Page 55 of Love and the Shameless Lady

“One of them, or some other patron, must have gone to your room to steal the gun and knife,” Julian said. “Do you remember any patrons that evening who weren’t known to you?”

“I’m sure there were some, but I don’t remember clearly. We were very busy.” She flapped a hand. “I simply don’t believe it. If I were truly in danger from one of the fraternity, Mr. Bennett would have learned of it. Or Andy Evans. He’s a friend of my brother. Besides that, none of them know I write books. I don’t leave my manuscript out where prying eyes can find it, and most of the smugglers can’t even read.”

“But some of them can. Tell me, what goods do they smuggle in your stories? So far, I’ve noticed nothing but brandy.”

“Weapons to Ireland?” Miles suggested.

“No,” she said. “I stuck with brandy.”

“Gold?” Miles asked. “From England to France, as has been done on the southeast coast.”

“Only brandy.” Daisy began to look seriously annoyed. “The smugglers are only a means to an end for the heroine of the first story to escape persecution, and for her daughter, in the second story, to recover all the charms her mother had sold or lost. Neither heroine actually engages in smuggling.”

“Except for one former French aristocrat, but she was smuggled into England after concealing her identity for ten years as a prostitute,” Melinda said.

“By God, Melinda, is this what you enjoy reading?” Lord Garrison demanded.

His wife patted his hand. “The prostitution was in her past, Miles, and it wasn’t her fault. The alternative was the guillotine. She was trying to begin a new life, and the heroine of the story helped her.” She frowned. “Surely you don’t think someone would threaten Daisy for writing that. It’s all the rage to support institutions for the reform of fallen women.”

“I hate that expression,” Daisy said. “It’s so unfair.”

Melinda made a sympathetic face. “It must have been coined by a man. No woman would have dreamed up that stupid pedestal metaphor.”

“It wouldn’t make any sense to say it of men,” Miles said.

“Because it’s your nature to be ‘fallen’?” Daisy rounded on her cousin. “Because you can’t help it? What about women? Might it not be in their nature, too? Why are we stuck on a pedestal and then punished if we don’t like it up there?”

“Might we return to the subject at hand?” Julian said.

Daisy turned on him, a curse on her lips . . . and subsided. “Yes, let’s. I don’t wish to quarrel, particularly when it’s obvious that I’ll never, ever win.”

“I don’t think Miles meant it quite that way,” Melinda said. Julian agreed with her, but wished she’d said nothing. Miles gave no sign of caring one way or the other, but Daisy was incapable of letting this particular issue lie.

Daisy flapped a hand. “Miles is entitled to his stupid male opinion. It’s nothing to me what he thinks.”

Oh, damn. Now she’d upset Melinda. “I’m sorry,” Daisy said. “I shouldn’t speak so of your husband.” Even if he deserves it.

Melinda’s eyes narrowed. “No, you should not, considering how kind both Miles and Colin have been to you.”

“But they shouldn’t have had to be particularly kind,” Daisy raged. “I did nothing that they, and countless other men, have not done hundreds of times.”

“Not necessarily hundreds,” Julian protested.

She rounded on him. “No? Why not? No one shuns you for it. You can buy it anytime you like.”

“That’s boring, love.”

“Ah,” she flashed, “and who would want a boring bedmate?” A blush surged hotly into her face.

Melinda muffled a giggle and Miles raised an amused brow, while Julian eyed her with an air of having made a discovery.

Damn him. Why must he keep noticing things about her?

“To return to Miles and Colin,” she said hurriedly, “I’m grateful to them, but still, what virtue is there in treating me fairly?”

“The virtue is in ignoring the dictates of society and doing what they believe is right,” Melinda said.

This reasonable response annoyed Daisy even more.