Chapter Thirty-Seven
For a moment, all three of them were still and silent, locked in shock.
“Mind closing the door?” Tha?s finally found the wits to say. “I’ve got a prick inside me.”
Cornelia slammed the door immediately.
Alastair, still holding her, looked like he might faint.
She didn’t blame him. She was shaken up by what had just happened between them. It was like not a minute had passed since they’d left the cottage.
It was like coming home.
But she couldn’t let herself get weepy. It was just sex, just a frig in a damned closet, not something that should break her heart.
“I’m so sorry,” Alastair said. “Christ.”
“Don’t worry. Not the first time Cornelia’s caught me fucking in a linen room.”
“Really?”
“Well, no. I don’t usually fuck in linen rooms unless it’s by special request.”
“A request you get a lot?”
“You’re my first.”
He tightened his arms around her. “Glad to be your first in something.”
“A rarity indeed.”
He kissed her cheek. Oddly, he seemed to have calmed down. He seemed almost happy.
“You’re not having a fit over this?” she asked.
“I’m not sure that that would help. The damage is done.”
The damage.
That cut through her. Reminded her how he thought of her. More like a risk than a woman.
She parted from him and handed him a towel. For two people who hadn’t even used a bed, they’d both managed to get extremely sticky. She’d have to come back in here later with a mop and clean.
But first she had to get Eden out of this building so that she could be upset in peace.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Cornelia won’t say anything. Nothing shocks her.”
“She looked and sounded plenty shocked to me.”
“I’ll threaten her. She’s scared of me. Now come, let’s sneak you downstairs.”
She moved to open the door, but he put his hand on her arm to stop her. “Wait,” he said.
God, she loved his touch. Even the light pressure of his fingers on her arm made her body brighten.
“What?” she asked.
“Tha?s, I was thinking about something. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, actually, and seeing you today makes me wonder if perhaps there’s something to it.”
He looked at her intently, boring into her with his eyes in a way that made her nervous.
“Well, what is it?”
“Say I can’t find a wife this season,” he said.
She just about stopped breathing.
Was it possible he felt the same way she did? That life was simply less when they were not together? That the sun was not as bright and the air caught in your lungs?
Could it be he wanted forever, damn the consequences?
“What if I took a mistress instead and tried again later on?” he asked.
Oh.
How stupid of her.
Of course he was not proposing marriage.
He wouldn’t.
Ever.
Nothing had changed.
“Well, that’s a question for yourself to answer, I’d reckon,” she said, trying to hide her disappointment.
He swallowed, hard. “I think I have. I’m asking you. What if you were my mistress?”
Her?
He had a slight smile on his face, like he expected her to be pleased by this invitation. And that almost brought her to her knees. How could he ask her this, when he was one of the few people she’d spoken to about her dreams?
He might as well have called her a sheep again.
She wanted to slap him.
“Eden,” she said sharply.
“Alastair,” he corrected.
“Alastair,” she bit out, “the answer is no.”
His face fell. Like he was surprised. Like he really thought that after everything, she’d just happily agree to be his hired woman.
“Why not?” he asked. He looked crestfallen.
It was infuriating.
“Because I don’t want to be a mistress,” she cried. “And I told you that, and told you why. Weren’t you listening?”
“I was, Tha?s.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “I was. I’ve listened to everything you’ve said, and I know that you didn’t like being kept by a single man in the past. But it wouldn’t be like that with me. I wouldn’t own you or ask you to obey me. You could do whatever you like. But at night, you could come home to me.”
The idea of coming home to him made her guts twist. It was everything she wanted.
But she wouldn’t come home to a man who could only ever think of her company as something he could buy.
After the bungled night with her last patron, she’d made a firm decision. She was retiring.
“No,” she said. “I’ve stopped taking paid lovers. You were my last one.”
“You’ve what?” He looked at her like she’d said she had become a sea captain and sailed to the Arctic. Which cut her to the bone. That he could only see her on her back.
“But what will you do instead?” he asked.
“I’ll help look after this place. Tend to the girls.”
He nodded slowly. “I see. You’ll be wonderful at that.”
“I’m wonderful at most things.”
“You are,” he said. “But perhaps you could do both. You could be my companion and still—”
“I don’t want to be a mistress, Alastair,” she said. “I want to be a wife. And if I’m your companion, I won’t be able to meet a man who loves me. And you won’t meet your lady either. So let’s call this what it is. A nice affair that ran its course.”
He closed his eyes. A muscle twitched in the side of his face. She could see he was truly pained by this.
For a second, she wondered if he would do the thing she’d fantasized about. Tell her that she was the woman he wanted to marry.
But when he opened his eyes, they were full of disappointment. Not hope for some imagined future. Alastair Eden was a realist. He knew they could not be together.
He’d known it all along.
They both had.
“Yes,” he said. “Of course. I’m being foolish.”
His pain was obvious. It almost made her want to weep. For how foolish this all was. Two people who wanted each other, kept apart by mores and rules.
But she would not cry in front of him. She’d do it later. Mourn this thing that couldn’t be, alone.
“I’ll see you out,” she said.
“No need. Take care, Tha?s.”
He bowed to her deeply and left the little room.
She waited until the sound of his footsteps faded before exiting the closet.
Then she collapsed on one of the dormitory beds and let the tears roll down her cheeks.
It was no time at all before Cornelia and Seraphina were beside her.
“What in the name of God is going on?” Seraphina said. “Cornelia says you were fucking Lord Eden in the linen pantry? He just ran out of here without saying a word of goodbye. Now you’re in tears? Did he do something to you?”
“He asked me to be his mistress,” Tha?s said, wiping away the tears.
“Just today? Out of the blue? While swiving you?” Cornelia asked.
“Well, he waited ’til the swiving part was over.”
“And this made you sad enough to cry?” Seraphina asked.
“Darling, what is wrong?” Cornelia said. “I didn’t know you even liked Eden. Have you even seen him since last year? None of this makes sense.”
“Camberwell didn’t really win me in the auction,” Tha?s admitted. “It was a ruse to cover up the fact that Eden did.”
“What?” her friends gasped out at once.
“When I was in Gloucestershire, it was with Eden. I was with him for the month. He asked Camberwell to bid on his behalf, to keep the whole thing secret.” She paused. “Don’t tell anyone. It’s important to him that no one knows.”
She might be angry with him, but she would not break her word.
“Of course we won’t tell,” Seraphina said. “But how strange. He doesn’t strike me as the type to keep a mistress. Much less pay exorbitantly for one.”
“He’s not. He hired me to train him how to be a good husband before he goes off to find a bride.”
“Oh,” Cornelia said. “How...”
“Considerate?” Seraphina offered.
“Yes. Even rather sweet,” Cornelia said, as if she were confused.
“He’s very sweet,” Tha?s wailed. “So sweet that I fell in bloody love with him.”
“In love with him!” Cornelia erupted.
“I can’t explain it either. It just happened. I taught him to rut, and something went wrong in my brain.”
“Eden didn’t know how to have sex?” Seraphina asked.
“Well, he thought he wasn’t good at it, and he wanted to be perfect before he married. No harm in that.”
“It’s rather romantic,” Seraphina said.
Tha?s sighed. “I know.”
“Did it work?” Cornelia asked.
“Yes,” Tha?s said. “He’s very, very good. I miss him.”
“Well, why not agree to be his mistress? What’s the harm?”
“I don’t want to be a mistress. I want to have a man of my own. Just one. I want to make a family with him. Be a wife. Be chosen.I know neither of you ever wanted to marry, and it must sound crazed from the likes of me, given what I am, but it’s what I want.”
She braced for them to give her all their arguments against it. To say she’d lose what rights she had, that she’d not have independence, that love was not a question of binding herself into unfair laws.
But neither of them said a word in judgment.
“You don’t sound crazed,” Seraphina said. “Or unworthy. If that’s what you want, then you should have it.”
“Maybe if you told Eden how you feel, he would marry you,” Cornelia said.
She laughed bitterly. “I did tell Eden that, and he said—and these were his exact words—‘I could sooner marry one of my sheep.’”
The two of them looked aghast.
“A bloody sheep?” Seraphina said.
“I will snip off his balls,” Cornelia said. “Immediately.”
“It’s fine,” Tha?s said. “He didn’t mean it in a hateful way. It’s not that he scorns me. I think he cares for me. But he isn’t the type to flout the rules. He’s too proper. He values his reputation, wants to be perfect. He’s the last man in England who’d make a whore his wife. And I won’t be with a man who wants someone else to have his family.”
“Nor should you,” Cornelia said. “You deserve a man who cherishes you exactly as you are and who’d consider it the honor of his life to marry you.”
The words were kind. But they didn’t make it hurt less that Alastair would never be that man.
“I hope you’re right,” Tha?s said.
“I know she’s right,” Seraphina said.
“I’m rarely wrong,” Cornelia said.
“Don’t puff yourself, Duchess,” Tha?s retorted.
“Don’t call me Duchess,” Cornelia said.
“Let’s not spar just now,” said Seraphina. “Tha?s might cry again.”
“Only because I love you,” Tha?s said.
“As much as it pains me to admit it, the feeling is mutual,” Cornelia said, taking Tha?s’s hand and kissing it.
“Well, let’s get on with it,” Tha?s said. “Day’s going stale on us, and I need to clean up the linen pantry. Made a mess of it.”
“Don’t forget we’re leaving at six to go to Jack’s,” said Cornelia.
Elinor’s husband’s petition for divorce was to be voted on by the House of Lords tomorrow. Elinor was in a state, knowing that the chances of it passing were nearly certain. She didn’t have a lick of desire to stay with Bell, but the divorce would leave her arsed: without the legal rights of a single woman or the benefits of her marriage contract, and no hope of seeing her children until they came of age.
Tha?s was worried about her. Every time she saw her, Elinor looked worse. Pale and watery-eyed and tired and so thin that Tha?s had taken to bringing her sweets whenever she visited.
At six, she joined the other women in Cornelia’s carriage, which took them to Jack’s rooms in Mary-le-Bone.
They rode in silence, knowing the mood at supper would be solemn. But when Cornelia knocked on the door, Elinor threw it open with a smile so big it showed her molars.
“Ah! You’re here! Ha!” she cried. She held an open bottle of wine in her hand and raised it above her head. “Who wants spirits?”
The three of them exchanged a confused glance.
“I’ll take a glass,” Tha?s ventured. “What’s the occasion?”
Elinor’s eyes went wide. “You haven’t heard?” She put her hand over her heart. “Oh, Jack,” she called over her shoulder. “Come! They haven’t heard. I thought everyone knew. It’s been in the afternoon papers. But then I suppose you’ve been out at the Institute and—”
“What is it?” Seraphina cried.
“Bell is dead!”
“What?” Cornelia yelped.
“My husband, God rest his evil soul, was killed this afternoon.” She looked at them with bright eyes. “Murdered,” she whispered, though more in the manner of a killer than a mourner.
Cornelia braced herself against the wall. “You didn’t—”
“Not me. A girl he was courting by the name of Emily Clark.”
“Emily Clark!” Tha?s said, remembering the name from Eden’s papers. “But she’s a wisp of a thing, barely out of the nursery.”
“She must have a great deal of mettle to her, wisp or not,” Jack said, coming to put his arm around Elinor. “Stabbed the rotter right in the throat.”
“Come in, come in,” Elinor said. “I’ll tell you everything.”
They made themselves comfortable in Jack’s small parlor, accepting drinks. Then Elinor produced a letter from her friend Lady Margaret DuMont.
“The story is in the papers, but Margaret has more details. She lives across from Lord Hoover, you know. I’ll read it to you.”
“Bell called on Miss Clark this morning, bringing flowers,” Elinor read from the letter. “He asked to be alone with her, and her chaperone excused herself. (Old Vanessa Perth. Not to be trusted with a pussycat, let alone a girl. Who knows what Hoover was thinking. I think he’s gone a bit demented.) In any case, once they were alone, Bell said he’d be a single man tomorrow and asked for Emily’s hand in marriage. When she demurred, he became enraged. He took her by the shoulders and attempted to force himself on her, saying he would take her virtue and then she would be compelled to marry him. Vanessa heard screaming and came back in the room, but she’s an old woman, and Bell ignored her cries to stop. Emily tore herself away and grabbed an ornamental dagger from the wall. And when he tried to wrestle it away from her, she stabbed him with it.
“She didn’t mean to kill him, only ward him off,” Elinor concluded, “but in the scuffle, the knife happened to strike an artery. There was no saving him.”
“Poor Miss Clark,” said Seraphina. “She must be in pieces.”
“But at least saved from a life with that cretin,” Tha?s said.
“Will the girl be arrested?” Cornelia asked.
“Because there was a witness to see she was acting for her own protection, she won’t be prosecuted,” Elinor said.
“Thank God,” said Seraphina.
“Yes,” Elinor said. “I would hate for the poor girl to have to suffer more.”
“So Bell is...” Cornelia trailed off.
They all looked at each other, shaking their heads.
“I don’t want to tempt the devil celebrating his demise,” Elinor said. “He is, of course, the father of my children, and they will be devastated to learn of what has happened.”
“But now they have you,” Seraphina said. “And you can all be together.”
“And Elinor, you’ll be a widow instead of a divorcée,” Cornelia said. “You’ll have your independence.”
Elinor nodded. “The first thing I’m going to do is find my children. And then, Jack and I are going to have a wedding.”
“Not getting married by law,” Jack added. “Neither of us want that. But we’ll say our vows to each other all the same.”
Tha?s shed tears for the second time that day. And this time they were happy ones.