Last Dance in London (Rakes on the Run #1) - Sydney Jane Baily Page 0,23

children be sold and raised by someone else.

“I’m not sure I want to hear any more of this barbaric behavior.” He sipped his wine. “However, you did say it was done by agreement.”

“Sometimes, yes. A wife might initiate the sale if her husband has gone missing, say during the war. I warrant some of those men fighting under your command came home to find their wives had been bought by another. However, in other cases,” she continued, “it is against both parties’ wishes. To keep more people from becoming a burden on a given parish, like my own dear Chislehurst where I grew up, the Poor Law of our great nation allows local authorities to force a husband to sell his wife to keep her out of their parish workhouse. And as surely as I’ve seen an amusing caricature of dear John Bull holding Bonaparte’s head on a pitchfork, I’ve seen a man forced to send his wife to market to be sold in a different parish.”

“That’s horrendous.” A morsel of food stuck in his throat, and he swallowed twice to get it down.

Miss Sudbury gave her customary delicate shrug of one shoulder.

“I have heard that a woman and her new husband may at least be bought a meal by the parish authorities who forced the sale.” Sarcasm dripped from her tone.

“How kind of them,” Jasper put forth with equal irony, before downing the dregs of his wine and gesturing for the footman to refill it. “And what of the old husband?”

“He does not get a meal,” she said coolly.

They blinked at one another over the next course of the best British beef. He was starting to feel guilty just having a good dinner.

“But he does get to stay in the parish poorhouse as a single man,” she added, “and that keeps him from being a beggar on the street.”

She sighed, her bosom rising and falling under his gaze, and it was a beautiful thing to watch.

“Wealth is the key to freedom in Britain.” Miss Sudbury said the words half to herself, half to him.

“Indeed.” To that, he agreed. He was not unaware of the benefits he enjoyed by having been born on the right side of the blanket in his particular household.

However, it was time to turn their conversation back to the path of more pleasant niceties. For selling one’s wife for cheap, along with one’s child, hardly made for an aphrodisiac to love-making.

To that end, he told her of the last horse race he’d attended, correctly choosing the winner, of a ballet he’d seen in which two dancers collided on stage, and lastly, of a play in which the main actor forgot nearly all his lines, then drew out a flask, downed it, swore excoriatingly, and stomped off stage.

They were both laughing when he was done, and he felt vindicated as a good dinner guest who’d earned his place at the table, especially after his earlier faux pas.

“The meal was superb,” he told her, wiping his lips and setting his napkin beside his plate after a dessert that had been meant to dazzle and had succeeded.

A platter of sugar biscuits and meringues artfully arranged around a tooth-cracking pastillage sculpture of a massive pineapple had been only the beginning. It was followed by small cups of the richest custard and then, lastly, ratafia cakes which melted in his mouth so easily, Jasper had eaten three.

“Thank you,” said Miss Sudbury.

Despite the many courses, she’d done her fair share of enjoying the desserts, and he admired a woman with a hearty appetite in all senses of the word.

“Although, as I had nothing to do with it,” she continued, “I shall send your approval back to my sister’s cook.” Then quietly, she added, “However, I can cook, in case you were wondering.”

Her soft words surprised him. He hadn’t been wondering anything of the sort. It never occurred to him she could do so, nor that she would need to. Yet she seemed to be trying to impress him with her domestic abilities. How strange! He couldn’t imagine any other lady of his acquaintance ever uttering such a low phrase or letting him picture her for one moment in the harsh environment of a kitchen.

However, the image of Miss Sudbury, chopping vegetables or stirring stew, her soft curls sticking to the damp skin of her forehead and neck, appealed to him in an entirely visceral way — especially when he imagined her in nothing but an apron barely covering her full breasts and