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.
Chapter 6
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!”
He smiled as he looked down at the mangy mama cat. Her fur was burned in patches and uneven in others. One eye was gone, and if he wasn’t mistaken, her tail was bent at an odd angle. But the animal was alive and caring for her kittens with all the devotion of the Madonna.
“Well, she looks like she’d be a good mouser.” The cat looked nothing of the sort. But then, he’d learned not to judge people—or animals—by their appearance.
“She’ll teach her kits well, you mark my words. Then you’ll see. Not a rat would dare show its face here.”
“At least not the four-footed kind,” he drawled. They still had problems with men of one ilk or another come looking for a woman or her children. That was why he kept a couple of large guards in the house and paid them well. Mostly they fetched and carried whatever was needed. But other times, they kept the human vermin outside.
With a wry smile, she gestured him out of her room again. He stepped out and headed for the upper floor of patients. She accompanied him, and he slowed to match her pace. Chandelle had once been a great beauty, or so he’d been told. But now she was in her fifties—an ancient age in her profession—and the sickness that had brought them together so many years ago had yet to leave her joints. That made her stiff as she moved, slow and unsteady with the paint box whenever she bothered, and mostly unfit to do the day-to-day nursing some of the patients required. But nursing had never been Chandelle’s strength. She had an eye for people—their talents and their failings—and she had no reservations about using that knowledge for the good of her charges. As a madame, she’d been a deft hand at blackmail. As the head of a home for sick women, she knew whom to accept and whom to toss from her steps like bad meat. Every one of her charges had helped out in one way or another. And neither she nor Robert would have it any other way.
Today, however, she turned that keen eye on him. Or rather, her keen nose. She sniffed the air as they walked and curled her lip. “You ’ave the smell of the docks on you.”
He nodded. “Spent an extremely unpleasant hour at Mr. Johnny Bono’s Mercantile.”
“Johnny Bono! That bastard! Tell me you won’t have no truck with the likes of him.”
Robert smiled. “No truck, I swear. But I’d be grateful for news of him, especially as it concerns my sister’s dressmaker.”
She stopped halfway up the stairs, pausing to draw breath. Or perhaps it was to eye him with an all-too-clear gaze. “A dressmaker, you say?”