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that she did indeed look pallid
    compared to Nan’s glowing and painted beauty. But
    such beauty came at a price and it was a cost that
    Rebecca had never been prepared to pay. Even now,
    as she faced ruin head on, she shuddered to think of
    it.
    When she descended she found the workshop can-
    dles lit, a fire burning in the hearth and Sam the coach-
    man fetching a tray of tea in from the scullery. Nan
    was reclining on the chaise-longue, her feet up on Re-
    becca’s workbench, her head tilted as she admired the
    red shoes that peeped from below her petticoats. She
    looked abandoned and beautiful, all tumbled fair curls
    and creamy flesh. She looked up as Rebecca came in
    and gave a little shudder.
    ‘Brown, darling? So disfiguring!’
    Nicola Cornick
    43
    ‘I do not dress to impress in my profession,’ Re-
    becca said, without rancour.
    Her friend’s blue eyes mocked her. ‘And how it
    shows!’
    In reply, Rebecca pushed Nan’s feet gently off the
    workbench and sat down opposite her. Sam the coach-
    man put the tea tray down on the rosewood desk and
    gave Rebecca a huge wink. She found herself smiling
    back. Sam had the bearing of an old soldier and a
    granite-hewn face to match, and he might work for the
    Archangel, but then so did she after a fashion. He also
    made an excellent strong cup of tea, and that went a
    long way towards gaining Rebecca’s appreciation.
    ‘Call back for me in a half-hour if you please, Sam-
    uel,’ Nan said sweetly, kicking off the red shoes and
    tucking her feet up under her on the chaise-longue. ‘I
    have matters of business to discuss with Miss Ra-
    leigh.’
    The coachman bowed, gave Rebecca another smile,
    and went out into the street.
    ‘Your business must be urgent indeed if it brings
    you out so early,’ Rebecca said. She remembered Nan
    once saying that one of the benefits of being a kept
    woman was that one worked all night and could sleep
    all day. Rebecca privately thought that it was not
    worth it, even to be the mistress of an amiable buffoon
    like Lord Bosham. For better or worse, she had in-
    herited a large amount of pride and a streak of inde-
    pendence from her family, and that pride revolted at
    the thought of being any man’s mistress.
    Nan did not answer immediately. She allowed her
    gaze to travel around the workshop, pausing as her
    44
    The Rake’s Mistress
    eye fell on a slender vase on the windowsill. It was
    engraved with a picture of a sailing ship, a privateer
    with elegant lines and furled sails. She smiled slightly.
    ‘How is your brother these days, Rebecca? Have
    you heard from him lately?’
    ‘Not in a long time,’ Rebecca said. Her chest tight-
    ened and she took a deep breath to steady herself. No
    matter how much time went past, it always hurt to be
    cut off from Daniel; now that her aunt and uncle were
    dead, the isolation was much more acute.
    ‘A pity,’ Nan said, her blue eyes sharp. ‘Now there
    is a man who could persuade me into marriage...’
    ‘I do not believe that Daniel is a marrying man,’
    Rebecca said with a small smile. ‘He is wedded to his
    ship.’
    ‘Show me a man who is the marrying kind, darling,’
    Nan said, a little bitterly. ‘They are all out for what
    they can get, which is why we have to fleece them
    first.’
    Rebecca pulled a face. She had heard Nan speak
    like this before and seen her friend’s pretty face crease
    with cynicism and bitterness. Rebecca herself had
    never had a great deal of time for love. As a child,
    she had been a voracious reader and had devoured
    everything that came within her grasp, be it romances
    or treatises on engraving. Once she had started to
    work, the time for reading and any other pursuit had
    become very limited indeed and Rebecca had come to
    the conclusion that romance belonged only between
    the pages of a book. As far as she could see, marriage
    was a matter of comfort, convenience and sometimes
    of financial benefit, and yet she had never seen fit to
    Nicola