“Don’t you see them?” he asked. “They’re in every corner of London. The maimed, the hungry, the angry. If we are to avoid the fate of the French king, then we must take care of our people. Surely you see it, too.”
She touched his arm, and he felt his muscles flex in reaction before relaxing beneath her heat. “I see it,” she said. “And it does you credit that you do as well. So many of your set do not.”
He nodded, startled that he had spoken so passionately to her. As a rule, talk with ladies was of the weather and the latest play. “I beg your pardon. I find myself frustrated with politics of late. This is your first outing to Hyde Park at the fashionable hour. I should not darken it with my ill temper.”
She snorted. “This is not my first visit. I have spent many afternoons strolling at the outskirts to watch the fashionable go by.”
“What?” he asked. “Where?”
“I’ll show you my favorite place when we pass it. As for your ill temper, I find it interesting. It is not about losing money on a horse or a roll of the dice. It is not about how your first mistress is angry with your second or that your wife is spending your money faster than you can gamble it away.”
“You must find better company,” he groused.
“That is the whole purpose of this ride, is it not? To find me better company to marry?”
Well, that soured his temper even more, but he had to admit that he wanted her to find a better life than endless nights at the Lyon’s Den. That wasn’t much of a future for anyone, much less a fascinating woman.
“Tell me of your proposed law, my lord. Does it prosper? Will the resolution pass, do you think?”
“No,” he muttered, thoroughly downcast. “I lost a vote yesterday. One that carries others, and I cannot see how to regain it.”
“Oh, dear,” she said. “Who defected?”
“Baron Easterly. He’s in a monstrous foul mood, and he never agrees to anything when he’s like that. I swear, he votes nay merely because he is angry with the world, and I cannot fathom what has happened or how to turn it around.”
She chuckled. “His wife found out how much he spends at the brothels and has locked him out of her bedchamber in fury.”
“What?”
She frowned at him. “Baron Easterly, right? He’s the fat one with the bushy mustache. The one who frequents all the ladies just so they will crow about his prowess.”
This was not a proper discussion to have with a lady, but he needed the information too much to worry about the niceties. “Yes, that’s him. And his…appetites are rather legendary.”
“They are indeed,” she said with a grin, her eyes dancing in the sunlight. She was begging him to ask, daring him to continue with this topic, and he could not resist her when she looked so delighted.
“What do you know?”
“He has not touched a woman other than his wife in decades.”
He blew out a breath. It was sweet that she was this naive. Sweet and a little disappointing. “Of course,” he said placatingly. All men visited the brothels so that they could go home and make love to their wives.
“Listen!” she said. “He pays the women to tell his cronies how good he is. Then he sits in the chair and reads. Sometimes he talks about hunting with his dogs. We have had regular updates on how his son fares. The boy gets ill in the fall, but it always clears up by Michaelmas.”
Could it be true? Interesting gossip to be sure, but he didn’t know how to use it to his advantage. He would never threaten to expose the man for something so silly. If Easterly wanted to pay women to make him legendary, it was no business of Elliott’s. Or anyone else’s for that matter.
“The thing is,” she continued, “it would be so much better for him to pick a single mistress, someone thought to be unattainable. He could pay her a pittance of what he spends all over town and still have the same illusion of prowess. More, in fact, if it could be arranged.”
“That is not generally how mistresses work.”
“And that is not generally how the upstairs ladies work. But it could be arranged, and then he could pay court to his wife, still appear manly before his cronies, and have a great deal more money with which to pamper his family. It would work all the way around and likely put him in an excellent mood.”
Elliott wanted to argue. He wanted to claim that no man would spend his blunt on a mistress without taking advantage of what was offered. But he knew Baron Easterly. The man was short, fat, and balding. He took great pride in his reputation with women, and it wasn’t impossible that he had spent a great deal to maintain an illusion.
“But could it be done?” he wondered. “What unattainable woman would agree to such a bargain?”
“The Abacas Woman,” Amber said. “She’s mysterious, gentlemen have been vying for her attention since she came to the Lyon’s Den, and no man has claimed her.”
The woman who sat in a cage with Amber and her grandfather? The one who was responsible for the money that flowed through the den. “Would she do it?”