he must end his arrangement with his mistress.
Olivia had not considered how loud and raucous the hell might be with the onset of evening and the tide of patrons spilling in from the street. To be fair, not all of the noise came from below stairs. Even situated at the rear of the house as she was, she could hear boisterous laughter and drunken rough play and challenges coming from Putnam Lane.
She added more logs to the fire and stood warming her hands. The house vibrated with the steady movement of those below. She felt the tiny trembling of the floorboards under her. Occasionally there was a thump that she liked to imagine was a young man falling on his face from too much drink.
It was not only the drone of male voices that she heard. Olivia was easily able to pick out the feminine vocals as well. Breckenridge insisted that he did not operate a brothel, but she believed there were gradations of the truth in that assertion. If no money exchanged hands within the establishment it seemed a certainty that money was exchanged elsewhere. Mistresses. Courtesans. Adventurous widows. Eccentric and free-thinking women of a certain age. Olivia supposed these were the sorts of females who accompanied their gentlemen of an evening.
She was relieved to be well out of it.
Even as she thought it she heard the tread of footsteps in the hall. One pair light, the other with a distinctive cadence that signified a limp. A man and woman, for that is what she presumed the steps to represent, passed her door after the briefest of pauses, and continued a short distance to the stairwell at the end of the hall. Olivia could hear them climbing the steps, then followed their progress across her ceiling. Silence fell for a few blessed moments, but it was broken with a shudder that rippled her drapes.
Olivia supposed it meant the couple had found the bed.
She closed her mind to it, glad for the books one of the servants had delivered earlier in the day. She’d permitted herself a small smile when they arrived, though with her back turned to the man who’d carried them in. It seemed the cautious thing to expect that Breckenridge might quiz him. Certainly, given the titles the viscount had provided, Olivia had reason to question his generosity and his motives.
Thomas Brown’s “Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind,” the selected essays of T. R. Malthus, and a slim volume of three plays by Shakespeare—all of them tragedies—seemed to suggest that Breckenridge was getting a little of his own back or providing her with the means to sleep without benefit of Pettibone’s laudanum.
Olivia plucked the wool rug from the foot of the bed and carried it and the Malthus essays to the chair. In very little time reading acted as a barrier against all the distractions of her surroundings. She ceased to hear the rhythmic thumping of the bed above her, or the cries of the coupling participants as they urged each other on. She did find it darkly humorous that by the time they would come to crisis, she would be deep into reading the edifying “Essay on the Principle of Population.”
“You permitted them to go up to the rooms?” Griffin demanded. “I thought I was clear on that point, Mrs. Christie. I do not want my patrons coming upon her on their way to the private rooms.”
“You told her not to leave her room, didn’t you? I fail to see that it’s a cause for so much displeasure. The gentlemen expect to have a private place for an interlude if they’re so inclined.”
“And I am not inclined to provide it at the moment. That is cause for displeasure.”
Alys Christie’s nostrils flared. She was never served well by an angry countenance as it flushed her complexion unevenly and creased her brow. Because she had good reason to know it, she strove mightily to tighten the reins on her temper. It was never an encouraging sign when Breckenridge called her Mrs. Christie. It not only meant that he was put out with her, but that he was once again contemplating ending their arrangement. Hanging on seemed to be what she’d done these last two months, and after nearly a year under his protection, and the experience of having three previous gentlemen protectors and a husband besides, she knew the signs that she was about to be cast aside.
Arguments over trivial matters were the death knell, she had learned, and there could be no subject as inconsequential to her as the offended sensibilities of one Miss Olivia Cole.
Chapter Three
It was still dark when Olivia awakened. Snugly coccooned in the bed as she was, she allowed herself the luxury of remaining there a few minutes longer. The fireplace was cold and the stub of a candle she had placed on the bedside table had extinguished itself while she slept. She had wondered if she would wake disoriented to her new surroundings, but this was not the case. She knew immediately where she was and found some comfort in that, though it was short-lived. It was tempting to mistake this sense of familiarity for a sense of well-being. She could not do it, of course. The circumstances of her life were such that the moment she believed she was safe she was at her most vulnerable.
Olivia turned on her side and faced the window. She’d pulled the drapes closed before she retired but was careful to leave a sliver of an opening between them. As she lay watching, a crease of morning light slowly filled the space. The diffusion of the light, as though it were being filtered through frost flowers that had formed on the window, made her think it might have snowed overnight. She hoped it had. There was no part of London, from the tenements in Holborn to the palace at St. James, that was not improved by a blanket of snow. While fog had the ability to shroud the city’s landscape and make every distinction of architecture disappear, it seemed to Olivia that snow both illuminated and softened it. The townhomes along Putnam Lane would look just as respectable as those bordering the park once they were iced like party tea cakes.
The impulse was upon her to take in that vision, but she resolutely quelled it. If she had awakened in her own bed, she would have already thrown off the covers and completed her morning ablutions. Molly Dillon would have arrived in her room—a bit sullenly perhaps because she so disliked early risings—and helped her dress and arrange her hair, then Olivia would have asked for her pelisse, bonnet, and gloves and left the house for a morning stroll before the snow was trampled and made black by the smoke and soot rising from thousands of chimneys.
Olivia snuggled deeper under the covers. She was struck anew by the silence of the residence. Now that she had experienced the din of activity that filled the hell at night, she imagined this quiet was greatly prized by Breckenridge and his staff. She had an appreciation for it as well, finding these moments were to be savored if one could concentrate on one’s breathing and not on the thoughts spinning like dervishes in one’s mind.
It was inevitable, though, that one thought would demand attention above all others.
Alastair.
Now that it seemed he had not come to physical harm, she could permit herself to be furious with him. And disappointed. He should have told her what was toward rather than attempt to settle his debt in this havey-cavey fashion. More to the point, he should not have been making wagers, especially when he knew he was extending himself beyond his means.
Olivia realized that Alastair had not considered he would lose, certainly not to the degree that he had. A loss now and again was inevitable, and he would have anticipated that, but his general optimism, and yes, his naïveté, would have blinded him to the reality of the deep losses he was sustaining. His good fortune would return because he believed it would, because it always had. He did not see what she saw, or rather he did not draw the same conclusions that she had.
It was Olivia’s view that her entry into Alastair’s life had turned the tide of his fortune, beginning with his falling out with their father. It was inevitable, she supposed, that Alastair would eventually come to it, and she did not want to think what his response would be.
The thought of Sir Hadrien darkened her mood. She flattened her lips, suppressing the small moan that would have otherwise escaped. She hoped that one day she would be able to think of him without this bitterness in her heart, for it afforded him too much influence over her, but apparently this morning was not the start of that day.
Drawing in a bracing breath, Olivia lifted the covers and made herself