At the far end of the corridor, a door stood open. A few pieces of furniture occupied it.
“There are six servants and seven chambers,” Mrs. Lavender explained.
“And these are the stairs you mentioned.” Padua opened a door. It gave out to a small wooden terrace, and long flights of wooden stairs leading down to the garden.
Mrs. Lavender’s head poked out beside hers. “Fifteen years ago there was a small fire. It frightened me enough that I paid for these myself. As I said, they are useful in allowing the servants to avoid the trade, or the eyes of the gentlemen.”
Padua looked at the stairs, then the empty chamber. “Where do the male servants sleep?”
Mrs. Lavender pointed to an outbuilding that ran along the side of the garden. “Hector and the groom sleep there, in chambers above the carriage room and stable.”
“It is a big stable.”
“It was not always one. Before my time it was used for some kind of business. Smithing or ironworking. I had most of it cleaned out and put my carriage and horses there.”
Padua entered the empty chamber. She looked around. “For a short while, your original description of this house will be partly true. As it happens, I need a place to lay my head until I settle myself. Unless you object with good cause, I will use this chamber.”
Mrs. Lavender’s eyes widened. “You cannot be serious. It will not be appropriate.”
“What is inappropriate about it? My father owns part of a brothel. Who am I to have her nose in the air about using such accommodations? I will pay for a new mattress for this bed, if you will arrange for one to be brought. I will use these stairs, and avoid interfering with your trade. And while I am here, I will study the lease and those accounts.”
“Your father did not interfere with my business. He went his own way. That was our understanding of how it would be.”
“I will not interfere, either, if all is in order.”
Mrs. Lavender’s mouth flapped, but no more objections emerged. She shook her head in resignation and astonishment. “You are a strange duck. We both know where you got that, don’t we?”
Indeed they did. The difference, as Padua saw it, was the strange daughter would not be ripe for fleecing the way the strange father probably had been. If this was the family business, so be it, until that lease ran out.
“If Hector would bring up the valise I left in the reception hall, I will begin to get settled.”
Mrs. Lavender left her. Padua opened the window to air out the chamber, then turned her mind to deciding what furniture to keep and what to move out.
***
Ives grew impatient. The footman, Hector, had put him in Mrs. Lavender’s office at least a half hour ago. He checked his pocket watch. No, only ten minutes had passed. Ten frustrating minutes. Hectorrefused to answer any questions, even the most basic one: Did a very tall Miss Belvoir call at this house this morning? If she had not, every minute he sat here was another minute wasted.
He looked around the office. It was a little cramped, deliberately so. Mrs. Lavender could have arranged the desk differently to make more room. Placed like this in the center of a small chamber, it effectively confined visitors to a slice of floor between it and the door. The forced intimacy and close quarters, the cat sleeping on the hearth and the wool throw waiting in a basket, gave the office a cozy quality.
The door finally opened. Mrs. Lavender walked in. Her mouth fell open in surprise when she saw him. Then she smiled. “Hector said only that a gentleman awaited me. He did not say it was you.”
She patted him on the head, like he were a boy, then went to her desk.
“It has been so very long,” Mrs. Lavender said. “You are as handsome a devil as ever. Did your family ever come around to your choice of life path? I see your name in the papers sometimes.”
“My late brother, never, I am happy to say.”
She pursed her lips. “I am sorry for your loss.”
“Do not be. We muddled through, splendidly. We recovered from the shock so quickly that some found it heartless.”
“He came here, a few months before his passing. I reminded him he was not welcomed. He created a scene.Hector almost had to throw him out. Thank goodness not. All the friends in the world will not help if a duke speaks against a business, even one like this. I reminded him there were houses better suited to his preferences.” Her eyes twinkled. “I told him to ask his brothers if he had forgotten where those houses could be found.”
Mrs. Lavender’s house specialized in polite, romantic illusions for men who did not seek too much variation in their erotic experiences. As a young man, Ives had visited, like most of his friends. Some of them still did, he expected. Others had graduated to the more exotic tastes that Mrs. Lavender now alluded to.
“Of course, some of my more sophisticated gentlemen return now and then. I find that heartbreaks bring them here, or other disappointments. Is that why you have come? It is early, but I am sure one of the girls—”
“I am here about something else. Not one of your young ladies, but another woman. Did a Miss Belvoir visit today?”
