Page 32 of Cocky August Rake

“No woman here is expected to manage such a man alone. Boris knows who enters the house. Mr. Huxley keeps records of every client. The women watch over one another. There are bellpulls in every receiving room, and the doors do not lock a woman inside with a gentleman.”

“And if he ignores a refusal?”

“He is removed and forbidden to return.”

“And if he does worse than ignore it?”

Something shuttered behind her eyes.

“Boris has associates to deal with them.”

Reginald studied her.

He ought to have expected something of the sort.

Harry possessed scruples, certainly, but not the sort that would have prevented him from dispatching of men who preyed on the vulnerable. Men like their father would not have been tolerated at The Domus.

Reginald nodded. “You believe you are safe here.”

“We are safer,” Miss Darling corrected. “There is a difference. I don’t think anyone in the world is entirely safe anywhere. But here we have doors that lock against the outside world. Money that belongs to us. People who notice when something is wrong. And one another.”

She paused.

“That is more than many women possess.”

True. Still⁠—

“And when a woman no longer wishes to… engage with clients?”

“She stops.”

“Just like that?”

“If that is what she chooses, then yes.” Rose’s tone turned matter-of-fact. “Some take fewer appointments and help manage the household. Some keep the accounts or train the newer women. Others find work in shops or private homes. A few even marry.”

“They cannot return to their families.”

Miss Darling’s mouth twisted. “What families?”

The question silenced him.

“It is not perfect,” she continued. “I have never claimed that it is. But your brother helped women find another path whenever he could. No one is cast into the street merely because she has become inconvenient.”

Inconvenient.

The word struck with ugly force.

Reginald looked toward the window.

In his mind’s eye, briefly, he saw a young woman standing at the servants’ entrance of his father’s house, her belly swollen beneath a worn cloak. Months before, she had been admitted through the front.

That day, his father had refused even to see her. She no longer pleased him. Therefore, she no longer mattered.

Reginald forced the memory aside.

“None of that alters the bargain itself.”

“But they⁠—”