“You’re tenacious, opinionated, and, better, far more often than not, right.”
Camille blinked. “And?”
Madam cocked her head, angling a sharp gaze at her like an owl from a tree hollow. “Did you know, adultery is a learned behavior with nobility? Sons learn from their fathers. Sons, in turn, view wives as a means to continue their lines and then discard them for more scintillating entertainment, and the cycle continues. Generation after generation, only needing a single man of merit and fidelity to break the course, but rarely does it happen. The irresponsibility of siring bastards and neglecting them, however, is as old as the aristocracy itself.”
Camille’s brain eased into the subject change and the connection. “Your father was a member of the gentry. Thatdoesn’t explain anything. Dozens of bastards walk the streets. Your charity doesn’t extend to them.”
Madam’s smirk was approving. “Worse than any old titled man. He was a duke.” She paused. “The Duke of Camine.”
Shock sped Camille’s brain into a frenzy. Notherfather. Madam was too old to be a long-lost sister, which meant it was the previous Duke of Camine... her and Hamish’s grandfather.
“You’re my aunt.”
It didn’t make sense. The duke’s line was notorious for scandalous dalliances, but no duke, especially not the vain and conceited line of Camines, would have left their ‘kept’ women unprovided for. Like her, Madam—Aunt Clarice—must have had other opportunities.
Camille indicated the club with an all-encompassing glance. “Why here?”
Madam leaned back against her desk, displacing a stack of papers in a haphazard leaning tower. “I wished to help women like me, like us. I had not your mental prowess or stubbornness. I was born with beauty and charm and a need to control that which controlled me.”
She shrugged and Camille felt the overwhelming weight of years of toil and hardship in the gesture.
“When the duke died, I decided: I could follow in my mother’s footsteps and find a rich benefactor until my beauty faded, or I could build an empire where those same men would bow before their pleasure at my hands, at their expense.”
Camille didn’t hide her admiration. “An easy decision.”
Madam smiled. “I thought so.”
“Is that why you offered me a job?”
“Partially.” Madam didn’t apologize for the deception. “If you had shown up at my door pathetic and mindless, I would have thrown you out for your own good. No woman should choose this life out of desperation, though many do. But you were proudand fierce, and I saw myself in your refusal to cower under the threat of destitution.” Madam leaned over and extracted a file from her top drawer and set it in her hands. “Which is why I know you will make good use of this.”
Camille frowned and opened the file. There lay her proposal for her shelter for women, along with a deed to an old, abandoned school on the outskirts of Caring Cross.
“What is this?”
Madam cocked her head. “A counter-proposal. The space is yours.”
“You’re giving me a building?”
“It was payment for services rendered by a man who could not afford membership. A manyouvetted and claimed the girls would enjoy. The deed was offered up willingly, and the man has never whispered a regret about the exchange. And neither have the Ponies.”
A space for her shelter. She literally had the deed in her hands. “You’re giving me a building.”
Madam snorted. “Don’t be grateful. It doesn’t suit you. Yes, the building is yours, along with the full support of the Prodding Pony.”
“But the taxes? The maintenance—”
“You may thank Lord and Lady Quickner for the ease of transition.” Madam rolled her eyes. “The way those two went on and on about repaying the kindness oftheirangel, it was a relief to demand the money and shut them up. Don’t be surprised if they ask for their names painted on the door in gauche, golden letters.”
The obstacles that had lined her path all these years were falling one after another like toy soldiers overturned. Camille’s joy was laced with suspicion. It couldn’t be that easy.
“What is ityouwant in return?”
Madam’s smile was exacting. “When you acquire the funds to get up and running through benefactors or tuition or whatnot, I ask only one thing.”
Camille’s chest felt so light, she’d fetch the woman the moon. “Bastard girls will pay nothing,” she said. “Any gentleman thinking to dump theirmistakeswill pay through the nose.”
“Good.” Madam offered her hand and her condition. “And bastard dukes pay double.”
