done the same,” Cecelia chimed in.
“Do not tell me you’re defending him, Cecil,” Francesca snapped. “You wouldn’t abide that sort of thing from Ramsay, and Redmayne wouldn’t dare.”
“Touché,” Alexandra conceded.
“I wouldn’t think of defending him.” Cecelia puffed out a defeated breath. “It’s only that, well, people say rather awful things sometimes when they’re jealous. Things they don’t mean.”
“He meant it,” Francesca grumped.
“I suppose I just felt that you two finding each other after all this time … Well, it was all rather romantic. Something like fate.” Cecelia sighed the last word with dramatic nostalgia.
“We don’t believe in fate,” Francesca muttered.
“But we do believe in second chances.” Cecelia reached for her waterskin, which was filled with a lovely Viognier, and took delicate sips before handing it to Francesca. “And you two have such a history.”
“I’ve always hated history.” Francesca enjoyed the wine that tasted of exotic pears and summers in the south of France before passing it along to Alexandra, who waited to have the alcohol safely in her grasp before she retorted.
“The only people who say that are the people who hate their own history.”
Francesca’s next arrow missed its mark, but Alexandra’s comment had been a bull’s-eye.
“Chandler and I … our history is built on lies,” she lamented. “He believes my actual parents are the reason our childhoods were taken from us. He believes I’m Francesca.”
Alexandra drew up on her right and Cecelia on her left, a post they often took when together, the most distraught of them bracketed in the middle of their abiding devotion and undying protection.
“We’re all women who are acquainted with carrying our secrets and sins…” Alexandra drifted off, no doubt thinking of the man they’d all buried so long ago. The man who’d raped her at seventeen. The man she’d killed that very night when Cecelia and Francesca had helped her bury the body. “They do not make us villains.”
“He thinks I am a whore.”
To her astonishment, Cecelia shrugged. “Ramsay assumed I was the whore of Babylon. He now respects the women who work for me, so I’m convinced hearts and minds can be changed. It’s not an insurmountable obstacle. It just takes a bit of creative navigating, is all.”
Francesca vehemently shook her head. “I refuse to prove my virginity to him.”
Cecelia further surprised her by laughing. “Not of your virginity, dear, but of his own perception. It shouldn’t matter to him whether or not you’ve had lovers. He certainly has had his share.”
“How do you know?” Francesca whirled on her, suppressing the urge to shake her friend or interrogate her. Had she heard anything? Had he been to her establishment? Did she know a woman who’d enjoyed him in bed?
The thought made her sick, which made her cross.
“He has a very cocksure manner, doesn’t he?” Cecelia looked into the distance, as if Chandler, himself, was standing there. “He walks as though he is a man who has pleasured many women. Who enjoys doing so. Who is proud that he can.”
Francesca screwed up her nose. “You can tell all that by a man’s walk?”
“Of course not. But there are certain things about the language of the body.” Cecelia made an insouciant gesture. “I’ve collected certain odd bits of data from my current vocation as the Scarlet Lady, and subsequent analysis has required that I excel at reading men. Their tastes, proclivities. When not to let them in my establishment. Who and what they’d want to be offered.” She ticked these off on her fingers.
“Why, then, does he get to walk like he’s a lover, and I am expected to hang my head in shame?”
“Because you are a woman, obviously.”
Francesca ripped off her gloves, quite finished with enjoying herself. “That isn’t good enough. Not for me.”
“We’re getting off track here, Frank,” Alexandra said. “You are considering infiltrating the society that thinks nothing of enslaving little girls. Of burning entire households down to protect their interests. Our immediate concern is your survival.”
“That’s your immediate concern, not mine,” Francesca remonstrated. “I’m resolved, ladies. I will see this through or die trying. Best you get on board with that, or get out of my way.”
Cecelia retreated slightly as if she’d been slapped. Alexandra did the opposite.
Francesca felt immediate regret, but her lips didn’t seem capable of parting for an apology. Instead, angry tears stung at the corners of her eyes, and she had to turn away from them both.
It was Alexandra’s hand that landed on her shoulder, gently and unthreateningly.
“You survived the unthinkable,” she ventured. “When you go through