Page 54 of Lyon of Least Resistance

He’d signed the contract with little thought to the meaning of the words written on the page, having believed that no man could resort to the behaviors described. But he’d been naïve—not only in his lack of experience of women, but his lack of understanding of the plight of those women forced to serve a man’s baser urges.

And Cordelia had entered into such a profession.

“Dear God,” he whispered. “Why?”

“It was a means to an end, Lord Bedford,” she said. “Like any other form of commerce. I intended to save enough to purchase a home in the country where I could never be beholden to others again, so that I could begin again and perhaps find someone to love me. A home—a family of my own. I even thought of going to Somerset, but I never knew the name of the village in which I was born.”

“Did you not think to ask your guardian?”

A flare of anger shone in her eyes before she blinked and it disappeared. “I’ve not seen him in five years. He could be dead in the streets for all that I know—and he most likely is, for he was too fond of liquor. I care not what happened to him. And there was little point in returning to Somerset. My past mattered not. I only cared for my future.”

“So you remained in the Lyon’s Den,” he said. “What made you leave now?”

“I made the mistake that all whores make in the end,” she said. Then she turned toward the window, her face in profile, glowing in the light of the setting sun.

“What mistake?” he whispered.

“I fell in love. It was then that Mrs. Dove-Lyon said I had to go. And she was right. I couldn’t lie with another man after…”

She paused, her cheeks coloring, and lowered her head.

“After?” he said, placing a finger under her chin and tilting her head up.

“After I lay with you. And it’s a poor whore who can no longer bear to lie with other men, is it not?”

“Surely you cannot mean…” The words caught in this throat. He couldn’t summon the courage to voice his hope.

“You think I’m playing you false?” she said, an edge to her voice. “You think that all whores will tell the man they are with that he’s the only one they wish to lie with?” She shook her head. “Of course you do, and, given what I am, I cannot blame you. But do you not recall what I once said? That your Dahlia would never lie to you. And I’ve never lied to you, James—not as Dahlia nor Cordelia.”

He swallowed his shame. In expressing his doubt over whether he was deserving of her love, he’d made her believe that she, and not he, was the unworthy one.

“As her parting gift,” she continued, “Mrs. Dove-Lyon offered to find a match for me. So I agreed to one game, after which, if I rejected all suitors, I’d be free to go.”

“But you didn’t reject them all,” he whispered.

She curled her fingers around his. “I-I have a fondness for poorly executed paintings of roses.”

Moisture shone in her eyes and she wiped them with her free hand.

“Cordelia, I’m—”

“Don’t say it, I beg you,” she said, turning to face him, a plea in her eyes. “I’ve spoken of my history once, as you demanded, but I would ask that I now be permitted to forget.”

She turned away once more, and he took her other hand.

“Cordelia.”

She closed her eyes, her chest rising and falling with a sigh.

“Will you look at me?”

She faced him once more, and his heart almost broke at the pain in her eyes—the pain of a young girl who had been sold like a commodity, a girl who had learned to sell herself as a means to lift herself out of degradation.

A girl who had fallen in love.

He caught his breath. Did that mean that she’d spoken the truth to that exuberant young man in the Lyon’s Den?

He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles. She let out a low whimper, but maintained her gaze, her pupils dilating until he could almost see her soul in their dark depths.