The Lady's Tutor (11 page)

“You think a wife merits greater importance in the scheme of a man’s
life?” he asked lightly.

“Yes,” she retorted defiantly.

“So do I, Mrs. Petre.”

Elizabeth’s anger dissipated. A sudden image of a man’s member
rearing red and hot while he trembled with passion flashed before her eyes.

“Do you have the entire book memorized, Lord Safyre?”

“Yes.”

She stared, surprised. “Why?”

A wry smile twisted his lips. “My father. He would not give me a
woman until I learned how to please her.”

“Your father wanted you to learn how to please a woman ... by
learning not to trust one?”

He glanced down, reached out a long, brown finger to lightly
caress the blue-veined porcelain cup. “My father wanted me to learn that a
woman is capable of the same kind of sexual satisfaction as is a man. He also
wanted me to learn that there are good women and that there are untrustworthy
women”—expression hardening, he looked up—”just as there are good men and there
are bad men.”

She tried to picture him as a golden-haired boy, poring over a
manual of erotology, then practicing what he had learned on a beautiful
blond-haired concubine.

“But you were only thirteen years old,” she blurted out.

“Would you keep your two sons boys forever, Mrs. Petre?”

Elizabeth froze. “I will not discuss my sons with you, Lord
Safyre.”

The mockery was back in his face. “And you will not discuss your
husband with me.”

“That is correct.”

“Then what
will
you discuss with me, Mrs. Petre?”

Sex.

Love.

A bonding of flesh that is more than sacrifice or duty.

“Do you agree that the Contagious Diseases Acts should be
repealed?”

Dear Lord, that was not what she had intended upon asking him.

“No.”

Nor did his answer surprise her.

“Because you frequent that type of woman.”

“I do not pick up women off the streets, Mrs. Petre.” His voice
was raw instead of raspy, angry instead of seductive. “I am a man of means if
not one of respectability. The women I bed will not be affected by a
parliamentary act.”

She bit her lip, wanting to apologize but not even certain what it
was that she should apologize for.

“Why did you agree to tutor me? You must know that I would not
have gone to my husband.”

Dark lashes veiled his eyes. He resumed the idle caressing of the
cup, his fingertips lazily stroking and soothing. “Why did you chose me to
tutor you?”

“Because I needed your knowledge.”

He lifted his lashes. “Perhaps you have something that I need too.”

Elizabeth’s heart fluttered inside her chest. She gathered
together her notes and stuffed them into her reticule. It was not necessary to
consult the silver watch pinned to her bodice to know that it was time to
leave. “I think this lesson is over.”

“I think you are correct,” he agreed, his expression inscrutable. “Some
of the chapters in
The Perfumed Garden
consist of a few pages only.
Therefore, tomorrow we will discuss chapters three, four, and five. I advise
you to pay particular attention to Chapter Four. It is entitled ‘Relating to
the Act of Generation.’ ”

Clutching her gloves and reticule, Elizabeth stood.

Polite manners decreed that he also stand.

He did not.

She looked down at his head, golden in the light. Then she stared
at his fingers, dusky brown against the blue-veined porcelain.

Elizabeth remembered the span of his two hands. And wondered at
his
size.

She pivoted, almost fell over the chair.

“Mrs. Petre.”

Back stiffening, she waited for rule number three. No doubt it
would be totally objectionable and humiliating.

“Ma ‘a e-salemma, taalibba.
”

Her throat tightened. He claimed that the word was not an
endearment, so why did it touch a place deep inside of her that desperately
ached to be touched?

“Ma’a e-salemma,
Lord Safyre.”

amiel studied the four-year-old newspaper. It contained a grim
photograph of Edward Petre, recently appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, and
wife, Elizabeth, with two sons, Richard, age eleven, and Phillip, age seven.

A current newspaper contained a lone picture of Edward. He had
short, dark hair worn with a side part. As was the fashion, he possessed a
thick, droopy mustache. Women would consider him handsome, Ramiel thought
dispassionately, while men would be impressed with his self-confidence.

A month-old newspaper contained a picture of Elizabeth standing
behind a podium, only her head and shoulders visible. A dark hat with curled
feathers concealed all but a glimpse of her hair, dark gray instead of auburn
red. Women would consider her a modern woman who actively supported their good
works and her husband’s politics; men would think her a useful but uninspiring
wife.

A six-month-old newspaper contained a picture of Edward and
Elizabeth together, seemingly the perfect couple, he smiling benignly, she
blandly staring. And then there was the twenty-two-year-old newspaper that
featured an artist’s sketch of Andrew Walters, elected prime minister, and
wife, Rebecca, with eleven-year-old daughter, Elizabeth.

Andrew Walters had been very fortunate in politics. His first term
of office as prime minister had lasted six years. After losing the support of
his cabinet he had fought his way back. His second term, already four years in
the running, showed no signs of dissolution.

Ramiel compared the two family portraits.

Elizabeth bore a striking resemblance to her father. Whereas
Elizabeth’s children . . . bore a striking resemblance to
their
father.

Ela’na! Damn!
It
would be so much more simple if they resembled Elizabeth.

He scooped up a copy of
The Times
dated January 21, 1870. A
photograph of Elizabeth accompanied a notice announcing her engagement to
promising politician Edward Petre.

She looked so young. And naive. The photographer, either by
accident or design, had captured the dreamy expectation of an untried girl
poised on the threshold of womanhood.

Elizabeth had married at the age of seventeen; that made her
thirty-three. And now her face bore no expression at all, not in life as she
sat across from Ramiel discussing sexual intimacy, not in the various
photographs taken after her husband’s appointment in her father’s cabinet.

The papers were full of her activities. She campaigned extensively
for her husband, attending parties, organizing charity balls, kissing orphaned
babies, and doling out baskets to the poor and the infirm.

By all accounts, Elizabeth was the perfect daughter, wife and
mother.
A woman who deserved to be praised.

He threw the newspaper onto his desk.

Disgust warred with anger, desire with compassion. They were
chased by fear.

Fear that Elizabeth Petre did indeed know about her husband. Fear
that she had deliberately sought Ramiel because of that knowledge.

She had to know about her husband!

But then again ... there was no way that she
could
know ...
about Ramiel.

The age-yellowed newspaper fluttered; a soft rush of air filled
the library.

“El Ibn.”

To the untutored ear Muhamed’s voice was politely expressionless.
It was not. Muhamed silently asked that Ramiel repudiate Elizabeth Petre, as he
already had in his heart.

Perhaps Muhamed was right.

Elizabeth had blackmailed the eunuch. She sought sexual
instruction from Ramiel.

Neither act demonstrated innocence.

“Could this detective that you hired—” Ramiel paused, hating
himself for asking but unable to stop the question. “Could he be mistaken?”

Black eyes locked with turquoise ones. “There is no mistake,
El
Ibn.
”

Ramiel remembered the blaze of red in Elizabeth’s dark auburn
hair.. . and how self-conscious she had been when he complimented her. Her
actions had been those of a woman who rarely receives praise.

Raw rage, cold and hard, worked its way up into his chest.
She
deserved better than Edward Petre.

“What is Petre doing tonight?”

“He is attending a ball.”

“Who is giving it?”

“Baroness Whitfield.”

“The woman the Chancellor of the Exchequer was allegedly seen with
. . . who is she, Muhamed?”

Muhamed’s dark face remained stoic. “I do not know,
El Ibn.”

Ramiel regarded him with narrow-eyed intensity. “But you have an
idea.”

“Yes.”

“Then get me the necessary proof.”

Night swirled outside the bay windows.

Was Elizabeth dancing in her husband’s arms at the Whitfield
ball?
Did she know?

That morning she had taken two sips of Turkish coffee even though
she obviously disliked it. Or did she?

Given the opportunity, what would Elizabeth choose: respectability
or passion?

He suddenly envisioned her reclining naked on a stack of silk
cushions, smoking a hookah.

The image should be ridiculous—she wore creaking corsets and heavy
wool dresses perfumed by benzene. It wasn’t. He could all too vividly imagine
her dark auburn hair spilling down her back and across her full breasts while
she sucked on the bit.

“Have a carriage drawn around,” Ramiel abruptly ordered. “Tonight
I will follow Petre.”

The
ball was everything and worse than Elizabeth had expected. She chatted with
young debutantes who had not quite taken and to men who were too shy to
approach the opposite sex. Or she attended those men and women who were too
elderly or too infirm to dance. And all the while she listened to the practiced
scales of feminine titters and masculine guffaws as the gilded
ton
swirled
and twirled on the dance floor, absorbed in their pursuit of pleasure.

The Bastard Sheikh had complimented her hair. How long had it been
since Edward had given her a compliment... on anything?

How long can a wellborn woman comfortably go without coition?

“Mrs. Petre . . .”

It took a second for Elizabeth to realize that she was being
addressed. Her companion, Lord Inchcape, an eighty-year-old peer whose distinct
body odor necessitated that one keep one’s head turned upwind, did not need her
conversation, only an ear.

“Mrs. Petre, I have someone here who begs an introduction.”

Elizabeth gratefully turned to Baroness Whitfield, her hostess.

The welcoming smile on her face froze.

The Bastard Sheikh, dressed in black evening clothes and white
tie, towered over the baroness’s short, plump figure. On his other side, a tall
woman claimed his arm—the top of her head reached well past his chin. She was
slender, elegant in a turquoise gown that matched his eyes. Her face was a
perfect oval. Golden blond hair was caught in a chignon; it was the same color
as was the Bastard Sheikh’s.

Recognition was instantaneous:
She must be the woman whom he
had wallowed in until her perfume had become his scent.

A fleeting pain stabbed through her chest: jealousy,
envy.
The
woman was everything that Elizabeth would never be, exactly the kind of woman
she would choose for a man like him.

Baroness Whitfield’s plump cheeks were flushed with champagne and
the heat radiating from over a hundred bodies and three chandeliers. “Catherine,
may I present to you Mrs. Elizabeth Petre, the illustrious wife of our
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mrs. Petre, Countess Devington.”

Elizabeth’s first stunned thought was
She’s not the Bastard
Sheikh’s mistress, she’s his mother,
and then, incongruously,
She’s not
old enough to be his mother, surely.

Smiling warmly, the countess extended a white-gloved hand. “How do
you do, Mrs. Petre? I’ve heard so much about you.”

A cold frisson of fear raced down Elizabeth’s spine. Ignoring the
friendly overture, she stiffly executed a curtsy. “How do you do, Countess
Devington?”

“Catherine, you are acquainted with Lord Inchcape.”

“Indeed I am. How do you do, Lord Inchcape?”

Lord Inchcape nodded his liver-spotted head. “Not still galavantin’
off to those foreign countries and gettin’ yourself kidnapped, eh, what?”

The countess’s smile subtly altered. “Alack, not recently.”

Amusement lit up the baroness’s small, plump face. “Behave
yourself, Catherine. Mrs. Petre, may I present to you Countess Devington’s son,
Lord Safyre. Lord Safyre . . . Mrs. Petre.”