His lungs and belly seemed to drop through the floor. He moved to the doorknob.
“Oh, not like that!” said Mrs. Oldacre, reaching for his hand before drawing back.
“Then what is the matter?”
“It’s her hair,” the older woman said, her eyes filling with tears.
“Her hair.”
“I thought she might feel better with clean hair, but the mass became tangled, and now she’s confused and wants to cut it. All that beautiful hair. Lost.”
“Hair.”
“It’s a woman’s pride, you know,” said Mrs. Oldacre.
Anthony thought back to those waving locks he’d admired from a distance, then worshiped with his fingers. Letitia’s mane spread over his legs in bed. Draped on a blanket when they’d enjoyed a private picnic. She’d been so beautiful, like a painting, and she’d been so debased and deluded that she wished to surrender her most feminine charm. It was unthinkable.
It took Anthony a few minutes to locate a black silk mask from a fancy dress party he’d attended several years ago so he could talk to Letitia without revealing his identity. He’d have to find a long-term solution for her living quarters, though. He trusted Mrs. Oldacre — and she certainly wouldn’t divulge his name to Letty — but the longer Letitia stayed, so grew the risk that she would discover the identity of her benefactor.
Upon opening the door to Letitia’s bedroom, he paused. She had draped herself on the bed, her long locks trailing behind her, and she wore naught but a chemise. Her eyes were open but unseeing. At first, he thought she was dead.
“Letitia?” he whispered.
She blinked and finally focused, seeing him in the doorway. But she didn’t react.
“I hear you wish to divest yourself of your hair,” he said, pausing so as not to alarm her.
Letitia held up the golden scissors she’d somehow negotiated away from Mrs. Oldacre. Why the woman thought to bring her scissors was beyond him.
“You needn’t cut your hair off,” he said. “Someone can brush it for you.”
She pulled her long mane from where it rested on the bed. Before her, the locks that had once been her pride were damp and knotted. The ends were thin and frayed. How wretched she’d become in the days since he’d known her!
“I want it gone,” she said softly.
Anthony moved towards the bed, then sat beside her. Above the neckline of her fine chemise, Letitia’s chest was bony where it had once been smooth with youth and proof of good appetite. The roses that once bloomed on her cheeks had wilted. She was but a shade of her former self.
Even so, his heart beat faster being in the same room as Letitia Delemere. He was transported back to his early days as a youngblade in London, pride and lust overflowing as he captured the most luminous courtesan of the age. He should have known then that it wouldn’t last. At least he had learned that lesson and a few others besides — thanks to this woman.
“I’ve a mind to let you cut it off,” he said. “But I think I would do you a disservice if I didn’t at least try to help you first.”
“I am willing to be disserviced.”
“Lie down on these pillows. You needn’t even sit up. Merely allow me to brush out the knots,” he said.
Letitia reclined against the mound of plush bedclothes, her hair trailing behind her.
“Let it be known that I don’t permit just any man to touch my hair,” she said.
Anthony snorted. How like Letitia to claim superior morals while acting the harlot. Was she not willing to let a group of men fuck her just last night? And now she wished to pretend that she’d never allowed a man to brush her hair before?
Why, Anthony himself had done so frequently! He’d take up those silver brushes she favored and run them through her hair while she told him the latest gossip of the day or recounted some witty joke.
One day, after dreaming that she had been lost in a plague, Anthony had snipped a lock of her hair and placed it within the pages of an early printed edition of Dante’sLa Vita Nuovathat he had acquired on his Grand Tour. At the time, he’d thought they’d begun a new life together. What a predictable, pathetic young man he’d been, squandering jewels on a faithless woman who existed to part men from their money. And he should have known that; nothing about their arrangement should have been a surprise to him.
Anthony touched the brush to the bottom of her hair and tugged at a knot. Harder than he would have in the past. But then, he wasn’t a fool in love anymore, hoping to spare his darling the slightest pain.
He heard her draw in breath, but she didn’t complain or speak.
