Rosemont threaded their fingers together and brought her hand to his mouth for a kiss.
“We’re going to give you a new person to love,” Fancy announced.
Cheers followed, with the ladies rushing to surround Fancy, and the gents shaking Rosemont’s hand as though he’d done something truly miraculous when all he’d done was make love to his wife.
“That’s a wonderful gift, isn’t it?”
He glanced up at Thea beaming down at him. Time spent with her was turning out to be a wonderful gift. He rose to his feet. “I have something for you.”
Her smile softened. Damn it all. He’d spent hours striving to determine what to get her. Something meaningful but not too personal. Something that would be appropriate for her to accept. “It’s a silly thing, really.”
She waited expectantly. Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew the small box and handed it to her.
Gingerly, she removed the lid. “A match safe. Very much like yours.”
Except hers had roses circling her name etched in the silver.
“No matter how dark things get, you’ll always have light.”
A fine sheen of dampness was in her eyes when she lifted them to him. “I’ll always treasure it.”
He would always treasure his memories of her.
Chapter 23
The winds of change did not blow in gently. Sitting in the library, in a reflective mood, Althea was amazed by the difference three weeks could make in a life. She shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, at twenty-four her life had changed overnight. She’d felt powerless, like a leaf caught up in a whirlwind that had no say in the direction it traveled or where it eventually landed.
But now she was in control, and as other lives began to take different shapes, she began to carefully consider and mold hers into what she wanted, discovering she wanted something very different than what she’d originally thought she wanted when Benedict had first come into her life.
Although it wasn’t only him. It was everything happening around her that was causing her to look at things slightly differently. Nothing stayed as it was. Which was clearly evident as she occasionally sipped her sherry.
On Boxing Day, the ladies had gone to the Cerberus Club, where they’d discovered that Pearl and Ruby were quite skillful at dealing cards. They’d left the establishment with not only a substantial amount of winnings but an offer of employment as well, which they each accepted.
Shortly after one of Benedict’s ships arrived at port, one of the shipmates had shown up at the residence and declared his love for Flora. Apparently, they had been seeing eachother on the sly for quite some time, and the tendre he’d developed for her had tormented him while he’d been away, and he could no longer bear to be without her. They were married within the week.
Lily became a companion to Captain Ferguson’s wife, to ease her loneliness when he was at sea.
Hester had stopped entertaining gentlemen because a lady’s maid didn’t “do that sort of thing,” and she was now tending to Althea’s needs exclusively and being paid handsomely for her services.
A brothel with only one lady, Lottie, seeing to gentlemen, was no brothel at all. The decision was made to begin converting the building with its many rooms into a boardinghouse.
Lottie oversaw the conversion that began the first week in January. All the risqué paintings and statuettes were carted away. Walls were redone, draperies replaced. Althea fully expected the former doxy would hire out her services to decorate the homes of those coming into wealth—once she was finished with the current project.
The challenge was alerting the clients. Jewel greeted the men when they arrived, poured them a glass of scotch, and explained that the purpose of the establishment would be changing. Lottie took her favorites to her bed for one last hurrah. Those she didn’t know or didn’t favor, she blew a goodbye kiss.
Now, a couple of weeks later, they were seldom disturbed during the evening hours when they were all sitting in the library reading.
Althea continued to teach Lottie and Hester, to give them more refinement. But she couldn’t teach them forever. Soon she was going to have to determine a path for herself.
Althea missed all the nights when it had been only she and Benedict, when they’d been able to share personal stories, hurts, aches, and joys. The tulip glass of sherry still waited for her on the table. They still sat across from each other. No one else ever sought to claim those chairs as though they had been designed and constructed to hold only the two of them.
But with others in the room, the atmosphere had changed, the way the air did when a storm was threatening. Pages in books crackled as they were turned, sighs sounded, clothing rustled with the shifting of a backside, a stretching of shoulders, the bending of a neck.
At ten they would bid each other good-night with a punctuality that had not existed when she would become lost in stories Benedict shared or he would ask questions of her, when time held no sway over them.
After Hester assisted her in readying for bed and sought out her own slumber, after the building itself had settled in and gone quiet, she would sit on the bed with the counterpane folded back and wait. Wait for the quiet knock that invariably came.
She would open the door, welcome him in, and it was those moments she’d begun to live for.
