really is.”
Her fingers tightened in her lap.
“Others sign the contracts, agree to the rules, then decide once the door closes that those rules don’t apply to them.”
“And then?”
“No woman here is expected to manage such a man alone. Boris knows who enters the house. Mr. Huxley keeps records of every client. The women watch over one another. There are bellpulls in every receiving room, and the doors do not lock a woman inside with a gentleman.”
“And if he ignores a refusal?”
“He is removed and forbidden to return.”
“And if he does worse than ignore it?”
Something shuttered behind her eyes.
“Boris has associates to deal with them.”
Reginald studied her.
He ought to have expected something of the sort.
Harry possessed scruples, certainly, but not the sort that would have prevented him from dispatching of men who preyed on the vulnerable. Men like their father would not have been tolerated at The Domus.
Reginald nodded. “You believe you are safe here.”
“We are safer,” Miss Darling corrected. “There is a difference. I don’t think anyone in the world is entirely safe anywhere. But here we have doors that lock against the outside world. Money that belongs to us. People who notice when something is wrong. And one another.”
She paused.
“That is more than many women possess.”
True. Still—
“And when a woman no longer wishes to… engage with clients?”
“She stops.”
“Just like that?”
“If that is what she chooses, then yes.” Rose’s tone turned matter-of-fact. “Some take fewer appointments and help manage the household. Some keep the accounts or train the newer women. Others find work in shops or private homes. A few even marry.”
“They cannot return to their families.”
Miss Darling’s mouth twisted. “What families?”
The question silenced him.
“It is not perfect,” she continued. “I have never claimed that it is. But your brother helped women find another path whenever he could. No one is cast into the street merely because she has become inconvenient.”
Inconvenient.
The word struck with ugly force.
Reginald looked toward the window.
In his mind’s eye, briefly, he saw a young woman standing at the servants’ entrance of his father’s house, her belly swollen beneath a worn cloak. Months before, she had been admitted through the front.
That day, his father had refused even to see her. She no longer pleased him. Therefore, she no longer mattered.
Reginald forced the memory aside.
“None of that alters the bargain itself.”
“But they—”
He could hear no more. “Perhaps it is safer here. Perhaps your rules make it less cruel than the places I have seen.”
His hand flattened against the desk.
“But it doesn’t change the fact that men arrive with money and women give their bodies in return.”
He met her eyes. She kept silent.
“So forgive me if guards at the doors and fine furnishings fail to impress me. However carefully it is managed, men come to this place to purchase women.”
“No one owns us.”
“It is prostitution.”
Miss Darling went perfectly still.
Not the composed stillness he had noticed before. This was harder. Colder. A door closing behind her eyes.
“Yes,” she said. “It is.”
There was no shame in her voice.
For reasons Reginald could not explain, that unsettled him more than anger or defensiveness would have.
The enigmatic woman who had haunted his dreams for weeks rose and smoothed her skirts.
“It seems nothing I say today will change your mind.” That should have settled the matter, but then— “We should begin your tour before the patrons arrive.”
She crossed the room and opened the door without waiting to see if he would follow.
Reginald did.