A door just behind her was thrust open, filling the corridor with noise as two gentlemen nearly barrelled into her in pursuit of a young lady who disappeared, giggling and shrieking, into another room.
Somehow, in the process, Hope was knocked like a skittle towards Mr Millament who’d started towards her. He caged her hand on his arm and marched her quickly up the stairs saying, “Poor fellow’s been in a blue funk since he lost his sister, though he’s always been the serious type. Not quite like this, though. No; nothing like this. My friend Beavis and the other chaps wanted to find a lovely lady such as yourself the last time he was under the great black cloud of despair, but Felix would hear none of it, so this time we thought we’d take it upon ourselves. We’d hold a greart party and invite a girl just for him.” He sent Hope an appreciative look. “My, I would say you are his idea of perfection.”
Hope was about to ask why he thought that having a prostitute brought in would cheer him up if he’d previously rejected the idea, only Mr Millament had just thrown open the door to a scene of such total disarray that at first Hope thought the room was unoccupied.
It was a man’s bedchamber. Hope had seen enough of those to recognise one when she saw one. The large four-poster looked as if it had seen a great deal of action lately, the counterpane half on the floor; the sheets twisted.
A chair near the washstand was upturned.
Hope turned to look at Mr Millament, who patted her on the shoulder. “Bit of a ruckus earlier. Nothing to worry about, my dear. Just go in and see what you can do to bring a bit of comfort to our poor lost friend over there.” He sent her a wry smile. “The old fellow had a run of bad luck last night, and now his bride-to-be is in high dudgeon. Saw it all at Lady Mildew’s rout last night and it was not a pretty sight. He’s definitely in need of something to lift his spirits.”
He’d started to go on but Hope raised her hand for silence, saying, “If he’s about to be married, I’m not going in.”
“Lord, come back. I’d have thought morality was the last of your considerations. Besides, it was a figure of speech.”
Hope was surprised to see real concern in his eyes.
He shook his head vigorously. “Not yet. He hasn’t asked her yet, though she’s been in the wings for as long as I can remember. Don’t know if he can bring himself to take the final plunge, for all she’s not going to give up. Poor Felix. He’s in dreadful shape. You really are our last hope.”
He pointed to the bed, and Hope saw what she had not before. There was a man, prone, lying face down upon the mattress, half under the covers. How she could have missed that was impossible to speculate for the man was quite naked. His long, muscular legs, lightly dusted with dark hair, ended in a very manly pair of buttocks.
Mesmerised, Hope’s gaze travelled from his buttocks—where her eyes lingered—up the length of his spine. There was just the right amount of flesh covering his bones. He looked like a man in the prime of good health, though she could not see his face. His ears were instantly recognisable though. There was the slightest point to the tips. Perhaps a characteristic that would go unremarked by anyone who hadn’t gazed from the back pews each Sunday at the neighbourhood’s most eligible bachelor; first with interest, then with growing appreciation, and finally with excitement at the fact he seemed conscious of her.
He’d confirmed this the fateful night of the Hunt Ball, telling her he’d been awaiting the right opportunity to approach her, which seemed ludicrous since he was the catch of the neighbourhood and she just the vicar’s daughter. A penniless one, at that.
She turned back to Mr Millament but he had gone, closing the door softly behind him, and Hope’s fond memories of the past were exorcised by the shocking reality.
And of what she had to do.
She stared at the figure on the bed. She sniffed. An unfamiliar, not unpleasant aroma tinged the air. No, she had smelt this before. Once she’d been amongst a party of Madame Chambon’s girls invited to a Soho den of iniquity where a strange substance had been smoked through a water pipe in one of the rooms she had mercifully been spared from having to enter. Grace, who’d accompanied her, had been required to dance an exotic dance with veils, to recreate a dream that had visited one of the men smoking this drug. Opium.
She put her hand to her throat. Mr Durham was an opium eater? Isn’t that what dangerous Lord Byron had called them in his poem a generation earlier?
Her horror turned to tentative relief. If he believed himself in the grip of an hallucination, surely he’d believe her appearance was just a dream? When their encounter was over and he had no memory of it—she hoped!— she could live with her pride intact, and her heart not quite so eviscerated.
The man groaned. She supposed it was Mr Durham. She only had his naked back, buttocks, and pointed ears on which to make a judgement for he still lay face downwards on the pillow.
Hope took a step forwards, and was visited by an excitement so out of character, she thought she must be the one hallucinating on just the smell of the drug.
Why, if Mr Durham thought all this just a dream, she could indulge her own wildest fantasies. Ones she’d never had when she’d last seen him, for, as a young girl just out of the schoolroom, her wildest f
antasies had gone no further than what might happen in a less-populated corner of the local Assembly hall.
Of what might happen during that fateful assignation he’d organised in a hurried whisper the night of the Hunt Ball. The assignation at which she’d failed to appear.
Now that Hope had become acquainted with the desires of London’s Upper Ten Thousand—well, it felt like it, though it was really only a handful of the gentlemen who fell into that category—she’d learnt what men enjoyed. Mr Durham, as a pink of the ton, would no doubt have followed the conventional model of masculinity: taken a wife based on financial and family considerations whom he’d consider it only right to revere for her virtue, and a mistress to pleasure him in bed. Hope must have no illusions that the gallant gentleman who’d laughed away her embarrassment at losing her slipper during the waltz, who’d nearly kissed her, would have been any different.
So, if Hope was going to save Mr Durham from his demons as Mr Millament had exhorted her to do, she supposed her erstwhile admirer would enjoy imagining a dream along the lines of doing more than just kissing the debutante who’d failed to meet him at his proposed secret rendezvous.
She took a tentative step forwards, and craned her head as far over the bed as she could to ascertain the intensity of Mr Durham’s slumber.
He did not move.
She sat down on the mattress, felt it dip beneath her weight while she eyed the prone gentleman for any sign of movement.
There was none.
Now that she was this close, it was very tempting to stretch out a hand and stroke his dark brown hair back from his face. Was he as handsome as she remembered? Or had the demons wrought a dissipation she’d see written in bloodshot eyes and a ruined constitution? Hope had observed that happen often enough to the privileged gentlemen who bought her time and her body.