The Redemption of a Rogue, стр. 7

“Tell me,” he interrupted, his firm voice yanking her excuses out from under her.

She sighed and pushed the plate away, appetite gone once more. This was her private pain, her private story, and this stranger wanted to strip it from her. And yet he had earned it, hadn’t he? Certainly he had saved her life when he pulled her into his carriage. Perhaps again when he allowed her to escape to his home rather than returning to her own.

And maybe it would just help to say it out loud. She hadn’t really done that before. Oh, yes, she’d spoken to Aurora about it, but never in full. Her friend had her own problems.

“I-I suppose I should go back to the beginning,” she said, hating that her voice trembled when he was so stoic and calm. “You must want to know why I went there, the widow of a third son of an important family.”

He held her stare. “If you wish to tell me. But understand I don’t judge you, whether you went to that place for gold or pleasure. Your body is your own.”

She blinked. That would certainly not be the response of anyone else in her acquaintance. She cleared her throat nervously. “My husband left me with nothing at his death. His family has allowed me to keep the smallest of homes and two servants during my mourning, but nothing else, not even a carriage. Now that my mourning is coming to an end, they are already making noises about my needing to leave.”

His cheek twitched. “They would put you in the street?”

“They would.” She set her napkin on the table with a sigh. “I realized I would need to make alternate arrangements for my future. I thought of marrying again, but my own family is dead. There is no money. And my husband’s family has hindered my ability to come back into Society.”

“Why?” he asked, his brow furrowing again.

“They claim that seeing me makes it difficult,” she said, trying to keep the bitterness from her voice. “And perhaps that is true. Perhaps I remind them of Warren and that chokes them in their grief. But they would destroy me for their comfort.”

“Their kind always would,” he said, a touch of bitterness in his voice.

“Personal experience?” she asked.

He shifted and was silent for a beat. “I know a great many of them in my profession.”

She thought it might be more than that, but didn’t press the subject. This man’s history was none of her affair.

“I suppose you do.” She worried her hands in her lap. “The next option for a woman like me was to become a man’s mistress.”

“That must have been a shocking decision to come to for a woman raised as I assume you were.” There was no judgment to his tone, and that helped her feel less embarrassed by the confession.

“At first, yes,” she admitted. “But I was not…opposed to what happens between a man and a woman in a bed.”

His fingers clenched on the tabletop but he didn’t react in any other way so she continued, “And I saw that some women were treated very well. I tried to make discreet inquiries.”

“And used your real name,” he said.

She nodded. “It made sense to do so since if I succeeded in obtaining a protector, I would be publicly seen as a kept woman. But it only caused me trouble. My husband’s family was incensed. I was told in no uncertain terms that if I sought a protector, I would be put out of my home immediately and into the street.”

“And you have no one to take you in?” he asked.

“My dearest friend is Aurora Lovell, another widow, also left destitute by her situation. She hardly has enough for herself.”

“Viscount Lovell,” he said, apparently pulling from a never-ending catalog in his mind. “Died of an apoplexy, wasn’t it? In a bawdy house just barely better than the Cat’s Companion.”

“You are a wonder,” Imogen breathed. “How do you keep your information organized in that mind of yours?”

He actually looked a little uncomfortable at the compliment. “It matters little. There must be other friends.”

“There were. There are. But most have gone by the wayside. Some cannot afford to associate themselves with my fall. Some are not allowed. Some are fair-weather friends more interested in position than in helping.” She wished she sounded less invested in that. Less hurt. “So I am on my own.”

“How did you come to the Cat’s Companion, then?” he pressed.

“The better places, someplace like Donville Masquerade or Vivien Manning’s… I couldn’t turn to them to find a…a…”

“Lover,” he said, his tone suddenly rougher. “You’ll have to find a way to say it, Mrs. Huxley.”

“Please, won’t you call me Imogen,” she gasped. “It seems so wrong to talk about this while you use my husband’s name.”

Fitzhugh held her gaze a moment and then nodded. “Imogen.”

She had heard her name said a thousand times, by dozens of different people. It had never sounded the way it did rolling off this man’s tongue. She had never reacted the way she did now, her entire body pulsing with tension. Her sex clenching against nothingness.

Perhaps she should have learned to live with Mrs. Huxley because this was…so very wrong. Was she so far fallen that the first handsome man who showed her any kindness made her a wanton?

“I-I—” She struggled to find purchase against the tide of these unwanted feelings.

His pupils dilated slightly and he said, “You were explaining why you couldn’t go to a more respectable place.”

“Yes.” She fought to regain her breath. “Yes. Places like those were crawling with people who might report back to my husband’s family. I realized right away they weren’t safe. So I started to go…lower. I was given a card for the Cat’s Companion and so I went there.”

“Not a very easy place to find a permanent protector,” he said. “It’s a brothel in the truest sense. Men there want a night, nothing more.”

She nodded. “I know. Last night wasn’t my first night