“I am no hero. No angel. I am not even a very good man.”
“Most gentlemen in your circumstances would not spend their resources on those less fortunate.”
“I have to.” His hands curled into fists at his sides. He forced himself to relax them, forced himself to say, “I hired her.”
Aimée’s brow puckered. “This house on Maiden Lane . . . It was your idea? You hired Miss Grinton to run it?”
“Yes.” His head throbbed. He was tempted to let her go on believing that. To let her think well of him. But he had never been good at pretense. “No. I was her last client.”
Aimée continued to regard him, her face calm.
Didn’t she understand?
“I hired her as a whore,” he said harshly.
He didn’t know why he told her. To shock her, to drive her away? Or was he hoping, against hope and all reason, for her absolution?
He held himself stiffly, prepared for her blushes, braced for her condemnation.
She did blush, a rosy flush that swept from her jawline to the brim of her bonnet. “If you set up every lady of intimate acquaintance in a house with a budget and instructions to rescue other unfortunates, it is no wonder you are short of funds.”
He wanted to laugh. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to do any number of inappropriate things.
Because he could not, he glowered at her instead. “I am not intimately acquainted with any other woman.”
She tilted her head. “Only the one? Miss Grinton.”
What was she getting at?
“Yes,” he snapped.
“Did you . . . Do you love her?”
The wistfulness of the question caught him off guard.
“No. It was a transaction,” he said curtly. “It meant nothing.”
Something that Aimée, in her goodness and innocence, could never understand.
“And yet you felt guilty enough afterward not only to rescue Miss Grinton from her situation but to save others as well.”
He was furious. Found out. He had never put it in those words, even to himself. Perhaps Aimée understood more than he thought.
“Amherst thinks I am running a brothel.” Now why the devil had he told her that?
“The situation is unusual,” Aimée acknowledged. “But surely he should understand that you are only trying to help these poor women.”
“I didn’t tell him,” Lucien admitted.
He had resented being forced to justify himself. At the time his reticence had been a point of pride. Now, however . . .
“Amherst has other concerns,” Lucien said. “He would say Fanny and the others are not our kind.”
Not Nephilim.
“You do him an injustice,” Aimée said. “He obviously cares about you more than he does for the world’s opinion. Why else would he have brought eleven out-of-wedlock children to be raised at Fair Hill? You should not let your pride come between you.”
“I’m not currying favor with the old man for money.”