Free A Man Above Reproach by Evelyn Pryce

Nicholas flipping pages, but hadn’t the energy to explain.
    “May I take one of these, Lennox?” he asked.
    Elias nodded assent, preoccupied. He decided he would not call on her. He would leave it alone. He would concentrate on the estate, as he should have been doing, as if he had never set foot in the Sleeping Dove.

    A week passed. Josephine concentrated very hard on not thinking about the duke. By no means would she allow herself to think of him by his first name. She reminded herself on several occasions to not wonder if he had gone to the Dove looking for her. This didn’t matter. She would even write it down, if it was sticking in her brain too much: little scraps of paper that said things like
Doesn’t matter
and
Changes nothing
. Sometimes she would decorate them elaborately, with vines. She was thinking about translating them to cross-stitches.
    She could not deny, though, that she ran to the Sleeping Dove when Mother sent word that she was needed.
    When Josephine entered, it was oddly quiet. All the girls were assembled around a huge, lacquered, shining piano in the spot where her old one had been. They could have been at church, they were so still. Sapphire sat at the bench, unsure notes tinkling under her fingers as if she was afraid to play it. The men were still outside in the dining area, so the women were alone with their awe.
    “BB!” Sapphire cried when she noticed her. “From the duke! It’s exquisite!”
    Josephine had her hands out to her sides, in a gesture that she hoped conveyed the need to stop the nonsense.
    “It must be sent back,” she said in an approximation of an authoritative voice, though she knew it was colored by the arresting gift in front of her. “You never should have accepted it in the first place.”
    “Josie, he’s a duke,” Sally said, close to her shoulder. She sounded shell-shocked. “We cannot ignore something like this—we would risk our incomes. And he’s my Nicholas’s friend. Is he all that bad?”
    “Loathsome.”
    “He’s gorgeous,” Sapphire said, tilting her head in a wistful way. “He smells like heaven. I know; I was in his lap.”
    Mother Superior reclined at the front of the pianoforte. She wore a more serious expression than Josephine had ever seen.
    “This isn’t about you and your game anymore, chit,” she said. “Your paramour gives a gift to the Dove and has paid over half the same amount for the private audience that you will grant him. Now.”
    Josephine’s eyes watered with rage. He would ruin everything, the foolish, foolish man. He did not play fair.
    “Absolutely not,” she hissed. She had to stop herself from stomping her foot like the hundreds of tantrums she had thrown in her youth. Her father had called it “ill breeding” from her mother’s side of the family. “I do not have to obey his money and his title.”
    Sally put a hand on her arm and said for her ears only, “But we do.”
    “Bugger him,” she swore.
    All of the ladies gasped and their heads turned toward the back door.
    Elias was leaning against it. His legs were crossed at the ankles, lounging, as if he were watching a play. He must have been there the entire time.
    “Josephine,” he drawled. The sound of the name from his mouth sent chills through her. After a week of trying not to think of him, all she had done was think about him. “I implore you to discuss this without an audience.”
    Mother bowed low, lifting her skirts from the filthy floor to better afford her groveling. The piano shone in the room as if it were on fire. “We are sorry, Your Grace. Your generosity is appreciated by the girls of the Dove.”
    “Josie,” Elias said, holding out his hand this time. “Please.”
    The buzz of flies could be heard for lack of another sound.
    “You leave me no choice,” she said. She was fuming. She wanted to be alone with him just so she could scream at him. Josephine crossed the room in a few steps and did not take his outstretched hand. She