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“So now you are asking me for advice, Gabriel?” she teased, but gently.
Outside the room there was a loud rapping on the front door and then footsteps hurrying to answer it. Gabriel could hear Jemmy Dobson’s deep voice, and then more steps. Someone tapped on the sitting room door, and then it opened a crack and Jemmy stuck his head around the corner.
“Lady to see you, my love,” he said quietly. “Put her in your office, will I?”
Aphrodite smiled. “Thank you, Jemmy. I’ll be there in a moment.”
The door closed again.
Gabriel gave her a quizzical look. “I thought this was a club for gentlemen,” he said.
“You’d be surprised how many gentlewomen find their pleasure here,” she replied. “There was a very special client I dealt with not long ago, and very happy she is, too. But I must not talk about matters that are confidential.”
“You’re a very wicked woman, Madame. I always knew it.”
Aphrodite laughed. “Perhaps. A little.” She rose to her feet, her black silk skirts rustling. “I must see my visitor. You will stay here tonight, Gabriel? I think we should talk again. You know I think of you as the son I never had.”
“Of course I will stay.” He laughed.
“You are residing in London’s most select and famous house of pleasure. You are a very fortunate man indeed.” Aphrodite tapped him gently on the shoulder as she left the room.
Antoinette was standing by the window. When she was first shown into the room she’d sat down in the chair before the desk, but she had felt too much like a new girl waiting for an interview, so she stood up again.
The idea of living such a life made her uncomfortable, and she knew she would be completely unsuited to it. If she’d any doubts that her love affair with the highwayman might have changed her or corrupted her, then she was reassured now. Lying in his arms was special and magical, and no one else could ever make her feel like that.
Anyway, it was over. He was probably sailing away across the sea with Marietta. She could picture them toasting each other with champagne and dancing naked under the stars.
“You wished to see—”
Antoinette jumped, as if the other woman might be able to read her shocking thoughts. Madame Aphrodite had entered the room so quietly she hadn’t heard her, and now here she was in her black dress, her graying hair piled loosely upon her head, so much jewelry about her throat and wrists and on her fingers that it made Antoinette blink.
“But I know you,” she said with her French accent.
“Yes, we have met before, but we have not been introduced. I am Antoinette Dupre.”
Madame Aphrodite closed the door.
“Miss Dupre,” she said, curiously. “I remember you, of course I do. If I seem a little surprised to see you here, then you will understand why. Lord Appleby and I are not the best of friends at the moment.”
Antoinette clutched her reticule in front of her and spoke earnestly. “That is why I am here, Madame. I believe your house is the only safe refuge for me in London. I am in dire trouble and I need your help. Will you listen to my story…please?”
The courtesan’s eyes were as dark and intelligent as Antoinette remembered, and now they held a warmth and compassion that gave her hope and drew her closer. Aphrodite gestured for her to sit down and moved to a chair behind the desk.
“So you have come to me because Lord Appleby is an enemy of mine?” Aphrodite said curiously. “Has he spoken of me?”
“No. But I overheard what he was saying to you, the day you came to see him. I thought you were very brave to stand up to him.”
“I hate him,” she said, with a glitter in her eyes.
“I think you have heard the gossip about me, Madame. That I am Lord Appleby’s mistress?” Antoinette lifted her chin high.
Aphrodite bowed her head in acknowledgment.
Antoinette leaned forward, her gaze on the other’s face. “It is a lie. Lord Appleby arranged for certain rumors to be spread about, and then he planned to have us caught in a compromising position. Afterward everybody believed it was true, but I swear to you I was never his mistress. He was a friend of my uncle, and when my uncle died he began to visit me and my sister, pretending sympathy, pretending to be our friend.” She spat out the last word bitterly. “He does not know what it means to be someone’s friend.”
Aphrodite said nothing, watching her face and listening intently.
“He has done such a good job of convincing everyone that now no one believes me,” she went on, clearly upset.
