Finally, he gave a curt nod. “Righto. Follow me.”
Opening the door, he led her inside, and she was immediately struck by the gaiety echoing from rooms along the hallway and up the stairs. The people she could see were smiling and laughing, having a jolly good time. She couldn’t recall the last occasion when she’d smiled or laughed. The man who probably seemed a giant to most but simply large to her escorted her to their right and into a grand chamber with an enormous crystal chandelier and a woman sitting at a large desk. Near the window a man occupied a smaller desk. She immediately took a liking to Griffith Stanwick for ensuring this room was dominated by a female.
“Gertie, she wants a word with Mr. Stanwick,” the bruiser said.
Standing, Gertie gave her a thorough examination. “Right then. Wait here.”
While she walked out, the guardian of this establishment braced his feet apart and crossed his arms over his massive chest. Was he open to being hired by someone else? Herself, for instance?She rather doubted it. The gentleman by the window had taken pencil in hand and based upon his movements was busily sketching.
She glanced around. Although austere, the room had an elegance to it. She’d expected that a place where people came to fornicate would appear tawdry, but Stanwick had taken measures to ensure people could walk out of here without their faces turning red in shame. She knew a great deal about what it was to walk in shame, mortification thrust upon her by those who had judged her a sinner before she was one, judged her when, until those long-ago horrendous few weeks of her youth, her worst offense had been snitching a biscuit from the tin when the cook wasn’t looking.
After circling the room, her gaze returned to where it had begun: the man at the small desk. He smiled tenderly, almost gently, and extended a card toward her. “Here you are.”
Ensuring her shoulders were pulled back, her posture intimidating, she approached and took his offering. It wasn’t a sketch of her face... and yet it was. Her features were all sharp angles, brittle—not by nature’s hand but by her own unwillingness to reveal a modicum of softness. He’d drawn the facade but had somehow managed to capture what lay beneath it. She nearly wept because there was only the barest hint of the trusting girl she’d once been, the one who had longed for love and acceptance. “What am I to do with this?”
“Keep it.” He picked up another piece of parchment. “I draw the likeness of the members on their membership card so they’re able to enter more quickly and can’t loan it to someone who hasn’t a membership.”
Turning over the card, she saw that the other side had lines for inputting pertinent information such as name, age, and dues expiration. Clever. “Your talents are wasted here.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“I do not compliment. I speak but the truth.”
“Few would pay me as well as Mr. Stanwick does for so simple a talent.”
“It’s not a simple talent. You see what escapes the notice of most.”
“But not yours.”
“No, not mine.” Lives were put at risk if she didn’t notice everything.
“You wished to have a word, Miss—”
She quickly spun around to face Griffith Stanwick. He was blond, fairer than his brother but he possessed the same shade of eyes.
“—my father’sstrumpet.”
The disgust woven through the last word was no doubt shared by Marcus Stanwick as well and accounted for his not coming to her sooner. Opening her reticule, she placed inside the card the artist had given her and removed a small envelope, sealed with purple wax. “I need you to see this delivered to your brother.”
He dropped his gaze to the thick vellum before lifting it to hers. “For what purpose?”
“If I wished you to know that information, Iwouldn’t have gone to the bother of writing it out and sealing it.”
“You don’t think I have the means to open the letter?”
She took a step nearer until their breaths fairly collided. “I don’t think Marcus would want you to know and would be most disappointed in you for making his private business your own.”
“How private?”
“That is between him and me, but he offered assurance you could be trusted with my missive should I have a need. I do hope you won’t make a liar out of him.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’ve spoken with him?”
She merely arched a brow.
“When?”
“Two nights ago.”
