Chapter Three
Being a whore was a bit like being a physician. You took the measure of a man, diagnosed him, and administered a treatment. And Tha?s suspected all Lord Eden needed from her was a bit of confidence. He was a handsome man, after all—tall and slender with black hair and olive skin and deep brown eyes—and he was rich. He could marry most anyone without learning a thing from her. These lessons were for him—to make him as assured in bed as he was outside of it.
She didn’t need a month for this. A few nights of tips and tricks would do it.
She was not worried about making Eden a perfect lover. What was perfection, anyway, especially when every soul has their own tastes in bed?
What she was worried about was how in Satan’s name she’d pass the time here.
In London her days were overflowing. There was her mess of friends, any one of whom might want to share a meal or a laugh. There were her girls, the young harlots she trained and dressed and fed so they could leave the streets for better-paying, safer bagnios. There was the Institute, which she and her fellow Sirens visited several times a week. There were her patrons. There was the theater, the pleasure gardens, the opera, the dissolute soirees.
Here there was—what? Sewing. Milking cows.
She put away her things, which took no more than a quarter hour seeing as how few of them she’d been allowed to keep. She would have loved to change into a pretty gown for dinner, were her finery not locked away in Eden’s barn. She settled for dabbing her face and bosom with water from a pitcher on the bureau, spritzing herself with her spicy eau de parfum, and fluffing out her hair.
She was already bored.
She’d never been good at lacking for company. Aloneness made her itchy.
She’d make Eden talk to her.
She went down the noisy stairs—this whole house creaked like a listing ship every time she took a step across the ancient floorboards—and found him in the kitchen. He was at the long table in the center of the room, coatless in his white lawn shirt, sleeves rolled above his elbows, rolling out dough.
There was flour on his cheekbone and a few flecks in his hair, which had gone mussed as he bent over his task. It made a boy of him.
“What’s all this?” she asked.
“Your supper,” he said.
She eyed the ingredients arrayed in tidy little bowls around him. “What’s my supper going to be?”
“Quiche. It’s a pie of egg and cheese and—”
“I know what a quiche is, Your Lordship. I’m the fancy kind of whore.”
“Of course,” he said mildly, not ceasing the fluid movements of his hands as he pressed a round of dough into a tin. She liked the way it made his forearms flex. “Forgive me. Not everyone is familiar with French cookery.”
“Is that the kind of cooking you do?”
“Mostly. My mother was French. She taught me.”
Ah. Half-French, he was. That would explain his olive skin.
“Why?” she asked.
He shrugged. “She enjoyed it. And I liked to help her.”
Tha?s wrinkled her nose. “Lesson one for charming your future bride, hire a cook.”
He laughed. “I do have cooks at the abbey and in London.”
“The abbey?”
“Kendal Abbey. My family home. It’s in Cumbria.”
“Is it very fine?”
“It’s large, if that’s what you mean. It’s surrounded by quite a pretty forest, on a small mountain overlooking a lake.”
“How big?”
“Sixty rooms, or so.”
She wished they were staying there.
“You’ll want your ladies to know they’ll be mistress of such a grand place. They like that sort of thing.”
“Their mothers will already know,” he said. “Believe me, they keep track.”
Ah. Of course. Mothers. A class of woman Tha?s was not experienced with, being an orphan.
“I’ve thought more about your lessons,” she told Eden. “I have a plan for your first week of schooling.”
He looked at her with interest. “Oh?”
“We’ll practice courting first. Conversation. Dancing. A stroll. A private call. And we’ll practice your proposal.”
He raised a brow. “Wouldn’t that require knowing who I’m going to propose to?”
“Why?”
“I’d want to compliment her appealing attributes.”
“You can compliment mine,” she said, gesturing at her hips.
He blushed. “I would never comment on a woman’s appearance.”
“But you would notice it.”
He focused intently on the onions he was chopping. “Well, I suppose one does.”
“No harm in wanting a comely lassie. Tell us, what do you like?”
He shook his head, clearly embarrassed. “Looks aren’t of particular importance to me.”
Lies. No one was immune to a fair turn of the head.
“But if you could build a girl from scratch, you must have some druthers as to what she’d be like,” she insisted. “You must know what you’re looking for in a wife.”
“Ah,” he said. “Of course. She’d be young enough to bear several children, but not too young. I don’t want a maiden fresh out of the nursery. She’d like the country, as that’s where I prefer to spend my time when I don’t need to be in London. She’d be sympathetic to progressive politics and educated enough to understand such things and take an interest. She’d be nurturing and kind, so as to be a natural mother to our children. And she’d be polite, with elegant manners.”
In other words, imagine a woman completely unlike Tha?s, and one would have a perfect match. Ironic that she was the woman he wished to practice on. At least she understood politics, education be damned. And she could be polite when she chose to. Though, it wasn’t a choice she often made. Being vulgar was quite a bit more fun, when you could get away with it.
“That’s all lovely. But you still haven’t mentioned what she looks like.”
He slid a bowl of freshly washed mushrooms to her. “Would you mind slicing these?”
He was trying to distract her.
“I would mind, in fact,” she said, sliding it back. “And stop dodging the question.”
“I simply don’t see why it matters.”
“It matters because to make all those babies you’re imagining, you’ll need to want to fuck your wife.”
She hoped to get a rise out of him, as his stubbornness was annoying, but he just looked at her calmly. “You’re being crass deliberately.”
“Sex is crass, I’m sorry to tell you,” she said. “It’s noisy, wet, and messy, if you’re doing it right.”
This did disturb his calm. He scrunched up his face in distaste. “Please stop.”
“If you can’t talk about swiving, I don’t know how you plan to do it. But that’s a lesson for another day. We’re still onto the basics of courtship, where we’ll be stuck for the whole month as you can’t even admit what you fancy in a lady.”
“Very well,” he said, sounding cross. “She’d be pretty.”
She snorted. “Let’s be a bit more precise.”
“She’d have ginger hair,” he said quietly, to the table. “Freckles across her nose. A figure on the... ample side.”
Well, no wonder he hadn’t wanted to admit it. He was describing her.
She moved closer to him. “A bounteous bosom?” she asked.
“Uh, I suppose, er, yes.”
She grabbed his hand and plopped it on her arse.
“A nice, fat rump?”
He snatched his hand away like she’d put it in the fire.
“Tha?s!”
She sighed. “I reckon we’ll have to add rump-squeezing to the list.”
“She could not possibly enjoy rump-squeezing.”
“Says you, the female expert.”
He did not reply. Instead he turned his back and carefully transferred the quiche to the bake-oven.
Convenient like.
“How long until supper?” she asked. “It’s been a long day of travel, and I’d not want to starve.”
“Ah, I’m sorry,” he said. He grabbed a loaf of bread and cut her a slice, which he slathered with butter and sprinkled with salt. “Here you are.”
Upon closer inspection, the bread was flecked with green. She dropped it on the table, disgusted. “It’s moldy!”
He laughed and handed it back to her. “That’s not mold, it’s rosemary. My own recipe. Try it.”
She took a tiny bite. It was delicious.
“You invented this?”
“I fiddled with a version my mother used to make.”
She shoved more in her mouth. “It’s heaven.”
“Thank you.”
She munched her bread and watched him mix oil into a bowl of mustard, vinegar, and something white he smashed and then cut into tiny pieces.
“What’s that?”
“Garlic.”
It smelled sharp and grassy. She liked it.
“You’re not going to cook it?”
“I’m going to emulsify it and dress lettuce and herbs in it for our salad.”
“Lettuce? Am I a rabbit, then?”
He stuck a spoon in the dressing and held it out to her. “Taste.”
She delicately licked it with the very tip of her tongue. It was bright and tart.
“That’s good,” she allowed.
“It will be even better on your rabbit food.”
She watched him tear bits of lettuce and other green things into a bowl with his bare hands, then concoct a mix of apples and cinnamon he put in a pot over the fire.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“A simple applesauce, for pudding.”
“I like chocolate for my pudding.”
“Noted for next time.”
He moved through the kitchen with as much authority as any cook she’d ever seen. She liked watching him. It was too bad that male cookery was not a quality sought after among ladies on the marriage mart, for he would find a wife in no time, his supposed lack of skill in the bedroom be damned.
Though, she was even less inclined to believe he was as ignorant in the bedroom as he claimed after watching him in the kitchen. He moved with confidence in his own body and had deft hands. And there was something sultry about the way he tasted this and stirred that and held out foods for her to inhale their aromas.
He made cookery look erotical.
The kitchen began to smell savory, and he removed the quiche from the bake-oven. The top had puffed up into a beautiful golden crown that made her mouth water just to look at.
“Can we eat it now?” she asked. Her stomach rumbled loud enough for him to hear.
“Not yet. It has to cool. Can I offer you a glass of wine?” He gestured at a bottle with an unreadable label she assumed was in French.
“Yes,” she said.
He poured the pale liquid into a glass for her and then poured one for himself. He raised it, meeting her eye. “To you, for joining me here.”
“To me,” she agreed.
The wine was tasty, with hints of meadow and earth that should not have been delicious but were.
“Not bad,” she said.
He smiled at her tolerantly. “I import it. I brought it from my cellar at the abbey.”
She nursed her wine while he stirred his pot of apples, which made the kitchen smell spicy and sweet. She loved that smell; it was like the hug of a mother she’d never had.
At long last, he took a sharp knife and cut two large slices of the quiche. It oozed with cheese. He added generous portions of the salad to both their plates, then offered them to her. “Could you put these on the table?”
“Am I the footman now?” she asked, but she took the plates anyway.
He followed behind her with bread, butter, and the bowl of steaming apples.
The dining table was small and round, and they sat beside each other.
“Please, begin,” he said, gesturing for her to take the first bite.
She did not need to be begged. She chomped into the steaming quiche, and it was heaven: fluffy and gooey, with bits of mushroom and bacon and something herbaceous.
“Toothsome,” she said.
He smiled. “I’m glad you like it.”
He began to eat his own meal. He’d gone rather stiff, however. The ease he’d had in the kitchen was gone. Almost like he was at a loss to be alone with her without some task to keep him busy.
“Let’s practice your gab,” she said.
“My what?”
She assumed her finest accent. “Your conversation with the fairer sex, milord.”
“Indeed, yes,” he said quickly. He paused. “How would you recommend I begin?”
“You know how to talk to a lady, Eden. I’ve seen you do it a hundred times with right elegance.” He had perfect manners, after all.
“Yes,” he parried, “but never with a woman I’ve wished to marry.”
“Well, it’s no different. A girl’s a girl.”
“Very well.” He brightened his voice. “Terrible weather today.”
She rolled her eyes. “Rain. How seductive. Don’t talk of the weather.”
“Why? It’s universally relevant and makes a strong impact on one’s happiness.”
“Not one’s lust. Unless you happen to like swiving in a storm, no offense intended. We all have our little preferences. I suppose lightning gives the act a rather—”
He blushed. “Please stop. My future wife would definitely not talk to me of swiving.”
“Not on your first meeting,” she allowed. But he had gone red enough for her to take pity on him.
“Let’s see,” she mused. “Why don’t you talk about your abbey? Great houses are magnets for fine ladies.”
He nodded, looking less ill.
“We recently landscaped the rear gardens in the French style in Cumbria,” he said. “And there’s a fountain imported from Saint Petersburg.”
“How beautiful it must be,” she said, adding a high-pitched girlish croon to her most cultivated voice. “I’d so love to see it. Perhaps someday you will arrange a visit for me and Mama.”
He burst out laughing. “Where did that accent come from?”
She glared at him. “You think I can only talk like a gutter-bred slattern.”
“No, I simply wasn’t aware you could also talk like a drawing room miss.”
“Some gents like to whore with a gentle-bred lady. I have my tricks.”
“Can you do others?”
“Oui,” she said in a French accent. “I adore zees wine. Magnifique!”
“Needs a bit of work on the Rs to pass as Parisian, but not bad.”
“How do you know so much about what Parisian whores sound like, Monsieur Eden?”
“I told you, my mother was French. Although, er, not a whore. Obviously.”
“More’s the pity.”
“We seem to have gotten off the topic at hand.”
“Yes. Tell me more about your beautiful estate.”
“Well, we have sixty acres. Much of it’s grazing land, but we also raise livestock. Actually, we had quite an exciting year. A new blend of sheep feed has caused the herd to increase their weight by thirty percent in nearly half the amount of time we formerly—”
Tha?s reached out and put her hand over his lips. “No.”
He looked flustered. “No?”
“We do not talk about sheep slop to women we want to marry.”
He looked skeptical. “I agree it’s not the most, er, delicate line of conversation, but animal husbandry is a large part of my life. Should I not be honest about that?”
“It’s a part of your life your wife won’t care about unless she’s humoring you or happens to love lamb more than is good and natural.”
“Plenty of women are interested in economics.”
“Well then, wait for her to say, ‘Why, Lord Eden, I’m so very curious about your sheep. Tell me, how long does it take you to fatten them up for the slaughter?’”
“That accent truly is very amusing. If I didn’t know you, I’d think you grew up on St. James’s Square.”
“I grew up servicing the men of St. James’s Square,” she said.
The sparkle went out of his eyes. “Were you very young when you started?”
“Auctioned off at fourteen,” she said jauntily, though the memory was not very pleasant.
“That’s too young. How awful.”
She shrugged. “Plenty of girls in the brothel weren’t so lucky. The madam would have started me younger except she thought she could get more if she waited for my tits to come in. And come in they did.”
He pointedly did not look at her tits.
“How was it that you were in a brothel at such a young age?”
“Usual reasons. Orphan. Fine-dressed lady found me on the streets and offered me a position as her serving girl. Didn’t mention I’d be serving in a whorehouse, and I was too young to know better anyway.”
“How old were you?”
“Nine.”
“Tha?s, I’m so sorry.”
She disliked his pity. She’d done well for herself, her youth be damned. And everyone had a bit of trial in their past.
She waved his sympathy away. “Wasn’t you who tricked me.”
“I mean I’m sorry it happened to you. That you lost your parents so young and didn’t have an adult to protect you from the procuress.”
She shrugged. She’d long ago stopped crying on that account.
“What happened after you were sold?” Eden asked.
“The baron who took my cherry was nice enough. Kept me for a year. Then passed me on to a Swedish prince. Then a French merchant—lived in Paris for two years. After a few more stints as a mistress I got a reputation for being the delectable courtesan that I am, and I went on my own. One client a week, handpicked, just like I like it.”
“You like it?” He seemed so genuinely curious, she was not even offended by the question.
“Of course I like it. Wouldn’t have done it this long if I didn’t. I make enough to support myself in style working nought but a day a week. And I’m the best at what I do. As you’ll know if you ever hop into bed with me.”