Free Sapphires Are an Earl's Best Friend by Shana Galen - Jewels of the Ton 03 - Sapphires Are an Earl's Best Friend Page B

seem to leave her alone. Not that this surprised her. Men could profess to love one moment and fall out of love when the emotion became inconvenient. Darlington was no better or worse. He was the heir to a dukedom and could afford to be capricious. She could not. She’d made that mistake once and would never make it again.
    Lily hurried back to her rooms, stumbling upon them rather than finding them. The house was large and well laid out, but her head was spinning and her thoughts jumbled. Anna was waiting for her, and she handed her maid the needle and thread. “I will repair the lace on the green gown later. Now I should hurry down. I’ll wear the black and silver.” It wasn’t the best gown for her complexion. It didn’t make her look sallow and sick like orange did, or greenish and putrid like yellow, but it didn’t brighten her coloring either. Her face was already flushed, though, and she could use toning down. This was the one night she welcomed looking pale and colorless.
    When she was dressed and her hair repaired, she rushed down to the drawing room where the ladies had retired after dinner. The men were at billiards, and she knew they would not be long in joining the women now. She was rather surprised they had been this long at their port and cigars. Lily walked into the drawing room and stopped short.
    Oh, no.
    It was not the room that unnerved her. The room was beautifully appointed. The late duchess had obviously possessed exquisite taste. The carpets were thick and plush. She was not knowledgeable enough to know if they were Turkey or Aubusson or something else, but she felt her slippers sink comfortably into the rug. The walls were covered with elegant papers depicting Grecian urns and motifs. Portraits of the ancestral family were hung here and there, and she had enough of an eye to see that the painters had been talented. The ceilings were high and heavily molded, creating the effect of sumptuousness and openness, something the room needed, as the paneling and papers were quite dark.
    The furnishings were upholstered in damasks and silks and arranged in small pairings so as to allow several groups to converse at once. A fire lit the hearth, and a large chandelier brightened the room, which glowed from the light of several lamps. The room was to Lily’s liking. The company was not.
    She’d expected an assortment of widows and actresses, perhaps an opera singer or two. There was an opera singer and two widows, but there were also four other courtesans. She hesitated even to call them courtesans. They were so free with their favors as to be more akin to prostitutes. The widows, Mrs. Compton and Lady Euglin, were known as relentless seducers of young men. When a new buck arrived in Town, they were the first to sidle up to him at his inaugural ball. The opera singer, a woman whose name Lily did not remember—in the future, she would really need to stay awake during the opera—was the most chaste of all of them.
    And that was saying something.
    “Well,” one of the courtesans, a Mrs. Arbuckle, said upon seeing her. “If it isn’t the Countess of Copulation.” Lily knew the other courtesans of the ton had less than complimentary names for Juliette, Fallon, and her. The Countess of Copulation was one of the better ones. It was at a level with The Conjugal Countess. Some of the other C-words were not so polite. “Where are your friends, Countess ?”
    “Why, Mrs. Arbuckle.” Lily forced her feet to move forward, forced herself to step into the room. “I thought you were my friend.”
    The courtesan smiled thinly. “Oh, I am.”
    The other courtesans, by no means friendly with Mrs. Arbuckle either, tittered. No one in this room was her friend. When one’s livelihood depended on snaring a man, one could not afford to befriend other women. Juliette, Fallon, and Lily had been the exceptions. But then they were not typical courtesans.
    “Are you looking for a new protector?” a courtesan with