Robin Schone

by The Lady's Tutor

  “I have told you I do not have a mistress.”

  Elizabeth’s gaze, contemptuous in its own right, swept over the three of them, her father, her mother, her husband. “And I am telling you that I have done nothing wrong. But that is not what this meeting is about, is it, Father?”

  “Elizabeth!” Rebecca warned sharply.

  Elizabeth ignored the mother who for so long had ignored her. “Mother told you that I want a divorce. That is what this is about. Isn’t it, Father?”

  Andrew sat as if turned to a pale, silvery-auburn-haired statue. Only his eyes were alive. They burned with murky amber fire. “A man’s reputation lies in his family. If he cannot keep his family together, no man will trust him to keep his country together.”

  Reckless anger outweighed common sense. “Does that mean you will not use your influence as prime minister to intercede on my behalf?”

  Andrew leaned toward Elizabeth, his jaws knotted with the force of his emotion. “Are you deaf, girl?” Each word was carefully, perfectly enunciated, all the more terrible now that he was not shouting. “Edward is going to be England’s next prime minister. If he cannot control you, everything we have worked for will be lost. Edward will be banned from Parliament. My career will go up in smoke. I will see you dead before I allow you to destroy our lives.”

  Hookah smoke, Elizabeth thought incongruously, not political careers. She pictured the countess, comfortably sitting with a towel wrapped about her head while Ramiel offered her a baklava, and now here was Elizabeth’s family—

  I will see you dead echoed hollowly inside her head.

  Elizabeth’s heart skipped a beat. Blinding, breathtaking pain engulfed her.

  Surely he had not said that. Surely a father would not threaten to kill his daughter.

  Andrew leaned back in his chair, once again the affable, dignified man who sponsored charities to assist widows and war-orphaned children. “Does that answer your question, daughter?”

  Ramiel knew the moment Elizabeth entered the ballroom. His entire body charged with electricity. He pivoted, eyes searching, seeking—

  There she was, a mere ten feet away, standing just inside the doorway, dressed in a burgundy satin ball gown. Beside her, Edward Petre nodded his head at an acquaintance, half bowed in the direction of another.

  Senses prickling, his gaze locked onto Petre’s arm. Elizabeth’s small, gloved hand was pressed through the crook of his elbow. Petre’s fingers were snugly clasped over hers. As if in loving affection . . . or to physically restrain her.

  Ramiel’s gaze snapped up to her face. Her skin was chalk white.

  He had seen her only hours after her husband had rejected her sexual advances. She had been pale then, but now—she looked frozen. The ice bitch he had originally mistaken her for.

  Ramiel remembered her laughter in the countess’s sitting room. Her cheeks had been flushed and her eyes full of life as she sampled the hookah and then the baklava. The woman he stared at now was dead.

  What had the bastard done to her?

  Common sense told him to wait until Petre left her side—no good would come out of a face-to-face confrontation in an overcrowded ballroom. Male possessiveness told him otherwise—Elizabeth was his woman; he would not tolerate another man touching her, hurting her.

  He closed the distance separating them, planted himself squarely in front of them. “Mrs. Petre.”

  Elizabeth’s face did not register any emotion—no welcome, no surprise, as if he were nothing. Her voice, when she spoke, was cold and polite. Lifeless. “Lord Safyre.”

  Petre’s fingers convulsively squeezed her hand that he still held captive, as if in warning. He knew that Ramiel wanted her . . . just as Ramiel knew that Petre did not.

  Ramiel was an inch shorter and four years Petre’s junior. He coldly appraised the older man, knowing his weaknesses, weighing his strengths. “I have not had the pleasure of being introduced to your husband.”

  Petre returned his perusal, lip curled. “We do not associate with the likes of you, sirrah. Henceforth, you will stay away from my wife.”

  For one timeless second Ramiel seemed to be hurled outside his body. He could see the three of them standing together as if in intimate dialogue, Elizabeth with her auburn hair and white skin, Edward with his black hair and drooping mustache, and himself, golden-haired and brown-skinned. Farther inside the ballroom, couples swirled in a tangle of black evening jackets and jewel-colored gowns, while around them men and women promenaded or clustered to chat. A titter rose over the whine of the violins, was swallowed by a bark of laughter on the opposite side of the ballroom. Suddenly, he was yanked back into his body and he knew exactly what he had to do.

  The line had been drawn, the positions taken. There was no going back.

  “That is for Mrs. Petre to decide, surely,” he murmured silkily, provocatively.

  “I am her husband; she will do as I say,” Petre retorted grimly, triumphantly.

  Ramiel’s heartbeat quickened; anticipation pumped through his veins. He felt a moment’s regret, that Elizabeth was trapped in the cross fire. And then all he felt was the need to take Edward Petre out of her life.

  “Really.” A feral smile curved his mouth. “I believe you belong to a fellowship who call themselves Uranians, do you not, Petre? I wonder. Does your wife know of your interest in poetry?”

  Stunned disbelief shone in Petre’s brown eyes; it was followed by pure rage. Both confirmed his guilt.

  “Let her go,” Ramiel said softly.

  Deliberately misunderstanding, Petre released Elizabeth’s hand. A sneer twisted his face. “Tell Safyre you do not wish his company, Elizabeth.”

  Ramiel’s gaze snapped back to Elizabeth.

  Her clear hazel eyes were cold, blank. They did not belong to the woman who had swum in a Turkish bath and smoked a hookah. They did not belong to the woman who had held an artificial phallus in her hands and told him that she had tried to look underneath a stone leaf covering a male statue because she was seventeen and pregnant and she wanted to see what had made her that way.

  Sharp pain sliced through Ramiel’s chest, stealing his breath. The countess had offered to send him away today and she had wanted him to stay. They had shared baklava. And now she was going to deny everything.

  Her pale, bloodless lips quivered, tightened. “Please accept my apologies for my husband’s rudeness, Lord Safyre.”

  “Elizabeth!” Petre spat out.

  “Enough, Edward. I will not be dictated to in this manner.” She stared at Ramiel’s white bow tie. “I will talk to and dance with whomever I please.”

  Jubilation burned through Ramiel’s body like warmed cognac. She had chosen. Whether she realized it or not, she had finally made her choice.

  He held out his hand, so close his breath fanned her hair. “Dance with me.”

  Show me that you aren’t afraid to take a Bastard Sheikh.

  “You will regret it if you do, Elizabeth.”

  Icy fingers swept down Ramiel’s spine. The threat in Petre’s voice was implicit.

  “How will she regret it, Petre?” Slowly, he lowered his hand and turned his head away from Elizabeth. Turquoise eyes locked with brown eyes. “Will she regret it as much as you will? Will she regret it as much as your lover?”

  Now Ramiel would see what Edward Petre was made of. Would he challenge Ramiel? Would he pretend that he didn’t know what Ramiel was talking about?

  Would he sacrifice Elizabeth—to save his career?

  “What will it be, Petre?” Ramiel drawled dangerously, his message clear. I will keep your secrets if you give me your wife.

  Edward walked away.

  Ramiel smiled mirthlessly.

  “Why did you do that?” Elizabeth’s face was even more pale than it had been when she stepped into the ballroom.

  “Will you regret dancing with me, Elizabeth?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you will do it.” Satisfaction tinged his voice.

/>   “Only if you tell me what Joseffa said when you took the tray from her.”

  Ramiel’s lashes veiled his eyes. “She said you have magnificent breasts. Breasts that are worthy to suckle sons . . . and a husband.”

  Bright pink colored her cheeks. “My husband has never suckled my breasts.”

  “There is a difference between begetting children and being a husband, taalibba,” he informed her gently.

  “Is that in The Perfumed Garden?”

  “Yes.”

  She held up her gloved hand. “Shall we dance?”

  Emotion squeezed his chest; relief, regret, triumph. He offered her his arm, a belated concession to propriety, wanting to make amends for the rumors that were already springing up from the confrontation between the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Bastard Sheikh. He could feel the stares, hear the whispers.

  If Petre were a good politician, he would have graciously acceded and saved himself and his wife public embarrassment. Instead, he had abandoned her to the unmerciful ton.

  Perhaps it was best that she learn to accept notoriety now. No matter what Ramiel did or did not do, society would talk. About his bastardy, about his Arab heritage, about his renowned sexual appetites.

  About his woman.

  At the edge of the dance floor he took Elizabeth’s right hand and clasped her waist, corseted but not as tightly as it had been the night of the charity ball. She reached up and rested her left hand on his shoulders. Mentally counting one, two, three, he twirled her into the waltz.

  He looked down her dress at the white skin straining for freedom. And remembered the soft, full curves and long, hard nipples the damp silk robe had so lovingly cupped when she sat in the countess’s sitting room. “You do have magnificent breasts.”

  The quiver of her lips belied her aloofness. “What is a Uranian, Lord Safyre, and why did it upset my husband when you mentioned it?”

  Ramiel could tell her . . . and she would be free. Conversely, he did not want to tell her for fear that she would come to him because a bastard was more acceptable than a man like Edward Petre.

  “It is as I said, a fellowship of minor poets.”

  “Minor . . . as in . . . youthful?”

  Ela’na, damn, she was sharp. But it was not young girls that Edward liked.

  “Minor also means of little importance.”

  She lowered her head so that he stared at auburn hair instead of hazel eyes. Jagged shadows darkened her cheeks. “Your mother sent you away when you were twelve.”

  He leaned closer to hear her; his cheek brushed her hair, a silky warm caress. “Yes.”

  “Did you miss . . . England?”

  Ramiel realized she was imagining sending her own sons off to a faraway land. She did not realize that her pain would be greater than theirs. “For a month or so,” he said laconically.

  Her eyelids sprang open. She stared up at him in blatant disbelief. “Only a month or so?”

  “You have two sons. You know what boys are. When my father gave me a horse, I realized that sun and sand can be rather pleasant.”

  “I shudder to think what you realized when he gave you your own harem,” she said acidly, her motherly sensitivities offended at a child’s fickle love.

  Ramiel laughed softly, pulled her close so that when he whirled her around he stepped between her legs. Her stomach rubbed against his groin, smooth satin on hard silk. “I would be happy to show you what I realized.”

  “Do irises grow in Arabia?”

  His fingers tightened around her small, slender hand. He could feel her delicate bones underneath silk and flesh. “Pink irises,” he murmured huskily, breathing in the clean, unperfumed scent of her hair and body. “With silky soft petals that grow hot and moist.”

  She abruptly stopped dancing, hazel eyes wide, avid, wanting everything Ramiel wanted to give her, everything he wanted a woman to give to him.

  “Come home with me, taalibba. Let me show you the ways to love.”

  All forty.

  Her hand resting on his shoulder clenched convulsively. Temptation glimmered in her eyes, evaporated.

  He had said too much, too soon.

  Snatching her hand from his shoulder, she stepped back, curtsied. “The dance is over, Lord Safyre. Thank you.” And turned her back on him. Again.

  Ramiel leaned against the wall and moodily watched her mingle with the ton. Gossip had already spread. Men filled her dance card. Chaperones protectively hovered over their charges when she came near them.

  Sometime after midnight a braying laugh erupted from the dance floor. Ramiel straightened. He knew that laugh and he would not stand by and see Elizabeth preyed upon by men like Lord Hind-valle.

  Another mark against Edward Petre.

  He had the right and privilege of protecting her and he did not; Ramiel’s protection would further damn Elizabeth in the eyes of society.

  Just when Ramiel came abreast of Elizabeth, he saw Hindvalle’s face turn purple. The seventy-year-old roué abruptly turned and walked away, spine erect as it had not been in many years.

  Elizabeth stared up into Ramiel’s dark, brooding face. “I asked him if he was a member of the Uranian fellowship.”

  Healing laughter spewed up out of his chest and drowned out the surrounding drone of men and women gossiping, flirting, maligning, and complaining.

  “Take me home.”

  He stared down into her hazel eyes, laughter forgotten.

  “To my home, Lord Safyre. Edward has not returned to the ball. I have no carriage.”

  A pulse throbbed in his right temple. An identical throb swelled and pounded in his groin.

  “Here, in this ballroom, Elizabeth, I am not your tutor. I will not be your tutor in the carriage.”

  She lifted her chin. “You would touch me against my will?”

  It would not be against her will. They both knew that.

  Ramiel rapidly calculated how to leave together yet attract a minimum of attention. Now that he knew she would soon be his, he felt strangely protective of her reputation.

  “I’ll have my carriage drawn up. A servant will come get you. We do not need to be seen leaving together.”

  Gratitude softened her face. “Thank you.”

  The footman accepted Ramiel’s generous tip with a blank face. “You will summon Mrs. Petre when I tell you to. Then you will escort her to my coach. If you say one word to another living soul, I will personally castrate you and send you to Arabia, where eunuchs are sold like whores.”

  The footman had a large Adam’s apple; it bobbed up and down. “Yes, my lord.”

  Ramiel paid his servants well; in return, they performed their jobs well. The coach was in front of the marquis’s palatial house inside of ten minutes. “Now,” he told the footman.

  Damp, insidious fog blanketed the night and seeped inside the coach. Ramiel leaned his head against the leather upholstery and closed his eyes, trying to control his body, his wants, his needs. He did not move when the door opened. Nor did he move when the coach tilted and he was surrounded by the essence of Elizabeth, her smell, the heat of her body. She had no sooner settled across from him with a swish of satin and a squeak of leather than the door slammed closed and the coach lurched forward.

  “Last Thursday night I ran into a lamppost.”

  He opened his eyes and stared at the dark outline of her cloak and bonnet. She had touched him but had not confided in him. “You were hurt . . . and you didn’t tell me.”

  “My pride was hurt more than my head.” Her voice, so proximate in the close quarters, was remote. A dim glow of light from a passing lamppost briefly illuminated her face. “But I was frightened that night, because there were only me and the coachman and neither of us could see in the fog. We could have fallen into the Thames and all I thought about was that I would die and I would never know what it is like to love. May I kiss you?”

  A bolt of heat shot up his body. May I kiss you? reverberated over the grind of the carriage wheels. �
�Take off your bonnet.”

  The sleek silhouette of her head replaced the bulky shape of the bonnet. Springs creaked; she perched on the edge of the seat, knees rubbing his through the layers of their individual clothing.

  He leaned forward, tensed when gloved hands cupped his head.

  She jerked away.

  “Elizabeth—”

  Instantly, her hands were back without the gloves, warm skin cupping his ears, sliding forward to the hard planes of his jaws. He closed his eyes on a wave of pleasure pain. It had been so long . . .

  “Your skin feels different from mine. Harder. Rougher.”

  He choked back a laugh, eyes opening, wishing he had lit the lamps inside the coach so he could see her face as she indulged her passion. “You are a woman; I am a man.”

  Ramiel held his breath, waiting, waiting, and then she was leaning closer, her breath fanning his lips—

  The carriage bounced; her lips skidded across his chin.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “No. Don’t stop.” If she pulled back, he would put his hands on her and he would take her. “Here.” He reached out his arms, braced himself between the carriage windows. “Now. Again.”

  Tentatively, she leaned forward, breath caressing, lips touching . . .

  Sizzling electricity galvanized Ramiel. Blindly, hungrily, he angled his head downward and opened his mouth over hers, sucking at her lips, swaying with the coach, moving with her as she explored the moist friction of a kiss, ferame, her first kiss by a man.

  Not enough.

  Easing back slightly, her lips soft and wet against his, he whispered shakily, “Open your mouth. Take my tongue inside of you.”

  She sucked in air, his breath, and then he was inside her. A low groan worked its way up from his chest. She gripped his head as if she wanted to pull him into her mouth, but her tongue nervously danced away from the prod of his.

  Ramiel would not let her retreat. He circled, he probed, he licked until she imitated his motions, circling him, tasting him. Ela’na, she was hot. He wanted her. . . .