Regency High Society Vol 7: A Reputable Rake / The Heart's Wager / The Venetian's Mistress / The Gambler's Heart

His worried expression contained no censure this time. ‘Let me think upon a solution. The servants must not talk or you will be discovered.’

She gazed at him in wonder. How good it felt not to be alone in managing this scheme.

‘Another matter.’ His grey eyes were intent. ‘You must not allow the girls to appear on Bond Street or St James’s or any other place where they might be recognised. And you must not be seen in their company.’

She had not thought at all on matters such as this. ‘Why not?’

‘Your Mrs Rice wants her girls back. That fellow from the park and others will be searching for them.’

‘The man from the park?’ He’d wanted Lucy. What did he have to do with Mrs Rice? ‘How do you know this?’

He leaned closer, his eyes taking on a hard edge. ‘I know. You will obey me in this, Morgana.’

The use of her given name made his demand seem even more sinister. ‘As you wish, Mr Sloane.’

His expression softened. He lifted his hand and for a brief moment she thought he would caress her face. A foolish thought, because he drew it away again.

He gave her a raffish grin instead. ‘Call me Sloane. If we are to be conspirators in your little venture, formality between us is hypocritical, is it not?’

Her own smile tickled the corner of her mouth. She presented her hand to shake. ‘Then I give you permission to address me as Morgana.’

He did not miss her quip. Laughing, he accepted her hand. The contact of his warm, rough hand in hers, bare skin to bare skin, only intensified this new intimacy between them.

Breathless, she murmured, ‘Thank you, Sloane.’

His laughter ceased and his expression turned serious again. He released her hand. ‘You may not thank me in the end, Morgana. This is a foolhardy and dangerous business we are engaged in. Who knows what will come of it?’

With that he opened the door and left, but for quite a while afterwards Morgana stood still as a statue, gazing after him.

* * *

That evening’s must-attend entertainment was a ball given to announce the latest ton engagement, a merger guaranteed to please the families, if not the young man and woman involved. Everyone was present, including Morgana.

Sloane spied her across the room, standing with her aunt. Her eyes caught his for a mere second, but he felt the exhilaration of intrigue. There were dangerous secrets between them and care must be taken that no one discover this change in their relationship. He held his breath that Morgana would do nothing to reveal it.

She did not fail him. After the brief contact with their eyes, she turned back to her aunt as if she’d not seen him at all.

Almost disappointed, he kept up his part of the pretence, but this secret between them, and the risk of discovery, heightened his enjoyment of the ball. It put his senses on alert.

He took care not to neglect Lady Hannah, engaging her in one early dance as she would expect of him. Suddenly his behaviour towards Hannah had become part of the subterfuge, making it easier to take part in the inconsequential chatter that passed as conversation between them. After the dance, he left her to her other suitors, whose number had increased of late. His nephew David joined the growing throng.

Sloane sauntered into the room where the refreshments were set out. Another gentleman joined him. The Marquess of Heronvale.

‘You are Mr Sloane, are you not?’ the tall, taciturn marquess asked.

‘I am, sir.’ He gave an inward groan.

A few months ago, because of a foolish wager, Sloane had threatened to expose the nefarious past of this powerful man’s sister-in-law. She’d been the Mysterious Miss M. in the days Sloane had known her, the prize in a gaming hell. The threat had been nothing but a drunken bluff on his part, but no one knew he had never meant to carry it out. Certainly not the marquess.

Sloane braced himself. Heronvale looked at him intently.

Here it comes, Sloane thought, envisioning all his efforts to restore his reputation sinking into a cesspool.

Heronvale gave a slight nod. ‘I hear you are a man of your word.’

Sloane released a relieved breath. He had given this man’s brother his word that he would not disclose the damaging information. Sloane gave Heronvale a frank stare. ‘I am many things, sir, among them a man of my word.’

The marquess smiled approvingly. ‘I admire that. Tell me, are you carrying refreshment to anyone?’

‘Merely seeing to my own thirst,’ Sloane admitted.

‘Excellent.’ Heronvale nodded again. ‘Sit with me for a moment and share a drink. I would value your company.’

Sloane sat with the Marquess of Heronvale, conversing over wine glasses, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The marquess told Sloane duty had brought him to London that season. He came for Parliament, reluctantly leaving his wife and newborn son in the country. By the end of their conversation, Heronvale had invited Sloane to dine with him at White’s the following evening, at which time they could discuss politics and what role Sloane might play in it.

After the men shook hands and parted, Sloane nearly danced a jig. The Marquess of Heronvale thought he might play a role in politics? By God, if Sloane had Heronvale’s endorsement, what man would dare question his reputation? He felt triumphant!

He returned to the ballroom where a set was forming. Scanning the room, he found Morgana unattached. She was the one person in the room he wanted to be with at the moment. As casually as he could manage, he crossed the room and asked her to dance with him.

‘You look happy,’ she said when the country dance brought them together.

It was a simple observation, without any teasing flirtation attached. ‘I am indeed.’

The figures separated them. When they came close again, she asked, ‘Why so?’

He halfway considered giving her some bantering, evasive answer. It is what any other partner would expect. But this was Morgana with whom he shared many secrets. Why not share his good fortune with her as well?

‘I have had a brief chat with Heronvale and I’m engaged to dine with him tomorrow.’

She looked perplexed. ‘This is the source of your happiness?’

They had to complete the figures again before he could explain.

‘Heronvale will make a powerful ally.’

‘I see.’ She glanced over to where Heronvale stood conversing with Castlereagh. She frowned. ‘Will he make a good friend, though?’

A friend? Such a notion was unfamiliar indeed. It took him aback. ‘Yes. I do believe I would like him for a friend.’

She smiled and the dance separated them once more.

At the end of the set, he was reluctant to leave her side, but he forced himself to circulate, even asking Hannah for a second set. Hannah’s conversation was as gay as usual, but the set seemed unusually long.

Sloane declined her invitation to share the Cowdlin carriage for the trip home. He left the ball early, another errand to perform. Walking out into the night air, he became himself again, watchful and alert as he set off on foot to his destination, an innocuouslooking town house off of St James’s Street.

He sounded the knocker and a huge bear of a man dressed in colourful livery opened the door.

‘Good evening, Cummings,’ Sloane greeted the man and handed him his hat.

Cummings made no sign of noticing that Sloane had not crossed this threshold for at least three months. ‘G’d evening, sir,’ Cummings responded in his deep monotone.

‘Is Madame Bisou available?’

‘In the card room.’ Cummings disappeared into the back room where he stowed the various cloaks, hats and canes.

Madame Bisou owned this establishment, a gaming hell and brothel, as honest and clean as any gentleman could expect. She was also indebted to Sloane, who, right before he made his decision to abandon this sort of gaming, had broken her faro bank with one mad night of reckless play. He’d not had the heart to call in the debt. She was, therefore, much beholden to him.

He climbed the stairs to the gaming room where he’d once played whist with a woman in disguise. The Wagering Widow, they’d called her, and it had been wagers over her that drove him to make his empty threats about Heronvale’s sister-in-law. Sloane had lost badly over the Widow. Twice. And he hadn’t fancied being known for it.

When he entered the room, several men looked up from their cards. One older fellow called to him, ‘Sloane! It has been an age! Come partner me.’

Sloane shook his head. ‘I’m not playing tonight, Sir Reginald.’

Madame Bisou caught sight of him and came bustling over. ‘Oh, Monsieur Sloane,’ she cried in her atrocious French accent. ‘How delightful to see you!’ Her flaming red curls bounced as energetically as the flesh the low neckline of her bright purple dress failed to conceal.

She gave him exuberant kisses on both cheeks, but regarded him with some wariness. ‘You have perhaps come to collect?’

He smiled. ‘No, but there is something I wish to discuss with you.’

‘You wish time with me?’ She spoke so loudly everyone in the room could hear.

He glanced around, but everyone was too busy with their cards or dice to heed her very public invitation.

‘To confer with you,’ he clarified. ‘But I will pay for your time.’

‘Oh, no,’ she protested as she led him out into the hall. ‘We shall deduct it from what I owe you.’

She took him to the supper room and they seated themselves at the same out-of-the-way table where he’d got bloody drunk over the loss of his first wager over Lady Widow.

Madame Bisou lowered herself into a chair with a noisy rustle of satin skirts. ‘What is it, mon cher, that you require of me?’ She fluttered her lashes seductively.

‘Ease off, Penny.’ Sloane took the seat across from her.

She frowned at his use of her given name. ‘Speak quietly, Cyprian, or I shall shout your name across the room.’ Her French accent fled and she talked like the Chelsea girl she’d once been.

He laughed. ‘As if everyone does not know it. My father has made certain of that.’ He signalled to one of the serving girls, who brought them a bottle of brandy and two crystal glasses.

He poured for her. ‘I am in need of a favour, Penny. An odd one, but I am persuaded you will be the perfect person for it.’

As methodically as he could, he described Morgana’s plan, trying to make it sound as if it were not completely irrational. After he finished he downed a whole glass of brandy in one gulp.

Penny leaned towards him. ‘Do you mean to say a baron’s daughter has taken in some of Fortuna Rice’s girls and she wants to train them to be high-flyers?’

Sloane poured himself more brandy. ‘You have grasped it, Penny.’

‘And you want me to teach them how to seduce men?’

He gave her a sly smile. ‘If you know such things.’

She slapped him playfully on the arm. ‘Of course I know such things! You know I do, darling. I am an expert!’ She straightened in her chair and fussed with the lace on her bodice. ‘I am to go to Mayfair, into this lady’s house?’

Sloane’s eyes narrowed. ‘I suppose I could bring them here—’

‘No!’ she cried. ‘I want to be invited to Mayfair. Now tell me, Cyprian. How much is she willing to pay?’

He wagged his finger at her. ‘Do not rook her, Penny, or you will answer to me. If you tutor these girls, your debt to me is forgiven. That should be payment enough.’

She grinned and her eyes danced. She looked almost like the ambitious and beautiful young doxy he’d met ten years earlier. ‘I declare I might have taken this on at no charge at all. It sounds a splendid lark.’

‘But I warn you, you must speak of this to no one.’ He leaned forward for emphasis. ‘No one. Or you will, indeed, answer to me.’

Early the next morning Sloane sent a message to Morgana that he would bring her tutor to her at eleven o’clock.

Morgana and Miss Moore spent the morning drilling the girls in how to walk, sit, stand and curtsy as a lady might do, but all Morgana could think of was that Sloane would be calling—with the tutor, of course.

Soon the clock struck eleven. Ten more excruciatingly slow minutes passed before the knocker sounded and Cripps came in to announce that Mr Sloane and ‘a female person’ were in the front drawing room.

‘Very good, Cripps.’ Morgana rushed out of the room. She left her grandmother and Miss Moore with the girls. With Sloane, the pretence of a chaperon was unnecessary.

When she entered the drawing room, he turned to face her. He was resplendent in dove grey pantaloons, shiny black boots, and a coat in a blue so dark it was almost black. He quite took her breath—and her speech—away.

‘Miss Hart.’ He stepped aside to reveal the woman he had brought with him. ‘May I present Madame Bisou.’

The woman looked perfectly respectable in a plain brown walking dress and spencer. Only the flaming red hair peeking out from under her sedate matching bonnet gave hint to her profession.

‘Madame Bisou.’ Morgana offered her hand. ‘I am grateful you have come.’

The woman appraised Morgana as she accepted the handshake. She gave Sloane a significant look. ‘Cyprian, I begin to understand how you came to make this request.’

His face filled with colour, and Morgana rushed to speak. ‘Mr Sloane is acting as my friend only because I have given him little choice, Madame.’

‘Little choice indeed!’ Madame Bisou exclaimed. ‘As if Cyprian does anything he does not wish to do.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘Now, what is it you require of me?’

Morgana begged them to sit while she explained.

When she finished Madame Bisou’s eyes danced. ‘I am well able to teach your girls how to be pleasing to men. I have some experience in such matters, do I not, Cyprian?’

Sloane returned her glance with an ironic gleam in his eye. ‘You do, indeed, Penny.’

Madame Bisou made a face at him, and Morgana realised with shock that the madam must have once been intimate with him. Was she still? Morgana felt the same sick feeling she experienced when realising her father must have used The Whoremonger’s Guide.

No. Not the same feeling. This felt worse somehow.

She regarded Madame Bisou, her eyes narrowing. Surely the woman was older than Sloane, who must be in his thirties. There were faint lines around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. Her skin had lost the tautness and clarity of youth. Still, she had an aura about her that made Morgana certain that if the two of them walked down the street, gentlemen would turn to look at Madame Bisou and not at her. But that was what she had desired in a tutor, was it not?

‘Shall I do, Miss Hart?’ Madame Bisou sounded amused.

Morgana shook herself. What business was it of hers with whom Sloane shared such… intimate behaviours? If anyone should be concerned it would be Hannah, but then Hannah would never know of this.

‘I suspect you will do very well, Madame,’ Morgana responded, avoiding a glance at Sloane. ‘Shall I take you to your students?’

Madame Bisou clapped her hands. ‘Oh, yes. The sooner, the better.’

Sloane stood. ‘I doubt you require my presence. When shall I collect you, Madame?’

Madame Bisou looked to Morgana.

‘In two hours, Sloane, if that would not be inconvenient?’ Morgana still did not look straight at him.

He bowed, but stepped to the open door of the library to say a brief hello to Morgana’s girls. Morgana hesitated a moment before ushering Madame Bisou into the room, pausing to watch Sloane head towards the hall.

Sloane walked out of Morgana’s house at the same moment his secretary approached his own door.

Mr Elliot looked greatly surprised, no doubt wondering why his employer called upon a single lady before noon, alone at that.

‘Good day, Elliot,’ Sloane said in a deliberate tone.

Mr Elliot blinked rapidly. ‘Good day, sir. I… I was just returning from town.’

‘Seeing to my business, I suppose?’ Sloane walked over to where Elliot stood.

Elliot still avoided his eye.

Sloane rather enjoyed the young man’s discomfort. It belied his usual efficiency. But Sloane also realised that Elliot was not a fool. Even if Elliot concluded he was making a conquest of Morgana, what Sloane suspected anyone would conclude, he believed he could count on the young man’s discretion. Still, it did not hurt to emphasise the point. ‘Is there something you want to ask me, Mr Elliot?’

‘Oh, no, sir.’ Elliot sputtered. ‘That is—it is none of my affair, I am sure.’

The two men walked together into Sloane’s house. ‘It is no affair of mine as well, but you will not speak of me visiting Miss Hart’s house.’

His secretary looked wounded. ‘Of course I will not, sir!’

Sloane nodded. ‘Very good.’

He headed to his library, thinking a small glass of port might pass the time while he waited to collect Penny.

To his dismay, Elliot followed him into the room. ‘There is something I ought to speak with you about.’

Sloane already had the bottle of port in hand. He gestured for the young man to sit and poured a glass for them both.

Elliot began, ‘Sparrow, your butler, sir, informed me that one of the footmen informed him that Miss Hart’s footman was talking of something havey-cavey next door. It seems there are some suspicious females present in the house.’

Sloane paused just as he was about to lift his glass to his lips. He tried to sound casual. ‘Havey-cavey?’

Elliot shrugged. ‘That is all I know. I shall discover more in time. I thought I ought to tell you of it, because you indicated reservations about moving next door to Miss Hart.’ He stopped and gave Sloane a considering look. ‘But perhaps you know of it…’

Because Elliot had seen him leave Morgana’s house. Sloane stared at his secretary a long time. It had taken only a day for news of Morgana’s strange guests to reach Elliot’s ears, something he must deal with post-haste.

Elliot regarded him with a steady look. ‘You do know of this,’ he said simply. ‘I beg you would instruct me how you wish me to proceed.’

Sloane appraised the young man. Elliot was alert and intelligent. Because the young man lived with him, it would be difficult to put much past him. Sloane was unaccustomed to trusting another person, but Elliot could be of great assistance. He could help keep an eye on Morgana when Sloane could not, an extra protection.

Elliot was beholden to Sloane, who, as a favour to a former smuggler, had taken on the man’s son as secretary, providing him with a chance at a respectable profession. Even if Elliot was disposed to be loyal in return, was it fair to ask him to share the risk of Morgana’s courtesan school being discovered?

Who was he fooling? If the courtesan school was discovered, Elliot would sink with the rest of them. Better for him to be warned.

‘Drink your port, Elliot,’ Sloane said. ‘And I will endeavour to explain.’

A quarter of an hour later, Sloane had told Elliot the whole story. When he finished, he refilled Elliot’s empty glass.

‘That young maid wishes to be a courtesan?’ Elliot asked incredulously.

Sloane sipped his own drink. ‘She is bent on some sort of harlotry, Miss Hart insists. That is how this whole courtesan school came about.’

Elliot stared into his port. ‘I wonder why she should wish to do such a thing.’

Sloane leaned back in his chair. ‘Living with her father, I expect. He was one of the King’s diplomats in Spain during the war. I suspect she pretty much did as she pleased in his house.’

Elliot looked baffled. It took several moments before comprehension dawned on his face. ‘Oh, you meant Miss Hart. I was speaking of the maid.’

‘The maid?’ It was Sloane’s turn to be bewildered. He took another sip. ‘In any event, if this business reaches the ears of the ton, it shall be the downfall of us all. I may find your assistance useful from time to time. May I depend upon you?’

‘Indeed, sir,’ Elliot responded, but in a distracted manner.

Elliot proceeded to inform Sloane of the financial business he had transacted in town. The complexity of the investments Elliot had set up were a bore to Sloane, but the profits continued to be gratifying. He kept watch on the mantel clock.

He returned to Morgana’s house early to collect Penny.

Miss Hart’s butler admitted him. ‘I shall announce you directly, sir.’

‘In a moment.’ Sloane handed him his hat and gloves. ‘What is your name, man?’

‘Cripps, sir.’ The butler placed his hat and gloves on the marble-topped hall table and turned back to him.

Sloane gave the man a steely stare. ‘It has come to my attention, Cripps, that the servants under you are passing tales about this household to my servants.’

Cripps returned his look impassively.

Sloane continued, ‘This will not do. You have shirked your responsibility to protect this lady’s privacy.’

A muscle in Cripps’s cheek twitched, but he remained stiff and erect.

The man gave away little. Sloane decided to increase the stakes. ‘I am a wealthy man, Cripps, but I can also be a dangerous man to cross. Treat this lady and her guests well and you and your staff will be rewarded. Bonuses to them all from me.’ He leaned forward menacingly. ‘Harm her with loose tongues or otherwise and you will incur my wrath.’ He paused for Cripps’s reaction.

The butler did not change expression.

‘I assure you, you do not wish to displease me,’ he emphasised.

Cripps finally responded in a low voice. ‘I will do my duty, as I always do.’ His face remained bland. ‘Shall I announce you now, sir?’

Once with the students, Madame Bisou dropped her French accent and her flirtatious ways. Oddly, she reminded Morgana of one of the Spanish noblemen her father had entertained in Spain. The gentleman had been incredibly shrewd, extracting from her father exactly what he wanted, and exactly what her father had originally refused to give him. Morgana discovered later that the nobleman had manipulated the French just as effectively.

Madame Bisou had the same kind of cleverness and charm. She drew in the girls with a very friendly, motherly manner, and held them in her palm while she spoke of her origins.

‘I was not always Madame Bisou,’ she began in the spellbinding voice of a practised story-teller. ‘I was born Penny Jones, and my mother died giving birth to me. As a child I walked at my father’s side while he hawked dirty old clothes on Petticoat Lane. “Old clo,” he’d cry over and over. “Old clo.”’ She looked heavenward. ‘I can still remember it. Hearing the other street vendors’ songs all day as well as my father’s. I used to sing them myself and dance, and passers-by would throw me pennies. Pennies for Penny.’ Her smile left her face. ‘It was not long before men paid for more than my dancing.’ She gave them all a significant look. ‘By day I’d follow my father in the street and by night in the pubs, until one night he had no more coins for his gin.’ Her voice got very low and Morgana could see each of the girls and Miss Moore, too, straining to hear. ‘That night he sold me to a man in the pub for a few shillings. I never saw my father again.’

‘That’s dastardly,’ cried Katy. ‘What happened next?’

Madame Bisou gave a ghost of a smile. ‘The man sold me at a profit to a bawdy house. After he had his way with me, that is. He sold me to a mean old abbess who beat her girls if they gave her any trouble. She kept all the money.’

There was a collective exclamation of outrage, and the madam went on to tell how she fooled the procuress and wound up with enough money and power to take over the house and drive the woman away.

Katy and Rose cheered with enthusiasm at this triumph.

Madame Bisou looked each of the girls in the eye. ‘I know how to get gents willing to die for me,’ she said dramatically. ‘And that is what I will teach you. I’ll show you how to make them beg to do what you want them to do. I’ll teach you how to trick them into paying you much more than they thought they would. And how to have them stumble over each other to see who can buy you the biggest ring, the most expensive necklace or the most beautiful bracelet.’