Page 12 of The Ladies Least Likely
She pushed his hand away. “I won’t do it.”
He scowled. “You bloody well came tomyrooms. You made me an offer. I accept.”
“I didn’t offerthat. My…” She didn’t say the wordvirtue, but a courtesan, no matter her price, could make no claims to virtue. She firmed her lips. “I’ll pay you. A thou—a thousand pounds.”
“Done. And you’ll pay in the currency I specified.” He smiled broadly. “The cloth market. The blanket hornpipe. Making the beast with two backs—that is Iago’s line, you know. Always did think he’s the best thing Shakespeare wrote.”
See, he wasn’t an entire ogre. He was cultured. He’d take her to the theatre. He’d even take her to musical evenings if she persuaded him in the right ways. “I’ll tell you when the debt is relieved.”
She narrowed her eyes right back at him. “There will be no blanket hornpipe.Sir.”
“Oh, there will be horn piping.” She stepped away, and he grasped the fringe at the edge of the shawl she wore draped over her elbows. It wasn’t a Kashmir shawl like that worn by the girls his stepmother tried to make him talk to. It was wool with a red and black print, a serviceable item of clothing, freshly laundered but clearly much worn.
Neither was her cap of a fashionable style, and her gown, for that matter, was a decade out of date, not of silk or satin but hand-painted muslin. The lace that enchanted him was an archaic touch, as fashionable young ladies had put off their laces during the French Revolution. She wasn’t expensive.
Which meant he could afford her. Which meant he couldn’t let her leave.
“Ross!” he barked. “That contract.”
Ross lifted one maddening brow. “Have the terms been decided, then?”
“I just want St. Sefin’s.” She clutched her lace as if he would tear it from her. Her eyes were wide but not full of fear. Rather anger, sorrow, disappointment—God, how he hated when women looked at him with disappointment. But there was also a hint of despair.
And I just want you. Of course, he wouldn’t be such a complete clod as to say it. A woman that beautiful, that graceful, that entirely enchanting should never know despair, not the faintest hint of it.
Instead, he stretched his mouth into a grimace that was his attempt at a smile. He wanted her in his bed immediately. She could start earning her title to whatever properties of his she wanted and he’d strive for that oblivion that would release him, however temporarily, from remembrance, from hauntings, from pain.
“And you know what my requirements are. I’ll give you a week to gather your things. And if you don’t agree, then I’ll come to St. Who’s What myself and turn all of you out, every last rat and bedbug.”
She whirled away from him, and beneath the flare of her petticoats he glimpsed her feet, clad in sensible leather half-boots, much worn. Her flight to the door left him with the most extraordinary tearing sensation, like a limb being ripped away.She was leaving, but he understood now that she didn’t have any money. Nothing near a thousand pounds. Likely she’d never seen two sovereigns side by side. She had nothing to bargain with but her own sweet, delicious self.
She’d be back.
“Don’t make me wait too long!” he called as she exited. “I’m likely to lose interest, and I have a terrible memory.”
He smiled as the door slammed behind her. For the first time in ages, Pen had something to look forward to. Something more than a burned flank steak, weak grog, Turbeville’s idiocy, and a blinding hangover.
He faced Ross, who looked back with a level stare. “I’ll wait on that contract then, shall I?” his secretary said.
Pen rubbed his hands together, the good right against the left that sometimes had full sensation, sometimes not. He felt more alive than he had in ages. As if life had been granted him again. He hadn’t felt that even when he woke on the surgeon’s cot after Tenerife, unable to move half of his body, beset by a staggering pain that he understood even then would become his constant companion. Finally, undeservedly, but after much suffering, he’d been granted a reprieve.
“I give her two days. Three at most,” he said confidently. “Where’s my rum?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Four days had passed. Three to go, and then Penrydd would be upon them. Gwen imagined the scenario as she filled her sack with her latest batch of soaps, scented waters, and remedies. He would come with a pitchfork, like men used to pursue witches.
No, he was a titled lord, arrogant and indolent. He’d hire someone else to brandish the pitchfork. Like the sly secretary who had sat and witnessed their interview with great amusement, knowing the whole time what Penrydd was asking her was far, far different from what she was offering him.
Would it be any less embarrassing if they hadn’t had a witness? It would have been no less infuriating. No less crushing a disappointment. She would be left in the same quandary.
Become his mistress. Save St. Sefin’s. And be taken away to the most enormous and filthy of English cities, far from the hills and rivers of Wales, to become a kept woman, subject to a man’s whims and compelled to submit to whatever he demanded of her. A strange, uncomfortable heat snaked through her innards at the very thought.
Or deny him, preserve her virtue, and let them all be cast into the street without shelter or sustenance. Was her virtue really worth that much?
“I won’t let you do it.” Dovey waited outside the kitchen door, morning sunlight lending her hair and face the high gloss of finished silk.
“Do what? Go to harbor and trade our goat’s milk for seaweed? I’ve been meaning to make laverbread,” Gwen answered. “And if the butcher has lamb to give away this week—roast lamb with laver sauce! Wouldn’t that be a treat?”
