Jade Lee - Wedded in Scandal

“That bastard is the only one who will give me credit! And now his prices will be tripled! What you have done, my high-handed lord, is ruin me and my business!”

“Ruin you? I paid for the damn silk!”

“And how many dresses can I make from that? One, maybe two? What about muslin and lace, thread and buttons? Did you think about that while you were ruining me?”

“He was accosting you!”

“He was most certainly not!” she snapped back.

He slammed back against the seat, and his mind’s eye unerringly repeated what he had seen. “So it’s true. You are his mistress.”

Crack! The slap of her hand across his face surprised him as much from the speed as the vehemence of her attack. His head shot to the side. He hadn’t even seen the blow coming.

“I am no man’s mistress. Not his and certainly not yours!”

He didn’t move, but he felt the imprint of her hand burning on his cheek and his fury coalesced into a cold, ugly thing. “I know what I saw, Mrs. Mortimer. But of course, it is no business of mine. And,” he added, his eyes narrowing into hard slits, “no business of ours will be exactly what you get.”

He saw that Mrs. Mortimer understood immediately what he meant. She blanched to a ghostly white, but didn’t say a word. It took Gwen a moment longer to comprehend, but when she did, she bristled with all her youthful contrariness.

“Why, you interfering, high-handed, arrogant…brother!” Gwen spat the last word as if it were the gravest insult. “I do not have the slightest understanding of what just happened, but I completely agree with Mrs. Mortimer. It is all your fault, Robert! All of it!” Then, to prove that she wasn’t completely at a loss, she turned to Mrs. Mortimer, her expression concerned. “Am I to understand that Mr. Bono accosted you?”

Mrs. Mortimer released a sigh of frustration. “Gwen, dear, please do not be concerned. It is the sad truth that women in my position are accosted constantly. Your brother yesterday, Mr. Bono today. It is a game they play—”

“Do not think to put me in the same category as that villain,” Robert snapped, but guilt was burning a dark hole in his gut.

Mrs. Mortimer went on as if she had not heard him. “It is why I wear padding when I visit Mr. Bono. He likes to…er…touch. And if I allow just a little touching, the price is better. I praise his masterly skills in front of his men, I giggle and simper, and yes, I even tease. If I could afford to go elsewhere, I would. Indeed, that is why I am working with a new woman who will hopefully solve this problem. But she has only just begun to work and was unavailable this morning.”

Gwen frowned. “But you shouldn’t have to do business that way.”

Mrs. Mortimer reached out and touched Gwen’s hand. “Should and shouldn’t do not apply to some of us. Be grateful that you are protected.”

“Well,” huffed Gwen, “you shall not be punished because of my brother’s boorishness.” She shot a withering glare at Robert. “I believe, Mrs. Mortimer, that I shall double my trousseau purchase. And I think I will get all of my friends to visit you as well. It shall be a condition of attending my wedding. They must all wear a gown made by you.”

Color returned to the dressmaker’s cheeks, and Robert had the churlish instinct to be furious at her for impelling his sister to do such a thing. He had been trying to protect the woman, damn her. And she had somehow managed to turn him into a villain and his sister into her greatest patron.

“My God,” he whispered, “you are the most brilliant businessman it has ever been my misfortune to meet.”

Both women turned to look at him, but it was the dressmaker who spoke, with an arched brow, no less. “I am not a businessman at all, my lord. In fact, I believe that is the source of our difficulties. You have no idea what to do with a woman in business.”

“Because a woman ought not to be in business,” he groused. And then he could have bitten off his own tongue for his stupidity. He merely meant that she ought to have a man to do her purchasing and the like. After all, if a man were to go to Mr. Bono’s, then all this havy cavy nonsense would not happen. It was all perfectly logical, and yet it was absolutely not the thing to say to these two women. To say that they were insulted was a mild understatement. Gwen huffed and called him the type of names he had long since learned to tune out. Mrs. Mortimer simply looked at him with pity in her dark eyes. Pity! When he was the damned viscount and she was a nobody dressmaker!

Good Lord, but he was beyond grateful when they finally arrived at the shop. He leaped out immediately, simply to remove himself from the diatribe Gwen continued to level at his head.

“Gwen, my dear,” he said, interrupting her in midword, “I believe I shall walk from here. Pray go home and let Mother know what has happened. I’m sure she would love to know the exact details of my perfidy.”

If there was one thing his mother enjoyed, it was a lively discussion of his faults. In the meantime, he gestured to the coachman. The footman was already carrying the bolt of blasted yellow silk into the shop. If Robert had his choice, he would turn around and depart immediately. But politeness required that he open the shop door for Mrs. Mortimer. She smiled her thanks, her expression tight. And politeness also required that she invite him inside.

“It has been a long day, my lord. Would you like some tea before you depart?” Her words were no more and no less than what he expected. But some devil in his heart made him look her in the eye, waiting until she finally met his gaze. “My lord?”

“This is not done between us. I will not stay now, but I will return.”

He watched understanding and dismay fill her expression. But there was a spark of excitement there. He was sure of it. Excitement, desire, all of the feminine reactions that said, Do come back. Do challenge me again. He read them in her eyes. Or so he told himself. Then he spun on his heel and walked away.

Robert didn’t go to his home. Nor did he head for his club. He needed time to think and analyze his emotions, and so he headed for the one place he could be himself: his brothel. On the occasion of his sixteenth birthday, Robert had been summoned into his father’s library and told it was time to become a man. But as his father never did anything that was less than grand, he presented his son with not just a prostitute for the night, but an entire brothel, named the Chandler, a place where any man could get his wick lit. And, as was typical with all his father’s business purchases, the reality was a great deal more sordid than the presentation.

He and his father had shown up at the brothel steps, only to stand at the doorway for a terribly, terribly long time. Eventually the door was opened by the only standing “candle” in the house, the rest having been stricken by fever.

His father had taken one whiff of the stench and started to back away. Robert was doing the same, except that the “candle” fainted straight into his arms. At that point, he had no choice. He half carried, half dragged the girl to the nearest settee, then sent his father to fetch a doctor. His father didn’t return, of course, but the doctor did. And together, the two men toiled as no heir to the Earl of Willington had done in generations.

Ten days later, nearly half the candles had survived. And when Robert collapsed, it was the madame of the house who, settling him in her own bed, nursed him as his own mother had never done. From that moment on, Robert and Chandelle were fast friends. And the brothel became something else entirely, though with the same name. It was a hospital of sorts for working girls. A place where the women could heal or die with dignity. If some of its former trade continued, Robert wasn’t aware of it. And he certainly didn’t take a cut of the profit.

What he did take was a back room that was wholly his. In it, he read, relaxed, and dabbled in the one thing he had once wanted to do above everything else: medicine. He kept track of the treatments the girls received, the concoctions and the potions that helped and those that did not. He had visitors of a sort, too. Men of medicine he consulted on one case or another. But mostly, he and Chandelle managed alone, doing their best for the girls who knocked upon their door.

He told no one what he was doing. It was perfectly acceptable for an earl’s son to own a brothel. It was absolutely unacceptable for him to be housing them to no profit and be treating them as human beings, caring for their diseases, and seeing that their children grew up in a wholly different life.

And if his father ever found out that this was the reason there weren’t enough funds to make his disaster of a mine immediately profitable, then there would be the devil to pay for sure. Chandelle and her patients would be safe, Robert would see to that. But the earl would demand a reckoning—and a good deal of money—to recompense what had gone into the Chandler. And sadly, Robert just didn’t have the money in his own right to do that. Not in one lump sum. So he kept his passion secret, and he went there only when he was assured no one would miss him.

Chandelle met him at the door, opening it quickly and ushering him inside. When he would have spoken, she pressed a finger to his lips, then gestured him to her bedroom. He followed her quietly enough to where three children sat completely enraptured by the sight of a mama cat licking clean her new litter of kittens.

“She wandered in and set up right by my fire,” whispered Chandelle. “What was I to do but call in the little ones to watch? It has given their mothers three hours’ worth of peace!”