A Notorious Countess Confesses by Julie Anne Long

Author:Julie Anne Long [Long, Julie Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Historical
ISBN: 9780062118035
Google: DIEhcU7e7TIC
Amazon: 0062118021
Publisher: Avon
Published: 2011-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

TWO HOURS LATER, Mrs. Sneath, Miss Josephine Charing and Miss Pitney delivered Eve to Lady Fennimore’s house.

“Lady Fennimore is a very elderly dowager. She enjoys the company since she cannot leave the house any longer. Perhaps you can read to her,” Mrs. Sneath suggested. “Something edifying to both of you.” She’d thrust a Bible into Eve’s hands. A passage was marked.

“She’s terrifying,” Miss Charing had confided to her, out of earshot of Mrs. Sneath. “She’s a horrible old lady. If you haven’t cried in years, even if you’ve never wept at all in your entire life, I wager she will find a way to make you do it. Even Miss Pitney—and her heart is as cold and hard an olive stone, I assure you—wept.”

“I got a bit of camphor in my eye, and it stung,” Miss Pitney insisted huffily. “Her room is filled with the stuff.”

“Her daughter Jenny holds up well, I think, beneath all of that. She says her mother wasn’t always like that, but I’ve never known her to be anything else. And she likes the vicar, Lady Fennimore does.” Her tone said, But who doesn’t?

They abandoned Eve at Lady Fennimore’s, with the promise to fetch her in two hours.

Eve was then ushered by a diffident young woman named Jenny, Lady Fennimore’s daughter, into a manor house scarcely more impressive than her own. She didn’t see any bones strewn about, which she supposed was promising.

And then she’d been led up to a stiflingly hot room, fire roaring, curtains flung open, sun pouring in. The center of the room was occupied by an ancient, bedridden woman.

“Ah. So you’re the whore everyone’s been nattering about.”

She had enormous blue eyes. One of the consolations of old age for her, clearly, was the opportunity to shock. Which she’d embraced with unfettered glee.

“Have they been nattering on about me, Lady Fennimore?” Eve asked pleasantly. “Although one can’t be a whore unless one is paid for favors. And I haven’t been paid for favors in simply ages. So I’m not certain I qualify any longer.”

Lady Fennimore narrowed her eyes. “Doing it simply for the pleasure of it now, are you?”

“Can you think of a better reason?”

This gave Lady Fennimore pause.

But only for a moment.

“To bring children in to the world,” she said huffily. “I’ve brought several of my own into the world, you know.”

“Of course. The making of children is a splendid excuse to make love. I’ve a riddle for you, Lady Fennimore What do you suppose is the primary difference between a whore and a wife, all told?”

Lady Fennimore appeared to give this some genuine thought.

“Skill,” Evie told her.

And damned if Lady Fennimore didn’t smile at this, albeit slowly, with an evil little gleam in her eye. “We all of us do it for the money, don’t we, when it comes right down to it? Sell ourselves into marriages. Perhaps your way is best after all. Why did they send you in? Are they trying to shock me into an early grave

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