Praise for Hope Tarr

“Beautifully written…Callum and Alys make wonderful lovers.”

—RT Book Reviews on Twelve Nights (4 Stars)

“Twelve Nights is a spectacularly sensual historical and a joyously fun read.”

—Fresh Fiction

“This entertaining quick read is perfect for that rainy afternoon when you want to be in a far off place dreaming about kidnapping your very own alpha male. I know it’s one of my fantasies.”

—Barbara Vey, Publishers Weekly on Bound to Please

“Fury and passion go head to head in Every Breath You Take…. The emotional swings are dizzying, and will keep you captivated right up until the end.”

—Coffee Time Romance

“Heartwarming characters, wonderful passion and an innovative story make this the perfect Christmas tale.”

—RT Book Reviews on It’s a Wonderfully Sexy Life

Dear Reader,

Second chances, don’t you just love them?

When I concluded my Victorian trilogy Men of Roxbury House a few years ago, it occurred to me I’d left some loose ends dangling—two loose ends, to be exact. At the end of Untamed, the series finale, secondary characters Lady Beatrice (Bea) Lindsey and scalawag turned semirespectable private secretary Ralph Sylvester had begun falling for one another, landing squarely in the shadow land between lust and love. Only there hadn’t been time, or in my case, pages for me to devote to unfolding their story. And I thought that was rather a shame.

Readers agreed. Based on an outpouring of e-mail requests, I decided to give Bea and Ralph a book and a happily ever after of their own. To earn it, they both have some sexy lessons to teach—and learn.

I hope you enjoy The Tutor. And if you adore the Victorian era as much as I do, please look for my novella “Tomorrow’s Destiny” in a Harlequin Victorian Christmas anthology with bestselling authors Betina Krahn and Jacquie D’Alessandro this December 2010.

Happy summer and, yes, happy (beach) reading,

Hope Tarr

www.hopetarr.com

Hope Tarr

THE TUTOR

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hope Tarr is the award-winning author of more than a dozen contemporary and historical romance novels. The Tutor, Hope’s seventh book for Harlequin’s sexy Blaze line, is set in one of her all-time favorite time periods: the late Victorian era. Hope lives in Manhattan where she finds the people-watching sublime and daily life more nuanced if not always stranger than fiction. She is a cofounder of Lady Jane’s Salon, www.ladyjanesalon.com, Manhattan’s first and, so far, only monthly reading series devoted to romance fiction and to “sharing the love” by supporting groups serving women in need. To enter her monthly and special contests or to read her blog, visit Hope online at www.hopetarr.com.

Books by Hope Tarr

HARLEQUIN BLAZE

293—IT’S A WONDERFULLY SEXY LIFE

317—THE HAUNTING

364—STROKES OF MIDNIGHT

407—BOUND TO PLEASE

441—EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE…

512—TWELVE NIGHTS

To my friend and editor, Brenda Chin, whose taste, talent and insight make every book not just a little bit better but a lot better. And to my friend and fellow author, Leanna Renee Hieber, who is always so great about planning writing dates, seeking out silver linings, and finding cool Manhattan coffee bars with lots o’ outlets.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Prologue

London’s East End, 1874

RALPH SAT ON THE SIDE of his mum’s unmade bed as she checked her reflection in the moisture-spotted mirror. Her curled hair and painted face meant she was going out for one of her “little strolls” along the docks though it seemed to him she was dressed uncommonly fine.

She swung about to face him, full skirts swaying like the Bow Street Church bell. “How do I look, ducks?”

“You look beautiful, Mum,” Ralph answered, both because it was true and because he knew how much male praise, even his, pleased her.

She grinned, revealing the gap in her gum line where one of his “uncles” had knocked out the tooth. On occasion, one of the nicer ones brought him a toy or treat but in the main they ignored him, followed his mum into her bedroom, and rolled about on the bed kissing for a good hour. Ralph wondered their lips didn’t wear out.

She reached down and ruffled a hand through his wheat-colored hair, the same shade and texture as hers. “I should hope so, for I’ve an appointment to keep with a very fine and generous gentleman.”

Fear knotted his stomach. “Not the one who hit you? Mum, you promised!”

Her mouth flattened, bringing out the fine creases at the corners. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. Now I want you to eat the lovely supper nice Mrs. Hanson has set out and afterward you’re to say your prayers and go to bed straightaway. I’ll be back before you’ve had the chance to miss me.”

Despite her promise, the twist in his gut told him this was not a typical night. He grabbed her hand and held on tight. “Please, Mum, don’t go. Don’t…don’t leave me.”

“Crikey, Ralphie, don’t be such a baby.” She pried free and headed for the door. Halfway out, she turned back, eyes teary. “I’ll never leave you, Ralphie. Two peas in a pod, we are.”

He never saw her again.

“Nice Mrs. Hanson” hadn’t proven so nice after all. As the days turned into weeks and the weeks into a month, the lodging house lady became progressively stingy with her suppers. When at the end of the month his mother still hadn’t returned with the money for his keeping, she turned him out, not caring that it was winter and snowing. The one time she’d caught him sleeping beneath her front steps, she’d boxed his ears.

“It’s a respectable house I run, and I’ll not have some whoreson lollygagging about ruining my reputation. Now off with you, you little bastard, else I’ll call for the constable and see you sent to the workhouse, not that you won’t find yourself there soon enough.”

Even with his ears ringing, she hadn’t had to threaten a second time. Ralph had grown up on his mum’s stories of her childhood in a parish workhouse and from them he harbored a terrible, bone-chilling dread. He’d moved on, making his bed in a succession of stairwells and stoops.

The day he met Johnnie Black he’d been stealing his supper or trying to from a costermonger in Billingsgate Market. He’d gotten as far as stuffing one nicked sausage into his pocket when the food seller looked up from wrapping a roast and caught him. Ralph turned, intending to speed away. Before he could take more than a step, ham-size hands seized hard hold, lifting him from the ground.

A fury-reddened face shoved up close to his. “You thieving little bugger, I’ve a mind to spit you like a—”

“What’s the trouble, guv?”

Dangling, Ralph managed to turn his head to take stock of his seeming savior. Johnnie Black must have been only in his early twenties, but he’d seemed enormously worldly-wise to Ralph. He wore a tall black stovepipe hat banded with shiny black ribbon. Beneath it, his fringe of black hair hung in greasy ropes over deep set, darting eyes.

“Not that it’s any of your concern,” the butcher bellowed, “but I just caught this guttersnipe stealing my sausages.”

Black broke into a broad smile, revealing a gold-capped front tooth that Ralph thought very fine. “’Tis a misunderstanding is all. This should settle my little mate’s account.” He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a crown, and handed it over.

Within seconds, Ralph’s feet found the earth once more. Instinct screamed for him to flee, only he feared his weak-kneed legs would fold.

Pocketing the coin, the seller’s scowl slid into a smile. “Lads will be lads, I suppose.” He pulled a second sausage from the spit and handed it to Ralph.

Too hungry for pride, Ralph tore in, juice dribbling his chin. While he ate, Johnnie wrapped a friendly arm about his shoulders and steered them away from the main market building.

On his way, he launched into his pitch. “Men such as we lot seize life by the hair with these two hands.” He hiked back his coat sleeves and held out his long-fingered hands and knobby wrists with obvious pride.

Starting in on the second sausage, Ralph managed to say, “Sounds grand.” He finished the food in a final gulp, wiped his palms on the front of his coat, and stuck out his hand. “Ralph Sylvester, sir. It’s pleased I am to make your acquaintance, mister…?”

“Black, but me mates call me Johnnie.” He enfolded Ralph’s hand in his bony clasp. Letting go, he looked Ralph up and down. “Ain’t you the fine gentleman for all you’re dressed like a dustman? With a bit o’ spit and polish, you might do handsomely, handsomely indeed.”

Stomach full, Ralph felt his pride return and with it a stab of shame. He folded his arms across his chest, wishing the moth-eaten wool of his coat might miraculously thicken. “I haven’t the blunt to pay you back.” Seeing as how they’d met over him stealing food, he supposed that much must be obvious, but he thought it best to make matters clear all the same.

Johnnie Black shrugged, button eyes beaming. “What’s a quid or two between mates? And I mean for us to be mates, the very best.”

Now that his belly was no longer banging against his backbone, Ralph found himself smothering a yawn behind the back of his hand.

“Fancy a lie down?” Black asked. “I’ve a feather bed as broad as a boat with a goose down quilt waiting for someone to warm it.”

Ralph hadn’t lain in a proper bed for coming on a month and his stiffened body longed to stretch out. Still, thinking back to his mum and the uncles, he hesitated. “I won’t have to kiss anyone, will I?”

Johnnie tossed back his head and cackled. “Not on the mouth or the arse, either, not ever again.” He whipped around and started off, leaving Ralph to follow.

Ralph shoved his gloveless hands inside his hole-worn pockets and ran after him. Passing through crooked, cobbled streets thick with gin shops and street corners where painted women like his mum congregated and called out, “Are you good-natured, dear?”, he did his best to match his benefactor’s long, fast strides. Finally Johnnie drew up before what looked to be an abandoned tenement, the windows boarded, the main door barred with a placard that read C-O-N-D-E-M-N-E-D.

Taking in the mound of busted boards and rotted roofing, Ralph began to suspect his new friend might have greatly oversold the bed, but still he followed Black to the back of the building, too tired to seek other shelter.

Johnnie kicked aside the crate, revealing a cubbyhole-size crawl space. “After you, mate.”

Ralph hesitated, his bloated belly sinking. He’d grown up rough enough to know that what he was about to do meant putting his life in the hands of a stranger. Yet what choice had he?

Ducking into the darkness, he felt sweat break out over his body. The space was close as a coffin, and the skittering and squeaking nearby suggested his first acquaintances would be four-legged and curly-tailed. He pressed on. A pinprick of light, or at least a lesser darkness, greeted him on the other end. Tunneling toward it, he tamped down his fear of rats and general foreboding. The space gradually broadened. Lifting a testing hand above his head, his palm met with slimy stone. Ralph rose from his bruised knees and straightened. As his vision adjusted to the dimness, he became aware of a dozen or so pairs of watchful eyes fixed on him, some narrowed with hostility, others seeming only curious.

“Lads, come meet your new mate, Ralph.”

Black’s voice behind him nearly sent him shooting out of his shoes. He swung about to find Johnnie towering over him. How he’d managed to stuff that long, angular body through the hole was a mystery Ralph was determined to solve, but for now, worry for the immediate future crowded out his curiosity.

“Is this a workhouse?” he demanded, poised to dive back into the earth if need be.

Johnnie took off his top hat and tossed it to one of the boys, a brawny, blunt-featured lad with reddish-brown hair, a blackened eye and what looked to be a recently broken nose. The boy wasn’t especially tall, but the breadth of his shoulders and the size of his hands would have drawn envy from many a full-grown man.

Black made a sound low in his throat, somewhere between a scoff and a growl. “This is the antidote to the workhouse. Do you know what an antidote is?”

Ralph hadn’t a clue. The poverty of his experience struck him anew. “N-no,” he ground out, painfully aware of the other boys’ sniggering.

“’Tis the cure,” Black supplied, expression sobering. “Me operation is run in the manner of a school and me, I’m the headmaster. I take in boys like you, boys with no prospects and no place in life, and I turn them into men, gainful men. You do want to be gainful, don’t you, Ralph?”

Ralph sensed it wasn’t really a question, but he nodded nonetheless. “Y-yes.”

He dared another glance. The room was blanketed in cobwebs and dust, the air stale and close, and yet it was also snug and warm, certainly more commodious than the stairwell he’d last called home. He didn’t want to seem ungrateful. More questions might well be met with being turned out, and like Johnnie Black’s other “pupils”, he truly had nowhere else to go.

Ralph was tired of being turned out, tired of being cold and stiff and empty in ways neither food nor gin could fill. He wanted a place in the world. It needn’t be the very best place, not Buckingham Palace or anything so grand. It only had to be a place, safe and warm from where he wouldn’t be chased off, beaten or starved. A place he might come to call home.

Home. Of all the things Ralph longed for, a home topped the list.

Seemingly satisfied, Black nodded. “Off with you lot.” A snapping of bony fingers sent the bystanders scattering, except for the beefy boy holding the hat. He leaned down to Ralph, settling icy fingers upon his shoulders. “You bide here until you work off the crown you owe me. Afterward, if you fancy another go at it on your own, you’re free to walk out or you can stay on as you wish. Sound fair?”

“Y-yes.” Evenhanded as the terms seemed, they were a far cry from Black’s earlier friendliness. But beyond anything to do with terms, the feral gleam in those button eyes had Ralph’s heart pounding.

“Capital.” He slapped Ralph upon the shoulder, and then beckoned to the brawny boy with the hat. “Rourke, show Sylvester the ropes and mind you keep your humbugging to a minimum.” Turning back to Ralph, Johnnie added, “Rourke is a bit o’ a scrapper though he’d be better served to work on his fingers and give his knuckles a rest.”

Silent still, the boy, Rourke, regarded Black with smoldering eyes.

Black darted his gaze between them. “You two are partners now.”

Rourke shoved the hat at Black’s middle. “Scarce good some scrawny stripling will do me,” he said, speaking at last, and Ralph detected the faintest trace of a brogue.

Ralph pulled back his shoulders and stuck out his chest. “I can hold my own.” Admittedly, he was only of average size for his age and a month of mostly missed meals guaranteed he hadn’t much to bring to a fight. But he was also nimble-fingered by nature, able to tie a string to a fly’s wing and perform sleight-of-hand tricks since the age of six.

“Close your clapper, paddy,” Black snarled, “and mind you’re on probation. If you don’t start bringing in your share, the next time I may just let you swing.” He shifted back to Ralph, his scowl smoothing. “Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite, and I’ll see you at breakfast in the morning. We’ll have sausages, I think. Sausages will be rare tasty,” he added, elbowing Ralph in the side.

Swallowing his fear, Ralph waited for Johnnie to leave. Once he had, disappearing behind a quilt used as a curtain, he turned to Rourke and whispered, “What exactly are we’re partners in?”

The look Rourke sent him seemed almost pitying. “Dinna worry, laddie, you’ll find out soon enough.”

1

Lesson One

“In all these things connected with love, everybody should act according to his own inclination.”

—The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana

Linlithgow, Scotland, December 1891

“I LEAVE FOR LONDON on the morrow.” The announcement made, Lady Beatrice Lindsey turned her attention to the carrot in her gloved hand and Princess, her sister’s grizzled pony, gobbling it as she spoke.

Ralph stole a glance at the blond beauty standing at the paddock fence beside him, her downcast gaze veiling her cornflower-blue eyes. For the first time since she’d arrived a week ago, Beatrice was avoiding looking at him. Rourke’s lovely sister-in-law had beguiled him since they’d first met in London the month before on Rourke and Lady Katherine’s wedding day. That he was a former felon turned semirespectable secretary and she the daughter of an earl placed his romantic hopes somewhere between dashed and doomed.

He dipped into the burlap bag of carrots he’d brought along and handed her another. “This is…news.”

Propping one foot upon the fence rail, he plucked at his corduroy-clad knee, privately considering why he should feel so very stunned. He’d known she must leave eventually—very well, imminently—but need it be so very soon? The Christmas week they’d spent together had been the happiest he’d known in some time, a long time—very well, ever. Growing up, Christmas had been just another day for him, another day for doing without. Whether holed up in the East End lodging house with his mum or the thieves’ den run by Johnnie Black, he’d never known what it was to have a tree or presents or a bed of his own from where those ubiquitous sugar plums might dance about in his dreams. Having survived for thirty years without such sentiment, really, why take up the burden of keeping Christmas now?

Beatrice Lindsey was why. Even with her lithe, long-limbed body swathed in the belted greatcoat she’d borrowed from her brother-in-law and her feet shod in a pair of leather riding boots that had seen better days, she was more beautiful than most women who’d spent hours preparing for a ball. Beyond her looks, there was a good deal more to her than the spoiled miss she still sometimes pretended to be. Her thoughtful demeanor, steady gaze and subtle but inherent femininity held his fancy where the more obvious charms of bolder, brasher women had worn thin. She was, he admitted, the woman with whom he’d become swiftly smitten and for the first time in his life, not in an exclusively sexual way. He’d hoped her Scottish sojourn would extend through the New Year at least—very well, indefinitely—so that he might discover where, if indeed anywhere, these fine new feelings might lead. Now, it seemed, that was not to be.

“Can you not delay until after the New Year? Twelfth Night in Scotland is something to be experienced,” he ventured, not because he truly thought he could alter the outcome, but because he’d never forgive himself if he failed to try.

She shook her head, the waning winter sun lighting her loosely braided hair like a halo. “I’m afraid not.” Brushing her gloved hands off on her coat, she turned to him and shook her head, the gesture slight but resolute. “I received a telegram from my father summoning me home. It seems my departure from Aunt Lavinia’s in the midst of the holidays has created quite a scandal.”

He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from replying that her father, the Earl of Romney, had created scandal aplenty with his whoring and his drinking and his gaming, the latter most especially. That he hadn’t managed to muster enough fatherly feeling to protect his not-yet-twenty-year-old daughter from the lecherous advances of his crony, Lord Haversham, obliging her to seek refuge in Scotland with her newlywed sister attested to a character every bit as black as that of any criminal of the East London underworld. Haversham—the very name was poison on his tongue. Ralph had never met the blackguard who’d dare lay lecherous hands upon his secret darling, but he’d never wanted anyone dead half so much.

Even though he sensed his was a lost cause, he wasn’t prepared to give up quite yet. “Give me leave to speak to Rourke on your behalf. I believe he may have some sway with your father.”

“Sway” was a discreet way of saying blackmail. To Ralph’s best knowledge, the Scot still held her father’s gambling marker, the very marker he’d put into play as a gambit to force Romney to give him the hand in marriage of his elder daughter, Katherine—Kate.

Bea whipped about to face him. Pleading eyes, the very blue of cornflowers, fixed imploringly upon his face. “Please, promise you won’t. After what I’ve just put Rourke and Kate through, I couldn’t bare to cause them further trouble.”

She was referring to her bringing Felicity Drummond along as her traveling companion. The cunning redhead was Rourke’s long ago mistress, a bit of history Beatrice hadn’t known. Once ensconced in the newlyweds’ household, Felicity had set her cap for Rourke, contriving to make it seem to Kate as though they were still lovers. Just a few days ago, the ruse was revealed and Felicity dispatched back to London to everyone’s collective relief.

He dropped the empty sack at his feet. “You had no way of knowing what Felicity had been to Rourke in the past, let alone what present mischief she meant your sister.” Despite the sad little life she’d led so far, he doubted a heart as pure and tender as hers could begin to conceive of evil on such a scale.

She shrugged, biting her bottom lip in that effortlessly sensual way that never failed to find him hardening. Seconds later, she shook her head, looking so young and lost that he ached to take her in his arms if only to comfort her. “Still, in future I must know better. I must do better. It was a childish fantasy to think I might avoid my problems simply by running away. Even if Father had not summoned me back, I still must make my peace with my aunt. It was abominable of me to leave as I did. I can only imagine how worried she must have been.”

Raised with no mother but her older sister, Kate, alternately neglected and bullied by her father, and most recently set upon sexually by his crony, Beatrice Lindsey still seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time fretting about the feelings of others. Swift as she was to forgive people their transgressions, she was far slower to forgive her own small sins. If he could have but one of his many wishes for her granted, it would be that she cease being so bloody hard on herself.

He stepped down from the fence and turned to her. “You are too hard on yourself, milady.”

She sent him a tentative smile. “So formal you are, Ralph.” Seeing the sparkle return to her eyes, knowing he was responsible for putting it there, felt both gratifying and thrilling. “Shall I go back to calling you Mr. Sylvester, then, or simply Sylvester?” The smile broadened, revealing the bedeviling dimple on the left side of her chin.

Captivated, he leaned closer, close enough that his shoulder brushed the side of her breast, a deliberate and dastardly liberty he refused to regret. Standing so close, quite alone as they were, he found it hard to care that she was an earl’s daughter or that Rourke would have his manly parts on a platter if he dared defile her.

Ralph dared, oh, how he dared. “I’d rather you didn’t. Mr. Sylvester makes me sound like a mad old uncle and Sylvester like a butler.”

Not that his situation was much above that. His elevation from valet to private secretary was a recent affair, more the result of Lady Kate’s household management skills rendering his old post obsolete than any refined ability on his part. No matter how finely cut his suits or highly polished his shoes, he was still a servant.

“Ralph it is then, for you don’t seem a whit mad and certainly you’re not old… Well, not terribly old,” she added with a grin, the latter bringing the dimple into even greater prominence.

“Ah, how cruel is youth.”

He pantomimed a knife thrust to the heart, the action not so very far from the mark. At times such as this, he was reminded of not only the more than decade difference in their ages, but also of how very much more he’d seen and done and lived.

“I will miss this and…you,” she said suddenly, her eyes and smile dimming.

Ralph dropped any pretense of humor, as well. “Once in London, what will you do? Haversham—”

“Do not worry on that score.” She cut him off with a brisk shake of her beautiful blond head. “Father may have called me back, but that does not mean I will return to his house. I will take myself to Aunt Lavinia, beg her forgiveness and confess everything as I should have done from the start. She is no great admirer of my father, even though she is his sister. Once she knows the truth, I’ve no doubt she will take my part.”

That she would find sanctuary with her aunt brought him relief, but he would have liked to insist upon more. At the very least, he would have liked to insist she accept his escort back to London, with a female from the household staff as chaperone, of course. Above all, he would have liked to insist she stay, not only through the holiday but indefinitely, forever. Unfortunately he had no claim upon Beatrice Lindsey, no claim and therefore no right to insist upon anything at all. In his thirty years, Ralph had never felt the want of social standing and money more keenly.

She folded her gloveless hands atop the fence rail, the nails bitten to the quick, the delicate knuckles chapped to pinkness. “This may well be the last time we find ourselves alone. We should say our goodbyes now, as simply Ralph and Bea.”

Ralph swallowed against the lump lodged in his throat. For a former con artist, mimic and master of disguise, he was having the very devil of a time hiding his feelings around her.

Too caught up to care, he reached across and covered her hands with his. “I don’t fancy saying goodbye to you simply. I don’t fancy saying goodbye to you at all.”

She nearly matched his five foot ten inch stance. Accustomed as he was to women looking up at him, he found he quite liked having this one look him in the eye. Even with goodbye less than a day away and his heart aching in anticipation, the prospect of all the sexual positions their equal footing would allow had him swelling.

“I will return, I promise. Only not as Kate’s little sister on the lam, but as a proper lady.” She let out a laugh for all that her eyes were swimming. “Why, I shall be so self-possessed, you shan’t recognize me, Ralph.”

God, but he hoped that wouldn’t be so. “I shouldn’t like to think of you as changed. I shouldn’t like to think of you as anything other than what you are at this very moment.” He swallowed, throat aching.

“You always see the best in me, Ralph. You cannot know what your friendship this past week has meant to me.”

He wouldn’t have believed it possible that a heart as hardened as his could feel so raw. “I am glad I could bring you comfort.” He reached for her hands, too caught up to care who might see.

Her gaze fastened on his eyes and slowly slid to his lips. “Oh, Ralph.”

Ralph lifted his hand from hers and laid it atop her shoulder. His other arm encircled her waist. She angled her face ever so slightly to the side and without so much as touching her, he knew their mouths would match perfectly.

“Say goodbye to me,” she said on a sigh. Reaching for his wrist, she drew his hand to her breast. “Beatrice.”

Furling his fingers over the sweet swell, Ralph doubted she knew what she was doing, how far afield she was allowing them to stray, but he did. How simple it would be to open their coats and shove up her skirts, to push her back against the fence rail and make her his. And yet he couldn’t. He couldn’t say goodbye to her any more than he could take advantage of her, not like this.

“Say goodbye to me.” Pressing into his palm, she pushed his muffler aside and nuzzled his neck.

It took the strength of Hercules, but somehow he managed to hold himself back. “No, I won’t. Not like this.”

A throat being cleared had them pulling apart. They turned their heads toward the stable from where Kate, Beatrice’s older sister, strode briskly down the bridle path toward them, her husband’s brindled mastiff, Toby, trotting by her side.

Rourke’s wife was a petite, pretty brunette with hourglass curves and sharp amber eyes that suggested she didn’t suffer fools. Casting a sideways look to the adorably flustered blonde beside him, her hair coming undone from the loosely moored braid, Ralph still found it hard to believe the two were related.

Kate sidled up beside them, smile tight and gaze keen as an eagle’s. “Bea-Bea, there you are,” she announced as though she hadn’t just seen them wrapped about each other like so much ivy. “And Princess, how fares my precious pony this fine day?” She pulled a carrot from her pocket and turned away to fuss over the horse. Mostly, Ralph suspected, she meant to grant them time to compose themselves.

The carrot devoured, Kate turned back to them. Settling her gaze on her sister, she said, “You’ve an early train in the morning. Sad as I am to see you go, we should get you packed.”

Flush-faced, Bea stepped away from him. “Of course.”

Kate gave a satisfied nod and linked her arm through Bea’s. “Once you’re packed, we’ll have Cook make us some tea and we’ll settle in for a cozy chat before supper.” She glanced Ralph’s way. “Of course you are welcome to join us, Ralph.”

Taking his cue, he backed away with a bow. “I shall leave you to make your preparations, Lady Beatrice, and to enjoy your final night with your family.”

Beatrice hesitated, biting at her bottom lip. “I… We shall see you at supper, shall we not?”

The hope in her voice sent his heart sinking, but mindful of his place he shook his head. “I’m afraid my duties prevent me from joining you,” he answered, the excuse not remotely true.

As a former felon, he’d been accustomed to sleeping days and working nights, but respectability had its privileges, a so-called normal schedule being one of them. Unless he and Rourke were traveling to inspect one of the many railway offices and stations in his friend’s ever expanding empire, his secretarial duties ended at five o’clock sharp, leaving his evenings free—and empty. Before Bea’s coming, he’d spent the time reading in his room—and wondering what the devil he might do with his life.

Kate nodded. “I shall have Hattie set another place in case you change your mind.”

Avoiding Bea’s gaze, he said, “I won’t, but thank you, milady.”

Arm locked with Bea’s, Kate turned to walk toward the castle. Beatrice, however, held her ground.

Blue eyes locking on his face, she swallowed hard, the ripple traveling the length of the white column of her throat. “I suppose this really is goodbye.” She extended her hand, which he couldn’t help but see was shaking.

He reached out, took it and squeezed the palm ever so slightly. “It is, but only until your next visit.” Having reminded her of her promise, he had no recourse but to release her.

She dropped her arm to her side. “Keep well.” Lower lip trembling, she turned to go.

He stood watching as she and Kate walked away toward the castle, their linked forms growing gradually smaller until they were finally one with the scene. The press of a wet muzzle against the side of his neck sent him turning away at last. The horse, Princess, fixed him with what he could almost believe was a look of sympathy.

He reached out to stroke the white blaze between the wide-set rheumy eyes.

“Goodbyes are the bloody devil, aren’t they, old girl?”

Say goodbye to me, Ralph.

Ever since his mother had walked out on him, Ralph had made it a point to never ever say goodbye. Still, in his heart, he knew it would be a long time before he and Beatrice Lindsey crossed paths again.

“REALLY, KATE,” BEA SAID, tugging her arm free and whirling on her sister as soon as they were out of Ralph’s hearing. “Did you have to whisk me away as though I’m a baby in need of my nursery nap?”

Kate turned to her, eyebrows lifting. “Is it a crime to wish to spend some time alone with my only sister before she leaves?”

“Of course it isn’t.” Kate’s hurt tone softened Bea, but only to a point. “But our spending time together isn’t what this is about and well you know it. Admit it. You don’t much like Ralph.”

Kate stopped in midstride, her great brute of a dog dancing about her booted feet. “That is not true,” she said, and the denial struck Bea as wholly sincere. “Ralph and Rourke have been best friends since they first met as boys in that horrid thievery house in London. According to Rourke, Ralph saved his life on more than one occasion. Despite how he downplays his role here as merely that of a secretary, the man’s a marvel for remembering facts and ciphering figures, not to mention cunning as a fox when it comes to negotiating railway rights with rival companies and charming Rourke’s stockholders to part with their purses and approve the new innovations in safety. Ralph always manages to hold on to his temper when my dear, hotheaded husband is about to lose his. I, for one, do not know how we would get on without him. And I shall never ever forget the very great part he played in tracking down Princess and bringing her back to me.”

Princess had been Kate’s childhood pony. According to Kate, the horse was her comfort in a household where their father bullied and ignored her and their mother mostly holed up in her room and wept. Not long after their mother died giving birth to Bea, their father staked Princess in a card game. As was so often the case, he lost. Over the years, Princess changed hands numerous times. The pony’s rotted teeth, scarred gums and crop-marked flanks were tragically telling. Ralph had been the one to find her. Acting on Rourke’s behalf, he’d employed his customary charm and cleverness to trace the sundry bills of sale to her current owner, a costermonger. Ralph paid the man off and brought the pony back to Kate in time for Christmas. Indeed, Kate had good reason to value Ralph and yet…

“But,” Bea continued. With Kate, there was always a “but.”

Kate blew out a heavy breath. “When it comes to women, charming rogues like Ralph Sylvester eat little girls like you for breakfast.”

Bea resisted the impulse to stomp her foot and thereby prove her sister correct. “I’m not a little girl. I’m a woman.”

Kate’s silence spoke volumes. Her big sister still regarded her as a baby chick not to be let to stray too far from the nest. Frustrating though that was, Bea couldn’t blame her. She had made mistakes, two very large ones. Following Lord Haversham away from the ballroom and into the cloakroom, ostensibly to help him fetch her missing wrap, was, in hindsight, a consummate act of stupidity. Had the maid acting as attendant not returned to discover them, the evening might have ended very badly indeed.

Likewise she’d let Felicity Drummond play her as though she were a violin. Bea still wanted to rip out Felicity’s red curls by the roots, but mainly it was herself at whom she remained furious. That she’d been so easily played was both shameful and sobering.

Ralph alone didn’t seem to think any less of her for her failings. The past was in the past, or so he said. Staring into his warm hazel eyes, Bea had found herself believing.

But Kate was correct on one score. Ralph was charming, dangerously so. The boorish bucks who roamed the ballrooms of London high society could take lessons in charm from her brother-in-law’s secretary. He made Bea feel things, big things, dark and dangerous things, things she feared that, if she stayed another week or even a day, she might not find herself able to hold back from exploring. Lowborn former thief though he admitted to being, Ralph was the most scintillating, dashing specimen of manhood Bea had ever set eyes upon. Since they’d first met in London on the morning of Kate and Rourke’s wedding, thoughts of him had occupied more of her waking moments than she’d care to count. She had, she admitted, been largely living in a fantasyland where she was the fairy princess and Ralph was her white knight, her prince charming and ultimately her lord and king.

Fueling those fantasies was the fact that Ralph didn’t seem to see her as a little girl, but as a woman. Back at the paddock, he’d certainly treated her as such. If only she weren’t so woefully ignorant of worldly ways, so patently parochial, she might have done more than guide his hand to her breast. Unschooled though she was, she fancied she’d stirred him. Had Kate not interrupted them, at the very least he would have kissed her, she felt sure of it.

“I am nineteen,” Bea persisted, steering the conversation safely away from Ralph Sylvester. “Most of my friends in London are engaged by now.”

Kate cocked a dark brown brow. “Speaking of engagements, do you mean to see that nice Mr. Billingsby when you return?”

Bea held back a groan. “I suppose I shall.”

The prospect of facing not only her aunt but also her plain-as-paper suitor was enough to make her reconsider staying on another week. And yet wasn’t Mr. Billingsby, so mild-mannered and steady, so conventional and well, dull, precisely the sort of husband that a girl—a woman—such as she might very well need?

Pulling back her shoulders, she forced herself to face the person whose love and esteem mattered the most. “You must believe in me again, Kate, believe that I’ve learned from my errors, for truly I have. I feel as though I’ve grown a lifetime wiser this past week alone.”

“A lifetime is a rather long time.” Kate wrapped a consoling arm about Bea’s shoulders. “What I do believe is that you are a bright, lovely young woman with a healthy curiosity and a great deal still to learn of men. As such, accept the advice of a sister who has lived nearly a decade longer than you have and put any romantic thoughts of Ralph Sylvester from your mind.”

Bea sucked in a sigh and held her peace. Put any romantic thoughts of Ralph from her mind.

Kate might as well ask her to travel to the moon.

September 1892, Nine Months Later

“WOOLGATHERING, RALPH?”

Rourke’s question pulled Ralph back to the present. Snapped back to consciousness, he wondered how long he’d sat at his desk staring off into space, his fountain pen dripping ink onto the draft of Rourke’s speech to railway shareholders, the latter lying forgotten on his blotter.

Ralph shook his head as if to rid it of cobwebs and slid the pen into its stand. “Forgive me, Patrick. From here on, I promise you my undivided attention. Now, where were we…?” He glanced down at the badly blotted paper on which they’d made but poor progress so far.

“The devil if I know.” Rourke blew out a heavy breath. “I can’t concentrate for the life of me, either.” He scraped a big, blunt-fingered hand through his unruly auburn locks and began pacing the carpet.

Ralph regarded the Scotsman with a mixture of pity and amusement. Whatever ailed his friend and employer, he’d lay odds it was of a domestic nature. When it came to his high-spirited wife, Kate, and their one-year-old daughter, Lucy, the otherwise iron-willed railway magnate turned mushy as porridge.

But then life had a way of creeping up on a man. In the course of the past decade, Ralph had softened himself. He’d become accustomed to sleeping in beds instead of camping in stairwells, to wearing custom-tailored suits instead of foraging clothing from rag-and-bone shops, and to taking his meals at a proper table instead of pulling pilfered market fare from the linings of his pockets. He’d not only lost his edge, he’d lost his desire to have an edge. Scalawagging was a young man’s sport, and he would be one-and-thirty on his coming birthday.

A life free from want was that very thing for which he’d scrapped, stolen and repeatedly lied. And yet now that he’d achieved it, he oftentimes felt like a wishbone at risk for being torn apart. He was a servant and yet more, a friend and yet less than an equal. Limbo, he supposed, described his place or lack thereof to perfection. And limbo’s shifting sands made for a bloody unreliable foundation upon which to build a life.

Glancing back over at Rourke’s furrowed brow, he judged that what the Scotsman mostly needed now was a friend. “Care to tell me why you’re hell-bent on wearing holes in Kate’s new Persian carpet?”

Scowling, Rourke stopped pacing long enough to push up the spectacles that were forever sliding down his crooked bridge of nose. “Kate’s breeding again.”

Ralph straightened in his chair. “So soon? But Lucy is scarcely weaned.”

Rourke flushed a shade of crimson deeper than his usual ruddy-cheeked hue. “I thought we were as yet safe. I should have taken greater care with her. I should have used…”

“A prophylactic,” Ralph offered, easing back into his seat.

Thinking of the tin of French Letters gathering dust on his bedside table, he felt his spirits slipping toward sadness. He hadn’t had a woman in nine months and he was hard-pressed to put his finger upon why. As always, he had a plentitude of prospective partners, including the housekeeper, Hattie, a handsome woman for all she was forty-odd and on the plump side from a recent pregnancy. Listing toward middle age though he was, his libido loomed as large as ever, a ravenous, thrashing beast he struggled to sate several times daily with naught but his own hand. In those straining, seeking moments, one woman alone took shape in his fevered fantasy.

Lady Beatrice Lindsey.

In the nine months since her leaving, he’d thought of her often, but heard from her not a word. Absurd though it sounded, those first few months he’d actually supposed she would write. But then her silence only confirmed what he’d known in his heart all along.

She was too bloody good for him.

Rourke’s voice, roughened with worry, had Ralph reining in his renegade thoughts. “Aye, and yet ’tis scarcely the way a man thinks to go about making love to his wife.”

“Pray convey my congratulations to Lady Kate…I do beg your pardon, Mrs. O’Rourke,” he added quickly. As easygoing as the Scot ordinarily was, he could be touchy in matters to do with his wife.

Rourke’s face went ashen. “Kate would have my head on the serving platter were she to know I’d let the cat out o’ the bag so soon.”

As you would have my cods if you knew what I was thinking of doing with her baby sister, Ralph mentally answered. Aloud, he said, “You wanted a fertile female, a good breeder and that is what you’ve got. Why not set your mind to accepting your good fortune and spawn a dozen more babes if you will? It’s not as though you’re wanting for rooms.”

Rourke was the only man of Ralph’s personal acquaintance whose home was quite literally his castle. When he’d bought the estate at auction several years ago, it was in near ruinous shape. Over the past year, Kate had used her remarkable household management skills and innate good taste to transform it into a true palace.

Ralph cast his gaze about the library, one of several recently refurbished rooms. Taking in the burled walnut chimney piece, Italian crafted furnishings, and the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the latter lined with volumes of the classics bound in cranberry-colored tooled leather, he had to admit his friend had done bloody well for himself. A good many of those books had been taken down and read or at least perused, including a certain Indian advice manual, The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana awaiting him in his room.

The ancient Hindu text, translated from the Sanskrit by the British scholar Sir Richard Burton a decade before was a nearly two-thousand-year-old treatise on how to make love to a woman. Ralph had found the book by chance a few weeks ago. He doubted his friend realized it was on his shelves let alone had gone missing. Then again with a railway empire, a beautiful wife who adored him and a rapidly filling nursery to his credit, Rourke didn’t seem to require the author Vatsyayana’s sage advice.

Ralph, however, could do with a bit of help.

Tamping down his envy, he rose, rounded the desk, and clapped his friend on the back. “You’re to be a father again. News such as this calls for toasting, not brooding.”

Rourke answered with a glum nod. “You’ve the right of it. It’s only that… Damn it to hell! I never meant to love a female so bloody much. If anything were to go amiss with the carrying of this child… Were she to be taken from me, I’d go mad. Aye, I’d go stark raving.” His voice faltered, and he cast his gaze away.

Ralph squeezed his friend’s slumped shoulder. “Pull yourself together, man. Women have been birthing babies since Eve bit into the apple. Your lady’s blood may run blue, but she’s still a fine, sturdy woman.”

Rourke raked his hand through his thatch of reddish brown hair yet again. At this rate, the poor bastard would be bald before the birthing. “I must take the greatest care with her while not seeming to hover. Kate hates hovering. And you know as well as I how obstinate she can be. If she thinks I’m trying to limit her liberty in any way…” He finished the thought with a shake of his head.

“Kate wants this baby as much as you do, maybe more,” Ralph replied, knowing he must stand as the voice of reason. “She’ll take care for the child’s good as well as hers, and sail through this pregnancy as she did the first and a good many more, I’ve no doubt.”

Rourke shoved fidgeting hands into his coat pockets, the garment in need of a good pressing for all that it had been pristine that morning. “I can’t begin to think of going through this again, at least no time soon. And now her sister’s come to stay the week. The last time the bothersome baggage visited was fair near our undoing. But this time she can make herself of use by entertaining Kate and keeping her quietly occupied.”

Ralph’s heart tripped. “Lady Beatrice is coming here?”

Rourke looked at him as though he’d grown a second head. “Not coming, she is here. Did you not know?”

Ralph shook his head, aware his palms had begun to perspire. “I did not.”

“You should come down to supper more often if only to keep abreast of the news. Aye, we, or rather Kate, asked her up for Lucy’s first birthday, which is tonight. She arrived a few hours ago. She and Kate have been holed up in her room thick as thieves ever since. I canna help but think there’s a cat soon to be let out of its bag.” Rourke’s gaze sharpened. “I remember you giving her riding lessons when last she was here.”

Ralph forced a shrug. “We only went out once before she was called home to London. By her father,” he added, feeling the old rancor rise.

He wondered if a like family drama was behind her present visit or if indeed she’d only come to celebrate her niece’s natal day. He wondered if she’d thought of him at all in the past nine months. He wondered if she was looking forward to seeing him again, at least a little bit.

Rourke cleared his throat, folded his former pugilist’s hands behind his broad back, and stared down at his toes. “I know your custom has become to take your supper in your room, but I could do with a bit o’ masculine support. Say you’ll sup with us tonight?”

Usually Ralph declined his friend’s invitations to dine. With a good book and a decanter of Scotch awaiting him in his room, family dinners where he was the sole single person, the token bachelor and third wheel didn’t present much of a draw.

But the memory of warm blue eyes, moist full lips and silken gold hair moved him to break with custom. “Yes, Patrick, I believe I will.”

WHY, I SHALL BE SO SELF-POSSESSED, you shan’t recognize me, Ralph.

Seated at supper later that night, Ralph studied Beatrice from across the silver-laden dining table, the gasolier overhead setting off the glinting gold in her hair, which she wore drawn into a loose knot at her nape, no “rats” or fake fringes of hair, no pads or combs, no artifice at all. Even with the Sevres porcelain epergne centerpiece of candles and hothouse blooms standing like a barricade between them, their eyes still managed to meet with fair frequency.

Dressed in a simple dusky rose-colored silk tea gown, she was even prettier than he remembered and he remembered quite a lot. One of the lovelier innovations to emerge from the Rational Dress Movement, the loosely constructed garment mimicked the medieval era with its simple, flowing lines, allowing for the wearer to remain uncorseted. The thought of spanning Beatrice’s slender, supple waist with his two hands, of feeling her firm flesh unfettered by any foundation garment set his cock stiffening and his body blazing.

Nine months ago, she’d been a woman-child, coltishly graceful, adorably uncertain at times. From what he could tell, she’d grown up indeed, wholly a woman for all that she tickled Baby Lucy’s belly, cleaned her plate like a country girl and teasingly remarked upon Kate’s “glow.” Ralph couldn’t have said whether Kate glowed or not. As always, he only had eyes for her sister.

“Ralph, is the Scotch broth not to your liking?” Lady Katherine—Kate—called to him from the far end of the table.

Aware of Beatrice’s gaze riveted upon him, he forced down a spoonful of the soup before answering, “On the contrary, I am savoring it immensely. You have changed your recipe, have you not?”

Kate flushed with pleasure. “You are discerning as ever, Ralph. I instructed Cook to add a bit of an India spice, turmeric. It’s costly, but one only requires a pinch and I think—hope—it affords that little dash of specialness.”

That little dash of specialness, indeed. Catching his eye, Beatrice plucked up her fan-folded napkin and blotted the corners of her mouth. Innocent though her downturned face might appear, he marked her shoulders shaking. The little minx was smothering a snicker! Relieved she hadn’t changed entirely, Ralph found himself battling a telltale ticklish twitching himself. God, but he’d forgotten how very good it felt to have her about.

The dinner stretched on, the conversation revolving around the guest of honor, Lucy, busy banging her spoon on the tray of her high chair. Besotted with the baby, Rourke and Kate scarcely seemed to glance Beatrice’s way. Ralph, on the other hand, couldn’t tear his gaze away. Still, it was a relief when the final course of fruit and cheese was cleared to make way for the birthday cake, a tiered and glazed monstrosity festooned with confectionery roses and pink sugar icing bows. It was altogether so unwieldy that the housekeeper, Hattie, had to roll it in upon a cart. Moist eyed and beaming, Rourke lifted Lucy into his arm and led a rousing rendition of the “Happy Birthday” song. Returned to her high seat, Lucy punched her tiny fist into the cake’s top tier.

“She takes after her da,” Rourke proudly proclaimed, scooping a spot of frosting off his daughter’s chubby cheek. “That’s my right hook, I tell you.”

Hattie, a mother herself, produced a towel and took charge of cleaning up the baby. Looking on, Bea shot an adorably naughty look her sister’s way. “What a pity Rourke’s clever photographer friend Mr. St. Claire isn’t on hand to immortalize the moment.” The blurred wedding portrait of a kicking Kate pinned upon Rourke’s lap, taken quite against her will, remained a tender topic in their household.

Kate picked up the cake knife and aimed a dagger look her husband’s way. “I believe Hadrian has immortalized quite enough moments in my family so far as I am concerned.”

Looking sheepish, Rourke sidled up to his wife’s side. “Och, Katie, I thought you’d forgiven me ere now.” He planted a smacking kiss upon her cheek, and then made a show of jumping back and covering his privates.

Kate flopped a sad-looking slice of cake onto a plate and paused to lick frosting from her finger. “Sometimes I think I must have two babies instead of one,” she said, then blushed fiercely as if belatedly realizing what she’d as good as revealed.

Beatrice rose from the table. Stepping over the dog, she made her way to her sister’s side. “Let me help you serve, Kate. At this rate, you’re as bad a butcher as Lucy.”

Feeling very much the outsider, Ralph looked on as though watching actors in a play. The laughter and the teasing, the private jokes and the shared memories were as alien and exotic to him as Vatsyayana’s translated book awaiting him in his room. Messy, chaotic and at times complicated, this was family life, he realized with a pang. Even before his mother had walked out on him, he’d never experienced it, not really. “Cake, Ralph?”

Ralph looked up. Beatrice had rounded the table to his side, a dessert plate in either hand.

Cake besmirched by baby snot and spit-up hardly seemed much of a treat, but given the pretty person offering it, he accepted with a smile. “Thank you,” he said, his gaze drinking in the sweet curve of her cheek, the lovely long column of her neck and the shadowed swell of her breasts where the gown’s simple square-cut neckline dipped ever so slightly.

She set the dessert down before him, and he caught himself thinking how very good that smooth, pretty hand would feel cinched about his cock. “I made sure to find you a piece that wasn’t squished.” He started to stand, but before he could, she slipped into the empty seat beside him.

“Squished?” he echoed, feeling his pulse pick up at her nearness. Her scent, jasmine, was wreaking havoc with his mind.

“Yes, squished—from the baby.” She forked up a bite of cake and smiled at him, not only with her mouth, but with her eyes.

The temperature inside him spiked yet another notch, and he slipped a finger beneath his starched shirt stock. “Oh, right.” He forced his gaze downward to his dessert plate.

One of the more pristine specimens being served, his slice boasted an intact pink rose atop. Would Beatrice Lindsey’s breasts be tipped in a like shade of pale pink or were her areolas and nipples more the coral color of ripe peaches? Roses, he decided, and took a bite.

“Hard as a bloody brick,” he said beneath his breath and only afterward did it strike him he wasn’t only speaking of the confection.

Beatrice laughed. The soft tinkling put him in mind of the set of wind chimes his mother had kept in the window of the last lodging house room they’d let. Drifting off to sleep summer nights amidst that makeshift music remained one of his gentler childhood memories.

Squalling from the end of the table announced that, so far as the guest of honor was concerned, the evening was at an end. The company set their napkins aside and rose. Hattie collected the cake-encrusted infant and carried her off to bed. The doting parents followed her out, the sleepy-faced dog bringing up the rear, but not before Kate announced they would reconvene shortly for coffee and a very special surprise in the library.

Secretly delighted to be without a chaperone, Ralph offered Beatrice his arm. “Shall we?”

She nodded and laid her smooth hand and slender forearm atop his sleeve. The frisson of awareness that light touch set off was almost alarming.

“Tell me, do I seem dreadfully grown-up to you?” She looked up at him through her lashes, the old shyness spiced with a knowingness that was refreshingly, intriguingly new.

“Dreadfully.” He steered them toward the dining-room door.

Her heeled slippers put them on equal footing, reminding him of all the many advantages being of a like height might bring when seeking to have sex standing. Feeling as though his flesh was afire and his clothes too tight, he led them out into the corridor.

The library was on the same level. They had to cross the minstrel’s gallery to get there. Moving them along at a slow stroll, Ralph pointed out the various improvements made since her last visit, shamelessly angling for more time alone with her.

Halfway through, she stopped and turned to face him. “Ralph?” Her cornflower-blue eyes lifted to his.

His heart skidded to a stop along with his feet. Remembering how her breast had felt, he swallowed hard. “Y-yes?”

One word from her and he’d gladly forgo duty and decency and even his friendship with Rourke. One word was all that kept him from opening one of the doors adjoining the gallery and pulling her within.

“You have a spot of frosting on your cheek. May I?” She moved to the front of him.

Deflated, he nodded. “Yes, thank you.”

She slid the tip of her forefinger into her mouth, whetting the digit. She hesitated and then reached up, swiping at the spot. “Sorry, I don’t have a handkerchief at hand.”

“I don’t mind,” he said. Indeed, had he suspected such a happy outcome, he would have smeared himself with the stuff.

Her upturned face brought their mouths in proximity. Were this another place and time, were they two very different people, he might have happily seized hold of her buttocks, lifted her high against his hips and taken her against Kate’s prized leather wallpaper.

“There, I’ve got it.” She stepped back, licking frosting from her finger and like as not the salt from his skin, too. “Now you’re perfect,” she added, her grave gaze traveling over him and, he fancied, lingering on his lips.

“Thank you…milady.” Even with nine months’ of shored-up fantasies involving every exotic sexual position his mind could fathom, he didn’t forget the gulf in their stations.

She tilted her face to the side, pretending to study the gilt-framed landscape lying just beyond him. “So formal you are, Ralph,” she said, reaching around him and touching the edge of the frame, her loose three-quarter-length sleeve falling back to reveal the shapely arc of a slender, white elbow. “Shall I address you as Mr. Sylvester then?”

He remembered her asking him the same question nine months ago and smiled. “I’d rather you didn’t.” He took a step toward her, his pulse thrumming and his cock brick hard. “It’s one thing for a married matron such as your sister to call me by my surname, but a beautiful unattached young woman doing so would have me feeling old.”

Like a lamp being turned down, the teasing light in her eyes dimmed. She stepped back, spoiling the moment.

“Yes, well, I suppose we should be getting on. Surely Kate and Rourke will have finished tucking Lucy in. I recall Kate telling me earlier about installing a back staircase connecting the nursery directly to the library and Rourke’s study. How extraordinary.”

“We can sometimes hear Lucy’s wails while we’re working,” he admitted, reclaiming her arm.

She brightened marginally. “I think it’s wonderful that Rourke is such an involved father.”

“I suppose,” he said, still too drunk on her scent to give much thought to fatherhood or babies or indeed, anyone but her.

Her face fell. They walked the rest of the way in suddenly awkward silence, Ralph wondering what he might have wrongly said or done.

Reaching the library, he released her with reluctance and stepped back for her to precede him.

“There you are,” Rourke called from the rose marble mantel shelf upon which several silver-framed photographs of Kate and baby Lucy commanded pride of place. “Och, Sylvester, you must have taken the lass the roundabout way.”

“Yes, we thought you two must have gotten lost,” Kate chimed in, sharp-eyed gaze darting between them.

Ralph did indeed feel lost, only not in the way Kate meant. For a handful of magical moments he’d lost himself in Beatrice Lindsey and the foolish fantasy they might somehow find a future together. But Beatrice’s stiffening beside him crushed that fantasy much as her niece had the cake.

“Lady Beatrice was catching me up on London gossip.”

He slanted his gaze to Beatrice, who’d slipped behind the camel-back sofa as though seeking to set some barrier between them.

Her hands plucking at the sofa’s curved back, she sent him a grateful smile. “Were it not for Ralph guiding me, I should have found myself quite lost,” she said brightly, a bit too brightly.

She left the furniture and floated about the room like a fairy, pausing from time to time to remark upon the handsomeness of the recently redone jade-colored walls decorated with white Chippendale scrollwork, the burled walnut Eastlake chimney piece and various other improving features. Nervous as a cat, Ralph thought, again wondering why. As much as he might want to believe he was the cause, he suspected it was another matter entirely.

Hattie entered, followed by a parlor maid in a neat lace-frilled cap, black dress and bibbed apron, the latter bearing a silver tray of champagne flutes. Ignoring the serving girl’s gimlet-eyed gaze—he’d turned her down for sex the other day—Ralph accepted his flute, wondering what more wanted for celebrating. The absentee birthday baby was tucked snugly into her crib, dreaming no doubt of the wondrous new discovery called “cake.” Rourke’s preferred libation was Scotch and no doubt in deference to her not so secret pregnancy, Kate had imbibed only lemon water all night.

Pushing away from the fireplace, Rourke raised his glass. “To our dear sister, Bea, who we are verra pleased to have with us on this happiest of occasions.” He turned to Bea who, along with Kate, had drawn up by his side. “And yet, it’s sad we are to welcome you back only to part with you so soon again.”

Part with you? Was Beatrice about to embark on some sort of journey? There was a great fashion these days for well-bred young women of means to go off on The Orient Express to Istanbul and back. He’d made a wager of sorts on that vogue sometime back, but like the majority of his wagers, it had never come through.

A broad grin split Rourke’s face. Addressing Bea, he said, “Katie only just told me your grand news.”

Foreboding hit Ralph like a fist. What grand news?

“If you and Mister…” Breaking off, Rourke turned to Kate.

“Mr. Billingsby,” she provided, setting her untouched champagne down upon the marble mantel.

“If you and Mr. Billingsby are half as happy as your sister and I, then it’s blissful you’ll be indeed.”

Ralph cinched his fingers about his flute and focused every fiber of his being on not snapping the fragile stemware in two. Around him glasses clinked, stopping in silence at his. Impervious to their stares, he knocked back his flute, emptying it in a single sparkling swallow, too bruised to care how coarse he must seem, too numb to taste the fine French bubbles as anything better than brine.

Saluting Beatrice with his empty glass, he asked, “When does the happy event take place, milady?”

She bit at her bottom lip but didn’t answer. No matter. She was as good as gone. For the second time in his life, a woman he loved was walking away from him. At least his mother had looked back. Since her announcement was made, Bea hadn’t bothered to lift her gaze from the floor.

Beaming, Kate answered for her. “In three weeks, our Bea-Bea will walk down the aisle as a bride!”

BACK IN BEA’S BEDCHAMBER later that night a hen party was underway, the festivities fueled by a fresh bottle of champagne of which only Bea and Hattie partook.

“Mr. Sylvester is looking well,” Bea ventured after what she hoped was a respectable interval from the chatter of weddings, honeymoons and babies. Seated on a tufted velvet stool at the mirrored dressing table and wearing a robe and night rail she would shortly shuck off, she stared at her reflection in the gilt-edged mirror, vaguely surprised she didn’t look as devious as she felt.

Head covered in curling papers, Hattie popped up from her perch at the foot of Bea’s bed and reached for the champagne bottle. Plucking it from its bucket of shaved ice, she topped off both their glasses. “Sinful handsome, you mean, and the pity is he knows it.”

Kate, likewise dressed for bed, picked up the chased silver brush and moved to stand behind Bea. Leaning back into the brushstrokes, Bea willed herself to relax. “Do you find him conceited, then?” she asked, heartily hoping their answer would be no.

Barring the few words they’d exchanged at supper and on their way to the library, she hadn’t spoken to Ralph Sylvester in nine months. Still, that he might be lording his looks over Hattie and the other female householders would disappoint her sorely. Nine months ago, he’d been the sole person in whom she’d felt she could confide her troubles.

She consoled herself that she’d done a great deal of growing up this past year. Casting aside her girlish, romantic-novel-inspired fantasies and accepting stolid Mr. Billingsby’s suit seemed proof she must be finding her adult footing at last. She’d circulated in society sufficiently to know that a gentleman’s swagger and dash often masked a host of sins. She didn’t want to end up as her mother had, leg-shackled for life to a drunkard and a gamester and a womanizer, no matter how fair his face. In the several years over which she’d had copious occasions to observe him, she’d never once seen her fiancé drink to excess or wager beyond what was fashionable. Her intended didn’t possess so much as a single cruel or rakish bone in the whole of his pallid, spongy body. That she would never be the Guinevere to his Lancelot, the Juliet to his Romeo, or the Elizabeth Bennett to his Mr. Darcy did indeed produce the occasional pang but alas, such was the price of security. Mr. Billingsby might stand out as the very antithesis of a romantic hero, but he was also a solid, buffering bulwark to which she might moor herself against the turbulent winds of time.

Still, must the sex be so bloody bad!

It wasn’t lust but pure practicality that had driven her to test the conjugal waters with her intended. Despite what ladies like her were brought up to believe, from dressing room gossip and her own exploratory readings, she’d become convinced that sex was the glue that held most marriages together. And so a fortnight before, she’d cajoled Mr. Billingsby into veering his brougham off the main road where he’d brought it to a jolting halt behind the hedgerows. Carefully choreographing had her guiding his fumbling fingers to loosen her bodice and then to press her back against the carriage seats. Chilled and chafing, her “sexual awakening” at his hands—his trembling, fumbling, sweaty-palmed hands—stood out as one of the most dispiriting moments of her life.

It likely hadn’t helped matters that she’d thought of Ralph Sylvester the entire time.

The mental picture of how he’d looked that night strolling into dinner, dapper in a black coat, black waistcoat, and starched white necktie secured with a gold fox-head pin, still had her fighting for breath. Her nine-month-old memory had not done proper justice to the chiseled perfection of his unfashionably clean-shaven features, the gleam in his hazel eyes, or the glint of his sandy-colored hair, which he wore longish and without whiskers.

To her secret shame, she’d spent many a night lying abed on her back, thighs splayed and hips lifting, sifting her fingers through those wavy locks in her mind. Even more lascivious imaginings had followed—Ralph’s slender but broad-backed body pressing hers into the mattress in the most delicious of ways, his lips lingering on hers, on the hollow of her throat, and then lower, the bliss of having her damp, straining flesh explored by his elegant hands, hands that would feel neither fishy nor fumbling, but stalwart and knowing and sensitive to her every secret desire and forbidden want.

Unlike Mr. Billingsby, Ralph would not fumble. He would not sweat. He would not climax with one great porcine grunt and then collapse into a boneless heap atop her. Unschooled though she was, she was sure of those things and more. Like the romantic heroes of the “penny dreadfuls” she’d been devouring for a decade, Ralph would be a magnificent lover, an expert tutor in the loving arts.

And a tutor was precisely what Bea needed!

The wretched episode with Mr. Billingsby had made it plain that one of them had best know what he—or rather, she—was about. The blind could not very well be expected to lead the blind. As badly as Mr. Billingsby had bungled the business of bedding, in fairness Bea hadn’t the foggiest notion of how to set any subsequent encounter right.

Who better to step into the role of her tutor than Ralph? With Ralph she wouldn’t have to feign attraction. She was attracted, abundantly so. In keeping her secret about Haversham, he had proven himself to be both discreet and her friend. As Kate had pointed out nine months before, he was not the marrying sort, which made him perfect for her plan. All she need do was persuade him to agree.

“Bea-Bea, are you quite all right?” Kate’s voice broke in on her musings. “You look flushed.” Reaching around, Kate laid the back of her hand upon Bea’s brow as she’d used to do when Bea was little.

“Almost feverish,” Hattie agreed. The pair exchanged looks of concern.

Exasperated, Bea broke in. “Will you two please stop fussing? I’m not feverish and I’m not a child.”

“’Tis a bride’s natural nerves.” Hattie eyed Bea’s half-empty glass. “More champers, ducks?”

“No, thank you.” Bea pushed her flute out of reach, fearful of imbibing too much for all that she was on her third glass and still sober as a judge.

Her nervousness more befitted a bride on her wedding night than a fallen woman about to fall even further. Still, it wouldn’t do for her to arrive at Ralph’s rooms drunk or to otherwise act the slattern. The success of her plan hinged on holding his interest, if not for the whole night, then certainly for several successive hours, long enough to learn what lessons he had to teach.

Hattie shrugged and sloshed more champagne into her own glass. “What were we talking of?”

“Ralph,” Bea put in, hoping she didn’t seem over-eager.

“Oh, right,” Hattie said, slurping more of the champagne. “Half the housemaids fancy themselves in love with him. Just last month he had me move him to the west tower’s turret chamber. Said he fancied his privacy and left it at that, but for sure ’twas so the housemaids would cease bothering him nights.” A hiccup echoed the pronouncement.

The west tower! The turret room! This was success beyond Bea’s wildest hopes and yet she couldn’t help feeling a bit sick inside.

“Are you saying women present themselves at his bedchamber door?” she asked, fighting her admittedly irrational jealousy.

Alas, so much for her knight in shining armor. But then, the Ralph she’d once fancied herself to be in love with wasn’t real, was he?

Hattie shrugged. “A few swigs of gin will send a randy girl tripping down a hallway but a trek to the west wing and then a climb up a creaky flight of stairs is best left to the bold. Wherever he takes his pleasure, he doesn’t take it here. Were he diddling one of the housemaids, mark me, I would know it.”

Relief washed over Bea. Ralph might not be a knight or prince precisely, but at least he didn’t go about “diddling” housemaids or tossing up the skirts of any Jane or Jenny who popped into his path.

Her respect for him renewed, she thought back to how quiet he’d seemed at supper, not at all the jovial Ralph of her memory. “It must be hard sometimes.”

“What must be, dear?” Kate asked.

The question took Bea aback, for she hadn’t meant to say her musing aloud. Even so, she was moved to make an honest answer. “Not knowing one’s place in life.” Despite the difference in their stations, she fancied she understood at least a little of how Ralph must feel.

Hattie snorted. “I’d say he has a rather cushy life all in all. A roof over his head, three meals a day and a salary that’s generous by anyone’s standards aren’t trifles to be sneezed at. Really, what more is there to want?”

Love, Bea thought, suppressing a sigh. Big, gorgeous, over-the-moon love.

“For all we know, he has a secret sweetheart to whom he’s remaining true,” she added, falling back into her fantasies yet again.

Nine months ago, Kate had warned her that Ralph ate “little girls” like her for breakfast. She hadn’t believed her sister at the time, but nine months’ wiser, she did now. Ralph was a lone wolf, an alpha male. Men such as he made for glorious lovers and inglorious husbands. Giving Ralph her body for the purpose of gaining the sexual knowledge to make a success of her marriage was one thing, but she must take the greatest care to hold back from also giving him her heart. Yes, her heart was the one part of her he absolutely could not touch.

Kate’s pointed gaze found hers in the mirror. “Bea-Bea, what a child you yet are,” her sister said. “It’s endearing, this naiveté of yours and yet it has me fearing for your future. Marriage, even a love match, is best entered into with eyes wide-open.”

“Pray don’t scold her, milady,” Hattie said, patting Bea on the back. “Our girl has a good heart and always has despite the old tantrums. I only hope Mr. Billingsby is mindful of what a little treasure he has.”

Bea felt a guilty twinge, but shoved it aside. She and Mr. Billingsby were promised, but marriage lines had yet to be spoken. And the plan she was about to put into play was as much for his sake as hers.

Lifting her hand from Bea’s shoulder, Hattie slanted Kate a wry look. “Speaking of eyes wide-open, do you wish to have The Talk with our lamb, milady, or shall I?”

The Talk? Oh, dear Lord! Swinging her gaze back to the mirror, Bea confirmed she wore her blush-burned cheeks like twin brands.

“That isn’t necessary,” she spoke up, mortified for all the wrong reasons. “I have spent considerable time in the country, if you recall.”

Kate rolled her eyes, clearly thinking her a ninny. “Men and women are not barnyard beasts. Lovemaking in marriage is meant to bring about procreation, of course, but it is meant to bring pleasure, too.” She hesitated, biting her bottom lip as if weighing her words. “Should you wish for time for you and Mr. Billingsby to become accustomed to one another, there are ways of postponing conception. Despite what anyone else may tell you, you are under no obligation to have a family straightaway.”

Bea hadn’t given a great deal of thought to motherhood beyond its inevitability. She would become a mother sooner or later and that was that.

“I brought you something.” Kate glanced back at the bedroom door as if to confirm it remained closed. Turning back to Bea, she dropped her voice to barely above a whisper. “Consider it an early wedding gift.” She reached into her robe pocket and brought out a tiny tin.

Taking it from her, Bea wondered why Kate had chosen this late hour for gift-giving when she was staying a full week. Anticipating jewelry—earbobs given the box size—she flipped up the latched lid.

A dozen or so tiny, folded, papery…things lay within. Gingerly, she plucked one out and set the box down. She held it up to the light. The balloon was narrow and elongated like a baby’s booty only longer and sheerer than any stocking she’d before seen.

“Roll it over your two fingers, only take care not to puncture it with your fingernails,” Kate cautioned.

Bea obliged, rolling the object over her middle and forefinger. It wasn’t a balloon or a stocking at all but a sheath made of some thin and slightly moist membranous tissue. The inside seemed to have been treated with some form of unguent for it slid slickly over her fingers.

Understanding struck. She jerked her head up and looked between her two companions, Hattie choking back giggles, Kate silent and steely-eyed.

“Is this what I think it is?” she asked, a telltale treble to her tone. If so, then Kate’s “wedding gift” could not have been better timed.

Kate cleared her throat. “It’s called a prophylactic or more commonly, a French Letter. Should you wish to prevent conception or disease—and I should hope Mr. Billingsby will be a sufficiently devoted husband to render the latter concern nil—sheath your husband’s member with one of these or have him do so before he enters you. It may seem strange, even awkward at first but one quickly adapts to the practice or so I’m told.”

“You don’t know?” Surprise sent the question slipping out before Bea had the chance to consider it.

The bright scarlet stain spreading over her sister’s face confirmed the answer as no. “After this baby arrives, Rourke and I have decided to be more…mindful of planning our family.”

Never before had Bea known Kate to be the novice. Growing up nine years apart, her big sister had seemed almost a supreme being to her. Currently Kate was a sublime wife, mother and household manager, as well as a published authoress of her first mystery novel. That Bea would get to try the prophylactic first, far sooner than Kate could know, wasn’t strictly speaking an “accomplishment”; still, it sent a prideful thrill shooting through her.

“Let us change the subject, shall we?” Red-faced, Kate picked up the brush. “Have you given any thought to how you shall wear your hair?”

“My hair?” Bea echoed, still playing with the prophylactic.

Scissoring her covered fingers to test the sheath’s strength, she tried imagining rolling it over Mr. Billingsby’s less than stalwart member. Instead images of Ralph’s face and yes, his member, or rather how she imagined it, crowded into her mind. How was it that the thought of touching her future bridegroom so intimately made her feel squeamish while the thought of touching Ralph made her feel quivery and hot?

“On your wedding day,” Hattie supplied.

Bea shrugged. “I suppose I shall wear it as I always do.” Her worries were all for the wedding night. Beyond being fitted for her gown and ordering her trousseau, she hadn’t given the day much thought.

“But you have such pretty hair,” Kate said, sifting her fingers through Bea’s loosened locks, which were abundant, but poker straight and so far impervious to any curling iron known to man. “And a woman is a bride but once. Though we were barely speaking, still Rourke says he’ll remember how I looked standing beside him at the altar ’til his dying day.”

Sighting her sister’s dreamy-eyed reflection, Bea felt a stab of envy. Rourke and Kate had both been too stubborn to admit it, but their marriage of convenience was a love match from the first. The best Bea could look forward to with Mr. Billingsby was companionship and, if she might manage it, satisfying sex. Still, security was not to be sneezed at.

She pulled the prophylactic off and dropped it back in the box. “The veil will cover it.”

“You’ll be a beautiful bride whatever you choose.” Stepping back, Kate began dividing Bea’s hair into sections for braiding as she’d used to do.

“Leave it loose,” Bea said. The tension within her had been steadily building ever since the announcement in the library. She felt as if the corners of her eyes were being pulled back to her ears.

Kate stepped back. “Very well, only don’t blame me when the maid can’t get a comb through it in the morning.”

Bea cast a guilty glance to the tin of French Letters sitting in open view. If her evening went as planned, she wouldn’t be laying her head all that terribly long. “I’ve been wearing it to bed undone for months now.”

Undone. How utterly perfectly that single word summed up her life.

2

Lesson Two

“Women being of a tender nature want tender beginnings.”

—The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana

RALPH SAT UP IN THE leather-upholstered wing chair in his bedroom suite, the single malt blazing a trail down the back of his throat, the light rhythmic rain pattering outside his window sounding like rifle fire inside his head. Three drinks in and he’d still to recover from the ridiculous notion that the whole world, his whole world, lay in rubble.

Beatrice Lindsey was to marry. By the month’s end, she would plight her troth with another man, a man by the name of Billingsby. Even as he strove to absorb the shock, he fought against feeling it. Kate’s baby sister was no baby at all, but a young woman approaching her majority. If he recalled her birthday as precisely as he did every other detail about her, she would turn one-and-twenty upon the first of February, an age by which well-bred young women were expected to marry.

Ralph’s twenty-first year seemed another lifetime. By then he’d already seen several years’ service as a pickpocket for Johnnie Black, a pony racer for Astley’s Amphitheatre and lastly a magician and mimic for myriad London variety saloons. His wasn’t yet a long life, but it had been a full one.

Sheltered though Beatrice was, last winter’s flight from London was but one of several proofs that she more than knew her own mind. If Mr. Billingsby was her choice, and it seemed he was, then the only course a rational man might take was to wish her happy and hope the sot possessed sufficient sense to appreciate his great good fortune.

When it came to Beatrice Lindsey, Ralph was not a rational man.

What he was, at the moment, was an angry man, and the target of his fury, irrational though it might be, was again Beatrice. She’d had him on first in the dining room and then in the hallway with her halting whispers and her contrived touches and her fraught, frequent glances. Those searching, soulful looks had melted him, made him think that, future or not, he must mean something to her.

But now he knew better. And yet something about that blessedly brief, bleak celebration in the library hadn’t smelled quite right.

Mr. Billingsby is a verra fortunate fellow, Rourke had later exclaimed, setting aside his champagne in favor of Scotch.

If Ralph lived a century, he’d never forget how Beatrice’s gaze had gone dead. It is I who am the fortunate one, she’d dutifully answered, but like a wind-up doll, she’d seemed only to be going through the motions.

Billingsby. The very name struck a note so sour that not even Rourke’s finest whiskey could take away the taint. Faceless and formless and innocent of any wrongdoing though Beatrice’s bridegroom was, still Ralph despised the bastard almost beyond the brink of bearing.

He drained his glass of the Scotch and briefly considered pouring more. But getting pissed wouldn’t do anyone any good, least of all him. Instead he set the tumbler aside and took up the book lying in his lap. Vatsyayana’s Kama Sutra was the sole companion with which he could tolerate sharing his otherwise solitary evenings. The world of the Hindu sage was an exclusively male domain that modernism had mostly vanquished. Yet pretending it still existed suddenly seemed a most comforting thought.

The knock outside his door was so soft that at first he mistook it for the rain. A second rapping, slightly louder, had him closing the book and eyeing the wall clock. It was almost midnight. If his nocturnal caller was another dim-witted housemaid, by God he’d have Hattie’s head. Still, for prudence sake, he laid the book facedown on the table before rising. Cinching his robe, he made his way over to the door.

He opened it partway, expecting giggles and gin-laced breath and cheeks roasted red from hours of working too near the fire. Instead a caped Beatrice awaited him on the other side. If wishful thought had been a tangible force, he might almost believe he’d conjured her from air.

“May I come in?” she asked softly, not exactly a whisper but near enough.

Ralph nodded. He opened the door the rest of the way and stepped back to admit her.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you.” Biting at her bottom lip, she whisked past him, her cloak hem brushing the tops of his slipper-shod feet.

“No.” Belatedly he realized he still held the door. “I was…reading,” he added. He closed the door and ushered her inside.

His sitting room wasn’t much—a settee covered in moth-eaten red velvet, a small wine table upon which he’d set his glass and book and a pair of armchairs upholstered in a fairly hideous Scottish plaid, all castoffs he’d foraged from the attic. The space suited his needs, but looking with fresh eyes, her eyes, he supposed it must seem impossibly shabby.

He gestured her to the other chair, but she shook her head. “I think better on my feet. But please sit if you wish.”

Ralph might be the son of a whore and a former pickpocket, but he prided himself on a gentleman’s manners. Remaining standing, he folded his hands behind his back, bracing his right hand about the wrist on his left, mentally manacling himself from doing what he desperately wished to do, which was to sweep her into his arms and kiss her until the Mr. Billingsbys of the world were obliterated from her brain.

Instead, he stood still, stock-still, and studied her, curious as to what, if anything, she wore beneath the cape. “I trust you weren’t seen?”

The likelihood of someone seeing her in this part of the castle at this hour of the night was remote, yet not unthinkable. With so many persons housed beneath one roof, one never knew who might be milling about.

“I shouldn’t think so.” She reached up with one slender hand, drew back the fur-lined hood, and shook out her lovely long hair.

It was obvious she had something to say to him, equally obvious that she was stalling. She wrung her hands. Small and white and slender, beyond her face they were the sole part of her body he could see. “I am keeping you from your rest.” She started toward the door.

Cock hard, he stepped in front of her, blocking her path. “You are keeping me from nothing.” Now that she was here, setting aside his anger and betrayal required no more effort than closing the cover on the contraband book. “Fancy some tea? I have a spirit lamp,” he added, rather foolishly. He had a spirit lamp, but then so did everyone else.

She hesitated and then shook her head. “No, please don’t bother.”

“It’s no bother, but if you’re quite certain—”

“Quite,” she broke in, cutting him off.

Silence fell between them like the heavy velvet theater curtains he recalled from his performing past. For several minutes, the clock’s ticking and the rain’s pattering and Ralph’s blood roaring through his ears were the only sounds to break the heavy silence.

“I know you must think me brash in coming here like this,” she finally managed to get out. “But I assure you I have thought the matter through most carefully, and I see no other course.”

She looked so adorably uncertain, so soberly serious that despite everything, he found himself fending off a smile. “And what matter might that be, Lady Beatrice?”

“I wish for you to tutor me.”

The pronouncement gave him pause. Book read and street smart though he was, he’d had scant schooling. What fractional formal education he possessed he’d picked up from Salvation Army classrooms where the free soup, not the lessons, had been his draw.

“Tutor you in what subject?”

She drew a deep breath and slowly exhaled it. “I wish for you to tutor me in…sex.”

BEATRICE REACHED UP, her hand working down the queue of hooks fronting her cape with remarkable speed. Coming to the end, she shrugged her shoulders. The cape slid off. Rich, red velvet pooled about her slender ankles, leaving her naked as a newborn, a newborn goddess.

Like a dragonfly caught in amber, Ralph couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t do more than stare. She was beyond beautiful, spellbinding, her blue eyes dark in the dimmed light, her smooth skin opaque. Her hair was a curtain of pale silk, the straight locks bringing to mind not golden sunshine but silvered moonbeam as befitted a creature of the night. The vision put him in mind of an angel he’d seen in a church’s stained-glass window on one of the handful of Sundays he’d gone to worship with his mother. The sight of all that entombed beauty had made him sad. He remembered praying for a way to rescue the beautiful angel and set her free.

Staring at Beatrice, longing filled him, not only physical desire but a soul-deep craving that bordered on aching. He wanted to set Beatrice Lindsey free—from her father, her sister and most of all herself. He wanted to be the one to show her just how good life outside the sanctified temple of society’s rules and expectations could be. He wanted to tear down the barriers of her current constraints and build her a palace large enough to accommodate the wings she would need to soar.

He wanted, he realized, to tutor her not only in sex but in life itself.

She firmed her chin and pulled back her shoulders. Her gaze, both defiant and uncertain, locked on his. “Come now, I’m not so very bad…am I?”

She punctuated the question with a shrug which did intriguing things to her breasts. Small, rounded and tipped in palest pink, they were just as he’d imagined. Her nipples stood out, hard, slightly darker pink points that put him in mind of roses while the buds were still quite closed. It was too early to tell whether she was aroused or simply chilly from the draft. A bit of both, he presumed.

He shook his head. “No, but I am.”

Ralph closed the space between them in a single stride. Beatrice let out a sob and opened her arms. Though he hadn’t laid so much as a finger upon her, he would wager his small pension she was ready to receive him.

“Beatrice, oh, Beatrice.”

It required a Herculean effort and one that drained every whit of his will, but he did the difficult, near to impossible right thing.

Planting a hand on either slender upper arm, he held her away from him. “Good God, girl, what the devil are you about?”

Her face crumpled. Blast but she was going to cry.

He wagged a finger in her face. “No crying, do you mind me? Not a single tear or I’ll set you out in the hallway as you are.”

The roughness in his voice seemed to work. She firmed her mouth, sniffed and then nodded. “Right, no crying.”

Backing away, he bent and scooped up the cape from the floor, his gaze aligning with her mound, the musk making his mouth water and his cock further thicken.

Straightening, he shook out the garment and, reaching behind her, settled it on her slender shoulders. “For the love of Christ, cover yourself.”

She obliged. Looking both embarrassed and relieved, she turned her attention to refastening the hooks. Ralph shook his buzzing head. Rourke might love him like a brother, but he’d also skin him like cattle were he to find them out. Shagging little sisters counted as a cardinal breach of the manly code.

Duly covered, she looked up at him, one corner of her beautiful mouth edging upward. “In case you’re wondering, I’m ruined already.”

He stared into her unrepentant eyes, wondering if, as in the gallery earlier, she might be playing some game or worse. “You’re soused, aren’t you?”

He recalled her drinking sparingly of the supper wine and scarcely touching her celebratory champagne, but perhaps she’d imbibed more liberally than he’d thought. It was hard to say. Her breath didn’t smell of alcohol. Far from it; her scent put him in mind of the freshness following a springtime shower.

She shrugged. “Hattie and I drank more champagne in my room, but in truth she had the lion’s share.”

“Mad, then?”

That time she paused. “Overwrought perhaps, but mad, I shouldn’t think so. And I meant what I said, every word. I want you to tutor me in—”

He held up a hand, cutting her off. If he heard “sex” even one time more from those luscious lips, he couldn’t account for the consequences.

“Should you not wait to explore any further intimacies with your bridegroom?”

Biting at her bottom lip, she shook her head. “Sadly, Mr. Billingsby is not as skilled in managing these matters as one might wish.”

Ralph felt his spirits lift. Weighing his words with suitable gravity, he said, “I am sorry to hear it.”

The devil he was. Her admission of her fiancé’s failings was balm to his bruised soul. Beatrice Lindsey might have had her first time with another man, a man with a ridiculous name best befitting a goat, but at least Ralph had the satisfaction of knowing the sex had stunk.

“In fairness, he did make every attempt to be gentle. Barring that most unpleasant moment—” she paused, shivered, and pulled a face “—the encounter wasn’t painful so much as mortifyingly awkward, quite…dispiriting.”

“Dispiriting?” he repeated, wondering if he might have misheard. Harkening back to their last leave taking when she’d boldly laid his hand upon her breast, he wouldn’t have pegged her for frigid.

She paused, and then nodded profusely. “Yes, dispiriting captures the sentiment exactly.”

“Most men of your social station keep mistresses.” He hated to be the one to explain this to her, but really, someone should. “Rourke is by way of a happy exception,” he added both because it was true and because he feared her sister’s fairy-tale union might have given her a false view of the majority of marriages. “Once you give your husband an heir and a spare, he’ll likely let you alone.” Indeed, most of his mother’s clients had worn wedding rings.

“But I do not wish to be left alone, abandoned in my marriage bed,” she exclaimed, the desperate look returning. “My wish, since you force me to put it plainly, is to experience sexual pleasure with my husband,” she added almost, he fancied, as though her fiancé was an afterthought. She bit at her bottom lip, pulling the tender-looking flesh beneath her pretty top teeth in such an unconscious yet totally tantalizing way as to make Ralph grateful, profoundly grateful, that he wore a robe rather than trousers. “Mr. Billingsby afterward admitted to having been a virgin, as well. So you see, ours was a case of the blind leading the blind.”

The blind leading the blind, indeed! Ralph smothered a less than gallant laugh. Virginity couldn’t be helped, he supposed, and yet the picture emerging of Beatrice’s fiancé was that of a milksop who couldn’t begin to manage a woman.

The devil perched upon his shoulder prompted him to press, “Can you be more specific?”

A pink splotch broke out on either high-boned cheek but to her credit, she didn’t look away. “Once he…spent himself, he collapsed atop me and lay immobile for a good many minutes. I fear his constitution may be less than vigorous.”

“I see,” Ralph said, his humor fading.

His poor, beautiful Beatrice. How dreadfully disappointing her first sexual experience had been. He only hoped the oaf hadn’t hurt her. She looked so sad and lost he could scarcely restrain himself from reaching out to hold her.

Brightening, she sent him a grateful smile, the same blindingly brilliant smile she wore following climax in his fantasies. “Yes, you do, don’t you? I’d hoped you would. One of us must take the reins of conjugal relations in hand, and that responsibility, it seems, will fall to me.” Her smile dimmed. “But I cannot very well teach Mr. Billingsby what I do not know myself. You comprehend my dilemma, do you not?”

“The blind leading the blind, yes, I believe I do.”

“Thank you.” She fretted her bottom lip, and Ralph felt himself swelling thinking of all the ways that very pretty mouth might be put to use. “I wish for you to tutor me in sex, Ralph. And no worries, I am more than willing to meet your price.”

Ralph felt his mouth fly open. “My price!”

She answered with a brisk nod. “Owing to a series of tidy bets I placed at The Downs last season, I have money, gobs of it. Well, not gobs precisely, but two hundred pounds, more than sufficient for one night’s work.”

One night’s work! For the span of a few hammering heart beats, he stared into the pale oval of her perfect face and willed himself to hate her. His mother had been a whore. Former thief though he was, he’d yet to sell himself that way.

He supposed he should be accustomed to indecent proposals by now. Men such as him, who’d lived rough but cleaned up shiny attracted a certain sort of woman—bored, rich and neglected. At least Beatrice seemed to consider him a step up from the gamekeeper or gardener. He did, these days, work indoors.

The irony was he would have done her for free. Hell, he would have paid for the privilege. The money she offered was a pittance, not that she’d know. She was too unschooled in the world beyond her salons and soirees to realize what commodities such as sex cost. Even if she’d offered him a king’s ransom, he’d cut off his hand before taking it.

If he possessed so much as a grain of sound sense, he would show Lady Beatrice the opposite side of his door immediately and find some way to banish her not only from his rooms, but also from his brain.

But Ralph had always been more lucky than wise. And he’d never wanted any woman as he wanted Beatrice. Beneath his desire lay fear. If he didn’t agree, she might well decide to seek tutelage elsewhere. The next man she propositioned might not be careful with her or discreet. Hell, he might not be clean. Blackmail, syphilis, rape—the host of dire possible consequences had his heart thundering and his palms sweating. It also steeled his resolve.

Beatrice Lindsey was looking to get herself seduced and she was even willing to pay for the privilege. Most men in his position would consider the bargain well met. A beautiful, eager almost virgin was his for the having, and all he need do was stay hard and breathe. Staying hard was the easy—inevitable—part. It was the breathing he must make a point to remember.

“I accept but on one condition.”

She met his gaze head on. “Name it.”

“Proper tutelage cannot be accomplished in a single night. It will require the full week at the very least.” If he was to sell his soul, he meant to exact its worth.

She hesitated, sliding her tongue over that very full, very pink bottom lip. God, that mouth alone might drive him mad. “But I only have the two hundred pounds.”

“More than ample,” he answered swiftly, swallowing his distaste.

“In that case, we have a bargain.” Smiling, she extended her trembling hand.

Ralph held back from taking it. “To be clear, once you step foot within this chamber, you will place yourself completely in my hands, subjugate yourself entirely to my will. Missish modesty has no place within these four walls. I will treat you as a woman, not a girl and most certainly not a child. You already know your own mind. I will teach you to know your own body just as fully. No pleasure will be off-limits, no act of lovemaking too shocking, too outrageous or too forbidden to forgo.” He steeled his voice to a schoolmaster’s sternness or rather how he imagined a schoolmaster might behave. “You must forget the so-called rules entirely. Within the boundaries of this room there are no rules. There is, however, a guiding principle and that, my dear, is pleasure. Can you do that, Beatrice? Can you surrender yourself to pleasure, to me, for the next seven nights?”

“I will try.” She firmed her chin and her voice. “I will do better than try. I will!”

Her fervor was almost religious in its zeal. One would have thought she’d just volunteered to roll bandages for wounded soldiers or to spoon up soup at one of the East End’s Salvation Army kitchens.

Fighting a smile, he composed his features into a somber face that would have served a barrister or better yet a judge. Unlike schoolmasters, barristers and judges were two occupations with which he could claim considerable firsthand account. “Excellent. Then we are agreed.”

“You’ll take me on, as your pupil?” The tentative hope in her voice would have caught at his heart had he not already closed off that most inconvenient organ.

Resolved to play the part of the perfect scoundrel she seemed to suppose he was, Ralph grinned. “Yes, Beatrice, I believe I will.”

Brightening, she didn’t miss a beat. “Marvelous. I brought these.” She reached into her cloak, brought out a tiny tin box, and held it out for him to take.

Ralph didn’t have to open it to know what lay inside. “You brought your own prophylactics?” he blurted out, horrified she didn’t trust him to take care of her.

She bobbed a brisk nod. “Will you not sheath yourself so that we may…get on with the business?”

“When the occasion presents itself, I shall. I possess a full tin of my own.”

Her face fell. “So you do diddle the housemaids after all?”

Ralph hadn’t “diddled” so much as a single housemaid since he’d entered Rourke’s employ. When his friend first acquired the castle several years ago there had been a widowed pub mistress in Linlithgow who’d been generous with her pints and her favors. But his visits had fallen off for no particular reason beyond not caring to bother. He hadn’t had a woman in more than nine months. But his past paramours were scarcely any of Beatrice’s business. She was, after all, the one of them about to wed.

He shrugged. “Given your chosen subject, a monk would make a very poor tutor, do you not think?”

She nodded. “Yes, of course.” Her high forehead furrowed, making her look momentarily older than her not quite one-and-twenty years. “Shall I take off my cloak and lie down?” She glanced toward the sofa. Stuffed with horsehair and narrow of seat, it was a thoroughly uncomfortable piece.

Her question caught him off guard. Good God, did she expect him to pounce like an animal? Foreplay, he more than suspected, was one of the subtleties her fiancé had seen fit to circumvent.

Ralph was determined to be tender with Beatrice whether she wanted it or not. “Mind that you are the pupil here and leave the lesson in my hands.” He stepped closer and slid his right foot between her two slipper-shod ones. Reaching up, he brushed the curve of her bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. “You have a beautiful mouth.”

Her gaze slid away. “Th-thank you.”

He pinned her chin between his thumb and forefinger and willed her to look at him. “There is no need to thank me for a simple statement of truth.”

Indeed, hers was a mouth made for kissing, many kinds of kissing. A mouth Ralph resolved to tease and titillate, to sample and savor. A mouth that one day soon he meant to see rimming his cock.

But it was only their first lesson.

He leaned in, angling his face to hers, letting her become accustomed to their closeness. “I mean to teach you well, Beatrice.” He brushed his lips over hers.

She shivered. “Ralph, I—”

“Hush, no more talking, no more thinking at all for the time being,” he ordered, feeling his cock thickening at the prospect of leaving all such cumbersome logic behind.

Sliding his tongue along the seam of her lips, he savored her petal-soft texture and champagne-laced breath, teasing her back and forth, again and again. His waiting was rewarded with her sudden sharp breath, the low little moan sending her sagging against him. Wrapping his arms about her waist, he slowly worked his tongue inside, touching the tip to the ridged roof of her mouth, the bottom row of her perfect white teeth and finally her tongue. He stopped there, gauging her response, constructing a mental catalogue of what she seemed to like best.

Clearly she liked this. She reached up and wound her slender arms about his neck, the cloak opening partway. Her breasts pushed against his chest, making him mindful that beneath the cloak she was as naked as he was beneath his robe.

Ralph took advantage of her raised arms to unfasten the cloak. He came to the last of the hooks and slid the garment from her shoulders without her seeming to register its loss. He glided his gaze over her, savoring the pretty picture she made—breasts, small, high and rose-tipped; a lovely long waist and slender legs that seemed to go on forever. Women as a rule liked being looked at, and in Beatrice’s case his admiration was in no way feigned. She was quite perfectly beautiful as well as gloriously willing. Based on what she’d shared of her first time with the milksop, he would have expected clenched thighs and a board-stiff body. Nothing could be further from the case. So far he’d scarcely done more than kiss her and already her nipples stood out, taut twin pink peaks.

He slid a hand from her breast down the length of her, stroking her belly and lower. Kneading her crisp curls, he felt his swollen cock leaking. “Did you ever climb trees when you were little?”

Lazy-lidded eyes met his. Had they been on the streets, that distracted look would have been his cue to snatch her purse and run. But he had dearer spoils at stake. And he had no intention of running anywhere.

“Once, I think. Not really. Kate was always the one of us playing out-of-doors. I preferred staying inside with my dolls.”

He slid his other hand down her spine and cupped her ass. Shaping the firm lobe, he brought her flush against his erection, letting her feel him, letting her know. “Bend your leg and brace it upon my waist,” he breathed into her hair. “Yes, that’s the way.” He slid his hand to the crease of her knee, locking it in place.

“Is it really possible to have relations in this position?” she asked, shifting against him so that he was obliged to reach down with his free hand and check to make sure his unsheathed cock remained covered.

Stroking her, he said, “Were I to lay my hands just below your buttocks and lift you and were you to oblige me by cinching your legs tightly about my waist, we could have vigorous congress with but a wall as anchor. Does that intrigue you?” Her widened pupils and moist, parted mouth told him it did, but he wanted to hear her say it.

“Yes,” she admitted in a breathy voice. “Yes, it does.”

Sticky moisture slid down the side of him. Of the two of them, he was likely the least in control.

To cover his discomposure, he summoned his sternest, most professorial tone. “In that case, ask me for it. Ask me for it, Beatrice, and when you do, mind you say ‘please.’”

“You want me to…beg you?” Whetting her dry lips, Beatrice was torn between offense and a strangely dark thrill.

“Sex is a dance of sorts,” Ralph explained, his one hand petting her most intimately, his other fixed firmly upon her bottom, and what might only be his…member pulsing against the inside of her one open thigh. “And in this dance, I am master.”

Meeting that steely-eyed gaze in the semidarkness, Bea sensed he meant to take their arrangement, their lessons, most seriously indeed. And that was precisely what she wanted—wasn’t it?

She opened her mouth to reply she knew not what. Before she could say anything, he bent his head to her breast, his mouth closing over the tip, his tongue laving the nipple, a sweet, sweet antidote to the swollen ache. At the same time, his stroking hand slid lower still, raising a trembling shiver.

“That feels nice,” she whispered, tightening her grip about his neck and cinching her leg more firmly about his waist, the craving coiling at her core. “Better than nice—it feels so very good.”

He lifted his head to look at her. “I’m glad. I want you to feel good.” Gaze locking on hers, he found her with his fingers, sliding the digit in and out. Warm liquid drizzled the inside of one sensitized thigh, sending his taut muscles thrumming. “Oh, Ralph.”

He withdrew his digit. To her shame, she whimpered, even begged, this time without having to be prompted. “Please, oh, please,” she whispered, uncertain for what she asked, trusting him to know, to take care, to satisfy.

His eyes told her he knew what she needed even if she did not. He found some heretofore undiscovered part of her, a tight little nubbin she’d once viewed with her hand mirror, and began circling it with what must be the pad of his thumb.

“You like this, do you not?” His breath was a balmy breeze that stirred the damp hair at her temples, his strumming hand the instrument of her physical salvation and moral doom.

“Oh, yes.” She swallowed hard, wondering at how her throat might feel so parched when the space between her thighs felt so very wet.

Hot chills skittered over her. Perspiration gathered at the back of her bent knee. Her sex throbbed with a building, budding ache.

Stroking her nether lips, he whispered into her ear, “Tell me what else you want.”

Desperate to reach the release she’d never before known, she reached down between them, encircled Ralph’s wrist, and steered him back to her center.

“Where you touched me before…in small circles, it felt—” She stopped there, the glorious sensations too grand for words.

She didn’t have to explain. Clearly Ralph knew what she needed better than she did. He found the nexus of her need and recommenced the slow, rhythmic rounding. Aching need crested toward crescendo. Random tingles transformed to a steady staccato throbbing. She was close to experiencing her first sexual climax, closer than she’d ever before been, so very close she could catch the scent of it in the musky air and taste it on her tongue.

She covered the top of his strumming hand with her own. “Please, please don’t stop.”

“I won’t stop.” As if to prove it, his plucking finger picked up pace, sending her sex humming.

The climax broke over here like a storm, the contractions striking fast and furious. Like a tree struck by lightning and split in half, she felt the shuddering run through the whole of her—belly, back and buttocks, fingers and feet.

Burying her face in the salt-flavored flesh of Ralph’s neck, she drank in the scent of sweat and lemon seed soap and screamed and screamed and screamed.

BEA LOWERED HER CRAMPED LEG. Her foot touching the floor triggered a painful pins-and-needles pinging. She lurched against him.

“Careful.” He caught her easily, his arm a steadying anchor about her naked waist.

Forced to cling to him, she felt her former embarrassment returning. “My leg is asleep.”

“So I see. Hold on to me.”

With his free hand he covered her with the cloak and then walked her over to a chair. Reaching it, he sat her down and knelt at her feet. He reached for her foot and began kneading the arch.

“Ooh.” Bea winced as the needling spiked.

“Better?” He slid his massaging hands upward to her calf.

Staring down onto the top of his bowed head, the wavy locks still bearing the furrows from her fingers, Bea couldn’t bring herself to answer beyond a nod. The sudden lump lodging in her throat felt as big as a boulder. Despite the most intimate act in which they’d only just taken part, his tending of her seemed infinitely more personal, almost…tender. “Ralph?”

“Hmm?” As if lost in his task, he didn’t bother looking up.

“Do you mean to…that is will you…enter me?”

Still working her leg, he shook his head. “I will not.”

Hugging the cloak about her, Bea felt the sting of his rejection like a backhanded blow. Mr. Billingsby’s reaction had been dispiriting to be sure, but this was humiliation swept to soaring, dizzying heights.

Addressing his crown, she said, “I know I’m not a beauty like my sister.”

The current fashion favored females with curvy tops and bottoms and tiny, cinched-in middles. Kate was blessed with such an hourglass figure. Bea, in contrast, was shaped like a stick.

This time he looked up. Their gazes snagged, and his massaging hands stilled though he yet cradled her foot. “No, you are nothing like your sister,” he agreed.

Bea felt a sob bubble in her throat. Choking it down, she pushed up from her seat. “Well, now that is settled, I should go.”

Only Ralph refused to release her. “What you are is breathtakingly beautiful and utterly exquisite.”

Tears of gratitude dampened her eyes. “Then why do you not desire to—”

“I desire to do everything with you.”

“Everything?”

He nodded, the stark need sketched on his features affirming he wanted her as she did him. “Yes, everything.”

“Then why…”

His gaze swept over her face. “It is late, you have spent the day traveling and the servants will begin stirring in another few hours. We have six more nights.”

“But I still want…” Mortified, she bit her lip and let the sentence trail off.

“Anticipation plays a large part in sexual satisfaction.” He grinned up at her, once more the consummate rake. “In the interim, I want you to go back to your room and practice pleasuring yourself.”

“But I’ve never…” Ashamed, she let the sentence die.

Rubbing her arch, no longer tingling, he lifted a brow. “Pleasured yourself?”

She hesitated. “Not…successfully.”

Before the dispiriting episode with Mr. Billingsby, she’d launched multiple attempts. She’d ended each session frustrated and sore.

He set her foot gently down and stood. “A woman must understand how to satisfy her own desires before she can satisfy those of a partner.”

He offered her an arm up, his gaping robe revealing perspiration-damp curls, perfectly sculpted pectorals and the brownish pink disc rimming one nipple. Relief at knowing he still wanted her brought a swift return of desire. Suddenly, she wanted to rip off that robe and lap his salt-slick skin, draw his nipples into her mouth and see just how hard her suckling might make them, drag her nails and lips and teeth across his leanly muscled chest and torso and…

“I will try.” She reached out a shaking hand and wrapped her fingers about his wrist.

He brought her to her feet and swung her toward him, so close that she could taste the smoky peat of the Scotch he’d drunk on the breath blowing across her lips, feel the heat of his gaze like fire on her flesh. “Think of self-pleasure as your first homework assignment. There may well be a test when you return tomorrow night.” He winked.

Bea relaxed, as well. “So you mean to have me back, then?”

“Come at nine o’ clock and make sure you’re punctual.” He looked down to his wrist, which she still gripped, and then back up at her, gaze gleaming. “I have a most intriguing lesson in mind.”

DAWN LIGHTS STREAKED THE SKY by the time Bea crept over the threshold of her bedchamber and pulled the door quietly closed. The flagstone floor felt like an ice block beneath her thinly soled slippers, the chamber’s chill beckoning her to bed. On her way, she couldn’t resist stopping before the dressing glass. Turning up the globe lamp, she regarded her reflection.

The eyes meeting hers in the mirror were wide and clear and shining despite her having been up since dawn the previous day. But it was her swollen lips and flushed body that betrayed the change in her as she trusted Ralph would not.

Her first climax. What a mad, marvelous miracle it was! And to think Ralph had used no more than his hand whereas Mr. Billingsby’s entire person had not begun to bring about such a torrent of sweet, savage release.

But then Mr. Billingsby had never once stroked or kissed her breasts. Nor had he parted her thighs ever so gently and used the pad of his thumb to catapult her to mad, over-the-moon ecstasy. Likewise, she very much doubted it would occur to him to drop to his knees and rub her cramping feet.

Charming rogues like Ralph eat little girls like you for breakfast.

What a pity Ralph wasn’t a marrying man, an even greater pity that she should, even after tonight’s impromptu lesson, still fantasize that he might turn into one. But then confounding fantasy with reality had always been her flaw. Growing up, she’d pretended that her mother wasn’t dead after all but a fairy princess living in a castle in the sky. Her father wasn’t her real father, but a wicked troll who’d captured her and Kate. All they need do was bide their time until their respective handsome princes turned up to rescue them. Simple.

But grown-up life didn’t work like make-believe. Ralph might resemble the handsome prince of her girlish daydreams, but along with being her friend, he was also a former thief, a charming womanizer, a rogue. She wasn’t really in love with him. She couldn’t be. Loving Ralph would be blatantly stupid and after all the stupid mistakes she’d so far made, she couldn’t afford another.

In the spirit of prudence, she hung her cape back inside the wardrobe lest Hattie remark upon why, in the middle of the night, she had taken it out. Shivering, she walked over to the turned down bed and slipped beneath the chilly sheets. Pulling them up to her chin, she settled in, her recently sated body throbbing to full, awakened life.

Beneath the covers, she found herself with her fingers. Only for the first time in memory she felt no guilt, only a tremulous excitement she now recognized as arousal. Retracing the motions of Ralph’s finger—even thinking of those small, slow circles had her throbbing—she concentrated on conjuring her tutor’s handsome face, his eyes especially. No longer cast adrift in a sea of bottomless wanting, she felt the pleasure building as she’d always supposed it should, cresting toward some invisible crescendo, a golden moment she’d yet to fully comprehend but craved again all the same. In her fantasy, her slender finger became Ralph’s blunter digit, the blankets atop her the weight of his leanly muscled body lying atop hers. She could almost feel the warmth of his breath striking the side of her throat, the soft press of his lips as he trailed heated kisses over her body, a body he’d blessed with the word exquisite. And all the while, his gaze never left her.

Watching eyes. Hazel eyes.

Ralph’s eyes.

She squeezed closed her eyes and came and came and came.

3

Lesson Three

“Men and women, being of the same nature, feel the same kind of pleasure.”

—The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana

BEA SLEPT IN LATE the next morning, but once awake, she made a point of going down to breakfast if only to keep up appearances. Greeting Ralph over buttered toast and tea was a daunting prospect, and yet her week-long stay included not only nights but days, too. She couldn’t expect to avoid facing him in the bright light entirely.

Descending the new central staircase Kate had ordered put in, she followed the aroma of sausages and buttered eggs to the breakfast room. She poked her head inside the open entryway, absurdly disappointed to find only Kate, Rourke and the baby within. No Ralph.

Stepping inside, she summoned what she hoped was a sunny smile. “Good morning.”

“Good morning.” Kate paused in spooning what must be mashed peaches into Lucy’s mouth and looked up. Eyes widening, she said, “My, how pretty you look.”

“Do I?” Self-conscious, Bea bent to the baby, chucking her beneath her dimpled chin. “Not nearly as pretty as this little peach, I’m sure.”

Prejudiced though she no doubt was, her niece was a pretty child who so far exhibited her mother’s fine features and her father’s dramatic coloring, the very best of both worlds. Running a finger along Lucy’s satin-smooth cheek, Bea found herself imagining what her future offspring with Mr. Billingsby might look like. Pale-skinned, light-haired and light-eyed with a chin that could do with strengthening, her fiancé was best described as nondescript. Were she to have babies with Ralph, on the other hand, they couldn’t be anything but beautiful. Mentally conjuring their blond and sandy-haired, hazel-and blue-eyed brood, she felt a lump lodge in her throat.

Rourke dragged his gaze from his plate. “I didn’t think you city lassies ate breakfast,” he said with a wink.

She smothered a smile. There was a time several years ago when Bea had harbored a trifling tendre for her sister’s brash, barrel-chested, big-hearted Scots suitor. His stocky, solid frame and twinkling gaze had seemed to offer the masculine comfort and security for which she’d been searching all her life. But from the moment she’d first set eyes upon Ralph on her sister’s wedding day her girlish crush had died a swift and irrevocable death.

“What rubbish,” Kate broke in, rolling her eyes. “I’m a city lassie as you say and I’ve eaten breakfast all my life…barring the first few months of pregnancy, that is.” The greenish cast to Kate’s complexion and the untouched plate of buttered toast before her confirmed this was indeed such a time.

Bea studied her sister and sighed. Even in the midst of morning sickness, Kate stood out as a classic beauty. To keep their father’s creditors at bay, she’d posed as a Professional Beauty or “PB” for Rourke’s photographer friend, Hadrian St. Claire. Her image still graced the cartes postales sold from St. Claire’s London studio, only now the monies made funded a charity to benefit the East London poor.

If only Bea might put herself to some such worthy task. Passably pretty in a blandly British way, she wasn’t sufficiently original to stand out as a beauty or sufficiently scholarly to be one of those plain but terribly clever women who presided over literary salons. Unlike Kate who had a happy marriage, a beautiful baby daughter and now her novel writing to fulfill her, Bea had yet to find any particular area of expertise, beyond fabricating her foolish fantasy world.

But after last night, success seemed in sight. She could excel at sex, and sex, she was convinced, was a bigger bit of marriage than most women of her class were raised to believe. Nervous though she’d started out, once her “lesson” began in earnest, she’d melted beneath her tutor’s artful touch like butter sitting out in summer sunshine.

“Did you sleep well, Bea-Bea?” Kate asked, reaching over to nudge her still seated husband.

“Of course she did,” Rourke answered for her. He pushed his chair back from the table and rose, sketching Bea a brief bow. “It’s the country air,” he announced, shooting another wink Bea’s way.

Neither he nor Kate could possibly know how very sleeplessly she’d spent her first night beneath their roof, but Bea felt herself blushing nonetheless. Lest Kate spot her guilty face, she made a beeline for the sideboard. Striving for normalcy, she picked up a plate from the stack and began filling it with deviled kidneys, ham, kedgeree and eggs cooked three ways. Lastly and to please Kate, she filled a compote dish with Kate’s put-up peaches and clotted cream of which her sister was justly proud.

“Used to city life as she is, I wonder she could sleep amidst all the quiet.”

Bea whipped about, a triangle of toast dropping off her plate.

Ralph emerged from the butler’s pantry. “Good morning.” Though he greeted the table at large, Bea fancied his gaze found hers first.

Rourke turned to the newcomer. “Gracing us with your presence for a second meal, Sylvester? Och, but this is a rare honor.”

Recovering, Bea looked between the two men. Rumpled and coatless, Rourke appeared as though he’d emerged from the bottom of a rag bag. Ralph in contrast was impeccably turned out in a camel-colored frock coat with velveteen lapels and tight-bottomed trousers, every seam and hair in perfect place.

Ralph grinned. “I’m glad you’re mindful of it, Patrick.” He bowed to Kate and then crossed the carpet toward Bea.

Heart hammering, Bea counted the steps it took him to reach her.

“Good morning, milady.” He used the toe of his wing tip to slide the toast beneath the buffet and then walked over to the table.

Bea followed him over and put her plate down. “Thank you,” she said, taking her seat in the chair he held.

“You are most welcome.” He slipped into the shield-back chair beside her. “I trust you slept well?”

“Like a baby,” she said tightly, laying her napkin across her lap. Really, it was very bad of him to tease her at the table. She glanced across to his empty place. “Aren’t you breakfasting?”

Knowing hazel eyes met hers, bringing to mind the previous night and the promise of all the naughty lessons she’d yet to learn. “I’m saving my appetite for later.”

Light-headed, Bea reached for the teapot.

“Allow me,” Ralph said, intercepting her. She started to demur when he added, “I must earn my keep, after all.”

She sat back. “As you wish.”

He poured hot tea into her bone china cup. Beneath the table, his free hand landed upon her leg.

Bea started. Had she been sipping tea already, surely she would have scalded herself.

“Cream, milady?” he asked, lifting the silver pitcher, and the gleam in his gaze made “cream” seem a wicked word indeed.

Shivering, she nodded. “Yes, please.” Determined to appear as normal as possible, she picked up her knife and fork even as he kneaded her knee.

He set the cream pitcher down and reached for the sugar bowl. “Do you take one lump or two?”

“I take none, actually.” She picked up her teaspoon. “I believe I am sweet enough.”

“I believe you are,” he said beneath his breath, sliding his hand upward to her thigh.

Liquid warmth congregated at her core. Even though layers of clothing lay between them, the insides of her thighs began to tremble.

Clanging announced her spoon’s striking the floor. Bea felt her face spike from blush to full-on flame. “I am so clumsy this morning,” she announced for the benefit of the room.

Ralph’s fingers curled about her knee, holding her in place. With his free hand, he reached across to the vacant place setting and stole the spoon from it.

Somehow he managed to lift up her petticoats and dress. His fingers toyed with her garter, sending wet warmth splashing her inner thigh.

He handed her the utensil. “Milady.”

“Thank you.” She grabbed the spoon and used it to stir her tea—vigorously.

From the head of the table, Kate asked, “Have you yet tried the peaches and clotted cream, Bea-Bea? The fruit is tinned, of course, but the cream comes from the estate dairy.”

Ralph turned to Bea, a smile playing about his lips. “I can vouch for the fruit being most succulent with or without the cream.”

His hand slid to her core, palming her through her bloomers. Even without the luxury of looking down, she knew she was beyond wet, drenched, in fact. Thank goodness she wore a petticoat, as well; otherwise she might find herself worrying over the possibility of leaving a telltale spot upon the cushion.

He traced the undergarment’s slitted crotch, teasing her curls and nether lips through the damp cotton, drawing both her desire and her indignation, a peculiar pairing of feelings that brought her to the cusp of coming.

Setting her jaw to better bear it, Bea refused to break. “I am sure I will find them delicious though I’m quite certain I will prefer them with cream.”

Two can play at this game, Mr. Sylvester.

A quick glance to the head of the table confirmed Kate was busy feeding the baby and Rourke with feeding himself. Confident that only Ralph watched, she set the spoon aside and ran her index finger along the bowl’s rim, then captured some of the clotted cream on the tip.

“Hmm,” she moaned, bringing her finger to her mouth. “I cannot seem to get nearly enough.” Snagging Ralph’s suddenly stark gaze, she slid her finger farther into her mouth and sucked the cream from the tip.

Ralph swallowed hard. His teasing hand fell away and he snatched up his folded and heretofore untouched napkin. Dropping it over his lap, he displayed a look that was decidedly discomfort.

“Would you care to try some, Ralph?” Bea asked, offering him the dish and smothering a victorious smile.

Ralph adjusted the napkin to better cover the bulge at his lap. “Thank you, but for the moment I believe I’ve had as much as I may manage.”

RALPH DIDN’T COME DOWN to dinner that night. Like as not, he considered that appearing at a third family meal might arouse suspicion. Even so, Bea couldn’t seem to stop fidgeting.

Pushing her untouched turbot about her plate, she finally asked, “Is Ralph not joining us?”

“Ralph’s dining with us is by way of being the exception, not the rule,” Kate replied.

Rourke reached for the carafe of lemon water and refilled Kate’s glass and then his. “Aye, ’tis a rare occasion that brings him down for supper.”

Feeling Kate’s gaze on her, Bea forced a morsel of the perfectly cooked fish between her lips. “Lucy’s birthday.”

Kate’s trill of laughter had her looking up. “Hardly.” Her gaze alighted on the infant quietly busy with breaking apart a dinner roll into what must be a thousand crumbs. “No doubt Rourke will be cross with me for saying so, but Ralph, dear friend though he is, is not really a baby person.”

Bea had suspected as much. Still, the confirmation sent her spirits sinking. Alas, her fantasy brood of sandy-haired, hazel-eyed children must be summarily dispatched. When would she learn that, beyond the bedroom, fantasy and reality rarely mixed?

Next to her, Rourke set down his glass with a slight slam. “Kate is halfway to being right. ’Twas your coming he came down to celebrate.”

Startled, Bea asked, “Mine?”

He nodded. “Aye, when I told him you’d come, he couldn’t accept my invitation to sup swiftly enough,” he added, winning a poke in the ribs from his wife.

Bea felt her mood lifting and her mouth fighting a silly grin. Ralph’s regard for her wasn’t only another of her fantasies after all. It was the genuine article. They had been friends nine months before, and they were friends still. Once she wed Mr. Billingsby, perhaps she need not give Ralph up entirely. They could never again be lovers, of course, but their friendship need not necessarily fall away. Even during the nine months apart during which she’d deliberately held back from corresponding, hoping to give her feelings for Mr. Billingsby a properly nurturing soil in which to grow, Ralph had never been far from her thoughts. Until now, she hadn’t allowed herself to consider just what a gaping hole removing him from her life would leave.

Dinner ended, they retired to the parlor. Sitting captive beside Kate on the settee, Bea covertly watched the wall clock from atop the pages of the Wilkie Collins novel she pretended to read. Counting down the minutes remaining until nine, she felt like a jack-in-the-box poised to pop. Fortunately, Rourke had his bespectacled beak buried in a stock report, and Kate was likewise too immersed in the mystery manuscript she was editing to remark on her restlessness.

Kate’s early-stage pregnancy made for an early retiring household. By the time the hallway clock showed half past eight, her sister was yawning behind her hand.

Kate replaced her manuscript pages in their folder and rose. “Poor hostess that I am, I’m afraid I must seek my bed. Will you excuse me?”

Also rising, Rourke cast an apologetic look at Bea. “Even were Kate not in a family way, we keep country hours here.”

Kate nodded. “The evenings here must seem deadly dull to you after the season in London.”

Bea shook her head, hoping her relief didn’t show. “Not at all,” she answered with feeling.

The previous night’s lesson had been the most stimulating, most exciting night of her life. That she had six more lessons still left to her made evening, and nine o’clock especially, her very favorite time of the day. Yawning extravagantly, Bea got up as well, kissed Kate good-night and rushed back to her room.

At five minutes to the ninth hour, she put on her robe, cracked open her bedchamber door and peered out into the thankfully vacant hallway. Creeping out, she made her way to the west wing and Ralph’s rooms. She found him waiting in the sitting area, one hand braced upon the mantel. Bathed in firelight, he had on his dressing gown, as well. From the previous night, she knew he wore nothing beneath.

“We missed you at supper,” she said, thinking how transparent she must seem. There was no “we,” only her. The civility, contrived though it was, also was honest. She had missed him most dreadfully.

“Did you?” He untied the robe and turned toward her. It was clear, abundantly so, that he was naked beneath.

Bea drew a deep breath and ran her gaze over him. Dusted by light brown hair and dappled by firelight, she couldn’t fathom a man’s body being more beautiful. And from the juncture between his thighs the heretofore hidden part of him stood out from its nest of dark curls, long and thick and straight as a spear. Casting her gaze downward, she felt her flesh tingle and heat. Her reaction confirmed what she’d long suspected about herself, suspected since her menses had first begun, signaling all sorts of strange bodily stirrings.

Beyond her birth, she wasn’t a lady at all.

A true lady would feel fear. A true lady would feel some trepidation at the very least. A true lady wouldn’t feel anything close to what she felt: a deep, primal stirring. The dispiriting encounter with Mr. Billingsby was fast fading to a blur at the back of her mind. Based upon it, and a childhood spent largely in the country, she had only the vaguest of notions of how Ralph’s…thing must function.

As if reading her mind, he snagged her gaze and asked, “Would you like to learn how a man’s body works?”

Bea couldn’t wait to discover, starting with touching him. He was so swollen the stretched skin looked almost shiny in the fading firelight. She imagined he must feel, if not soft exactly, then silken. And yet he stood out so firm and straight, there must be strength there, too, and force and yes, maleness…

Hanging back at the door, Bea licked her suddenly parched lips. “Yes, yes, I would.” Catching his inquiring look, she thought a moment and then added, “Please.”

Ralph flashed her a winsome, white-toothed smile. “Excellent.”

Bea’s thoughts raced and her breathing stalled. She’d left her tin of French Letters behind in her room, mindful that the previous night he’d assured her he had his own. Bea was both relieved that he was careful and madly jealous of any woman with whom he’d previously partnered. A man did not keep a tin of French Letters on, presumably, his bedside table simply as some sort of modern decoration. Pretty as those tins were, their contents served a most practical purpose. Ralph must have a mistress, perhaps more than one though it didn’t sound as if she or they lived beneath Rourke’s roof. But then practical, clever Ralph wouldn’t wish for any romantic complications. And yet wasn’t complicating his life precisely what she’d done?

“May I ask you a question before we…begin?”

He bowed his head. “You may.”

“Were I not to wed within the month, would you still—”

“Fuck you?” he finished for her, his gaze locking on hers.

Beatrice lifted her chin, refusing to be cowed by the crudity. “I was going to say ‘tutor me,’ but yes, I suppose that was what I meant.”

“I can’t say for certain.”

“That’s very honest of you,” she answered, equal parts disappointed and relieved.

The very last thing she needed once she wed was to be compromised—or tempted—by a former flame. Their private lessons must end with the week. To carry on would compromise any chance of remaining friends. Still, she liked to think that she wouldn’t be entirely easy for Ralph to forget.

His gaze captured hers. He lifted a broad-backed hand to hail her, a hand capable, she knew, of creating a great many pleasurable sensations. “Take off your robe and come here.”

Bea hesitated. Wishing she’d drunk more of the supper wine, she untied her sash and slid the garment off. Like Ralph, she was naked beneath. Remembering he’d seen her already, she pushed away from the door, willing her wobbly legs to carry her. She stopped a few paces in front of him, her senses filling. He must have bathed and shaved for her. The scent of lemon seed soap was strong on his skin and his jaw showed no glint of stubble.

“Would you like to touch me?” His downward gaze left no doubt as to his meaning.

She touched the backs of three fingers to her mouth, which she realized had fallen open. Until now, Mr. Billingsby’s member was the only human adult male’s she’d seen and though she’d suspected he was but modestly endowed, she hadn’t understood just how modestly until now.

“A confident woman does not hesitate,” Ralph chided. “A confident woman knows her own mind and confidence in the bedroom can be a most alluring trait. A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will do. I repeat—would you like to touch me?”

She opened her mouth to answer yes. Only then did she realize she was sucking at her lower lip…like a harlot.

Then again she had the rest of her life to be a lady or at least pretend to be one. She had only this one week to be her true self, to be a woman. “Yes, yes, I would…please.” She drew a deep breath and held out her hand.

THE SIGHT OF THAT SLENDER, smooth-palmed hand reaching for him was nearly Ralph’s undoing. Nearly.

She parted his robe, and her mouth fell open. “Oh…my.”

Ralph followed her saucer-eyed gaze downward. He was heavily engorged and thoroughly thick, the slit of his head slippery wet and welling with want.

Gently, she encircled him with her hand. “You tell me a woman must understand her own desires before she may satisfy those of her partner, did you not?”

He nodded. “So I did.” The little minx was using his own lesson against him and in so doing, rapidly reversing their roles.

“Then yes, I want to touch you…here.”

Here. Ralph smiled to himself. She might be conquering her reticence by leaps and bounds, but her sexual vocabulary still wanted for broadening.

Her thumb tracing the circumference of his cock head had him catching at his breath. Jaw set, he managed to say, “It’s called a penis or a cock if you prefer, and I believe you comprehend its function a great deal better than you credit.”

She nodded sagely. “Well, I have seen horses breed.”

Ralph groaned.

Bea blushed, a pale pink stain that spread from her cheeks to her slender white throat and the tops of her beautiful shoulders. “What is it? What have I done wrongly now?”

“Nothing, only… Suffice it to say, it’s not every man who can maintain his confidence when his member is being compared to that of a…stud horse.”

She hesitated and then joined him in the joke. “I suppose you have a point.” Tentatively she stroked the side of his shaft. “You are quite beautiful here. And compared to the only other male member I have seen, Mr. Billingsby’s, quite broad and long.”

Ralph bit back a groan. “I realize that the purpose of these…sessions of ours is to promote conjugal bliss between you and your intended, but do you suppose you might refrain from mentioning his name in the course of our intimate relations?”

“Yes, of course.” She stroked her hand along the length of him, making him want to groan for an entirely different reason.

Fighting for control, Ralph went on, “Regardless of how endowed he is or is not, a reasonably sensitive and skilled lover should be capable of bringing his partner to satisfaction.” Remembering he was supposed to be teaching her something, he thrust into her palm. “It works like this only…inside you.”

Startled eyes flew up to his face. “And that produces a sensation that is…pleasurable?”

He nodded. “Provided the man employs it properly, yes, it does.” As if reading her uncertainty, he added, “Though it is not your first time, still I mean to be very careful with you. But if you are having second thoughts or misgivings about our…arrangement, then this would be the time to voice them.”

His gaze on her face, he forced himself to stay very still, so still he scarcely registered that he breathed. She closed her hand and held him, her slender fingers furled about the base. If she drew away and left him now, he wasn’t entirely certain what he would do.

She shook her head. “No second thoughts.”

Ralph released the breath he’d been holding.

“You’re so beautiful here and everywhere else,” she whispered, lifting her face to kiss him even as she stroked the moistened tip with her thumb. “Does this feel all right?”

Biting back a groan, he managed, “It feels better than all right.”

“Am I doing it properly, then?” Her siren’s smile told him that despite her inexperience, she knew exactly what she was about.

In the throes of his need, he almost laughed. “Yes, though the word proper doesn’t exactly come to mind. Exquisite, more like, though if you keep stimulating me as you’re doing, I’m going to lose control. I’m going to climax.”

Bridged brows greeted that statement. “That’s the point, isn’t it?”

“Not yet. Not if I’m to please you, too.”

“But you are pleasing me. Touching you pleases me.” She hesitated. “I am curious what it might be like to…kiss you there, as well.”

Ralph could almost believe his heart stopped beating. “Have you ever taken a man’s member into your mouth?” he asked, already assured of the answer.

“No.” She shook her head. “Do men enjoy being kissed that way?”

Ralph nearly choked. “Yes, they—we—enjoy it very much.”

“Then I want to learn.”

Ralph swallowed hard. “Kneel at my feet.” Even though he was bare and the room cold, he’d never felt hotter in all his life.

She released him, but only for the handful of seconds it took for her to slide down to the floor. Seeing her beautiful face, now eye level with his waist, had Ralph’s heart pumping apace with his cock.

Looking down onto the crown of her golden head, her hair sweeping over one shoulder to expose the creamy arc of jaw and throat, remorse struck him. Whether she accepted it as a lesson or not, what he was about to have her do amounted to taking terrible advantage of her.

“Beatrice, you don’t have to do this,” he said, reaching down to help her up.

“I know that.” Her lazy-lidded gaze lifting to his reflected remarkable self-assurance. “I want to.” Ralph held in his breath as she guided him inside the warm, wet cavern of her mouth, her lips slipping over him like a warm, wet glove. Sliding him back out, she smiled. “Hmm, you taste nice. Delicious even.” Her eyes drifted closed again, long lashes brushing the tops of her cheekbones.

She was awkward at first, finding her bearings, finding her way. Aside from offering an encouragement or two, Ralph declined to direct. Instead, he held on to the edge of the mantel shelf and held back her hair to keep it from falling in her eyes. The tender gesture was a first for him, he realized. But then the lovely woman kneeling at his feet wasn’t just anyone. She wasn’t only his pupil, whatever that might mean. She was his heart’s desire, the woman he’d loved from afar for nine long months, who by some stroke of fortune had granted him the gift of herself for seven, now six, bittersweet nights.

Closing in on his climax, he began to withdraw from her with regret. Covering him still, she looked up at him with hurt eyes.

He shook his head, wondering if she had any clue as to how grievously she tempted him. “I am going to come. I am going to ejaculate into your mouth. Is that really what you wish?”

Her eyes looking up into his dared him to be wicked. And selfish. And yes, dirty as he’d never before been with any lover less experienced than him.

She slid him out of her lips long enough to say, “Then come. Come in my mouth. Only stay with me.” As if to drive her point home, she dipped her head and drew him even more deeply inside, massaging him not only with her mouth, but what must be the muscles of her throat.

“Beatrice.” He sank his hand into her heavy hair and fought for what remained of his self-control. “Get up.” Brooking no argument, he stretched down a hand to help her to her feet.

That time she obeyed. She started toward the bedroom. On the brink, Ralph caught her about the waist. “Here. Now,” he said, turning her back toward him. With his free hand, he reached into his robe pocket for the prophylactic he’d had the forethought to place there for just such an opportunity.

He handed it to her. “Put it on for me.”

Beyond any titillation that her touching him might bring, rolling on a condom might well be one of the more practical lessons she learned from him. If she and the milksop husband decided to pace their progeny, at least one of them ought to know how to prevent conception.

She hesitated and then took it. Her fingers brushing him had turned a telltale cold. Watching her roll the sheath over him, her beautiful mouth pursed in concentration, the swell of her perfect breasts flushed pink, he couldn’t wait so much as a moment more.

“Time to learn tree climbing.” He grabbed hold of her waist and lifted her against him. “Wrap your arms about my neck as you did the other night and both your legs about my waist.”

She obeyed, her slender arms winding about his neck, her thighs anchoring to his hips. Kissing her, he carried her over to the wall. She was light as a cloud and pale as the moon and he couldn’t wait to drive himself inside her.

But wait he did. Bracing his back against the paneling, he reached down between them. His testing fingers confirmed she was ready for him. More than ready, she was drenched.

“Beatrice.” He captured her mouth with his. Tasting his musk on her tongue, he locked both hands about her bottom and drove into her.

Her eyes flew open. She let out a gasp that bordered on a scream, and her one arm fell away from his neck.

He stilled inside her. “Beatrice?”

Eyes squeezed closed, she grabbed hold of him again and cinched her thighs tighter. Ralph rocked against her. Slipping in her slickness, he allowed it was too perfect, she was too perfect. Perfect enough to forget that this was but a game they were playing. Perfect enough to forget that in a few weeks she would walk down a church aisle as another man’s bride. Perfect enough to forget that she didn’t love him, that none of this was real.

She met him thrust for thrust, and though Ralph had been with more women than he cared to count, never before had he moved with anyone with such perfect unspoken understanding. Lost in sensation, he could scarcely credit the murmured endearments slipping forth from his mouth—“so beautiful,” and “God, you feel so good around me,” but mostly her name, “Beatrice,” again and again, the pressure building with each cry and thrust.

He came hard, the climax tearing through him. Stifling his cry, he bit the inside of his cheek to keep from calling out her name.

Spent, he fell back against the wall, his body boneless as the jellied eels he’d once coveted from the costermongers stalls at Billingsgate Market, the inside of his mouth tasting of blood. Beatrice glided down him like a snowflake—impossible to hold and yet impossible to stop wanting. Looking down at her puddled about his feet, he considered sweeping her up in his arms and carrying her off to bed.

But before he did, he reached down to unsheathe himself. It was then, only then that a heretofore unanticipated reality slammed into him with the force of a brass-knuckled fist. Unfurling the prophylactic, he saw that like the inside of his mouth, it too was coated in blood.

“WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME you were a virgin?” Ralph demanded, pacing the room’s four corners.

He had deflowered her mere weeks before her wedding. Beatrice might not seem to be upset about that, but he felt frantic enough for the both of them.

Wrapped up in his robe, Beatrice sat cross-legged in his chair. “If I had, would you have agreed to our lessons?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, there you have it, my reason.” She crossed her arms in front of her like a shield.

“You lied to me.” He drew up before her, quaking with outrage—and fear. The world was a hard place for a fallen woman. His mother’s misspent life had taught him that much at least.

“I didn’t, not exactly.” Given the grim circumstance, he found her dismissive shrug beyond maddening. “I did indeed seduce Mr. Billingsby only at the last moment he went all…squishy. Truth be told, until a short while ago, I wasn’t certain whether I was still a virgin or not.”

Ralph groaned. “You are most certainly not one now.”

She uncrossed her arms. “Indeed, I am not. What a relief.”

“That’s one way of seeing it, I suppose.” He fitted a hand over his pounding brow and contemplated the decanter of Scotch nearby.

She shrugged again. “I don’t imagine I shall miss a maidenhead overmuch.”

Ralph let his arm drop. “You may not, but I imagine your bridegroom will.”

She waived away that notion with a flick of her wrist and went back to fiddling with whatever she held in her lap. “Should he remark upon it, I shall simply say I lost it riding.”

He slapped a hand to his forehead. “But you don’t ride all that often as I recall.” On her last visit, he had very much looked forward to teaching her.

She sent him a smug smile. “Ah, well, you know that, but he does not.”

It struck him that her fiancé knew precious little about her. In point, Ralph was coming to suspect he knew her not at all. “Remind me again why you are wedding this princely paragon.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Are you asking as my tutor or as a curious person?”

“The latter, I suppose.”

“In that case, I shall decline answering.” Clutching something against her, she got up to go. “Good night, Ralph.”

His gaze following her, he hadn’t the heart to answer.

Halfway to the door, she turned back. “By the by, this is a most illuminating book you’re reading. I don’t suppose I might borrow it?”

Coming closer, Ralph saw what until now he had been sufficiently distracted to miss: for the better part of the past half hour, Beatrice had kept Vatsyayana’s Kama Sutra lying open in her lap. He felt oddly embarrassed though he couldn’t put his finger on why. They’d already performed several of the sexual acts described in the book. Still, there was something about seeing it in Beatrice’s slender hands that made him feel seamy, as though he must not be all that much better than Lord Haversham. That man had accosted her in a coatroom, but at least he’d left her intact.

He pinched the top of his nose where, just between his eyes, a headache had begun to hammer. “You might ask your sister.”

Appalled eyes met his. “My sister? I hardly think so.”

It was Ralph’s turn to shrug. “Why not? It belongs to your brother-in-law’s collection.”

She handed the volume over without another word.

Taking it, Ralph allowed that night was a Scotch occasion if ever there was one.

4

Lesson Four

“A man should gather from the actions of the woman of what disposition she is, and in what way she likes to be enjoyed.”

—The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana

“YOU NEED TO BE TAUGHT A LESSON, Beatrice,” Ralph told her the next night, standing beside the bed on which she lay. Untying the belt from his robe, he pulled it free from the loops. “You need to learn to submit to pleasure and for this week at least, that means submitting to me.” Slowly, very slowly, he dragged the belt free of its loops.

Bea’s breath hitched, not with fear, but with a strange, edgy excitement.

“Give me your hands.”

She hesitated, and then held them out for him to bind. He looped the belt about her right wrist, and then her left, and then tied the whole to the brass bedpost. Lifting her head from the pillow to watch, she felt both removed from her body and completely one with it. She wondered if she was supposed to struggle, to fight him. Struggling, fighting was part and parcel of her nature. And yet she found she didn’t want to fight with Ralph Sylvester. She wanted to submit to him, obey him and give herself up to him—completely.

He secured her and stood back. “So long as you don’t struggle, there should be no bruising.”

Bruising! A frisson shot through her, sexual excitement flavored with the barest hint of fear.

She wore her corset, garters and stockings, but no bloomers, no other under things at all. Lying near naked, displayed like a whore, was strangely exciting. She could hardly wait for him to climb atop and enter her. Instead he stood looking down at her for what seemed like an ungodly long time.

He grabbed a rose from the vase on the bedside table and, easing a hip onto the side of the mattress, settled in beside her. “You’re beautiful.” He dragged the rose’s pink petals along her cheek and jaw. “Utterly exquisite.” Using the flower, he traced the curve of her lower lip.

She felt sweat break out upon her brow. “Please.”

“Please, what?” He stroked the petals along the swell of her breasts.

Her corseted nipples stiff and aching, she hesitated, wetting her lips. “I want…” Her voice trailed off. What did she want?

“Do you want the device again?” he asked gently.

The dildo they’d earlier used had been strangely stimulating. Made of leather, it was long and thick and fashioned to simulate the member of a well-endowed man. Straddling Ralph’s lap while facing their joined reflections in the full-length dressing mirror, his hardness pressed against her buttocks and his hand moving the dildo in and out and around had been undoubtedly titillating. But mainly, it was Ralph’s watching her, not the novelty that had caused her to climax. A prop was no substitute for a flesh-and-blood lover. Still, once she wed Mr. Billingsby, the device might well be elevated to the level of marriage savior, not because she doubted her fiancé’s aptitude to learn so much as she did her will to teach him. More and more of late, she couldn’t imagine sharing such intimacies with anyone other than Ralph.

She shook her head. “I don’t need a toy. I need you. Please, Ralph, please…” She fought against the restraints not because she wanted to escape, but so she could grab his hands and force them down upon her body.

He swung a leg over her and straddled her. She expected him to reach for the French Letters on the bedside table, but instead he slid down the length of her. Parting her thighs, he bent and kissed her between them.

Stroking gentle fingers through her mons, he smiled up at her. “How many times must I tell you, you’ve only to ask?”

He dipped his head and this time he covered her with his mouth. Unprepared, Bea would have leaped from the bed were she not bound there. The sensation of his lips and tongue on her sex was exquisite, beyond anything she had heretofore imagined.

Her sensitized skin suddenly felt too hot, too moist and altogether too tight to contain such a world of wanting. Hot chills skittered down her spine. Gooseflesh furled her upper arms and forearms and thighs. Like a demon’s heart buried between her legs, her sex was consumed with a great throbbing ache.

Relentless, Ralph licked and laved her, suckled and spread her wide, then wider still. The pressure built, the pleasure peaking toward a pinnacle. Almost there, almost there and not quite…

“Please don’t stop, please don’t, please…” Now that she’d begun begging, she couldn’t seem to stop.

Ralph slid not one but two fingers inside. Rubbing a heretofore undiscovered sensitive spot within her, he circled her clit with his tongue. Once, twice, thrice…

Bea exploded, the fireworks and shooting stars melding into one long blissful scream.

RALPH DREW THE CHAIR NEARER to the bed, the better to watch Beatrice sleep. He shouldn’t have let her fall asleep in his bed. It was careless of him, stupid really. Now that he had, he couldn’t risk falling asleep himself. He would need to wake her in another few hours so she could slip back into her room before the servants stirred.

It was just as well. He was weary without being sleepy, physically sated without being truly satisfied. Not since he was fourteen and caught working Johnnie Black’s flash house had his emotions felt so bloody raw. He forced himself to remember that what she wanted wasn’t him, but a specific part of him, his cock. She didn’t want the complete package that was Ralph Sylvester and he couldn’t find it in him to blame her. Not even his mother had wanted him and the women with whom he’d lain over the years had only needed him for the short-term. He was too upper-crust for a woman of his own class and too sketchy for a woman who was a lady to consider as anything more than a secret lover. Why should this woman, this girl really, be any different?

And yet Bea was different, he’d always known it. Their interludes at the paddock feeding carrots to Princess had been some of the loveliest of his otherwise unlovely life.

This girl is getting to you. As always, the heckling inside his head sounded a lot like Johnnie Black.

She was. She had. He’d never wanted a woman beyond her body, beyond the pleasure, beyond the moment. Wanting more than sex with someone was unchartered waters for him. He was not only out of his depth, but sinking fast. The only plane upon which he understood how to approach her was the physical. He only hoped his body would suffice to bridge the gap, the emptiness left by all the words he dared not say. He wanted her to not just want him, but to need him. He wanted to be her food, her opium, her air. He wanted to snare her so that the breadth of her desire made it impossible to fathom ever leaving him. Not now. Not ever.

And even if he failed and she married the milksop, Ralph meant for her to wear the memory of him—his scent, his touch, his taste—like a brand.

BEA CRACKED OPEN AN EYE. The curtained bedchamber was dark and yet morning it must be. Any notion that the previous night’s happenings might have been a dream vanished the moment she lifted her arms to the headrest and stretched. Her body was deliciously tender in any number of wicked places. In particular, the lovely soreness between her legs didn’t lie. Likewise the bruises on her knees and wrists, the strained muscles of her arms and thighs, and the muskiness of the mussed sheets testified that the previous night of vigorous carnal pleasure was no wishful imagining but a physical event between two flesh-and-blood beings. An event she couldn’t wait to repeat. Last night’s lesson had surfaced a heretofore unknown and unsuspected aspect of her personality.

She fancied a bit of burlap with her lace.

Unfortunately Ralph Sylvester was only interested in her body. No doubt he viewed her as little more than a stimulating novelty not unlike the sexual toy he’d produced for her to try. Beyond the next few days, he didn’t want her in his life.

But that depressing thought was best saved for later. She might have begun the night with her wrists lashed to the bedposts, but in the end it was her tutor who had capitulated. He’d let her spend the night. Smiling to herself, she rolled onto her side and reached for Ralph. Instead of her arm met with empty space. Testing it with her palm, she found that space to be quite cold.

A funny, frenzied panic seized her. She pushed herself upright. “Ralph!”

“Good morning.”

Relief flooded her, ridiculous and yet true. She followed his voice over to the window. He reclined in the wing chair by the window, the smoke from the cheroot he held sketching clouds in the air. His hair was mussed, one side sticking up higher than the other, and the light coming in from the parted curtains showed the glint of stubble on his face. Wearing the now familiar dressing gown with brocaded lapels, he epitomized a gentleman at his leisure. The robe was laid open at the waist, unbelted, but then she knew why. The sash still hung from the bedpost behind her, the final proof that last night had been very real, not a dream at all.

“What time is it?”

“Coming on four o’ clock. I was just about to wake you.” His lazy lidded gaze slid over her body, reminding her that by now he knew it as well or better than she did herself. “I trust you slept well?”

“Yes.”

Indeed, she’d slept more soundly than she could ever before remember. Who would have known sin made for such a soft pillow?

She lifted the covers and glanced down at herself. She still wore the corset, but her garters were gone, no doubt lost somewhere in the blankets. “I suppose I should go.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed.

“Yes, you should. But first I want to see you.”

She let the sheet drop. Just a few days ago, displaying herself in the bright light of morning would have seemed an unthinkable boldness, but now she didn’t seem to mind at all.

His eyes lit and he stubbed out the smoke. “I want you again.” He said it matter-of-factly. Only those hot eyes raking over her weren’t matter-of-fact at all.

“I want you, too.” She’d awakened mere minutes ago and already the tightly coiled ache throbbed between her thighs.

She came toward him, forcing herself not to rush, but to take slow, steady steps. What she really wanted was to race toward him and launch herself into his lap, but such inelegant exuberance was for true lovers and their relationship wasn’t about lovemaking, but sex. He was her tutor, not her fiancé, her lover and yet not really. Despite the intimate nature of their subject matter, she couldn’t afford to forget that ultimately she was paying for his time.

She halted before him. Past being unnerved by his steady stare, she drew her gaze slowly over him and down. She’d never before thought of a man’s member as being beautiful, but Ralph’s was, very much so. He was long and thick, the rosy cock head already dewy with desire. Fascinated, she reached out and traced the silken slit with the tip of her forefinger.

He shuddered, not just his member, but the whole of him. Looking up, she saw that a fine misting of sweat had broken out on his forehead, chest and belly. His skin felt damp and flushed, almost fevered.

Bea knelt, one of her favorite things or so she was learning. His legs were already open. It was a simple matter to move his robe aside, lay her hands upon his knees, and settle between. She did. Musky maleness greeted her, mingling with the scents of sweat and lemon seed soap and another scent she vaguely recognized as her own. The olfactory onslaught made her mouth water and her sex slicken.

She slid one hand upward to the inside of his thigh, and he started. “Am I doing something wrong?”

A stark shake of his head accompanied the choked sound he emitted. “No.”

“Shall I keep touching you?”

He nodded. “Yes, yes…”

He snapped his mouth closed so quickly that she couldn’t be sure, but she could have sworn he’d started to say, “please.”

RALPH REQUIRED ROURKE’S signature on a railway document, only the Scotsman had gone missing from the study and had been absent from his desk for some time. Not that Ralph was worried. As usual these days, his employer could be found in the nursery playing with his baby daughter and spoiling her to the brink of death. Given how roughly they’d both grown up, Ralph could only marvel at such worship of a child.

Rourke stood beside the crib, holding Lucy in his arms, patiently enduring her twisting his broken nose, her tiny fisted grip one that would do a fledgling pugilist proud. Ralph crossed his arms on his chest and leaned against the door frame, his impatience fading in the midst of such a charmingly comical scene.

“Get ’em where it hurts.” Rourke pulled back and planted a smacking kiss on his daughter’s apple cheek. “That’s Papa’s girl.”

Ralph reasoned it was likely time to interrupt. “If the rest of Black’s Boys could but see you now.”

“Fatherhood makes fools of the best of us.” Rourke dragged his gaze away from the baby and lifted it to Ralph. “Mock me if you will, but mind you, Sylvester, your day will come.”

Ralph snorted. “My day will never come.”

Rourke cocked a roan-colored brow. “Never makes for a bold statement—and a bloody long, lonely time of it.”

Ralph shoved off from the door and crossed the room to the crib. He felt cross suddenly though he could hardly say why. “I stand by my ‘never’ and support it with two very sound, very rational reasons. I will never marry nor will I sire a bastard to endure an existence such as we did.”

No need to add that the woman with whom he was rapidly falling in love—very well, with whom he strongly suspected he’d already fallen in love—was set to wed another.

“A confirmed bachelor, are you?” Rourke cocked a brow and snorted. “Well, I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Women, Sylvester, have a way of sneaking beneath a man’s skin.”

Ralph let the subject die, declining to point out that their life circumstances lay worlds apart. He’d never before begrudged his friend his fine fortune nor did he now. Still, he felt an inkling of regret he hadn’t followed suit even in some smaller way, set aside a “nest egg” of his own. Beyond a wardrobe of custom-cut suits, he had little enough to show for all his tricks and cleverness.

Rourke broke in upon his thoughts by saying, “I’ve to go into Edinburgh the day after next for the quarterly shareholders meeting. I canna trust that blasted blackguard chairman of the board, Seamus Craig, not to stage a coup. The devil never ceases to try and thwart me, though the return on investments for the new tunnel has seen profit doubling over the past quarter.”

Blast, but the quarterly stockholders meeting had escaped Ralph’s mind entirely even though he’d been the one to draft the memorandum to the board members the week before. But then since Bea’s arrival, his steel trap of a brain had turned sievelike, at least when it came to any matter not expressly concerned with his lovely pupil. Their latest lesson had launched in the wee hours of that morning, and he caught himself wondering how she might be getting on.

“What time do we leave?” Ralph asked.

Rourke concentrated on rearranging the soft pink blanket about the baby. “I thought you might bide here.”

“You won’t need me at the meeting?” Ralph asked, careful to conceal his elation.

Normally he might take offense at being so easily dismissed, worry even that it was some reflection on his work performance, which admittedly had been less than stellar of late. But under the circumstances, the possibility that he might stay behind and finish out the week with Beatrice was veritable music to his ears.

Rourke shrugged. “I can manage for one day, I suppose. Besides, I don’t like to leave my Katie Girl alone when she’s breeding.”

A week earlier, Ralph would have been hard-pressed not to point out that Kate would hardly find herself alone in a household that now numbered nearly fifty. But given the circumstances, why look a gift horse in the mouth?

“If you’re quite certain…”

“I am, so it’s settled, aye?” Rourke asked though from Ralph’s experience of his friend turned employer, it was more statement than question.

Ralph nodded. “Yes, it’s settled.”

Seemingly satisfied, Rourke leaned over the crib and commenced cooing at the baby.

Turning toward the door, Ralph allowed he’d rarely felt more unsettled in all his days.

“BEA-BEA, YOU SEEM so very fidgety,” Kate remarked that same afternoon, pausing in her otherwise enthusiastic presentation of her latest renovation plans, the last of the series of the Edinburgh architect’s drawings unfurled atop her desk. “I venture to say you’ve not heard a word I’ve said this past hour.” She let out a huff, inadvertently rousing Toby snoozing beneath the desk.

Shifting in her seat, Bea feared her sister wasn’t far from the mark, but she scoured her distracted brain all the same. “You had my full attention up to the point of replacing the hip baths with built-in copper-cast bathing tubs. A dial for hot and cold running water as well as waste sounds very grand, very modern. I’m quite certain the housemaids currently charged with carrying heated water upstairs in those heavy brass cans will forever bless your name. When it comes to the conversion from gas to electricity, though, I’m afraid you’ve quite lost me.”

“No matter.” Looking marginally mollified, Kate rolled up the plan and replaced it in its hollow tube. “Is anything the matter?

Bea shrugged, and then shivered at the reaction even that slight motion wrought. “It must be wedding jitters,” she said, falling back on the apparently failsafe excuse for all imminent brides.

Poor Mr. Billingsby could not begin to fathom the torrent of sexual craving his ineptitude had released. At this rate, she would be the most sexually knowledgeable bride of her set. The other night, she had been beyond bad. Certainly she had not entertained such scandalous and exotic notions during her doomed attempt with Mr. Billingsby, whose person it was a trial to touch. But with Ralph she found she yearned to do scandalous, exotic things. She wanted to be wicked with him, for him, and not only because the lessons might have some future matrimonial use. She wanted to touch, taste and gaze upon Ralph and be touched, tasted and gazed upon by him for no other reason than because doing so gave her pleasure.

His latest lesson, which had occurred that morning, had involved gifting her with a pair of marble-size metal-weighted balls, which he’d presented in a green baize-lined case. A long, thin gold chain strung the orbs together. Ben-Wa balls he’d called them, a device for eliciting desire that dated back to the ancient Orient. Bea had never heard of such a thing but once she realized their purpose, she’d been curious—very well, eager—to try them.

Bea quickly learned the balls didn’t induce sexual climax but rather a slow-burning state of relentless arousal. Gravity proved to be both friend and foe. The slightest movement of her hips or legs increased the teasing friction. When Kate suggested a brisk walk outside to view the winter garden she’d put in, Bea had nearly choked on a mouthful of morning chocolate. Sitting in the nursery rocking chair had nearly been her undoing. She’d already excused herself to her room to masturbate on three separate occasions and it was not yet teatime. Short of pulling on the chain and removing the blasted balls, which her tutor expressly forbade, she had little choice but to suffer the relentless stirrings in silence and count out the hours until evening.

“Perhaps a walk would help,” Kate said yet again and glanced beneath the desk to where the dog lay snoring on his side. “Toby could use the exercise.”

Bea held back a groan. She pushed back from the table and all but leaped from her seat. “Actually I believe a good book from your finely stocked library may be just the antidote I seek.”

AFTER LEAVING KATE, Bea set her stride toward her brother-in-law’s study, which set adjacent to the library. She needed Ralph. She needed him quite desperately. The desire inside her was building toward implosion. Seeking him out during the day was a direct violation of their agreement. And yet at the moment, Bea didn’t care, not a jot. She was sick to death of rules, even the ones she’d helped to make—especially those.

She came upon her brother-in-law’s study, a familiar destination by now. Blast but the door was closed. Pressing a flushed ear to the paneling, she discerned Ralph’s voice and then Rourke’s in answer. Judging from the timbre of their tones, they sounded to be in the thick of a project. Then again, that shouldn’t surprise her. It was, after all, the middle of the workday.

Bea gathered her courage, raised a trembling fist, and knocked. After a moment’s pause, Rourke called for her to enter.

Weak-kneed, she stepped inside. Rourke sat behind his desk, a leather-bound ledger lying open and his spectacles sliding down his broken bridge of nose. Ralph sat at the second desk, his cravat loosened and his jacket hanging over the chair back. A small, black bound notebook lay open before him, and he had a fountain pen tucked behind one ear.

Both men pulled back their chairs and stood as she entered. Dividing her gaze between them, Bea felt her palms begin to perspire. Until now her hands had been one of the few parts of her body she had maintained some control over.

“I am so sorry to disturb you.” It seemed she did little but apologize these days.

Rourke fixed her with a worried look. “Is ought amiss? Kate, Lucy—”

“Kate is pouring over the latest architect’s drawings and Lucy is napping in her nursery.”

Distracted though she was, it still warmed her to see just how very much Rourke cared for the females in his life. Her sister and niece were everything to him. Then unlike Ralph, her brother-in-law didn’t eat little girls for breakfast or big ones, either. Patrick O’Rourke had begun life as a homeless rogue as had Ralph, but he’d taken to the civilizing pleasures of home and hearth with astonishing ease. Ralph, in contrast, could scarcely bring himself to sit through a family dinner. He didn’t bother to hide that he found Lucy’s crying to be a bother. Even in the throes of her very real, very physical frustration, Bea conceded that her heart’s sudden fisting hadn’t to do with Ben-Wa balls or dildos or the delicious things to be done with silk scarves. It had to do with babies—all the blue-and hazel-eyed, blond-and sandy-haired, beautiful babies she and Ralph would never ever have.

Voice shaking, she said, “I crave a word with Ralph.” For the first time since entering, she dared to look at her tutor head-on.

Ralph returned her gaze, game face on. “Can it wait, milady? I am in the midst of taking down a letter.”

Bea gritted her teeth. He knew damn well why she’d come, the level of her urgency, the rawness of her need. Her brother-in-law, however, looked to be wholly in the dark, and she meant to keep him that way. Still, she’d never had much talent for lying. Growing up, Kate had always seen through her fibs straightaway. But at the moment she was altogether too hot, too wet and too consumed by desperate desire to back down.

“I’m afraid it is urgent,” she said sharply. Staring into his expressionless hazel eyes, she suddenly saw just how good at lying he could be. “I need you…to telephone in a telegram for me, an urgent telegram to do with the wedding.” Unnerved, she pivoted back to her brother-in-law. “I must tell Aunt Lavinia that Brussels lace will never do. If I do not intercept her before she puts in her order with the dressmaker, it will be too late,” she added, inwardly wincing at what a silly goose she must sound.

She saw Rourke catch Ralph’s eye and mouth the word brides accompanied by a rolling of his eyes. Composing himself, he turned back to Bea. “Seeing as your purpose is so verra urgent, I suppose I can spare him.” He closed the large leather-bound ledger lying open on his desk. “Go on, Sylvester, we can take up this beastly business later.”

Ralph’s gaze brushed over her, and the heat coiled at her core unfurled and shot straight to her toes. “If you’re certain,” he said to Rourke as though she weren’t in the room at all—another blow to her pride.

Rourke stooped over the desk, pushing the scattered papers into piles. “You’re not that indispensable.” He punctuated the pronouncement with a wink.

“As you wish.” Ralph turned away to collect his coat, his expertly tailored trousers stretching tautly over his slim hips and perfect ass. Wondering why he seemed so intent on torturing her, Bea licked her lips and considered that her brother-in-law could not know just how very wrong he was.

At that moment, Ralph Sylvester was as dispensable to her as air.

“Thank you,” she said and headed out into the hallway.

Ralph followed her, still taking his sweet time. Stepping out, he pulled the study door closed behind him. “The telephone is in the front hallway,” he told her, his innocent tone belied by the wicked gleam in his eye.

Bea darted her gaze down the corridor and, finding it to be empty, grabbed his coat by the lapels and pulled him to her. Grinding her aching breasts against his chest, she hissed, “Speak to you? No, I don’t wish to bloody speak to you. I wish to…”

She stopped herself. Dear God, was she truly becoming so coarse that she would behave so badly in broad daylight in her sister’s home?

He sent her an impudent smile. “You’ve only to say the word, one word, and you can have what you want. You know this and yet your stubbornness persists.”

Bea ground her back teeth together and braced herself to let go of what little remained of her pride. “Please.”

His smile broadened. He took firm hold of her elbow and steered her down the corridor. Tripping to keep pace beside him, she asked, “We aren’t… That is to say… Aren’t we going to your room?”

He turned to look at her, his mocking eyes proclaiming her the sorriest of fools. “We can go anywhere you fancy, fornicate on the dining-room table if you wish. It’s not as though I have any particular reputation to protect, but if you value yours I’d warn against sneaking into bedrooms in the middle of the day. In case you haven’t noticed, servants tend to talk.”

They came upon the staircase. Opening a small door beneath it, he all but shoved her inside.

Squinting to accustom her eyes to the darkness, Bea saw that they stood in a storage closet. The space was big enough for two but barely. Dust motes floated in the dark, still air, which smelled of cedar and must. The slanted ceiling almost scraped the tops of their heads.

Ralph pulled the door closed behind them. Turning back around, he braced his back upon the wall and slid his gaze over her. “Tell me, how are you enjoying our latest experiment? By the look of you, you’re liking it far too much.”

Staring into that cocksure smile, she doubted she’d ever hated anyone half so much. Not her father for selling Princess and thereby ending Kate’s girlhood, not Felicity Drummond for playing her for a fool and not even Mr. Billingsby for being so very clumsy and complacent that she’d been driven to…this.

Fueled by fury as much as desire, she launched herself at him. Ralph’s arms wrapped about her, whipping her about.

He pinned her with the length of him, his eyes boring into hers, his hardness thrusting into her thigh. “Tell me what you want.”

The backs of her legs bumped against something solid and seemingly immoveable. A washstand, it seemed. He lifted her atop and set her down none too gently on the marble slab, the chill seeping into her backside.

“I want you to take these bloody…balls out of me.”

He quirked a brow, all cucumber-cool reserve swathed in expert English tailoring—tailoring her hands itched to rip from his body, his perfectly sculpted, sinfully beautiful body. The same perfectly sculpted, sinfully beautiful body that could bring her pleasure and drive her to madness in equal measure, pleasure and madness such as she’d never before imagined might exist.

“Is that all?”

He pulled her to the edge and stepped up so that she was forced to spread her legs to accommodate him. “How many times must I direct you, Beatrice, to ask for what you want?” His finger stroking slow, invisible circles at the side of her knee nearly set her out of her mind. His parted lips but a whisper away, he breathed into her mouth, “Ask, simply ask.”

“I want you to make me feel better. I want you to make me come.”

He shoved her skirts up to her waist. Bea looked down and gasped. How could she have forgotten? Earlier the crotch of her bloomers had become so drenched that in desperation she’d shucked them off. Her garters and stockings banded skin that was snowy-white for all she felt afire. Her pubis was at half tilt, the curls damp with desire, her nether lips ruby-red and glistening.

Ralph’s stark gaze met hers. He laid a hand on either knee and spread her legs as wide as they would go. As if reading her mind, he dipped his head and plunged not one but two fingers inside her. Fullness flooded her. Bea fell back on her elbows with a sob, arching against his hand. She felt his warm breath strike her belly and then lower. A gentle pull and then a snapping sound announced he’d captured the tail of the chain between his teeth. Bea caught her breath. For the span of several heartbeats, she forgot all save the gnawing need.

He drew back. A triumphant laugh saw him dropping the balls into his handkerchief and then into his pocket. He bent to her again. His tongue stroked, swept and finally struck deeply inside her, raising a nexus of heat at her core and shivery gooseflesh everywhere else. Bea squirmed atop the stand. It was hot and bruising, sticky and sweet and altogether the most primal moment of her life. Beyond shame, she cinched her legs about his waist and clawed at his back, her fingernails sinking into the worsted wool. She wanted to come, but first she wanted to make him bleed.

His mouth glinting with wetness, her wetness, he looked up at her and smiled. “A lady in the parlor and a whore in the bedroom.”

Beyond words, she braced herself on her elbow and let him have his way. He did, torturing her by moving his fingers scissor style inside her, milking her into his hand, teasing her clit and bringing her to the brink of satisfaction again and yet again, always pulling back before the final moment.

Beatrice was sure she would go mad. Mayhap she was mad, for what woman in her right mind would revel in being so degraded? Ralph didn’t want a marriage with her or babies with her or anything that someone such as she viewed as being a future, a life. He was perfectly content for her to carry on with her marriage plans, perfectly content to let their relationship rest as tutor and pupil, all they’d ever be. As bruised as her heart felt, yet she couldn’t seem to stop from lifting her hips to that hard, thrusting hand.

She spread her thighs as wide as they would go and locked her legs about his waist. “God, I hate you. I bloody hate you,” she said, lifting against him, mingling her sweat with his, her desire with his, reveling in the knowledge that for the rest of the day he would wear her scent on his fine clothes.

“I hate you, too.” He slipped his free hand beneath her buttocks and squeezed, his fingers sliding beneath the lobes. “I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed hating a woman so very much.”

He hated her. That was something, she supposed. The desktop bored into her backside, bruising the tip of her spine, punishing the backs of her thighs. The thought of bending over him as he disciplined her with the flat of his hand had her sex quivering.

“Hate me some more,” she moaned, grabbing at his wrist, willing him to work a third and even a fourth finger inside her, longing for him to finish her with his mouth. “Please,” she added. Having finally submitted to the begging, she couldn’t seem to stop.

She punctuated the plea by lifting her bottom off the marble, thrusting upward with her hips, and slamming into his hand, a silent invitation for him to touch and taste and take her in whatever way he wished.

“You’re so wet I could work the whole of my hand inside you for all that you’re still tight as a virgin.”

She opened her eyes and met his stark gaze. Holding it, she reached down and touched the hood of the little nub that, thanks to him, she now knew was called a clitoris. “I want you to stroke and suckle me there, just there.” Beyond shame, she moved her forefinger in the little circles that over the past few days she’d found she especially liked.

His head disappeared between her thighs. He spread her inner lips and covered her with his mouth, sending pleasure pouring through her. She worked hard fingers through his sandy-brown locks, raking his scalp with her nails and lifting to meet his mouth. He teased her with the tip of his tongue, striking the sensitive spot again and again, raising the steady desire she’d endured all day to a scalding, spiky mad ache.

The orgasm struck—fast, hard and furious. Lost to it, Bea shook, she shivered. She threw back her head and howled. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she might have screamed. At last she stopped shaking and opened her eyes. Ralph stood over her, a palm braced on either side of the washstand, blood and sweat streaking one side of his face.

“I’m sorry, I—”

“My turn.” He lifted her off the desk, set her on her feet and spun her about. “Bend over.”

Facing away from him, she sprawled over the table, her skirts riding her waist. He grabbed a fistful of her hair, pushed it to the side and lightly bit into the back of her bared neck. “A whore in the bedroom,” he whispered, his breath striking her nape.

Beatrice moaned. Though she’d come mere moments ago, she wanted him again. More than wanted, she needed him. She shifted to look back over her shoulder. His trouser flap hung open and he was rolling a prophylactic onto his darkly engorged, heavily swollen shaft. Watching him, she felt her mouth water and her sex cream. She licked her lips, remembering how good he’d tasted and the edgy thrill of taking all that maleness into her mouth.

Despite his command to stay as she was, she was almost moved to turn about and repeat the experience when “it” struck her. He’d known. Ralph must have known or at least strongly suspected that the Ben-Wa balls would drive her to seek him out. Not even a rogue like Ralph Sylvester went about his workday with prophylactics in his pocket. He’d manipulated—no, tortured her all day, and judging from his smug smile he was abundantly gratified by her predictable response. It was yet another reason to hate him. And she would hate him, deeply and darkly—later.

She felt him rubbing his cock head along her nether lips and pleasure poured through her. Into her ear, he whispered, “You’ll be wasted on that milksop fiancé of yours, you know that, don’t you? You can give him all the lessons you will, assuming he accepts them, and still he’ll not know what to do with you.”

Bea swallowed a moan, her hands flexing atop the table. “You ought not to speak of him so.”

She wished he would not speak of Mr. Billingsby at all. As much as she willed herself to hold on to the notion that their lessons were as much for her fiancé’s future benefit as hers, like a fist striking glass, this current coupling shattered that illusion.

He anchored hard hands to her hips and entered her in a single, blinding thrust. Nothing, absolutely nothing in Bea’s life before now had ever come close to hurting so very good. She moaned and raked her nails over her breasts. Even through the heavy corseting, she could feel her nipples swelling.

He drew back and entered her again. This time the force slammed her hard against the marble. She caught herself on her forearms. She would bear bruises on the morrow, maybe as soon as that night. Bruises she would wear on the train back to London. Bruises she might well find herself having to explain on her wedding night. Bruises that, regardless, she would weep to see fade.

Buried deeply inside her, he reached around the front of her, banding an arm about her breasts. “Will he be able to give you this, Beatrice? Will he?”

He rotated his hips and flexed from side-to-side inside her. Perspiration broke out on her brow. “No, he bloody well won’t. No one will ever again, no one but you!”

He pulled out and thrust again. At the same time, he reached around to her front and found her clit with his fingers.

Bea spasmed so sharply she couldn’t be sure if what she felt was pleasure or pain. Like a crystal vase she’d accidentally dropped as a child, she shattered, myriad glittering, sharp-edged pieces that could never again come together as a whole. Damp and weak-kneed, she sagged against the slab.

Hands, gentle once more, smoothed her skirts back down, picked her up, and sat her gently upon the stand. “Have one of the maids draw you a hot bath.” Ralph finished buttoning his trousers and turned to go.

“Shall I still come to you tonight?” she asked. Her body now sated, she found she hated herself far more than him.

He turned back long enough to nod. “Tonight at nine, I shall expect you.”

He hesitated and then reached inside his pocket. Drawing out the handkerchief, he dropped the Ben-Wa balls into her lap.

LYING TOGETHER IN Ralph’s bed later that night, Beatrice traced the black bird tattoo banding his bicep with a single softly stroking finger. “This is nice,” she said, breaking their companionable silence.

Ralph couldn’t say how long they’d lain together like that, the only sounds in the chamber those of the ticking clock and their collective breathing, but he agreed. It was nice. Unlike his past lovers, Beatrice showed no tendency to fill up the void with chatter. In such brief, lovely moments, he need only concentrate on the sunshine clean scent of her, the satiny smoothness of her skin, and the sensation of her breath striking the side of his neck. At such times, it was easy enough to forget they were playing a game, a match in which more and more of late, master and pupil seemed to be pitted against one another. Still, despite what he’d earlier said, hating her was the very farthest thought from his mind.

“Only you’re hot as a baker’s oven,” she added with a laugh, flopping onto her back. Only then was he aware that their bare skin had been sticking.

He turned on his side to look at her. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d ever been within a stone’s throw of an oven of any sort.”

She swept a hand through her tangled hair, the very picture of unstudied beauty. Mussed, he decided, was how he liked her best. “You’d be surprised. Kate and I took on a great many tasks once the servants were let go. The only difference was Kate was actually good at them. I’m afraid I burned as many fingers as I did pies.”

He doubted she’d ever known what it was like to go to bed hungry. Still, her circumstances had been strikingly mean for an earl’s daughter, an aspect of her history he tended to forget.

He lifted her slender hand and carried it to his lips, the white flesh smooth and flawless as a newborn’s. “You seem to have recovered.” Turning it over, he made a show of examining the palm and digits and sprinkling kisses across the tips.

“Fortunately, Aunt Lavinia employs a full kitchen staff, otherwise I’d be going about in white gloves whether I wished to or not.”

He summoned a smile, though the mention of her London life blunted his good humor. Not because he begrudged her a past there—God knew he certainly had one—but because he was both jealous and sad that his birthplace would be the backdrop for her future, a future that didn’t include him.

Stretching like a cat, she kicked one leg free from the covers. Sliding his gaze down her dimpled knee and shapely calf, he focused on her slender foot. The temptation to suck on those perfectly tapered, perfectly pink toes decided it. She would stay for another hour—at the least.

She rolled back his way and returned her attention to his tattoo. “This is a most unique marking.”

He shrugged. “Hardly unique. Rourke has the same. We all do.”

“We?” Her gaze edged upward to his face.

“Black’s Boys, they called us, after our leader, Johnnie Black.”

“You were in a street gang, then?”

“More like a ring for…thieving. Johnnie ran the flash house where we all lived. His ruse wasn’t especially novel, but it was tried-and-true. He’d scour the streets for castoff boys such as Rourke and I who’d nowhere to go and next to nothing to lose and bring us back to his rookery.”

Blue eyes widened. “And you followed him?”

He shrugged. “Johnnie was a smooth talker and his dandified if not exactly clean appearance placed him above the typical street tough. Once he brought you back, he baited the hook with all manner of fancy fare—roast goose sizzling on its spit, feathery light pasty pies, and sausages as thick as a man’s wrist. To have known hunger, gnawing, belly-bloating hunger, and suddenly be presented with such bounty can be as drugging as opium or gin. A few weeks in, though, life altered considerably. The fine fare fell off to gruel twice daily with the occasional roasted potato tossed in. If you fancied meat, you’d best be prepared to steal it. On top of our board, we each had to steal enough to make our weekly footing.”

“Your…footing?”

Her widened eyes were his wakeup call, reminding him how easily, too easily, he could slip back into the telltale street cant. Slippage meant he was letting down his guard. At one time, that would have been a dangerous—deadly—mistake. It was dangerous still only not to his physical survival so much as his heart.

He found his voice and explained, “Our keep, our rent if you will.”

Puzzlement furrowed her brow, and he had to hold back from reaching over and smoothing the tiny folds. “How can there be rent set upon an abandoned building?”

Until now he’d been in danger of forgetting what an innocent she yet was. Despite the drunkard gamester of a father and the want of any mother save her sister, she’d still grown up pampered as a princess. She was a princess still. And he was? If not a pauper, then certainly a rogue, one more refined than reformed. The patina of civilization he’d acquired in no way altered the baseness of his birth, the baseness inherent to the man he was still and always would be: son of a whore, card sharp and thief. Of all the precious things he’d taken in his time, Beatrice Lindsey’s maidenhead would stand as his chief crime, he was sure of it. Breaching her hymen was bad enough of him. At the very least he could leave her with a few intact illusions.

He hesitated, unsure of how much more, if anything, to say. “Johnnie may not have owned the rookery in the sense of possessing a deed writ upon paper, yet that crumbling, stinking sinkhole of buildings belonged to him nonetheless, as did we. We all had specialties. Mine were picking pockets and running street scams.”

“What sort of scams?”

He cast his thoughts back to those bygone days. He’d used to miss them—the danger, the thrills—but he realized he didn’t, not anymore.

“One of my most successful ones was to pretend to be a foreign visitor who’d lost his way and his wallet. I’d distract the mark with my babbling long enough to pinch his purse.”

Thinking back to all the men and women he’d duped over the years, he’d be hard-pressed to name a greater fool than he was. Only a fool would live like a monk for nine months, pining for a woman who would never condescend to take either his ring or his very common name.

“You make it sound like a game.” Her tone suggested disapproval, but fascination, too.

“It was a game, a game with high stakes—life and death, freedom or capture—so I learned to play it sublimely.”

Lying was second nature to him, sex his forte. He was a natural mimic, a born actor. He’d played so many parts, he sometimes forgot who he was.

“Have a listen to this. Je suis enchanté de faire votre connaissance, mademoiselle.”

“I am delighted to make your acquaintance, as well,” she said, her expression transformed into one of surprised delight. “Why, Ralph, what a dark horse you are. I didn’t know you spoke French.”

He grinned. “I don’t.” He was showing off for the girl and having too bloody much fun to care that she was only his for another few days. He followed with stock phrases in German, Russian and finally top-drawer English, his heart singing when she giggled and clapped her hands. “Britannia’s plum-in-the-mouth dialect isn’t really different from street cant, you see. It’s only another accent to be studied and mimicked.”

“What of Rourke? What was his specialty?”

“Rourke was The Brawn. Even as a lad, he was a scrapper with fists like hams and a fury like fuel oil on the receiving end of a lit match. That temper of his could ignite whenever you needed it as well as when you didn’t. One little spark was all that was wanted and then he was off. You couldn’t ask to have a better lad at your back. But pity you if you saw those fists flying at your face. If you did, they would be the last you saw for a week at least.” He chuckled at one of his few happy memories.

“And you? No, don’t tell me, let me guess. You were The Brains.”

He held up a hand and fluttered his fingers. “I was what our leader called The Touch.” He sent his two right fingers walking atop the covers toward her, taking the opportunity to tease the tips of her sheet-covered breasts.

She giggled and batted his hands away. “That tickles,” she protested though her eyes told him she liked it. Ralph liked it, too.

“A light, knowing touch seasoned with a whit of patience has always served me well.”

All at once, the mood between them shifted, the teasing sense of fun falling away. Ralph swallowed hard, wanting her yet again.

He slid a hand beneath the sheet and found her breast. “Shall it serve me again, Beatrice?”

She covered his hand with her slender one and urged him closer. “Yes, dear Lord, yes.”

5

Lesson Five

“Those things that increase passion should be done first, and those for amusement should be done afterward.”

—The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana

“HAVE YOU KEPT UP with the riding?” Ralph asked of Bea the following morning at breakfast, more for something to say than from any great curiosity. He was curious, he supposed, but only mildly so. Queer, really, how once they stepped outside his bedchamber, he lost any presumption to confidence with her.

She hesitated, looking around though they alone occupied the room. Rourke had taken an early train into Edinburgh and Kate, he suspected, was weathering a rough bout of morning sickness in her room. Though she never complained, the last time Ralph had come upon her unexpectedly in the solarium, her face had rivaled the potted palm for green.

“Not really,” Bea said at length, toying with the toast upon her plate.

A stint racing ponies at Astley’s Amphitheatre had transformed Ralph into a formidable equestrian. Years later, he rode as well as any country gentleman. In contrast, Bea’s father’s selling off his stable, including Princess, had left his youngest daughter little opportunity to ride.

“Fancy a lesson?” he found himself asking whether from pity or selfishness or both he could not be sure.

Blue eyes flashed open wide. “Now?”

“Why not?”

Considering what he’d so far taught her these past days behind those proverbial closed doors, a riding lesson, even one sans chaperone which might or might not end in sex, seemed positively wholesome—and yet infinitely more intimate.

Reserved in public as she was, in private she had any number of clever to witty things to say. He fancied or at least he hoped that must mean she felt at ease with him. Beyond what they did together in bed, he genuinely enjoyed being with her.

How did one go about the business of living when living wasn’t a business at all? How was one to act if not running some sort of scam, playing some manner of game? When it came to normal life, Ralph privately admitted he was the one in need of tutoring.

Turning over her spoon, she shook her head. “I shouldn’t wish to shame myself.”

It occurred to him that he wasn’t the only one of them to feel a fish out of water beyond his bedroom. The epiphany restored his confidence and fueled his determination to see her in the saddle again.

“It would be but the two of us.”

“Are you quite certain you have the time?”

For once the truth was his friend. “Ever since Rourke wed your sister, the household runs like a well-oiled machine. What duties I still retain leave me ample time to be at my liberty.”

In the end she capitulated. The day was fine, sunny and warm with a hint of autumn crispness. The sky above them was near cloudless, an almost perfect cerulean canopy. What few scattered clouds were present appeared outlined by a dramatic golden light. Walking their horses up the heather-covered hillside, Ralph found himself on the brink of believing his own lies—that they were an ordinary couple in love, that there would be no need to say goodbye at the end of the week or indeed ever, that he had the rest of their lives to make her happy outside of bed as well as in it.

Cresting the hilltop, they reined in to look onto the valley below, the ramparts of Rourke’s castle barely visible. Ralph turned to Beatrice, pleased to find her holding the looped reins lightly yet firmly as he’d advised.

Intercepting his gaze, she smiled. “You’re a very good teacher.” Wearing a riding habit of deep emerald-colored velvet borrowed from her sister, she looked very fine, a natural horsewoman as well as a natural beauty.

“You’re a most apt pupil.” Grinning, he added, “I marvel that after yesterday you can sit sidesaddle with such ease.”

She blushed and bit her lip. “I didn’t mean in that way.”

But Ralph had. He liked embarrassing her almost as much as he did pleasuring her. Indeed, the two seemed to go hand-in-hand.

“I trust I didn’t hurt you? If I ever do, you’ve only to say.”

She stared down at the horn of her saddle. “People have treated me with kid gloves all my days. I suspect my future husband will follow suit, not because he is unkind or unfeeling, but because he knows no other way. No matter what wonders I learn this week, he’ll likely visit me nightly until I’m breeding, and then spend the majority of our marriage at his club. But I have to at least try. I don’t want that to be all I know of intercourse. I want to know something more than that, something finer and grander. I want to know what it is to be with a man who wants me and…and I him.”

Despite the sad little scenario she painted, Ralph’s heart soared. Whether she realized it or not, Beatrice Lindsey had just admitted she saw him as something more than a plaything. Beyond whatever tricks he might teach her, she wanted him. The unexpected admission caught him off guard, prompting him to make one of his own.

“I’ve carried about an image of you since we first met.”

Her head shot up. A look of alarm flashed across her pretty face. “A photograph!”

Rourke’s friend Hadrian St. Claire was a celebrated photographic portraitist in London. Before her marriage, Kate had posed for him, her image imprinted and sold to the public on cartes postales. Ralph had always considered that St. Claire had selected the wrong sister. But that wasn’t what he’d meant.

“I refer to a mental picture.”

“Oh.” She subsided into silence.

Their horses’ heads were almost touching. Taking the opportunity, he reached across, meaning to kiss her. “You’re beautiful, Beatrice. I wonder sometimes that you don’t seem to see yourself as others do, as I do.”

Her breath hitched. She leaned into him. “Ralph, I—”

The rumble of horse’s hooves coming toward them at full gallop had him straightening in his seat and turning his horse’s head to have a look.

A figure in work shirt and breeches rode toward them. The rider neared and Ralph saw that it was Hamish Campbell.

Rourke’s stable manager drew up beside them. He doffed his cap, his weather-worn features wearing a worried look. Likely he disapproved of Ralph’s taking his employer’s sister out riding without a chaperone but was too mindful of his place to say so.

“How now, Hamish,” Ralph said, refusing to have his own good humor put off. “I’ve never known you to take a pleasure ride in the middle of the day, not even as fine a day as this one.”

Dividing his gaze between them, Hamish gave a grave shake of his head. “It’s nay pleasure ride, sir, though I wish it were. ’Tis bad news I’m brought to bear.”

Beside him, Bea drew a sharp breath. “My sister…Lucy?”

Reaching over, Ralph took hold of Bea’s gloved hand, too caught up in comforting her to give a damn what Hamish Campbell or anyone might think. “If you’ve news, then have out with it, man.”

Beatrice squeezed his fingers back. “Yes, please, Mr. Campbell, do not keep us on tenterhooks.”

Hamish shifted his gaze to Bea. “Lady Kate sent for me to bring you back, miss. ’Tis the old pony, Princess. She’s dying.”

PRINCESS WAS INDEED DYING. There was nothing more to be done. The grand old girl was dying, and Bea was afraid if she allowed herself to start crying, she might never stop.

Kate knelt by the horse’s head, her outer coat flecked with straw, her hair a wild mess, the front of her skirts bearing damp patches where mud and moisture had seeped through the knees. The sight tore at Bea’s heart.

“We came as soon as we heard.” She opened the gated stall door and dropped down beside her sister.

Kate looked up from stroking the nut-colored mane flecked with white and turned her tear-streaked face to Bea’s. “Thank you.”

Since Ralph’s rescuing her last winter, Princess’s retirement days had been filled with sugar cones and carrots, with brushings and many, many pets over the paddock fence. Still, that Kate hadn’t even had her back a full year brought fresh tears to Bea’s eyes. Nine months, it was such a bloody brief time to be happy!

“Such a pretty, pretty Princess you are,” Kate cooed, mouth trembling.

Throat thickening, Bea joined Kate in stroking the dying animal. According to her sister, Princess in her prime had been a beauty to behold, the white blaze upon her forehead like a shining star. No doubt Kate’s memory was colored by the rose-tinted lenses of a little girl’s unconditional love, but then that was the wonderful thing about love. It made one see only the very best in another being and, in so doing, brought out only the very best in oneself.

Loving Ralph was having such an effect upon her. And yes, she loved him, not the fairy-tale prince of her fantasy, but the flesh-and-blood man of real life. She’d fallen in love with him nine months ago. If only she could turn back time to that December day they’d stood at the paddock fence feeding carrots to Princess, those pivotal precious moments alone before Kate interrupted them. This time she’d do things altogether differently. This time when Ralph asked her to reconsider, to stay, she would, oh, how she would.

Back then she’d been too confused and prideful to consider that her feelings might run more deeply than a flirtatious friendship, too caught up in the mistakes she’d made to trust her feelings, her instincts or her heart. And now that she did trust herself, it was too late. She was engaged to another man, a good man, a steady man, a man who by virtue of his very predictability assured that her future would be safe and secure. Even were she not spoken for, even were Ralph to magically transform into a marrying man, not even he would wish to wed a woman whose loose morals had caused her to act the strumpet. Tears filled her eyes. It was indeed too late.

Hamish Campbell pulled off his tweed cap and scraped a broad-backed hand through his thinning hair. “She started walking stiff-legged like, putting her weight on the back of the hoof, but we thought it must be the rheumatism. I told Ned here to keep a watch on her.”

“I did,” the boy, Ned, piped up. “Three days ago she was as right as rain.”

Outraged, Bea looked up from the horse. Too late was bad enough, but blatant neglect was too much to bear. “You let her suffer three days without saying a word to anyone?”

She looked over to Ralph, who’d also knelt to examine the horse. Silent, he met her gaze with unreadable eyes.

Hamish spoke up, “Dinna blame the boy. That horse was my responsibility.”

“No,” Kate broke in, amber eyes fierce for all that they were swimming in tears. “Princess was, and is, my responsibility. Had I not been so preoccupied with my bloody stupid novel this past week, I would have found the time to come out and check on her as I usually do. I’m the one who knows her best. One look would have told me that something was dreadfully wrong. I shall never forgive myself.” She sank her head into her open palm.

Ralph gently released the horse’s swollen hoof and rose. “The pedal bone is collapsed. It’s pressing against the sole of the hoof. Even were she able to fight off the fever, we’d have to put her down for lameness.” He fixed his gaze on Kate. “It might be the greater mercy to put her down now.”

Kate swallowed hard and then nodded. “I wish Rourke were here,” she said softly, a tear rolling down her cheek.

“I can wire him for you, milady,” Ralph offered. “He would want to know so that he might take an earlier train home.”

Kate firmed her trembling mouth and shook her head, the old resolve returning. “Thank you, but no, absolutely not. This shareholders’ meeting requires his undivided concentration. There is no point in distracting him from his purpose when there is nothing he or anyone else can do.” Her voice cracked. She dashed the back of her hand across her eyes and looked quickly away.

Bea could bear it no longer. Kate had always been there for her, her comforter and protector. Now that their roles were reversed, there seemed nothing for her to do but watch her sibling suffer.

Rising, she turned away from the sad little scene to Ralph. Taking hold of his arm, she steered them out of the stall and over to the stable door.

Once there, she dropped her voice to a whisper. “We could take the train to Edinburgh, fetch a horse doctor there. It’s worth a try.”

Gaze grim, he shook his head. “It’s too late. There’s nothing more anyone can do.”

“I don’t believe that. You’re so clever. You know so much about horses. You know so much about so many things. You just have to try harder. You just have to want to.” She was spiraling toward hysteria and yet too caught up to care. “Beatrice—”

She planted a hand on either of his shoulders and dug in, desperate to save something, someone, a horse. Kate’s horse. She and Ralph were so good together in so many ways. Saving a horse—surely together they might manage at least that small miracle.

“That horse means the world to my sister. Princess was Kate’s first and only pet. Our father staked her in a card game. He lost, of course. He always loses. You can’t know what having her back has meant to Kate.”

Ralph shook his head. The pitying look he sent her made her want to slap him. “She’s dying, Beatrice. The kindest thing we can do is to end her suffering.”

“How can you say such a thing? How can you be so bloody complacent?” she demanded, and it struck her she wasn’t only speaking of Princess.

In another two days, they would say goodbye as lovers, the sands of her newfound happiness running out like Princess’s halting final few breaths. Perhaps she wasn’t only grieving for the horse. Perhaps she was grieving for herself, too.

“It’s too late.”

Bea refused to hear that yet again, refused to listen. “It is not too late!” She let go of him and dropped her arms to her sides. “If you cared for me, you would do something. You would at least try. But you don’t care for me, do you, Ralph? Beyond fancying what a bloody good lay I am, you don’t care enough to trouble yourself.”

“Beatrice.” Face paling, he reached for her, but she stepped back, shaking her head.

“I’m going back inside to be with my sister. Why don’t you go read your bloody Kama Sutra, diddle a housemaid or better yet, fuck yourself with one of your nasty little toys?”

His stricken face was her final, bitter satisfaction. Turning back inside, she left him standing still as a wax figure.

Soft sobbing greeted her even before she opened the hinged stall door. “Oh, Kate!”

“She’s gone,” Kate announced without looking up, stroking between Princess’ wide, staring eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Kate.” Feeling helpless, Bea let the stall door swing closed. Stepping around the horse, she dropped down beside Kate and pulled her into her arms. “You have every right to be furious.” Stroking her sister’s tangled curls, Bea felt fresh tears falling—for Princess, for Kate, for herself. “Nine months to be reunited, to be happy, isn’t enough, not nearly. It’s bloody nothing.”

Kate pulled back and shook her caramel-colored curls. “You’re wrong. It was everything.”

Bea held her peace. How could she possibly comfort Kate when she couldn’t begin to comfort herself?

“I WISH I MIGHT GET DRUNK,” Kate said sometime later, sipping from the vacuum flask of hot tea Hattie had brought them along with a heavy quilt and flask of Scotch whiskey.

They sat huddled together beneath the quilt, keeping vigil over the passed away Princess. Considering Kate’s pregnancy, Bea really ought to persuade her to go inside where she might draw a warm bath. So far she hadn’t found the heart. Kate must bid goodbye to her precious pet in her own way and in her own time. In the interim, Bea meant to keep her as warm as possible.

She reached out to pull up their shared quilt from where it had slipped off her sister’s shoulder. “I wish you could, too.” She lifted the flask in her other hand, considerably lighter than when Hattie had handed it to her. “Likely it’s a black mark on my character to drink alone, but I’m feeling too bloody bleak to care,” she said and took another swig.

She wasn’t exactly drunk. She wasn’t exactly sober, either. She’d never before imbibed whiskey, but then, this was a wake of sorts.

She swiped her stinging lips with the back of her gloved hand, an unladylike gesture the sight of which would have shocked Aunt Lavinia directly into her grave. But then Aunt Lavinia and London and rigid rules about how a lady, a woman, should behave seemed fairly far away and utterly inconsequential at the moment.

Watching her, Kate remarked, “You were rather hard on Ralph, do you not think?”

Bea shrugged. “You could not possibly have overheard our conversation.”

“I didn’t have to. I saw his face when he came inside to check on us a while ago.”

“Ralph came back?”

Kate nodded. “He did, but only for a moment. You were busy covering…Princess. He looked as if you’d slapped him.”

Bea had felt like slapping him and not only once. Were it not for the proximity of possible onlookers, she wasn’t entirely certain she would have refrained.

“He should have done something. It was he who found Princess and brought her back to you, and yet he behaved as though she was a broken machine beyond fixing.”

Kate’s eyes might be rimmed in red from crying, but she used them to level Bea an unwavering look. “He’s a man, Beatrice, and he grew up rough as did Rourke. To his way of thinking, showing his emotions would be a sign of weakness. Simply because he doesn’t show his feelings or speak of them does not mean he doesn’t feel—care—deeply. Likewise, men on the whole are not terribly good at intuiting a woman’s wants. If you want or need something from him, you’re going to have to put it to him plainly. You’re going to have to ask.”

Ask for what you need, Beatrice.

Bea dropped her gaze and replaced the stopper on the flask, mainly for something to do. “What could I possibly want from Ralph Sylvester?”

Kate blew out a heavy breath, the steam crystallizing in the rapidly chilling air. “That is not for me to answer.” She slid her arm free from the blanket and laid it cross Bea’s shoulders. “But this much I will say. Sometimes our soul mate doesn’t look or behave as we expect, but our instincts, our hearts, never lie. Had I set aside my pride and listened to my heart, I should have known Patrick was my true love from that very first waltz where he stole me from my promised partner and trod upon my toes.”

Bea loved Ralph with the whole of her heart, and yet “charming rogues” like Ralph were not marrying men. For as long as she could remember, a stable, secure home life was the prize she sought. Such a solid if less than stimulating state could only be secured with the Mr. Billingsbys of this world, men who, no matter how sexual inept and physically uninspiring, could still be counted upon to put a ring on your finger and then stand beside you year after year as time lent its crusty, dulled patina to the once shiny band.

But being with Ralph had made her realize there was a great deal more to life than feeling safe. Looking through the lens of the past few days, she tried to imagine what marriage to Mr. Billingsby would be like. Imagining sitting with him in their snug little parlor night upon night—so solid, so secure, so stultifying—sent her lungs seizing.

As if tapping into her turmoil, Kate hugged her tighter. Laying her cheek against Bea’s, she whispered, “Look to your heart, little sister, look to your heart.”

IF YOU CARED FOR ME, you would do something.

Brooding in his bedchamber later that night, Ralph took another sip of Scotch, hoping to dull the day’s pain. For the past nine months, Princess had lived the life of a pampered pet, and Ralph had done his part in spoiling her. He didn’t ordinarily think of himself as an “animal person,” but the very humanlike gratitude with which the grizzled pony greeted the slightest gesture of kindness had plucked at his heart.

But the pony’s loss was only partly responsible for his morose mood. Already it was five minutes past their appointed nine o’clock hour. Judging from her earlier outburst, Beatrice likely wasn’t coming this night or any other. As much as he tried telling himself that didn’t matter, it did. Oh, how it did.

She loved that horse but beyond that, she loved her sister. Though Kate always cast herself as the caretaker, Ralph was coming to see that behind-the-scenes, Beatrice carried out a fair bit of caretaking herself.

How would it feel to relinquish control and let Beatrice Lindsey take care of him? How easy it would be to succumb to the magnetic pull of those big blue eyes, tender lips and soft white hands. How easy would it be to fall down the rabbit hole as had Lewis Carroll’s Alice and immerse himself in the wonderland that was his lady?

Not his lady, not really. Beyond the make-believe world they’d conceived, she didn’t belong to him any more than the books he routinely borrowed from Rourke’s library. In another two days, she would return to London and to the inept but presumably welcoming embrace of her milksop fiancé, Mr. Billingsby. Irrationally, Ralph hated the man more with each passing day.

The light knocking outside his door startled Ralph. Heart hitching, he stood on surprisingly shaky legs. In the event his visitor was other than Beatrice, he made certain to cinch his robe before giving the call to enter. “Come in.”

The door opened, and Beatrice stepped inside. She drew the door closed and turned to face him. “I’m late.”

Any notions of riposting with a glib retort washed away in the flood of relief he felt. “You’re here.” Raw emotion lent his voice a telltale huskiness he hoped she might miss.

She came toward him, a vision in a cream-colored silk robe, the vee-shaped neckline showing a tantalizing glimpse of lace from what must be a matching nightgown beneath. The garments looked like something a bride might wear on her wedding night. It occurred to him that she might have taken them from her trousseau.

“I wasn’t certain you would still come.”

She stopped a foot or so from him. “I wasn’t certain I would still be welcome.” She cocked her head to the side and regarded him. “Am I?”

He nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course.” For someone who’d survived for years on silver-tongued cleverness, he was having the very devil of a time getting his words out.

“I acted like a child today. I hope you will for give me?”

Reading the question in her voice, he rushed to reassure her. “You were distressed and understandably so.”

She nodded. “Princess is…was Kate’s pet, not mine. Kate loves judiciously, but those whom she does, she loves fiercely, be they two-legged or four-legged. After Father sold off Princess, Kate, I’m told, was crushed. She never took another childhood pet though she dearly loves animals.”

“I’m sorry they did not have more time together,” Ralph said, and though the sentiment was nothing but sincere, the person he felt most sorry for was himself.

He had only a few more days—and nights—with Beatrice before she left for London and Mr. Billingsby. The next time he saw her, she would be a married woman, forever removed from his touch.

“I’m sorry, too,” Beatrice said. “But were it not for you they would have not had these past nine months and that would have been a tragedy indeed.”

The way she was looking at him, he suddenly felt ten feet tall, a modern-day Hercules or better yet, an Atlas with the weight of the world upon his shoulders and happy to have it so as long as she, Beatrice, looked upon him as she did now. Could he have captured the glow of that gaze in a vial, he would mount it upon a chain and wear it about his throat for the rest of his days.

Feeling suddenly, improbably shy, he shifted the subject. “You care deeply about your sister.”

Beatrice did not deny it. “She has been both mother and sister to me. I have been turning to her for protection all my life.”

“Only not now?”

She hesitated. “I’m not sure I comprehend your meaning.”

“You haven’t told her about the difficulty with your fiancé.” Topic aside, still he couldn’t bear to spoil the moment by mentioning that ridiculous name.

She shook her head, visibly tensing. “I shouldn’t wish to burden her.” She bit at her bottom lip and admitted, “And I am not certain she would understand.”

“Understand us?” he suggested. Us—how had he managed to miss the utter loveliness of that brief word?

“Oh, no!” she replied with unflattering swiftness and a cursory flick of one slender wrist. “I am afraid under the circumstances she would try, most forcefully, to talk me out of marrying Mr. Billingsby. She’s already hinted I may be marrying in haste.”

Emboldened, he asked, “Are you?”

She let out a long sigh. “Mr. Billingsby is not handsome nor is he of any particular wit. He has a comfortable income, but it is no great fortune. And as you know, he is not especially skilled as a lover.”

Why she should select a man so admittedly lacking for a mate stretched his imagination beyond its limits. Ere now, he’d assumed she must have some romantic inclination toward her future husband, otherwise why put herself to the risk and trouble of seducing him a fortnight before the wedding? Now it seemed that was not the case.

Heart pounding, Ralph found it impossible to resist asking any longer. “Then why wed him? You are young and beautiful, titled and talented. You could have any man you wished.” You could have me!

She regarded him seriously. “He is…nice.”

“Nice?” Ralph could do little more than stare.

She was throwing her future away for “nice”? Until now Ralph had prided himself on having a highly developed comprehension of human nature. As part of his thieving past, he’d made a study of strangers with the goal of quickly understanding their habits and weaknesses. But Beatrice’s declaration rendered him all but speechless. That niceness should suffice to win a price such as her quite literally boggled his mind.

She bobbed her head. “Yes, nice, as well as amiable and honorable and kind to people as well as horses and dogs. I have never seen him drink to excess or use strong language or indeed direct so much as an unkind word at anyone, be that person a peer or a peasant. And while admittedly he is possessed of but a small fortune, I have every confidence that fortune shall not founder, for he does not wager beyond what is sociable. With Mr. Billingsby as my husband, I can count upon a roof over my head. It will be a modest roof, but the deed to it will never wind up as collateral for a debt or as a marker on a gaming table. With Mr. Billingsby, I shall have devotion. I need never worry that he is leaving me at night to attend his mistress or that he will demean me or those dear to me in any manner.”

It was a pretty speech as well as a seemingly sincere one, and still Ralph couldn’t help but think there must be more to her decision. “That is…all?”

She fixed him with knowing blue eyes. Mayhap it was a trick of the turned down lamps, but she suddenly seemed far older than her not yet one-and-twenty years.

“That, Ralph, is everything.”

If that indeed summarized “everything,” then Ralph was fully prepared to provide her those things himself. He drew a breath and braced himself to make his declaration. “Beatrice, I—”

“My father,” Bea broke in, “is not a nice man. He is a drunkard and a gamester and a whoremonger. Were it not for Kate sitting as a photographer’s model to make ends meet these past years, I might well find myself in the workhouse for all that I’m an earl’s daughter. Despite all Kate’s successes at shielding me, still I have lived with uncertainty all my life, on tenterhooks waiting for the cocoon to be breached, the bubble to burst.”

So, she was willing to settle for a loveless and likely passionless marriage in exchange for security. He supposed he couldn’t fault her. Compared to the solid and upstanding Mr. Billingsby, a former card sharp and thief must seem a shaky proposition, indeed. And yet it wounded him that, on some level, she might be painting him with the same broad brush as her father.

He took a step toward her and demanded, “If Mr. Billingsby offers everything you desire, why are you here?”

It was a selfish question, perhaps even a cruel one, and yet he was just selfish enough and cruel enough to ask it. Beyond anything, he had to know.

She shifted her gaze to the side. “I wanted you to teach me about sex…so that I may better guide Mr. Billingsby.” Again, there was that telling pause.

Ralph drew closer. “And now?” He snagged her gaze with his and refused to release her. “Why are you here, Beatrice?” He slid yet another step toward her.

She shook her head, her gaze dipping. “Because…because I want to know what I shall be missing in the years to come. Because…I want to know what it means to be lovers with a man in the truest sense of the word.”

He closed the gap between them and lifted her downturned chin on the edge of his hand. “Is that the only reason?”

Eyes swimming in tears fought their way back up to his face. “Because I wish to know what it is to…engage in sexual intimacy with a man…with a man I might love.”

SOMETIME LATER, Ralph pulled the sheet over them both. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

Bea let out a laugh. “I believe I’m doing it now…or rather recovering from doing it.”

She supposed she should be grateful he’d so far refrained from bringing up the embarrassing bit about her loving him. That he hadn’t made a like declaration wasn’t lost on her despite the tenderness of the sex they’d just shared. Not that she’d expected him to. Still, it would be nice.

“Come now, turnabout is fair play. The other evening I answered your question about my tattoo.” His teasing voice brought her back to the moment.

Rolling over on her side, she stared at him askance. “Since when have you cared about playing fair?” She congratulated herself on making a rather fine and irrefutable point.

“Touché,” he conceded with a slight nod. “Then in the spirit of fun rather than fairness, answer me this—what is the one thing about your history I could be counted upon never to guess?”

“Beyond growing up as an earl’s daughter wearing darned stockings and shivering for want of fuel?”

“Yes, beyond that.”

She bit her bottom lip. “Very well, I was a gluttonous, fat child.”

He drew back to look at her, his gaze scanning her sheet-sheathed body as though expecting her to suddenly inflate. “You were never fat!” Beneath the covers, he moved his hand over her belly. “You’re slender as a sylph.”

“I wasn’t then, I assure you. My sister, I believe, has the photographic proof stowed away somewhere.”

Food had been her solace, the resulting padding of extra flesh a sad little protection against hurt. Beyond a cursory pinching of plump cheeks or chucking of doubled chin, no one was particularly interested in fawning over the chubby child, no one save Kate. As curt as her sister could sometimes be, she’d always shown Bea a kind word and a soft hand.

For the first time it occurred to Bea that perhaps she and her father had something in common after all: weakness. He drank to fill the void and fend off the monsters. She’d sought solace in the pantry. And always, always she’d longed to be more like Kate. Kate who never ate or drank to excess, who never seemed to question the correctness of her course, and who had sacrificed herself for the family, for Bea, for the better part of two decades without once uttering a word of resentment or reproach. Growing up as she had surrounded by all that loving perfection, how could such a flawed creature as she ever feel close to whole?

Instead, she’d put her energies into those traits of which she was already master: petulance and pettiness and a great many foolish fronts that gained her adult attention and a vague indulgence that might almost pass for love—almost.

He spoke at last. “Gluttony is accounted to be one of the seven deadly sins, but I’ve never considered it on par with the others.” He was making a joke, or trying to, but suddenly Bea found none of it funny.

Grimly aware he’d yet to say “I love you” in return, she stared up at the plasterwork ceiling. “You’re not the only one with a past. I’ve been spoiled and selfish, vain and weak. Befriending my brother-in-law’s former mistress and bringing her into my sister’s new home counts as a rather substantial sin, wouldn’t you say?”

“You had no way of knowing Felicity and Rourke had a prior liaison, let alone that she had designs on him still.”

The fierceness of his tone had her dragging her gaze back to his. He was making excuses for her. A part of her liked that. A lot. Ever since she could remember, she’d craved a champion, a knight-in-shining-armor who would wear her colors and take her part. And yet adulthood demanded she not let herself off the proverbial hook quite so easily.

“My bringing Felicity Drummond north last winter nearly cost Kate and Rourke their happiness. That they can bear to look at me let alone have me here as their guest is a testimony to how very good they are. Had I been in their place, I’m not at all sure I would be quite so forgiving.”

“I don’t believe that.”

Rather than argue, she turned away from him and onto her side. “You’re forever instructing me to ask for what I want in bed. Well, we are in bed now and I would very much like not to talk anymore.” Nor did she especially wish to get up, gather her clothes, and make her way through icy corridors and winding turret steps to her room.

His hand settled over the top of her shoulder. “Will there be any other directives or requests?” he asked, a smile in his voice.

Honesty was made easier by not having to look him in the eye. “I want to spend the night here, the whole night, with you. I want you to hold me, hold me as if we were lovers, true lovers, and not playing a part. I want you to hold me as though we have all the time together in the world instead of only a few more days. Will you do that for me, Ralph?”

Silent, Ralph wrapped his arms about her. He tucked her against him, his lean body molding to hers. Pressing a kiss into her hair, he settled her head at his sternum.

Closing her eyes, she cuddled closer. Having Ralph’s warm, strong body spooned against hers wasn’t only better. It was the very best feeling imaginable.

Drifting off to sleep, it struck her she hadn’t even had to say “please.”

KATE SAT PROPPED UP IN BED late that night, her manuscript pages lying in an untouched pile on the bedside table along with a mug of tea she kept forgetting to drink. Sprawled across the foot of the bed, Toby lifted his head from her now numb toes and turned to the knob twisting in the chamber door. Kate tensed, wondering who would enter her room at this late hour without bothering to knock. Seconds later her anxiety was allayed when a russet head poked inside.

“Patrick!” She greeted her husband with a wobbly smile and open arms. “I didn’t expect you home until tomorrow.”

“I came as soon as I could.” He dropped his attaché case by the door and bounded over to the bed, not stopping to remove his greatcoat or his boots. The latter were likely to be caked with mud, but Kate was altogether too happy to see him to care about that now.

He swooped down on the bed beside her and lifted her onto his lap. “Och, Katie Girl, I’m so verra sorry about Princess.”

“But how did you know?” She stopped herself. “Ralph telegraphed you, didn’t he? I forbade him to bother you and yet he did.”

Rather than deny it, Rourke snorted. “Dinna worry, my love. Sylvester takes orders from no one, not even me. And in this case he was in the right. I would have wanted to know. I’m so verra sorry about the horse, doubly sorry I wasna here to be of comfort to you.” He pressed a kiss against her temple, and Kate tightened her hold on his big, broad shoulders. No matter what befell her, be it a rejection letter for her manuscript or the loss of her precious Princess, her big, bluff Scotsman could always, always make it better just by being near.

She pulled back to frame his dear, blunt-featured face between her hands. “You’re here now. That’s all that matters.”

She pressed a kiss onto the bridge of his bent nose and then buried her face against his solid shoulder, chafing her cheek against the scratchy folds of his tweed overcoat, inhaling the scents of peat smoke and single malt whiskey and the bay rum he used after shaving. She might have just experienced one of the saddest days of her adult life and yet she was a lucky woman indeed.

For a while they stayed as they were, with him gently rocking her and stroking her hair. But as always the passion between them flared to life in bad times as well as good. When his big hand brushed her breast, Kate had no thought of moving it aside. This was love, pure love, and losing a beloved family member, even if that family member was four-legged, begged not only for proper grieving, but also for celebrating life, including the new life growing inside her.

Features taut, he drew back. “Och, Katie, I meant only to hold you, but…”

She laid two fingers along his lips. “You are holding me.”

Beneath her fingers his mouth curved into a smile. Gently, very gently, he eased her back onto the mattress. Still wearing his coat, he found the hem of her nightgown and slid it up and off.

Laying her down, he pressed soft kisses over her still flat belly. “When I think how close we came to losing one another last year…” He looked up at her, his eyes filling.

It was difficult to fathom that nine months ago she’d asked him for a separation. It only went to demonstrate how two people who deeply loved one another could be led astray by a misunderstanding. Such was the circumstance with Bea and Ralph, she strongly suspected.

She opened her mouth to say so, but before she could form the words, Patrick’s head dipped lower. His beard-bristled cheeks brushed the insides of her thighs. His mouth moving over her mons had her gasping. Shutting her eyes, she ran her hand through his hair and gave herself up to the peace and the pleasure.

Some time later, Kate fought her way back from sleep to say, “I’m worried about Bea-Bea. I believe she may have feelings for Ralph for all that she insists on going through with marrying Mr. Billingsby.”

Beside her, Rourke shifted, lifting his leg to accommodate the dog sprawled at their feet. “I thought you wanted her to wed Mr. Billingsby?” Dark though it was with the lamps turned down, she could feel him rolling his eyes.

“That was before I saw how good she and Ralph are together. What I dismissed nine months ago as an infatuation seems to run far deeper.”

He blew out a heavy breath. “Your sister is a grown woman. It’s not our place to interfere.”

“You can’t really mean that.” She’d been “interfering” since Bea was in nappies and she saw no sense in giving up her maternal role now.

“I do. Remember the muddle nearly made of our marriage when others piped in with their advice giving and hold your tongue. You’ve enough to do managing Lucy and me, not to mention the bairn on the way and the wee book you’re writing.”

“I suppose you’re right,” she said with a yawn, not because he was, but because she was too weary to argue, at least for the night.

“Katie, I know that tone of yours. Consider yourself warned—leave it alone. It’s been more than a year since you’ve felt the flat of my hand on your backside but—”

“Patrick, you promised!” she broke in, lifting her head. “Besides that, I’m pregnant. And you love me. And…and I’ll turn Toby on you. In case you haven’t noticed, he’s my dog now.”

“I’ve noticed.” He cast a gimlet gaze downward to the snoring dog.

“Regardless, ours is a marriage of true minds, or so you swore. Or was quoting Shakespeare just a ploy to soften me?”

“Of course it wasna.” Voice mellowing, he patted his shoulder for her to lay her head. “I’ll never again put so much as a finger upon you in anger, though if memory serves me, you gave as good as you got.”

Hearing the smile in his voice, Kate kissed him and rolled onto her side, a luxury she’d have to relinquish in not so many more months. “I always do, my love. I always do.”

6

Lesson Six

“Congress having once commenced, passion alone gives birth to all the acts of the parties.”

—The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana

WHEN BEA ASKED TO BORROW the brougham and driver to go into Linlithgow the next morning, no one, not even Kate, thought to ask why. Her sister, still grieving her horse, was quite understandably holed up in her room.

Once there, Bea headed for the cobbled high street. From Hattie she knew there was a public house, the Stag and Tartan, from which mail, including telegrams, might be both dispatched and received. She supposed she might have sneaked the use of the castle telephone. Then again, given the grave importance of her message, likely she’d been right to send it in person.

She opened the door and ducked beneath the low frame. Pipe tobacco and peat smoke greeted her as she stepped within. Old-fashioned tallow candles filled the brackets on the whitewashed stucco walls. She followed the sound of voices and clanging cutlery and tankards into the taproom. Tavern tables lined three of the room’s four walls and most of the seats on the backless benches were taken for all that it was a workday and not yet time for tea. Making her way between the tables, ignoring the curious stares and occasional wink shot her way, she walked up to the caged bar beyond which mail bags mingled with tapped beer kegs and casks.

“Can I help you, miss?” the bespectacled barkeep and apparent postmaster inquired.

Bea nodded, resolved despite her hands’ trembling. “Yes, please. I need to send a wire to a gentleman in London.”

“London,” he echoed, scratching the side of his head. “Why, that’s a rare long way.”

“Is it?” she asked. Perhaps it was. She wouldn’t have thought so a week ago but then, a lot could happen in a week. A lot had happened in six days. Now nothing would ever again be the same, most especially not her.

“What is it you wish to say, miss? Mind ’tis six pence’s for the first ten words and a ha’penny for every word thereafter.”

Bea paused, not because she was uncertain of her message—indeed, she’d composed it several times on the trip into town and she was fairly certain it did not surpass ten words by much—but because once she sent it there would be no turning back.

Behind the barred box, a throat cleared. “Miss?”

Bea swallowed against her own thick-feeling throat. The previous night in Ralph’s arms had been the deciding factor, not the sex, tender though it had been, but the emotional intimacy afterward. As much as she hated to hurt the feelings of a fellow human being, she could see no other way.

She drew a bracing breath and began: “Mister HC Billingsby Knightsbridge London. Stop. Cannot marry you. Stop. Please forgive & forget me. Stop. Bea. Stop.”

BEA LEFT FOR TOWN after breakfast, her demeanor making it clear she wasn’t looking for company, at least not Ralph’s. From her vague reference to shopping, he surmised she might be going about wedding errands, perhaps even selecting a gift for her bridegroom. That thought acted like a lit match to his jealousy. Feeling at loose ends, he headed to the study hoping to find his friend within. Surely Rourke, newly returned from his trip, must require him to take down yet another letter, dispatch a telegram or perhaps help him go over another quarter’s profit figures? He heartily hoped so. It would be good to have some occupation, otherwise he would only waste the day brooding on the fact that he had but one more “lesson” with Beatrice. The previous night she’d as good as said she loved him and yet so far as he knew, her plans remained unchanged. Mr. Billingsby and the coveted security he presumably offered were proving formidable foes.

The clacking of typewriter keys alerted him that Lady Katherine was within. That she was back at work so soon was surprising. Then again, everyone had their own way of dealing with grief.

The door stood ajar. When his knock met with no answer, he announced his presence with a cough and stepped inside. “Forgive the disturbance. I was looking for Rourke.”

“He’s gone riding.”

“I see.” Hoping his disappointment didn’t show, he turned to go.

“Since you are here, pray take a seat, Ralph.”

Kate nodded toward the sole chair whose seat was unfettered by papers and books. Ordinarily a paragon of orderliness, she apparently made an exception when it came to her writing. By the look of it, she was in the thick of things.

Circumventing the dog lying sprawled in the center of the carpet, he made his way over to the chair and sat. “How may I be of service?”

Amber-colored eyes fixed on his face. “You and I started off on the wrong foot when I first came here as a bride, but I like to think we’ve become friends.”

Wondering at her point, Ralph nodded. “I believe we have, milady.”

“As a friend, I will speak frankly.”

Ralph had never known Kate to speak any other way but frankly, be it to a friend or foe, but he held his peace.

“My sister’s happiness was my primary concern nine months ago, and it remains so.” She halted, searching his face. “Back in London, it was I who arranged her introduction to Mr. Billingsby. At the time, I thought his mild-mannered nature might be the antidote to her impulsiveness. Now it occurs to me that I may have inadvertently pushed her into a marriage that may bring her no great distress but also little joy.”

Ralph reasoned he had nothing left to lose. “Have you considered that Beatrice possesses more sound sense than you credit her with? Perhaps you would both be better served by letting her decide her future for herself.”

He braced himself to be ordered first from the room and perhaps even the house. Instead, she drew a ragged breath. “Our mother died when Bea was but a few days old. I’ve been making decisions on her behalf as a mother might for twenty years. It is a difficult custom to break…but I will try.”

Ralph had never before known Rourke’s wife to willingly relinquish control. Flabbergasted, he could do little more than nod.

Kate drummed her fountain pen on the desktop. “But before I turn over any new leaves, I have a question to ask of you. It is a most important question, so I counsel you to think carefully before giving your answer.”

“And that is?”

She fixed her gaze on his face. “Are you a marrying man, Ralph?”

Her question took him aback. Recovering, he asked, “That depends. Do you have a bride in mind?”

Her face showed she was not amused. “Don’t play coy with me. I saw how you looked at my sister the other day in the stable and more to the point, I saw how she looked at you. Only last winter I would have judged you to be a scalawag and a philanderer. I did judge you as such, and truth be told I am not yet certain I am entirely mistaken.”

Ralph opened his mouth to defend himself, but her raised hand stayed him though he couldn’t think why. Lord knew, he’d never submitted to any authority before. But Lady Katherine wasn’t only Rourke’s wife. She was also the elder sister of the woman he loved. And judging from her very leading and intrusive question, he might just find an ally in her if he played his cards properly.

“But much can change in nine months,” Kate continued, lowering her hand. “People may change, myself included. And so I ask you for the final time, are you a marrying man?”

Ralph swallowed hard, his pride as well as his fear. Beatrice loved going to bed with him, that much was clear, but did she love him? “For the right woman, I could become one.”

“For my sister, you mean?”

He shook his head, all at once weary of women playing with him. “It is a moot point. She is affianced, is she not? She seems determined to go through with her marriage to this…Billingsby because he is…nice,” he ended, spitting out the word.

She shrugged. “She is not married to him yet. Not for a fortnight more. Beyond that, you’ve never struck me as a man who gives up easily.”

It was his turn to look her in the eye and ask the hard question. “Am I to understand that you would accept me as your brother-in-law? Unlike Rourke, I have no fortune to recommend me as a relation.”

She sat back in her seat with a sigh. “Admittedly, I used to care for such things greatly, too greatly. But if this past year has taught me anything, it is that a happy marriage is not reliant upon equity in station. Instead, the ingredients are mutual liking and respect, passion, and love. I’ve always known you liked Bea and this week it has become abundantly clear that you lust after her, as well. But do you love her?”

This time Ralph didn’t hesitate. “I do.”

He’d meant to tell Beatrice so the previous night before all her talk of safety and security had derailed him. And then afterward in bed, she’d suddenly seemed so sad he hadn’t thought it the proper time. Now he wondered if it wasn’t the timing, but his own courage that had failed him.

Exhaling heavily, Kate rested her folded hands upon her flat belly as if anticipating the coming swell. “I thought as much, but I had to hear it from your lips to be sure. Seeing you now, I cannot but believe you to be sincere.”

“I am.”

“If you won her, would you let me or my father or anyone else stand in your way?”

“Not on your bloody life,” he answered bluntly.

She smiled. “In that case, you have my blessing.”

“Thank you.” Judging that their heart-to-heart was at an end, he rose to go.

“One final thing.” Kate’s voice stalled him in midstep.

He turned back. “Yes?”

Beneath the arch of one dark brown brow, she stared him down. “If you hurt her, I’ll see your cods cut off.”

WEARING ONLY A CORSET, garters and stockings, all black, Bea knelt on the floor in Ralph’s room. The silk blindfold, also black, made for a taut band about her head, the ticking of the wall clock her only means of tracking the time, the floor planks both bruising and cold beneath her bare knees. Her hands weren’t bound, but she’d folded them behind her, the right hand cuffing the left wrist just as he’d instructed. It hadn’t seemed so very bad at first. She’d supposed his latest lesson would involve him stepping into the outer chamber for five minutes, perhaps ten.

The clock’s chiming confirmed he’d been gone almost an hour.

In the course of waiting, the floor had come to feel cold and hard beneath her bare knees, uncomfortably so. Her bare backside felt goosefleshy. Surely her last lesson in submission, in pleasure, needn’t include contracting a fever. Had she known he meant to make her wait so very long, she would have asked for a cushion at the very least. But then she supposed creature comforts would detract from the edginess swiftly transforming to desperate impatience.

She’d never been a patient person. In point, she abhorred waiting. Ralph no doubt knew that just as he seemed to innately know nearly everything else about her.

She briefly considered yanking off the blindfold, rising and fetching a pillow from the bed to spare her knees, a blatant violation of the “rules” Ralph had set and to which she had agreed.

You are to hold this position, this very posture, until I return and release you. Until I do, you may not move, you may not rise, not to scratch your nose, not even to relieve yourself. If you do, I shall know of it. And Beatrice, my beautiful wicked Beatrice, I shall punish you.

The heat in his eyes when he’d pronounced “punish” had made her instantly wet. And throbbing. And shivery in a way that had nothing to do with kneeling near naked on a cold floor in a drafty room.

She reminded herself she was free to rise and leave at any time. Whenever she wished, she was at liberty to tug the blindfold free, put her clothes back on and walk out the door. Given that she was taking the train back to London on the morrow, she might quite possibly never look Ralph in the face again. All her scandalous explorations, all the deliciously dirty things they’d done together would be as good as erased.

Only she didn’t want any of it—him—erased. She didn’t really want to be free, not if free meant living apart from Ralph. The choice was hers. The only bond fettering her was her need.

The bald truth was she wasn’t submitting to anything at all. Nothing was being imposed upon her that she had not expressly consented to, that she didn’t dearly want. Searching one’s soul could be a “dodgy” thing or so Hattie might say. Certainly this latest lesson was forcing her to face yet another uncomfortable, inconvenient self-truth.

It satisfied some need within her personality to beg.

Deep within herself, she harbored some heretofore dark, secret need to subjugate herself to another’s will, to lose herself to the pleasure and the darkness, desires that must never ever see the light of day, desires which after this week, she must put away forever.

But not just anyone would do. Ralph, it must be Ralph. She liked giving him power over her, sexual power. Beyond that, she would have liked giving him everything, all of her, including her heart.

Complete submission, her last lesson in pleasure, promised to culminate in her greatest reward. But first, where was he?

RALPH PACED HIS SITTING AREA, glass of Scotch in hand. Under the guise of a “lesson,” he’d left Beatrice nearly naked, blindfolded and kneeling on the floor. The reality was he was working up the courage to tell her he loved her and to ask her to break off her engagement to Billingsby. He’d never felt more out of his depth in all his life. Once he took her blindfold off, he would have to look into her eyes, her beautiful eyes, and find the courage to say either “I love you” or “goodbye.” His hands shook so badly that a measure of Scotch lopped onto his knuckles, obliging him to set the glass aside.

Toenails clicking on the uncovered floorboards alerted him that he was no longer alone. He snapped up his head. His gaze aligned with that of his unanticipated visitor, and he released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Toby, how did you get in here?”

Toby, Rourke’s brindle-colored mastiff, loped up to him and sniffed at his pocket. The dog was nearly the size of a miniature pony but without any trace of equine grace. Since his master’s marriage, he’d lived as Kate’s shadow. The improbable pair could be seen making their rounds about the castle. And yet the beast seemed to have a canny knack for knowing when someone in the household was in distress.

“What are you looking at?” Ralph demanded, willing the animal to go away.

Only Toby didn’t appear inclined to go anywhere. He cocked his massive head to the side and nudged Ralph’s hand with his nose. The nudging ratcheted to full force bumping. Backing up, Ralph held up his hands.

“Bad Toby, stop that. Stop that at once.”

He couldn’t be sure, but he almost fancied the animal was deliberately pushing him toward the bedroom door. His back bumping up against the knob confirmed it.

Looking enormously pleased, Toby wagged his tail encouragingly, the thing lashing at Ralph’s legs like a whip cord. The bloody beast had him pinned against the bedroom door!

Ralph reached down, scratching the dog’s head to distract him even as he tried maneuvering himself around the massive and implacable body. “Move.”

He tried giving the dog a push back, but Toby wouldn’t budge. The dog seemed to be digging in his heels, all four of them. He fixed Ralph with a maddeningly determined look that made Ralph think of Kate, his mistress. Come to think of it, they did both have amber-colored eyes.

“Take care, Toby,” Ralph said, giving up the fight and reaching for the doorknob. “Sticking one’s nose in the romantic affairs of others brings the very devil to pay.”

BEA WOULD LATER REFLECT that she must have nodded off because the door’s opening sent her starting. Footfalls belonging to a male shod in slippers rather than boots or shoes made steady progress toward her.

“Ralph,” she called into the blackness, heart hitching.

Silence greeted her. Still, it must be Ralph, it must! If anyone else were to discover her as she was, there would be no further cause for fretting upon the future. There would be no cause for fretting about anything at all, for she would, she hoped, expire upon the spot.

Strong hands seized firm but gentle hold of her. “Ralph,” she said again, this time with a smile, for his scent of lemon and bay rum told her it was he as much as his touch.

“I’m so sorry. Dear Lord, Beatrice, I’m so very sorry.” Sliding an arm beneath her, he lifted her against him and buried his face in the curve of her neck and shoulder.

“It’s all right, Ralph.” Still blindfolded, she reached up to comfort him, her fingers finding his sandpapery cheek. “You came,” she breathed, winding her arms about his neck. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized, not fully, how very close she’d come to fearing he might not.

“Sorry, so sorry…” He repeated the regret as though it was a mantra.

He lifted her from the ground. Cocooned in a dark, weightless world with only Ralph to anchor her, Bea had never felt more safe or grounded in all her life. She rested her head against what must be his shoulder and absorbed his scent, his solidness and his warmth.

Halting, he lowered her. After an hour of kneeling on hardwood, his bed felt wondrously soft, like a cloud she alone occupied. Only she didn’t wish to be alone any longer, not tonight, not evermore.

“Ralph.” She stretched out her arms in appeal.

His hands slipped behind her head, tugging the blindfold free. “I love you.”

Not certain she’d heard him properly, Bea blinked and looked up at him. Hair mussed from where he’d run his fingers through it and gaze stark, he was hands-down the most beautiful sight she would ever behold.

“You love me?”

“I do.” He eased onto the bed beside her and then moved to cover her, trailing whisper-light kisses over her neck, her breasts and her belly. “I love you.” His stroking hand moved to the inside of her thigh, his palm warm and his touch both gentle and flawlessly knowing. Parting her thighs, he pressed soft kisses on the insides. “I love you.” He fitted a hand between and filled her with his fingers.

Happy tears filled her eyes. Both her heart and body felt poised to explode. She reached down, cinching a stalling hand about his wrist. “I love you, too,” she said again, this time freely and without fear. She briefly considered telling him about the broken off engagement, but stopped herself, not wanting to spoil the magic.

Resting back to rest on his heels, he regarded her. “I’m glad.”

Gorgeously engorged, his penis was thicker and longer than she’d ever before known him to be. Only looking up at him, she felt the throbbing intensify, the longing so stark, so raw it bordered on pain.

“I want you inside me. Please, Ralph,” she added, not because she needed to beg anymore, but because she simply liked saying the word along with his name.

He reached for the tin of French Letters setting out on his nightstand, took one out and began rolling it on.

“Oh, no, please, don’t,” she said, surprising them both. “I want you, just you.”

He paused, the prophylactic partway on. His eyes found hers in the semidarkness. “Are you sure?”

“I am.” Lest there be any doubt, she pushed up on her elbow and unfurled the condom herself.

Holding her gaze, Ralph shifted to straddle her. Bea held her breath, intuitively sensing that this time would be unlike any previous coupling. The lessons were over, the fantasies finished. This time they would be making love, not playacting parts. Reality had never been more gloriously welcome.

He entered her in one clean, beautiful thrust that had them both gasping. Bea felt her heart filling along with her channel. “Oh, Ralph, I’m so happy, so madly happy.” She anchored her legs to his hips and met him stroke for stroke.

He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. Stilling inside her, he reached down and caressed her cheek. “I want you to be happy. It’s what I’ve always wanted.”

He moved inside her gently, so very gently, periodically pausing to touch her face or to look deeply, searchingly into her eyes. Smoothing a hand down her lover’s sweat-slick back, Bea gave herself up to the moment, letting herself feel not only the pleasure, but the love.

When they came, they did so together, crying out each other’s names. When later Ralph pulled the covers over them both, there was no mention of saying goodbye or parting ways for separate rooms. Folded into Ralph’s warmth like two stacked spoons, Bea let sleep carry her off, trusting—hoping—that with love on their side, the future would take care of itself.

STANDING ON THE THRESHOLD of the study the next morning, Ralph cleared his throat. “Sorry to be late. I…overslept.”

Bea had left his room for her own scarcely an hour ago. To his best knowledge, neither of them had bothered to appear at breakfast. Their mutual absence would stand as a stupid slip-up if he didn’t so dearly wish for them to be caught.

Rourke looked up from his open newspaper. “Nay matter. Kate and I had a leisurely breakfast.”

Ralph stepped up to the desk. Staring into his old friend’s face, he found himself at a loss as to how to begin.

Fortunately for him, Rourke was not one to endure long silences. “You’re the verra picture of a soberness, Sylvester. You also have the look of a man with something weighing on his mind.”

Ralph nodded. “Accurate on both counts, Patrick.” He’d always known his friend’s acumen wasn’t limited to business, but he’d never before been more cognizant of the other man’s canniness than he was now. “I’ve come to give you my notice.”

Rourke dropped the newspaper without folding it. “If this is your idea of a joke—”

“It’s no joke. You’ve been carrying me for years now. As much as I appreciate your friendship and of course, your largesse, it’s past time I struck out and made my own way.”

His own way—and Beatrice’s. He hadn’t proposed to her, not yet, but after last night, he couldn’t believe she still might mean to marry the milksop. Still, security was important to her, and he meant to provide for that and all her other needs to the very best of his ability. His position as Rourke’s private secretary was fine for a bachelor—his friend paid him embarrassingly well—but before long, he hoped to make Rourke his brother-in-law. Bosom friends though they were, still Ralph had his pride. He didn’t want to be seen as living off his future wife’s family. He had a little nest egg set aside, not much, but enough for a stake in some small business and a start for a new life, a new life with Beatrice.

Rourke brought his fist down hard on the desk, sending inkwell and paperweights jumping. “This is about my sister-in-law, isn’t it? That cursed girl is the bane of my existence.”

Friend or not, Ralph didn’t pause to properly consider his actions. The name of the woman he loved, yes, loved had just been impugned and there was nothing left to do but fight.

He launched himself at the desk and grabbed his friend by the collar points. “Take it back.”

Rourke glared up at him. The muscle ticking in his jaw told Ralph he was struggling to hold himself in check. “Be careful, Sylvester. Remember I spent time in the ring, and it was good reason they had for calling me The Bull.”

Before making his fortune, Rourke had made his way as a pugilist. His winnings had been his stake for purchasing the first railway shares that had transformed him from street tough to magnate. In a fist fight, Ralph would emerge as the loser—the pulverized, flesh-stripped loser—and yet he held on.

“Don’t ever speak so about Beatrice in my hearing. Don’t ever speak about her in that manner at all.”

Rourke nodded and Ralph let go. Shaking his head at Ralph, he lifted one ham-size hand to his neck and kneaded the raw, red spot that would soon turn into a bruise. “Good God, she’s gotten to you, hasn’t she? You love the lass.”

Brow perspiring, Ralph stepped back. “I do.”

Rourke knocked back his head and guffawed, so hard and long that Ralph was tempted to punch him if only to make him stop.

Swiping at his watery eyes, Rourke said, “Two scalawags like us ending up wed to earl’s daughters, sisters no less. Life takes some wondrous queer turns, aye Ralph?”

Ralph fell silent. “I haven’t proposed yet.”

“Why the devil not? If you’re waiting for the father’s blessing, you might as well wait for hell to freeze over. But for certain you’ll have Kate’s and mine.”

“Thank you, Patrick.”

Ralph hesitated. For the first time since they’d met at Johnnie Black’s flash house all those many years ago, Ralph found himself in the position of pupil. And a pupil’s shoes, he realized, made for exceedingly uncomfortable footwear in which to stand.

“What if I ask her and she still won’t break it off with Billingsby?”

“Och, man, find your balls. You’re one o’ Black’s boys, and the best of the bunch.” Rourke rose and rounded the desk. “Beyond that, you’re a born card sharp. Don’t tell me you’re afraid to take a chance on love?”

Ralph sank into a chair. “I have so little to offer her, Patrick.”

“Would it help to know you’re rich?”

Ralph snapped up his head. “That isn’t funny.”

“Do you remember some months back you gave me that one hundred pounds and asked me to invest it in that wee scheme o’ yours?’

Ralph did. He’d approached Rourke after reading an article in the financial section of The London Times touting the rage for traveling to the Orient. The new railway extending service from the present Orient Express into satellite terminuses had seemed his very favorite sort of wager: a long shot. He’d handed over the money to his friend to invest as though it was his. A self-made man in a society where class was mainly based on birth, Rourke was a living legend among working men and his “betters” both. Ralph had reasoned that having his railway magnate friend act as the front man would greatly increase the stock’s likelihood of success. Apparently, he’d been right. Still, that he was rich in his own right boggled his already boggled brain.

Rourke’s grin confirmed it. “The shares split, and then split again and then again. The wire came in early this morning.”

Reality hit. Ralph shot up from his chair. He gripped the edge of the desk and held on with white-knuckled hands. “You’re serious, aren’t you? I’m rich!”

Rourke nodded. “If you sell now while the price is at peak, you’ll be set for life with ample funds to provide for a wife.”

“Even if she’s an earl’s daughter?”

Rourke snorted. “I’m married to one, as well. Trust me, you’ll get used to it. They’re still women, Sylvester. Good women, with generous, loving hearts open to the man canny enough to see beyond the fuss and frills. Give Bea the chance to make you happy. From the looks of you, she has already.”

BEA WAS ON HER WAY to find Ralph and tell him about the telegraph she’d sent to Mr. Billingsby the day before. So far the sole person who knew about it was Hattie. She’d simply had to tell someone or burst. Jubilant, the housekeeper had urged her to seek out Ralph straightaway. She came up on the study just as he was stepping out.

Smiling, he stepped back. “I’ve just given my resignation.” He reached out to embrace her.

Startled, she leaped back. “Ralph, why! Even were Rourke not your friend, this must be a very secure situation.”

His smile faded. “For a man such as me, you mean?” His gaze flickered over her face.

Bea acknowledged she’d framed her thoughts badly. “I didn’t mean it that way. I only meant that if you and Rourke have quarreled, I’ll speak to Kate straightaway. I’m sure she can fix things and—”

His expression darkened. “I neither want nor need your sister to ‘fix things.’ I’ve made my decision.”

“I see.” She hesitated, waiting for him to say something more, something like “I love you. Marry me.” Instead he stayed silent and stared at her as though she’d just sprouted horns.

“You are resolved, then?” She winced at how small her voice sounded.

“I am.” Again she waited for him to say more, but instead he moved to step past her.

She started to reach for him, but stopped herself. Their lessons were over. This was real life, not fantasy, and despite last night’s “I love yous”, she needed to know whether or not he meant to spend that life with her.

“Where are you going?”

Turning back, he smiled thinly. “For the present, to pack.”

SECURITY, THERE WAS THAT word again. Deflated, Ralph walked back to his rooms. Beatrice hadn’t once asked about his plans. She hadn’t seemed to suppose he had any plans. Beyond that, she didn’t seem to trust him to take care of her. She’d yet to say anything to indicate she meant to break off her engagement. For all he knew, she might still mean to go through with marrying the milksop.

Stepping inside his rooms, he found Hattie waiting. He held in a groan. Just what he didn’t need: another uninvited woman invading his privacy.

Duster in hand, she advanced on him, her mien that of a soldier marching into battle. Stopping scarcely a foot away, she ran her stern-eyed gaze over him. “You’re a sorry sack.”

He drew the door closed behind him. “You’re looking splendid, too. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to pack. I’ve given my notice.”

He started to sidestep her but she shifted, putting herself directly in his path. “So you’re running away.”

He shrugged. “That’s what street boys do. We run.”

“Where will you go?”

His destination wasn’t her concern, but he supposed there was no harm in answering. “Back to London. It’s my home. I’ve been away too long. But please keep that bit of gossip to yourself until Lady Beatrice boards her train tomorrow.”

A shocked gasp greeted that directive. “You mean to say you’re letting her leave without you?”

So much for keeping secrets. Rather than put up a token denial, he shrugged. “It is hardly in my power to detain her even…even if I wished to. She is getting married or had you forgotten that niggling detail?”

She opened her mouth as if to reply, and then clamped it closed. Looking as though she might explode, she said, “Before anyone goes anywhere, you need to talk to her.”

“Really? I wasn’t aware I had anything more to say.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’ve money now, Ralph. You don’t have to play at being a proper gentleman anymore. You can be one.”

He started. “So you know about that, do you?” Recovering, he tsked. “Hattie, my darling, this listening at keyholes and reading wires meant for other persons simply must stop.”

She lowered her lids. “I might have had a glance at the master’s desktop, but only to dust it, of course.”

“Of course.” He bypassed her and walked over to pour himself a much needed Scotch.

She followed him, wrenching the glass from his hand. “The only reason you’ve for being miserable is because you fancy being so.”

Giving over the glass, he answered, “Money or not, I’m still too hard for someone so very fine.”

“Hard, is it?” She snorted. “If anything, I’d say you’ve gone soft…soft in the head, soft in the ballocks, too.” She lifted the glass and drained it in a single swallow that would have served a sailor proud. Handing it back to him, she said, “I wouldn’t have thought it of you.”

It was likely a mistake to ask and yet he’d made so many mistakes in his life already, what could one more signify. “What is that?”

She folded her arms across her chest and pinned him with her gaze. “You, Ralph Sylvester, are a coward.”

Ralph slammed the empty glass down upon the table. “Were you a man, you’d find yourself issuing your next insult from the floor.”

“Threaten all you like because I’m not leaving this room until you answer me. Do you love my girl or not?”

Ralph exhaled heavily, suddenly drained of the will to fight. “Of course I love her. I’ve loved her from the first moment I set eyes on her.”

Hattie stared at him with a misty gaze. “Then for Lord’s sake find her and ask her to marry you before that mealy-mouthed milksop coaxes her to come away with him.”

He nodded. “You’re right. I will. Thank you.” He turned to go. Halfway to the door, he turned back. “Of what milksop would we be speaking?”

She looked at him as though his wits were dim indeed. “Why, Mr. Billingsby, of course. He came direct from the train station a few minutes ago. He’s waiting for her in the library.”

7

Lesson Seven

“It sometimes happens that while gains are being sought for, or expected to be realized, only losses are the results of our efforts.”

—The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana

BEA HAD BEEN ON HER WAY back to her bedroom for a proper think and a cry when one of the parlor maids intercepted her to say that a gentleman from London awaited her in the library. The plain cream-colored vellum calling card confirmed it. Mr. Billingsby had arrived.

The library door stood ajar. Bea drew a bracing breath and stole a glance inside. Mr. Billingsby stood in profile by the fireplace, his gloved hands clenching the brim of a silk-banded bowler. She’d expected to have another full day, even two, before she needed to gird herself to face him, but the bewhiskered blond head and sloping shoulders showed it was not to be so.

She cleared her throat, opened the door fully, and stepped up to the threshold. He must be deep in thought indeed for he failed to turn about. She feigned a cough, louder this time. “Mr. Billingsby,” she said softly and, drawing a deep breath, started inside.

The Honorable Hamilton Conan Billingsby whipped about to face her. “Beatrice,” he said gravely. In the midst of her discomfiture she started, for until now the only person to call her by her full name was Ralph.

He walked toward her, dropping his hat upon the library rug. “Bother, it!”

Face flushed, he stooped to retrieve the hat as did she. Their foreheads cracked—painfully.

His mortified gaze crawled up to hers. He straightened. “I beg your pardon.”

“It’s quite all right.” Declining the hand he held out, Bea rose, rubbing her forehead. The latter would likely bear the brunt of a bruise before nightfall, the very least her very bad behavior deserved. This is not the best of beginnings, she allowed, and handed him the hat.

He took it, and she couldn’t help but see that his hands shook. Remembering how those trembling, fishy fingers had felt upon her flesh both firmed her resolve and sent her heart sinking. Were she to go through with marrying him, she’d likely find herself installed upon a pedestal for the remainder of her married days. At one time, being on the receiving end of a kind man’s blindly pampering adoration might have sufficed, but no more. Pedestals now struck her as cold and drafty places. Being with Ralph these past days had shown her she didn’t want to be treated as a china doll or admired as a trophy.

She wanted to be loved.

Straightening, Mr. Billingsby sent his pale blue eyes traveling the length of her. Uncomfortable beneath his scrutiny, she waved him toward a chair, but he shook his head. “I should prefer to stand if you do not mind,” he answered.

Bea did not mind. Second to turning and running out the door, she preferred standing, as well.

“I am surprised to see you here, sir,” she said. “That is to say, I would not have expected you to come all this long way.”

His blinking stare put her in mind of an owl. “Did you not? Did you think once I received your wire I would simply go away?”

Bea didn’t answer, for what answer could she give that would not render further hurt? She had indeed thought he would, if not go away, accept her decision without confrontation. It seemed her fiancé—former fiancé— was fashioned of sterner stuff than she’d credited.

“Shall I ring for tea?” she asked, desperate for distraction. Taking his acquiescence for granted, she started toward the bell rope.

“I did not come for tea,” he said, his trembling voice stalling her in her steps. “I came for an explanation—and the chance to change your mind.”

She girded herself with a deep breath. “I am afraid my mind remains unchanged. I still find myself unable to marry you, sir.”

Ironic, really, that it had taken her and Ralph’s naughty games, their dirty lessons to bring her authentic self, her raw honesty to the surface. Now she was done with playacting, done with pleasing people for the sole sake of keeping the peace. Even though she’d hurt Mr. Billingsby—she was hurting him—she reckoned it far fairer to wound him lightly now than to inflict deeper wounds later on.

The cloud crossing his unremarkable features made him appear positively tragic. “You are resolved, then?”

She nodded, determined to make herself perfectly, painfully clear for both their sakes. “I am.”

“There is someone else, is there not?”

“We were never a match,” she said, more gently this time. “Surely I am not the only one of us to know this?”

He swallowed hard. “Hearing the words from your lips is hard, harder than I expected.”

Bea nodded. “As is saying them.” She reached out to pat his shoulder, thought better of it and let her hand drop. “My one regret is to have caused you pain or embarrassment. Anything I may do to ease your burden, you have only to name it. Should you wish to appear to be the one to beg off, I shall support you in your story.”

He shook his head. “I have waited to wed you for two years now. The day you finally accepted me was among the happiest of my life. Now that you tell me a marriage between us is not to be, I find myself unable to care what gossip is put about.”

She reached out and this time her hand found his shoulder. Resting it there, she said, “I am very sorry.”

He ran a hand over his brow. “I realize that my…performance the other evening was…lacking, hardly the stuff of a young lady’s romantic dreams. I was deucedly nervous and, as I said, it was my…er…first attempt. If you will only reconsider, you have my word that I will endeavor to be a good husband to you in…every way.” Blushing, he broke off.

His desperation plucked at her heartstrings, but for both their sakes she held firm. Regardless of whether or not Ralph remained in her life, she would not consign either of them to a loveless and likely sexless marriage.

“What happened or rather didn’t happen between us was as much my fault as yours.”

She’d added the latter to be kind, but hearing the words aloud, they struck her as nothing less than the truth. If the past week of “lessons” with Ralph had taught her anything, it was that to receive sexual pleasure, one must begin by being a good lover oneself. Looking back, she more than suspected that Mr. Billingsby had likely found her performance to be every bit as…dispiriting as she had his.

“Were I to marry you, I would be doing us both a disservice. We both deserve to share our lives with mates for whom we can feel grand passion and enormous love. Someone who feels those things for us in return.”

He hesitated, gaze sliding over her. “By the looks of you, you’ve found it already. You’ve always been pretty, far too pretty for someone like me, but you’re positively blooming.”

“I am in love,” she admitted.

He lifted his chin and sent her a wobbly smile. “Sad though I am for myself, I will endeavor to be happy for you.”

“You are a good man, Mr. Billingsby.”

“Please,” he said, “Call me by my given name.”

“Very well, Hamilton, someday very soon you will find a woman worthy of you, I know you will.”

She meant it. She felt a guilty pang for having spent so very much of her time and energy cataloguing his supposed failings. It had taken her crying off their engagement to appreciate his many finer qualities.

“I hope so.” He puffed out his chest. “Hang hope, I will!” His shoulders sagged. “But first I must find a way to get over you. I shall miss you, Bea. I genuinely enjoy your company.”

“And I yours.” For the first time, Bea found herself honestly returning the sentiment without pretense or obligation. “I’d like us to start over as friends.”

“Friends?”

She nodded, her spirits lifting with relief. Now that the worst was over, she found herself feeling tender toward him. “Yes, friends. I believe that in the years to come we shall be great friends indeed.” She held out her hand.

He grasped it, his palm dry rather than sodden as she remembered it. “Friends. I should like that. I believe I should like it very much.” At the final moment, his face crumpled. He pulled her to him.

“Oh, Hamilton, sweet boy, don’t take on so.” Bea reached out and enfolded him in a heartfelt hug.

RALPH WHIPPED AWAY FROM the library door, lungs locking and heart racing. Bracing his back against the plasterwork wall, he felt as though someone had ripped the heart from his chest, leaving a hole that somehow still managed to ache. Mere feet away, Bea stood wrapped about the milksop, Billingsby, like ivy about a pole. Ralph had arrived in time to hear only snatches of their conversation—scattered murmurings of mutual fondness and futures—but the body language of that embrace told him all he needed to know.

His foolhardy fantasy was finished, the twisted fairy tale at an end. Beatrice might be marrying a frog who might never transform to a prince, but still he was a frog from her own class and kind. She was leaving Ralph as his mother had. Unlike his mum, Bea hadn’t lied at least. She was doing exactly what she’d set out to do. She was seducing her soon-to-be husband and by the looks of them, she was going about it with admirable expertise.

He remembered the railway timetable he’d earlier slid into his jacket’s inside breast pocket and pulled it out. There was no need to wait until next week or even tomorrow. The next southbound train to London arrived inside of two hours. If he left at once, he might well make it. Other than his clothes, he really had nothing to pack.

His fingers fisted about the leaflet. Tossing the balled up paper on the floor, he allowed there were no more “ifs” to consider—and absolutely no more reasons to stay.

KATE LEFT MR. BILLINGSBY in the library with the promise that he would stay long enough for luncheon. As soon as she could, she broke away and bolted for Ralph’s rooms. Telling Mr. Billingsby to his face that she could not marry him had been a hard thing to do, but in the aftermath, it felt freeing. Her and Ralph’s earlier tiff was just that, a silly misunderstanding. Clever and charming, Ralph would soon find another situation, she was sure of it. If need be, she might find work, as well. What mattered was that they loved each other and were free to be together.

Stepping inside, humming alerted her that she wasn’t alone. Spirits sinking, she crossed the main room and followed the singing into the bedchamber.

Hattie stood beside the stripped-down bed. The sheets in which Bea had only just lain were bunched into a ball on the floor. Had the housekeeper paused to peer at them, Bea had no doubt that the traces of their recent lovemaking would have been embarrassingly evident.

Walking over, Bea asked, “Hattie, what are you doing here?”

Hattie looked up from the blanket she was folding. “I might ask you the same.”

Bea allowed she had no choice but to brazen it out. Remembering she was a woman, not a child, she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and prepared to stand her ground. “Yes, you might only I asked you first.”

“Clearing out Ralph’s room. He won’t be needing it anymore.”

Bea swung her gaze to the far side of the room. The wardrobe doors stood open, the cabinet’s interior empty save for a few empty hangers.

Panic seized her. “Where is he?”

Pummeling a pillow, Hattie answered, “Gone.”

“Gone?” Bea echoed, stunned. She’d never imagined he meant to leave so soon, let alone without so much as a goodbye.

Hattie nodded. “He left for the train station a half hour ago.”

A half hour ago! She scraped a hand through her hair, belatedly remembering she’d pinned it. Pins spraying, she demanded, “What is his destination? Surely he left a direction?”

Hattie shook her head. “Somewhere in London, but beyond that, he wouldn’t say.”

Feeling as though she might faint for what would be the very first time in her life, Bea gripped the bed rail, the very bed rail to which she’d savored being tied. That her fortunes could so drastically change in just a few hours seemed impossible to wrap her mind around.

“He left this for you.”

Hattie picked up the book that had been lying out on the bedside table and handed it to her. It was The Kama Sutra, of course. Even in absentia, Ralph’s sense of irony remained.

“Thank you.” Feeling like a sleepwalker, Bea stretched out a trembling hand and took it.

For a few seconds she thought to take it back to her room, only she wasn’t at all sure her weak knees would carry her that far. Aware of Hattie watching her, she sank onto the side of the mattress and cracked open the richly bound cover.

She wasn’t really surprised to see a folded note slipped into the spine. Hands shaking, she unfolded the crisp vellum and read.

The proverbial scales have fallen from my eyes, and I see what I should have known since first we met: the impossibility of our ever being together.

Bea paused, gathering herself. Unlike her uneven scrawl, Ralph’s penmanship was precise, elegant.

Hattie’s voice broke in. “What does it say?”

Bea pulled her watery gaze from the paper. “You don’t know?”

“I’m no snoop,” Hattie huffed, drawing up beside her. A moment later, she added, “Besides, he sealed it.”

She returned to the letter.

Even were you not an earl’s daughter, still you are, my dearest, darling girl, far too fine for the likes of me.

A tear rolled down her cheek and struck the page, blurring the ink.

I wish you and your fiancé every happiness. I only hope he has the sound sense to deserve you as I cannot nor ever will. I remain your most loyal friend, humble servant—

—And affectionate tutor…
RS

SITTING AT HER MAHOGANY DESK inlaid with maple, Toby stretched out beside her, Kate was feeling mightily pleased with the turn life had taken. She had a loving husband whom she adored and who supported her in her writing and, indeed, in her every endeavor. Not so very long ago, she’d encountered Bea’s fiancé, Mr. Billingsby, exiting the library in such deep distress it could only mean Bea had come to her senses and broken off their engagement. A short while ago, Kate had put her own dearest daughter down for a postteatime nap and now further family duties were as yet hours away. Running her fingertips over the keys of her new typewriter, a gorgeous black-lacquered beast Rourke had special ordered from the American manufacturer Sholes & Glidden, she looked forward to hours of undisturbed, productive peace.

The door swung open, slamming against the freshly painted plasterwork. Bea stormed inside.

Cheeks shot with pink, she marched up to Kate’s desk. “What did you say to him?”

Flummoxed, for a moment Kate could but stare. “To whom?” The tears pooling in her baby sister’s eyes and the accompanying tremble to her bottom lip told her this was no tantrum, but deep distress.

Bea let out a snort. “To Ralph, as if you didn’t know. He’s given his notice and gone.”

Kate started. Ralph was leaving them! Indeed this was news and bad news at that.

“I did not know.”

“Well, he has. He spoke to Rourke just this morning.” Bea nodded, the expression in her eyes bruised. “Apparently, he’s already left for the train station. To go to London,” she added, voice breaking as though London might as well be Mongolia or the moon. “He left me a…note.”

She jammed a fist into her gown’s pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She made as if to fling it upon the desk, hesitated, and then tucked it tenderly back inside.

Kate was at a loss. She’d thought her and Ralph’s heart-to-heart had gone off enormously well. Perhaps her threat to cut off his balls had been in poor taste, but even so, she couldn’t imagine she’d said anything so waspish, so horrible to cause him to desert not only his best friend and their household, but Bea, the woman he professed to love.

“If I gave offense, it was certainly not intentional. And Rourke has said nothing to me about any quarrel. Perhaps you should examine your own interchanges for the cause.”

Bea glowered at her, no small feat given the wateriness of her eyes. “Meaning?”

Kate was in no mood to fight, but it was obvious Bea was. “I do not write mystery novels and yet remain blind to real life. That Ralph and you were both absent from breakfast this morning did not pass unremarked upon.”

“Oh.” Bea folded her arms over her breasts and looked Kate in the eye. “Very well, I shagged Ralph. I shagged your husband’s best friend and secretary and now he’s run off. Last night he told me he loved me but it seems he does not.”

Kate surmised she was supposed to be shocked. She wasn’t. She might be mistress of a castle; still, little went on in her household that she didn’t know of or at least suspect. Beyond that, Bea was her baby sister. “Does Ralph know your fiancé is here?”

“Mr. Billingsby is my fiancé no longer. I’ve broken off my engagement to him.”

That much was good news. “I suspected so when I saw him earlier. Still, I am relieved to hear it. I’m sure Ralph was, as well.”

Bea pressed her lips firmly together and glanced down at the floor. “I have not told him.”

“Bea, why not?” Kate pushed back her chair and stood.

Bea bit her lip. Twisting her hands before her, she admitted, “I was afraid.”

Incredulous, Kate looked at the lovely, accomplished young woman before her and wondered why Bea still did not seem to know her true worth. “Afraid of what?”

Bea sighed. “Afraid he won’t want me, I suppose.”

Torn between frustration and sympathy, Kate said, “Is it so very hard to believe someone, a man, might actually love you with all his heart?”

Mouth trembling Bea admitted, “Yes, yes, it is.”

Kate hadn’t supposed such an easy surrender. Startled, she asked, “Why, dearest?”

The floodgates burst. Tears streaming, Bea admitted, “Because I’m so bloody boring.”

“THAT’S ABSURD.” Sidestepping Toby, Kate rounded the desk. “You are the furthest thing from boring.” She opened her arms, and grateful for the comfort, Bea let herself be enfolded in that warm, sisterly embrace.

Bending to lay her head on Kate’s shoulder, she sniffed, “Well, maybe not boring precisely, but certainly I am not the sort of woman who can hold the interest of a man such as Ralph, not beyond a week.”

Ralph was the most handsome, clever and altogether entertaining man she’d ever known. He was also a superb lover with sexual appetites that went well beyond the ordinary as she well knew. How could she, a passably pretty girl from a top-drawer family who, until that week, had been cocooned in safety all her life, have possibly thought to hold him?

Kate stared at her. “Why should you think that?”

Bea lifted her head. “You yourself warned me that charming rogues like Ralph eat little girls for breakfast.”

“Oh, dear.” Kate blew out a long, slow breath. “I was wrong.”

It was Bea’s turn to stare. “You admit to being in the wrong?” If so, this would indeed be a first.

“Yes, I do. I believe Ralph loves you. Nine months ago I would not have thought so, but I do now. Ralph loves you, Bea, with all his heart.”

Bea waited for her sister to say more. With Kate, there was always more. When several heartbeats had raced by and Kate still had not, Bea feared she might implode. “But,” she prodded.

“There is no ‘but.’ As to what comes next, that is entirely up to you. I’ve made a pet of you for far too long. But you’ve been my baby sister, my baby, since I was nine years old. Now I must learn to treat you as a woman and that means trusting your judgment.”

Warmed, Bea admitted, “I do love him, Kate. I love him with all my heart. I would give anything to know where in London he has gone.”

Kate was already headed for the door. “We will find Rourke at once. If anyone can puzzle out Ralph’s whereabouts, it is my husband.”

From the doorway, Hattie held out what looked to a wrinkled train schedule. “He’s bound for Paddington.”

Heart beating double time, Bea bounded across the room and took it. “The train timetable with Paddington circled in pen. Oh, thank you, Hattie, thank you!”

Dividing her gaze between the two women, Bea admitted to herself that she didn’t only want Ralph. She needed him. She needed him in her bed to be sure, but beyond that she needed him in her life. The Mr. Billing-bys of this world, no matter how solid and respectable, would never ever do. There was but one action left to take.

“Kate, forgive the imposition, but I must borrow your brougham again. It seems I have a train to make.”

STANDING UPON THE TRAIN platform minutes away from his London-bound train pulling in, Ralph considered that it was a damnable curse, this caring about people. The old Ralph Sylvester never would have allowed himself the luxury of it. That bloke had been young but wise, cheeky but clever. He scarcely knew himself these days. That was the problem with wearing so bloody many masks. After a while, you couldn’t be certain what, if anything, lay beneath.

His train pulled in, screeching to a halt on the tracks before him. Moments later, the doors opened and eager passengers flooded the platform, several greeted with handshakes and hugs by those waiting to receive them. Watching one young couple embrace, Ralph felt a lump lodge in his throat. His newfound wealth meant nothing to him without someone with whom he might share both it and his life. Not any “someone,” but Beatrice.

What the hell was he thinking! Hang pride, he had to go back for her! He had to at least try to win her back from the milksop.

Fortunately, the only luggage he’d brought with him was the light valise sitting at his feet. He was reaching for it when above the station manager’s bullhorn, the porters’ whistles and the general din he swore he heard someone calling his name. Not just any someone, but Beatrice.

He swung about in perfect time to see her go down, swallowed by the crowd. “Beatrice!”

BEA REACHED THE TRAIN PLATFORM as the train bound to Paddington pulled in. Her breath hitching, she slanted a hand over her brow, straining to see through the clouds of steam to the throng of passengers about to board. A woman pushing a pram stepped to the side at the same time that a mountain of carted luggage momentously moved. And that’s when she saw him.

“Ralph!”

Folly though it likely was to think he might see let alone hear her, she stuck a hand up into the air and hailed him nonetheless.

“Ralph!” she called out again, not caring for the scowls and queer looks directed her way.

Even with his back turned to her and wearing an outer coat and hat, she knew him. She would recognize those broad shoulders and that cocky, confident stride anywhere. “Ralph!”

He cocked his head to the side and turned around almost as if he heard her.

Giddy hope flooded her. She waived her aching arm like a flag and pushed her way toward him. Ticket or not, luggage or not, if Ralph boarded that train, then so would she.

A porter hauling a luggage cart stepped into her path. They collided, the impact knocking her to her knees.

Surrounded by trampling feet, panic seized her. But then strong arms lifted her upright. “Good God, are you all right?”

Cheek pressed against Ralph’s tweed-clad chest, her nostrils filling with lemon and warm, well-worn wool, Bea nodded. “I am now.” She pulled back to look up at him. How could she have known that security could look and feel and smell so good?

“I’d think you would be weary of the ground,” he said, his mouth quirking in that wry smile she so loved to see.

Bea smiled, too. “I wasn’t there for long. You caught me.” Indeed, like the fairy-tale prince of her girlhood fantasies, Ralph had come to her rescue in more ways than one. The best part was Ralph was real and, she hoped, still willing to be hers. Steeling herself, she drew back her shoulders and stuck out her chin. “I’ve come to tell you I love you—again. And I either want to go with you or take you back with me. Regardless, I don’t want us to part, not now, not ever again.”

Raised brows greeted that pronouncement. “What of Mr. Billingsby?”

“I broke off our engagement. I sent him a wire from town the other day. I never expected him to seek me out in Scotland.”

He shook his head, but his eyes grew encouragingly warm. “I saw the two of you in the library. Are you quite certain he knows that was an ending, not a beginning?”

So that explained his flight. Kate had been correct. She owed her sister a proper apology once she—they—got back. “Indeed, he does. It would seem I’ve become rather good at speaking my mind as well as asking for what I truly want.”

Ralph swallowed. “If recent memory serves me, you’re rather good at a lot of things.”

She didn’t deny it. Because of him, she’d learned to respect her body and trust her heart. Only she didn’t want him as her tutor anymore. She wanted him as her husband.

And so she steeled herself to be braver than she’d ever before been. “Marry me, Ralph.”

His jaw dropped. “You’re proposing?” He backed up a step, hardly the most encouraging response.

But Bea had come too far to back down now. Advancing, she said, “I am. Does that shock you?”

He hesitated. “A little,” he admitted.

“Good.” Lowering her voice, she added, “I’d only ever thought to have a companionable marriage with satisfying sex. Never ever did I think I’d love anyone so very dearly or so very much.” She paused for breath. “I know my proposing is unconventional…very well, scandalous. Then again, considering all the scandalous acts in which we’ve so far engaged, a marriage proposal seems tame indeed.” Not only tame, but right, so very right—provided he said “yes.”

Ralph smiled at last. “Do you mean to go down on one knee?”

Smiling, she shook her head. “I believe I’ve spent more than sufficient time on my knees this past week, wouldn’t you agree?” Without waiting for his answer, she added, “I’d rather say it’s your turn.”

He hesitated. “Very well.” Stepping back to clear space, he went down on bended knee. Lifting his gaze to hers, he took both of her gloved hands between his. “Beatrice Lindsey, I accept your proposal of marriage and ask most humbly that you do me the honor of accepting mine in return. Will you, darling? Will you spend your life with this erstwhile thief? Before you answer, you should know I am not penniless. Thanks to an investment I had Rourke place, I have come into a small fortune.”

Eyes welling, she clasped his hand. “That there is money for our keeping is welcome news, but I would have married you were you a pauper. I would gladly wed you this very day only my wedding gown is in London with Aunt Lavinia.”

“The very one with despised Brussels lace?”

“If you must know, I fibbed. It’s French satin with very little trim,” she admitted with a grin.

He tossed back his head and laughed. “You’d be beautiful walking down the aisle in a granary sack or better yet, nothing at all. Still, I’ve a fancy to see London again. I’ve been away too long. A fish out of water is just that.” He hesitated. “Once there, shall we call upon your father so I can ask for your hand? He’ll refuse me, of course, but I’d like to make the effort and pay him proper respect if only for your sake.”

She shook her head, her horror in no way feigned. “Papa may be the Earl of Romney, but steeped in debts as he is, he’ll be only too glad to pawn off my keeping to someone else.”

“Then I’ll ask Rourke. Assuming he lets me live, I mean to have him stand for me as best man.”

“Why should he mind our marrying?”

He sent her a quizzical look. “My corrupting your innocence could be seen as a breach of trust.”

“Oh, that.” Men could be such ninnies. “We need have no worries on that score. Kate is on our side and if anything, you shall seem a hero for taking a soiled sister-in-law off his hands.”

“You’re not soiled,” he said with feeling, looking so deeply and searchingly into her eyes that she felt naked albeit in the very best of ways. “You’re perfect, completely and utterly divine.”

She smiled, happy tears trickling down her cheeks. “I know you’ve become accustomed to acting the tutor and me the pupil, but really, Ralph, don’t you think you might get up and kiss me?”

“Indeed, my bride-to-be, that’s a capital plan.”

He reached out, lifted her chin on the edge of his hand, and drew her face to his. “I love you,” he whispered, so close that she tasted his breath upon her lips. He kissed her top and bottom lip in turns and the corners of her mouth before matching his lips to hers.

Brushing her mouth over his, she smiled back. “I love you, too.”

He slid his tongue along the seam of her lips and though they were in a public place, a most public place, still Bea had no thought of denying either of them.

“I’m glad, for I’ve waited all these years for someone to love me, I shouldn’t care to be loved but a little.”

She started to answer, but his tongue stroking inside her mouth stalled her from speaking. He kissed her both deeply and gently. It was their first kiss revisited, only this time the tenderness wasn’t by way of being a lesson, but an honest expression of not only great passion but also great love mutually shared.

Cries of, “Jaysus, let a room,” and “Bloody hell, put a ring on the lass first,” had them pulling apart. Breathless and giddy, Bea took a shaky step back. “You’re no Mr. Billingsby, but I expect you’ll do.”

She looked up into Ralph’s smiling eyes, and for the first time it struck her that this beautiful, wonderful, miraculous man was hers, all hers. Not for seven days but for the sum of the rest of their happily ever after lives.

Sobering, he said, “Be that as it may, my darling, do you think we might manage to pass the next, oh…fifty-odd years without evermore uttering that most unfortunate gentleman’s name?”

“That might be managed.” Rather than risk spoiling the moment, she refrained from pointing out that from here on they’d be addressing her former fiancé and hopefully now friend as Hamilton.

Ralph hesitated. “Before we put your former fiancé to bed, so to speak, I’ve one final question.”

“And what is that, my love?”

“Was he really that wretched in the sack?”

Bea hesitated. Having made their peace, Hamilton was her friend now. She had no wish to speak badly of him. She already felt sufficiently guilty on that score. And yet Ralph was not only her lover, but also the love of her life and her soon-to-be husband. She owed him nothing less than utter honesty, undivided loyalty and the whole of her overflowing heart.

She nodded, fighting a giggle. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

Predictably he grinned. “That’s very sad…for him.”

She swatted his arm. “It’s most unfair and ungrateful of us to poke fun. Poor Mr. Billingsby…I mean, Hamilton is our benefactor, after all.”

“Our benefactor?” One dark brow lifted. “How so?”

“It was his very…shortcomings that sent me back to you, the perfect place from which I should never have strayed and nevermore shall leave.”

The melting look he sent her seemed to send the temperature in the chilly train shed rising by several notches. “In that event, I feel myself quite warming to the unfortunate fellow. Perhaps he only wants for some…tutelage.” He grinned.

Smiling, Bea shook her head. “If so then he must look elsewhere, for my mind, body and heart belong wholly to another. They belong to you for now and the rest of my days.”

“Beatrice?” The telltale sheen to his eyes and the gravity of his tone had her heart skipping beats.

She raised their clasped hands and brushed her lips along his knuckles. Lifting her gaze to his, she smiled. “From here on my place is by your side. There, my dearest, darling tutor is the only place I shall ever again wish to be.”

ISBN: 978-1-4268-6002-7

THE TUTOR

Copyright © 2010 by Hope Tarr.

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