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her little salon, taking tea and writing letters.
    “Do you go up and join her, Miss Sarah. There’s cakes, fresh made. You look as if you could do with some feedin’ up.” Cook, ample herself, believed everyone to be on the verge of inanition.
    Miss Tolerance was not hungry, but thanked Cook cordially and passed through the green baize door which marked the division between the servants’ area and the public rooms. In one of the large salons an elegant tea was spread out for the delectation of the patrons and whores. Miss Tolerance turned away from the room, in which half a dozen men were drinking tea or wine, piling cakes onto their plates and ogling the girls in their neat muslin gowns. Miss Tolerance preferred not to socialize with Mrs. Brereton’s clientele; they reminded her of her own equivocal position in the house and in society. She proceeded up the stairs to the little salon, a pleasant, neatly furnished room with a couch, desk, small table, and a window that looked onto the rear garden. Mrs. Brereton sat at the desk, frowning at something before her.
    “Who has offended you, aunt?”
    “My dear Sarah!” Mrs. Brereton at once put the letter aside and rose to greet her niece. She was a tall woman with a commanding presence; she regarded her niece with a slow smile, as if each passing moment served to recall her affection for the younger woman. Mrs. Brereton, owning some fifty years, looked a good decade younger. Her figure was slender and her complexion well-tended, as befit a woman who had been, for many years, the crown jewel in her own establishment. These days Mrs. Brereton had only a few patrons of her own, but considered the maintenance of her appearance to be part of the effort she owed her business, and spared neither time nor money. Today she wore a gray silk gown with a half-jacket of cherry-striped silk; her short, silvering dark hair was pomaded into artful curls that looked less girlish than sensual.
    “Come sit with me, my dear. How is it I have not seen you in a week?” Mrs. Brereton softened the reproach by tilting her head to receive her niece’s kiss.
    “A week, aunt? Surely no more than half that.”
    “Well, it has seemed like a week.” Mrs. Brereton said. “How do you do?”
    “I do well. Cook sent me to eat some of your cakes.”
    “I wish you will. I cannot think why she gives me so many; I cannot eat them all, and it is wasteful.” Waste was Mrs. Brereton’s particular abhorrence.
    “I am sure I can help you with one or two of them, aunt.” Miss Tolerance seated herself and took up the cup Mrs. Brereton had poured for her. “Thank you. You seemed very vexed with what you were reading.”
    Mrs. Brereton maintained a flat ban upon gossip regarding her clientele among her employees. Her scruples on her own account were, however, a little more elastic.
    “It is a letter of complaint regarding the new boy. Or perhaps merely a complaint that he is too popular to be constantly available to this gentleman.” She flicked the sheet in her hand with a finger. Mrs. Brereton, unlike most London brothel keepers, was liberal enough to keep a male whore in her employ, reasoning that she was not in the business of judging her clients’ needs, but supplying to them.
    “Who is complaining?”
    “Lord Holyfield. Which surprises me. He was so passionately fond of Matt that I did not expect him to warm to young Harry, let alone demand his undivided attention.” Mrs. Brereton sighed. The late Matt Etan had been liked by everyone in her establishment, and by a number of gentlemen of particular tastes. His death—upon an errand for Miss Tolerance—had caused a rift between her and Mrs. Brereton which had only slowly healed.
    “Matt used to complain of Lord Holyfield’s particularity. Perhaps it is not Harry, but his lordship, who is the problem? Young Harry seems an agreeable enough fellow.”
    “My rules are very clear, and particularity or favoritism is a great offense. Harry is too