I’d wager that half the women there wished they’d thought of it first.
The other half were violently offended. Mrs. H____ is a patroness of the arts and quite influential in certain circles, and so Aunt Beryl dared not offend her by insulting one of her guests. It was only I who was subjected to Aunt Beryl’s vitriolic opinions.
“Filthy, abandoned creature” was the mildest of those insults. “Untamed independent” and “ungoverned wanton” only piqued my interest at the time.
Hereby came my conviction that Aunt Beryl was something of an imbecile, for it was quite obvious to me that the Swan was everything that was elegant and gracious. She swept into the room, tall and golden and smiling so sweetly that I could not help but smile back, though she beamed her charm indiscriminately about the room.
The whispers ran about the perimeter of the hall, scurrying like vermin, carried mouth to ear, but the Swan smiled as if she heard none of it and held out her gloved hand to greet the soprano who had so entertained us.
The Swan had beautiful features, of course, but it was more than mere symmetry and hair of gold that fixed everyone’s attention so. She moved through the room with the confidence of a duchess, surely knowing that men admired and desired her even as their wives admired and despised her.
And envied her.
But perhaps that was only me.
It simply seemed to my eyes that the Swan had a rather marvelous existence. She was cosseted and spoiled and adored as much as any cherished bride, but if the love grew stale or the man became unbearable—as I was beginning to suspect that many men did, in time—then the Swan was free to sail as grandly out the door as she had sailed in.
The Swan was a woman with options.
If only I could be like her.
I wrapped my shawl about my shoulders and sat in my open window, gazing unseeing into the deepening night. It was very late but the chill kept me awake. There was a notion swirling in my mind and I wished to capture it and make it hold still for examination.
No matter how I argued and pleaded, I knew I could not win against my relatives’ determination. Their self-interest far outweighed any sense of responsibility to me. In fact, they likely felt they were indeed charting the correct course for my future.
Merely fleeing would serve no purpose. I had no refuge but this one. I had no doubt that I would soon be found and brought back in disgrace, bound for a convent or a sanitarium, a common end for girls who refused to conform. My mother had railed against such practices enough times for me to have a depressingly realistic vision of such a future.
Therefore, my rebellion must be extreme. It must shatter all ties. It must be so scandalous, so entirely and completely unacceptable, that my aunt and uncle would rather touch a hot coal than associate themselves with me.
I lifted my gaze to the sky, though the stars were hidden behind the sooty London clouds. “If I am to be bought and sold,” I whispered to the sky, “then I should profit from the transaction. I should be the merchant and the banker, as well as the livestock.”
* * *
I have never been one to dawdle once having made a decision, so I began to put my plan into motion the very next day.
All of Society knew that the Swan wore only the most beautiful gowns. Since it was widely understood that the most beautiful gowns were those crafted by the great Lementeur, I knew that I might find the wearer of such gowns by attending her dressmaker.
Lementeur kept a very exclusive shop on the Strand. It was discreetly announced by a sign containing only a scripted, flowing L. It might as well have been heralded by a military brass band, for there was not a woman in London who did not sigh upon passing the mysterious entrance to the most elite arbiter of style in all of England.
That next afternoon, I lingered across the road with my aunt’s maid, Sylla. I had been allowed out of the house due to the realistic tenor of my heartfelt and sincere apologies to my relations. Once I had explained my childish qualms at being worthy of such an overwhelming honor and profusely thanked them for their most industrious efforts on my behalf, I was given back my freedom. I was even, as long as I was accompanied, permitted to venture to the Strand in order to peruse the shop windows. After all, I had to acquaint myself with the costly accoutrements that would soon be part of my new, glorious existence as Lady Ashford.
I daresay that my aunt and uncle thought I was quite mad, but they were far too interested in their own advancement to question my motives in changing my mind. They simply went on planning the wedding that they had never canceled.
For my part, I pled shyness and maidenly nerves and hoped to avoid meeting with Lord Malcolm even once.
This did not prevent him from showering me with costly gifts. The first day was velvet, in the form of a cloak that swept the floor with the length of it but was so fine that it weighed quite perfectly for a summer evening.
I gave it to Sylla.
Aunt Beryl discovered my deed and forced poor Sylla to give it back. How the cloak ended up in the coal chute I’m sure I don’t know.
Sylla was scarcely older than I, so I contented her with a lemon ice and the bribe of my pink-trimmed bonnet if she did not convey my doings to Aunt Beryl.
Now Sylla, who bore no personal love for my exacting aunt, accepted the bribe with glee and settled into a doorway with her ice.
I had feared it might take days or even weeks to catch sight of my prey, yet we had scarcely loitered an hour before a very distinctive carriage pulled to a stop before the boutique entrance. Who but the notorious Swan would ride about town in a dainty white-lacquered carriage emblazoned with a graceful golden swan upon the door? I was in awe at the flagrant lack of discretion. The Swan was a woman after my own heart.
I fear I followed her directly into the shop, like a hound upon her heels. The elegant fellow who held the door gazed at me curiously but I merely lifted my chin and strode into the establishment as if I had every right to be there. The Swan shot a single startled glance over her shoulder, then pointedly looked away from me.
Another pair of ladies stood in the elegant receiving room. They eyed the Swan with regal disdain, yet they did acknowledge her presence with cool nods. The Swan dipped a gracious but impenitent curtsy back. I copied her motion out of pure instinct and their narrowed gazes shot to me. The Swan stepped away from me and moved to the grand window, leaving me standing quite alone. Disregarding the watching ladies, I scurried after the Swan.
“Madam, I must speak with you,” I whispered. “It is a matter of the direst urgency!”
She turned her shoulder to me and pretended to examine the draperies. Unwilling to admit defeat, I presumed to reach my hand to pluck at her sleeve. When I heard a hiss and then an astonished giggle from the elegant pair lingering in the receiving room, I saw the Swan twitch with annoyance.
Then I noted the twin blotches of color staining her elegant cheekbones and realized that I was wreaking some sort of damage to her graceful dignity. I thrust my hands behind my back and clenched them there, but I did not move from her side.
The beautiful boy returned and bowed the other ladies from the chamber and into their ostentatious carriage outside. When he returned, he began to approach us. I glared him away with every ounce of desperation I possessed. I can be quite intimidating when I choose to be, though I stand less than five and one half feet. His eyes widened and his gaze flicked between myself and the Swan. I added a scowl from my arsenal. His eyes narrowed and his suspicion grew very apparent, but he turned to retire into another chamber.
The moment he disappeared, the Swan turned to me with her blue eyes blazing with fury. Beautifully, of course.
“What is the meaning of this?” she hissed. “Who are you?”
I had prepared quite an earnest and poetic plea for this moment. However, in the urgency of my need, I quite forgot it. “I want to be a courtesan!” I blurted.
The Swan drew back in surprise. Despite my desperation, a part of my mind took the time to sigh ov
er the perfect symmetry of her features, even when blank with shock. Admiration aside, however, I was never one to pass up someone else’s silence.
“I am being forced to wed a loathsome fellow,” I continued, my words firing at her like bullets. “I have no recourse but complete ruination!”
She narrowed her gaze at me. “Then go ruin yourself on some hapless horse groom and leave me out of it.” She began to turn away.
I grabbed her hand in desperation. “My relations would only conceal it and sell me off anyway! You have no idea of the power of their ambitions!”
She hesitated. “Sell you?”
I swallowed. “I am naught but a transaction,” I said bitterly. Though I was prepared to endow my performance with further theatrics, it turned out to be unnecessary. My voice broke down entirely as my throat closed tight. Hot tears threatened and I thought I might wish to vomit soon.
Until that moment I had hidden my true grief from even myself.
The Swan withdrew her hand gently from my grasp, but she did not turn away again. “This loathsome fellow—who is he?”
I wrapped my arms about my belly. Only with such firm support could I still my trembling enough to speak again. “I am to wed Lord Malcolm Ashford.”
“Ah. Malcolm.” Her brows rose and her lips pursed. “Loathsome, indeed.” Her irony was not lost on me, even in my distracted state.
My chin rose defiantly. “I know he is considered a handsome catch, but he does not love me. He doesn’t even know me. He likes my face and my lineage—”
The Swan’s gaze roved over me. “I daresay that is not all he likes,” she murmured.
I dismissed that notion with a toss of my head. “I do not wish to be some lord’s plaything against my will, nor even his lady wife. I wish to live in my own way, to reside where I choose, to eat and drink and sleep where I choose!”
I heard another carriage roll to a stop before the shop. The Swan straightened. The cool distance returned to her expression. “While I might sympathize with your situation, I cannot help you. I should not even be speaking to a girl such as you!”
I shook my head. “I care nothing for my reputation,” I cried.
The Swan flicked a glance toward the shop door. “I, however, care a great deal for mine. It would not do for the mamas of Society to suspect me of luring their daughters from their virtue.”
I looked away, near tears. “I have no mama,” I said. “I have only the keepers of the keys to my prison.”
The young man, apparently having expected the carriage, strode through the room toward the door. The Swan moved as if to turn away from me before the new customer could enter. I clutched at her hand once more, for I truly had nothing to lose. Flagrant coercion seemed like the tiniest of sins.
“Please! You must help me! I have nowhere else to turn!”
“Let me go!” She tugged at her hand and glanced worriedly at the door.
“No! Let them see!” I was not my mother’s daughter for nothing. “What will they think when I fall at your feet and beg at your hem?”
She paled. “You wouldn’t!”
I bent my knees, prepared to wail away.
“Very well!” The Swan pulled away violently. “You may come to me tomorrow morning, early. You must come before the rest of Society begins to make calls.” She took a calling card from her reticule and handed it to me.
“Thank you! Oh, thank you, Swan!” I wanted to embrace her, but feared alienating her entirely. I settled for smiling and, I confess, jumping up and down a bit.
Her eyes narrowed. “This is not agreement. This is merely permission to begin a discussion.” She pressed her lips together. “Although I suspect I shall regret conceding even that much.”
I nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes. Thank you!” With that, I let her slip away and allowed the handsome young man to show me from the shop. I left with my chin high, my heart flying.
I had won the first round. Everyone knew that the first round was the most important.
Except, of course, for the last.
Six
The Seven Delights of the Courtesan
The freedom to dance
To make music
To compose poetry
To paint
To contemplate literature
To converse
To perform
To delight oneself with one’s own mind and soul.
Were it not for Sylla’s discretion and heretofore unbeknownst talent for deceit, I should never have been able to make my way to the Mayfair home of the Swan without my aunt’s interference. Aunt Beryl had decided that it was high time for me to begin planning my triumphant wedding celebration. I demurred, but she would not listen. On my prompting, it was Sylla who begged that I should be permitted to accompany her to visit the house of Baroness G____, who kept a cousin of Sylla’s as one of her many maids.
Aunt Beryl immediately turned about and insisted that I wear my best day gown and take the carriage for our excursion, and to leave my calling card, though we visited a lowly maid, and most important of all, to be sure to drop the news of my impending marriage in the hearing of the baroness’s butler.
I murmured my assent and slipped away before she could offer any further advice. Sylla and I giggled as we jolted away in the glossy but ill-hung carriage, giddy with our brief taste of freedom.
Someday soon, I hoped, that freedom would be a permanent flavor upon my tongue.
When my uncle’s sullen driver pulled the carriage to a halt before the baroness’s house, we hopped down before he stirred himself to open the door and waved him on his way. “We shall be hours inside,” I told him breezily. “I have coin to hire a hack for the way home.”
With an indifferent grunt, he nodded and drove away. When we turned, we saw that the baroness’s door stood open and that a gaunt, supercilious fellow in livery regarded us suspiciously from the top step. I grabbed Sylla’s hand and we fled, laughing like naughty children. The baroness would have to do without my intrusion today! I had no fear of discovery, for Aunt Beryl would never dare question her.
The Swan lived a scant few blocks and a million degrees of Society away. Even I knew that outside the streets and squares of the elite lay the small, intimate corners of the demimonde. Her home was every bit as luxurious as the baroness’s and quite a bit more tasteful, I imagined.
The Swan’s housekeeper led us to sit in a very pretty parlor done up in the colors of ivory and palest periwinkle. I thought to myself that if I ever had a home of my own, I should like it to be exactly like the Swan’s. With a few more cushions and a dash of brighter color, of course.
The Swan met us there in a matter of moments. After greeting us graciously, if coolly, she sent the housekeeper away to prepare a tea tray and directed Sylla to await me in the kitchens if she liked.
Sylla glanced at me and I nodded. When she was gone, the Swan seated herself across from me and regarded me with cynical appreciation. “I did not expect you to come.”
I felt as though I had passed some sort of test. “I mean what I say, madam—er, miss…”
“I fancy ‘Your Grace,’ myself,” the Swan said dryly.
I raised a brow. “Why not ride full canter? Why not ‘Your Highness’?”
Her cool reserve faltered as her lips twitched. I knew then that the relentlessly elegant woman before me possessed that most prized of virtues—a sense of humor.
She sat back then, lounging with feline grace upon her sofa. “I allowed you here to plead your case,” she reminded me. “Go on, then. Convince me.”
I took a deep breath and recounted every single rationale that had brought me to her parlor. I wished independence, freedom, a life of my choosing, a destiny of my own.
At length, she held up a hand. “You are forgetting something,” she told me.
I reconsidered every reason and argument I had prepared for this moment. Yes, I had expressed them all.
The Swan smiled softly at my confusion. “My dear little girl,
what of love?”
I frankly gaped, I fear to say. “Love?”
She laughed outright then and the exquisite illusion shattered. I realized at that moment that the Swan was no more than a few short years older than myself.
“You might be missing the point, just a bit,” she said, still chuckling. “Or am I mistaken? You do wish to become a courtesan?”
I frowned, blinking at her. “But men pay you for sexual favors. What has love to do with such a cold contract?”
She twinkled at me. “Done properly, there is naught cold about it. In fact, my lover finds me quite warm, indeed.”
“But you are a prost—”
Her hand came up as quickly as a slap, but she simply held it before me, palm outward. “That word has nothing to do with me. A courtesan is not a commodity, she is an artist of love.”
I lifted my chin. “I do not believe in love.”
Relaxing back into her lazy sophistication, the Swan smiled benevolently at me. “Ah, but love believes in you, little girl.”
“I am not a child.” I bridled. “I am eighteen years of age.”
“Ah, you are practically a spinster. Perhaps you had best take that loathsome gentleman up on his offer before you shrivel away.”
Her teasing did not upset me for nothing could deter me from my course. “I have every intention of taking a lover as required,” I told her. “I simply wish a straightforward business arrangement.”
She leaned forward then, completely serious. “You are an ignorant snippet from an ignorant world, so I will not throw you from my house. However, if you call me a prostitute one more time I shall strangle you with your own prissy little bonnet strings! Have I made myself perfectly clear?”
I felt those ice-blue eyes burning me, so I put my cup down and returned the Swan’s gaze. “Are you rethinking your decision to help me?”
She didn’t smile or avert her intense gaze. I began to feel a bit nervous. I had thought myself becoming inured to her eerie beauty, but sitting in silence before her now, I rather felt as though I were being judged by a Faerie Court. Still, stubbornness might be thought a flaw in Society, but it had always served me well. I raised my chin and held that gaze with my spine straight.
A Courtesan’s Guide to Getting Your Man Page 6
