No. He wouldn’t think on that. He didn’t like to consider it.
“Most wives don’t frequent prostitutes to develop their skills. And you have time for maternal research.”
“She seemed as good a research partner as any, considering you’ve already cut my pool of possibilities in half. After all, you have not been helping. Is she your paramour?”
He ignored the question. “Prostitutes seemed a reasonable next step in your plan?”
“Interestingly enough, they didn’t until last night. But when Penelope suggested that there might be prostitutes here—”
“Lady Bourne knows about your ridiculous plans and hasn’t tied you to a chair?” Bourne’s wife or no, the lady deserved a sound thrashing for allowing her unmarried, unprotected sister to gallivant through London’s darker corners without purchase.
“No. She simply answered a few questions about the Angel.”
About him? He wouldn’t ask. He did not wish to know.
“What kind of questions?”
She sighed. “The kind that ended with me knowing that there might be a prostitute or two here. Is she very skilled?”
The question was so forthright, his head spun. She did not need to know that Sally Tasser was perhaps the most skilled workingwoman this side of Montmartre.
“What do you want to know?”
She blinked up at him with those big blue eyes and said, as though it were a perfectly reasonable thing to say, “Everything.”
For one long, lush moment, he was lost to the vision of just what everything might entail. To the way her body might fit to his, the way she might taste, soft and sweet on his tongue, to the wicked, wonderful things she might allow him to do to her. To the lessons for which she did not even know she was asking.
He wanted to show her everything.
And he wanted to begin now.
“Do you think that Miss Tasser would be willing to provide a lesson of sorts?”
It was becoming difficult to breathe. “No.”
Pippa tilted her head. “Are you certain? As I said, I would be willing to pay her.”
The idea of Pippa Marbury paying to learn Sally Tasser’s trade made Cross want to destroy someone. First Bourne, for allowing his sister-in-law to run untethered throughout London, and then the Marquess of Needham and Dolby, for raising a young woman who was completely lacking in sense, and then Castleton, for not keeping his fiancée properly occupied in the weeks leading up to their wedding.
Unaware of the direction of his rioting thoughts, she said, “Lord Castleton has never attempted to compromise me.”
The man was either idiot or saint.
If Cross were Castleton, he’d have had her a dozen different ways the moment she’d agreed to be his wife. In darkened hallways and dim alcoves, in long, stop-and-start carriage rides through the crush of midday traffic, and outside, quickly, against a strong, sturdy tree, with none but nature to hear her cries of pleasure.
To hear their mutual cries of pleasure.
But he was not Castleton.
He was Cross.
And this was thoroughly, completely wrong.
He took a step back, his thoughts making him guilty—making him look around the dim casino floor in sudden fear that someone might see them. Might hear them.
Why was it that she was always where ladies should never be?
“Last night, I attempted to indicate to him that I was happy for him to touch me. Kiss me, even.”
He hated the earl with a wicked, visceral intensity.
She was still talking. “But he didn’t even seem to notice me. Granted, it was just a touch on the hand, but . . .”
Cross would pay good money for her to touch him so simply.
Her big blue eyes were trained on him again. “Do you know why he hasn’t attempted to seduce me?”
“No.” Again, sainthood seemed the only logical answer.
“You needn’t feel that you must protect me from the truth.”
“I don’t.” Except he did. He didn’t want her to know the truth of his own thoughts. Their sordid nature.
“It’s because I am odd.” And then she looked up at him with those enormous blue eyes, and said, “I can’t help it.”
God help him, he wanted to kiss her senseless, odd or not. He wanted to kiss her senseless because she was odd.
“Pippa—” he said, knowing he shouldn’t speak.
She cut him off. “Don’t tell me it’s not true. I know it is. I’m strange.”
“You are.”
Her brows knit together. “Well, you don’t have to tell me it is true either.”
He couldn’t help it. He smiled. “It is not a bad thing.”
She looked at him as though it was he—and not she—who was mad. “Of course it is.”
“No. It’s not.”
“You’re a good man.”
He was nothing of the sort. And there were several key parts of his body that wanted to prove that to her. One of them in particular.
“It’s fine that he is not interested in seducing me,” she said, “but it cannot go on forever.”
“Perhaps he is trying to be a gentleman.”
She did not believe it. “That hasn’t stopped Tottenham.”
A thread of fire shot through him. “Tottenham has attempted to seduce you?” He’d murder him, next prime minister or not.
She looked at him as though he’d sprouted a second head. “No. Why would Tottenham seduce me?”
“You said it.”
“No. I said he’d tried to seduce Olivia.”
She hadn’t said any such thing, but he let it go.
“Not tried to,” she pressed on, “did. Has done.” She closed her eyes. “I’m the only Marbury daughter who has not been seduced.”
He could rectify this tragic wrong.
Except he couldn’t.
She looked up at him. “Can you believe it?”
He did not know what to say. So he said nothing.
“You can, I see.” She took a deep breath. “This is why I required your help from the beginning, Mr. Cross. I need you to show me how to do it.”
Yes.
He swallowed back the word. Surely he was misunderstanding. “How to do what?”
She sighed, frustrated. “How to attract him.”
“Whom?”
“Are you even listening? Castleton!” She turned away, heading for the nearest table, where a roulette wheel stood quiet in its thick oak seat. She spoke to the wheel. “I didn’t know that he should be attempting to seduce me now. Before our wedding. I didn’t know that was a part of it.”
“It’s not. He shouldn’t be doing any such thing.”
“Well, you’ve clearly never been engaged because it seems that this is precisely the kind of thing that happens between to-be-married couples. I thought I had two weeks. Apparently, I don’t.”
There was a roar in his ears that made it difficult to understand her, but when she turned to face him again, shoulders back, as though she were about to do battle, he knew he was done for. “My research must begin immediately.”
He was being punished. That was the only explanation.
“I need someone”—she paused, then reframed the statement—“I need you to teach me how to be normal.”
What a travesty that would be.
“Normal.”
“Yes. Normal.” She lifted her hands helplessly. “I realize now that my original request—for the experience of ruination?” she asked as though he might have somehow forgotten the request in question. As though he might ever forget it. He nodded, nonetheless. “Well, I realize now that it is not at all a strange request.”
“It’s not?”
She smiled. “No. Indeed. In fact, it seems that there are plenty of women in London who fully experience those things that I am interested in before their wedding night—including my sisters. That bit is between us, I hope?”
Finally, a question to which he knew the reply. “Of course.”
She was already moving on. “You see, I thought I would require a certain amount of knowledge on the night in question because Lord Castleton might not have the knowledge himself. But now, I realize . . . well . . . I require it because it’s ordinary.”
“It’s ordinary.”
She tilted her head and considered him curiously. “You do a great deal of repeating me, Mr. Cross.”
Because listening to her was like learning a second language. Arabic. Or Hindi.
She was still talking. “It’s ordinary. After all, if Olivia has it, and Lord Tottenham is quite the gentleman, well then, many must have it, don’t you think?”
“It.”
“Knowledge of the inner workings of the marital . . .” She hesitated. “Process.”
He took a long breath and let it out. “I’m still not certain why you need a prostitute to teach you such . . . workings.”
“It’s no different, really. I continue to require a research partner. Only, it seems now I require research on normalcy. I need to know how it is that ordinary females behave. I need help. Rather urgently. Since you refused, Miss Tasser will do.”
She was killing him. Slowly. Painfully.
“Sally Tasser is no ordinary female.”
“Well, I understand that she is a prostitute, but I assume she has all the required parts?”
He choked. “Yes.”
She hesitated, and something flashed across her face. Disappointment? “You’ve seen them?”
“No.” Truth.
“Hmm.” She did not seem to believe him. “You do not frequent prostitutes?”
“I do not.”
“I am not entirely certain that I support the profession.”
“No?” Thank God. He would not put it past Pippa to simply pronounce a newfound desire to explore all aspects of the world’s oldest profession.
“No.” She shook her head. “I am concerned that the ladies are ill-treated.”
“The ladies who frequent The Fallen Angel are not ill-treated.”
Her brows knit together. “How do you know?”
“Because they are under my protection.”
She froze. “They are?”
He was suddenly warm. “They are. We do all we can to ensure that they are well treated and well paid while under our roof. If they are manhandled, they call for one of the security detail. They file a complaint with me. And if I discover a member is mistreating ladies beneath this roof, his membership is revoked.”
She paused for a long moment, considering the words, and finally said, “I have a passion for horticulture.”
He wasn’t certain how plants had anything to do with prostitutes, but he knew better than to interrupt.
She continued, the words quick and forthright, as though they entirely made sense. “I’ve made a rather remarkable discovery recently,” she said, and his attention lingered on the breathlessness of the words. On the way her mouth curved in a small, private smile. She was proud of herself, and he found—even before she admitted her finding—that he was proud of her. Odd, that. “It is possible to take a piece of one rosebush and affix it to another. And when the process is completed properly . . . say, a white piece on a red bush . . . an entirely new rose grows . . .” She paused, and the rest of the words rushed out, as though she were almost afraid of them. “A pink one.”
Cross did not know much about horticulture, but he knew enough about scientific study to know that the finding would be groundbreaking. “How did you—”
She raised a hand to stop the question. “I’ll happily show you. It’s very exciting. But that’s not the point.”
He waited for her to arrive at the point in question.
She did. “The career . . . it is not their choice. They’re not red or white anymore. They’re pink. And you’re why.”
Somehow, it made sense that she compared the ladies of the Angel to this experiment in roses. Somehow, this woman’s strange, wonderful brain worked in a way that he completely understood.
And as he considered that odd, remarkable truth, she prodded, “Aren’t you?”
It was not the simplest of questions. Nor was it the easiest of answers. “It is not always their choice, no. In many cases, girls fall into it. But here, they are well treated. Well fed. Well paid. And the moment they want to stop their work, we find them other places.”
Her brows rose. “Where?”
He smiled. “We are very powerful men, Pippa. Our membership has need of servants; our vendors require shopgirls. And, if not that, then there are always safe houses far from London, where girls can begin anew.” After a long silence, he added, “I would never force a girl into this life.”
“But some of them choose it?”
It was an incomprehensible truth for some. “The white branch.”
She nodded. “Like Miss Tasser.”
“Like Sally.”
“Well, all the more reason for me to mine her expertise.” She pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose. “If she chooses it, she must enjoy it to a certain extent. And there’s no one else. It’s not as though Castleton has offered his assistance.”
As it should be.
No. Not as it should be. Of course Castleton should be offering his assistance. He should be doing much more than that.
The thought made Cross more murderous.
She pursed her lips. “Do you think I ought to ask him? Perhaps that’s how these things are done?”
No! “Yes.”
She blushed, tempting him. “I’m not sure I could.”