on the two tall windows matched the upholstery. It was a man’s room, and she felt like an interloper.
Then again, interloping was a good way to get to know someone.
She strolled to the desk, but there were no incriminating letters to Mrs. Price left out on the blotter, just a bill from the wine merchant. The man had paid sixty pounds for his port, and a hundred pounds for a case of brandy! The rest of the desk was taken up by a display of classical marbles and bronzes, a veritable Pantheon of gods and goddesses. And a big box of chased silver. Sea nymphs writhed on the lid, and the key was in the lock, just tempting her to open it.
Twenty pounds, she realized, would be nothing to the man who lived here. Not if he was in the habit of paying out a thousand pounds to this girl and that. A thousand pounds! Now, that would be sizeable. With a thousand pounds, she wouldn’t have to worry about money for years.
“Don’t touch that!” Pickering cried angrily.
Bustling over to her, he slapped her hand away. She yelped in rage.
“Where is Sir Benedict?” she demanded. “I have private business with him.”
Taking out his handkerchief, he began to polish the ornaments on the desk.
“My master,” he said coolly, “has entrusted me with the task of making the appointment. I can tell you precisely what sort of woman he desires you to send.”
Behind her veil, Cosy’s eyebrows touched her hairline. “Your master, Sir Benedict Wayborn, wants me, Mrs. Price, to send him a woman?” she repeated carefully.
“Yes, of course, a woman,” Pickering snapped. “What are you implying?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “Please go on! You were saying?”
“My master desires you to send an Irish girl; tall, slender, with perfect skin, red hair, and green eyes. He wants her to sing to him in Italian, but, between you and me, my master doesn’t speak Italian, so, really, she could just improvise. He won’t know the difference.” He stopped, peered at her through the layers of her veil. “Aren’t you going to write any of this down?”
“I have an excellent memory,” she assured him in a clipped English falsetto. “Are you quite sure he wants red hair? It’s been my experience that gentlemen prefer blondes.”
Pickering drew himself up to his full height. “If my master has a lech for an Irish girl with red hair, who are you to question his taste? You forget yourself, Mrs. Price.”
“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean to forget myself.”
“You almost made me forget about the breasts,” he whined. “Sir Benedict prefers a small, high bosom.”
“Oh, he does, does he?” she said tartly. “Anything else?”
“I should warn you not to send a squeamish young woman. My master’s right arm was amputated some years ago. He doesn’t like people to feel sorry for him, of course, but an expression of shock and horror would scarcely bolster his confidence. Other than that, he is a perfectly healthy specimen, I assure you. A little shy, perhaps.”
“Shy!”
Pickering sighed. “I’ll be frank with you, Mrs. Price. Sir Benedict’s loins are in a dreadful state. If my master doesn’t bed a woman soon, I fear he might explode. Of course, it’s my fault completely. For years, I have drawn his baths, darned his stockings, boiled his shirts, pressed his suits, and starched his collars, but I never once thought to get him a woman.”
“You were busy,” she said charitably. “Stockings don’t darn themselves, you know.”
“How soon can you get the girl?” he asked eagerly.
“I’ll see what I can do,” said the imposter. “In the meantime, I understand that ice baths can be most efficacious in cooling an overheated body. Or you could try putting saltpeter in his food. They use it in the Army when the men get a little too randy for their own good.”
Cosy left the interview with a feeling of accomplishment. As she went down the front steps, she saw a veiled woman coming up the street. Her suspicion that this was the real Mrs. Price was borne out almost at once as the other woman walked up to the gate.
The two veiled ladies looked at each other angrily.
“Mrs. Price?” Cosy said coldly and imperiously.
“Who wants to know?”
Cosy threw back her veil. Her green eyes glittered dangerously. “I am Lady Wayborn,” she said with cool dignity. “If you ever come near my husband again, I will tear out your liver and feed it to my dogs. I will laugh while you die, and I will dance on your grave. Are we clear, Mrs. Price?”
The other woman gasped, sucking in her veil. “Yes, Lady Wayborn,” she said meekly.
Lady Matlock no longer lived with her husband. Having provided her lord and master with two healthy sons as well as one superfluous daughter, the countess was now free to enjoy the ill health she had always complained about. Deeply engrossed in the pursuit of Parisian actresses, Lord Matlock had offered no resistance when his lady removed to Bath.
Lady Rose, their only daughter, had been brought up in the country by a governess, then brought out in Town by an obliging aunt. The return of Rose to her mother’s bosom had forced the invalid to make a remarkable recovery, but it was very tiring to be well again. Society expected so much of one when one was well.
“Are you or are you not pregnant?” Lady Matlock snarled as she neared the end of a long, uncomfortable interview with Rose. She was no closer to understanding Lord Westlands’s odd behavior toward her daughter than she had been the day before, and her delicate nerves were completely frayed. I am too young, she raged inside, to have a grown-up daughter. “If you are increasing, he will have to marry you. We will make him marry you.”
Rose was curled up in the window seat, scornful and sullen. Her eyes were red from crying, but she was all cried out now. “I am not increasing,” she howled.
“Then you will have to marry someone else,” said her parent, exasperated. “You can’t stay here. I’m too ill.” Opening her daughter’s wardrobe, Lady Matlock began pulling out the gowns Rose’s maid had so carefully put away the day before. “And no wonder!” she exclaimed in disgust. “You will never catch a husband dressed so modest. I was practically naked when I met your father. Fardle! Fardle!”
Rose’s maid, who had been banished to the privy closet for the mother-daughter interview, reentered the room. “Yes, my lady?”
“Here is a shocking piece of intelligence for you, Fardle,” said her ladyship. “Men like looking at bosoms! Lower the bodices of the ballgowns by three inches, and the day dresses by two inches. That ought to do the trick.” She looked angrily at her daughter. “I expect you to try, Rose. For my sake. You will find little competition here. There is a Miss Vaughn that all the men are in love with, but she’s poor, and half-Irish, so I do not take their love for her seriously. Better to be rich than pretty, I always say, and you, my dear, are both!”
“I should like to meet her,” Rose said eagerly.
“Who?
