“But there is something you must know before we marry. Something about me that will likely make you reconsider this union. You needn’t feel obliged to wed me after you hear this, Peter. You didn’t know.”
“Selina, for God’s sake, you must know that I don’t feel obliged—”
She gathered her nerve and cut him off. “Let me tell you something that very few people know.”
He went quiet, but his hands stayed on hers.
“Do you know the circulating library Belvoir’s?”
He nodded, his expression baffled.
“My brother Will owns it. And I”—God, it was so hard, sohardto make herself say the words—“I run it. Two and a half years ago, before Katherine died, I asked Will to buy it for me, and he did. I meet with my publisher, Jean Laventille, monthly, in secret. I have two men of business who carry out the daily operations. I oversee the library maintenance, the price of our subscription, our membership rolls, all ordering and binding, and—of course—the catalog selection. I have made Will a great deal of money, and we keep most of it in a bank account that neither of us touches. I am a female aristocrat, the sister of a duke, and yet I engage in trade.”
Peter, God help him, appeared absolutely delighted.
“Good Lord,” he said. “I knew you were infernally clever, but I had no idea—noidea—Selina, I see Belvoir’s bookseverywhere. Those green covers—my God,youcame up with that?” He grinned at her. “I don’t think I could be more impressed.”
Despite herself, her foolish heart leapt in astonished pleasure. Leapt, and then plummeted right off a cliff instead of landing, because he’d barely heard the half of it.
“There’s more,” she said. “Quite a bit more. It gets worse.”
“All right,” he said, still smiling. “Tell me.”
“You may not have realized it, but you have probably seen Belvoir’s books more often with women than men. That is because of something called the Venus catalog, which is accessible only to women. I had Will buy Belvoir’s for one very specific purpose.”
She paused, long enough for Peter to prompt, “And that purpose was…?”
“Sexual relations.”
Well, that had certainly taken him by surprise.
She kept talking. “A number of years ago, I learned that my father had kept a long-term mistress. I scarcely knew what a mistress was. In the year I made my bow, I discovered that Vernon Whaley, the Marquess of Queensbury, whom I considered a mostexcellent catch, was known for having relations with his servants and then putting them out on the street.
“I didn’t understand it. I couldn’t. I was entirely sheltered from the realities of life in thebeau monde. And I wasn’t alone.”
Her voice was trembling now. “At the end of that year, my dear friend Ivy came to see me at Rowland House. She was terrified, weeping her heart out. She was pregnant, you see. And she did not understand how it had occurred. That was how little she knew about intercourse, Peter. She did not understand what physical mechanism had gotten her with child. She did not know how to prevent it. And she had no idea what to do when the bastard of a man who impregnated her refused to stand by her.”
She knew the expression on her face had to be a little frightening—a half-wild smile, a smile of rage and ferocity. “Her parents threw her out, but she’s tough, my Ivy. We set her up in a little house near our estate in Gloucestershire, and she lives there with her son. And now Belvoir’s pays for it all. But I swore that year that whatever it took, I wouldn’t let another naive woman suffer that way—not if I could help it.
“So I had Will buy Belvoir’s, and I developed a selection of books that can only be checked out by women. Memoirs by courtesans. Erotic poetry. Gothic novels. Each month, I read perhaps a dozen such books and choose the most useful for the Venus catalog.”
She tried to relax her fingers on his, because her knuckles were nearly white. “It’s very popular. Most of the women of thetonare members. And absolutely no one knows that it’s mine.”
There was a long moment of quiet, and she stared at their linked fingers, trying to think of how she could make him understand what had been going on in her mind that year. The fury that had animated her and her single-minded determination to fix what was wrong, no matter the cost.
“Selina,” he said gently.
She looked up. The expression of delight on his face was gone, replaced by a softer expression.
Pride, she thought it was.
“That’s spectacular,” he said. “Youare spectacular. You are a bright, brilliant light on this benighted country.”
“Oh,” she said. And then, “Oh no.” He meant it, she realized. He was proud of what she’d accomplished. But he didn’t grasp the potential consequences. Perhaps, having been raised outside the insular world they inhabited now, he couldn’t.
“Peter, you have to understand. Eventually someone is going to figure it out. It’s not at all difficult to uncover the fact that Will owns Belvoir’s, and he’s been out of the country for over two years now. As our circulation has grown, so too has curiosity about the library. One hard look at the catalog, and what I’ve done will be in the papers.”
“And, Selina, what you’ve done is extraordinary.”
