Robin Schone

by The Lady's Tutor

  There was no mistaking his coarse suggestiveness.

  “With English currency.”

  Nor was there any mistaking her deliberate obtuseness.

  He cast a telling glance about the library, at the ceiling-to-floor shelves filled with leather-bound books, at the priceless silk-screen panels that dotted the remaining three walls, at the credenza inlaid with mother-of-pearl, at the carved mahogany fireplace that was a masterpiece of English craftsmanship.

  “That is one of the benefits of having a sheikh for a father. I have no need of your money,” he replied with feigned disinterest, all the while wondering just how far she would go in her quest for sexual knowledge—and how far he would go in his quest for oblivion. “Or that of anybody else, for that matter.”

  Her gaze did not waver from his.

  She would blackmail... but she would not beg.

  “Do you know what you are asking, Mrs. Petre?” he asked softly.

  “Yes.”

  Ignorance shone in her clear hazel eyes.

  Elizabeth Petre thought that a woman like herself, a woman who is older and whose body is not “perfect,” a woman who is respectably married with two children, could hold no appeal to a man like himself. She did not understand the driving power a man’s curiosity could become or the powerful attraction a woman’s desire could ignite.

  Ramiel knew these things only too well. Just as he realized that mutual need could bind a man and a woman together more surely than vows spoken in a church or a mosque.

  A dull sulfuric glow penetrated the bay windows. Somewhere above the yellow fog that heralded another London morning shone sunlight and the beginning of a new day.

  Pivoting sharply, he crossed the Oriental carpet and reached to pluck from the ceiling-high wall of books a small leather-bound volume.

  The Perfumed Garden of the Sheikh Nefzaoui.

  In Arabic it was titled Al Raud al atir wa nuzhat al Khatir—The Scented Garden for the Soul’s Delectation. More popularly it was translated as The Perfumed Garden for the Soul’s Recreation.

  Ramiel had memorized it as assiduously as boys in England memorize Greek and Latin primers. But whereas the primers prepared English boys to read Greek and Latin scholars, The Perfumed Garden had prepared Ramiel to satisfy a woman.

  It also gave excellent advice for a woman who wished to learn how to satisfy a man.

  Without giving himself time to reconsider his action, he returned to the bay window and offered her the book. “Tomorrow morning, Mrs. Petre. Here. In my library.” Muhamed had said she had arrived at—“Five sharp.”

  A small, slender hand gloved in black kid sprang out of the heavy concealing folds of her wool cloak. The book, some five by eight inches in measurement, was grasped snugly between thumb and fingers. “I do not understand.”

  “You want me to tutor you, madam; therefore, I shall tutor you. Lessons begin tomorrow morning. There is your textbook. Read the introduction and the first chapter.”

  She lowered her head; the upturned veil blocked the overhead light so that her expression was hidden in shadow. “The Perfumed Garden of the . . .” She did not attempt to pronounce the rest of the title, Sheikh Nefzaoui. “I take it this is not a book on how to cultivate flowers.”

  His lips twitched with sudden amusement. “No, Mrs. Petre, it is not.”

  “Surely there is no need to start lessons so soon. I will need time to assimilate what I read—”

  Ramiel did not want to give her time to assimilate.

  He wanted to shock her.

  He wanted to titillate her.

  He wanted to peel away the drab black wool and her cold English reserve and find the woman underneath.

  “You asked me to tutor you, Mrs. Petre. If I am to do so, you will follow my instructions. Excluding the preface and introduction, there are twenty-one chapters in The Perfumed Garden; tomorrow we will review the introduction and the first chapter. The morning after we will discuss the second, et cetera, until we finish your schooling. If you prefer more time to ponder your lessons, you will have to find another tutor.”

  The distant slam of an attic door echoed through the walls; as if on cue, the dull clang of metal followed, an iron skillet sharply contacting an iron stove as below stairs the cook started breakfast for the rising servants.

  The book and her gloved hand disappeared inside the black wool of her cloak. Her corset audibly protested the abrupt motion. “Five o’clock is too late; we will have to start at four-thirty.”

  He cared little what time they conducted the lessons; his only interest was how much a woman like her would learn from a man like him. “As you will.”

  Her neck was slender, as had been her hand. The shoes peeking out from underneath the concealing cloak were narrow.

  What did she seek to restrain so tightly within the confines of the creaking whalebone—flesh . . . or desire?

  “Every school has rules, Mrs. Petre. Rule number one is this: You will not wear a corset while you are in my house.”

  Her fine white skin turned ruby red.

  He wondered if she turned that same fiery color when she was sexually excited.

  He wondered if her husband had ever sexually excited her.

  Her head jerked back. “What I wear or do not wear, Lord Safyre, is none of your concern—”

  “On the contrary, Mrs. Petre. You sought me out to teach you what pleases a man. Therefore what you wear is my concern if it is detrimental in accomplishing that goal. I assure you, a creaking corset does not please a man.”

  “Perhaps not a man of your nature—”

  Ramiel’s mouth involuntarily tightened.

  Infidel. Bastard. There was nothing he had not been called, either in Arabic or English.

  He was strangely disappointed that she should be afflicted with the same prejudices as were other people.

  “You will find, Mrs. Petre, that when it comes to sexual pleasure, all men are of a certain nature.”

  She tilted her chin in a gesture that was becoming increasingly familiar. “I will not tolerate any physical contact with you.”

  Ramiel smiled cynically. There were things that affected a person far more deeply than mere touch.

  Words.

  Death.

  Dabid . . .

  “So be it.” He briefly inclined his head and shoulders in a half-bow. “I give you my word as a man of the East and the West that I will not touch your body.”

  Impossibly, her spine stiffened even more; it was accompanied by the creak of her corset. “I am sure you understand that our lessons must be kept in the strictest of confidence. . . .”

  Ramiel was struck by the irony of English etiquette. She blackmailed him yet expected him to be a gentleman and remain discreet about her indiscretion.

  “The Arab people have a word for a man who speaks of what goes on in privacy between himself and a woman. It is called siba, and it is forbidden. I assure you that under no circumstances will I compromise you.”

  Her mouth tightened into what the English so aptly termed a stiff upper lip. Clearly, she did not trust the concept of Arab honor. “Good day, Lord Safyre.

  He bowed his head. “Ma’a e-salemma, Mrs. Petre. I am sure you know your way out.”

  Elizabeth Petre’s retreat was marked by a harsh swish of wool and a sharp click of the library door opening then closing. Ramiel stared at the swirling yellow fog outside the bay windows and wondered how she had traveled to his house. Hack? Her own carriage?

  Hack, he would guess. She fully realized the danger should their liaison be discovered.

  “El Ibn.”

  Ramiel’s stomach clenched.

  The son.

  He was the Bastard Sheikh. He was Lord Safyre. And he was El Ibn. The son . . . who had failed. Never again would he bear the title of Ramiel ibn Sheikh Safyre—Ramiel, son of Sheikh Safyre.

  He turned, body tensed as it had not been the past thirty minutes.

  Muhamed wore a turban, a man’s baggy trouse
rs and thobs, a loose, ankle-length shirt. He had been with Ramiel for twenty-six years. A gift from Ramiel’s father, a eunuch to protect the bastard son of a sheikh who at the age of twelve had failed to protect himself. And had done no better at the age of twenty-nine.

  He reached inside his dress coat and retrieved the card tucked away there. An address was printed in the lower right-hand corner in ornate script.

  “Follow Elizabeth Petre, Muhamed, to make sure that she doesn’t get into any more trouble than she already has.”

  Ramiel’s expression hardened.

  A man like the Chancellor of the Exchequer married moral women to bear his children—he would not relish his wife performing those sexual acts he sought from his mistress. Ramiel had been exiled from his father’s country; he had no desire to be exiled from the country of his mother. If trouble accrued from this tutelage, he would have to be prepared.

  “When she is safely inside, surveil the house. Follow her husband. I want to know who his mistress is, where he meets her, when he meets her, and how long their association has been going on.”

  Chapter 2

  The heavy morning air pressed around the sour-smelling hack as if it were a living entity, heart beating in time to Elizabeth’s heart, breathing when she breathed. Her reticule, heavy with the book she had stuffed into it outside the Bastard Sheikh’s door, pressed into the jointure of her thighs. Outside the grimy window of the hack, dim shapes shifted in the lifting fog. Vendors shouted their wares and servants haggled over their prices as if she had not spent the longest thirty minutes of her life convincing the most notorious womanizer in England to teach her how to give a man sexual pleasure.

  The Bastard Sheikh’s voice mocked her still, a rasping purr of English civility. Do you know what you are asking, Mrs. Petre?

  Yes.

  Liar, liar, liar, liar, the carriage wheels grated. A woman like her could not possibly know the price a man like him would exact for carnal knowledge.

  Anger poured over Elizabeth in scalding waves.

  How dare he tell her that a man’s satisfaction lay in a woman’s ability to receive pleasure, as if it were her fault that her husband kept a mistress!

  The smell of his perfume—his woman’s perfume—clung to her nostrils.

  It was as if he had wallowed in it.

  No, it was as if he had wallowed in the woman who had worn it.

  He had smelled as if he had rubbed every inch of his flesh against every inch of her flesh.

  Elizabeth shut her eyes against the unbidden image of darkly tanned skin pressing down, around, and inside a woman’s pale body.

  Blue and green lights flashed behind her eyelids.

  No, the lights were neither blue nor green. They were turquoise. The same color as were the Bastard Sheikh’s eyes.

  His hair was English and his skin was Arabic, but his eyes belonged to neither the East nor the West.

  They spoke of places Elizabeth had never been to, of pleasures she had only imagined.

  They had judged her as a woman and found her wanting.

  The rear wheel of the hack fell into a rut, startling open her eyes. Bracing herself, she stared at the worn leather facing her.

  Women like her, older women, imperfect women, they would not be chosen by men like the Bastard Sheikh, but they deserved pleasure, too, and she was not going to back down because he made her feel every second of her age, every imperfection of her body.

  She had spent seventeen years being an obedient daughter, bending her will to that of her parents. She had spent an additional sixteen years being a dutiful wife, suppressing her desires that she not repel her husband.

  The Bastard Sheikh had said there were twenty-one chapters in the book he planned to school her with.

  She could endure those mocking, knowing turquoise eyes for three weeks.

  She could endure anything to get the knowledge that she needed.

  The hack came to a tooth-jarring halt.

  It took Elizabeth several seconds to realize it had reached her destination as opposed to being jammed in traffic again. It took her several more seconds to locate the door handle and wrench it open.

  The street corners looked alien through the black veil, as if they had changed in some obscure but overt manner in the past two hours. A change that could not be accounted for by the mere passage of dark dawn into day.

  “That’ll be one shilling and twopence, ma’am.”

  She stared up at the cabbie.

  He was a shell of a man, worn thin by lack of nutrition and fourteen-hour-long workdays. A halo of light surrounded his head—the morning sun peering through the overlying clouds of smoke and fog that surrounded London in November, December, and January but had this year extended into the month of February.

  Elizabeth was healthy and wealthy with a prominent husband and two sons. Why could she not be content with what she had?

  Digging into her reticule, she grabbed a florin and tossed it up to him. “Keep the change.”

  He caught it deftly and doffed his hat. “Thank’ee, ma’am. Will ye be needin’ a hack agin?”

  It was not too late, the old Elizabeth whispered. She could pay the driver now to deliver the book back to the Bastard Sheikh and she need have no more contact with him.

  But she was not the same woman she had been last week. Nor would she ever be again.

  Her husband had openly flaunted his mistress in public. While he took his satisfaction elsewhere, she had suppressed her physical needs in the belief that conjugal bliss lay in family, not flesh.

  Her marriage had been based on lies.

  “Not today, thank you. I will, however, need one tomorrow morning. Four o’clock.”

  A grin momentarily wiped away the lines of exhaustion etched into the cabbie’s face and revealed the youth that was his in years if not in experience. He clicked to the horse. “I’ll be ’ere, ma’am.”

  Elizabeth stared after the hack. It was quickly swallowed up in the morning stream of horses and carriages and yellow ribbons of fog.

  She had not expected to have to wait an hour for the Bastard Sheikh to return home from his nocturnal carousing. Now she would have to think of some excuse as to why she was returning home at a time when normally she would still be abed.

  A sudden shiver of awareness prickled her skin.

  Someone was watching her.

  Stomach churning, she pivoted.

  There was no one on the sidewalk.

  “ ’Erring a ha’penny! Fresh ’erring! Git yer ’erring fer breakfast! ’Erring a ha’penny!”

  Across the street on the opposite sidewalk a young boy pushed a wheelbarrow, shouting his wares. Leaning against a brick building nearby stood a dark figure—

  A team of horses obliterated her view. Steam rose from their bodies. They pulled a wagon piled high with barrels. When it passed, Elizabeth saw that the fish vendor had paused. The back of a dark cloak curved over his wheelbarrow.

  A woman, no doubt a servant, buying fresh herring for breakfast.

  Fear mingled with relief. No one knew that she had met with the Bastard Sheikh.

  This time.

  After walking the three blocks to her town home, she was bathed in sickly sweat.

  And still she could smell the perfume.

  Stealthily unlocking the front door and pushing it open, Elizabeth surprised her butler in the act of struggling into his jacket.

  Her heart skipped a beat.

  When the Arab butler had denied her entrance, she had given him her card to intimidate him with her family’s political clout.

  The servant, surely, had passed the card on to his master.

  Where it no doubt still remained. With the corner turned down to indicate she had called in person.

  The Bastard Sheikh had said every school has rules. His first rule was that she could not wear a corset in his house.

  She had used blackmail to gain audience with him. Why would he not use blackmail to humiliate her?


  “ ’Ere now, what d’ye think ye’re doin’—”

  Elizabeth jerked back her veil just as a pair of large, freckled hands reached to bodily evict her.

  The butler froze, black jacket askew. “Mrs. Petre!”

  “Good morning, Beadles.” She had never seen her butler without gloves on. The image of his freckled hands lingered in her mind even as a hurried explanation spilled out of her mouth. “It’s a beautiful day. I thought an early morning walk would sharpen my appetite. Has Mr. Petre had breakfast yet?”

  Beadles hastily straightened his jacket, expression instantly changing from one of malevolence to deference. “Indeed not, madam.” Suddenly realizing his gloveless state, he jerked his hands behind his back. “You should have rung for a footman. It’s not safe for a woman to be out alone in the early hours of morning.”

  Elizabeth was vaguely amused at how quickly he assumed a gentleman’s flawless accent when only seconds earlier he had spoken pure cockney.

  “There was no need, Beadles. I did not walk far.” Underneath the voluminous wool cloak she strangled her reticule while she calmly continued as if it were commonplace for the mistress of the house to go off on a walk before her servants arose from their beds. “Please ring for Emma. I need to change for—” What? Bed? “Breakfast.”

  Beadles was far too dignified to comment on his mistress’s odd behavior. The top of his balding head gleamed in the weak beam of sunlight that had trailed her steps.

  Elizabeth bit her lip to contain a hysterical laugh.

  It was all so anticlimactic . . . so normal.

  Who would ever suspect that Mrs. Elizabeth Ann Petre, daughter of the prime minister and wife to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had blackmailed her way into the Bastard Sheikh’s house that she might convince him to tutor her on how to give a man pleasure?

  Perhaps she would awaken to find that this was all a dream and that her husband was exactly as she had always thought him to be, a man who was more comfortable with politics than he was with women.

  Perhaps she would awaken and find that the nasty, hurtful rumors that he had a mistress were false.

  Suddenly, her plan to be tutored by the Bastard Sheikh—a plan that had previously seemed bold and daring—now seemed merely tawdry.