David Lord of Honor (The Lonely Lords) (2 page)

Amery?

The title landed in David’s awareness with a physical shock, for the rigid spine, plain brown cloak, and beaded reticule across the room belonged to none other than Letitia Banks. That shock smacked unmistakably of the hand of fate, shaking David’s conscience by the scruff of its neck.

He swept up to the lady and possessed himself of her startlingly cold hand.

“Mrs. Banks, I am ever so pleased to see you again.” He bowed correctly over that hand, and treated her to a decorous smile. When he straightened, surprise was receding from her dark eyes, though her gaze was guarded.

And still, to David, sad.

“Viscount Fairly.” She curtsied. “A pleasure.”

She’d withdrawn her hand, suggesting the sight of David would be a wary, cautious pleasure until she knew he wouldn’t join in the taunting.

David aimed a look to his left, at the three lackwits who had gone quiet after a muttered “That’s Fairly” had been hissed from one to his companions.

“Hello, Tavistock,” David said with excruciating civility. “Bootley, and—forgive me if the name eludes me—Belchamp, I believe?” He turned away from them with such perfect unconcern that even simians such as they had to understand: their misbehavior had been noted, and any hopes they’d treasured of gaining admission to The Pleasure House had been blown to cinders.

Marking the first occasion in David’s experience when owning a brothel had served a worthy purpose.

“Here you go, ma’am.” A clerk scuttled forth from the faded blue velvet curtain partitioning off the back of the shop and put a small cloth bag into Mrs. Banks’s hand. “A pleasure, as always.”

“My thanks,” she said, sliding the bag into her reticule.

David did not stay her with anything but his respectful manners, though the urge to restrain her with a hand on her arm was tempting. “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind bearing me company for a moment or two longer, Mrs. Banks? I’d like to put a certain matter of fashion before a lady, if you’d tolerate my escort to your next destination?”

“Of course, my lord,” she said in the same soft, controlled voice. “I’ve some gloves to pick up several doors down.”

They walked out in silence, the street nearly deserted. The chill wind had picked up, and the sky had taken on a leaden quality. David signaled to his groom to walk the mare home, and hoped this difficult day wouldn’t include a pair of ruined riding boots.

“Do you suppose it will snow?” David asked, offering his arm.

“My housekeeper says it will,” Mrs. Banks replied, taking his elbow about as firmly as she might grasp, say, the tail of a hungry, sleeping dragon. “Her rheumatism hasn’t been wrong yet.”

David owned a brothel. He approved its expenses, signed contracts for its every pound of flour, head of cabbage, and lump of coal. He knew courtesans’ clothes required laundering, the dishes from which they drank their tea had to be washed, and so forth, and yet, he hadn’t pictured Letitia Banks with a housekeeper, much less one suffering sore joints.

“I really did have something I’d like to discuss with you.”

She stiffened, as if she expected him to proposition her right there on the street, the sky about to dump more cold and misery on all and sundry. Her posture alone communicated that if David were to make such overtures, they’d be unwelcome.

Which was interesting, and not a little lowering.

“Do you truly have a pair of gloves to pick up, Mrs. Banks? Or may I take you somewhere we might have some shelter from the elements?” He had no particular matter to discuss with her, but the wind was bitter, and she’d been out shopping without even a maid to attend her on a day when most people would be snuggled up to a blazing hearth, a steaming pot of tea at hand.

And Thomas had been worried about her.

“The gloves can wait. We could return to my house, if you like.” She ducked her eyes to the left at that offer, suggesting she’d forced herself to make it.

David did not want to return to the modest dwelling where, on the occasion of his brother-in-law’s death, he’d paid a call on her months ago.

“I have a property only a few blocks distant that’s not in use at present. If you’d allow it, I could look in on my staff and get a bite to eat. I’m realizing, as I stand here, that I’ve skipped my luncheon.” For no discernible reason, or possibly to enhance his credibility with a bit of truth, he added, “I become irritable when peckish.”

Particularly when he’d also foregone most of his breakfast for the entertainment of his man of business.

The lady treated him to a considering pause, the duration of three lazy snowflakes, before she let David escort her the several blocks to their destination.

“This is lovely,” she said, looking around the entrance hall of a dwelling David had meant to rent out but hadn’t got around to.

“I have a number of rentals throughout the city, this being one. Let me take your cloak, as it appears I’m short of staff.”

When he raised his hands to undo the frogs at her throat, she flinched, a reaction any brothel owner—much less a fellow trained as a physician—recognized. David dropped his hands and stepped back.

Skittish. Of course she was skittish. They were alone, David had a good five stone of weight on her, and half a foot of height, at least. “My apologies. I did not mean to presume.”

“I’m just…” She fumbled the fastenings free, her hands shaking. “I was surprised, my lord, nothing more.”

He deposited her cloak and his greatcoat on hooks in the hallway and offered her his arm. The notion that she might be anticipating a forcible sampling of her charms flitted through his mind like another of those cold, bone-penetrating gusts of wind.

“We’ll summon reinforcements from below stairs,” David suggested. “And I hope you will join me in some luncheon, though it’s late for that. I won’t last until tea if I don’t eat something.”

She dropped her hand from his arm when they gained the parlor. “You must accommodate yourself, my lord.”

Mrs. Banks wasn’t reassured by small talk—smart woman.

“I’m surprised you remember me,” David said, lighting candles about the room with a taper from the fireplace. “If you give the bellpull a yank, we’ll no doubt break up a rousing game of whist in the servants’ parlor.”

She tugged on the bellpull but did not take a seat. “You provided me funds upon your brother-in-law’s death without asking anything in return. Why shouldn’t I remember you?” She was too polite to mention his mismatched eyes, and she sounded unhappy with him for his generosity.

Or perhaps she was unhappy with herself for accepting it.

David had been unhappy too, because what sum, however great, could compensate a woman for what Amery had taken from her?

A knock on the door, followed by David’s command to enter, admitted a smiling housekeeper.

“Lord Fairly. I thought I heard the front door.” The little dumpling of a housekeeper, apron spotless, cap tidy, beamed at him as if his arrival were her every wish come true. “Staff’s off today, but I am sure you and your guest could use a pot of tea and some victuals.”

“Mrs. Moses.” He smiled right back, a cheerful housekeeper qualifying as one of life’s dearer blessings. “You would live in my dreams forever were you to provide some hot tea and cold food. We are famished.”

Her smile grew brighter. “And will you be needing anything else?”

“I might be needing a room here for tonight, if you don’t mind,” he said, thinking of the pleasures of a London snowstorm and the perfect fit of his riding boots. “Don’t go to any bother. As long as the sheets are clean, I’ll manage.”

“It won’t be any trouble.” Mrs. Moses curtsied and bustled off. She never moved at less than a full parade bustle, and David had never seen her discommoded. When he turned to face Mrs. Banks, he was surprised to see
her
expression had become discommoded indeed. “Have I given offense?”

“If you intend I share that room, you have.” The weather outside was balmy compared to her tone.

“I do not.” He might speculate, dream, ponder, or fantasize—he was an adult male of means without a current female attachment—but he was not
intending
anything.

“Then I apologize,” she said, shoulders slumping. “But I am here with you, alone at a private residence, you know of my profession, I am in your debt, and you spoke of… biding here for the night.”

“You don’t know me well enough to understand I wouldn’t presume so,” David said. “Perhaps we might consider your misapprehension a reasonable mistake? Would you like to eat in here, or should we repair to the breakfast parlor?”

“Here. The fire’s already lit.”

And the room boasted two lovely bay windows, one facing the street, which would allow any passersby to note a woman in distress. A viscount—
even
a viscount—who owned a brothel eventually appreciated the brutal pragmatism any shopgirl acquired before her twelfth birthday.

“Shall we sit?” He gestured to a sofa upholstered in a blue brocade that went nicely with Mrs. Banks’s coloring. His guest was turning out to be more than a little prickly, and he made the tactical decision not to seat himself beside her.

He fell silent while Mrs. Moses brought lunch and the tea tray on a cart, and then went smiling and beaming on her way, as if David entertained pretty, single women every day of the week—which he did
not
.

“You are looking at me most oddly, Mrs. Banks, as if you’re surprised to see exactly the meal I’d requested of my housekeeper. Would you be so good as to pour?”

“Of course,” she said, taking off her gloves and reaching for the pot. “How strong do you like your tea?”

“Just short of bitter. And most people stare at me, until they figure out that the problem with my countenance is that I have one blue eye and one green eye. Then they invariably don’t know where to look.”

“But your eyes are beautiful,” Mrs. Banks remonstrated, sitting back without lifting the teapot. As soon as the words left her lips, she looked away, and now—
of
all
things
—a blush suffused her cheeks. “I do apologize, my lord, for making such a personal observation.”

A blushing courtesan was not something even the owner of a brothel saw every day, and the sight was… charming, but also somehow discordant. Intriguing in ways that made a man,
a
gentleman
, inconveniently curious.

“One doesn’t apologize for a sincere compliment, Mrs. Banks.” David’s younger sister had paid him a similar compliment once, and Astrid Alexander was a stranger to flattery. “Our tea should be adequately steeped by now.”

“As you wish.” She poured and fixed his tea with cream and sugar, then passed him his cup, her hand still evidencing a minute tremor. The physician in David noted it, as did the man, and neither one was pleased.

“I’ve traveled a great deal,” David said, “but I’ve found nothing anywhere to rival the simple pleasure and comfort of a cup of strong tea. When one is poor, such comforts are dear indeed.”

“You consider yourself impoverished?” Mrs. Banks asked as she prepared her tea.

Before he answered, David paused to close his eyes and take his first sip of strong, sweet, nearly scalding tea, for bliss in any form was to be savored.

“As a child, I lived with my mother in a small town in Scotland. Our circumstances were humble, and the winters long and cold. My mother loved me, and I never understood how poor we were, because it was all I’d known.”

“But your mother understood,” Mrs. Banks guessed—accurately. “May I fix you a plate, my lord?” She might have been the hostess at some village at home, so correct were her manners.

“At least one.” For David grew hungrier by the moment, also more desperate to provide the woman a decent meal.

As she arranged bread, cheddar, ham, and sliced apples on a plate, David discreetly studied his guest. Her dark hair and dark eyes were not pretty, not in the blond, blue-eyed Teutonic sense most Englishmen would be drawn to. She was not charmingly petite, not overtly flirtatious. She was, all in all, an unlikely choice as a courtesan—the best ones were—but even as he drew that conclusion, David had to admit the woman was… restful, like his sister Felicity was restful, even in the presence of her decidedly unrestful spouse.

Letty Banks moved with graceful, economical motions; she was comfortable with silence; she had good instincts.

And Thomas Jennings’s hunch had been accurate: Letty Banks was in serious trouble, too.

***

A man seeking to buy a woman’s favors always bore a bit of calculation in his eyes. Sometimes the calculation was friendly. Sometimes the coin he offered was a promise, a ring, pretty words, soft caresses, or a bit of cash. More often, he didn’t try to disguise his objective or his contempt for a woman who’d grant it.

Letty had become so cold, so hungry, she’d nearly stopped seeing the calculation and the contempt, and yet, in David Worthington’s eyes she found… neither. Not for her, and
not
for
himself
.

“Thank you.” He accepted the plate, letting his fingers brush hers, a fleeting warmth any woman of sense would disregard. “And you must join me, Mrs. Banks, else I shall feel like a glutton.”

The tray bore a veritable feast by Letty’s standards, and yet, she was already in his lordship’s debt.