The Secrets of a Courtesan Read Free

pawnbroker’s shop occupied two downstairs rooms in
    the stone-built terrace. Eve used one as the shop front and the other, a much larger room, as a
    combined office and a store for all the goods people brought in to pawn. Upstairs there was a
    tiny bedchamber and some even tinier living quarters. She and Joan clung to their financial
    independence by their fingertips. The premises were hardly sumptuous but the shop did at least
    provide an independent living and it had been a lifesaving opportunity for Eve when she had run
    from London—and from Rowarth—leaving everything behind, broken by a miscarriage, reeling
    from the news that she would never bear another child. She had left behind the beautiful little
    town house that Rowarth had given her in Birdcage Walk, where he had spent all his nights and
    most of his days with her, the clothes and the jewels, and had climbed on the first stagecoach
    from the Blue Boar Inn in High Holborn. She had told the driver she would go as far as her
    money could take her and had ended up in Fortune’s Folly, working as an assistant until she had
    accumulated sufficient savings to buy the shop, working her fingers to the bone, working, always
    working, as she tried to forget…
    She pushed the memories away. Rowarth was standing in her office and looking around him with
    a lively interest. He looked elegant and polished, the epitome of wealth and privilege, utterly out
    of place in these shabby surroundings. Never had the differences between them felt so stark.
    “So,” she said, a little ungraciously, “I can give you two minutes, Rowarth, no more. Whatever
    your business is with me, I do not want to discuss it.”
    His gaze came back to rest on her, dark, brooding, and she repressed a little shiver.
    “You will give me as long as I require,” he said. He straightened. “My business with you is this.
    I am here on behalf of the Home Secretary. You are under suspicion of criminal activity. If you
    do not help us we will ruin you. We will expose your true identity and we will take from you
    everything that you possess.” He smiled at her. “Now,” he said gently, “will you talk to me?”

Chapter 2
    She looked the same as she had done five years before. Alasdair Rowarth looked at his former
    mistress and amended his view slightly; she looked almost exactly the same except that there
    were shadows haunting those glorious lavender blue eyes now, suggesting a sadness that went
    soul deep. He did not feel any pity to see them; she had left him, walked out on him for another
    man, so whatever sorrow she had brought on herself was surely richly deserved.
    The bitterness and resentment twisted within him and he ruthlessly subdued it. She was nothing
    to him now. He was here to prove it. But he remembered that it was Eve’s clear and candid gaze
    that had first enslaved him from the moment he had stepped into the ballroom at Albermarle
    Street, persuaded against his better judgment by his friend Miles Vickery to attend the Cyprian’s
    Ball. He had been bored and restless that evening, he remembered, searching as he always was
    for something elusive, something he could not even name, grasping after that mysterious entity
    that would fulfill him and provide a desperately needed balance to the lonely duty that was his
    life. Rowarth had come into his dukedom young; so many people depended upon him, it seemed
    that his days were never any more than a round of obligation and responsibility. He had searched
    for someone to share that weight of duty with him, looked for a wife at Almacks and in the long
    round of the London Season, and had been bored rigid by the witless pattern card debutantes he
    had met.
    And then he had attended the Cyprian’s Ball and there she had been, Eva Night, bright, dazzling,
    so very alive, and in some way strangely untouchable even as she was effectively selling her
    virginity to the highest bidder. He had been entranced. He was rich enough—so he had