The Lady's Tutor (3 page)

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 trousers 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.”

he 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.”