Chapter Twelve
An hour later, Charlotte lifted her hands after the final notes of a divertimento by Johann Baptist Cramer. For a brief moment there was silence, then a slow clapping began.
“Excellent, my lady.”
She had not expected to hear that voice for another day at least. She rose from the piano bench and curtseyed as he bowed. “Lord Kenilworth, what a surprise.”
“Ah, and, from the look on your face, not a pleasant one. I do apologize for interrupting you.”
“I had just finished the piece.” She tried to retain the sense of calm she’d had while playing, as she sat back down on the bench and indicated he should take a nearby chair.
It was unfair and unwanted that his mere presence seemed to provoke such a strong response in her. He sauntered forward and Charlotte could not help but notice how well he looked in his dark blue jacket and biscuit-colored pantaloons. His dark hair, fashionably cut, curled slightly. Everything about him gave the impression of a wealthy, important peer. Only the slight shadow in his eyes, as if he was uncertain around her, belied his confidence.
Well, good. Let him be wary of her. “Did my brother invite you to join us for tea?”
“No.” Lord Kenilworth stared at her for a few moments before finally lowering his long, elegant frame onto the chair. “I thought we might speak about a topic of interest to both of us. A subject about which we must come to an agreement and the sooner the better.”
“If you have come to discuss our so-called betrothal, I wish you would not,” Charlotte said, returning his steady gaze. “I will do what is expected of me for the rest of the Season. That must be good enough.”
“I am sure you will. Yet, I have not come about our betrothal, but about your reason for not wishing to wed me.”
For the love of God! The man was impossible. “We have been over this before, my lord. Until you can admit you are mistaken about how any woman feels about selling her body, we can have nothing further to discuss.”
Charlotte’s bountiful breasts rose as she took a deep breath. Her hands clenched. Her face was a portrait of outrage. This was a woman no one could dismiss. In short, she was magnificent, and—he vowed—she would be his.
Regrettably, she was also the most stubborn woman Con had ever had the misfortune to meet. “Some might consider marriage to be a form of prostitution.”
He heard the crack of her palm against his cheek before he felt the pain radiating through his face.
Apparently, she did not agree.
“That”—her face was flushed, once again her breasts heaved in indignation, and he didn’t think she had ever looked more beautiful—“was one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. A married woman has a position in society. Her children are legally born and can inherit lands, other property, and titles. She has settlement agreements to protect her rights. If her husband predeceases her”—Charlotte’s eyes narrowed and Con thought she might be envisioning his death—“she may remain a widow or marry again. She is not in the position where she must seek another protector. She is not in danger, or in as much danger, of contracting some dreadful disease.”
How the hell does she know about that? Con wondered.
“If her husband mistreats her, she has the protection of her family and possibly the law, as Lady Byron and others have shown.”
He was not going to even try to inform Charlotte that many women could not take advantage of the law or that their families would not support them either financially or emotionally. All that mattered was that Charlotte’s family would, and would make the courts do so as well.
She glared at him for several more moments, and he wondered if she was finished. Then she pointed a long, elegant finger at him. “You are so sure of yourself, my lord. Well, I dare you—no, I challenge you—to ask your mistress how much she likes living the life she is leading. Whether she would rather have had a different life than the one with which she is now stuck.”
His cheek still burning, Con managed a half smile. “What are the odds?”
Startled, Charlotte gaped at him. “I do not understand.”
Now was the time to make her promise to marry him. “What do I receive if I’m right and you are wrong?”
“The satisfaction that you were right, and I was wrong.” Her chin rose. “More I will not promise.”
Con considered attempting to convince her to wager with him; instead he stood and bowed. “Very well, my lady. I shall ask her. After which, I will faithfully report my conversation, and then we will have another sort of discussion.”
“One where you will be forced to eat toads.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, plumping them up nicely.
He’d wager that her nipples were the color of light pink roses and tasted like honey. Marriage to her was enticing him more and more. Or rather having her in his bed was, but one came with the other. “Someone will be tasting something, in any event.”
Con kept his smirk to himself as he rose—there was no point in tempting her to slap him again—and strode out of the room.
Less than fifteen minutes later, he knocked on the door of a house on a quiet street at the edge of Mayfair. He had bought the town house for Aimée about a month after he had hired her. The place she had been living in was too far away for his taste.
Con waited until the elderly butler opened the door and stood aside.
“Good afternoon, Clark.”
“My lord.” He bowed. “The mistress is in the morning room.”
“Thank you.” Con strode down the corridor to the open door at the end. “Aimée.”
She rose slowly and as fluidly as flowing water. “Kenilworth.” Her regular smile of welcome was absent and she did not move toward him. “I hear you are to wed.”
Well, damn. It had not occurred to him that Braxton’s talk would have spread to her, but that was the only way she could have found out. Con should have written to her so that she would have been prepared for the news. “Yes. I wish I had been the one to have told you. I returned to Town only an hour or so ago.”
“It is not widely known in my world.” She gave a slight Gallic shrug. “Lord Braxton thought I would be looking for another protector and offered himself.”
Bugger the man! “Is that what you want?”
“Do you mean to say that you would keep me as your mistress after you married?” Aimée’s eyes shimmered with tears. “I have known you to be selfish, mon ami, but never cruel.”
Devil take it. This was not going at all as he’d expected it would. Did all the females in his life believe he was a cur? He’d thought Aimée knew him better than to ask such a question.
Charlotte was insistent that he discover how his mistress had become a courtesan, and he had agreed. Secure in his belief that the beautiful, talented, and intelligent Aimée had chosen this life. But now . . . now he was suddenly not so sure of himself. “I’m making a muddle of this. Please, may we sit down? I have a question to ask you.”
“Naturellement.” She glided to the bell pull. “I shall order tea.”
After no more than a minute or two, her butler carried in a tray with tea, brandy, and wine, as well as small cakes and sandwiches. She must leave standing orders for the repast to be readied when he arrived.
A small smile wobbled on her lips. “I know how hungry you always are.”
“Thank you.” Food was the last thing he wanted right now, and he did not dare resort to the brandy. “I’ll have a cup of tea.”
Once she’d handed the tea to him and poured a cup for herself, she folded her hands in her lap. He supposed this was to create a feeling of calm, but her fingers had tightened to the point where her knuckles turned white.
“What is it you wish to ask me?”
“Aimée, why did you choose this life?”
For a moment she stared at him, a polite smile frozen on her lips. Then her top lip curled into a sneer. “I did not choose this life.” Her voice was low, and brittle, and pain echoed through her words. “It was chosen for me.”
Con’s first reaction was to reach out to her, hold her hands or take her into his arms. Yet he wasn’t sure she would accept his comfort or that he had the right to offer it.
His second response was chagrin. Charlotte had been right and he, in his arrogance, had been absolutely wrong. “I would like to hear your story, if you will tell me.”
Blinking rapidly, Aimée poured a glass of the claret he provided for her cellars and took a long swallow. “I do not think you truly wish to know. This is merely some fancy you have developed.”
Then he did reach out, covering her hands with his. “Please. I need to understand.”
Shaking his hands off as if they were dirt, she brushed at a tear. “I come from a good family. My father was a wealthy wine merchant, and my mother was the daughter of a baron.” She pronounced the rank in the French manner. “They were very much in love, but they would not have been allowed to wed if it had not been for la Terreur. My grandfather did not cover his head. You would say ignore the facts. The noble he had wished my maman to marry had been murdered, and he thought she would be safer with my papa.” Taking out a lace-edged handkerchief, she dabbed her eyes. “For many years we were happy. Then my parents died from la grippe. I was fourteen, dévastée. A man my father knew, a colonel, offered to take me to my aunt and uncle in Lyon.” She took a larger drink of wine, almost emptying the glass. “Instead he made me his mistress.” Her eyes had a dull, hopeless look and her tone was flat. “Some months later he was given a command in the south and left me with a well-known courtesan in Paris. She taught me everything she knew. Art, music, clever conversation. The last thing she did for me was to send me here, to England. I heard that she has since died.”
Con poured her another glass of wine. Fourteen! He did not even know how to respond. How could anyone take the innocence of a child? Although, he knew it happened. He never expected to be on familiar terms with and care for someone it had happened to. But Charlotte, if she had not actually known, had suspected what had occurred. He almost wished she was here to tell him what to do.
He drank his now cold tea without tasting it. “Do you know if your aunt and uncle are still in Lyon?”
“They are. We write to each other. They think I am married to an English merchant.”
Even in France, being a courtesan is not respectable. To keep up such a façade Aimée must want desperately to be respectable again.
He wondered if that was even her real name and thought it was probably not. “What if you had the funds to go to your family in France, with enough money to live on as if your ‘husband’ had died and left you a widow? Would you like that?”
She looked at him for the first time since she had begun her story, and stared. The soft ticking of the gilded clock on the mantel filled the silence. Still, it was several moments before she replied, “More than anything in my life I want a real husband and children. Very few women want to have the life I’m leading.”
The last part of what she said answered another question. Most of them? How could he have been so wrong?
“You are shocked, mon ami.”
Con could only nod.
“How much would you pay for a woman who showed her distaste?” Aimée asked.
Not much, he answered, but only to himself.
He sucked in a deep breath. He might not be able to repair all the damage he and other men had done, but he could help her have what she wanted and deserved. “Then you shall have it. Or at least as much of that life as I can give you.” His stomach twisted. The part he played in Aimée’s life made him almost physically ill. “I will transfer this house to you. It is your decision whether to sell it or lease it. I will also set up an account that will be sufficient for you to maintain the fiction you told your family.” The sick knot that had developed in his stomach began to unwind as he mentally reviewed the steps needed to accomplish his goal, and he smiled. “I’m afraid you will have to arrange the husband and children on your own.”
For the first time since he’d entered the house, the smile Aimée gave him was genuine. This time, he hoped the tears shimmering in her eyes were ones of happiness. “Merci beaucoup, mon ami. I do not know how to thank you.”
“It is I who should thank you.” Con thought of the stories Charlotte had told him and how he had scoffed and not believed her. “You have given me a chance to begin making amends.”
His former mistress moved to a small escritoire. Drawing out a piece of paper, Aimée made a notation. “This is the name I use for my family.”
Folding the foolscap, he tucked it into the pocket in his waistcoat. “I promise you I shall never reveal to anyone your connection to this name.”
“Thank you, again.” She held out her hands. “I wish you much happiness with your fiancée. She must be très spéciale.”
Taking her fingers, he kissed them for the last time. “She is more than that.”
Much more than he had ever suspected.
Yet now, he would have to confess to Charlotte that she had been right all along. As he left Aimée’s house, he wondered ruefully if his male pride could take the blow she was bound to land, and prayed she would be kinder to him than he had been to her.
Chances were he’d be eating real toads before this was over. But would even that be enough to convince Charlotte to marry him?
Con turned on Saint James Street toward his club. He’d never been at such a loss in his life. Fortunately, she didn’t expect him until tomorrow. For the rest of the day, he’d simply forget about it and enjoy convivial companionship and a bottle of Brooks’s excellent brandy.
Not long afterward, he opened the door to his club and handed his hat and cane to a footman. The club’s master bowed. “Good day, my lord. May I felicitate you on your betrothal?”
Hell! Rumors be damned. The news was all over Town. “Thank you, Smithers. Perhaps a bottle of brandy to celebrate.”
“As you wish, my lord.” He bowed again before snapping his fingers at a footman.
Con had no sooner sat down with his glass of brandy when a friend of his, Lord Endicott, strolled up. “You’re a sly dog, Kenilworth, snatching up Lady Charlotte when Harrington is still in the country.”
What the devil did that pup Harrington have to do with Charlotte? “I beg your pardon?”
Endicott’s brows rose at the same time his jaw dropped. “You mean you didn’t know? He’s been sniffing around her all Season. He had to get his father’s agreement to the match. That is the reason he’s out of Town now.”
Was that why she was so hesitant to marry Con? She had said it was because of his mistress, but did she wish to wed Harrington? Was she in love with the man? “His name has not come up.”
“How did you meet her in the first place?” Endicott settled on a leather chair next to Con’s.
Now that was a question he could answer. “Worthington introduced us. Went to visit him and stayed for tea.”
“If Worthington had any other sisters out this year,” Endicott said with feeling, “I’d cultivate a closer acquaintance with him. That’s how Rothwell met Lady Louisa, you know.”
Lady Louisa? Oh, that’s right. Worthington’s other sister. He’d mentioned that she had got married not long ago. “Yes, of course. I’m fortunate to be a friend of his.”
It began to occur to Con that coming to Brooks’s was not one of his better ideas. At least until his life was more settled.
“Demmed fine ladies, Worthington’s sisters.” Endicott glanced at the bottle of brandy and frowned. “Come now, Kenilworth, you don’t want to be drinking that stuff. A celebration is called for.” Endicott turned his head and called out, “You there, bring us a few bottles of your best champagne. We have a betrothal to celebrate. Lord Kenilworth here has stolen the march on the rest of us and convinced Lady Charlotte Carpenter to marry him. Must wish him happy!”
Perdition. He couldn’t let Charlotte jilt him now, even if she did prefer that pup Harrington. Con would never live it down.