What Esther needed, desperately, was to hate this woman who’d had intimate knowledge of her husband, to loathe her and all her kind, and yet, Mrs. St. Just worried for her son and apparently had no one with whom she could leave the child safely.

“Bring him along.”

Relief flashed in the woman’s eyes. She scurried across the alley and reemerged from the mews, towing a dark-haired boy.

“Devlin, make your bow.”

The lad gave Esther a good day and a far more decorous bow than Bart usually managed.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Master St. Just.”

He was thin, and his green eyes were too serious for a boy his age. Esther was not at all pleased to make his acquaintance, wondering with more than a little irritation which swaggering young lordling had turned his back on this blameless child.

The next thought that tried to crowd into Esther’s mind she sent fleeing like a bat up the chimney.

Esther took her guests—what else was she to call them?—in through the big, warm kitchen. Mrs. St. Just looked uncomfortable, while the boy was wide-eyed with curiosity.

“Perhaps your son would like some chocolate while we visit, Mrs. St. Just?”

If the help recognized the woman’s name, they were too well-bred to give any sign. The scullery maid remained bent over her pots, the boot boy didn’t look up from his work at the hearth, and the undercook kept up a steady rhythm chop, chop, chopping a pungent onion.

“Devlin?” Mrs. St. Just knelt to her son’s eye level. “You be good, mind? Don’t spill, and be quiet. I won’t be long.”

“Yes, Mama.”

Esther did not tarry to study the curve of the boy’s chin or the swoop of his eyebrows. He was a hungry boy, and any mother knew exactly what to do with a hungry boy. She caught the undercook’s eye and made sure the lad would be stuffed like a goose before he left.

The next issue was where to serve tea to her husband’s former mistress—for Esther would offer the woman sustenance as well. That was simple Christian charity.

Esther addressed the undercook, who’d gotten out bread and butter and was reaching for a hanging ham. “I’m feeling a bit peckish, so please bring the tray to Mrs. Slade’s parlor.”

The choice was practical: the housekeeper’s parlor would be warm and would spare Mrs. St. Just a tour past the upstairs servants. It would also mean mother and son were not separated by more than a closed door.

When that door had been latched, Esther turned, crossed her arms, and regarded Mrs. St. Just where she stood, red hands extended toward the fire.

For her sons, Esther would cheerfully kill. She’d walk naked through the streets, denounce her king, sing blasphemous songs in Westminster Abbey, and dance with the devil.

What Kathleen St. Just had done for her child was arguably harder than all of that put together. Esther took a place next to the woman facing the fire, their cloaks touching.

It occurred to her that they were both frightened. This realization neither comforted nor amused. Esther grabbed her courage with both hands, sent up a prayer for wisdom, and made her curtsy before the devil.

“Two questions, Mrs. St. Just. First, does his lordship know that boy is his son, and second, how much do you need?”

* * *

Kathleen St. Just’s household had shown signs of wear and want. In Cecily O’Donnell’s, the floors gleamed with polish, the rugs were beaten clean, and a liveried and bewigged porter still manned the door.

And yet, as Percival followed the woman into a warm, elegant little parlor, his footsteps echoed, suggesting every other room in the place was empty of furniture. Fortunately, this parlor held no memories of intimacy, for Cecily entertained only above stairs on an enormous carved bed sporting a troop of misbehaving Cupids.

“Shall I ring for tea?” she asked as she closed the door behind him.

“You shall state your business. One is expected to attend the morning’s levee.”

Her lips curved up in merriment. “How it gratifies me to know you’d rather spend this time with me than with our dear sovereign.”

She went to the door and rang for tea—of course. When the door was again closed and he was assured of privacy, Percival speared his hostess with a look that had quelled riots among recruits culled from the lowest ginhouses.

“State your business, woman, or you will be drinking your tea in solitude.”

To emphasize his point, he moved toward the door. She stopped him with a hand clamped around his wrist. “You will regret your haste, my lord.”

There was desperation in her grip… which could work to his favor. Percival aimed his glower at her fingers—her ringless fingers—and she eased away.

His next glower was at the clock on her mantel. “You have five minutes.”

A tap on the door interrupted whatever venom she might have spewed next. “Come in.”

A maidservant entered, accompanied by a little girl with red hair and a stubborn chin. He’d seen the child before somewhere, but couldn’t place her for the unease coursing through him.

The girl was not attired in a short dress as befit one of her tender years, nor was her striking hair tamed into a pair of tidy braids. She was dressed in a miniature chemise gown of gold with a burgundy underskirt, her pale little shoulders puckered with gooseflesh. Her hair was pinned up on her head in a style appropriate to a woman twenty years her senior, and—Percival’s stomach lurched to behold this—the child’s lips were rouged.

“Magdalene, make your courtesy to the gentleman.”

A perfectly—ghoulishly—graceful curtsy followed, suggesting the girl had been thoroughly grilled on even so minute a display. “Good day, kind sir.”

Percival manufactured a smile, because the child’s voice had quavered. “Good day, miss.”

And Magdalene—a singularly unkind name for a courtesan’s daughter.

Cecily grabbed the girl by the chin and pointed toward the sideboard, across the room from the fire’s heat. “Be quiet. You”—she waved a hand at the nursemaid—“out.”

Was everyone in this household terrified of the woman?

“You have three minutes, Mrs. O’Donnell, and then I shall do all in my power to ensure our paths never cross again.” He meant those words, though his gaze was drawn back to the child, who stood stock-still, staring at the carpet in all her terrible finery.

“Three minutes, Percival? I say our paths have become joined for the rest of our days on earth. Whatever else I know to be true about you—and I have kept up, you may be assured of that—I doubt your vanity would allow your only daughter to be put to work in her mother’s trade, would it?”

While the child remained motionless and mute, Percival felt his world turn on its axis. A hollow ache opened up in the pit of his stomach, a sense of regret so intense as to crowd any other emotion from his body.

The child could be his.

His dear, tired, dutiful wife would not kill him—that would be too easy a penance for a young man’s folly—but she’d likely remove herself from his household, and not a soul would blame her. The rules of marital combat in Polite Society allowed a wife to discreetly distance herself from an errant husband once heirs were in place.

Percival picked up the child, who cuddled onto his shoulder with a sigh. She weighed too little for her height, which looked to exceed Bart’s only slightly. Percival brought his burden—his daughter?—to the door and found the nursemaid, as expected, shivering in the corridor. “You will take miss back to the nursery, keep her there for the duration of my interview with your mistress, remove the damned paint from her face, and dress her appropriately to her station—and warmly. Is that understood?”

The maid cast a glance past Percival to Cecily, who nodded.

“Understood, my lord.”

Without another word, the child was taken from the room. Percival remained in the doorway, watching as she was towed by the hand toward the stairs. On the bottom step, the girl turned and met Percival’s gaze, surprising the daylights out of him by sending him a slow, careful wink.

Despite the tumult and despair rocketing through him, he winked back, recalling in that moment where he’d seen her before: in the park, peering out of a coach window. She’d struck him as a lonely little princess being dragged about on some adult’s errand, an accurate if understated assessment.

With a pointed glance at the clock, Percival turned and faced the woman who had in the last moments become the enemy of all he held dear. “What do you want?”

Her smile was the embodiment of evil, but she at least seemed to know enough not to approach him. “What I want is simple, my lord. I want you. Unless you can live with the fate of any girl born to Magdalene’s circumstances and live with the knowledge that all and sundry will become aware of her patrimony, then I suggest you accede to my wishes.”

He didn’t believe for one minute she meant he’d have to accommodate her in bed. She’d have to be daft to think him capable of such a thing. She wanted his escort, his protection, his wealth. Cecily O’Donnell was nothing if not shrewd.

She would understand shrewdness in another.

“Hear me, woman: You will ensure no harm comes to that child, lest the repercussions redound to your eternal detriment. You will produce baptismal records, a midwife’s sworn statement, and an affidavit from the man of the cloth who presided at the child’s christening before I even entertain the notion that girl might be my get. And you may be assured, should misfortune befall Miss Magdalene, I am threatening your very life, just as you are threatening my welfare. Make no mistake about that.”

She blinked, the only sign of intimidation he was likely to see from her.

“My arrangement with you was exclusive, my lord.”

Percival moved toward the door, pausing with his hand on the latch. “Your arrangement with me was brief and long ago. Our encounters were meaningless and few, and between them, I did not trouble myself with what you got up to or with whom. You did not quibble over the compensation made to you at the time, and you know well the risks of your profession. I will see proof the child could be mine and then decide what’s to be done about her.”

A final glance at the clock—five minutes on the nose—and Percival walked out, feeling like a man given a reprieve from a date with the gallows. And yet, as he retrieved his stallion from the mews and turned the beast for home—there would be no attending any levees today—his mind circled around one question:

What would this cost him?

There would be a cost in coin, of course, and in convenience, because no child of his was going to grow up without her father’s protection. Those costs were entirely bearable and the responsibility of any man who took his pleasures outside of marriage.

The greater cost was going to come in the distance this would create between Percival and his wife. Sooner or later, Esther would become aware Percival was supporting Mrs. O’Donnell again. Polite Society, having all the kindness of a troop of rabid wolverines, would make sure Esther knew of the child as well.

As he turned for home, the true price of his interview with Cecily O’Donnell settled into Percival’s awareness next to the grief he felt at his father’s senescence and at his brother’s decline: the only way Percival could protect his wife from all the sorrows looming as a result of the morning’s revelations was by sending her away and keeping her far from the reach of gossip.

* * *

“I fear for the bovine population in the Home Counties,” Esther muttered as her husband seated her for an evening meal that once again featured beef.

His smooth gallantry faltered, something only a wife of several year’s duration would notice. Percival leaned closer to Esther’s ear. “I care not what is served when the company at table is my lovely wife, whom I once again have all to myself.”

Esther smiled, but Percival’s flattery rang hollow. Everything had rung hollow since Esther had found Kathleen St. Just shivering at the gate.

Percival took his seat at Esther’s elbow and poured them each a glass of wine. “What did my dear wife find to occupy herself today?”

Esther sampled her wine, needing the time to fashion a fabrication. “I saw Gladys and Tony off, settled a dispute between warring tribes of Hottentots in the nursery, penned a disgustingly cheery epistle to Arabella, reviewed the household accounts with Mrs. Slade, discussed with her several candidates for the upstairs maid’s position, and then made a half-dozen morning calls. Devonshire sends his regards and despairs of your politics.”