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Esme’s laughter stopped. “Really?”

“He wants me to move back into the house,” Helene repeated, well aware that she hadn’t exactly told the whole truth…yet.

“Oh, my goodness,” Gina said with fascination. “What has happened to the rakehell husband himself?”

“He must be feeling his age,” Esme said. “Perhaps he was infected by that odd malady called respectability.”

“Not exactly,” Helene said.

“What do you mean?” Esme raised an eyebrow. “I should tell you that Miles’s reaction was just the same. When I asked him for a child, he said that he would move back into the house, and he would bid Lady Childe farewell. Which he did do,” she added conscientiously, “although he and I never had the chance to live together again.”

“Well, once again Miles and Rees are shown to be not precisely of the same caliber,” Helene said, twiddling with the delicate handle of her teacup rather than meet her friends’ eyes.

“How do you mean?” Gina asked. “I don’t follow. How does Rees’s request differ from Miles’s?”

“Rees wants me to return to the house,” Helene said, raising her chin. “But his mistress, Lina McKenna, will remain in the house as well. And those are the only circumstances under which he will father a child.” She had decided to keep Rees’s offer to engage in the business nine months in the future to herself. Her friends would undoubtedly argue for waiting, and if there was one thing Helene knew for certain, it was that she could not wait months.

A second later she took a deep breath and hoped that Harries was a good distance from the front hall so that he wasn’t shocked out of the few strands of hair he had left by the shrieks issuing from the drawing room.

On the surface of it, Gina was the more furious. She literally turned red and spluttered, unable to put a complete sentence together.

Yet Esme was, in her own way, more dangerous looking. There was something positively terrifying about her expression. Helene wouldn’t have been at all surprised if her black curls suddenly turned into snakes and she transformed into Medusa herself.

“The dissipated fiend!” Esme said between clenched teeth. “How dare he even suggest such a revolting thing to you. How dare he even say such a thing in a lady’s—in his wife’s—presence!”

“He dared,” Helene said calmly. Having thought of nothing else all night long, she no longer felt any surprise over the occurrence. “Actually, it’s quite like Rees, if you consider the proposition at length.”

“There’s no word to describe him!” Gina screeched.

But Esme was looking at Helene, and something in her eyes made Helene shift uneasily in her seat. “And just what did you tell him in reply, Helene?”

“That’s hardly the question, is it?” Gina said. “The question is—The question is—” But she stopped and blinked at Helene. “Of course you said no.”

Helene stirred her tea with a small silver spoon and then put it precisely to the side. “Not exactly.”

“You cannot enter that house under those circumstances!” Esme said, her voice low and fierce. “I will not allow it.”

“While your concern is endearing,” Helene replied, “I am a grown woman.”

“You wouldn’t!” Gina gasped. “You’ll be ruined. Absolutely ruined! And that’s not to mention that the very idea is revolting.”

“I agreed to his proposition, with certain conditions.”

“Let’s hear them,” Esme said grimly.

“I shall enter the house for one month only, and no one is to know of my presence.”

“Unlikely,” Esme said. “It’s bound to get out.”

“Rees has few servants, and no callers. I shall take a hackney to the house and live as a recluse.”

“This is all irrelevant,” Gina said. “You can hide in the attics if you want to, Helene, but you’re still entering the house—living in your own house—with a nightwalker!”

“She’s not quite so repellent. I did meet Miss McKenna, if you remember. I judged her remarkably young, and certainly not practiced in her profession, if you can call it that. I do believe that she was, in fact, merely an opera singer before Rees debauched her.”

“Yet a brief encounter with the woman was enough to send you fleeing into the country,” Esme reminded her. “And now you are considering sharing a house with her? With your husband’s mistress? Have you gone raving mad, Helene?”

“Perhaps. Sometimes I think so.” Helene bit her lip hard. “I want that child. I will go to any lengths to have a child. Any lengths.”