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And maybe, just maybe, Charlie would feel so terrible about his brother cleaning up his mess, he’d clean himself up finally.
If only.
He knocked lightly on the door. This time Regan opened. She waved her hand and let him inside, shut the door behind him, then engaged the brass hotel lock.
“There he is,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you’d really come.”
“I said I would. Here I am.”
He stood behind the gold velvet chaise longue in front of the fireplace, as if to put a wall between himself and Regan.
“Did we see Charlie home safely?” she asked as she sauntered over to the large walnut drinks cabinet and took out two highball glasses, added ice, then whisky.
“He’s staying with friends. I use the word ‘friends’ loosely.”
“Eighteen. Hard age,” she said. “It’s a…vulnerable age. Isn’t it? Suddenly seen as an adult, and yet you have no idea how to go about it. Possibly why I married Sir Jack so young, barely twenty. Fear of being on my own, unprotected… I thought I was being smart and savvy. Instead I was being very reckless.”
She was reckless, all right. Marrying an older man when she was twenty. And him. This…whatever this was they were doing. Her rash offer.Ten for ten.His foolish, desperate acceptance.
“Did he really make you call him Sir Jack?” Arthur asked.
“Not in private, but in public. With the staff, too. ‘Wife’ was basically a staff position for him anyway.”
“He sounds like a quite a catch.”
She laughed. “Ah, well, my mother died when I was very young, and my father was gone all the time for work. I wanted safety, security. Whatever faults Sir Jack had, I will always be grateful he left me quite secure.”
“Prisons are secure,” Arthur said.
“Yes, well…I know that now.” She lifted her glass in a mock toast and took a long drink.
Arthur glanced around, trying to get his bearings since he’d be spending a lot of time here in the next few weeks.
“Welcome to the penthouse of The Pearl Hotel,” Regan said. “Like it?”
“It’s impressive,” Arthur said. This was more than luxury. He’d grown up in luxury. This place was pure decadence.
“When the hotel opened in 1909, this suite was reserved for the most special clients with the most exacting needs.”
“So…rich men who needed pretty girls.”
“Or boys. If they could pay, they were provided whatever they wanted. Your great-grandfather even lived here in his day.”
“Looks like the sort of a place a rake like my great-grandfather would live.”
“I suppose that makes me a rake then. And the penthouse is once more being used for its intended purpose—to debauch young lords, my Lord Arthur.”
Arthur ignored that comment and her smile. Something had caught his eye. She’d changed the painting.
Over the fireplace, so enormous he could have burned a whole coven of witches inside it, hung a painting of a pretty young woman and her ugly old husband. Arthur could tell the young wife wanted out because she was practically banging on the window with her hands while a parade passed outside the house. The old man’s face wore an expression ofWell, go on, why don’t you? Nobody’s stopping you, so it was clear they’d had this argument before.
“The Gilded Cage,” Regan said, pointing with her highball glass, “by Evelyn de Morgan. What do you think?”
“I think…if that painting is what you hang in your sitting room, I’m not sure I want to know what you hang in your bedroom.”
She laughed. “It’s a lovely painting.”
“It’s not very happy,” he said.
