ToLoveaLady (24 page)

Resigned to waiting for Estelle’s help, she took the time to look more closely at the room. It was smaller than her chambers at Charles’s ranch, and completely dominated by a large, canopied bed that jutted out from the corner to the middle of the room. Draped in blue moire and gold tassels that matched the window coverings, the bed looked soft and inviting. But did people ever
sleep
in beds in houses like this?

She turned away and concentrated on surveying the rest of the room. There wasn’t much to see: an oak washstand with pitcher and bowl, a hat tree with a half a dozen bonnets on display, a chest of drawers, a kerosene lamp, a single chair and a door leading to a connecting room. Curious, she tried the door. It didn’t budge.

“We keep the doors between the rooms locked.” She jumped as Estelle spoke behind her. Estelle winked. “Wouldn’t want anyone busting in and surprising us while we work.”

“Then why have connecting doors at all?” Cecily regretted the question as soon as it was out. Maybe she didn’t really want to know what went on in places like this.

“The main reason is so we can slip out if a customer gets too rough, or wants a service we don’t provide. Or someone else can slip in to help get us out of a jam.”

Cecily hadn’t thought about the danger involved in a job like Estelle’s. “Does that happen very often?”

Estelle shrugged. “Not very. But it pays to be safe, just in case.” She took the dress she’d had folded over her arm and spread it on the bed. The wine velvet skirt fanned out like a bell, while the sleeveless top was cut very low and trimmed in black lace.
 

“It’s beautiful.” Cecily rubbed her fingers across the soft velvet.

“I just have to do the hem and it’ll be finished. You modeling it for me will be a big help.”

“I need help with my buttons.” Cecily turned her back to Estelle and smiled at her over her shoulder. “Please.”

Estelle made quick work of the line of jet buttons. “Better take off the bustle and the petticoats, too,” she said. “Otherwise, the skirt won’t hang right.”

Cecily obliged and Estelle helped slip the velvet dress over her head. She stared in alarm at her breasts swelling above the neckline of the dress. “I think it’s too small for me.”

“No, no, it’s perfect.” Estelle finished doing up the back and turned Cecily around to face her. “Oh yes, you look wonderful!
 
This next room has a mirror. Come have a look.”

Upon walking, she discovered the dress was slit up one side from floor to above the knee. “This seam has come undone,” she said, looking down at her stockinged leg which peeped through the opening.

“It’s supposed to be that way.” Estelle unlocked the door to the adjoining room and led Cecily to an oval looking glass on a stand in the corner. “Now look how beautiful you are.”

Cecily could hardly believe she was looking at herself in the mirror. The dress, so deceptively simple-looking when it had been lying on the bed, did strange, flattering things to her body. Suddenly, her waist looked narrower, her breasts larger and more rounded. Her neck became long and graceful and her skin glowed with a new warmth. “Now we’ll just let your hair down a little.” Before she could protest, Estelle removed half a dozen pins and Cecily’s hair cascaded down her back. Estelle patted her shoulder. “How do you feel?”

Cecily covered the exposed tops of her breasts with her hands. Divested of petticoats and bustle, she felt lighter and daring. Looking at the image in the mirror again she saw, not Lady Cecily Thorndale, only daughter of the Earl of Marbridge, but another, more adventuress Cecily, a woman far more likely to be entertaining a man in her bedchamber than pouring tea for the Literary Society. “I don’t feel like myself.” She giggled. “I wonder what Charles would think if he could see me now?”

“I wonder,” Estelle murmured. She turned back toward the door. “I forgot my pins. I’ll just run downstairs for a moment and get them. You wait here.”

As the door clicked shut behind her, Cecily continued to study her reflection in the mirror. What would Charles think if he could see her now? Would he see past the petted and polished girl he’d agreed to marry because it was what his father wanted to the flawed and feeling woman who loved him without regard to title or position, but only because he was Charles?

Or was that other, false image of her so firmly fixed in his mind that he could acknowledge no other? Angry at the thought, she turned from the mirror and started to return to the other room. But when she tried the door between the two chambers, it refused to open. No matter how much she twisted the knob or pulled, it was clear the door was locked.

“How could that have happened?” she wondered aloud, and went to the door leading into the hall. She would go out into the hall and enter the other room from there. But this door, too, refused to open. She shook it furiously, then pounded on the panel. “Estelle!
 
Help, I’m locked in!”

She put her ear to the door and listened, but the only sound she heard was the throb of her own pulse in her ear. She slumped against the door. Estelle was bound to be back soon, but what was taking her so long?

Five minutes passed, and then ten, during which Cecily paced the length of the small dressing room half a hundred times. She pulled a trunk over to the single high window, but even standing on it, she could not reach to push it open. She tried shouting and pounding on the door, but no one answered. The house might have been deserted.

Had they rushed away to some emergency and forgotten her? What could have taken them away so quickly? An image flashed through her mind of Estelle and Fifi, heads together and giggling as they plotted in the parlor. Immediately after that, Estelle had pleaded with Cecily to help her hem the dress. But couldn’t Fifi have helped her just as well? A leaden feeling in her stomach, she sank onto the chest, chin in her hands. What if Estelle had left her here on purpose? But why?

All she could do was wait. She only wished she knew what she was waiting for.

Chapter Fourteen

“This message just came for you, m’lord.” Charles was wrestling with a reply to his father’s latest letter when Gordon entered his office, bearing a folded sheet of paper on a silver tray.

“Put it over there and I’ll read it in a moment.” He nodded toward the side table, then turned back to the half-filled sheet in front of him. He’d detailed what he knew of the Ace of Clubs ranch and recommended being allowed to approach John Grady with an offer. If he played this right, it might be the means to end the rift between them.

That bit of business dispensed with, his words had deserted him. Why was it when he conversed with others, glibness was second nature to him, but with his father, his tongue, and thoughts, were as leaden as spent bullets? He needed brilliant words to placate the old man, persuasive words to make him see Charles’s point of view, and nerve enough to write them down and send them off.

“Hrrrmph!” He looked up and saw Gordon still standing there. “The young man who delivered it said it was urgent, m’lord. Requiring an immediate answer.”

“All right. Give it here.” He shoved the incomplete letter away and replaced the pen in its stand. What would a few more moments matter?

The decidedly feminine scrawl on the note was unfamiliar to him, but the message was short and to the point.
“Madame LeFleur, Fifi and Estelle request the pleasure of your company for dinner this evening, seven o’clock at their new home.”

“They want me to dine with them this evening. That’s impossible.” He laid the note aside.

“I was told if you refused I was to give you this second note, m’lord.” Gordon withdrew another letter from his coat.
 

This longer note was written in the same hand. “
My dear Lord Silsbee, I beg you to come to dinner at my home this evening. I have a matter of some urgency to discuss with you. Madame LeFleur.”
His gaze dropped to the postscript below the signature and his heart began to pound.
“It concerns Lady Thorndale
.”

What could the prostitute have to say to him about Cecily? Surely nothing of consequence. He scanned the letter once more. “She says it’s an urgent matter,” he said to no one in particular.

“Shall I lay out your dinner jacket, m’lord?”

He looked back at the unfinished letter to his father. “Where is Cecily?” he asked.

“I do not know, m’lord.”

He sighed. “Please tell her I must be away for supper.” He pushed back his chair and rose. “But don’t tell her where I’ve gone. Madame and the others may be her friends, but I doubt she’d like the idea of them entertaining me, even at an innocent dinner.”

“Yes, m’lord.”

By the time he had shaved, dressed, and saddled his horse, the sun was setting. He rode toward Madame’s new house in the gray light of dusk, the sharp edges of the landscape softened to smudges. A brush of wings startled his horse and he looked up to see a great horned owl silently soaring over the prairie, in search of a mouse or some other small creature. As he watched, the first star winked against the silvery sky, and then another and another. The owl hooted once, then a great stillness settled over everything. Straining his ears against the muffling silence, he heard the brush of the horse’s hooves against the sand, the creak of the saddle as his weight shifted with the horse’s gait, the intake and exhale of every breath, and then, a layer below it all, as much felt as heard, the steady thump of his own heart.

He had felt loneliness many times in his life, and the isolation that comes from purposely withholding part of yourself from others. But he had never felt this aching emptiness, as if he were the only person in this vast expanse of space. He knew if he cried out, there would be no one to hear him. If he were thrown from his horse and injured, there would be no one to help him but himself. No fear came with this realization, only a weighty sadness.

He spurred the horse on toward the new whorehouse, and filled his thoughts once more with speculation as to why Madame had summoned him. Had Cecily confided something to the older woman that she was too shy to confess to Charles? Was she in some sort of trouble? Did she need money? Did she have gambling debts or other obligations and thus no way to pay her passage back to England? Though Cecily had never struck him as the type to gamble, wagering was very popular in some circles and she might have fallen in with a rough crowd and obligated herself beyond her ability to pay.

What other sort of trouble could a lady of Cecily’s station get into? Answers eluded him. He only knew that, whatever the trouble, he would help her out. His honor, and his true affection for her, would never allow him to desert her in her time of need.

Madame LeFleur’s house stood out on the otherwise empty prairie like a lighthouse on a deserted shore. Yellow light from the windows sent a welcoming beacon into the darkness. What traveler on the road from town would not be drawn to such a welcoming sight?

When he arrived at the house, a young man, the messenger of earlier in the day, took his horse and directed him toward the door. “The ladies is expectin’ you, suh.”

Fifi answered his knock, and opened the door wide. “Lord Silsbee, so good of you to come.” She ushered him inside and led him to a parlor, where Madam LeFleur and Estelle waited. The room surprised him. He had expected red velvet and tacky excess. Instead, the room was as stylish as any London townhouse might boast. Soft lamplight glinted off polished wood and a single gilt-framed mirror, and the gold and white furniture looked both elegant and comfortable.

The women, too, were dressed more tastefully that he had expected, Madame in dark blue satin, Fifi in green silk and Estelle in brown lawn. Their gowns perhaps were cut lower than was currently fashionable, their skirts clinging more closely to their bodies, but not so much so as to be lewd. Their perfume, light and floral, scented the air.
 

“Welcome, Lord Silsbee.” Madame smiled at him from her chair by the lamp. “Please, be seated.”

He sat on the edge of an upholstered wing chair. Estelle took his hat and Fifi handed him a drink. “Why did you wish to see me?” he asked.

“We wanted to thank you for your very great kindness to us, rescuing us from the horrid jail, allowing us to live in your home until ours was complete.” Madame looked coy, dimples deepening in one cheek. “We can never properly repay you, but we hope you will accept this small token of our appreciation.”

Alarm raced through him. What was she talking about? On his feet once more, he struggled for composure. “I assure you madam, thanks is unnecessary.”

Estelle put her hands on his shoulders and urged him to sit down once more, but he remained standing. “Nonsense,” she purred. “A man like you deserves special thanks.”

He could only imagine the ‘special thanks’ these three would have in mind. He took a drink. The fine malt whiskey was smooth going down, helping to clear his head. Not that he wasn’t tempted by their offer, but these were Cecily’s friends, only recently his house guests. And there was Cecily to think of. They were, after all, still engaged.

“Please remember that I am an engaged man,” he said stiffly.

The look Madam gave him might have been seductive in her younger days. “Surely, my lord, even engaged men have to eat.”

“Eat?” He felt weak in the knees and sat once more.

“Why yes. We have prepared a fine dinner as a gesture of our thanks.” Madame raised her brows in mock alarm. “Were you thinking we meant something else?”