Page 85 of Dick Stone, Regency Stud
As soon as he had Tabby upright, Edward hurried away, and voided the contents of his stomach into a bush.
“You been drinking tonight, Dick Stone?” she asked.
He took a swig from his — formerly her — silver water flask and nodded no.
“Your head bothering you?”
“Not tonight.”
“Then what’s got your whirligigs twisted?”
Edward held out his arms as if defeated, and Tabby hopped into them from the top church step.
“Long day. I had a lot to do before your auction.”
“And you’re not even the one who had to buy hair,” she said blithely.
As she recounted her trials and tribulations, Edward walked with uncharacteristic grimness, marching ever closer to Mrs. Chaffinch’s boarding house and the inevitable implosion of his orderly life.
When he opened the door to his lodgings, there was the landlady, towering with disapproval. She’d known Tabby was a young woman before Edward did and had sent them both glares, but carrying a lass in a nightdress into a respectable boarding house simply wasn’t done.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Chaffinch,” he said, chastened without her saying a word. “I’ll make other arrangements tomorrow.”
Her mouth pinched, and she closed the door to her own sitting room soundly when he walked past.
“I suppose this means I can’t wail when you stick your piece in me,” said Tabby under her breath.
Edward couldn’t bring himself to respond to her joke, even to feign a smile. He reached the door of his room at the top of the stairs and pushed in.
He deposited Tabby on his bed and set about removing his jacket and lighting a few tallow candles.
“Do you really want to be a courtesan? A woman who…sells her favors?”
Tabby giggled. It was the first overtly girlish thing he’d heard her do in the entirety of their acquaintance. How strange to look up and discover that everything had changed.
“I don’t want to do any work, not if I can help it,” she said. “But if I must, bending over for toffs and the like doesn’t seem to be the worst way to make king’s pictures. It’s the only way to make real coin as a girl other than wet nursing, and I don’t have the dairy hills for that. Besides, you’re not doing so bad as a stud. And IsaidI’d be your equal.”
Edward wanted to rip his hair out. Had she been living as a lad so long that she forgot life was very different for men and women? No, that couldn’t be the case, or she’d have abandoned her pragmatic breeches some time ago.
“That’s not how it works,” he said.
“That’s the way it has to work, Dick Stone, because that’s my plan for how we can be friends even when things change. When you’re the marquess.”
Edward’s rise in status and a physician’s revelation regarding the contents of Tabby’s breeches had sent her into something of a panic, convinced that Edward was but one arranged marriage away from slamming the door on their friendship.
He needed to set her mind at ease so she’d never do something this chuckleheaded again.
“Nothing is going to change,” he said.
“Of course you say that. But one day, you’ll have—”
Not this again, he thought.
“I sold Tencendor,” he said.
Tabby turned to him, betrayal and hurt stamped on her face for the first time that night. Not even being struck by the auctioneer made her eyes go wide like that. “Why…”
“I required funds,” he said, his voice hoarse.
