Regency Seduction: The Captain's Courtesan / The Outrageous Belle Marchmain

With the curtains still closed, all the girls hurried to take up position on stage. Charlotte was carefully seating herself on a damask-covered throne and preening her dyed golden locks, while the others clustered around. Now Rosalie could hear Dr Barnard standing in front of the stage and announcing to the gathered audience, ‘For your delectation, my honoured friends! A scene of exquisite and ennobling artistry—the Greek goddesses!’

Rosalie had kept as far to the back as she could. Oh, she wondered, the breath hitching in her throat, what had she let herself in for?

The heavy curtains were gliding back.

There must be nigh-on a hundred men out there.

She felt rather sick. For Linette, her beloved sister. She would see this through, for Linette—and for Linette’s child, Katy.

Chapter Three

‘Dear Rosalie, why on earth are you asking me about such a place?’ had been her friend Helen’s startled response when Rosalie mentioned the Temple of Beauty two days ago. They were in Helen’s printing shop, and all around them were heaps of freshly printed broadsheets. ‘From what I’ve heard,’ Helen went on, ‘that Temple is nothing but a glorified brothel!’

‘Bwothel,’ little Katy had lisped. ‘Bwothel.’

Quickly Helen turned to the two children, who were drawing stick men on some scraps of paper. ‘Toby, darling, take Katy to the kitchen and get her a glass of milk, will you?’

‘And a treacle bun?’ Six-year-old Toby, always hungry, asked the question hopefully.

‘And a treacle bun each, yes, if Katy wants. Look after Katy, now!’

‘C’mon, Kate.’ Holding out his hand, Toby had valiantly led the toddling two-year-old past the for-once silent printing press towards the kitchen. Katy was still lisping, ‘Bwothel. Bwothel …’

Rosalie watched them go with a catch in her throat, then said quietly to Helen, ‘Toby’s wonderful with Katy. I’m so very grateful to you for letting us stay here with you, Helen. I wish you’d let me pay you for our food, at least!’

‘And I wish you’d take my advice and stop going round these dreadful places on your own.’ Helen had sighed. ‘Men who visit the Temple of Beauty have only one thing on their mind! Are you going because you’ve heard that Linette might have been there?’

‘Exactly. You know how Linette always talked of being an actress? Well, now I’ve found out she may have worked at this Temple of Beauty, three years ago.’

‘That place! Oh, poor, poor Linette!’

Helen had been a teacher at the little school in the village where Rosalie and Linette grew up, then she’d married and moved to London, where her husband ran a small publishing press in Aylesbury Street, Clerkenwell. But a few years later he’d abandoned Helen and their little son, Toby, for a singer from Sadler’s Wells. Helen had always kept in touch with Rosalie by letter, and after her husband’s departure she wrote to her young friend that she’d resolved to make a success of the publishing business on her own. When Rosalie’s search for Linette brought her to London last autumn, it was to Helen that she turned.

‘I will pay you, Helen, for my accommodation,’ Rosalie had insisted when she arrived outside Helen’s door.

‘Nonsense.’ Helen had hugged her warmly. ‘I’ll do everything I can to help you find your poor sister. As for payment—well, how about writing for The Scribbler?’

‘The Scribbler? Helen, what’s that?’

And Helen had gone on to explain.

The Scribbler was a weekly news sheet Helen produced, a round-up of London events and advertisements, which Helen also used from time to time to denounce the greed of the rich and the plight of the poor.

All this Helen had told Rosalie as she’d unpacked her bags last October. ‘What I really need,’ Helen had said, eyeing her former pupil thoughtfully, ‘is someone who’ll write a weekly diary of London life. Something light, about the theatre, for example, or an amusing commentary on the latest women’s fashions … How about it, Rosalie? You have talent—I realised it when you were my pupil.’

‘But I’ve never thought of writing for publication!’

‘Why not? I remember you write with such charm, such humour—just try it, please?’

Helen’s suggestion certainly paid off, because Rosalie’s weekly articles—published under the pen name of Ro Rowland, a fictional young man about town—had become resoundingly popular. In other circumstances, Rosalie would have revelled in her new life. She’d come to love this little Clerkenwell printer’s shop with its ancient hand press that rattled away merrily in the front parlour. But Helen could be stubborn, and every so often Rosalie had to make clear what she was after. What her purpose was.

‘All I want is to find out the truth about Linette,’ Rosalie had repeated steadily in the face of Helen’s objections. ‘I thought we’d discussed this. My sister might have met him at the Temple of Beauty and I cannot leave any stone unturned.’

‘Then …’ Helen had hesitated ‘… it might just help you to know that Dr Barnard keeps a secret register of clients. Names, addresses, the dates they visited, that sort of thing. I only heard about it because once I was offered the chance to publish some of it by a man who worked for Dr Barnard and showed me some pages he’d copied. I refused, of course—I’d have made too many enemies. But I learnt that Dr Barnard keeps this register—he calls it his green book—in his office, hidden inside a hollowed-out copy of a big old book called The Myths of Apollodorus. And since you know, roughly, the dates that Linette was there, it just might help you! It’s such a tragedy that you don’t know the name of her villainous seducer—’

Rosalie cut in, giving Helen’s hand a squeeze. ‘Thank you for the news about the register. You are such a good friend.’

Helen shook her head, sighing. Though over thirty now, she still looked just like the village schoolteacher she once was, with her brown hair pinned up tightly and her eyes behind her spectacles shining with intelligence. ‘Just look after yourself, my dear, won’t you? Get out of that “Temple place” just as soon as you can. Men.’

‘Men don’t worry me, since I’ve got a foolproof defence, Helen,’ Rosalie said lightly. ‘I’m simply not interested in them. Though we mustn’t forget that there are some good men in the world!’

‘Not that I’ve met lately!’ snapped Helen.

Rosalie put her head on one side mischievously. ‘What about your friend Mr Wheeldon?’

‘Francis! Oh, well, he’s different.’ Helen was busily putting the latest copies of The Scribbler into piles for distribution. ‘And you certainly wouldn’t find him at Dr Barnard’s Temple of Beauty!’

True. Rosalie had chuckled at the thought of the kind, middle-aged churchwarden Francis Wheeldon visiting such a place. She picked up a Scribbler. ‘Shall I take some copies of this to the news vendor in the Strand for you, Helen? You usually sell quite a few there, don’t you?’

Subject changed. But Rosalie hadn’t wavered in her resolve to visit the Temple of Beauty. If appearing on stage for a night was the only way to get further in her quest, then so be it. That register could be a breakthrough—because Rosalie had lied to Helen. She did know the name of the man who had ruined her sister. But she was keeping it to herself, for she had no doubt that he was not only hateful, but dangerous.

Now Rosalie was looking down from the stage at all these lecherous roués in fresh disbelief. How could her darling sister have fallen in love with someone who came to a place like this?

‘Athena!’ Mrs Barnard was hissing at her from the wings. ‘You, new girl, stop glaring down at our guests like that! And pull your bodice lower, or I’ll come out and do it myself!’

Rosalie muttered a retort under her breath and dragged down her bodice just the tiniest fraction. Sal winked at her. It was going to be a long ten minutes. Lifting her chin, deliberately staring at a fixed point at the very back of the hall, Rosalie mentally started composing a piece for The Scribbler. ‘Tonight your fellow about town Ro Rowland took himself to the well-known Temple of Beauty. And there he observed that a large number of the male spectators, being over fifty years old, were alas too short-sighted to fully enjoy the beauteous goddesses on display …’

Suddenly, the door at the back crashed open. A latecomer strode in and halted abruptly. He looked around, not up at the stage, but at the men in the audience, some of whom had turned in irritation at the slam of the door. Rosalie caught her breath.

He was not an old, fat lecher. He was tall and dark-haired, thirty at most. He was quite unmissable.

‘Now, there’s a sight for sore eyes,’ Sal murmured appreciatively at her side.

Rosalie nodded mutely. Most of the men in here favoured the current fashion for fancy tailcoats in blue or bottle-green superfine, padded at the shoulders and adorned with ridiculously large silver-gilt buttons that would lend themselves to the cartoons of Cruikshank or Gillray. But he—her man—was dressed casually, almost roughly, in a long grey overcoat that hung open to reveal a rumpled linen shirt and a horseman’s tight buckskin breeches tucked into worn leather riding boots. Instead of a high starched cravat, he wore a simple white neckerchief knotted loosely at his throat.

He looked angry, determined, and—absolutely gorgeous. His wide-set eyes smouldered with fiery challenge beneath jet-black brows. And his careless attire served only to emphasise the masculine perfection of his body—that broad chest, tapering downwards to lean hips and muscular thighs … I’m sorry to let you down, Helen, but perfect is the only word for it. Fascinated, she let her gaze rove back up to his face, noting how his untamed dark hair lent dramatic emphasis to those lean, sculpted features and that amazingly sensual mouth.

His firm jaw was shadowed with at least a day’s stubble. He looked as though he didn’t give a fig for the company he’d disturbed. An aura of danger emanated from him, together with the cynicism of a man who’d already seen rather more of life than he should.

Yet—you only had to look at him to imagine being in his arms. To imagine doing things a well-bred girl shouldn’t even be thinking of. What was he doing here? You know the answer to that, you fool. Yet somehow, he—her man—looked as if he hated all this just as much as she did.

Don’t be an idiot, Rosalie. She could just imagine Helen proclaiming with a snort of derision, ‘Of course, a man prefers to pay for a woman, because the act of purchase means he can discard her the minute he’s had enough of her!’

Just for one incredible moment, his gaze met hers so searingly that she felt as if he was undressing her with his eyes. The warm colour suffused her skin. Then he turned his back on the place with a shrug of scorn and walked out. She felt, ridiculously, a sense of loss. A few minutes later the curtains were gliding shut and the girls, chattering avidly, were being shepherded off the stage. Back in the dressing room Rosalie put her hands to her flushed cheeks. Sweet heaven, who was that man?

And then Sal came over, and was digging her in the ribs. ‘Isn’t he just about the most gorgeous creature you’ve ever seen? Don’t try to deny it. I saw you staring!’ She chuckled.

Rosalie’s heart plummeted. ‘Does he … come here regularly, then?’