Hardly a Husband (Free Fellows League 3)

Theodora's pale blue eyes flashed fire. "How dare you pass judgment on me, Lord Shepherdston? When you have been one of my best and most frequent visitors?"

"Customers," Jarrod corrected. "Let's be frank and put the proper name on it. I have been one of your best and most frequent customers and I have paid very well for the companionship you provided to me."

"And I have supplied you with the most excellent companionship your coin can buy," she retorted.

"To my very great pleasure," Jarrod allowed. "But to my very great shame, I never questioned how my companions came to be my companions."

Theodora shrugged. "Then you're typical of your class, my lord."

Jarrod raised his eyebrows in query.

"You're a gentleman," Theodora told him. "And very few gentlemen accustomed to pleasure ever question how the pleasure is supplied."

Jarrod shook his head. "And now I know that you supply it by luring displaced women into a life of prostitution."

"Economics," she retorted. "Supply and demand. You pay me and I supply women to meet the demand of wealthy gentlemen like you." She stared up at him. "How did you think they came to be here?"

"I suppose I was naive enough to assume the women were here because they wanted to be here. I didn't expect that you would recruit daughters of recently deceased country clergymen."

"Why shouldn't I recruit daughters of clergymen?" She pushed back her gilt chair and stood up. "I am the daughter of a country clergyman. My father was a vicar."

"You?" Jarrod was clearly taken aback.

Madam Theodora was a lovely, elegant, and sophisticated woman with silver blonde hair and pale blue eyes. Jarrod knew that she was older than he by a half dozen or so years, but she had the complexion and the slim, willowy figure of a young girl. She wasn't tall, but her figure gave the illusion of height, and her manner of dress and exquisite taste in clothes heightened the illusion.

She spoke flawless French and several other languages, priding herself on greeting her foreign guests in their native tongues. She was also an accomplished musician, often entertaining her guests with her pianoforte or harp. Always graceful and gracious, Theodora had a talent for making her guests feel as if they were the most important men in the world. In bed and out of it. And she made certain that the women in her employ possessed the same ability.

Her home on Portman Square wasn't simply a house of pleasure, it was a refuge from the pressures of everyday life, a place where men were stimulated physically and mentally.

Having shared Theodora's bed on numerous occasions, Jarrod knew just how talented she was, but it came as something of a shock to discover that he knew next to nothing about her. "I would have guessed that you were French or the daughter of French emigres."

"Not at all." Theodora smoothed the front of her silk dress as she considered his comment. "I'm as much a part of England as the Thames."

"But a vicar's daughter…"

"You would be surprised at the number of vicars' daughters employed here. And at the number who chose a life of sin to escape a life of hypocrisy. Vicars' daughters are taught to worship, please, and obey from the cradle.

Those who embrace this life make excellent Cyprians." Theodora moved close enough to touch him on the arm. "What don't you understand, your lordship?" she asked. "That we've fallen from grace? Or that some of us have done so willingly?"

"Did you?" he asked.

She ignored his question and posed one of her own. "Come, your lordship, what did you think happened to those of us who were gently brought up and educated, then left without dowries or means of support?"

"If I thought about it at all," Jarrod admitted, "I suppose I thought you eventually married someone who didn't require a dowry."

Theodora gave an inelegant snort. "Well, I suppose you were right, Lord Shepherdston; eventually some of us do marry. But a great many of us do not. And when we don't marry, we often end up as governesses or companions or housekeepers and lose our virtue when the masters of the house decide to use us for their pleasure. Afterward, we acquire protectors who set us up in convenient little houses. But those affairs are generally of short duration. Gentlemen suffer financial reversals every day and many are very fickle in their affections. A fortunate few of us are lucky enough to keep the house when we lose our benefactors and go into business for ourselves."

"You didn't choose this life," he said. "You're speaking from firsthand experience."

"Perhaps." Theodora gave him a brief salute. "Perhaps my virtue was taken from me while I was employed as a governess in the household of a man who will never be granted license to darken this door." She smiled at Jarrod. "Perhaps I didn't choose this sort of life in the beginning, but I chose it at last."

"You accepted it," Jarrod corrected. "You didn't choose it."

"I chose to make the best of it," Theodora retorted. "I chose to create a place of beauty and brilliance and pleasure. An exclusive place where gentlemen would willingly part with exorbitant amounts of money in order to share my bed or the beds of the women I employ. I chose to become the mistress of my fate, and the beauty of maintaining an exclusive establishment with a select clientele is that I can keep out the riffraff."

"What about the women you employ? Did you give them a choice when you lured them to your front door with the promise of safe haven? Did you offer them employment as Cyprians? Did you abuse their trust?"

"I took them in."