“I don’t know,” he said.
Robert clapped his hand around Nicholas’s bicep and squeezed gently. “It’s only a week, brother. You can endure anything for a week, I know you’re more than strong enough. And you could come out of it with what you desire secured.” He hesitated. “Please. I have never been able to do much for you. Let me do this.”
Nicholas shifted. “May I bring the dog?”
Robert glanced down at Fortescue, who was glowering at him because he’d touched Nicholas. It was only good training that was keeping him from bearing those terrible teeth.
“Your dog hates everyone,” Robert pointed out. “But certainly. He would be welcome. I’m sure he’ll enjoy running free all over the grounds at Roseford.”
“Then…” Nicholas let out a long sigh. “Yes. Yes, I’ll do it.”
Robert clapped his hands together with a laugh. “Excellent. Give me a few days to make the arrangements and I’ll send word with all the particulars and a few names of those who’ll be in attendance so you may strategize.”
Nicholas motioned toward the path and they began to walk again. Fortescue trailed behind, dragging his tree with him. “Thank you.”
Roseford cast him a side glance. “No thanks necessary. You may not like it, but wearebrothers. And I’ll do anything for my family.”
Nicholas didn’t know how to respond to that statement that felt too intimate and close, so he said nothing. And prayed he wouldn’t regret taking Roseford’s offer of help…and family.
Aurora gripped her hands at her sides and prayed that she looked cooler and more collected than she felt as she walked up the cracked staircase to the worn-down building above. A faded sign hung from rusty chains above the door.The Cat’s Companion. She shuddered at the smells from the docks nearby and the glances she was receiving from the men gathered by the door, waiting for entry.
A big man with only half his teeth and a cruel glint to his eyes seemed to be managing who entered and who was refused. He noted her approach and licked his lips as he looked her up and down. She touched her hair to be certain her wig, worn to conceal her true identity, was still in place, and tugged her shawl closer, but that only elicited a burst of laughter from the men.
“Might as well not try to cover it up, sweet. It won’t take long to get it off!” called out one faceless voice from the crowd.
She ignored it and girded herself for talking her way into the house of ill repute. “Sir,” she said.
“New girls go ’round the back,” the doorman said, his gaze flitting over her. “Maggie will like you. You look…fresh.”
She swallowed hard, but ignored the bile rising in her throat. So he thought she was a new girl, come here to make her way on her back. That was fine. It would help her gain entry. She could only pray she’d find what she came for.
She nodded and slipped past the men in the line, around toward the alleyway that led to the back entrance. It was dimly lit, entirely unsafe. She knew the risk she was taking coming here at all. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was Imogen. She had to find Imogen.
There was a door open around the back and a bored-looking woman stood there, smoking a foul-smelling cigar. As Aurora approached, she pulled it from her lips and puffed smoke in Aurora’s face. “Come to work?”
Aurora coughed, waving at the smoke that seemed to stick in her nose and throat. Her heart was all but pounding out of her chest and her eyes stung with fearful tears as she nodded, playing out the lie that would get her inside. She didn’t belong here. Of course, she hadn’t belonged in many of the places she had been in the past few weeks. But she still went to them because her best friend had gone missing weeks before and Aurora had heard she was in one of these…places. Her desperation turned to action that would surely change her forever.
“Go inside then,” the woman said with a shake of her head. “Maggie’ll deal with you.”
Aurora stepped through the door. Inside the place was far too hot and there was a faint stink of sweat and sex in the air. She shifted, looking for the twice-mentioned Maggie. She had no idea what she’d say to the woman who ran this house of sin, at least not without causing herself a great deal of trouble.
There was no one waiting for her in the small foyer inside the back entrance. No one was there at all. She looked around at the scuffed wooden plank walls, the stained furniture where a guest might wait to be received. She certainly hoped Imogen wasn’t here.
How had things come so far? Just shy of a year ago, she and Imogen had both been somewhat unhappily married but sheltered in their homes, able to turn to each other for comforting conversation when their husbands humiliated them at places just like this one. It hadn’t been much of a life, perhaps. Aurora had many regrets, ones that kept her up at night, haunted by a face she hadn’t seen in almost a decade.
But it had been safe. It had been comfortable. And then in a span of just a few weeks, both her own husband, Viscount Martin Lovell, and Imogen’s husband, the Honorable Mr. Warren Huxley, had died. Lovell of a sudden apoplexy in a place very much like this one, Huxley in a carriage accident, racing his phaeton like the fool he had always been.
They’d never spoken it out loud, but Aurora knew they’d each felt a sense of…relief? Amidst the sadness and shock, it had been there. The end of their marriages should have meant the beginning of new lives with freedom, for both men had been well off.
Except Lovell had left Aurora with very little. Her family had its own struggles since her father’s death, so she’d kept most of her plight from them. Huxley had left Imogen with nothing at all. Desperation had set in. Despair. A constant fight to stay afloat had led to conversations about other options. Even unthinkable ones. When Imogen turned to this life, it hadn’t been a total shock to Aurora. But when she disappeared into it?
That was another story.
And so Aurora searched for her, praying she’d find her and convince her to come home. They would figure it out. Theyhadto figure it out, together. Only she kept coming to these places and never finding Imogen.
She drew in a shaky breath. If the woman who ran this place wasn’t here to greet and assess her, that actually helped her cause.
Aurora stepped forward and slipped into the darker hallway off the foyer. It was nothing but a long series of doors. Thin doors, behind which she could hear various sounds of pleasure. She swallowed hard and crept along the hall, listening for Imogen’s voice.
