Page 3 of Portrait of a Lady
Dominick cringed. “Those scarlet coats would make me look a fright. Besides, I’m an abominable shot. At the first crack of bayonets, I’m a dead man.”
“God’s teeth, you noblemen are so high in the instep,” Aubrey mumbled. “We are talking about the difference between financial security and poverty here.”
“If only a gentleman’s options weren’t all as odious as the clergy or the blasted military,” Dominick countered. “What else is there besides going intotrade?”
“I’m in trade,” Aubrey pointed out.
“Youare not the son of an earl.”
“The man has a point,” David offered. “If only we were women. Then there would be the occupations of governess or companion or some such to consider.”
Benedict chuckled. “Perhaps we ought to fit you for a gown, though you’ve no tits to fill it with.”
“If he had the tits to fill a bodice, he wouldn’t have to become a governess,” Aubrey scoffed. “He’d be able to tempt some man to the altar, and knowing David, he’d be flush as a king.”
“Damned right,” David replied with a smirk. “A lady must have standards, after all.”
“We’ve lost sight of the point here,” Hugh chimed in. “Even marriage offers no solution for men in our situations. All the heiresses have set their caps for peers with titles and lands.”
David perked up at that. “I have land…or will have it once my father has turned up his toes.”
Dominick snorted. “If I were you, I would not go bragging to the debutantes about that impoverished shithole you are poised to inherit. You may as well possess no land at all.”
David pulled a face, while Dominick simply laughed. Still, he offered no protest because they all knew Dominick’s words to be true.
“You know, misguided as David might sound, he actually makes a valid point,” Benedict remarked. “Women have an edge over us. All they need do is display their charms and dupe some idiot into caring for them for the rest of their lives.”
“Precisely,” Hugh agreed. “And it isn’t only a matter of marriage. The ones with sullied reputations or lacking a dowry may always turn to becoming some man’schere-amie.”
“And make quite a bit of coin in the process,” Dominick added. “Have you heard the latest gossip surrounding Melissa Barrow?”
“Baron Gadsden’s mistress?” Benedict asked, wracking his brain for any news he’d heard about the chit. “He kept her in grand style until he died, I know. Even sprang for that monstrous carriage she moves about Town in.”
“Four perfectly matched bays, brass trimmings, and that ridiculous maroon color,” Aubrey said. “You can’t miss it, which I suppose is the point. The man was said to be besotted with her until the day he died, giving in to even her most absurd requests. You cannot fault the woman for taking advantage.”
“But did you hear what happenedafterthe baron’s death?” Hugh asked as he sat upright on his sofa. “The settlement he left will keep her ensconced in her townhouse for the rest of her life, with enough left over to open her own milliner’s shop. Her designs are all the rage this Season, and I’ve no doubt she’ll retire to the country in a few years to enjoy what’s left of her life in the style of a princess.”
“Deuced lucky female,” Dominick muttered. “And she isn’t the only one, Clare Woodward’s keeper ensures she has her own theater box, and a wardrobe so excessive she’s never seen wearing the same gown twice.”
David gave their friend a knowing smile. “I say, Nick, you sound downright envious. Perhaps you might become some man’s mistress so you can enjoy such a lifestyle. You needn’t work at all, simply reach deep inside yourself and find a taste for your own sex.”
Benedict half-expected Dominick to react with the predictable outrage and insist that no depth of poverty could ever drive him tothat. But Dominick surprised them all by returning David’s smile and letting out a bark of laughter.
“As dire as my situation has become, it may well come to that,” he quipped. “What do you think of Lord Walsingam? If one squints hard enough, he might almost pass for a female.”
They exploded into hysterics as Dominick went about picking apart the foppish style of the viscount in question. Benedict often saw the man about Town and had witnessed the ridiculous lengths he reached to make a spectacle of himself.
As the laughter died away to the occasional guffaw and snort, Dominick sighed. “All that being said in jest, it’s still true that all a cunning, enterprising woman need do is spread her thighs to earn herself a king’s ransom. It is really too bad that a desperate man cannot become a courtesan in order to better his financial situation.”
Benedict perked up at that, a sudden idea occurring to him like a lightning strike to the brain. It was preposterous; so ridiculous, so unbelievably ingenious he could not believe he hadn’t thought of it before.
“What if youcoulddo it?” he offered. “Become a courtesan, I mean?”
Dominick furrowed his brow and looked at Benedict as if he thought his friend had gone mad. “Gad, Ben, I was only joking about Lord Walsingam. Desperate or not, I’m no molly.”
“And if you were, you’d not find yourself in the position of a courtesan,” Hugh reminded them. “Sucking men off in alleys and darkened parks for a few shillings here or there will not earn you your own theater box or enough money to retire to the country.”
“At least in a molly house, a man might have a pillow to lay his head upon at night,” David stated. “It might be preferable to being turned out of one’s residence; not altogether a terrible prospect for a desperate fellow.”
