CHAPTER ONE
June 1824
Two years, six months later . . .
Frances Thorne blinked twice at the booklet in her grasp.
“I told you it was scandalous,” Kaye said, crowding closer for a better view.
Together, they walked to the second floor box window of Mrs. Hunter’s Agency and Servant Registry. Outside, the London street bustled with the raucous clamor of carriages, handcarts, horses, and all the people one would expect on such a fine June day. Frances, however, paid little attention.
She adjusted her brass-rimmed spectacles. The afternoon light illuminated the palm-sized booklet of men’s fashions from Paris. Turning another page, she lingered on the sketch of a man dressed in boots, breeches, shirt, cravat, waistcoat, and . . . nothing else. No frock coat or tailcoat, just a fitted striped waistcoat.
While the page on the left side of the booklet displayed a frontal sketch, the right displayed the . . . backside. And what a fine sketch it was.
Frances let out a slow breath. Fanning herself with the booklet, she blamed the warm weather for the rush of heat to her cheeks and neck. “And you say that you found this at your uncle’s shop?”
“It was on his worktable this morning,” Kaye said, angling her face toward the cooling breeze of the makeshift fan. Kaye lived with an aunt and uncle above his tailor shop, and Frances knew she occasionally borrowed sketches, though never an entire booklet. And never one with such detail to the—ahem—backside.
Frances stopped fanning and studied the sketch once more. Solely out of appreciation for the artist’s skill, of course. Never mind the fact that she was the last person who would be considered a dilettante. “You don’t suppose there was an actual gentleman fitted with these clothes, do you?”
“I’d like to think there was.” Kaye snickered and tucked a corn silk lock of hair behind her ear, her blue eyes dancing. “In fact, I’d like to think that he might walk through the door of Mrs. Hunter’s one day, take one look at me, and—”
“And not be a lecher like nearly all the other men we deal with?”
“Yes, well”—Kaye sighed—“at five and twenty, I’m beginning to wonder if I wouldn’t mind a lecher so much, as long as he was my lecher.”
At seven and twenty, Frances knew precisely what her best friend meant. Frances, however, was still holding out hope to find the one person who could restore her faith in men. Which would not be an easy task, considering that her own father dashed those hopes on a daily basis.
“Do you suppose your very own lecher is out there, right this instant?” Frances closed the booklet and looked down at the street below.
A black landau with a matching pair of high-steppers in the harness stopped in front of the shop. Even before the door opened and the occupants stepped forth, she knew it was Lady Binghamton. Her ladyship often brought her maidservants here to have them instructed on how best to escape rogues and roués. Artful Defense was a service that Frances had provided for the past two and a half years, since she’d first begun work here.
For Mrs. Hunter, these lessons were an amenity offered by the agency to loyal patrons at no charge, and therefore with no additional wages for staff. For Frances, this instruction—in addition to her clerking duties—provided a way to honor her mother’s memory. Her mother had been passionate about Frances’s knowing how to protect herself, even to her very last days.
Mother had told her of a dear friend—a girl who’d trusted the wrong man. The girl’s naivety had been ripped from her most cruelly. Elise Thorne’s most fervent wish was for Frances never to suffer like that girl had.
That had been the reason why Frances had begun to offer lessons in defense, adding her own adaptations to what her mother had already taught her.
“I wonder who her ladyship has brought this time,” Kaye mused, nudging Frances with her elbow. “Soon she’ll be running her own abbey, and all her maids will be dressed in habits. It makes me wonder about the late Lord Binghamton.”
“We dare not.” Frances already imagined that his lordship had likely not been the best of men. Especially since his widow of more than forty years believed all men to be cads of the first order. And if a lady with much more experience in life was so jaded, then what hope did Frances have of not becoming just like her?
“True. Perhaps even a lecher of my own wouldn’t be for the best.”
A heavy gray cloud passed in front of the sun, offering a glimpse of their reflections in the glass. Their teasing expressions had gone. Now, they stood with heads bent and hands clasped like mourners at a funeral.