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“You should have heard him,” she said. “He shouted at me and shouted and shouted... I will never forget the names he called me, the things he said to me. ‘I’m leaving, you jealous stupid bitch, you ugly boring nothing. Of course I fucked your mother. Who wouldn’t? She’s a goddess and you’re nothing compared to her and you’ll always be nothing, you little whore.’ And I just sat there on the floor with my hands over my ears, rocking back and forth and wishing I were anywhere but there. Then he left. That was it until last Saturday night when I saw him in the music room with Mum. Smiling at me.”
August opened his mouth, no doubt planning on saying something comforting. She raised her hand to silence him.
“It’s all right. I know I’m not as beautiful as my mother. It’s fine.”
“Your mother is a lovely woman, but she is not a goddess.”
“You know how my parents met?” Lia asked. “Daddy went to her little art gallery in New York to buy a painting from her—somehow she’d gotten hold of a painting of my great-grandfather, Malcolm. When she wouldn’t sell it to Daddy, he picked her up, threw her over his shoulder and carried her out to his car. They eloped just like that.” Lia snapped her fingers. “One day she was a New Yorker running a gallery. The next day she was an English countess. But that’s how beautiful Mum is—men take one look at her and want to carry her off. Nobody’s ever going to carry me off.”
“Achilles and Briseis,” August said. “Now I see the appeal.” He kissed her knuckles. “Lia, I would choose you over your mother every time, every night for a thousand years. And my taste is impeccable.”
“Thank you,” she said in a small voice. She shouldn’t have been happy to hear that, but she was.
“David said what he said to hurt you, not because he believed it.”
“He called me boring,” Lia said with a bitter half smile. “Maybe at seventeen I was. But I’m not boring anymore.” She couldn’t quite hide the pride in her voice.
“Never met a boring madam,” August agreed. “Is that why you became one? To prove David Bell wrong?”
She laughed softly. “Maybe? Possibly? Let’s just say when I was given the chance to have that very interesting career, I took it.”
“So how does a wealthy earl’s daughter get around to starting her own, ah...gardening and tennis club?”
“Georgy, of course.” Lia grinned. “We’ve been getting into scrapes together since we were toddlers. She heard about a party for some Hollywood bigwig who was in town to film a movie. They were trying to get as many pretty legal-aged girls at the party as possible. And it was at the Pearl Hotel. Had to go, right?”
The Pearl was her great-grandfather Malcolm’s favorite brothel back in the ’30s, after all. She couldn’t resist a chance to get tarted up and see Old Number Thirteen’s former playground.
“Nice party?” August smiled as if he already knew the answer.
“Nice party,” she said. “I met someone. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Load the party with pretty girls and horny men and odds are somebody’s going to get off with somebody else.”
“How was the sex?” August asked.
“Better than with David, though that’s not saying much. When we were about to leave the hotel room, he gave me his card and said he wanted to see me again the next night. I said I was busy. He said he had five hundred pounds to get me unbusy. I said I’d think about it. I didn’t need the money, but it was flattering. You know, my great-grandfather loved prostitutes. ‘Whore’ was a compliment when he said it. He only respected women who knew their own worth—no sane woman would let a man so much as shake her hand for less than a hundred pounds, and all that.”
“Who was he?” August asked. “Your gentleman friend?”
“An actor,” Lia said. “Great hair. Fantastic cheekbones. One of those congenial perverts. Too busy to date. Too horny to go without. You know the sort.”
“I know exactly who you’re talking about. I did body shots with him in Malta last summer. Unless you’re talking about a different set of fantastic cheekbones...”
Lia would never tell. She smiled a little to herself at the memory.
“Georgy wassojealous. When I told her about his offer, that I didn’t want to do it again, she said she’d do it in a heartbeat, especially for five hundred.”
“You offered her in your place?”
“I let him know I was too busy but said a friend of mine might be interested. Texted him a pic. He texted back a thumbs-up. I told him I was the daughter of a very rich earl with connections everywhere, and if he didn’t want to get his face on the front pages of the papers for all the wrong reasons, he’d take good care of her. He swore he would. And he did. It was only after I’d set the ‘date’ up that I realized I’d sort of rather inadvertently...”
“Pimped out your best friend to a near-stranger?”
“Yes, that.” Lia winced. “Didn’t stop me from doing it again. Week after, he called me and asked if I had anyotheramiable friends for some of his amiable friends who were in town—five hundred an hour if they were pretty and could keep a secret. After that, it sort of grew and grew...until there were five women working for me and fifty or more men who were regular clients.”
“Not bad. Not bad at all.”
Lia nervously twirled her ring. “I would always tell myself I was doing it to protect the ladies. If I were handling the money and the appointments and vetting the men—thanks to my parents I know almost every toff in the country—they’d be a lot safer than meeting total strangers. And theyweresafer, and they did make more money, and nobody ever got hurt. But, if I’m honest, I do it because it’s fun, it makes me feel important...and it’s definitely not boring.” Lia smiled at that. She’d had a good run, that’s for certain.
“And now David Bell knows?” August asked.
