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Slowly, Mr. Parret set his daughter on the floor. “Belinda,” he said quietly, “go find your governess.”
“But I want to hear about the lady.”
“Go. Now.”
He waited until she’d disappeared. Then he walked forward, slowly, and picked up the ring. He dangled it from its chain, turning it from side to side. “Well,” he said softly. “One of the complexions that could be put on the matter I observed in Shepton Mallet was…precisely this. I didn’t want to think it. After all, I don’t want to ruin Sir Mark’s reputation.”
No. Jessica had thought long and hard about her options. There were only so many ways she could find money, and she wasn’t going to—she couldn’t—sell herself again. But even if she wasn’t selling her body, she could still sell her integrity.
You have an odd sort of integrity to you, he’d told her once. Maybe…maybe after this was all said and done, she could have her security and her integrity, all at the same time.
“I think,” Parret said, settling into a chair, “that you need to tell me your tale.”
Jessica took a deep breath. “It began,” she said, “when I met Sir Mark in Shepton Mallet. I had come there, you see, with the express purpose of seducing him…” The story she conveyed was mostly truthful. It required only a few alterations to change the entire tenor of it. She spoke, and Parret listened, nodding intently. When she was done, he picked up the pages she’d scrawled that morning and read through them.
“You write well,” he said in surprised tones, as he turned over the first page.
“For a courtesan, you mean?”
“For a woman.” He spoke absently, his fingers drumming against the table. He turned another page. “For that matter,” he said, “you write well for a man.”
Jessica searched for an appropriate response. Her mind covered everything from sarcasm to outrage. Finally, she settled on the simplest reaction. “Thank you,” she said graciously.
When Parret reached the end, he looked up. His mouth was set in a grim line beneath the ragged line of his mustache. “I don’t think this will work,” he told her.
“Then I’ll have to take it to your competitors.” She tried not to hide her disappointment. She’d hoped that Parret would be able to give her enough to survive—enough that she wouldn’t have to think of money for a good long while yet.
Parret scowled. “Oh, not the piece,” he explained. “I meant that we can’t call you a courtesan. It’s too risqué. Why don’t we call you a ‘fallen woman’ instead, and leave the precise circumstances of the fall a mystery? That way, the public will be free to imagine anything they wish.”
Jessica took a staggering breath of relief.
“Of course,” Parret continued, “I can offer you my normal rates—a shilling per column inch. It’s a fair offer—what I would give a man under the circumstances.”
Jessica almost smiled. “My dear sir,” she said, “you must be joking. No man could possibly have told this story. We are talking about the most in cendiary article that London has seen in years. You can’t fob me off with a few shillings. This isn’t piecework. I want fifty percent of the proceeds.”
His eyes narrowed. “All the expense of production is mine, and all the risk. Two pounds, no more.”
“Forty-five percent. I can take my account to anyone else. I’ll have a share of the proceeds, or you’ll have nothing.”
He slapped his hand on top of the papers, as if to ward off that threat. “Twenty-five.”
“Thirty, and I get five pounds upfront.” Enough to clear the debts in her name. Enough to survive for months. Enough for the future to become suddenly possible, and not some grim, looming fate. Even the city street outside the window seemed to lighten.
Mr. Parret cocked his head to the side. “Very well. I accept.” He reached out one hand.
Jessica took it carefully. “You bargain well,” she told him. “For a man.”
He pursed his lips ruefully and shook her hand. And apparently, that was all it took to turn a courtesan into a former courtesan. She’d just earned enough to survive for a good long while. Before this ran out, she would find a way to earn more. She wouldn’t need to sell her body ever again.
“Sir Mark will be furious.” It was the worst part of this deal, knowing how much he hated private inquiry—and knowing that she would be thrusting him into the public eye with a vengeance.
But Parret didn’t even shrug as he smoothed out the papers. “He usually is. I never let it bother me.”
Maybe one day she’d be able to view Mark’s response with such equanimity. That day was a long way off.
“I want to publish this one section each day, for five days—that will really get everyone interested, and we can charge double for the last printing. As for a title, I thought to call it ‘The Seduction of Sir Mark.’ That has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”
“But what is he going to do, when he sees that?”
“Hopefully,” Parret said, “he’ll get very angry. It will confirm everyone’s suspicions, and make us a great deal of money.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
TWO DAYS AFTER Mark arrived in Bristol, his brother suggested a walking trip.
“My duties are reduced during the summers,” Smite said. “And Ghost could use some country air.” He’d said this with a gesture at the puppy, who gamboled about their feet.
Mark had translated this as: Stop moping about.
They’d sent a letter to Ash, informing him that they’d be gone a few days—eldest brothers did tend to worry, even over grown men—and Mark spent the remainder of that day losing himself in procuring supplies and planning the trip. He’d pored over maps and railway timetables, finally deciding to take the train to Reading, and from there, a meandering journey through country roads until they reached Basingstoke. It would be four or five days through tracks and lanes. Mark made note of a few smaller hostelries along the road where they might stay.
“None of the big ones now,” Smite had said lazily. “I don’t know how they’ll take to a dog.”
They’d have taken an entire menagerie from a duke’s brothers. But then, Mark didn’t need Smite to explain his peculiarities.
It was good to have something else to think of. It was better still when they disembarked from the passenger car in Reading to a bright, sunny day. It was a day so glorious that Mark could almost forget that everything else in his life was far from perfect.
The locomotive pulled away from the station in a cloud of smoke, leaving Mark and his brother pushed about on all sides by the crowd leaving the platform.
Smite met Mark’s eyes and jerked his head toward the road. In this dry weather, the track was dusty with all the passing traffic. His brother would naturally prefer to choke on road-dust than spend time in a crowd. Mark shouldered his burden, happy to bear a little discomfort. It would get his mind off the interminable spiraling back, the uncomfortable thoughts of her…
No need to speak, thankfully. They made their way out and started through the clouds of hanging dust, holding their breaths. The fields weren’t far beyond; once there, they might not need to speak to anyone until they reached their destination for the evening.
The whole notion sounded lovely.
“Oy!” A voice sounded behind them, recognizable and yet impossible at the same time.
Smite paused, turning on the shoulder of the road. A man—tall, burly—was striding toward them. He moved quickly, without once seeming to hurry. He had a satchel thrown over his shoulder; he barely glanced down the road for traffic before darting across.
“I had thought,” the man said without any additional greeting, “the two of you would be civilized enough to stop in the public house before sallying forth.”
“That’s where you went wrong,” Smite said. “We didn’t intend to do anything so dramatic as sally. We had just planned to start.”
Mark stared at the newcomer in dumb confusion. ?
?Ash,” he finally said stupidly. “What are you doing here?”
“Got Smite’s message about the trip late last night,” his eldest brother replied. “I can’t have the two of you haring off on your own, can I?”
“We don’t hare, either. We walk. With dignity.”
Beside them, Ghost gave the lie to that by jumping up on Ash, his paws leaving two dusty footprints on his trousers.
Ash was protective, sometimes to an overbearing degree. Mark should have realized how suspicious it was that he’d not responded to their letter with a lecture on walking safely. In his normal course of events, he would have offered them an armed guard…or…or whatever other ridiculous thing he might have dreamed up.
