Mary Jo Putney (7 page)

She smiled with genuine amusement. "After a few months working for Clothilde, I justified her faith in my looks when an elderly banker took a fancy to me and bought me for his own use."

"Bought
you?" Diana gasped as she looked up. She had expected to be shocked, but not in this particular way.

"That's what it amounted to." Madeline shrugged. "It wasn't as bad as it sounds. I was quite happy to go with him, since it was a much easier life. He set me up with lodgings and clothes, everything I needed. Though it sounds like slavery, the payment to Madame Clothilde was merely compensation for loss of my services. Not an unusual arrangement.

"He was very indulgent and treated me like a daughter most of the time, except when he was actually..." Madeline halted, unable to think of a discreet way of finishing the sentence. "He kept me for three years and in the end made a generous settlement. He was moving down to Brighton for his health, and he said he was getting too old for a mistress anyhow. I quite missed him."

She looked back for a moment, a fond smile on her face, before continuing briskly, "After that, I became one of the aristocrats of the trade, able to pick and choose my lovers. I was careful in my choices, and with my money as well, so I never had to go with a man I disliked."

Madeline's pragmatic words made her scandalous past seem natural, even desirable. Diana asked hesitantly, "Would you do it over again if you had the choice?"

Madeline's dark brows knit together. "Do you know, I have never considered that? I did what I had to do to survive. After my fall from grace, my choices were very limited." She pondered further before saying slowly, "Being a fallen woman was a way out—out of Yorkshire, out of poverty, out of a narrow life that never suited me. The great courtesans must have not just beauty, but personality and wit. I had the opportunity to grow, to use my mind to its fullest. I met fine men I could never have known otherwise, and lived a life of comfort and luxury."

As Madeline fell silent, one phrase reverberated in Diana's mind.
A way out. A way out. A way out of Yorkshire.
The words pulsed with significance for her, a significance she was not yet ready to face. Not yet, but soon, soon....

Diana's thoughts were interrupted as Madeline continued her narrative. "The first months in the brothel were... difficult, but I escaped with my health and sanity intact. After that, since I was a
femme entretenue,
a kept woman, I lived very well. It was rather like having several husbands in succession. The chance of catching some vile disease was slim, and I had much more freedom than a respectable woman. If a man became unpleasant, I could refuse him. Yes, if I had to live my life over, there is little I would change. I felt no shame for what I did. The only shame was in how others saw me."

She laughed suddenly, her face showing the charm that had made her such a success at her trade. "Most of the Fashionable Impures had nicknames like the Venus Mendicant, or the White Doe, or Brazen Bellona. Because of my dark hair and eyes, I was known as the Black Velvet Rose. Silly, but rather sweet. It's strange, the influence women like us had. Men who would treat their wives like imbeciles would talk politics with their mistresses. My salon was usually much livelier than the respectable ones, because men would speak so much more freely."

Madeline gestured expressively. "Because I preferred being kept by one man, I lasted longer than most Cyprians. Of course, when I was between lovers, I would... shop a bit until I found someone who pleased me. I enjoyed all the best aspects of courtship and marriage, without the problems wives have."

Muffled almost to unintelligibility, Diana asked the question that burned beyond all others. "Did you actually enjoy the... the physical part of the life?"

The strain in Diana's voice confirmed Madeline's guess that the girl's introduction to sex had been the sort of crude fumbling that made so many woman despise the act. Carefully she said, "Making love can be quite lovely. It's best if you care deeply for your partner, but it can be enjoyable with any man you like who treats you well. Many women never learn that, of course. We are raised to protect ourselves from all men's advances, to fear being touched. It becomes difficult to relax and enjoy loving."

Watching Diana to make sure her words did not give offense, Madeline continued, "It is very agreeable to know and appreciate one's body as a potential source of pleasure. A more experienced woman at Clothilde's told me to explore myself by touch, to take different textures like silk, velvet, rough linen, cool china, and to rub them over myself to see how my body responded.

"I followed her advice and found that I was a sensual creature. I would also study myself in the mirror, trying to understand what made a woman's body desirable to a man. And in time, I learned the kind of power a woman can have over a man."

Diana had gone beyond wondering at the strangeness of this conversation, though she was still too shy to meet Madeline's eye. She sensed that the older woman's words were a gift to her, an attempt to explain things beyond Diana's experience. Indeed, there was an intuitive logic to what Madeline said. Diana loved to touch, to hug her son's warm body, to express her feelings with a soft brush of her hand, to evaluate the fabric she bought or the bread she kneaded by its texture and consistency. If these other forms of touching were enjoyable, surely the most intimate could be also?

Madeline hadn't finished yet. "Sex is one of the most powerful and double-edged gifts God gave to humankind. It can be a source of pain and for women even death, yet is also the source of new life. At its best, it expresses the deepest love a man and woman can share." Her dark eyes were reflective. "It is hardly surprising that sexual knowledge was the loss of innocence that forced Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, or so a vicar once said when he was visiting me."

She smiled wickedly. "He was not the sort of man of the cloth to preach against life's pleasures."

Her smile faded as she tried to define what she had never spoken aloud. "Sex can be used as a cruel weapon, with one person dominating another. That can work either way, with a woman or a man controlling the partner. It is one of the few ways a woman can hold power over a man, though it is chancy and dangerous. Some people are too cold to be ruled by their senses. Others can be brought to their knees, with all their pride and honor broken by the ones they love...."

She smiled disarmingly. "It isn't usually that way, of course. More often, physical love is a way of giving and receiving pleasure and reassurance. Still," she said, narrowing her eyes as she looked at Diana, "a woman as beautiful as you could become truly powerful if she chose to."

Diana met Madeline's gaze, brushing her forehead with one wrist and leaving an earthy smudge as she asked with grave curiosity, "You really think I am beautiful?"

Madeline nodded. "Yes, perhaps the most beautiful woman I have ever known, and I speak as one who has seen most of the great and notorious beauties of England. If you wished, you might become a duchess, or the greatest of courtesans. Don't you think of yourself as beautiful?"

Diana shook her head. "Not in the least. But I have seen how men look at me, and sometimes wonder what they see. They don't seem to look at other women the same way. Often men... try to touch me, as if by accident." She bent over and dug a stone out with unnecessary violence. "I've wondered if that is why so many women glare at me as if I were their enemy."

Madeline sighed. "Beauty, like sex, is a double-edged sword. It can make you a victim, or it can help you acquire what you want from life, whether that is love or wealth or power."

Diana looked up, knowing that what her friend had told her this afternoon could change her life. "You are telling me this so I can see myself as others do."

"Yes, my dear." Madeline looked at her with compassion. "You saved my life in more ways than one, and I would like to repay you in a way more meaningful than jewels, though you may have those too. While I know that you have found a certain contentment here at the edge of the world, you are restless sometimes, as I was. If you ever choose to leave, you must understand the power of your own beauty, how to wield it and how to protect yourself. Otherwise you risk being used and destroyed by those who desire you."

She made a wry face. "I, too, have been blessed and cursed with more than my share of the kind of beauty men desire. That fact set the pattern of my life." Her gaze became earnest. "There is nothing shameful in what happens between men and women, and much that is wonderful. Don't be shy of asking me questions."

Diana nodded gravely. "Thank you. Certainly I will have questions later when I have absorbed some of what you have told me. You are right; I have been content here, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life in Yorkshire, both for my sake and for my son's. It wasn't so bad when he was an infant, but Geoffrey needs to meet other children, to study with boys as intelligent as he is, to learn how far he can go in the world." She gave a twisted smile. "He even needs to face prejudice and rejection, though I hate to think of that."

She spread her hands outward in a gesture of helplessness. "Until you came, I didn't know how to imagine another kind of life. Sometimes," she said with a return to shyness, "I feel that God sent you to me, to be my teacher and friend."

Madeline smiled a response. There was fatigue in her face, but also gratitude, and a shyness to match Diana's. "I think perhaps he did. I hope so. I would like to give back some of what you have given me."

"Oh, you have," Diana said huskily, her lapis-blue eyes glowing jewel-like with inner light. Madeline was reminded not of a Madonna but of a pagan enchantress, Circe perhaps. "You have given me far more than you can imagine."

* * *

The capricious spring weather changed that night, turning cold and damp as gusty winds blew pale clouds across the midnight sky, concealing and revealing the bright passionless face of the full moon. The rest of the household slept when Diana quietly donned her cloak and went into the night.

Madeline had been right to sense restlessness in Diana. This was not the first time that she prowled alone across the moors, glorying in the wind whipping against her body, needing to burn away the fierce impatience that would not let her sleep. Restlessness had been as much a background to her life these last seven years as the wind itself.

Madeline's words earlier had struck a chord deep inside Diana, and now they circled in her head as her swift strides carried her across the moor.
Being a fallen woman was a way out—out of Yorkshire, out of a narrow life that never suited me.

It was mad for Diana to consider such a life for herself, even for a moment. Madeline had had no real choices; unthinkable that Diana should follow the same path voluntarily. Unthinkable—and yet she could think of nothing else.

She argued with herself. There were more two possibilities besides living on the edge of the world and becoming a high-priced whore. Diana had occasionally considered moving to some provincial city and presenting herself as a widow of modest means and unimpeachable respectability. Yet the prospect had not inspired her, quite apart from the fact that she hated the idea of living a lie.

She'd reached the top of the highest hill in the area, and beneath her gaze Yorkshire rolled away to the south. Moon-touched mist lay in the valleys and dales, the dark hills rising above like floating fairy isles.

Diana had found peace here, healing the wounds of the spirit that might have destroyed her if she had not had her child to love and care for. The love that connected her to Geoffrey and Edith had brought Diana back from the brink of pain and despair so great that it was nearly madness.
 
Now Madeline had come to enrich their lives. But on wild restless nights like this one, Diana wanted more.

Madeline had said that Diana's beauty gave her the potential to become a duchess or the greatest of courtesans. With Diana's unspeakable past she would never be a duchess. Even the most modest of respectable marriages was out of her grasp. She could never be respectable, so why not become a courtesan, a woman without shame or apologies? Diana wanted a man in her life. Since he couldn't be a husband, then he must be a lover.

The thought was a seductive one. A lover need not know about her past; he would likely not even care.

Since she could only hope for an illicit love, why not aim for the best and most profitable liaison possible? The very idea should be abhorrent to a respectable female. Yet what had respectability ever gotten her except pain and loneliness?

Beauty, like sex, is a double-edged sword. It can make you a victim, or it can help you acquire what you want from life, whether that is love or wealth or power. Unfortunately, a woman is more likely to become a victim.
All her life she had been the victim of men. They had brought her to the edge of destruction without even the sweet, passionate lies that had given Madeline pleasure before ruining her.

For Diana, there had been only ruination. There was something irresistibly enticing about the idea of dealing from a position of strength herself, for power would give her freedom.

She did not want power to punish or to victimize; her fury had faded over time. The magnitude of love she felt for her son had left no room in her heart for malice or bitterness. If her baby had been a girl, perhaps she would have turned from men forever. But Geoffrey was male and there was no evil in him. Diana had seen marriages based on caring.
 
Somewhere there existed men who would love and cherish a woman rather than abuse her.