“Miss Jones is to perform a séance at my house and I should like you to attend.” Alex made the statement as baldly as possible. His meaning would be clear: You are not worthy of explanation or preamble.
Nightingale’s eyes widened in what might be genuine surprise. Alex couldn’t be sure. “I… Well, of course. It would be an honor.”
“I should imagine so.” Few ordinary mortals received an invitation from a duke and almost no one at all received one delivered in person. “But I’m not inviting you for the pleasure of your company. I want you where I can see you. In fact, bring that velvet-clad street urchin as well.”
For the second time, Alex saw something that looked like genuine surprise flicker in Nightingale’s expression. “I… Urchin? I don’t…” The man was a study of confusion. He scratched his chin in apparent thought. “I’m not sure I know—”
“Oh, come now. Let’s speak plainly. I refer, of course, to the little red-haired gentleman who recited the Lord’s Prayer during the partial manifestation we both so recently witnessed. The one who delivered your photographs. I enjoyed the one of Miss Jones very much. We both know you sent it, despite your maddeningly avuncular manner toward her in my presence. I want you and the boy where I can see you during that séance. We’ll see how your girl does without her accomplices scribbling on slates in the adjoining room.”
“My girl, sir?” The hint of a smile played about the man’s lips. “Of course I’ll attend the séance. The boy too, since you wish it. But you’re quite mistaken if you suppose Miss Jones needs help from the likes of us.”
Alex rose unhurriedly without acknowledging the remark. “Oh, and Nightingale…” he said, as the other man began to rise. He made a point of dispensing with the honorific, a subtle insult that meant everything in situations like these. “You may stop throwing her at me. I have only one use for a guttersnipe of Miss Jones’s sort and one night is all I require, perhaps less. I certainly have no intention of making her my mistress, so do tell her to stop angling for the position. It isn’t dignified. I’ll take her when I’m ready, as I’m sure many men have before.”
He had hoped to startle a reaction from Nightingale with the crude words. A denial. Perhaps even some anger on Evie’s behalf. After all, this man was the closest thing to a father she had ever known. The least he’d expected was more apparent indifference.
But Nightingale laughed.
Perhaps Alex ought to have felt triumphant—the laughter amounted to a decided break in character—but he was so angry on Evie’s behalf that he failed to stride from the room as he’d originally intended. Even when he’d marshalled the extremes of his emotions, he didn’t walk away. He couldn’t. He had to see how Nightingale recovered from such a noticeable slip.
“Forgive me, sir, but I must defend Miss Jones from your accusations on that score. She’s intact. I saw to that myself. Kept her closer than I would if she’d been my own daughter. I would hardly seek to tempt a gentleman like yourself with a trull, now would I?”
This was plain speaking at last, but Alex couldn’t take any pleasure in having elicited it.
It wasn’t that he’d believed the things he’d said about Evie but he hadn’t thought her a virgin, either. He’d assumed the woman who’d posed for those photographs must be at least as experienced as he was himself. It hadn’t bothered him, first because his attentions hadn’t been honorable, and now because she was Evie and, whatever her past, he adored the woman it had made her.
No, what Alex felt was the strange detachment of the man who, perhaps without realizing, thought he had a woman sorted neatly into a box only to find that no woman (or man, for that matter) is so easily confined.
But the carriage…
Surely that made Nightingale’s claim unlikely.
“I don’t mean that she’s entirely ignorant. I assume you know by now I found her at Miss Rose’s. Rose is a respectable sort. She doesn’t start them as young as some and I got Evie away. But she’s an observant girl. She saw a thing or two, I’d wager. The girls in those places talk so frankly as well. Imagine the things she learned from listening. All that knowledge, yet she’s untouched. That’s a rare thing.”
A rare thing indeed. The idea had a predictable effect on Alex’s body. The effect it was meant to have. The frisson of lust was quickly swamped by nausea. He was furious with Nightingale who somehow knew the dark twists that would appeal to Alex’s baser self, but even more so with himself for being the sort of man who could listen to those words and feel the ache of desire.
And he still didn’t believe any of it. Alex had deliberately given Nightingale the impression his interest in Evie was trifling, so now the man was trying to hook him by dripping salacious ideas into Alex’s ear like poison. Thank God Nightingale didn’t know how truly obsessed Alex had been since the first moment he’d seen Evie or how the longing for her continued to grow.
Her virginity, even if it existed, was nothing.
“Eight o’clock tomorrow evening,” he snapped. “Make sure the boy attends.”
Alex walked away but he wished he’d done so before Nightingale told his blatant lie. No matter how often he told himself it didn’t matter, he could think of little else.
Consequently, he was subdued on the brief carriage ride to Brewer Street, chilled by the calculating light in Nightingale’s eyes. The man reminded Alex of a miser gloating over a long-hoarded store of gold. Virginity as valuable commodity. Perhaps not so very different from all those fathers who’d angled their daughters Alex’s way over the years. One virginity, carefully preserved, in return for one dukedom, slightly tarnished. But unlike them, Nightingale wasn’t after a dukedom, which begged the question: what did he want?
Try though he might, Alex couldn’t keep his mind on this important question. Instead, he found himself wondering, is it true? And he was fascinated by his own preoccupation with the matter. Evie was not a prospective wife, though he didn’t give a damn that she would be socially unacceptable in that role. No, the reason he would never consider proposing to Evie was that he couldn’t afford her.
Floored by this realization, he let his head drop heavily against the squabs.
Did he want to marry Evie? A less restful companion with whom to spend his life he could hardly imagine. Virgin or no, she was a woman with a past. A dark past as alien from his own as it was possible to compass. She was complicated. She told lies and withheld truth. Yet the idea of marrying her didn’t fill his heart with panic the way thoughts of the shadowy debutante he was destined for did. Quite the opposite. It felt right.
He forced his head up and mentally shook himself. He couldn’t have Evie, so the point was moot. Her alleged virginity, then, ought to have no bearing on him. She was not possible as a wife and, even if she were, why should her lack of sexual partners mean anything? Virginity before marriage did not presuppose faithfulness afterward. He only had to glance at the upper echelons to discern a number of examples where this had not been the case. As a logical being, he therefore doubted that lack of virginity equated to an inability to remain faithful.