“Sweet on him!” Elizabeth nearly fell off the dais. “Why, the man’s an utterarse!” She clapped a hand over her mouth; these maids were rubbing off on her. “How could you possibly imagine me sweet on him?”
Evie poked Mae, setting her into fresh peals of laughter.
Elizabeth remained annoyed. “Really, I cannot comprehend your?—”
“’Cause he’s so sweet in bed, miss.” Rose winked. “Best there is, trained t’ please a woman, if y’ know what I mean.” And she suggestively licked her lips.
Elizabeth was stunned by so lewd a gesture.
“’Tis true, he’s the best, is Jasper.” Evie piped up. “His own mum set Li’s girls t’ learnin’ on ’im when he were a boy, an’ later had ’im initiatin’ all the innocents she got. Made sure her son gave ’em one hell of a good ride afore she set ’em loose in Li’s whorehouse.” She laughed. “An’ I should know, as I were one meself!”
Rose gave the girl a friendly shove, then met Elizabeth’s eyes with kindness. “Miss, only a whore knows what it’s like t’ sell her body, an’ Jasp knows all the tricks same as us. Buggered men even, when he had to.”
“He did,” Mae said softly as the girls fell quiet. “For his mum he did.”
“Only he’d not let ’em bugger him,” Evie declared. “He’d let no man stick no dick up his—” But the girl stopped herself from saying more, watching Elizabeth’s face drain blood.
“Aw now, it’s not so bad, really,” Rose attempted. “A hole’s a hole when there’s cash on the table. Don’t matter if it’s a man’s or woman’s most days.”
Madam LeBrecht swooped in just then, skirts crackling in the stillness that had befallen the room. She frowned at her maids. “I hope you harlots have not been filling Miss Winthrop’s ears with gossip about her betrothed.” Her gaze pierced each one.
“No, ma’am,” Rose answered. “We’d ne’er speak ill o’ Jasp, you know that.”
“That’sMiss Li,” Mae whispered in Elizabeth’s ear. “She goes by both names.”
“Well I am certain Miss Winthrop has had enough of you lot for today. Come,” Miss Li told Elizabeth, taking her hand to helpher off the dais. “Allow me to fortify you with tea before Jasper fetches you home.”
Elizabeth was grateful to descend from the maids’ chaos; her ears were still ringing with all they’d divulged. Miss Li’s tea, however, was unlike any she’d taken before, for it was not simply tea, it felt like a ceremony instead. She sat upon the lady’s floor, on woven straw mats hidden behind silk-screened panels, her cup no cup but instead a small bowl.
The lady was not of Elizabeth’s world.
Miss Li poured tea in an elegant, slow manner, bowing before Elizabeth before she bowed before the tea, then raised her bowl reverently to her lips. Elizabeth followed suit, mimicking the gesture.
“Tell me something of yourself, Miss Winthrop.” Miss Li stared into her bowl. “I should like to better know the woman Jasper will marry.”
Clearly, this was no social chitchat. Then again, nothing about this day was as it should have been. Elizabeth was struck by the woman’s overly familiar use of Milton’s first name—Jasper—which the three seamstresses had also liberally used. She decided to be blunt.
“Baron of Milton offered an exorbitant sum for my sister’s hand yesterday, ma’am, having swindled our father into great debt the very night before.” She controlled her emotion. “I offered myself in her place, wishing to spare my sister a man like Milton.”
“Ah.” Li lovingly swirled the tea in her bowl. “A wise decision, Elizabeth. May I call you Elizabeth?”
“Of course,” she answered, though Miss Li did not offer the use of her own name.
“Jasper is an old acquaintance of mine. In fact, I owe him my life. I am personally invested in seeing him well settled.”
Elizabeth had no words to respond to this.
“He is under the mistaken premise, however, that power and wealth can buy happiness.” Her gaze flicked up from her tea. “He also believes a titled wife will open doors which remain as yet closed to him.”
Elizabeth had assumed as much, but this baron was marrying the wrong woman if he thought she might improve his standing.
“Which is why I am surprised he chose you,” she finished.
“I more than urged him to reconsider, Miss Li.”
“No doubt you did.” She again peered into the depths of her tea. “Jasper is not a man easily dissuaded,” she told her, “though you may be precisely the woman he needs.”
“I…” Elizabeth hesitated. “Miss Li, I must ask if everything your maids just told me is indeed true about the Baron’s past.”
