ite enough to explain what he was about to suggest. ‘You might have noticed that fine suite of cameos she was wearing at the Richmonds’ ball. If we were to offer her a fee…’
As he expected, none of his family seemed shocked. ‘How clever,’ Sara approved. ‘I know they are not well off—I was warned not to set my sights on her brother—but that must be a great help. No wonder she always dresses with such style. I was wondering about that shopkeeper in Jermyn Street, where we bought my moonstone, but Miss Hurst would be much better.’
‘Certainly,’ Ashe agreed, straight-faced. ‘We wouldn’t want a Frenchwoman.’
His mother was frowning. ‘Miss Hurst can hardly go off with you unchaperoned, Ashe.’
‘There is Great-Aunt Charlotte in the Dower House. She could stay with her,’ Ashe pointed out. ‘Or Aunt Charlotte might prefer to come to the house. If I hired a chaise for Miss Hurst and she had her maid with her, I cannot imagine that would be a problem.’
‘All I know of my aunt is that she cordially disliked my father,’ the marquess said. ‘But I can write, see if she’s willing to assist us in this, if your Miss Hurst is prepared to oblige us.’
My Miss Hurst. Now there was a concept that appealed to him. Ashe kept his face neutral. ‘I will sound her out in principle. If Great-Aunt is not willing to have a guest or move to the main house, then we will just have to think again.’
Great-aunt or not, he was going to offer Phyllida a fee that would keep her from the necessity of going into the East End for months. Months while he persuaded her into his bed, months while he enjoyed her as his mistress.
‘You want me to come with you, alone, to your family home?’ Phyllida sorted through a jumble of emotions. Surprise, a surge of wicked excitement, rapidly suppressed, outrage if this was deliberate plotting, delight that she might earn a fee so easily and in such surroundings.
‘I am asking you to accept my escort, with your maid. My great-aunt Charlotte has condescended to move into the main house for the duration—largely out of curiosity, I suspect, but she will make an unexceptionable chaperon should anyone discover your presence.’
‘But—’
‘I am suggesting a generous fee by the day, as we have no idea of the extent of the problem, and you have the first opportunity to negotiate on items we wish to sell.’ Ashe Herriard sat back in the chair, crossed long legs in elegant relaxation and waited. ‘Naturally we will not be making it known that we have employed an expert, let alone who it is,’ he added.
‘I suppose I could develop exhaustion from all the gadding about I have been doing and need to visit a friend in the country for a few days’ rest,’ Phyllida pondered aloud. A generous fee and time alone in Ashe’s company. It was very tempting. But could she trust him? Or, rather more to the point, could she trust herself?
‘You would not have to venture anywhere near Buck’s territory for months,’ Ashe remarked.
Cowardice? Or the perfect excuse to yield to Ashe’s persuasions? Whichever it was, that was a powerful argument. ‘I will be glad to do it,’ she agreed before she could talk herself out of it. ‘Gregory is going to the same house party as your family, and so is Miss Millington. Lady Arnold has promised to exert her best endeavours to secure her vouchers for Almack’s because she is Gregory’s godmother and thinks Harriet will be good for him.’
‘And you are not invited?’
‘Best not to remind the patronesses about our parents’ casual approach to marriage,’ she said with a lightness she was finding hard to maintain lately.
‘May I ask what happened? I do not mean to pry if it is not something you choose to speak of.’
There was a faint snort from Anna, sitting in the corner with a basket of mending to keep up the appearance of propriety. Phyllida shrugged. ‘It is no secret. They were madly in love—or, at least, Mama was—eloped and then Papa just kept vaguely failing to get round to marrying her.
‘He made every excuse you might imagine. His father would forgive them in time and then they could have a proper society wedding, he’d run out of funds for Mama’s bride clothes, he had to come back to London from Tunbridge Wells where she was in lodgings in order to make money for the rent by gambling. One pretext after another.
‘And once Mama was expecting me she was hardly the slender girl who had attracted him in the first place, so she saw even less of him. Finally a frantic letter brought him back to marry her. But, of course, he stopped off for a prize fight on the way, got drunk and surfaced a day later. A day too late, as it turned out, for I had been born the night before.’
‘That,’ Ashe said austerely, ‘is outrageous.’
‘Mama put it rather more strongly, apparently. But she loved him, at least enough for Gregory to be conceived. After that we hardly saw him. Money would arrive erratically.’
And then Mama had become ill and so, with no family alive on her mother’s side, Phyllida had set out for London to find Papa. But that had cost more than she had imagined. He was not to be located, not immediately, so she had to pay for lodgings and food and gradually she had become more and more desperate until there had been only one stark choice. Sell the last thing of value she had, or starve and fail her mother and brother.
‘Miss Hurst?’
She started, looked up and found Ashe watching her, his faint frown at odds with the relaxed pose he still held. ‘Sorry. I was just remembering. It was not a happy time. But that is all in the past now. Anna, we must pack and prepare for a trip of— How long, Lord Clere?’
‘Five days? We can do the journey in a day, easily, I understand, so that would give you three to assess the situation. I hoped to leave the day after tomorrow at nine.’
‘Very well. I will be waiting.’
Phyllida found herself staring rather blankly at Ashe’s broad shoulders as he made his way out in Anna’s wake. Had she just made a terrible mistake in trusting his discretion? The consequences of this getting out were serious. Not for her reputation, as such, for if Ashe said his great-aunt was to be there as chaperon, she was certain she would be. But she was risking being exposed as a dealer, as not just dabbling in trade, but being deeply immersed in it.
It was, she thought with a sigh, thoroughly unfair. If Gregory pulled off the successful wooing of a mercantile heiress he would be warmly congratulated by everyone and his wife accepted everywhere.