Hot shame engulfed her. He had shared his knowledge and she had turned her back on him.
She squared her shoulders and stood up, clutching paper, her reticule, and her gloves. “I apologize for my actions at the ball, Lord Safyre.”
His expression did not invite an apology. “Which actions are those, Mrs. Petre?”
“I did not mean—” Yes, she had meant to cut him. She had seen her mother’s disapproval and had instinctively acted to avoid it. “I walked away from you.”
“Would you dance with me again?”
Dance with a bastard. Her breasts pressed against his chest, thighs to thighs, swirling and whirling, impervious to propriety and ugly, hateful truths. He was a man who belonged to neither the East nor the West; she was the wife of a man who preferred his mistress’s bed to hers.
“I would be honored.”
A smile twisted his mouth. “I wonder, Mrs. Petre. Where is your husband?”
Her spine stiffened. “At home,” she lied. Or perhaps she did not. “In his bed.”
Where she should be.
“Is he, Mrs. Petre?”
“You lied, Lord Safyre,” she riposted. “You know who his mistress is.”
“I did not lie, taalibba. I do not know. I merely wondered if you knew.”
“You do not think that I will be able to seduce my husband, do you?”
There. It was out.
“I do not know.”
She lifted her chin. I do not know was better than no.
“Perhaps you underestimate your abilities as a tutor.”
“Perhaps you underestimate your husband.”
All the pent-up desire burst into frustrated anger. “This is not a game, Lord Safyre. You told me that whether you were called a bastard or an infidel you are still a man. Well, I am a woman and my choices are few. I must make my marriage work because that is all I will ever have.”
Tears filled her eyes.
She hated tears. For thirty-three years they were the only protest she had voiced, muffling her loneliness in a pillow.
“Go home, Mrs. Petre.” His turquoise eyes were unreadable. “You have dark circles underneath your eyes. Get some sleep. Tomorrow we will discuss Chapters Seven and Eight.”
“Very well.”
The paper was not hers. She blindly placed it on the desk and turned around, careful of the chair, careful of the emotions that sat like fragile eggs on her shoulders.
“Mrs. Petre.”
For a second Elizabeth thought about opening the door and walking away and becoming the safe, blameless person she had been a week before. She wasn’t courageous, she was desperate.
“What?”
“Rule number five. Touch yourself and find the places on your body that are most sensitive. Lie down on your back, bend your knees and practice the same motions you practiced on your mattress.”
“Will this teach me how to please my husband, Lord Safyre?” she asked stiffly.
“It will teach you how to please a man, Mrs. Petre.”
Why did he make the two sound separate, as if Edward were not a man?
Or as if he did not believe that Elizabeth would be able to satisfy her husband . . . ever.
“Very well.”
“Ma’a e-salemma, taalibba.”
“Ma’a e-salemma, Lord Safyre.”
Elizabeth opened the door and stood face-to-face with the Arab butler.
Chapter 10
Muhamed’s head loomed over Elizabeth’s auburn hair. A black hood cast his face into shadow.
Every muscle in Ramiel’s body coiled in preparation—to drag Elizabeth back and finish what they had started—to protect her from the man she thought was an Arab.
His engorged manhood throbbed a painful tattoo inside his leather pants.
She had wanted to see him.
He had wanted to show her.
He still wanted to show her . . . what he looked like, how to please him, how to swallow his flesh for their maximum enjoyment.
Staring over her head at Ramiel, Muhamed inclined his shoulders in a half-bow. “Sabah el kheer.”
“Sabah el kheer, Muhamed,” Elizabeth responded, the wrong response, but her pronunciation was flawless.
Muhamed was surprised out of his stoicism. He stepped aside to allow her passage.
“Thank you.” Elizabeth nodded her head, dark red lights gleaming in the tight, braided bun of her hair. “Ma’a e-salemma.”
Fierce pride swelled inside Ramiel. Elizabeth was indeed a meritorious woman.
Ramiel watched Muhamed watch Elizabeth’s retreating back. He knew the exact moment she exited his home; the Cornishman turned in a swirl of black wool and the white thobs he wore underneath the cloak.
“El Ibn.”
Ramiel was not fooled by Muhamed’s bow. He waited for the Cornishman to step forward and close the library door.
“Eavesdropping, Muhamed?”
“I do not have to eavesdrop, El Ibn. I could smell your lust through the door.”
Ramiel bit back the lightning-quick retort, I did not know that a eunuch had such a keen sense of smell. He said instead, “I will not tolerate your interference.”
“The sheikh commands me to watch after you.”
“You are no longer his slave.” How angry Elizabeth had been when he had addressed her by name in front of the little housemaid. “I have it on the best authority that the English do not condone slavery.”
“A young girl died, El Ibn, because you did not resist the haraam, that which is forbidden.”
The concubine who had taken Ramiel’s virginity when he was twelve.
Hot desire turned to icy anger, English civility to Arab savagery.
Muhamed must be made to understand, once and for all, how important Elizabeth Petre was to Ramiel. He could think of only one way to drive home his point.
“You have been with me for twenty-six years, Muhamed. I value your loyalty and your friendship. But I will kill you if you ever harm Mrs. Petre. The Arabic way, very, very slowly, an inch at a time.”
“I would not harm a woman,” Muhamed said woodenly. His gaze glanced off Ramiel and focused on the wall behind him.
Ramiel relaxed. “Good.”
“It is not I who will harm her.”
Fear coursed through Ramiel’s blood.
Edward Petre.
Did he beat her? Did he know of the lessons?
“Explain.”
“The husband went to the Hundred Guineas Club.”
Ramiel’s nostrils flared in surprise.
The Hundred Guineas Club was a notorious club that obliged its homosexual members to assume a female persona.
“Is he still there?”
Aversion radiated from Muhamed’s shadowed face. “No. He left the club with a man dressed as a woman.”
The woman he had allegedly been seen with. Only she was not a woman.
“You followed them.”
“To an empty shop on Oxford Street.”
“Who was the man?”
“I cannot say.”
Not I do not know.
“You did not recognize him?” Ramiel asked sharply.
“You demanded proof, El Ibn. I have no proof but my own eyes.”
“You have not lied to me before, Muhamed. Your word is proof enough.”
“No, El Ibn, it is not. Not in this; you will not listen to reason. I will take you to the shop and you will see for yourself.”
Ramiel sensed impending danger, senses fine-tuned as they had not been nine years ago. Who was Petre’s lover, that the Cornishman feared he would not be believed?
Nothing would shock Ramiel, not sex, not death. Unless—
“Elizabeth was here, with me.”
Ela’na, damn, he sounded defensive. Elizabeth was not responsible for her husband’s actions. Nor was she knowledgeable about the kinds of sex games that were played in a hellhole like the Hundred Guineas Club.
Muhamed continued staring at the wall, face sto
ic.
Ramiel glanced down at his desk, at the gold pen he had earlier inserted between his fingers as if it were his manhood and the sheath of his hand Elizabeth’s vagina.
White paper balanced precariously on the edge of the mahogany wood. Black ink marched across it.
Leaning over, he scooped up the paper.
El kebachi—buttocks raised—like beasts in fields, he read. Dok el arz—belly to belly—mouth to mouth. Rekeud el aïr—riding a stallion.
They were Elizabeth’s notes, the words she had written while he recited the six main positions for coitus. They were not the words he had used, nor even the basic positions he had cited. She had listed alternative positions . . . and listed them by their Arabic names.
Either she had memorized Chapter Six in its entirety . . . or these were the positions that most excited her. To be taken from behind while she knelt on her hands and knees; to sit in a man’s lap, her legs around his waist; to straddle a man’s groin while he lay on his back with his legs raised.
Ramiel’s testicles tightened. He imagined taking Elizabeth while she knelt; letting her take him while he lay back; dok el arz, both taking, both giving as they sat facing each other, belly to belly, mouth to mouth.
He would lay odds that her only experience was the first position, one that she had not bothered recording, that of a woman passively lying on her back in an act of duty.
The last scrawled sentence grabbed his thoughts. Ramiel stared, transfixed. The pulse in his fingertips hammered against the paper.
Forty ways to love—lebeuss el djoureb—please, God, let me love just once.
Jagged pain ripped through his chest. He had fucked in all forty positions, and not once had a woman called it an act of love.
He licked his lips, tasting her, Elizabeth Petre, a thirty-three-year-old woman who had borne two children yet had never been kissed in passion.
She had touched him. She had licked her finger and explored his lips with the innocent wonder of a woman bent on sexual discovery.
Lebeuss el djoureb.
He could give her that. He could spread her legs and tease her vulva and her clitoris until each glide, each slight notching of his penis inside her, produced so much moisture that she would open up and take it all, his tongue and his verge, his past, her ecstasy, English pride and Arabic sexuality.
Reaching down, Ramiel opened the top drawer in his desk and carefully laid the paper inside, anchored it with the gold pen.
She had not understood when he had twirled her on the dance floor and recalled the story of Dorérame and the king. He had told her that he would free her from her husband. Now it was time to act.
“Yalla nimshee,” he said harshly to Muhamed. Let’s go.
A gig waited outside in the gray dawn; hot steam rose from the horse, a pale, silvery mist. The small, lightweight carriage groaned, once when Ramiel climbed up, a second time when Muhamed followed, gracefully maneuvering in his flowing black cloak and Arab garb.
Without comment Ramiel allowed Muhamed to take the reins. The Cornishman whistled once, a low, shrill command for the horse to go. Ramiel braced himself against the resulting jolt of the carriage.
Cold, damp air moistened his face. The rhythmical clip-clop of the horse’s hooves and the grind of the carriage wheels filled the street. Above the tall rooftops, pink light tinted the sky.
He did not question Muhamed further. There was no need to. Ramiel would soon see who had inadvertently sent Elizabeth to him.
There had been dark circles underneath her eyes.
What had kept her awake? Her social life? Her marriage? The Perfumed Garden?
Whom had she thought of as she rubbed her pelvis against the mattress—Edward Petre . . . or him?
The carriage swayed, turned a corner.
Oxford Street this far from Regent Street was no longer reputable. Both the narrow streets and the buildings were falling into disrepair. Ramiel glimpsed the dark shadow of a man tupping a whore in a doorway—down the street a vendor’s cart ambled along, making its way to a richer neighborhood.
“El Ibn. We are approaching the shop.”
Ramiel pulled his hat down low over his ears and wound a dark wool scarf around his neck.
Muhamed softly clicked and pulled the horse to a halt. He pointed. “There.”
Upon first glimpse the building looked like the rest of the small brick shops. Gradually, he could see that the front was darker than those surrounding it—the windows had been boarded over. Above the shop shone a pale sliver of light—there was a room above the store. And someone was in it.
Ramiel lightly jumped down from the gig onto the cobblestone street; wood creaked; the horse nervously stepped backward. Ramiel absently soothed it, then continued on his mission, steps echoing in the early dawn light.
The door to the shop was boarded up, the wood pasted over with bills—no entrance there. Another door off to the side no doubt led up to the room. It was locked.
Frustrated, he stared up at that pale sliver of light only fourteen feet away. He would have to wait until Petre and his lover came down.
He looked around for a spot to hide and stepped into the recessed doorway. He pulled the wool scarf over his nose to filter out the odors of urine, gin, and rotted refuse.
The rhythmic clip-clop of a lone horse and the grind of wheels heralded the arrival of a light carriage. A hack pulled to a stop in front of the boarded-over shop, a mere twenty feet from where Ramiel stood. A side lantern on the carriage shed a yellow circle of light, revealing the drooping withers of a black and white nag. The cabbie, perched on his seat at the rear of the hack with a bowler hat pulled low over his eyes, looked neither left nor right.
The locked door leading to the room over the shop swung open. A man stepped out, profile unrecognizable, a typical gentleman dressed in a conservative overcoat and top hat. His breath misted the cold gray air.
Unaware that he was being watched, the man leisurely turned and closed the door. Ramiel ducked back into the doorway, body tense, waiting, waiting, ela’na, damn, he could not have gotten this close and be unable to identify anyone—was he Edward Petre or the man Muhamed had refused to name?
A man and a boy, both bundled against the cold, hurried past Ramiel, heads bowed to keep out the cold and perhaps to prevent themselves from becoming unwitting witnesses. The muted click of footsteps warned Ramiel that his quarry was walking toward the hack. He leaned forward, peered around the brick.
The lantern on the side of the cab aureoled the man in yellow light. He opened the carriage door, then took off his tall hat before stepping inside.
The color of his hair was vaguely familiar, but it was not black—it must be Petre’s lover.
As if sensing that he was being scrutinized, the man turned, a gold-handled cane clenched in his hand. Light from the carriage lamp clearly delineated his features.
Elizabeth’s hand hovered over the knob to the door connecting her and Edward’s bedrooms.
Was he home?
No. She could feel the emptiness seeping underneath the door, as if loneliness were ether, invisible but no less tangible for its invisibility.
A woman’s tongue is like a nipple, to be nibbled and suckled. Her mouth is like a vulva, to be licked and probed. Have you ever had a man’s tongue in your mouth?
Did Edward put his tongue in his mistress’s mouth? Was he even now doing so?
Would he put his tongue inside her mouth when she seduced him?
She closed her eyes and sagged against the door, overcome with an inexplicable wave of revulsion. The blackness behind her lids grew brown, bulging leather tightly stretched over masculine flesh.
Dear Lord, she did not know herself. What would she have done if the Bastard Sheikh had unfastened the front of his trousers?
And then, contrarily, she wondered if he was bigger than the gold pen. Longer? Thicker?
He had said that a woman who was new to the ways of love or one who had been abstinent for some ti
me would require shallow penetration. Whereas a woman who had borne two children would need the full length of a man inside her to achieve her satisfaction.
The muscles in Elizabeth’s stomach clenched at the thought of her pale legs thrown over the Bastard Sheikh’s brown, muscular shoulders.
Her eyelids snapped open. Edward was her husband; the Bastard Sheikh was her tutor. She should be imagining her legs thrown over her husband’s shoulders.
Straightening, she stared at the dim glow of her bedside lamp.
The Bastard Sheikh had commented on the dark circles under her eyes.
A ridiculous sense of gratitude washed over her. It was followed by disgust. She was indeed desperate for attention if she should be gratified that a man commented on her hollow eyes.
Impulsively, she crossed the thick carpet and turned the flame in the gas lamp as high as it would go. Light and shadow danced across the familiar room, turning the dawn-darkened carpet to blue, a rectangular box into an oak secretary, an oblong frame into a cheval mirror.
Putting away her gloves and emptying her reticule of The Perfumed Garden that she religiously carried to the lessons—as if the Bastard Sheikh’s library were indeed a school and the book of erotology a textbook—she hung up her cloak and her bonnet, then unpinned the little silver watch and dropped it into a drawer in the bottom of the wardrobe. Unbuttoning the velvet bodice of her dress, she hung that, too, inside the wardrobe. Gratefully, she shed the heavy bustle.
A glimpse of stark white snared her attention—she turned and stared at the woman in the cheval mirror. She was dressed in a plain white chemise and petticoats. Her skin was almost as pale as were the undergarments.
You have a womanly figure . . . Be proud of your body . . .
Staring, Elizabeth untied the first petticoat; it slid down the woman’s hips and puddled around her feet. Two more followed. Elizabeth raised her arms; the woman in the mirror raised her arms, too, and then she was obscured by white linen before reappearing again minus the chemise, dressed only in drawers, stockings, and shoes.
Her breasts were pale alabaster globes, heavy and full. The nipples were dark, tight.
Daringly, Elizabeth unlaced her plain white drawers, slid her hands inside the body-warmed cotton. Bending, she snagged the thigh-length stockings and pulled them down with the drawers. Fighting the instinct to cringe and hide, she straightened and assessed the naked body in the mirror.
Robin Schone Page 13
