“Lady Banbury told me she had an affair with one,” chimed in the fourth of their tight-knit group, Mrs. Joan Durbin. She was short and plump, her rounded cheeks always holding a rosy tint. “Why would she lie?”
“Oh, pish!” Maud grumbled. “Lady Banbury has every reason to lie. She is in debt up to her eyebrows and tries to pass her paste jewelry off as the genuine thing.”
“It was before her difficulties,” Joan retorted. “And I believe her.”
“So do I,” Mary said. “I find the whole thing so fascinating! The men have had their fun for so long, while telling us to mind our manners, keep silent, and stand in their shadows. As if we do not have wants and needs of our own.”
A sensation long forgotten slithered through Miranda’s middle, reminding her how long it had been since she’d experienced pleasures of the flesh. It was the one part of her marriage that hadn’t been lacking, as her husband had been a man of healthy appetites who hadn’t balked at teaching her the mechanics of intercourse. It might be shameful of her, but it was the only thing she missed about being someone’s wife. Outside the bedroom, she and Lord Hughes hadn’t known one another at all.
It had been her hope that the birth of their child would bring them closer together. But, while Lord Hughes had doted on their daughter, he had remained distant from her—as if his blood connection to little Ursula resulted in a camaraderie he could never share with Miranda.
“Hear, hear,” Miranda murmured, raising her cup.
Maud puckered her lips as if she had just tasted something tart. “Miranda, I am surprised at you. I would expect such talk from these two …”
“Do you like my sampler?” Joan chirped, a wicked grin spreading over her face.
She revealed the figure of a nude man with nothing but an ivy leaf covering where his manhood should be—thereby proving Maud’s point. Mary giggled into her teacup while Miranda fought back a smile.
“But not from you,” Maud continued, giving Joan a chiding look.
“Surely you haven’t been widowed so long you’ve forgotten what it’s like,” Miranda argued. “Our husbands might be dead, but that doesn’t mean we have to be.”
“I vow, Maud, it’s almost as if you’ve turned into an old prude overnight,” Mary said with a scoff. “I think it would be fun to indulge in an affair … for the sake of appeasing curiosity if nothing else. Don’t you want to know what it might be like with someone else—someone you wouldn’t have to marry to swive?”
“But to pay for it like some kind of … like …” Maud waved a hand through the air, lips moving as she searched for words but apparently found none.
“When my dear Roddy died, he told me to use my inheritance for whatever might make me happy,” Mary said, a hint of sadness creeping into her voice. Unlike Miranda’s polite but distant union, Mary’s marriage to the Earl of Rodingham had been a love match.
“I am certain he didn’t intend for you to spend the money on … on whores,” Maud retorted.
“They aren’t whores,” Mary argued. “They are courtesans. There is a difference, dear.”
“If they even exist, which I am certain they do not,” Maud fired back.
Joan’s expression grew smug as she bent to retrieve something from her own work-bag. Miranda’s eyes widened, Maud gasped, and Mary murmured, ‘I knew it’, under her breath as Joan held a crisp, white calling card aloft for their inspection. Two large letters were printed on it in a decidedly masculine script, with bold swirls gracing the edges.
GC.
“Where did you get that?” Mary whispered, almost as if speaking too loudly would make the card disappear.
“Lady Banbury gave it to me,” Joan replied, passing the card to Miranda for inspection. “Apparently, you can only meet with the proprietor if you present this card to the modiste, Madame Hershaw—hers is the shop in Cavendish Square, you know. According to Lady Banbury, you offer her the card and say you’re looking for a special type of gown … something to be worn in the evening. When she asks what you have in mind, you say you wish to impress a certain gentleman, and what you need must be unlike anything any other woman in London possesses. When you wear it, you wish to feel like the most ravishing woman in all the world. You tell her you want it made of red satin.”
Miranda passed the card to Maud, while Mary went to the edge of her seat, her rapt attention fixed on Joan.
“Then what?”
“Then, she ushers you into a secret back room, where the proprietor of the agency meets with you to make the arrangements. It’s all very secretive. They only accept new clients by referral … that card given by a client to a trusted friend.”
“Oh, poppycock!” Maud exclaimed as Mary finished her inspection of the card and handed it back to Joan. “Don’t you think if any of it were true, we would have caught wind of it before now? Scandal is the lifeblood of the ton, so I cannot fathom something like this has been going on for any length of time without someone finding out and exposing them.”
“Hmm,” Miranda mused, absently reaching for a scone. “Actually, when you think of it, the fact that they operate in plain sight is ingenious. The women who consort with these courtesans have everything to lose by allowing this information to fall into the wrong hands. Of course they have kept it a secret. Any woman who would think to go spreading the tale … well, she’d ruin her own reputation in the process, wouldn’t she?”
“Precisely,” Joan agreed.
Maud waved them off and returned to the sampler in her lap. “I still say it’s all some sort of prank. A lady is likely to turn up at Madame Hernshaw’s and receive nothing more from her inquiry but an expensive gown she’ll never wear.”
“Well,” Mary said, drawing the word out as she glanced from one lady to another. “There is only one way to know for sure, isn’t there?”
Joan’s eyes went wide. “You aren’t honestly suggesting I try to hire one, are you?”
“You do have one of their cards,” Maud pointed out. “What are you doing with it if you have no intention of investigating for yourself?”
Staring down at the card as if afraid it might bite her, Joan shrugged. “I hadn’t decided one way or the other. Lady Banbury offered it to me, but I’ve been carrying it about for weeks, too afraid to do anything other than look at it.”
“It’s settled then,” Maud declared with a decisive stab of her needle. “You’ll go to Madame Hershaw’s and find out whether the rumors are true and then report back to us.”
“Me?” Joan protested with a gasp. “But I couldn’t possibly! Lord Vaughan and I are making progress toward becoming more than acquaintances. I think he will make an overture soon, and if all goes according to plan, I’ll have a lover at nothing more than the cost of a few lowered necklines and flirtatious smiles. I nominate Mary. She’s the most adventurous of us, after all.”
Mary choked on a sip of tea and suffered through a coughing fit while Maud pounded her back. “Oh, but I am nowhere near ready to take a lover. It is too soon.”
Miranda’s heart ached for her friend, who had been widowed for two years yet was not ready to move on from Rodingham. What must it be like to love someone that deeply? She feared she might never know.