Tom watched avidly as Sarah scurried out of the room with a couple of the other girls. Damn Mrs. Erskine for choosing this game on the last night he could claim Sarah’s company.
There had not even been time to cheat and ask Sarah where she would hide so he could be sure of finding her first—she had been hustled away from his side too quickly for that.
He searched desperately around the room for a friendly face, finally spying Sarah’s friend in a corner. He strode over to her. “Polly, where will she hide?”
Polly gave a little smile and shrugged helplessly as her companion glowered in an unfriendly way at Tom. “All our rooms are at the top of the stairs. She will be in one of them, I’m sure—probably in her own.”
“How will I know which room is hers?”
“It’s blue. Blue curtains and bedcoverings. You can’t mistake it.”
Tom gave her a nod of thanks and strode over to the door, positioning himself to be one of the first up the stairs.
Mrs. Erskine found him there and drew him aside with a hand on his sleeve just as the call went up to start the hunt.
“What do you want?” he barked at her, itching to be on his way toward his Sarah.
“Come, Mr. Wilde, there is no need to be so hasty,” she admonished him. “The night is still young.”
“I only have Sarah to myself for one more night,” he growled at her. “You’re robbing me even of that.”
“That is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said. “Come, take a seat.”
“Can it not wait?”
“No, I’m afraid not.” She seated herself on one of the sofas and waited politely until, with another growl, he sat down next to her.
“You see,” she said, with a delicate dab at her nose with a lace-edged handkerchief, “I have another offer for the girl. He wants her from midnight tonight. Which is,” she consulted her watch, “approximately twenty minutes from now. Unless,” and she gave a gentle cough, “you would be interested in extending your payment for another month. I always like to give the incumbent the right to edge out their competition and extend their terms if they please. It’s good for business.”
“Another month?” He shook his head. Paying for another month would make a serious inroad into his ready money. He was not so besotted with the wench as to beggar himself on her account. “Out of the question.”
Mrs. Erskine gave a gentle sigh. “Then I am afraid I will have to accept the other gentleman’s offer.” She rose from the sofa and dismissed him with a wave of one heavily bejeweled hand. “You have fifteen minutes left on the clock. May I suggest you make the most of them?”
Fifteen goddamn minutes. Tom scowled heavily as he raced for the stairs. So much for his plans to spirit Sarah away and keep her to himself for the entire evening. If he didn’t find her soon, he would not even have the time to bid her farewell.
Fifteen minutes to find her before she belonged to another man—to Sir Richard Etheridge, he would wager. He could not look on as she was claimed by the disgusting Sir Richard. Bah—he was more like a squat, fat toad than a man.
He took the stairs two at a time, stopping briefly at the top of the stairs to glance around the sitting room.
The sound of giggling came from behind the piano in the far corner.
He strode over and peered behind it.
A number of seminaked bodies were entwined in the small space between the piano and the wall. One of the girls spotted him looking. “Come, you have found us,” she cried, holding out her arms to him. “You have to join us.”
Sarah was not among them. Ignoring the girl’s outstretched arms, he turned away and strode off toward the hall corridor.
One by one he opened the doors to the bedrooms and looked inside. He found a green room, a yellow room, and any number of pink rooms, but no blue room. Most of the rooms were occupied, but he ignored all invitations to join in the games that were going on. His time was running out.
He had just opened the door on yet another orgiastic scene when a terrified scream rang out from the end of the hall corridor.
Sarah’s voice—he would know it anywhere.
Taking off at a run, he followed the sound of the screaming, until he burst in on a scene that made him sick to his stomach.
Sarah lay spread-eagled on her bed, screaming wildly. Her arms were pinned down by a monster in petticoats, while Sir Richard, damn every bone in his filthy body, cock in hand, prepared to thrust into her sweet body.
Tom grabbed the first thing that came to hand, an iron candlestick holder from the dressing table, and cracked Sir Richard viciously over the pate.
Sir Richard looked up, astonished, for a moment, then his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped to the floor. The monster in petticoats took one horrified look at Sir Richard, lying senseless on the floor, and ran for her life.
Sarah was weeping now, curled up on her bed with her face buried in the blankets as if she wanted to hide away from the world.
He took her gently into his arms. “Sarah, my love, don’t cry.” There was nothing he could do, nothing he could say, that would take away the last few minutes. All he could offer her was his sympathy and his understanding, and the certain knowledge that she was safe in his embrace.
Her weeping eventually subsided into hiccuping sobs. “He hit me. He was going to rape me.”
He cradled her in his arms, stroking her hair as if she were a small child. “It’s over, sweetheart. He won’t hurt you again. I won’t let him touch you ever again.”
Sir Richard gave a groan and stirred on the floor. Clearly he had not hit the bastard hard enough. It was a shame he ever had to wake up.
She shuddered at the noise. “Take me away from here. Away from him.”
He picked her up and carried her down the hallway to a deserted sitting room at the very end where she could recover her composure out of reach of Sir Richard.
Sarah clung to Tom as if he were her lifeline. His warmth and tenderness gave her strength and the feel of his arms around her took away her pain. If only she could hold on to him forever. “Make love to me, Tom.”
His mouth fell open and he looked as if she had just hit him over the head with a plank of wood. “What did you say?”
“Make love to me,” she repeated, hiding her face in his shirtfront.
“Why? Why now?”
“Sir Richard frightened me.” An uncontrollable shudder racked her body as she spoke, but she did not weep. The time for tears was past. “I want to remove all remembrance of his touch from my body. I want to take away those memories of lying helpless under him, and replace them with memories that I can treasure. Please, Tom, make love to me.”
“Here?”
“Here, anywhere. What does it matter?” She did not care where—she needed him too badly.
“We cannot stay here. Sir Richard will be furious. He might well be angry enough to have the law on you and have you arrested for assaulting a Member of Parliament.”
“But I did nothing to him,” she protested, knowing all the while that her innocence would make no difference. The law was not made for poor people. She had dared to reject a wealthy man, a Member of Parliament, and he would have his revenge on her one way or another.
“Sir Richard cannot touch me—he knows he cannot touch me—but you? You are defenseless, a prostitute for all anyone knows, an easy target for his vengeance.”
Her heart leaped with fear. The streets would swallow her up after all. “I have nowhere else to go.” There was no armor against the resignation of despair that gripped her soul. She’d always known it would come to this in the end.
“Either he will have you arrested or he will try to rape you again. And next time I will not be around to stop him.”
He was right—Mrs. Erskine’s house was no longer a refuge for her. Sir Richard would kill her. Or he would succeed in raping her next time, and she would kill herself and save him the bother. She shrugged hopelessly. Whichever way she looked at it, the result would be the same in the end.
“Where will you go?”
What did it matter? Her life was over before it had begun. “There is nowhere in this world for a woman like me to go.”
Tom looked down at the fragile burden in his arms. His landlady would kick up merry hell if he brought home a strange woman to his lodging house. “You will have to come home with me,” he found himself saying. Ah, damn his landlady—he’d never cared much for her anyway.
Sarah acquiesced with a weary shrug. All the fight had gone out of her. She looked like the empty shell of herself, drained of all emotion. “Just for tonight, then,” she agreed. “I’ll find somewhere else to go in the morning.”
No gentleman worth the name would throw a lady out on the streets. Particularly not the lady he was obsessed with, in love with.
Damn it, he might as well admit it—he was in love with her. Head over heels, topsy-turvy in love with Miss Sarah Chesham. Once he had her in his lodgings, in his bed and in his arms, he would not let her go again.
If it meant that she would stay with him and give him the right to protect her from scum like Sir Richard, he would even marry her.
Marriage. He’d not seriously considered it before, but the more he thought about it, the more it appealed. Sarah would make him a fine wife. Her occupation did not bother him—in fact, he was man enough to admit that it turned him on. He was a grown man and his parents were no longer alive to be shocked by his choice of bride. Nobody else’s good opinion mattered to him.
If she stayed at Mrs. Erskine’s establishment, she would attract plenty of lovers, men with far more money and status than he could ever hope to aspire to. Any of them would set her up in luxury and she would want for nothing. They might not offer to marry her, but then again, such things had happened before.
If wealthier and more aristocratic men than he was did not blink at marrying a fallen woman, then why should he? Besides, Sarah was no whore, but an abused woman. Only an animal would have no pity on her situation. It was his duty to rescue her from Sir Richard and other men who would take advantage of her.
“Can you walk?” Reluctant though he was to put her down, he could not carry her all the way to his apartments.
She struggled to her feet. “I would crawl on my hands and knees to get out of this house tonight.”
They made their way downstairs and out of the front door, unobserved and unmolested.
Arm in arm through the dark streets, they walked to his lodging house. Tom did his best to support Sarah, but she was strong and would not lean on him.
The street was dark, his latchkey was stiff, and his landlady had an ear like a fox. Clad in a voluminous flannel nightgown, a knitted nightcap on her head, and a candle in her hand, she accosted them both on the stairs. “This is a respectable establishment,” she hissed at him, looking askance at Sarah’s ripped silk shift and low décolletage. “I will thank you to take your fancy piece elsewhere. I want no such shenanigans in my house.”
Tom gave her an icy glare. “I will thank you not to refer to my wife as a fancy piece.”
“Your wife?” both women asked at once. Thankfully his landlady’s strident squeal utterly overwhelmed Sarah’s quiet gasp.
“It is hardly the hour for introductions, but since you insist.” He gave Sarah’s arm a squeeze to warn her not to contradict him. “May I present my wife, Mrs. Thomas Wilde, until this happy afternoon Miss Sarah Chesham, and daughter of the late, and highly respectable, curate of Wigglesthorpe.”
The landlady looked doubtful, but in the face of his insistence, she had no choice but to back down. “Well, if she really is your wife—”
“Which she is,” he interjected.
“—then I suppose she is welcome to stay as my guest for tonight.” She gave Tom a meaningful look. “We can talk about your rent in the morning.” With that, she took her candle and waddled off into her apartments, muttering loudly about Sarah’s strange and highly suspicious choice of bridal attire.
As soon as Tom had shut the door into his rooms behind him, Sarah collapsed into a corner of the sofa. The effort of pretending to be strong, of pretending that she was not hurting in every way that she could hurt, was exacting a heavy toll on her. “That was gallant. Unnecessary, but gallant.”
He paced around the room, his head averted from her gaze. “Mrs. Fitchett is not known for her kindness to distressed souls. She would have refused you entry if I had made any other excuse for bringing you home with me.”
His voice was strangely uncertain. Was he already regretting his offer of a sanctuary for the night? She leaned back and closed her eyes, unwilling to face his rejection just yet. “What will you do tomorrow when she finds out you have told her a lie?”
“There is no need for it to be a lie.”
The darkness was a blessing. It matched her mood. “You do not mean that.”
“You are wrong. I meant every word of it.”
All she wanted was for him to make love to her and remove the taint of Sir Richard from her body. She would not feel clean until every trace, every memory of him was washed away. “Then you are either too foolish or too drunk to know what you have just said.” She wanted nothing more from him than his help erasing her memories. She could take nothing more from him.
“I am not drunk, and I make a very good living by my wits, so you should not call me foolish, either.”
“It does not matter. You cannot marry me. I would not ask it of you.” Her arms ached to hold him. “Come to me, Tom. I will be your mistress for tonight at least, though I cannot be your wife.”
“You will marry me.”
Her mouth curved in a faintly malicious smile. “Are you that scared of Mrs. Fitchett that you would marry me to escape her wrath?”
“Damn Mrs. Fitchett. I don’t care a bean for her.”
“Then come kiss me.”
“No.”
Had Sir Richard’s attack on her spoiled even this? She forced her eyes to open, to gaze at his face and read the truth that was in his eyes. “Do you not want me anymore?” His loss of desire was understandable, even excusable. He had seen another man on top of her, preparing to violate her body. The blame for his disgust lay with Sir Richard, not with Tom himself. She would try not to hate Tom for it.
“Of course I want you.” He smashed his fist down on the mantelpiece above the fire in frustration. “I’ve done nothing else but want you from the moment I first met you. I’m just about dead with wanting you.”
“Then why won’t you kiss me? Why won’t you take me to your bed?”
“I am a respectable bewhiskered Victorian gentleman of impeccable morals,” he said, his mood changing from frustration to frivolity on the instant. “I will not succumb to your wicked blandishments until you have agreed to marry me.”
“You are being ridiculous.”
“I don’t care.”
“You warned me weeks ago that you would never marry me.” The memory of their conversation still niggled at her soul. “Why have you suddenly changed your mind?”
“For all the usual reasons.”
She raised her eyebrows at him, waiting for an explanation.
“Companionship, a partner to share my life with, children, great sex.” He gave a comical leer. “Especially the great sex. I’m particularly looking forward to that part.”
Lust was no basis for a marriage. Not the sort of marriage she had dreamed about. “Maybe I won’t want to be intimate with you anymore if we get married.”
His leer turned into a confident smile. “I have had a month’s worth of practice in tempting you to fall into my arms. I am confident I will be able to persuade you into it.”
“Maybe I will want to fuck other men,” she said, pushing him to see how far he would go with his absurdity. “Consider, I was a coffee house girl after all. I may have picked up a taste that you will not be able to satisfy.”
His face darkened with distaste. “You enjoyed being beaten and nearly raped by Sir Richard?”
An involuntary shudder wracked her body. “That was not kind of you.”
“I apologize.” His voice was clipped, but his irritation was directed not at her for baiting him, but at himself for rising to her bait. “It was cruel of me.”
She should not allow him to flagellate himself simply for reacting to her provocation. “I accept your apology.”
“And my offer of marriage? Do you accept that as well?”
His ability to switch from deadly seriousness to even more deadly foolishness in the space of a heartbeat astonished her. “You will regret it in the morning.”
“Never.”
She pulled her ripped bodice lower, exposing her naked breasts, tempting him as best she knew how. “Come and kiss me.”
Impervious to her nakedness, he stuck his hands in his pockets and did not move away from the fireplace. “No.”
Her skirts were easily adjusted to show off her bare calves and thighs. “You will not make love to me until I agree to marry you?” She lifted her skirts higher, almost to the juncture of her thighs. “Are you sure about your decision?”
He gulped at the sight, but turned away resolutely, refusing to be tempted. “I will not.”
“Then I suppose I have no choice.” She rose from the sofa, clasped the tattered remnants of her clothes around her, and walked with dignity toward the door. “I will not accept charity. If you do not want me as your mistress, I will have to leave.”
His solid form blocked the doorway. “You cannot leave.”
“You have no right to keep me a prisoner here.”
He shot her a reproachful look. “Mrs. Fitchett thinks we are married. What ever would she think of me if my new bride deserted me on our wedding night?”
“She would simply realize the truth—that you had the barefaced effrontery to tell her a whopping lie to her face, and the ill manners to introduce her to your whore.” The thought of Mrs. Fitchett’s horror was almost enough to bring a smile to Sarah’s face. “No doubt she would turn you out of doors for it.”
“I like my apartments. Mrs. Fitchett doesn’t cheat me as much as most landladies would. I do not want to leave.”
“Tom, please be serious.” The room, which had seemed so comfortable and welcoming before, now felt like a prison whose walls were closing in around her. “This is not a joke to me. This is my life you are playing with.”
“I am deadly serious.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I like you, Sarah Chesham. I like you more than any other woman I have ever met. I like you enough to want to set up house with you and to spend my life with you.”
His plea touched her heart. “I have offered to be your mistress.”
“I could not live with the knowledge that you could up and leave me without a thought if you met a wealthier keeper. I want a permanent arrangement, not a temporary one.” His hands were on her shoulders and the warmth of his body was a comfort to her. “I want your life entwined with mine, so strongly that our ties to each other cannot be broken. That is why I want to marry you, Sarah. I want to be a part of you as you are a part of me.”
Desperately as she wanted to, she knew she ought not accept the gift he was offering her. It was too much for her to accept. “You want a great many things.”
“I cannot give you the sort of life you led at Mrs. Erskine’s establishment. I cannot give you a wardrobe full of fine silk dresses and a new pair of kid gloves every week.”
She shrugged. He did not know her very well if he thought that she hankered after such fripperies.
“I would not blame you if you liked that life too well to want to leave it for me. You are a beautiful woman, Sarah. Such a woman as you will have no shortage of wealthy protectors—wealthier by far than I am. I can offer you so much less.”
“I am only a milliner—and a whore. Nothing more. You offer me far more than I can ever deserve.”
“And I am a journalist who makes his money by exposing the dirty little secrets of the rich and titled.” He shrugged, his body warm against hers. “Marriage to me would not mean an entrée into society. I am tolerated by those on the fringes, and only because they fear the power of my pen. They would not like you any the more for marrying me.”
His self-criticism roused her to his defense. “You are more than your profession. They cannot know the real you if they do not love you as well as you deserve.”
He gave a self-deprecating smile. “I have a few genuine friends who would welcome you with open arms simply because I chose you. But do not be deceived—they are not society. I doubt your father would have approved of them.”
She turned her face to his shoulder. “My father would not have approved of what I have become, either.” The thought still pained her, even now.
Taking her face in his hands, he gazed searchingly into her eyes. “All my life, such as it is, I would like to share with you.”
Miraculous as it seemed, it appeared he really did want to marry her. She still could hardly believe it, but the truth of it was in his eyes. “You really do want me?”
“You have such strength and resilience that I cannot help but want you.”
Her resolve was weakening under his insistence. “Prove it to me. Kiss me and show me just how much you want me.”
“Will you promise to marry me in the morning?”
She had no more energy left to fight both him and her own desires. “Yes.” The word was barely a whisper in the darkness. Giving in to him felt like she was drowning in Paradise.
His embrace was almost painful in its intensity. “I have had your promise. You will not break your word.”
For better or worse she had made her decision and she would stick with it. “I will not break my word.”
He had wanted her so badly and for so long that it was sheer torture to have to maintain his self-control. For Sarah’s sake, he had to. Keeping a tight rein on his lust, he undressed her slowly, taking as much care of her torn clothes as he would of the finest silk. With his gentleness he would atone for the harm that Sir Richard had inflicted on her. “You are shivering.”
“I want you so badly,” she confessed to him in a small voice, her arms reaching for him. “I never knew before I met you how much I could want a man.”
The knowledge that she needed him as badly as he needed her was a powerful aphrodisiac.
Gently he ran his hands over her naked mound, stroking her pussy as tenderly as he could. “Are you sure you want me to make love to you?” He forced himself to ask the question, though he would die if she refused him now. “Sir Richard did not hurt you too badly?”
She moved her legs wider apart, nudging his hand in between them, encouraging him to explore her body. “He beat me and bruised my wrists, but you saved me before he could hurt me any further. Any hurt he caused me will be gone as soon as you make love to me.”
“In that case,” he said, picking her up and carrying her into his bedroom, “I had better hurry.”
The wax candles beside the bed gave off a muted glow and the eiderdown was soft on his back as he came to lie beside her.
The whiteness of her naked body gleamed in the soft candlelight.
With tender fingers he stroked her breasts, her stomach, her thighs, glorying in the sight of her. Her beauty and her generosity overawed him and made him want to give back to her all that she had given him and more.
This night she would lose her virginity in earnest—not to Sir Richard, but to his own tender loving. He would show her what true lovemaking was all about.
Sarah’s fingers were at his shirt buttons. “I want to feel your naked skin against mine,” she whispered, as she unbuttoned his shirtfront and slipped his jacket and shirt off his shoulders.
He could not help a smile of satisfaction. He’d waited weeks for her to say those words to him.
Her fingers moved tantalizingly over his torso, touching and caressing him until they stopped at the waistband of his trousers.
If she wanted him to stop now, he would stop, even if it killed him.
“I want to see all of you.”
He groaned with relief. She wasn’t going to stop him.
With a few deft moves, his trousers and underlinen lay discarded on the floor.
Her eyes grew wide in the candlelight as he approached her. “You are big,” she murmured. “Much bigger than…” Her voice trailed away into nothingness.
“I will not hurt you.”
“I hope not,” she said doubtfully, reaching out and stroking him with one fingertip. He arched his back and nearly came in her hand there and then.
“You will soon learn to appreciate my endowments,” he murmured, hanging on to his self-control by a thread. Desperate to possess her, he pushed her onto her back and knelt above her, his erect cock nudging between her thighs. “Open your legs for me.”
Hesitantly, she did just that, allowing him his first clear sight of her pink cunt lips.
He reached down and touched her there, sliding one finger inside her. Her pussy was hot and warm, and as wet as he could have hoped for. Her hips moved against his hand, urging him on to push deeper into her.
He could not wait any longer to take her. Spreading her legs apart, he nudged the tip of his ravenous cock into her pussy.
Her muscles tensed around him and she gasped, but she did not pull away.
He held himself still, the tip of his cock just inside her, until he felt her relax around him.
“That is n-not so bad,” she stuttered.
“Only not bad?” he queried, as he pushed into her a little way farther. “I cannot be doing it right.”
Again she tensed up, and again he held still until she melted around him.
“It’s better than not bad,” she admitted, a little breathlessly. “Indeed, it’s r-rather nice.”
If it got any nicer than this, he was going to disgrace himself and go off half-cocked. Slowly he withdrew a little way, steeling himself to regain control.
She made a moan of protest and grabbed tightly to his buttocks.
“I’m not going to leave you. Just positioning myself,” and he pushed into her more deeply, “for that.”
This time she did not tense up against him, but arched into him as he thrust so that he went deeper than he intended until he was buried in her up to the hilt.
Though he was aching to fuck her hard and fast and pound her into oblivion, he held tight to his self-control.
Gently he rocked her back and forth, impaled on his ironhard cock, wringing every drop of sensation from her. He wanted to show her that there was more to fucking than violence and aggression. He needed to give her pleasure and introduce her to the joy that was to be found in the embrace of her lover.
Droplets of sweat were dripping off his brow when finally she gave a choked cry and he felt her convulse around him. The clenching of her pussy muscles around his cock was too much for his overtaxed restraint. With a cry almost of anguish, he thrust into her hard and fast until the waves of his own pleasure overtook him and he spent his seed inside her until his body was wrung dry.
Exhausted, he collapsed beside her, pulling the bedcovers over them both to protect them from the chill of the night air.
As he drifted off to sleep, he felt Sarah’s hand creep into his, and her soft voice in his ear whispered, “Thank you.”
Before noon of the following day, Tom stalked in through the open door of Mrs. Erskine’s sitting room without waiting to be announced.
Mrs. Erskine was sitting at her desk, scratching away with her pen in a large ledger. She looked up when Tom entered and waved at him to sit down. “Mr. Wilde. What brings you here so early in the day?”
In no mood for pleasantries, he remained on his feet, responding to her greeting with a curt nod. “You will return the money to Sir Richard.” His voice was pure steel.
“I will?” she asked, her voice instantly frosty. Her pen lay idle on the blotter, her fingers now steepled in front of her chin. “On whose say-so?”
“On mine.”
“Do not be foolish. I gave you a chance to purchase the girl but you refused.”
“And I would suggest banning Sir Richard from your coffee house in the future.”
Mrs. Erskine looked down her nose at him. “Now why would I do that?”
“He attacked one of your girls and very nearly raped her. He would have succeeded if I hadn’t arrived just in time to save her.”
“Sarah?”
He nodded.
“Ah, I wondered where she had run off to.” She gestured to the note on her blotter in front of her. “I was just about to alert the constabulary to the fact she was missing—along with some very expensive clothing she had borrowed from me.”
“I took her away with me last night. Thanks to Sir Richard, her expensive clothing is now ruined.”
“I will add it to his bill.”
“You will allow him to return?”
Her eyes glinted with avarice. “What is it worth to you to have him banned?”
“I will write a short pamphlet that will mention, among other details, how he has been banned from a certain house for ungentlemanly behavior. By the time I have finished with him, his reputation will be in tatters and no respectable person, man or woman, will want to be seen with him.” He smiled grimly. Very soon Sir Richard would rue the day he laid hands on Sarah. “For the right incentive, I will make it subtly clear whose house it was, where it can be found, and what ser vices can be obtained there.”
She was too canny to smile, but the look of delight that flashed in her eyes betrayed her excitement at the prospect. “The publicity would be worth something,” she admitted grudgingly.
“You know perfectly well that it would more than make up for the loss of Sir Richard’s contribution. Not to mention, your girls would feel safer if he was banned. It would serve as a warning for other gentlemen not to take what is not freely offered—and paid for.”
She gave a decisive nod. “I will inform Sir Richard that his company is no longer agreeable to me. And Sarah? Where is she?”
“My wife,” he emphasized, “is in the front parlor drinking a cup of tea.”
“Your wife?” The look on her face was of amusement rather than surprise.
“My wife.”
“Please bring her in.”
Tom hesitated.
“I would like to see with my own eyes that she has suffered no lasting harm from Sir Richard. I am sorry for the girl—I do not countenance such behavior in my house.”
Tom felt Sarah’s arm tremble in his as he led her through the dark passageway to Mrs. Erskine’s sitting room.
Mrs. Erskine regarded her with a mild air. “So, Sarah, you are to be married to this scoundrel?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You could have done a good deal better for yourself. I was expecting you to snare a handsome young baron at the very least, or an elderly coal merchant with more than enough money to spend on fripperies for a young mistress.”
Tom frowned at her.
“But I daresay Mr. Wilde will treat you handsomely enough.” She coughed. “As for Sir Richard, he will be dealt with.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Now that the two of you are to be married,” she continued, “I have something I must give you.” With one hand she pushed her pince-nez glasses up her nose while with the other she opened one of her desk drawers and rummaged about in it for a minute. “Ah, here it is,” she said, bringing out a square of pasteboard and holding it out to Tom.
There was an address written on it in an elegant script—he recognized neither the address nor the handwriting. He turned it over, hoping for a clue to its purpose, but the other side was blank.
“That is my sister’s address.”
“Your sister?” Sarah ventured, looking over Tom’s shoulder at the card.
“She runs an establishment the pair of you might like to explore together,” Mrs. Erskine said, a rare smile creeping over her face. “An establishment for the entertainment of adventurous married couples.”
Tom shot a sidelong glance at Sarah. Her lips were pursed, but there was a definite gleam of interest in her eye. His cock sprang to attention at the thought that she would adventure there with him. When an opportune moment arrived, he would have to explore that subject a little further.
But not right now. He took Sarah’s arm and ushered her to the door. Mrs. Erskine was part of their past, not of their future. “Good-bye.”
Mrs. Erskine sat waiting as the couple walked out of her office. Had she misread the pair of them? She did not think so, but she had been wrong once before. Very, very wrong.
There were sounds of scuffling, and the whisper of a muted giggle reached her from the corridor.
Tom stuck his head back around the door. “We will give your sister your regards,” he promised, a merry glint in his eye, and disappeared into the corridor once more.
Mrs. Erskine picked up her pen again, a satisfied smile firmly planted on her face.
She had not been wrong. Her sister would be pleased.