“Lord Stephen is different,” Babette said. “Take this tea, for example. What lordling brings his light-skirts a tin of excellent tea? How did he know I’d appreciate that more than all the earbobs in Ludgate? The tea merchants don’t trot out the fine blends for the likes of us.”

“The earbobs are mostly paste,” Marie replied. “Did he bring you these biscuits too?”

“Aye. Had his footman deliver me a basket. I never had such glorious pears, Mare. I’m saving the last one to have with the chocolates he sent me. If you’d told me a pear could make right everything ever wrong in an opera dancer’s life, I’d have said you were daft.”

Another slurp.

“A man with glorious pears must be making up for a lack of glory in other regards, Bets.”

Marie had been with the opera five seasons. Stephen had steered away from her practiced smiles and knowing glances. Babette was new to the stage and had retained some generosity of spirit on her recent trek down from the Yorkshire dales.

Stephen had endured the usual round of cards at the Aurora Club, then caught the last act of the evening’s opera. Escorting Babette home had led to an interlude, and now—at three in the morning—Babette was having tea with her neighbor. Very likely, Marie had just bid good night to some wool nabob or beer baron.

“If you mean in bed,” Babette replied, “Lord Stephen is a handful.”

“A mere handful?” Laughter followed, the sort of laughter women shared only with one another. Stephen liked that variety of mirth and was happy to be its inspiration, though he really should be getting dressed.

“Not that sort of handful,” Babette replied. “He’s demanding, inventive, and relentless, is the only way I can describe it. You know how we sometimes flatter the menfolk?”

“Feign pleasure, you mean?”

Stephen felt a twinge of pity for Marie, who mentioned her subterfuge with no rancor whatsoever.

“He doesn’t put up with that, Mare. He has a way of insisting that there be no faking, no pretending, and that’s unnerving, it is. Goes along with the scrumptious pears and the rich chocolates. Lord Stephen deals in a kind of blunt honesty that wears me out as much as his swiving does.”

Women spoke a dialect Stephen didn’t entirely understand, though he sensed Babette was not offering a compliment to his sexual prowess. She wasn’t insulting him either, but she was blundering perilously close to an insight.

Should have left fifteen minutes ago.

“I hate it when a man lacks consideration,” Marie said. Porcelain clinked, suggesting she was serving herself more tea. “Some of them have more care for their horses and lapdogs than they do their women.”

A sad truth.

“Lord Stephen is frightfully considerate. He holds doors for me, holds my chair, as best he can with his canes and all. He never hurries me into the bedroom, and he never rushes away as if a hand of cards matters more than a fond farewell.”