Read Online A Courtesan’s Guide to Getting Your Man by Susan Donovan, Celeste Bradley - Free Book Online

romantic hope that this fellow actually loved me from afar, this cleared up that little misconception quite nicely. I was a purchase. I was a horse added to his stables, a painting added to his gallery. I was a thing, to be bought and sold.
    There were more words between them but with their voices lowered in more peaceful consultation, I could not hear them, no matter how I dangled my upper body from the window. Agreeing on the price, perhaps? Asking for the groom to check my teeth? Would I be weighed and measured, placed on the scales opposite a pile of gold?
    Helpless fury overwhelmed me. I ought not to be in this position! My parents would be appalled and revolted if they lived. Of course, if they lived, then I would not reside in this house with these people who thought I should behave like an ordinary girl.
    I knew what my relations wanted of me, but I had not been brought up to be obedient and unthinking. My mother, an unrepentant bluestocking, had wed quite late to a quiet bookish man, a philosopher and scholar, who found her unconventional notions delightful and stimulating. I was raised on freedom of thought and lively debate. If I wished to refuse my supper and only eat my cake, I might be allowed if I was able to put forth a case convincing enough to either make my parents laugh or even to begin a discussion between them so distracting that they took no notice of my sugar-coated fingertips.
    Perhaps it was no mystery that my relatives found me to be foreign and bizarre. Now, alone in my room, alone in my heart, even I wavered. I did not fit in to this world. I did not understand why I should hide behind my fan. I could not conceive of shutting my lips and closing my mind.
    Perhaps there was something wrong with me, not with them. I seemed to be the only one who did not wish to play by these rules …
    Or was I?
    There were women in the world, beautiful, elegant creatures who slipped through the rigid stratifications of Society like silk-clad wraiths. They had no husbands, no fathers, no high-handed uncles who sought to twist their lives into restrictive knots.
    The first time I ever saw the Swan was at Mrs. H ____ ’s musicale. It was quite an eclectic gathering, daringly including those who were rising in Society as well as those who fell just a bit outside it. To welcome a notorious courtesan to one’s home was entirely outré.
    I’d wager that half the women there wished they’d thought of it first.
    The other half were violently offended. Mrs. H ____ is a patroness of the arts and quite influential in certain circles, and so Aunt Beryl dared not offend her by insulting one of her guests. It was only I who was subjected to Aunt Beryl’s vitriolic opinions.
    “Filthy, abandoned creature” was the mildest of those insults. “Untamed independent” and “ungoverned wanton” only piqued my interest at the time.
    Hereby came my conviction that Aunt Beryl was something of an imbecile, for it was quite obvious to me that the Swan was everything that was elegant and gracious. She swept into the room, tall and golden and smiling so sweetly that I could not help but smile back, though she beamed her charm indiscriminately about the room.
    The whispers ran about the perimeter of the hall, scurrying like vermin, carried mouth to ear, but the Swan smiled as if she heard none of it and held out her gloved hand to greet the soprano who had so entertained us.
    The Swan had beautiful features, of course, but it was more than mere symmetry and hair of gold that fixed everyone’s attention so. She moved through the room with the confidence of a duchess, surely knowing that men admired and desired her even as their wives admired and despised her.
    And envied her.
    But perhaps that was only me.
    It simply seemed to my eyes that the Swan had a rather marvelous existence. She was cosseted and spoiled and adored as much as any cherished bride, but if the love grew stale or the man became unbearable—as I was beginning to