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‘But if it did.’
‘But it does not.’
‘But you said yourself...’ She looked at William, overjoyed in his solitude at the moment, even when surrounded by others. ‘That happiness is not always found there.’
‘No. But you know, it is not a question of whether or not you are doing everything society dictates, but whether or not you appear to be. There are thriving parts of London that operate outside of this... This fear. Where people are... More themselves.’
‘Really?’ She looked very keen.
‘Ladies do not go to them.’
‘Do they really not?’
‘Not if their husbands are responsible.’
r />
Truth be told there were a number of ladies who went to the sort of clubs he frequented. Particularly widows. Either looking for a man in the market to satisfy them, or looking to buy a harlot themselves. Briggs found nothing particularly shocking in the gaming halls and brothels of London. But perhaps that was simply due to his own acceptance of his nature.
Of course, he had wondered, when he was young, if there was something terribly wrong with him.
That he felt equal desire to kiss a woman as he did to take a riding crop to her.
But it had not taken long for him to discover books and artwork that suggested he was not alone, and then brothels that confirmed he was not. His particular favourite memory was when he had been a young man of sixteen travelling on school holidays, and he had gone to a notorious brothel in Paris and been presented with a menu. There had been acts on it he had never even considered.
And he had tried most of them. He was a man with money and few hard limits, so there was little reason not to.
Brothels had provided the perfect venue for him to explore the darker facets of his desires, while providing him with rules.
Rules, he had learned, were essential for a man like him.
He knew the women enjoyed it too. It was why he had been so certain that Serena...
‘The issue, Beatrice, is that these places truly are dens of immorality.’
‘The kind of immorality I must be protected from because of my health?’
‘And mine,’ he said. ‘If your brother had any idea that I took you...’
‘To a brothel?’
Of course, it had been Hugh who’d accompanied him to the Parisian brothel all those years ago. He was becoming as annoyed with the hypocrisy of the world as Beatrice.
‘Must you say that here?’ he said, looking around. He knew William was not paying attention to them.
But others might be.
‘He would kill you,’ Beatrice said, sounding nearly cheerful. ‘That is a fact.’
‘I would like to avoid being killed by Hugh, and if I had wanted to be killed by him, I would have simply refused to marry you in the first place.’
‘So there are all these rules of society, and half of the people in society simply do not observe them? Tell me, where is the logic in that?’
‘I suppose this,’ he said, looking around, ‘is what separates us from the animals.’
‘That and corsets, I imagine.’
‘Definitely corsets.’
