He smiled in the glass.When he did that, he looked like a prince.He looked like an illustration at the end of a storybook.A happy ending personified.But to her, of course, he was just a means to an end.
“Tonight, we are going to the opera, and it is not only rich gentlemen who attend the opera.Their wives and daughters will be there, too.And although they are not technically supposed to know who the courtesans are, they absolutely do.”
“And?”she said, turning back to the mirror, breaking eye contact with him.But she watched out of the corner of her eye as his gaze flitted across her body in the matronly dress.Suddenly, unaccountably, she wished she were wearing something that he deemed worthy.Ridiculous, she chided herself.
“And they imitate the courtesans.The cuts of their gowns and the style of their hair.But in this way, they also anoint them.They influence which ones the men find desirable through their imitation.”
“The men don’t want to bed their own wives, but they’ll bed the women their wives imitate?”
This dynamic seemed, to Beatrice, strikingly stupid.
Leith shrugged.“I didn’t say it made sense.It is just the way our world works.”
“But don’t all the ladies of thetoncome to this shop?”she said, trying to puzzle out this conundrum.“Don’t the courtesans and ladies all wear her gowns?”
“They don’tallcome here.But you’re right.Mrs.Warburton is the most popular modiste in London for anyone with money.”
“Indeed,” the lady herself said, sweeping into the room, followed by several attendants, who carried more gowns.
“I did not realize you were under the protection of Lord Leith, madame,” Mrs.Warburton said.“If you had told methat, I would have needed no other explanation.”
Beatrice bit back her scoff.She saw no reason that she should have informed Mrs.Warburton of her association with Leith when she was to buy these clothes with her own money.It killed her to spend down any of the coin this man was to give her for her two weeks with him, but she had no choice but to get a better class of garment.She knew that.
“Miss Salisbury cherishes her independence.But, in this matter, she sees why she should defer to my judgment.”
“In that, she is wise.There are few men with your experience in this area, Lord Leith.”
The words had the guise of a compliment, but Beatrice also caught a faint tone of contempt.For the first time that afternoon, she found herself liking the modiste.
“Come,” Mrs.Warburton said, gesturing to Beatrice to step down off the dais.“A new gown.”
Soon, Beatrice found herself in exactly that and then another.Even she could see that they were much more befitting a woman attempting to turn a profit from her allure.She understood, due to their cut and color, how they would announce her intentions.
Leith told her which gowns he preferred, appearing nearly bored with the entire proceeding.
Until she emerged in a gown dyed a deep green.
He shifted in his seat.
Then, in the mirror, she saw his jaw clench.He looked away and then back again.Somehow, she couldn’t say why, his gaze appeared warmer.
No, itwaswarmer, she realized.
And it was clear why.
He liked it.He likedher.Beatrice didn’t need years as a trained courtesan to see that.
And she would happily punish him.
“This bodice is very low cut,” she said, leaning over, almost bending in two, as if to examine the properties of its neckline.
She heard his intake of breath.
When she looked at him in the mirror, he had flushed, just slightly.
He ran a hand through his hair and looked away again.
But just as quickly his eyes were back on her.
