‘Darling, I thought you were getting money from that vulgar little cit.’
‘Corwin? Yes, I hope to. I just have to be sure I can keep him from interfering in the running as part of the deal.’ Never mind the detail that Corwin would insist on making Eden his son-in-law.
‘You are so stuffy, Eden.’ She subsided into a sulk, leaving him once more free to contemplate Lady Maude and the inconvenient fact that, if he was going to have any hope of sleep tonight, a visit to Mrs Cornwallis’s hospitable establishment was probably the simplest way of achieving it. Surely all he needed was the scent of another woman’s skin, the heat of another smiling mouth under his, the skills of a professional, to rout the memory of innocently sensual beauty.
‘Are you coming in?’ They were already at the Henrietta Street house, pretty as a jewel box with the white porcelain flowers filling the window boxes and the shiny green front door flanked by clipped evergreens.
‘No, Madame.’ Despite the footman, he helped her down himself, up the steps to the front door, dropping a dutiful salute on her cheek. ‘Sleep well.’
‘Blackstone Mews,’ he said to the coachman, climbing back in. Mrs Cornwallis would have some new girls by now. It was six weeks since he had last called.
Two hours later Eden lay back on the purple silk covers, his eyes closed. If he kept them closed, the girl probably wouldn’t talk until he was ready to get up and go. He had already forgotten her name.
A fingertip trailed down his chest, circled his navel, drifted hopefully lower. His imagination made it Lady Maude’s finger, with predictable results.
‘Ooh!’ she said with admiration that was not all professional. ‘Why not stay all night?’
‘I never sleep here.’ Her voice chased away the image in his mind. Eyes open, Eden rolled off the bed and reached for his breeches.
‘Oh.’ Another woman who could manage an audible pout. ‘But you’ll ask for me next time?’
‘No. I never ask for the same girl twice.’ No entanglements, no expectations. No messy emotions on her part. Certainly no night spent with her in his arms, waking up off guard and vulnerable.
‘But I thought you liked me…’ And she had that wheedling tone off to perfection too. He kept his back to the bed as he fastened his shirt. Madame, cajoling over her millinery bill, actresses fluttering their eyelashes as they tried to persuade him to give them a role, those simpering Corwin girls in pursuit of a husband. Did every female in existence, he thought irritably, have to coax like that? It occurred to him that Lady Maude had been admirably direct. No simpering, pouting or wheedling from her. What, he wondered, did she want from him?
‘Good night.’ Eden did not look back as he went out of the door.
Chapter Three
Eden Hurst was pacing like one of the caged lions at the Tower. No, Maude silently corrected herself. Those animals were confined behind bars. However menacing they looked, with the muscles bunching under their sleek hides and the flash of white fangs, they were impotent.
This man was free. This man made things happen, just as she had sensed he would. He turned from checking a ledger someone had handed him and Maude moved back between the flats, stumbling slightly over the grooves they ran in. The paperwork dismissed, Hurst strode to the front of the stage and began a highly technical discussion with someone invisible in the pit about the placing of the instrumental players to achieve a certain required effect.
He had discarded his coat and rolled up his sleeves. There was no sign of last night’s exaggerated tailoring, unless one counted the very whiteness of the linen shirt that made his skin even more golden in contrast and the expensive cut of his pantaloons and waistcoat. There were no diamonds in his ear today, just the ring to give emphasis when he swept a hand down in a gesture to reinforce his orders.
Maude found her eyes fixed on the point where his waistcoat had been laced at the small of his back, emphasising the balance between broad shoulders and narrow waist, slim hips and long legs.
Now he put his fists on his hips and leaned back to stare up into the gods to where a hand was shouting a query. The line of his throat was that of a Greek statue, she thought.
‘Extraordinarily beautiful animal, isn’t he?’ a dispassionate male voice asked, just by her ear.
Maude felt herself colouring: she could hardly deny to herself how she had been looking at him. ‘Mr Hurst appears very fit,’ she said repressively, turning to find one of the walking gentlemen at her elbow.
‘I’m not interested in him that way, you understand,’ the man continued, still watching his employer through narrowed eyes. Maude tried to appear sophisticated and unshocked at the suggestion he might be interested. ‘I just wish I could move like that. I watch and watch, but I’m damned if I can get it. New, are you? Nice gown, by the way. My name’s Tom Gates, walking gentleman and hopeful juvenile lead if that clot Merrick upsets the apple cart.’
Maude regarded him with some interest. He looked about twenty-one, but from a distance, with make-up, she could see he could easily pass for a lad of seventeen. ‘Thank you, it is one of my favourite gowns. I’m sure you’d make a very good juvenile lead. Is Mr Merrick prone to trouble, then?’
‘He will be if he doesn’t stop lifting La Golding’s skirts,’ Tom confided frankly. ‘Either Susan Poole will run him through with a hat pin or the guv’nor will have his balls for making trouble in the cast. What’s your line, then? Too classy to be a walking lady, I’d have said.’
‘I am not an actress, I’m an investor,’ Maude explained, watching the blood drain from the young man’s face as he realised his faux pas. ‘I am early for a business meeting with Mr Hurst.’
‘Oh. My. God.’ He smote his forehead dramatically. ‘Should I go and pack my bags now, do you think? Let me see, have I remembered everything I said that you’ll be complaining about?’
‘Lady Maude. Gates? Be so good as to explain what will cause her ladyship to complain to me.’ Eden Hurst was standing right behind them, his expression one of polite interest. Maude thought that it was just how a shark would look before sampling one’s leg.
‘Good morning, Mr Hurst. There is absolutely nothing to be concerned over. I arrived somewhat early and Mr Gates has been so helpful in explaining things, but he seems conscience-stricken because he forgot to address me by my title. I do not regard it at all.’ She shared a sweet smile between both men. Gates shot her a look of ador
ing thanks, Mr Hurst merely raised one eyebrow in a manner calculated to infuriate anyone else who could not manage the same trick.