few minutes later Miss Moore announced it was time for the girls’ lessons and helped Lady Hart to her feet. As Rose, Katy and Mary filed out of the room ahead of them, Miss Moore asked, ‘Are you coming, Morgana?’
Morgana looked up at her. ‘I shall be in shortly.’
Elliot left his half-eaten breakfast and followed Lucy, who paused uncertainly by Morgana.
‘What is it, Lucy?’ Morgana asked.
Lucy hesitated, and glanced shyly at Elliot. ‘Mr Elliot and I were talking of how the primrose is in bloom, miss. May I show him in the garden?’
‘Of course,’ Morgana said gently.
Sloane peered at Elliot. Was his secretary attempting to make a conquest of Lucy? Lucy could do much worse than a liaison with a fine young man such as Elliot, so why did he feel he ought to cuff Elliot’s ears?
Lucy curtsied more like a maid than a courtesan and she and Elliot hurried out.
Morgana turned to Sloane. ‘Is that not remarkable?’
‘What?’
‘Lucy and Mr Elliot. She seems to blossom around him, like one of her flowers.’ With a dreamy expression, she gazed at the door through which Elliot and Lucy had departed.
Sloane put down his fork. ‘Do not make this into some Minerva Press novel, Morgana.’
She raised an indignant eyebrow. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
He looked directly in her eyes. ‘Those are not two innocents. It is not a flower bed they are in search of, but the other kind of bed.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘Do not be vulgar, Sloane.’
‘Then do not you be missish.’ He made sure she listened. ‘How much do you wish to wager on it? Elliot and Lucy are bound to engage in more than a waltz soon enough?’
‘I do not wish to wager at all,’ she said in a huff, but she glanced back at the door with a pensive expression. ‘It is precisely what I am training her for, is it not? I dislike thinking on it.’
He made no effort to relieve her tension. ‘You ought to think on it. You’d best realise what sort of life you are handing these young women.’
She gave him a withering look. ‘I suspect you are about to tell me.’
Her sarcasm set him off. ‘If they are lucky they will attract men of means. They will be selling themselves to the highest bidder. The man may be short or tall, fat or skinny. He may smell. He may be cruel. But one thing is for certain.’ He paused so that she would be sure to pay him heed. ‘To the man she will be a mere ornament and bed partner. That is all. And she will be at his mercy for the food she eats and the roof that shelters her.’
Her colour heightened. ‘Will it be so different when you choose a wife, Sloane?’ She took an angry breath, and Sloane did not miss the tantalising rise of her chest. ‘Do you not seek a wife other men will consider beautiful? Will you not wish for the pleasure of her bed? I assure you, she will be at your mercy for her food and her shelter. At least my girls will not be tied to one man for life, if they do not wish to be.’
He’d be damned if he’d allow her to know she’d struck a truthful chord. ‘Spare me this Wollstonecraft recitation. Next you will be penning A Vindication of the Rights of Doxies and Harlots.’
For a second he thought she would slap him across the face, which he surely deserved. Her eyes flamed and flashed with pain. She gripped the edge of the cloth on the table. But he suffered worse than the sting of her hand. He watched as she blinked, straightened her spine and erased all expression from her face.
How many times in front of his father had he done the very same thing?
He could barely make himself speak. ‘Do not do that, Morgana. Please God, do not do that.’
‘Do what?’ she responded, eyes bland.
‘Pretend I did not wound you.’ His voice was a mere whisper. ‘I wish to God I had not said that to you.’
She remained stiff and distant. ‘It is of no consequence. My unguarded tongue.’ She waved her hand dismissively.
He caught it in his. ‘I fear I spoke like—in a manner I regret.’ Like his father, he almost said.
She pulled her hand away, and he snatched it back again. ‘You were correct, Morgana, about my marital desires. I do wish a beautiful wife and… the rest. It is the way of the respectable world, is it not?’
She darted a glance at their clasped hands. ‘The way for you, perhaps.’
He rubbed her palm with the pad of his thumb. ‘And for you?’
She again pulled loose of his grasp. ‘If there exists a man who could consider me an ornament, with my outspoken nature, I am certain he would soon fail to find me decorative.’ She let slip a fleeting glimpse of pain. ‘So your assessment of me was not far off the mark.’
Did she not know her appeal partly lay in her outspokenness? No pretence, no coy flirtations. He put his fingers under her chin and turned her face towards him, forcing her to look at him.
Her eyes glittered like topaz, and their gazes held until he felt like walls were cracking inside him, walls that held back his own pain, the pain he’d fended off almost since birth.
He cupped her cheek in the palm of his hand, touching the corner of her mouth with the pad of his thumb. ‘Morgana—’ he murmured.
Katy’s voice sounded outside the door and they broke apart just in time before she burst in.
‘Make haste!’ Katy cried. ‘Madame Bisou has arrived and says you must come for the dance lessons.’ She did not wait to see if they would follow her. Heading back out the door, she laughed. ‘You ought to see the fribble she’s brought with her.’
‘Well.’ Morgana stood. ‘I suppose we ought to join them.’
Sloane’s brow knit in worry. Who had Penny brought with her? There were already too many people who might leak information about Morgana’s outrageous courtesan school.
He offered Morgana his arm and they walked to the library, where the lessons were to take place. When they neared the door, he stopped her. ‘Forgive me?’ He brushed her cheek lightly.
Her smile held a hint of sadness, but it heartened him that it was a smile none the less. ‘Why the devil not?’
He squeezed her cheek playfully. ‘Hoyden.’
She grinned this time. ‘Rake.’
Katy came to the doorway. ‘What keeps you? Come on. We are waiting.’
They obliged her, entering the room where all the furniture except the pianoforte and two chairs had been removed and the carpet rolled up. Miss Moore had settled Lady Hart in one of the chairs and she sat in the other that was placed at the keyboard of the pianoforte.
‘Oh, lovely to see
