Page 8 of When the Marquess Needed Me (The Rake Chronicles #4)
Chapter Six
M iss Beatrice Salisbury stood before the glass and frowned.
She had been told that Mrs. Warburton was the best modiste in London. But Beatrice could not say that she was impressed by the gown she was currently wearing.
“It is pretty,” Sally said, from a divan to her right.
“You are unhappy,” the prim Englishwoman, Mrs. Warburton herself, said behind her, her tone somewhere between matter-of-fact and annoyed.
“It isn’t quite…”
The dress was exactly what she had asked for. An evening dress but nothing dramatic or sensual. Yes, she knew she was supposed to be a courtesan, but she didn’t like the idea of showing herself in scanty evening wear. Surely, men didn’t need such an obvious display of her charms to find her appealing. And with her confidence in the bedchamber, she felt that she wouldn’t need such a public advertisement of what she had to offer. And yet she couldn’t deny that the dress did not quite strike the right note.
“Dear Lord,” said a masculine voice from the other end of the room. “Are you chaperoning a debutante or trying to win the admiration of the vice-inclined gentlemen of London?”
Beatrice whipped her head around.
How had he found her?
He must have asked the staff at St. James’s.
But why would he come all this way just to see her shop?
“You would recommend a different gown,” she said, dryly. She was a bit offended by his remark, but she also did want the benefit of his expertise. That was his value, after all.
“Mrs. Warburton is known for gowns that regularly make men regret the day they were born. Let’s use that to our advantage, shall we?”
“I don’t think I need a gown to do that.” She smirked in the mirror.
He scowled.
Beatrice caught Sally’s eye. The girl looked scandalized again. Honestly, it was a bit trying to always have her sister’s innocent face staring back at her in shock.
“Sally, why don’t you see Mrs. Warburton’s attendants about your muslin?”
She had promised the girl a new dress and, really, she needed it.
The girl nodded and scurried from the room.
“Do not be arrogant, Miss Salisbury. It is not just the men you need to impress.”
What the devil did he mean?
“I will bring a new selection,” said Mrs. Warburton, her tone as dry as it had been since Beatrice had entered the shop.
“I don’t understand you,” Beatrice said, turning back to the mirror. She supposed that the bodice was a bit…matronly. She didn’t know London fashion, but even to her eye, the neckline looked a bit high. “The men have the money, the influence, the power. They are who I need to attract. Who else would I need to impress?”
He snorted. “You overestimate the typical high-society male. Most of them have never had an original thought pass through their minds. They chase after what other men of their ilk want. What other people in their world see as desirable.”
“But I already have you ,” Beatrice scoffed. “You are the tastemaker, are you not?”
“Yes, but I am not the only one.”
“You are being deliberately opaque.”
He smiled in the glass. When he did that, he looked like a prince. He looked like an illustration at the end of a storybook. A happy ending personified. But to her, of course, he was just a means to an end.
“Tonight, we are going to the opera, and it is not only rich gentlemen who attend the opera. Their wives and daughters will be there, too. And although they are not technically supposed to know who the courtesans are, they absolutely do.”
“And?” she said, turning back to the mirror, breaking eye contact with him. But she watched out of the corner of her eye as his gaze flitted across her body in the matronly dress. Suddenly, unaccountably, she wished she were wearing something that he deemed worthy. Ridiculous , she chided herself.
“And they imitate the courtesans. The cuts of their gowns and the style of their hair. But in this way, they also anoint them. They influence which ones the men find desirable through their imitation.”
“The men don’t want to bed their own wives, but they’ll bed the women their wives imitate?”
This dynamic seemed, to Beatrice, strikingly stupid.
Leith shrugged. “I didn’t say it made sense. It is just the way our world works.”
“But don’t all the ladies of the ton come to this shop?” she said, trying to puzzle out this conundrum. “Don’t the courtesans and ladies all wear her gowns?”
“They don’t all come here. But you’re right. Mrs. Warburton is the most popular modiste in London for anyone with money.”
“Indeed,” the lady herself said, sweeping into the room, followed by several attendants, who carried more gowns.
“I did not realize you were under the protection of Lord Leith, madame,” Mrs. Warburton said. “If you had told me that , I would have needed no other explanation.”
Beatrice bit back her scoff. She saw no reason that she should have informed Mrs. Warburton of her association with Leith when she was to buy these clothes with her own money. It killed her to spend down any of the coin this man was to give her for her two weeks with him, but she had no choice but to get a better class of garment. She knew that.
“Miss Salisbury cherishes her independence. But, in this matter, she sees why she should defer to my judgment.”
“In that, she is wise. There are few men with your experience in this area, Lord Leith.”
The words had the guise of a compliment, but Beatrice also caught a faint tone of contempt. For the first time that afternoon, she found herself liking the modiste.
“Come,” Mrs. Warburton said, gesturing to Beatrice to step down off the dais. “A new gown.”
Soon, Beatrice found herself in exactly that and then another. Even she could see that they were much more befitting a woman attempting to turn a profit from her allure. She understood, due to their cut and color, how they would announce her intentions.
Leith told her which gowns he preferred, appearing nearly bored with the entire proceeding.
Until she emerged in a gown dyed a deep green.
He shifted in his seat.
Then, in the mirror, she saw his jaw clench. He looked away and then back again. Somehow, she couldn’t say why, his gaze appeared warmer.
No, it was warmer, she realized.
And it was clear why.
He liked it. He liked her . Beatrice didn’t need years as a trained courtesan to see that.
And she would happily punish him.
“This bodice is very low cut,” she said, leaning over, almost bending in two, as if to examine the properties of its neckline.
She heard his intake of breath.
When she looked at him in the mirror, he had flushed, just slightly.
He ran a hand through his hair and looked away again.
But just as quickly his eyes were back on her.
Beatrice dragged her fingertips along the edge.
“It’s pretty, I suppose…”
“You’ll wear it. Tonight,” Leith snapped.
“I am not sure,” she said, coming back up to standing, and turning towards him. “Do you think it suits?”
“You know bloody well that it suits you.”
“Do you think I’ll impress the women of the ton ?”
“Blast the women.”
She turned back to the glass and smiled. With teeth. Flashing the gap that had often made her insecure and which legend claimed marked out lascivious women from the others. Now that she was turning courtesan, she supposed she didn’t have to hide it any longer.
“That’s what I thought.”
He glowered but didn’t contradict her.
Subtly, he pulled at his cravat, as if his breathing had been suddenly restricted.
She stifled a laugh.
When she had changed back into her normal frock, for a brief moment, she didn’t recognize herself in the mirror. She had forgotten, during her little masquerade on the dais, that she was not truly a courtesan. Not yet, at least. She had let it slip her mind that she was really the no-nonsense, practical Miss Beatrice Salisbury of Parkhorne Hall. Strange. She hadn’t thought herself capable of getting caught up trying on dresses.
Mrs. Warburton came back into the room.
“I will take the green dress,” she informed the older woman.
“No,” Leith said, suddenly standing. “We will take all of the dresses you showed us after my arrival.”
Beatrice started. “I cannot accept that.”
“You’re my mistress, are you not?”
“Well—yes.” Beatrice glanced at Mrs. Warburton. She was directing her attendants to wrap up the dresses, looking like they were discussing nothing more than the weather.
“This is how I treat my mistresses.”
“You buy them gowns?”
“Often. And jewelry—if that suits them. And whatever else they bloody need. That’s how it works, Miss Salisbury.”
Beatrice opened her mouth and then closed it again. She was used to the honest toil at Parkhorne, where what you put into the fields, the land, came out again, if you were lucky. This state of affairs seemed much closer to cheating.
But at the same time, she couldn’t think of one reason to refuse.
Not when she needed every bit of money that she had.
After all, when she found a real protector, a man who had not been arranged for her by a protective intermediary, he would presumably treat her thusly. She would bed him, and he would give her coin and presents. Presents she could sell and send to her father’s creditor. Perhaps she would be able to return to Parkhorne sooner than she thought.
“Very well.” She nodded. “I accept.”
He gave a small, bitter laugh. “I thought you might.”
She winced. Some part of her didn’t enjoy being treated like a doxy.
Leith was clearly used to dealing with demanding courtesans, who were trying to eke out what they could from their time with him.
As she studied his storybook face in the soft light of Mrs. Warburton’s, a question came to her mind.
How many of his mistresses had fallen in love with him? She would wager a good few. She could see a woman making exorbitant demands when the one thing she truly wanted—a permanent arrangement with the handsome, wealthy Lord Leith—was out of reach.
It was a good thing, then, Beatrice thought to herself, that she had no such vulnerabilities.
No, she thought, gazing at his handsome face, not even for a man who looked like Lord Leith could she ever fancy herself in love.