Beauty Tempts the Beast (Sins for All Seasons #6) - Lorraine Heath Page 0,99

as she occasionally sipped her sherry.

On Boxing Day, the ladies had gone to the Cerberus Club, where they’d discovered that Pearl and Ruby were quite skillful at dealing cards. They’d left the establishment with not only a substantial amount of winnings but an offer of employment as well, which they each accepted.

Shortly after one of Benedict’s ships arrived at port, one of the shipmates had shown up at the residence and declared his love for Flora. Apparently, they had been seeing each other on the sly for quite some time, and the tendre he’d developed for her had tormented him while he’d been away, and he could no longer bear to be without her. They were married within the week.

Lily became a companion to Captain Ferguson’s wife, to ease her loneliness when he was at sea.

Hester had stopped entertaining gentlemen because a lady’s maid didn’t “do that sort of thing,” and she was now tending to Althea’s needs exclusively and being paid handsomely for her services.

A brothel with only one lady, Lottie, seeing to gentlemen, was no brothel at all. The decision was made to begin converting the building with its many rooms into a boardinghouse.

Lottie oversaw the conversion that began the first week in January. All the risqué paintings and statuettes were carted away. Walls were redone, draperies replaced. Althea fully expected the former doxy would hire out her services to decorate the homes of those coming into wealth—once she was finished with the current project.

The challenge was alerting the clients. Jewel greeted the men when they arrived, poured them a glass of scotch, and explained that the purpose of the establishment would be changing. Lottie took her favorites to her bed for one last hurrah. Those she didn’t know or didn’t favor, she blew a goodbye kiss.

Now, a couple of weeks later, they were seldom disturbed during the evening hours when they were all sitting in the library reading.

Althea continued to teach Lottie and Hester, to give them more refinement. But she couldn’t teach them forever. Soon she was going to have to determine a path for herself.

Althea missed all the nights when it had been only she and Benedict, when they’d been able to share personal stories, hurts, aches, and joys. The tulip glass of sherry still waited for her on the table. They still sat across from each other. No one else ever sought to claim those chairs as though they had been designed and constructed to hold only the two of them.

But with others in the room, the atmosphere had changed, the way the air did when a storm was threatening. Pages in books crackled as they were turned, sighs sounded, clothing rustled with the shifting of a backside, a stretching of shoulders, the bending of a neck.

At ten they would bid each other good-night with a punctuality that had not existed when she would become lost in stories Benedict shared or he would ask questions of her, when time held no sway over them.

After Hester assisted her in readying for bed and sought out her own slumber, after the building itself had settled in and gone quiet, she would sit on the bed with the counterpane folded back and wait. Wait for the quiet knock that invariably came.

She would open the door, welcome him in, and it was those moments she’d begun to live for.

She watched him now as he removed the timepiece from his waistcoat pocket and glanced at the time—as though the watch was more accurate than the clock ticking away on the mantelpiece. “Is that the one?” she asked quietly, knowing he’d need no further identifiers, not certain why she’d not thought to ask him before.

He leaned forward to show it to her nestled against his palm. She inclined toward him to see it better. A stag was intricately carved on the cover. “Lessened my guilt,” he said, his voice low, the words meant for only her, “because it had no coat of arms or inscription to indicate it had any sentimental value. Just something a wealthy bloke purchased so he’d always know the time.”

She almost asked if he’d be passing it on to his firstborn son, but that would mean shining a light on a future they both seemed reticent to discuss.

Every night he brought her pleasure—sometimes in a different way, sometimes in a familiar way, but never in a way that completely claimed her as his, that changed the status of her virginity. Often it felt as though her