Chapter 1
Six Years Later
S ilas Windham hadn’t been to the Donville Masquerade in six years, yet he found it much the same as he remembered it with its unapologetic celebration of pleasure and sin.
He’d been in America all that time—running, his siblings would call it.
And he would snort and deny it, but in his heart he knew it was true.
He had been running for almost every day since he’d left London.
Of course, none of that mattered. He’d returned to the city a week ago now, and had been trying to find some way to ease back into his old life and finding it ill-fitting.
Like he’d changed too much and his old clothes no longer fell around him as they should.
Perhaps he had at that. When he looked around the great hall at the people flirting and teasing and often fucking, he felt little stir of longing. Once that had been his currency.
“Is that Silas? My Silas?”
He turned at the female voice calling out to him and couldn’t help but smile as his tangled emotions faded a fraction. “Simone,” he said as his former lover reached him and leaned in to kiss first one cheek then the other. He took both her hands and shook his head. “You haven’t aged a day.”
It wasn’t a pretty lie. Somehow she hadn’t. Although Simone was more than half a decade older than his thirty years, her dark hair and eyes were just as bright, there was not an additional wrinkle to her cheek. It seemed her life of joyful excess suited her.
“You are a flatterer, my dear,” she said, and slid her arm through his.
From any other woman, especially a courtesan like this one, he would have thought this was her trying to make a physical connection to perhaps land him again now that he was back in London. But Simone had always been as good a friend as she was a lover.
“How long has it been?” she asked.
“Six years,” he said, and refused to add that he could actually mark the time down to the day, the hour almost. Not because Simone had been so very important to him, but because just hours after his last heated encounter with her something had happened to him that had been life changing.
“Too long,” she said. “How are you, then? Are you home to see your brother?”
He tensed a little and pulled away from her grip. She let him go and no reaction to that rejection registered on her lovely face. “Yes,” he said, short but hopefully not cruel. He simply had no interest in getting into that topic with anyone. “But how are you?”
“Very well, thank you,” she said. “I’m currently affiliated with the Marquess of Harding and he treats me well. Not as…passionate as some of my lovers, you included, but every chapter of a book like mine is different, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “You have always written a fascinating tale, Simone. No one could deny it.”
“How long will you be in London, then?” she asked. “Are you back permanently?”
He hesitated. There was the question, wasn’t it? He’d come “home” to a place that had never felt home. But the place he’d run to hadn’t felt that way either. Would he stay here? Would he run back? Would he go somewhere else?
“I’m not certain,” he finally admitted. “A month, maybe more if this all doesn’t become unbearable.”
“Hardly enough time!” Simone said with a false pout that turned into a wicked smile. “You know someone in my acquaintance is going to be thrilled to have you here.”
He blinked at that surprising and entirely confident declaration. “What?”
Her expression became teasing, playful, as it was often wont to do, and she laughed. “Oh, nothing.”
“It doesn’t sound like nothing, you cheeky little minx.” He was laughing but his interest was truly piqued, and that was something. “Are you saying I have a secret admirer?”
Her laughter boomed out over the crowd and caused a few to look their way. “Oh, I wouldn’t ruin it for you. It is so lovely to have you back, darling. Will I see you at Vivien’s later this week?”
Vivien Manning, another infamous courtesan, was hosting a fete in a few days’ time and somehow she had been aware of his return, as well. Of course, the courtesans always knew everything, Silas had always admired them for the information they shared to protect themselves and each other.
“Yes, the invitation hit my tray before my trunks were even unpacked.”
“Well, it’s not every day we see such a welcome return,” Simone said. She squeezed his hand. “I’ll see you then.”
He watched as she darted off into the crowd, back to her protector or some other lover or to who knew what entertainments. Once she was gone, he sighed. No, he really didn’t know if his was who he was anymore, where he fit. And that was like a weight around his neck.
* * *
T he courtesans of London were a network of sorts. Staying connected, sharing information, it made everyone safer, but also gave insider facts so that a woman might make a quicker connection, get a better settlement or avoid an entanglement that would ask her to perform acts she didn’t like.
Once monthly, the courtesans gathered at a rotating residence, to drink tea and compare notes and coo over clothing and jewels that had been gifted by grateful protectors.
Arabella loved these nights of friendship and connection and tonight she stood with her two sisters, Evelina and Julia, and they watched the milling crowd of women with smiles on their faces.
“Georgina looks well,” Julia said. “She seems to like her new arrangement with Lord Leughton.”
“Her old one was so ghastly,” Evelina reflected with a shiver. “It’s one thing to agree to those kinds of things, it’s another to have a man want to force them.”
Arabella nodded. “Well, he’s on the list now, isn’t he? Not a one of us will grace us with our attention. He’s shunned. He can go back to his wife.”
“Well, considering she’s having an affair with Lucy and Lucy’s protector, Mr. Horace, I doubt he’ll be having much luck with her either,” Julia giggled.
Arabella pivoted to face her. “ What ? I hadn’t heard that.”
“It’s all very new, apparently,” Julia said. “I bumped into Lucy at the opera two nights ago and she was with them both. Couldn’t stop smiling.”
Arabella smiled herself. It was always lovely to see a person come into their own.
To do what they wished and what pleased them.
Of course, she worried if their friend was so happy, she might have developed feelings for one or both of her lovers.
That could lead to hurt, but every courtesan had to learn that lesson for themselves if they couldn’t see it from those around them.
She had never risked her heart with any of her lovers. It was part of her charm that she was a dancing sprite who pleased and laughed and charmed and then flitted away without so much as a look backward as she counted her settlement.
At present, of course, she was between protectors.
She had parted ways with the lovely second son of an earl just a week before.
She’d taught him things that had made his eyes go delightfully wide and then sent him on his way as soon as he’d started talking about a young lady he was properly courting.
He liked her, would probably love her eventually, and he would be happy in his choice.
He’d allowed Arabella to keep all the jewels he’d given her over the few months they’d been lovers and added nicely to her coffers with a monthly annuity to last for the next year.
Perhaps she’d wallpaper the breakfast room.
It could use some freshening up and she liked to make it pretty since it was one of the spaces in her home where she and her sisters were the only ones who came. A private place not for lovers.
“ Arabella !”
She jolted as Evelina said her name with some force. When she glanced at her sisters, they were both staring expectantly.
“Oh, was I woolgathering? My apologies. Just wondering if I should do green or blue in the breakfast room if I redecorate.”
Julia laughed, her face brightening with pleasure. “Oh, green! A lovely spring green would be so happy.”
“For you?” Arabella reached out to boop a fingertip on her sister’s nose. “Anything.”
“I was asking you who you were considering for your next protector,” Evelina said. “While you stared off into space thinking about paint and wall hangings.”
“Yes, you never go long without one,” Julia said, and her face fell a fraction.
She had been without a protector for over a month.
Arabella’s younger sister was far more selective than she was.
Or at least had fewer resources to catch herself a new gentleman within hours of her last. Sometimes Arabella worried about her.
She was such a romantic at heart and that was the way courtesans ended badly.
Not that Julia would ever be unprotected.
She and Evelina had been ensuring that all their lives.
“Well, I like having someone rich and powerful on my arm,” Arabella said.
“I let them think I’m the decoration for them, but it’s the opposite.
As for picking a new one, I know my worth.
I’ve watched them sniff around me and place their wagers and claim that they would have me since the moment Geoffrey stepped out my door.
There will be a frenzy in a few more days. I’ll have my pick.”
“And what do you want?” Evelina asked as she wrinkled her brow. She had been with the same lover for nearly two years now, the Duke of Southwater, who they all cheekily called Harry after his given name, Harold.
“Whoever pays the best settlement and benefits, I suppose,” Arabella said with a wink, though for a moment she had a flash of a memory that was not new.
The man in the garden all those years ago, his green eyes meeting hers and holding there in the heights of his pleasure.
She pushed the thought away. She could savor it later, as she often did when she entered the realm of fantasy.
“Is that all?” Julia asked. “You’ll only look for some man’s pocketbook?”
“Well, fun is also nice,” Arabella said. “And satisfaction if it’s possible.”