Ramiel leaned forward in his chair, wood creaking, suddenly wanting to stop the words that he knew were coming. “Mrs. Petre—”
“Lord Safyre . . . you, as a man . . .” She raised her head, hazel eyes filled with self-loathing. “Are you not disgusted with a woman who wishes to rut like the beasts in the field?”
He had wanted to see what was underneath her sedate exterior. Now he wanted to give her back her composure.
He could do it too.
He could lie. He could tell her yes, a woman’s base sexual needs revolted a man like him.
He could tell her that respectable Arab women were trained to give a man pleasure, not seek their own, and that passion, while praised in a concubine, was condemned in a wife.
He could send her home and spare her the decision that he would ultimately force her to make and hope that she never learn the truth about her husband.
Too late ...
“No, Mrs. Petre, I am not disgusted by a woman’s sexual needs.”
“But you are part Arab.”
There was no reason for the surge of raw rage that coursed through Ramiel’s veins. It had not bothered him when Inchcape called him a bastard. Elizabeth’s inference that he was half Arab and therefore not capable of the same sentiments as an Englishman burned like acid.
“I am a man, Mrs. Petre. Whether I am called a bastard by an Englishman or an infidel by an Arab, I am still a man.”
Ramiel was not prepared for the dawning comprehension in her eyes.
“If I thought differently, Lord Safyre, I would not have sought you out for instruction,” she declared firmly. “I offer you my sincere apologies if I offended you. I assure you it was not my intention.”
His nostrils flared.
He was not used to apologies, nor would he tolerate pity. “Then what did you mean, Mrs. Petre?”
“I merely meant that the English people do not accept a woman’s sexual nature. You do not find such needs repulsive because of your Arabic upbringing, whereas if you did not have your unique background, perhaps you would feel different. But perhaps it is only Englishwomen who are raised with these notions. My husband has a mistress, so obviously he is not repulsed by feminine sexuality. I do not know, Lord Safyre. I do not know what anything means anymore.”
The honesty in Elizabeth’s eyes was too stark. Ramiel stared at the proud tilt of her chin, at the blazing highlights in her auburn hair.
Red.
Arabs used the color to represent many things. Rage. Desire. Blood.
Here, in this room, it was simply the color of an Englishwoman’s hair. A woman who felt rage and desire. And perhaps, in the end, who would see blood.
“If a man is repulsed by a woman’s sexuality, taalibba, then he is not a man.”
“Perhaps not when she is young—”
“Mrs. Petre, you are a woman in her prime.”
“I have two children, Lord Safyre. I assure you my days of prime are long gone.”
She returned his perusal as if unaware that he had openly gazed down her dress last night and savored every glimpse of her smooth, round white skin. As if she could not imagine a man ever trembling with passion for her.
“You have a womanly figure, not the flat breasts and shapeless hips of a young girl.”
Elizabeth visibly bristled, her vanity pricked. “We are not here to discuss my person, Lord Safyre.”
“Mrs. Petre, there are certain things that a man can do with a full-breasted woman that he cannot do with a less generously endowed one,” Ramiel explained softly, gaze dropping to her chest in seductive speculation. “Be proud of your body.”
“And just what sort of things can a man do with a womanly figure, Lord Safyre?” she asked caustically. “Use her breasts as twin buoys?”
Ramiel laughed.
Elizabeth Petre would never cease to surprise him.
He had associated sex with pain; he had associated it with death. He had never associated it with laughter.
“If you are quite finished, perhaps we can continue with our lesson. How does a woman entice a man?” she inquired frigidly. “And please do not say by baring her breasts. I find it hard to believe that half the ladies who comprise society flash their bodies to you.”
Ramiel bit back another chuckle. “You surprise me, Mrs. Petre. I was not aware that you knew such language.”
“You would be surprised at some of the words that I know, Lord Safyre. A lady may not say them, but it is difficult not to hear them when she works with the poor.”
“Here, in my home, you may say what you will—I guarantee you I have heard it before—and from a very, very grand lady.”
The countess, Ramiel’s mother, would laugh to hear him describe her as such. Elizabeth Petre was not convinced either.
Ramiel relented. “A woman who enjoys her body is enticing, Mrs. Petre. The way she dresses, the way she walks, the way she talks—all of these things tell a man what he needs to know.”
“And that is?”
His voice deepened. “That she wants him.”
Her expression froze. “I am not flirting with you, Lord Safyre.”
The urge to laugh died a quick, irrevocable death. “I know.”
“You are my tutor.”
“In this room, yes.”
“Before you agreed to tutor me, did you know that my husband had a mistress?”
Ramiel stiffened. She could not know . . . could she? “I do not run in the same circles as does your husband.”
“But you had heard rumors?”
“There are always rumors,” he rejoined cryptically. “Else you would not be here.”
Elizabeth glanced down at the small silver watch pinned to her dress.
“Thank you for being so candid.” She laid the gold pen on top of his desk beside her unfinished coffee. “It has been an education.”
An education that had only started.
“Chapter Six, Mrs. Petre. You will find it of particular interest.”
Elizabeth had her curiosity fully in check. She stuffed her notes inside her reticule.
“Rule number four.”
She did not raise her head. “There are only so many articles of clothing I can shed, Lord Safyre. It is February. Furthermore, gowns are designed for bustles.”
He studied her intently. “How do you know what I was going to say?”
Clutching her gloves, she stood up. “You do seem to be obsessed with a woman’s clothing, or lack of, I should say.”
One day—hopefully soon—they would conduct their lessons without clothes.
“Very well. When you retire for bed, lay on your stomach and practice rotating your pelvis against the mattress.”
Her breath audibly caught in her throat.
“Love is hard work.” He stared at the velvet draping her gently rounded stomach, imagining her fleece, red like her hair, imagining his manhood tunneling deep inside her. “You must condition your body.”
She turned without comment. And barely sidestepped the chair.
“Mrs. Petre.”
Elizabeth paused, hand reaching for the knob on the library door. Seconds passed, she silently struggling, he patiently waiting.
How far would the Bastard Sheikh go? her stiffened spine shouted. How far could a respectable woman let him go and still remain respectable?
The squaring of her shoulders told him her answer.
Further than this, they said.
“Ma’a e-salemma, Lord Safyre.”
Hot blood filled Ramiel’s manhood. “Ma’a e-salemma, taalibba.”
Chapter 8
Kissing. Licking. Suckling. Nibbling.
The winding hallway, dimly lit and in need of a coat of paint, echoed with the sharp click of Elizabeth’s heels.
. . . There are other ways of providing release. Fingers. Hands. Lips. Toes. Almost any part of a man’s body can be used to satisfy a woman.
She skidded around a sharp turn in the hallway, instinctively slapped her hand aga
inst the wall to retain her balance.
I am a man, Mrs. Petre. Whether I am called a bastard by an Englishman or an infidel by an Arab, I am still a man.
Elizabeth leaned into the peeling paint, riding a wave of remembered pain.
His pain.
The pain of a bastard sheikh.
A cockroach scurried across the back of her gray kid glove. Biting back a scream, she snatched her hand away from the wall and jerked it back and forth, back and forth, even though the cockroach was long gone.
It suddenly dawned on her that this was not the way back to the meeting room.
A door stood ajar at the end of the corridor.
Elizabeth froze.
Something watched her . . . and it wasn’t an insect.
“Hello!” The hollow echo of her voice ricocheted off the dingy gray walls. “Are you there?”
There. There. There raced up and down the hallway.
Determinedly, she stepped forward.
The door slammed back against the wall.
There was no stopping the scream that escaped Elizabeth’s mouth.
“What ye be doin’ here, missy?” A tall, balding man with a bulbous red nose and matching eyes stood in the doorway. “Ain’t no fancy men in this buildin’.”
Irritation rippled through her fear. First the Arab butler had mistaken her for a woman of the night, and now this man.
She drew her shoulders back. “I am Mrs. Elizabeth Petre. The Women’s Auxiliary meet here; I gave a speech and then I needed to . . .” The man did not need to know that she had left the meeting to use the water closet, and having used it, had gotten lost in the massive building on her return trip because she could not stop thinking about a man she had no business thinking about. “I seem to have taken a wrong turn. Would you be so good as to direct me to the meeting room?”
“Meetin’s all done. Ain’t no one here ’cept you an’ me.
“But—”
“An’ I knows what ye be after. What th’ likes o’ all o’ ye hussies be after.”
Elizabeth realized that the man was stark, raving drunk.
“There are people waiting for me, sir. If you would be so good as to direct me—”
Staggering, the tall, reed-thin man stepped forward. “I be th’ custodian o’ this place. Ain’t no one waitin’ fer ye. Tol’ ye there be no one here save fer ye an’ me. If ye’re lookin’ fer a place t’ bring yer mutton mongers think agin, missy, cause I got a shotgun an’ I ain’t afraid o’ killin’ th’ likes o’ ye.”
Elizabeth’s heart skipped a beat, galloped to catch up. She wound the strings of her reticule around her fingers.
It contained paper, a pencil, a handkerchief, a coin purse, a comb, her house key and a small mirror—nothing that would aid in her defense.
Panic was not a solution either. She took a deep breath to still the pounding of her heart.
“I see.” Her hands inside the leather gloves were cold and clammy. “Thank you for your trouble. I will find my own way back. Please accept my apologies if I have inconvenienced you. Good evening.”
Slowly, slowly, she backed up, expecting at any moment for him to reach behind him for his shotgun.
He swayed back and forth, watching her retreat, glaring bloodshot daggers.
When Elizabeth rounded the bend in the corridor, she swirled around and did not look back. Her heart hammered in time to her footsteps as she ran what seemed like miles through the winding hallways in search of the meeting room.
She was not alone.
Common sense told her that this was a respectable building filled with business offices rented by businessmen who had no doubt long gone home for their supper.
Logic failed.
She could sense hidden eyes, hostile eyes, and knew that behind one of those doors lining the meandering hallway or around that bend, somewhere, someone was watching her.
Someone, perhaps, who did have a shotgun. Or a knife.
The building directly adjoined the Thames. It would be a simple matter to kill her, rob her, and drop her body into the icy, murky waters.
She would be dead and she would never know how a man’s toes could be used to satisfy a woman.
Elizabeth gasped in relief when she spied the easel holding the sign posting the designated room and hours of the Women’s Auxiliary meeting.
The double doors were closed . . . and locked.
Because she took so long to first find the lavatory and then to find her way back, the women must have thought that Elizabeth had gone home . . . and so they, too, had gone home.
As the custodian had known they had.
She twirled around, cloak billowing behind her; underneath it her horsehair-stuffed bustle swung back and forth like a pendulum. The entrance was just around the corner—
She wrenched open the water-stained front door. And gasped.
The fog was a wall of swirling yellow.
Elizabeth took a disbelieving step forward—and tottered on the edge of a cobbled step.
“Will!” Please, God, let her coachman be nearby. “Will, can you hear me?”
It was like shouting into a wet blanket.
Cautiously, she maneuvered the three steps that comprised the stoop. “Will! Answer me!”
She turned her head to the left, to the right, jerked it back to the left. Was that a horse whickering?
Slowly, she slid her feet along the sidewalk. “Will! Is that you?”
“Aye, Mrs. Petre, it be me.”
The coachman’s voice was so close, it could have come from directly in front of her. Yet it was so muffled by the fog, it could also have come from across the street.
“Where are you?”
A hand reached out and latched on to her right arm. “Here, ma’am.”
Elizabeth’s heart leapt into her throat.
Full comprehension of just how vulnerable she had been in that building, with Will incapacitated by the fog, coursed through her. She had not felt this degree of fear walking the streets before dawn and blackmailing her way into the Bastard Sheikh’s home.
“Will.” She blindly grabbed the coachman’s gnarled hand; it was reassuringly warm and solid through her kid gloves. “You should have come for me when the fog started getting heavy.”
“It came all of a sudden like. One minute it just be fog—the next it be like this. Can’t see my hand in front of my face.”
Yes, London fog happened like that sometimes. More often, the peculiar phenomenon occurred in November, sometimes in December or January. Elizabeth had never seen a night like this in February.
She peered in front of her, where she knew the coachman stood. He remained hidden from her view.
Yellow fog had swallowed London and everything in it.
Elizabeth struggled to control her fear. “Have Tommie walk the horses.”
“Can’t do that, ma’am. Tommie, he came down sick all sudden like while ye was in the meetin’. Sent him home.”
The sensible thing would be to have Will secure the horses and the two of them wait out the fog in relative comfort inside the building where the Women’s Auxiliary meeting had been held.
It was suicide to travel with no groom to act as guide for the fog-blinded coachman and horses. Men and women had been known to lose their way on nights like this and drop into the Thames. Yet she could not go back inside that building. Even on the off chance that she could find it.
The dense yellow mist stank of river water and the garbage that spewed into it. Elizabeth’s stomach roiled with apprehension. She could not drive a coach; therefore, “I will walk the horses.”
Will’s snort clearly penetrated the fog. “You, ma’am!”
“Would you rather I drove the carriage?” she rejoined sharply.
“Mayhaps we can go back into that building where the meetin’ was.”
Elizabeth shivered, remembering the feel of those eyes. “There is only the custodian there, and he threatened to shoot me if I did not leave.”
�
�� ’Ere now! Just let me get my gun and we’ll see who’ll be shootin’ who!”
Her fingers tightened around his hand. “I will take my chances with the river, Will.”
“Aye, but if ye take a dip, the horses an’ carriage will too.”
A choked laugh escaped Elizabeth’s throat. “You’re not concerned about your own life, Will?” Or hers? she wanted to ask.
“I swim like a fish. Good enough to save the both of us; couldn’t do nothin’ ’bout the horses though.”
Elizabeth refrained from pointing out that the coachman could not save her from drowning if he could not find her. Aside from that, a woman’s clothing was not designed for water sports—she would sink straight down. Nor could he save himself if he could not see the riverbank.
She imagined icy water and foul sewage clogging her nose, filling her lungs. She remembered the cockroach and the custodian and the watching, waiting eyes.
“I am not going back into that building.”
“Aye.”
Warm fingers patted the backs of hers. Elizabeth reluctantly let go of Will. Immediately, he guided her right hand to the horse’s head.
It started at her touch, as if it was as unused to humans as Elizabeth was to animals. Will curved her fingers around hard leather.
“Stand to the side of old Bess here, ma’am, else she’ll walk over you. Keep close to the walkway—when it ends, it means a thoroughfare; we can count the number of streets and figure out wheres to make our turns.”
The comforting heat of Will’s body slipped away into total obscurity. “Keep yer left hand out, ma’am—it’ll keep ye from knockin’ face into a lamp pole and fallin’ on yer fanny.”
Elizabeth should rebuke the coachman for his impertinence. Perhaps a week earlier she would have.
She squeezed her eyes shut. A week earlier she would not have asked a man if he was disgusted with a woman who wished to rut like the beasts in a field.
The impact of wood and metal shuddered into life as Will climbed up the side of the coach. The horse beside her whickered softly, stepped to the side. A hoof plopped down dangerously close to Elizabeth’s foot.
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