The Widow's Auction Read Free Page A

failed Henry in that respect struck her to the heart.
    â€œI’d lay odds that you’re not.” Phoebe’s face brightened. “And I know how you can find out for sure.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œCome with me tonight to the Widows’ Auction.” Scooting her chair closer, Phoebe glanced furtively out the open door, then lowered her voice. “It’s held at the Mayfair Bachelors’ Club every year. Respectable widows offer themselves in an auction for one night of. . . well. . . passion. The bachelors bid and the widows receive three-quarters of the auction price. The other quarter goes to the club.”
    Isobel’s shock knew no bounds. “You’re not. . . You don’t mean to–”
    â€œOh, I certainly do. I’ve done it before, you know. At last year’s auction, I met the most marvelous–” She broke off with a smile. “Let’s just say that once you’ve enjoyed the sweets, it’s difficult to abstain. And Mr. Chambers has been dead quite a while.”
    â€œBut, Phoebe, I know you’ve had men interested in marriage.”
    â€œYes, but I don’t want another husband, just a little. . . er. . . taste of pleasure from time to time. For all his faults, Mr. Chambers could lay out a feast for a famished woman, and I miss that.”
    Isobel gnawed on her lower lip. She didn’t know what the feast was like. She hadn’t even realized until this moment that there might be a feast at all. “What about your reputation and your future?”
    â€œThe auction is entirely anonymous. The women are masked, and no man may remove a woman’s mask without her permission. Otherwise the widows would balk at participating every year. It allows the gentlemen to have their fun, and the women to supplement their income–”
    â€œYou mean, to sell themselves like whores.”
    Phoebe shrugged. “If you wish to see it that way. I don’t. They don’t make a profession out of it. Some of the women even give the money to charity. And it’s not as if they have any virtue to lose.” A pleading note entered her voice. “It’s just one night for a lonely woman, Bella. One night of pleasure free from any dire consequences.”
    â€œOh? What about the possibility of children?” she snapped.
    Phoebe flashed her a smug smile. “There are ways to prevent that.”
    And she hadn’t known? Oh, but why should she? Henry had wanted children. That had been his primary reason for marrying her. It had been one of her great regrets that she’d been as unable to give him a son as his previous two wives.
    With a saucy tilt of her head, Phoebe surveyed Isobel critically. “You could do it, too, you know. For a night with you, a man would pay substantially. With that mass of blond hair and your rosy lips and fine form–”
    â€œI am not putting myself up for auction to the highest bidder! I’m certainly not spending the evening in the bed of a perfect stranger.”
    Still, the idea of being desired by a gentleman just for her body and naught else had a strangely enticing appeal.
    Oh, Lord, how could she even think it? It was the most wicked thing she’d ever heard of!
    Phoebe tsked at her. “You can’t go all your life moldering away in your lonely town house. You’re barely twenty-seven. It would be a crime for a woman like you to never truly experience the pleasures of the flesh.”
    â€œThere’s no guarantee that the man who bids on me will be any better able to show me. . . um. . . the pleasure of the flesh than Henry was.”
    â€œTrue, but they’re all experienced gentlemen or they wouldn’t participate. It takes a jaded man to bid on a widow when he could simply pay a common whore. These are men who find excitement in pleasing a woman who’s been long