know that’s hard when the blood is up. We’d best tell you what to do.”
“I like a sponge and vinegar,” Agnes announced.
“I prefer a copper penny,” Hetty said.
“It’s not an issue if you simply use your mouth,” Violet offered, but was quickly shouted down.
“She’s not going to start with that, you idiot,” Sukey said sharply.
Melisande was embarrassed, horrified, and unwillingly curious. “What in the world do you do with a copper penny? Offer a prayer to some saint.”
Agnes, the only practicing papist in the group, laughed. “You do the same thing you did with the sponge and vinegar, my lady. You insert it into your—”
“Stop!” Melisande cried, her curiosity more than satisfied. “I promise you I have no need of such stratagems. I’m barren.”
“What makes you think that?” Emma said. “Just because you didn’t conceive with an old man or a singular occasion with a younger one doesn’t mean someone with Lord Rohan’s…vigor…wouldn’t do the job.”
Enough was enough. The last thing Melisande wanted to be thinking about was Benedick Rohan’s vigor, or inserting peculiar things into the most private part of her body, or letting Rohan put anything of his into that same place.
“Or there’s coitus interruptus,” Sukey said. “He can just pull out and spill his seed on the sheets, or on you. It’s not foolproof, and not as much fun for the gentlemen, but I imagine Lord Rohan’s not interested in fathering bastards. He may even have a French letter.”
“What’s a French letter got to do with anything?” Melisande inquired, more mystified than ever. “If you’re expecting me to put a piece of paper in my…”
“Such an innocent!” Sukey said, shaking her head. “It’s a wonder we allow her out at night. A French letter, Lady Carstairs, is something the gentleman wears over his rod. He spills his seed inside it, not inside you.”
Rod, she thought, momentarily distracted. It seemed like rather a nice word. Evocative. “I think Rohan will be prepared,” Emma said. She looked at Melisande for a long, thoughtful moment. “Is there any way I can make you change your mind?”
Melisande shook her head, half determined, half terrified.
“Then ladies, we need to make her irresistible,” Emma announced. “Hetty, where are your emeralds?”
21
Emma sat alone in the library after Melisande and the strongly disapproving but very proper Miss Mackenzie had left. There’d been no talking Melisande out of her sudden decision, and in truth Emma hadn’t been that surprised. She’d seen the signs for days. She knew when the heat rose in the blood; she’d seen it often enough. It should have been no surprise that even Melisande would succumb when faced with the delectable temptation that was Rohan. Even she had been tempted, for the first time in her life, just a few short months ago.
Her work at the hospital, her effort at penitence, had been grueling, not for the faint of heart. She held the patients’ hands when they died, but she seldom looked into their faces. Until that night.
The boy—for he looked like a boy, his hair tumbled over his pale, sweating face—he should never have been there in the hospital. People of his class were taken care of at home, the doctors being summoned, the care provided by upper-class maids and butlers. But when Lord Brandon Rohan arrived back on the ship he’d been delirious with fever and somehow his papers had gotten lost. No one knew who he was, or even that he was an officer. He’d been shunted off like so many of the wounded men, to the stink of a hospital, there to live or die as may be.
He still had all his limbs, though one leg was cruelly wounded, and he would never walk without a limp. That was, assuming he even lived long enough to go home. The scars that covered so much of what must have once been a strong young body bore testament to the horror he had been through, and his pretty face was a travesty. He had been brought in at the end of a long day, and Emma had taken one look at him and known he would die. Not from any mortal wound—each of his terrible injuries had been tended to, and given a strong constitution he would normally recover. But he had opened his bright, fever-glazed eyes, and she’d known he’d given up.
It was a Catholic hospital, run by stern nuns, and Emma had chosen it, knowing the very thought would have offended her antipapist family, had they known. Mother