“Is it true, sir?” she asked in the quiet of their drive back.
“Is what true?” Harris trained his eyes on the road, rather than stare at her too much.
“That you always … bed a girl before you hire her?”
Blood rushed to his face. “Where the devil’d you hear that, miss?”
“From one of your … staff.” She blushed crimson.
“Which staff?” He lashed back. “Were it Tom? Or bloody Janie, me house madam?”
“J-Janie.”
“The nerve o’ that woman,” he muttered, shaking his head.
Miss Winthrop remained silent and Harris began to feel like a lout, even though bedding girls was anythingbutawful. Hell, it was the opposite of awful.
“I do it t’ make sure they suit,” he finally told her.
She shifted in her seat. “I’m afraid I do not understand, sir.”
Harris wasn’t sure she could handle the truth, but he didn’t want her thinking worse of him than she already did,thank you very much, Janie. He cleared his throat. “Me mum were a harlot, Miss Winthrop, same as Jasper’s. We grew up as brothers, though we’re not blood. But without no dad, raised only by whores, well, I understand women differently than most men.”
“I make no assumptions of you, Arthur,” she told him. “You are an enigma to me.”
He snorted, debating his next words. “Not all women can prostitute themselves, miss. Nor should any woman be forced to.” He might as well tell all. “When a girl approaches me t’ work atThe Leaf,I’ll not hire her if she’s not able t’ sell her body t’ men. And there’s only one way t’ know if she can. So I sleep with her once, as test. An’ if she don’t suit, I find ’er employment elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere?” She sounded shocked. “You mean you?—?”
“I don’t send her t’ no poorhouse, if that’s what you think.”
“No, Arthur, I only … I am surprised you’d take such interest in?—”
“I ain’t Finch, miss,” he bit back. “Whathedoes t’ girls is beyond…” But he wouldn’t go there. “I find ’em positions, most often in service, in houses like yer own, or Jasper’s.”
“Oh.” She again fell quiet. “I take it you have slept with a great many women then.”
“You askin’ me t’ supply you with a number?”
“No.” She again blushed prettily. Ridiculous, how pretty. “I meant only that you must be quite experienced.”
Harris kept his mouth shut.
“Arthur…” She hesitated. “Is bodily congress truly all that terrible for women and all that wonderful for men? Because if this is true, then marriage is a fate more cruel than I?—”
Harris could contain himself no longer. He cupped her cheek in his gloved hand and kissed her full, sweet lips so urgently her amber eyes flew open.
“I can assure you, Bella”—for necessity, he adjusted his seat—“if done right, the act is just as wonderful fer woman as it is fer man, as God intended it. An’ anyone what tells you otherwise knowsnothin’o’ lovemakin’.”
For the remainder of their ride, Miss Winthrop perched stock-still beside Harris, while he sat atop his curriclethoroughly inflamed. She was a great many things, this lady, but a fool she was not. He’d put nothing past her anymore. Nothing.
Stealthy as a cat and sleek as a kitten,he thought as he pulled up to her address and watched her enter her father’s house. She was unskilled and untrained, but Annabelle Winthrop had courage in abundance.
Which in his world, was no small thing.
“Down, boy!”
Mutton promptly sat, something Milton’s wife had been trying to get the wolfhound to do for the past half hour. He was enjoying Elizabeth’s attempts.
