“This is not a prison, Your Grace,” Madam said. “While the circumstances that bring my girls here may be demanding, indeed, I am not their jailor. They may leave when they please.”
Renard hadn’t expected the woman’s harsh tone. The woman meant it; she didn’t keep her girls like so many of the pleasure houses who demanded unreasonable control over women in already poor conditions.
Then why did Camille stay here? Surely, a woman as bright and educated as her could pass for a schoolteacher or a nurse in the lower income areas of town.
Which meant there was more than security on the line.
Renard frowned. Debt of another kind. Collectors, family—she needed money and fast to keep someone at bay. He’d be damned if he let his son or daughter be at the mercy of the slums and the lowlives who took advantage of those already disadvantaged.
“Do you know the names of the creditors she owes?” he asked.
Madam’s eyes widened, then crinkled with an amused smile spreading her mouth. “I know of some, the more persistent ones who have called on the house when they believed, wrongly, that payment was due.”
He heard venom in her voice. “You turned them away?”
“This is a house of pleasure away from reality. I informed the creditors they were not welcome unless it was them who offered a sum.” Madam’s smile remained, but it looked anything but friendly. “Then I asked them to leave.”
“Like I was asked to leave?” Renard still couldn’t sit on his backside for any length of period after being tossed into the streets.
“Just so.”
Good, he thought. His bruised bum aside, any fears he had over Camille’s involvement in the club were assuaged by Madam’s candidness. She was a fierce and exacting woman, if the stories he’d heard at White’s were any indication, but that fierceness extended to loyalty to her girls.
Meaning, the older woman had more than cold calculation beating in her chest.
He set a stack of notes on the desk between them. “Compensation for the names, then,” he said. “And a promise tonot interfere if the lady wishes to leave your employment after her debts are settled.”
Madam leaned back in her chair, her brow cocked. “I do not speak for the lady. Her business means her names to give.”
“You will not bargain with me?”
“I never said that.” That calculating look was back. “I do not dither in simple coin, Your Grace.”
“What do you want?”
“I trade in secrets.”
His gaze narrowed. “You mean leverage?”
She smiled as if to repeat, “Just so.” Her hand waved towards the door and the streets outside. “I am a businesswoman in a world of men. Money is parted with and exchanged like water between fish.Mycurrency keeps the most powerful men in England indebted to me and this club.”
Security. Renard’s gut twisted. The woman had a point, and a devil’s instinct. Her associates had no doubt returned with little in the way of blackmail material to use against him in case of his membership. A woman like Madam wouldn’t be satisfied with a paltry confession that the Duke of Lux liked to leave the house with his stockings un-ironed. He was a man of his word, and he lived by the philosophy of truth above all, except in one instance.
Darkness, pitch black and all consuming, rose from his very soul, a whisper of ruin that begged to be set free after years of suffering in silence.
He did not hesitate. “Very well.” Renard swallowed down acid in his throat. For Camille, he would do this. For his son or daughter, he’d find Camille and marry her immediately. That idiot cousin, Norris, could make his life difficult regarding the title, but Renardwouldprotect his family. Somehow. If he had to beg his friend, the Duke of Camine, for a place as a tenant on his estate, he’d learn how to milk a cow or till a field.
He would admit to his sins and suffer the risk of ridicule and possible imprisonment. He would need to set out immediately to find prospects for his sister, Charlotte, before his guilt was made public when there’d be no chance of settlement. He’d find her a husband, someone who’d weather the scandal and give her the family and status she deserved.
He raised his chin and looked at Madam directly. “May I ask a boon?”
Madam merely blinked.
“I need two weeks before you use this information to your advantage.” He licked suddenly dry lips. “So I may put affairs in order.”
Madam leaned forward in her chair, clearly more interested than her blank expression implied. “The Pony does not release information on a whim, Your Grace. If your currency is as damning as you suggest, you have my word. I will not reveal it without just cause.”
“Thank you.” Renard released his breath, but relief did not come. There’d never been anything but twisted self-loathing and responsibility since that afternoon, and a hope he could one day let the past rest in peace. But for Camille, he’d bleed the darkness from his soul, inflicted when flame and despair had eaten the very sunshine from the sky.
