This plan suited her better than any marriage could have.She enjoyed the carnal act, and she never wanted to marry.No, she would rather grant a man access to her bed than to her entire life.Especially since, in the years since her ruination, she had discovered that she had talents in the bedchamber.If her lovers were to be believed.
Beatrice suppressed a wicked smile.
Three of her lovers since Lord Gilchrist had proposed marriage, claiming that they had fallen in love with her.She didn’t believe that—not exactly.But a woman’s passion, her uninhibited passion, was a powerful thing, it seemed.
In short, other than the fields and markets, there were few places she was more confident than in the bedchamber.
She just needed Lord Leith to show her a few courtesan tricks, the types of things that fine men wanted their mistress to know, and she was sure she would have the debt paid down in a few short years.
Sally sighed.“I am not sure it’s right, Bea.”
“Sally, please, we’re here, we’ve been over this—Parkhorne Hall is my home.It is the only thing I care about, aside from you and mother and our brothers.A few years as a rich man’s mistress is a small price to pay for it.”
Sally nodded and turned back towards the bonnet.
Beatrice swallowed the lump in her throat.
The truth was that it killed her to think that she would be away from Parkhorne for that long.Years.The idea knifed through her chest and made tears spring to her eyes.Years away from not only her family, and her mother, but the wide halls and ancient windows, and the rolling hills and well-laid crops and the little spring that hid inside the beautiful wood.
Beatrice shook her head, blinking back the tears, willing them not to fall.
She was being ridiculous.
It would be nothing.
She had to think of their survival.
She had to focus on learning everything she could from Lord Leith.
Chapter Three
“You are notto bed her,” Monty said, the moment after Miss Salisbury made her exit.
Leith had just watched the hem of her white, old-fashioned frock disappear through the door.At first, the words did not penetrate the irritation that fogged his mind.
“What?”
“You are not to bed the woman,” his best friend repeated.“She is young, she is vulnerable, and I am resolute that she should find some other remedy for her problems than selling her body to the syphilitic hounds of the aristocracy.”
“I am touched by your description of me.”
“Present company,” Monty said, waving his hand, but it was barely convincing.
Yes, his best friend was still angry with him indeed.
Even if he wouldn’t upset his wife by admitting it.
“How young?”
“Four-and-twenty,” Olivia said.
Not particularly young, then, but in effect practically an innocent.When one considered her being from the country.He himself was ten years her senior.
“Let there be no confusion.You want me to keep the woman, pay her five hundred pounds, take her on her seven outings as my avowed mistress, and not touch her?”
“Correct.”
Five hundred pounds was double what Leith usually paid a woman for a fortnight of favors.It was an inflated price.Absurd, really.That he wouldn’t even get the basest of pleasures for his trouble—well, if he had taken to Miss Salisbury any more, he might really resent it.
