The Lady's Tutor (12 page)

Turquoise eyes clashed with Elizabeth’s hazel ones. Everything she
had read and discussed the last two mornings was in his gaze.

What does it mean, that a man’s member has a head like a brazier?

It means that it is red with desire and hot for a woman.

Dear God, what was he doing here?

Had he told the countess about their lessons?

Elizabeth nodded stiffly. “Lord Safyre.”

Before she could divine his intentions, the Bastard Sheikh reached
down and grasped Elizabeth’s hand. His dusky brown skin was covered by a white
glove. The press of his fingers through the dual layers of his silk glove and
hers was scorching.
“Ahlan wa sahlan,
Mrs. Petre.”

Elizabeth watched in horrified fascination as his golden head
bowed over her hand. His lips, when he kissed it, were even hotter than his
fingers.

The blood that had receded from her head upon first seeing him
flooded her face in a tide of scalding crimson. She snatched her hand back.

The baroness, as if nothing were amiss, smiled at Elizabeth’s
companion. “Lord Inchcape . . . Lord Safyre.”

Lord Inchcape drew himself up as tall as his stooped shoulders
would allow. “In my day we did not present our bastards.”

Elizabeth’s breath caught in her throat at the crude cut. She was
vaguely aware of the baroness’s stifled exclamation of, “Oh, dear...”

The countess’s eyes shot gray pellets of ice. “In your day, Lord
Inchcape, you had no title, therefore you would not be presented to anyone,
whether they be a bastard or a grocer.”

Lord Inchcape’s sallow face turned a mottled puce.

“Ummee.”
The
Bastard Sheikh’s husky murmur filled the explosive silence. “Mrs. Petre will
think us uncivilized.”

The countess’s frigid gaze did not waver. “I doubt very much if it
is we who Mrs. Petre will think uncivilized.”

Elizabeth bit back a shock of laughter.

Lord Inchcape turned and stalked into the milling crowd of
promenading men and women. The countess glared at his retreating back.

“The bad man is gone now,
Ummee,”
the Bastard Sheikh said
dryly. “You can
relax,
your chick is safe.”

Lightning-quick dismay shone in the countess’s gray eyes. It was
followed by rueful laughter. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Petre, but the
provocation was great. Being a mother, I am sure you understand my upset.”

Countess Devington had been a whore to an Arab sheikh. She
had given birth to a
bastard son. A bastard she had sent to Arabia when he was twelve years old that
she might escape the inconvenience of schooling an adolescent boy.

Elizabeth doubted if she had a maternal instinct in her entire
body.

“Yes, of course,” she said coldly.

The Bastard Sheikh’s eyes flashed with angry turquoise fire.

The countess gripped his arm; her smile remained warm and
friendly. “We came to fetch you for the next dance, Mrs. Petre. My son desires
to waltz. Please don’t say no; if you do, I may never be able to convince him
to attend another ball.”

Elizabeth cast a furtive glance at the teeming, seething mass of
jewel-colored silks and white ties that encircled them, desperately searching
for her husband, her mother, a reason to reject the offer.
A respectable
woman did not dance with a man of his reputation.

“My husband and I do not waltz—”

“Your husband is in the card room, Mrs. Petre,” the Bastard Sheikh
smoothly interrupted. “I feel certain he would not mind my standing in his
stead. Especially, as you say, if he does not waltz.”

The Bastard Sheikh was not discussing a waltz. He was discussing
sex. Edward did not dance with her in public, he was telling her, any more than
he slept with her in private.

Elizabeth could feel the curious stare of the baroness, the
strangely sympathetic one of his mother. And heard herself say, “I would be
pleased to waltz with Lord Safyre.”

Before she could retract her words, Elizabeth was propelled
through the sea of brightly colored silk dresses and stark black evening coats.
Hard, hot fingers curled around her elbow just where her glove ended and her
bare skin began.

Elizabeth sidestepped, only to be catapulted into the Bastard
Sheikh at the tuning shrill of a violin.

His body was as hot and hard as were his fingers. She could smell
the heat of him underneath the silk of his clothes. It was not marred by the
scent of a woman.

Blindly, she stepped back, but to no avail. She was penned in by the
suffocating press of perfumed silk and the brush of solid flesh as women and
men positioned themselves to dance.

The Bastard Sheikh captured her right hand and brought it up and
away from her body so that her breasts lifted inside her corset and jutted
forward. It was exciting; it was dangerous.
It was not what they had agreed
upon.

“You said you would not touch me.”

“As your tutor, Mrs. Petre. Not as your dance partner.”

“Why are you here?”

“Because I knew that you would be here.”

“I would not have come if I had known you would be here.”

A hard hand gripped her waist. “Now, why is that, I wonder?”

He was too close—Elizabeth couldn’t catch her breath. She
skittered away from the intense heat that radiated from his body. Her bustle
squarely impacted another bustle, springing her back into place.

“You will create more gossip if you do not touch me than you will
if you do, Mrs. Petre.”

He was right.

Gritting her teeth, she reluctantly reached up, up, up—and rested
the fingers of her left hand on his shoulder. Her left breast almost lifted
free of the corset.

The music started, a cry of violins and the crashing chords of a
piano. Warm air tunneled around Elizabeth, and suddenly, she was a part of the
gilded
ton,
of the soft swish of brightly colored silk and banners of
black coattails, men stepping, women swirling.

She concentrated on the stark white of her glove, the shiny black
satin that comprised his lapels, anything but the uncomfortable pounding of her
heart and the painful hardening of her nipples underneath the slick friction of
silk on silk.

She desperately searched for a safe topic of conversation.
She
was not supposed to respond to a man who was not her husband.
“I did not
know that you danced.”

“You mean that you did not know I was accepted in polite society.”

There was no sense in lying. “Yes.”

“There is a lot about me that you do not know, Mrs. Petre.”

“Do you sleep with the baroness?”

Elizabeth missed a step at the words that came unbidden from her
mouth. His fingers dug into her waist; a whalebone jabbed into her rib.

“You seem to be current on the prevailing gossip. Why don’t you
tell me?”

She stared hard at a diamond stud in his shirt. It winked in the
bright light from the overhead chandelier.

“How else could you know that my husband and I had accepted an
invite to the ball?”

“My mother,” he said lightly, twirling her. “She and the baroness
are bridge partners.”

“Does your mother know about our. . . lessons?” she asked
breathlessly.

“Siba,
Mrs.
Petre. I have told you I will not speak of what goes on between me and a lady
behind closed doors.

“You do not need to wear a corset.” His leg stepped between hers
as he twirled her again; solid heat pressed into the jointure of her thighs. “You
are suffering from lung collapse for nothing.”

Elizabeth’s fingers dug into his shoulder—no padding there, just
hard muscle. “We are not in your home, Lord Safyre. Whether I wear a corset or
do not wear a corset is of interest only to me and my abigail.”

“What about your husband, Mrs. Petre? Doesn’t he have anything to
say about what underclothes you wear?”

The sharp retort did not make it past her lips.

Her husband had never seen her underclothes, let alone expressed
an interest in them. Whereas she had no doubt that the Bastard Sheikh had seen
a lot of women’s underclothing.

“How do you come to dance so well if you do not often attend
social events?”

“How do you come to waltz so well when your husband does not?”

“I did not say that he does not waltz,” she retorted stiffly.

Edward waltzed; he merely did not waltz with her. He saved the social
amenities for his constituents.

“Tell me about your two sons.”

“I told you I do not discuss my children.”

“But I am not your tutor now. I am a man who is making small talk
to pass the time while we dance.”

Elizabeth’s head jerked back, her mouth opening to tell him that
if dancing with her was such a boring chore, he need not bother.

It was a mistake.

The only thing that separated their faces was ten inches.
The
span of his two hands.

“My sons are both at Eton,” she blurted out.

“Richard and Phillip, those are their names, aren’t they?”

“Yes. But how—”

“I do open an occasional newspaper. What do they like—politics?”

A smile rimmed Elizabeth’s mouth, remembering Phillip’s fight
because Master Bernard, a “Whig,” was supposedly an outrage to his “Tory”
beliefs.

“No, my sons are not interested in politics. Richard is studying
to be an engineer—he says technology is the way of the world and will help
people far more than government. Phillip wants to be a sailor”—her smile
widened—”preferably a pirate.”

An answering smile softened the Bastard Sheikh’s face. “Richard
sounds like a clever boy.”

Elizabeth searched his eyes for mockery but found none. A rush of
maternal pride overcame her caution.

“He is. He takes his exams for Oxford next fall. It will be hard
on Phillip when Richard leaves Eton though. They have always been very
close—despite their age difference and perhaps because their personalities are
so opposite. Richard is more quiet and studious; Phillip is a rascal. It would
not surprise me if they raided the school kitchen for midnight snacks—they
always do when they’re home.”

“You love your sons.”

They were all that she had.

Elizabeth evaded his too-knowing gaze.
“Ahlan wa sahlan.
What
does it mean?”

“Roughly translated, it means that it is nice to meet you. Do you
love your husband?”

She stepped on his instep—hard. “If I did not, I would not have
come to you.”

“Does your husband love you?”

“That is none of your business.”

“I intend upon making it my business.”

Surely he could not mean
—

“I think perhaps it would be best if we cancel our lessons, Lord
Safyre. I will have your book returned to you.”

“It’s too late,
taalibba.
”

Alarm feathered Elizabeth’s skin. “What do you mean?”

“We have an agreement.”

Dawning comprehension flared in her eyes. “I blackmailed you, so
you are going to blackmail me.”

“If need be.”

It was what she had feared that first morning; therefore, she
should not feel so ...
hurt.

“Why?”

“You want to learn how to give a man pleasure.. . and I want to
teach you.”

Elizabeth felt incandescent with anger. “You want to humiliate me.”

His lashes created hollow shadows underneath his eyes. “As I said
before, you know very little about me. Do you remember the story of Dorerame in
Chapter Two of
The Perfumed Garden?”

“He was killed,” she retorted grimly. Quite gruesomely, she
recalled.

“The king who killed him freed a woman from his clutches.”

“A married woman.”

“Then the king took the woman and freed her from her husband.”

“This is absurd.” She did not want to think about a married woman
being “freed” from her husband. “I do not see the purpose of this conversation.”

“Simply this: A woman in Arabia has certain rights over her
husband. Among them is her right to sexual union. She has the right to seek
divorce if her husband will not satisfy her.”

Mortification exploded inside Elizabeth’s chest. Only women of
loose morals were not satisfied in marriage.

How dare he
—

“For your information, my husband
does
satisfy me,” she
hissed.

“There will be no more lies between us,
taalibba.
You had
the courage to ask me to tutor you; now have the courage to face the truth.”