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“Every sensibility must revolt against the notion!” Gina said, shuddering.

“True. I know it’s a horrifying proposition. I would not have told either of you, except I could not imagine how I was to explain my ensuing delicate condition.”

“Of course you had to tell us!” Esme said, crossly. “Lord knows, I certainly engaged in some deranged behavior myself in the past.”

“Nothing like this,” Helene said.

“True.” Esme gazed at her in wonderment. “How you’ve changed, Helene! Just consider your customary severe attitude towards my wicked ways. Why, I’ve never had to develop much of a barometer of societal opinion because I could count on you to know precisely how little the ton would approve of an action. But now—”

Helene smiled. “Perhaps I’m doing this for the sake of our friendship. Now you need no longer feel like the wicked one between us.”

“I think you’re both missing the point,” Gina broke in. “How are you going to get rid of her, Helene?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the strumpet, of course. How are you going to get rid of her?”

“Why should I?” Helene said, shrugging. “I did force Rees to promise that he wouldn’t frequent her bed—”

“Ug!” Gina wailed. “I don’t even want to think about that!”

“I apologize,” Helene said calmly. “I am rather used to considering the whereabouts of my husband’s mistress. For all I know, she’s sitting at my dressing table as we speak.”

“Gina’s right,” Esme said. “You’ll have to get rid of the woman. It’s the only way to protect your reputation. The moment she’s out of the house, your presence there is acceptable. The gossips will, no doubt, be fascinated to learn that you’ve returned to the house, given the very public state of your separation from Rees, but reconciliation is certainly acceptable.”

“And how on earth am I to dispense with Rees’s mistress?”

“Perhaps she’ll just leave,” Gina said hopefully. “After she meets you, I mean.”

“Nonsense,” Esme said. “You’ll have to buy her off, of course. How long has she been in the house?”

Helene put down her cup with a little clink. “Two years and three months.”

“Oh,” Esme said, clearly taken aback by Helene’s precision. “Well, you will make her a persuasive offer. Monetary, of course.”

“I suppose I could do that,” Helene said, biting her lip. “I could use my allowance. I rather like the idea of using the money Rees gives me, as a matter of fact.”

“And she will accept it,” Gina put in. “No woman in her right mind would choose to live with Rees.” She broke off. “That was inexcusably rude, Helene, please forgive me.”

“True, none the less,” Helene said with a smile.

“If you give her a goodly sum,” Gina continued, “she’ll likely return to whatever village she was from, and you need never think of her again.”

“That would be…pleasant,” Helene said. “Very pleasant. I will try to find an occasion to make such an offer.”

Esme shuddered. “How you will survive in that house, I don’t know. I think I would succumb to the vapors, and I don’t have a sensitive constitution.”

“I will not succumb to the vapors,” Helene said, and the clear determination in her voice rang like a bell. “But I will return to this house in a delicate condition. I have made up my mind.”

Esme shook her head. “I just can’t get over how much you’ve changed, Helene. I feel like a character in that Shakespeare play, the one where the Bottom appears out of the woods with a donkey’s head instead of his own: “Oh Helene, thou art changed! Bless thee, thou art translated!”

Helene smiled at her. “You’re lucky that we are old friends, otherwise I should take exception to being likened to an ass.”

“Well, if the head fits!” Esme said, laughing as she dodged a small cushion thrown in her direction.

Seventeen

Trouble Comes in Many Guises