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Her nose still wrinkled, she crumpled Pen’s dress, pelisse and chemise into a ball and tossed it out into the bedroom.
Pen glanced up at her. “Thank you. It is kind. I didn’t mean to offend you about how you look—you are quite beautiful. You were at the Den of Diablo as well. I was just surprised at your age.”
She smiled with an incline of her head. “I will take that as a compliment.”
“You are here with Strider?”
Juliet’s smooth forehead crinkled. “Here with Hoppler? No. I am here on respite for a few weeks with the other women.”
Strider had more women here? Not just this beauty, but more?
She should have asked more questions about her surroundings.
“Where, exactly, is here?”
“Hoppler didn’t tell you?”
Pen shook her head.
Juliet sighed, waving her hand in the air. “Just like the man to forgo the details.” She moved closer to the copper tub, sitting on the cane chair. “This ishis home in Berkshire, though truly, Hoppler doesn’t come here often. It’s called the Willows and it’s on a rather large estate.”
“Is this near the village that the retired…ladies…have gone to? He mentioned a place where some of the women from the brothels retire.”
“It is.Fifield. And many of the women stay here while they are deciding what they want to do next. Some have a house built in the village. Some go home to wherever they were before they landed in London. And some just like to come out here a few times a year to escape the suffocation of London.”
“It all sounds so…proper.”
“Proper?” Juliet guffawed. “Do not mistake it—we know well the business we are in and the unsavoriness of it. We just choose to take ownership over our choices on the matter. And for many of the women, the ones that save, they’ll never have to lift a finger the rest of their lives. The whole of it is a bargain for how some of us have fallen and what could have become of us.”
“That is so unusual…and commendable.”
She shrugged. “We have Hoppler to thank. For as brutal as he can be, he’s also is the kindest man I know.”
Pen’s right hand lifted, her fingers curling over the curved edge of the copper tub. “You sound like you know him well.”
“As well as anyone at the Den, I presume. He isn’t an easy one to know.”
“You are…” The words froze on Pen’s tongue and she had to force them out. “Together?”
Juliet laughed, her hand going to her chest as she leaned backward in the chair. “No—no—I should have made that clear the moment I walked into the room.” She looked at Pen, her face holding sudden concern. “Your hand is gripping the tub so tight I’m afraid your knuckles are going to pop out of your skin. So I repeat, no—no, Hoppler and I are not together. We are friends—dear friends—nothing more.”
Pen forced her fingers to uncurl from the edge of the tub and her hand sank down into the water. “Why not more?”
A half-smile lifted Juliet’s right cheek. “I could never compete with a ghost. And as it turns out, the ghost is alive and healthy and sitting naked in his tub right now, and I couldn’t be happier for him. I imagine you will soften his edges.”
“I will?”
“Unless you plan on leaving? He said it was a possibility. But you’re not, are you?”
“I don’t know.” The words squeaked out of Pen’s mouth, soft and brittle.
“You don’t?”
She exhaled a long breath. “My heart…I lost him once. Then again. It was so much…too much.” Her words caught in her throat and she had to shake her head. “I don’t think I can repair what I have wrought upon him. And if he cannot look at me like he once did… I don’t think I can bear watching him walk away from me a third time.”
“Except you’ll never know how he looks at you if you leave.”
Pen’s mouth clamped closed, her bottom lip jutting up into a frown.
