Mrs. Hocking nodded, her expression dark as she spoke. “There’ll be a reckoning then, I think, once his Lordship returns?”
Li-Na shrugged. “I will tell him whatever I can. It’s up to him to do the rest.”
“He’ll do the right thing,” the woman said. “He’s always done right, even when it meant he had to muck out the pig wallow himself.”
Li-Na turned, surprised. “He’s done it himself?”
“He’s done it and not complained. His brother, too, though not after he got sick. They’re good men when they’re here.”
Li-Na nodded, her thoughts turning glum again. Lord Daniel was a good man, but he wasn’t here.
“Tell me more,” she coaxed, “about what Lord Daniel has done. And I’ll make sure to mention that your boys have helped with the garden when it’s needed.”
Mrs. Hocking screwed up her face. It wasn’t a classically beautiful expression, but Li-Na recognized it as the face she made before she started a tale. And from the intensity of the expression, Li-Na knew it would be a good one.
Chapter Twenty
“It’s the Lyon’sDen that has the most interesting gambling, don’t you think?”
Daniel nodded absently, thoroughly uninterested in Lord Lerwick’s conversation. The man fancied himself a Corinthian. He loved to race, box, and whatnot, but mostly he liked whoring and gambling on whatever caught his curiosity. That was probably why he liked the Lyon’s Den. It offered unusual gambles for the unwary, and there was a steep trade in side bets.
Unfortunately, Lord Lerwick was also an intimate of the Prince Regent and fancied himself an art expert. Perhaps he was well versed in erotic art, but as Daniel was not a purveyor of such things, he was hard pressed to know why the man insisted on coming back to Cornwall in order to inspect a case of vases in Daniel’s possession. But the Prince Regent had insisted, and so Lord Lerwick was stinking up the carriage while Daniel and Stefan tolerated the man’s boorish conversation.
Thankfully, Stefan had fallen asleep a half hour ago. Unfortunately, that meant the man felt free to turn the conversation to more lewd topics.
“There’s heavy betting on who will be that cage woman’s new lover,” he said as he stretched out his booted feet onto the squabs beside Stefan. Daniel pushed them off.
“Don’t wake the boy.”
Lerwick grumbled, but adjusted his feet. “I’ve a mind to have a go at her myself. I hear she’s Chinese and can do things with her feet that are so intense that most men pass out.”
Daniel’s jaw tightened. “What Chinese woman?”
“You know. The one in the cage that counts the money on her wood click clack thing.”
“An abacus?” Good God, the man was talking about Li-Na, and the thought made him physically ill.
“Yes, that. Her! Baron Easterly isn’t travelling to London anymore what with his gout and all. Said he’s given her up as his mistress. That means everyone else can have a go at her.” Lerwick waggled his eyebrows. “What do you think she can do with her feet?”
“Walk on them, most like.” The words came out more as a growl. The man couldn’t possibly be talking about Li-Na. She was too innocent to be any man’s mistress, or so he’d thought. But she wasn’t inexperienced, and she was absolutely the Abacus Woman at the Lyon’s Den.
But the idea simply didn’t fit, and the very suggestion was making him angry.
“Who is this Baron Easterly? And what makes you think she’s been his mistress?” He nearly choked on that last word. He knew that the Abacus Woman was a tantalizing mystery at the Lyon’s Den and therefore the source of a great deal of speculation. But he’d never heard that she was anybody’s mistress.
It was an unsettling realization, especially as Lerwick detailed tale after tale about his friend Baron Easterly. The man was a favorite among Lerwick’s set because he was a jolly good fellow who managed somehow to get the best harlots. Indeed, his sexual stamina was touted by all the women—or it had been—until he somehow managed to get the Abacus Woman as his mistress. No one knew how he’d done it, but the woman had come out of her cage several times, wrapped her arms around him, and lured him upstairs to where a jolly good time was had, according to everyone.
The stories seemed credible enough, at least the parts that Lerwick had himself witnessed, but Daniel could not reconcile the tales with the woman he’d had in his arms little more than two weeks ago. She was not the seasoned seducer that Lerwick described. And the dissonance between the two stories made him furious.
Could she be that talented a liar? So skilled as to pretend with him because that attracted him? Lerwick certainly described her that way. He described in detail the tales that the baron had relayed, and they were lewd enough to make Daniel’s ears burn.
“I cannot credit that anyone would do what you describe,” Daniel finally said. “Indeed, why would anyone want to?”
“That’s the wonder of Japan and China. They have strange interests, and the most amazing talents. Have you seen their pillow books? I found one for Prinny, and we spent many nights in discussion of the pictures there.”
Yes, he’d seen pillow books on several occasions. He’d admired the art and thought the content to be thorough. But it was nothing like what Lerwick described. “I think your tales have grown with the telling,” he said firmly.
“I witnessed it with my own eyes!” the man exclaimed. “Several of us were allowed in to watch and…”