Page 86 of In Compromise with the Earl
A footman came to the carriage and lifted a large box from the back seat and Aphrodite felt a section of her soul shatter when Oswald was not there.
She looked down at the ring that Oswald had slipped on to her finger in what seemed like a lifetime ago but was only three months. She turned the band, feeling the smooth slide of the ring as it circled her finger. A ring, it was an emblem of eternity, but as time slipped by she wondered if they were destined to be together that long.
“Pardon me, My Lady,” a maid knocked on the door. “The Dowager would like to see you in her drawing room.”
With a heavy sigh, Aphrodite stood and left the chamber for the Dowager’s drawing room and arrived to see her sitting at a table with the box.
“Lady Henrietta?” she asked.
“Someone sent us a box,” the Dowager said. “I don’t know what is in it, and since both our names are on it, I think it’s best for us to open it together. Shall we?”
They opened the box and upended it on the table—and a mishmash of things that made no sense, until papers began fluttering out as well. Aphrodite took one up and read a date that was a year ago and it read: ‘The Cytheria’.
“What—”
Then she read, “This night, Lord Tennesley subjected himself to the rose path and coupling with Lady Ismene for the two hours he paid for—” her stomach twisted. “And Madam gave him another girl who specialized in fellatio and games of submission—”
Oswald!
Dropping the paper as if it had burned her, Aphrodite took up a silken strip of cloth that looked perfect for slipping over the eyes and an instrument that looked like a horse crop.
An antique carved phallus sprawled on silk cloths made Aphrodite go white; there were glass beads, dice, silk ties, thin ropes, drawings of sexual acts and reports of scandalous coupling, two women, three women, a bacchanal—all that included Oswald.
She picked up papers, reading descriptions of salacious acts and scandalous games that made her sick to her stomach. There were reports about Oswald staying at the Cytheria from dusk to dawn the next day.
Her hand dropped on the box and when it tipped over, the sight of the white tubes with red strings dangling at one end made her ill. She knew what they were—she had walked into his room and saw an opened box of French Letters on the table.
Then, she picked up a sheet of funds, and the money she read made her ill; fifty pounds per visit; a virtual fortune. What had her running out the chamber was the name of the lady he had spent so much on, Lady Ismene, his favorite, a woman who was a delicate as a nymph with the features of his first wife.
Aphrodite left the room and hurried her chamber and ran into the bathing chamber moments before she lost the contents of her stomach. Her stomach churned, twisted and revolted until she felt empty. Hunched over the basin, she shivered and shook while her head felt hot and fogged over.
She pressed her head to the cool porcelain and sucked in a few shuddery breaths. It cut her down to the bottom of her heart, not that this was what Oswald had done, but that he had not thought to tell her.
Why? Did he think she would scorn him for it? He knew she had lived with her father, a man who had desensitized her to men using women for pleasure. Why would she have turned her nose up at him?
“It’s all right, dear,” Henrietta said was she pulled Aphrodite’s hair from her face. “I know it’s horrible, but I am sure Oswald will explain it when we see him.”
“Did you know?” Aphrodite asked hollowly, her gaze landing emptily on a spot on the wall. “Did you know that was what he was doing all this time?”
“No,” the Dowager said, her voice heated and laced with disappointment. “And I would never condone it if I had.”
She stared at the wall for a long, silent, and disheartening space of time. “Is that where he is now?”
“I cannot say,” Henrietta said, her tone dulled. “But I do not think he is.”
Sitting up, she reached for a pitcher of water and poured out a glass to rinse her mouth. After refreshing herself, she stood. “Thank you, but I…I have to leave for a while.”
“Where will you go?” the Dowager asked.
“I’ll know when I get there,” she replied.
* * *
Aphrodite spotted the spiral of St. Bride’s Church in Fleet Street from three streets away. She arrived at the church hearing the plaintive sounds of the organ as she descended from the vehicle.
Entering the church, she spotted a fair number of parishioners in the pews, heads bowed in reverence as the choir intoned the hymn. She slipped into a seat at the back and gazed up at the murals on the ceiling and the stained glass on the primary window.
Leo was kneeling before the pulpit, his stark white robes a contrast against the somber background of the wood behind him. She needed to talk to him but she could only do so when the service was over.
