focusing on the dozen or so women in her company. “Ladies?” She raised her voice. “The Viscount Rohan is interested in our social experiment. He believes you regret the choice you made and would prefer your previous employment, be it in Emma Cadbury’s house or elsewhere. What say you? Would you rather be back where I found you? Raffaella?”
“No, your ladyship,” Raffaella said promptly.
The rest of them answered, as well, and she turned back to Rohan, cool and cheerful. “Of course, they may be lying because they’re so terrified by my brutish nature, but I expect they mean it. The life of a prostitute isn’t a kind one, my lord. It’s a world of disease and despair, being forced to lie supine beneath men they don’t know and allow them their brutish lusts. They age quickly and end up on the streets, and most of them are dead by forty, of disease or accident or murder.”
There was a glint in his eye. “In fact, Lady Carstairs, in most brothels the women are rarely on the bottom.”
She eyed him steadily. “No, I imagine not. My assistant and friend has been very thorough in detailing the lives of these poor women, and I doubt being astride has much to recommend it.”
“I gathered you’ve been married. Don’t you know?”
“I hardly think that’s your business.”
“I’m merely curious that a widow who enjoyed the marriage bed is unaware of all the infinite varieties of making love. Or didn’t Sir Thomas manage to perform his husbandly duty? I collect the match was uneven—your youth for his fortune. In fact, that would put you on the same par with some of your charming gaggle. Sexual congress in return for financial remuneration.”
He was trying to goad her, and managing to succeed, when she considered herself relatively even tempered. She repressed a well-deserved growl. “Are you asking me if all women are whores due to the strictures of society? I won’t disagree with you. And while it is none of your business, Sir Thomas certainly fulfilled his marital obligations, but only in the most proper and respectful fashion. Which would hardly include…variations.” Why in the world was she discussing such intimacies with him, she wondered.
“Pity.”
He was trying to annoy her. Or at least provoke an unmannerly reaction from her, and succeeding to an alarming degree. “I beg pardon,” she said, aiming for sweetness and falling short of the mark. “This is hardly an appropriate topic of conversation. At times my passion for my project can cause me to speak intemperately. Perhaps we should leave. You may assure your betrothed that we will do our best not to sully her eyes with our presence. We will walk in the mornings rather than the afternoons.”
Oh, holy hell, she thought at the gleam in his eye. Now he knew she’d been asking about him, as well. She braced herself for his mockery, but he let the opportunity go, deliberately, she suspected. And not permanently.
“Miss Pennington is not my betrothed,” he said mildly enough. “And I would prefer you walk in the afternoon. Depending on my…debauches of the night before I may be abed until late morning, and I would hate to miss such a decorative addition to the park.”
He was talking about the girls, of course, but he was looking at her, and for the first time in her life Melisande understood why a woman might take off her clothes and lie down for someone. With his deep, caressing voice, intense eyes and handsome face he was a prime example of a rake, the scion of a family of hellions. She was playing with fire. He could talk a nun into an orgy.
She mentally slapped herself. She wasn’t a nun, and he wasn’t referring to her. “The answer to that, my lord, is to avoid debauchery in the first place. Rising early is good for both the body and the soul.”
There was a very definite stir behind her, one of profound disagreement, and she expected Rohan to remark on that. Instead he stayed focused on her, and she felt like a butterfly pinned to a wall with that gaze. No, a moth, she reminded herself, brutally honest.
“Staying in bed can be very good for the body and quite possibly the soul, as well,” he said, his voice low and almost irresistible. “You should try it.”
“I may remind you I’m a widow, Lord Rohan.”
“So you are, my lady. A very wealthy one, I gather. You should beware of men who seek to marry