CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

BACK AT THE inn, Mordecai retreated to his bedchamber, where he stripped down to his shirt-sleeves. Damn, but it was hot. He wrote a number of letters—to his man of business, to his bailiffs—then had a cold bath. He sponged himself down and shaved carefully, while anticipation built in his blood. Tonight I’m going to make love to Eleanor Wrotham.

He went downstairs to the private parlor. Eleanor was already there. She was once again wearing the ivory-white gown with the vandyked hem. Mordecai had realized over the past few days that she had only three gowns with her. Three gowns, one pair of shoes, one bonnet, one spencer.

“Good evening,” he said, and wondered if he dared offer to buy her a whole new wardrobe.

They sat at the table. Mordecai poured them both wine and carved the chicken. He could remember his own nerves before his first sexual experience. He’d been afraid Cécile would laugh at him, afraid that he’d be too fast, too slow, too clumsy, that he’d humiliate himself, that he wouldn’t be good enough. Was Eleanor feeling some of that fear now?

He set himself to putting her at ease. “Have you looked at those novels yet?”

“Yes. I read Sense and Sensibility yesterday.”

“What? All of it?”

Eleanor nodded. “And I read the first few chapters of Summer in St. Ives this afternoon.”

“Did you now?” Mordecai hesitated, and then asked cautiously, “What do you think of it?”

“It’s quite ridiculous,” Eleanor said. “Very amusing. Shocking. But . . .” Her brow wrinkled. “I have the feeling that it has more layers than I’m aware of, that things are happening on the page that I’m not seeing.”

Mordecai was certain of it.

“Take Mrs. Lightheel, for example—”

“Lightheel?” Mordecai said, and uttered a laugh.

Eleanor looked at him quizzically. Candlelight gleamed on her spectacle frames, gleamed on her chestnut wig.

“A lightheeled woman is one who, er, finds herself often on her back,” Mordecai told her. “Because her heels fly up so readily.”

“Oh.” Eleanor blinked, and frowned slightly, as if trying to envisage this. “Then the name is well chosen. Mrs. Lightheel has already had an amatory adventure on a billiard table, and I believe she is about to have another one in a card room.”

“You believe?” He reached for his wineglass.

“Yes. She has been playing cards with Mr. Readycock—”

Mordecai choked on his wine.

Eleanor looked blankly at him. “What?”

Mordecai put the wineglass down and caught his breath. “Cock is another name for a man’s bâton.”

“Oh,” Eleanor said. “I thought the author was comparing him to a rooster.”

Mordecai tried to suppress his laugh, and failed.

Eleanor wasn’t offended. She smiled wryly. “You see what I mean? The book has layers that I’m oblivious to.”

“I think perhaps we’d better read it together,” Mordecai said.

Eleanor nodded. She sipped her wine, a thoughtful crease between her eyebrows. “Is flute another word for bâton?”

“Yes.”

“Then Mrs. Lightheel is definitely about to have an amatory adventure. She’s just lost at cards, you see, to Mr. Readycock, and rather than pay the twenty guineas she owes him she has offered to play on his flute.” She frowned. “I couldn’t understand why he agreed to it.”

Mordecai couldn’t help it: he laughed out loud again.

Eleanor gave another wry smile.

“What are the other characters called?” Mordecai asked.

Eleanor thought for a moment. “There’s a Lord Tipvelvet. And a Lady St. George. Do those names mean anything?”

Mordecai nodded. “They’re sexual acts.” He paused, and then added, “Both of which I intend to show you.”

Eleanor blushed vividly. She fixed her gaze on her plate, no longer wry but flustered.

Mordecai looked at her pink cheeks and changed the subject: “What did you think of Sense and Sensibility?”

They discussed Sense and Sensibility for the rest of the meal. It was much safer ground. It allowed them both to pretend that this was an ordinary evening, that they weren’t intending to have carnal relations with each other shortly. Mordecai asked questions and listened to Eleanor’s answers and ate his meal, while anticipation gathered beneath his skin.

When they’d both finished, Mordecai refilled their wineglasses. The evening stretched before them: shadows and heat and intimacy. His heartbeat sped up slightly.

“Tell me about the others,” Eleanor said. “The ones who came after Cécile.”

Her question caught him by surprise. Mordecai almost spilled the wine he was pouring. He glanced at her. Eleanor blushed faintly, but she didn’t apologize for her words; she met his gaze straightly.

Her question was a direct one, and a bold one—and Mordecai admired her for it. “What would you like to know?” he said, putting aside the wine bottle.

“Who were they?”

Mordecai leaned back in his chair, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and thought about how to answer this question. “When Cécile went to America . . .”

When Cécile had gone she’d left a huge hole in his life. He’d been quite desperately lonely. Achingly lonely.

Mordecai rubbed his nose again, then reached for his wineglass. “When Cécile left I found myself rather more popular among the ladies of the ton than I’d anticipated. I’d acquired a reputation, you see. I must be a great lover, else Cécile wouldn’t have stayed with me for so long.” He sipped his wine. “An astonishing number of ladies threw their handkerchiefs into the ring. I should have been flattered, I suppose, but instead I was . . .” Lonely. “I wanted what I’d had with Cécile, you see. Companionship as much as sex. I wanted a kindred spirit.”

Eleanor watched him silently.

“In the end, I realized I wouldn’t find it again. Which left me with two choices: hiring a professional, or having an affair with one of the ladies lining up for me.” He frowned at his wine. “Personally, I don’t think sex should be a business transaction, so . . . the decision made itself.” He shrugged. “I decided to treat it like Tattersalls.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Tattersalls?”

“If you want a horse, you go to Tattersalls, choose the one that best meets your needs.”

“And what were your criteria?” Eleanor asked dryly.

“Not married,” Mordecai said. “And not someone who wanted to be my lover merely to show me off—that narrowed the field considerably. And after that . . . someone whose company I’d enjoy, who had a sense of humor.”

Eleanor Wrotham was eyeing him, a faint frown on her brow.

“I know it sounds calculating and . . . and arrogant, choosing a lover the way you’d choose a horse.” Mordecai tried not to let a note of defensiveness enter his voice. “But I didn’t want sex in exchange for money and I didn’t want to play a game with someone who saw me as a trophy. I wanted to share my bed with a woman I actually liked.”

Eleanor looked at him for a long moment, her lips pursed, and then she said, “It doesn’t sound calculating or arrogant, it actually sounds quite sensible. And . . . a little sad.”

Mordecai stiffened with indignation. “Sad?”

“You’re not a rake, Mordecai Black. You’re a romantic.”

Mordecai felt himself blush. Not a faint blush, but a deep blush that heated his whole face. He wanted to refute her comment, to deny it vehemently, but he couldn’t. Because she was right. He was a romantic. He didn’t want sex for the sake of sex; he wanted the dream. He wanted true love.

“Tell me about these ladies you selected,” Eleanor said. “Four of them, am I correct?”

He nodded, his face still hot.

“Were they all widows?”

“All but one.”

“Who was the first?”

“Annabel Wren.”

Eleanor nodded. All of London knew Lady Annabel Wren. Duke’s daughter. Duke’s widow. Beautiful, wealthy, flamboyant, shocking.

“Why did you choose her?”

“Because I wasn’t a trophy to her,” Mordecai said. The heat was fading from his face. “And she made me laugh. Annabel has a very, um, interesting sense of humor.” Lewd was the word he’d been about to utter. Lady Annabel could be as bawdy as a sailor when she chose to be, duke’s daughter or not.

“And after her?”

“Mary Halliburton.”

Eleanor nodded again. She clearly knew of Mary, too. Not quite as outré as Annabel. Fashionable rather than flamboyant, original rather than shocking. Earl’s daughter, viscount’s widow. A handsome, intelligent, assertive woman. A woman who knew what she wanted in and out of bed—and had the confidence to go after it.

“Mary was my mistake,” Mordecai admitted. “She wanted more than one lover on her string. She wasn’t faithful, so I ended it. And after her was Mary Wolverhampton.” His second Mary, as different from the first as chalk from cheese.

“The pretend affair,” Eleanor said, and then she quoted him: “What’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.”

Mordecai nodded. “Mary and I played our game for almost two months, while Wolverhampton got crosser and crosser. I was hoping he’d call me out, but he didn’t have the courage.”

“You don’t like him,” Eleanor said. A statement, not a question.

“Remember that fight at Eton? How when the first three went down, another eight stepped forward? Wolverhampton was one of the eight, so no, I don’t like him.”

Eleanor’s eyebrows drew together in a sharp frown. “You said his wife loved him.”

“She does.”

“But how can she? He doesn’t sound like a nice man at all!”

Mordecai shrugged. “Women don’t always fall in love with good men—nor men with good women. Sometimes the heart makes decisions that aren’t wise.”

She looked at him for a long, frowning moment, and then said, “Do you count Mrs. Wolverhampton as one of the five?”

Mordecai shook his head.

“So that leaves two more?”

“Yes.”

“Who were they?”

Mordecai sipped his wine. “Next was Véronique.”

“Another Frenchwoman?”

“A creole. A mulâtresse.” He observed her surprise. “Surely Roger told you? He was quite vulgar about her at the time.”

Eleanor shook her head. “He spoke of your low tastes, but he never mentioned a mulâtresse.”

Mordecai grunted, and drank some more wine. “Véronique was from Louisiana. Things are a bit different over there. Many of the wealthy men choose—I guess the closest word is concubines—from among the slaves. Véronique’s mother was concubine to a Frenchman. A nobleman’s son. After a time he freed her, and still later, he married her. When Véronique was born, her father saw that she was educated, had tutors sent out from France, taught her English, Italian, German. He settled a great deal of money and property on her and her mother.

“Véronique was legitimately born, she was wealthy, she had aristocratic blood. She could have married a respectable man . . . but instead, she chose to be a mistress to a very unrespectable man. Another French nobleman: Henri de la Rochelard, Comte de Pontillier.” Mordecai shrugged. He didn’t blame Véronique for her choice; Henri had been handsome, lighthearted, devil-may-care, fun.

“They were together half a dozen years. Henri brought her to London—she made quite a stir.” As much of a stir as Cécile had done eight years earlier. “Henri was a gambler, he ran through money like water. He needed a wealthy wife, and Véronique wouldn’t marry him, so he contracted a marriage with a sixteen-year-old heiress, a pudding-faced little thing. He thought he could have it all, you see: the beautiful mistress, the wealthy wife.”

Eleanor’s upper lip curled faintly in contempt.

“Véronique felt as you did. She left Henri to his poor little wife and took up with me instead. We got along very well.”

“Was she beautiful?” Eleanor asked.

Mordecai nodded. Véronique had been even more beautiful than Cécile, in his opinion—the dusky skin, the lustrous dark eyes. “But more than that, she had spirit. She was her own person. She was quick-witted and funny and rebellious. She enjoyed shocking people.” He gave a snort of amusement. “I remember once she tipped a bowl of punch over Henri. In front of half the ton. He had pink champagne in his hair, and orange peel.”

“Why?”

Mordecai shrugged. “I can’t remember. She used to fly into dramatic rages—then just as quickly be laughing again. She was . . . very alive.”

Eleanor hesitated, and then said, “Did you love her?”

“Neither of us was in love. We just liked each other a lot.”

“How long were you together?”

“Two years, and then Véronique went back to Louisiana. She hated England, hated the cold, the fog, the winters.”

“You didn’t want to go with her?”

He shook his head.

Eleanor considered this reply for a moment, and then said, “Who was after Véronique?”

“Sarah Tarleton.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Lady Tarleton?”

Mordecai nodded. Sarah Tarleton had been the opposite of Véronique. Their relationship had been comfortable, undemanding, restful. He’d enjoyed Sarah’s even-tempered company as much as her voluptuous body. “We were together almost a year and then I met someone else, a kindred spirit, so I ended the affair.”

“But you said you’d only had five mistresses.”

“I have.”

“But . . . who did you leave Lady Tarleton for?”

“You.”

Eleanor Wrotham blinked, startled, and then a deep blush suffused her face.

“I’ve been faithful to you ever since,” Mordecai said.

Eleanor moistened her lips and said, “How can you be so certain I’m a kindred spirit?”

“Because you helped that urchin in Halfmoon Street, when most other people would have looked away. Because you were kind to Arabella Knightley despite her past. Because you ride ventre à terre when no one’s watching.”

Eleanor looked down at her plate. “Georgiana rides like that sometimes, and she’s kind to Miss Knightley, and she would have helped that boy if she’d been there. Perhaps you should marry her.”

“Georgiana Dalrymple is a very nice girl,” Mordecai agreed. “But she and I have no spark. And besides . . . she doesn’t have your eyelids.”

Her gaze flew to him.

“I like your eyelids very much,” Mordecai said softly.

A blush suffused her face again. She looked hastily back at her plate. After a moment she said, “You said one of your requirements for your mistresses was a sense of humor. You don’t know that I have one.”

“You have a sense of humor,” Mordecai said. “You just don’t let it out very often.”

Eleanor glanced at him, a dubious frown on her brow. “How can you know that?”

“I’ve seen you make your cousin laugh.”

“In public?” She shook her head. “I would never do that.”

“At that balloon ascension in Hyde Park. I don’t know what you said to her, but it sent her into whoops.” Eleanor Wrotham had laughed, too, and she hadn’t looked like a duchess at all, she’d looked full of mischief and merriment—and then her father had turned to look coldly at her and the amusement had wiped itself from her face as if it had never been there.

Eleanor grimaced and looked away. “Father was very displeased. He rebuked me afterwards.”

“Of course he did,” Mordecai said dryly. “Heaven forbid that anyone should ever laugh.”

His tone made her glance back at him.

“What’s wrong with laughing?” he asked her.

Eleanor considered this question for several seconds, and then said, “Nothing.” Her chin lifted slightly, as if she was defying her father.

“Do you think you have a sense of humor?” Mordecai asked her.

She was silent for several more seconds. “I like to laugh,” she admitted finally.

“Most people do,” Mordecai said. “Your father probably would have enjoyed it, too, if he’d ever allowed himself to.”

“Father? Laugh?” Eleanor shook her head. “I never saw him laugh. Not once.”

This statement hung in the air for a moment, and Mordecai’s only thought was: How sad.

Eleanor sighed. “Poor Father. He was so narrow.”

“Yes.” Mr. Wrotham had been very narrow in his views. “When I offered for your hand I wasn’t at all surprised that he turned me down. I’d expected it.” What he hadn’t expected was for Eleanor Wrotham to accept Roger’s offer. That had been a kick in the gut. He’d been consumed by a sick, helpless, hopeless rage. “When your sister ran away, when the scandal broke and Roger jilted you and your father took you back to Lincolnshire, I wrote to him and renewed my offer. His reply was . . . discouraging.” Mr. Wrotham had penned a very unflattering summation of Mordecai’s character, and ended his epistle with the vehement assertion that he would rather die than see his daughter marry a libertine.

“I addressed my next letter directly to you. I felt you should have the choice of refusing me yourself.”

Eleanor’s lips parted slightly. She shook her head. “I never received it.”

“I realized that, eventually. I wrote twice more and did receive an answer in the end. From your father, telling me that I was wasting ink and paper, that no letter of mine would ever reach you.”

Eleanor shook her head again. “I’m sorry.”

Mordecai shrugged with one shoulder, and reached for his wineglass. “Not your fault.” He sipped. “I was on the point of setting out for Lincolnshire, to make my offer face to face, when Father had his stroke. Naturally, I was unable to leave him.” Six weeks, he’d spent at his father’s bedside. And then he’d buried him. “After he died there was so much to do. It was . . .” He blew out a breath. It had been a nightmare. The estates being parceled out, Roger livid that so little had come to him, the servants in an uproar. He’d honored his pledge—that he’d find employment for anyone who felt unable to work for Roger—but it had been like the Great Flood. Not just housemaids and kitchen maids and laundry maids, but footmen, butlers, housekeepers. He’d pensioned off the older retainers, but he’d still had too many servants. Far too many. In desperation he’d purchased Great Wynthrop, huge, long-neglected, gently decaying, and set them to the task of putting it to rights.

Every time he’d turned around a fresh problem had cropped up—the lawyers, the paperwork, the carpenters, the endless stream of defecting servants—and all the while he’d been thinking of Eleanor Wrotham, far off in Lincolnshire, guarded by her Cerberus of a father. He’d been aware of time slipping away, minutes, hours, days—and fear had taken root that she would marry someone else, someone her father approved of, someone who was prepared to overlook a ruined sister for the sake of a wife such as Eleanor Wrotham. There had been days when he’d barely been able to swallow his food, the fear had gripped his throat so tightly.

“And when I finally had everything under control, your father died.”

Eleanor grimaced faintly, and looked down at her plate.

“Proposing to you at such a time would have been the height of ill-manners. But I did write, offering my condolences.” He paused. “Did you get that letter?”

Eleanor shook her head. “My great aunt must have burned it.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, pressed her fingertips to her brow, and then opened her eyes again. “I’m sorry. It was unforgivable of them to destroy your letters. They had no right.”

“They were trying to protect you.”

“They were trying to control me,” she said fiercely. “As if I were a child and completely incapable of making my own decisions! They opened your letters and then burned them. It was wrong. Grossly wrong!” She inhaled a sharp breath, and released it slowly. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to raise my voice.”

“I don’t mind,” Mordecai said. “If you’re angry, why shouldn’t you shout?”

“I hope I wasn’t shouting,” she said stiffly.

Mordecai grinned at her. “Almost, but not quite.”

Eleanor Wrotham looked down her nose at him, the picture of an offended duchess, and then smiled wryly. “I apologize for my father and my great aunt. Their behavior towards you was unforgivable.”

“And their behavior towards your sister.”

Her smile vanished. “Yes.”

Mordecai put down his glass. “I should have waited longer, but I couldn’t.” Six months would have been proper. Five months, verging on disrespectful. Four months, too hasty . . . but four months had been all he’d been able to bring himself to wait.

Mordecai was suddenly aware of the special license in his breast pocket—wrinkled, dog-eared, precious—purchased at the Doctors’ Commons the day before he’d set out for Bath and carried ever since, while his hopes rose and ebbed like the tide. The license seemed to burn its way through the fabric. He leaned forward. “Nell, will you marry me?”

She stiffened, and became a duchess again.

I shouldn’t have asked. Mordecai sat back in his chair and resigned himself to yet another refusal, but Eleanor didn’t say No. She didn’t say anything at all. The silence grew—and grew—and optimism flowered cautiously in Mordecai’s chest. “Nell?” he said at last.

“I don’t know.” Her voice was troubled, and so were her eyes.

Mordecai felt a leap of hope. I don’t know was a thousand times better than an outright No. He leaned forward again, suddenly urgent. “Nell—”

The door opened: the serving-men coming to clear the table.

Mordecai experienced a burst of severe frustration. He sat back in his chair and tried to look relaxed not annoyed, but it was difficult when he’d just missed the perfect opportunity to press his advantage.

Then common sense reasserted itself. He didn’t want to push Eleanor Wrotham into marriage. If she still had doubts, if she wasn’t completely certain, then this wasn’t the perfect opportunity.

It would come. Tomorrow, next week, next month. One day he would ask, and Eleanor wouldn’t hesitate at all. She would say Yes, and she’d smile as she said it.

Mordecai sipped the last of his wine while the servants worked, and thought about what tonight would bring—the closeness, the physical intimacy, the deepening emotional connection between them. Anticipation stirred in his belly. And then he glanced at Eleanor. If an emotion was stirring in her belly right now, it would be nervousness. Or perhaps even fear.

Mordecai frowned. He wanted Eleanor to leave this parlor eager for what lay ahead, not nervous, and most definitely not afraid. He sipped his wine thoughtfully and eyed the sofa, and let an idea take shape in his mind.

When the servants withdrew, he said, “Run upstairs and fetch Summer in St. Ives, Nell. I’ll read the first chapter with you now.”

Eleanor hesitated, and then did as he bade.

When she returned, Mordecai latched the door. They sat on the sofa together. The sofa where he’d brought her to a climax last night. Where she’d watched him do the same to himself. His cock twitched at the memory. Mordecai opened the book to its first page, and glanced at her. “You may sit closer to me if you wish.”

Eleanor blushed, and shuffled a few inches closer, until their legs were touching.

Mordecai put one arm around her, gathering her even closer, tucking her into his body. “There,” he said, and then he turned his attention to the book. “Dear reader, between these covers you will find a true account of a house party that took place last summer. The characters who populate these pages are real, but you will recognize none of the names, for I have taken the precaution of altering them.”

He read at a leisurely pace, his voice low. An atmosphere gathered around them, cozy and intimate. By the time he’d finished the second page Eleanor had relaxed, leaning warmly against him.

On the third page, Mrs. Lightheel and Colonel Everhard embarked on a game of billiards together.

“Does Everhard mean what I think it means?” Eleanor asked.

“It means that the colonel is a very priapic man,” Mordecai told her.

“Priapic?”

“His bâton is constantly at a stand.”

Eleanor nodded. “I thought so.”

Mordecai continued reading. The prose was surprisingly well written—and it reinforced his opinion that the author was a female. There was a subtlety to it that one didn’t find in works such as Fanny Hill. The words themselves weren’t actually sensual, but the way the author put them together was: the billiard cues were long, hard, smooth, powerful, and the pockets the balls dropped into were snug, dark, soft, warm. When Mrs. Lightheel lightly caressed the billiard balls while she positioned them on the table, Mordecai’s own balls tightened. When she idly stroked her billiard cue—her fingertips whispering along that sleek, rigid length—he perfectly understood Colonel Everhard’s comment: ‘I beg you will cease that, ma’am. It’s extremely distracting.’

Mordecai explained all this to Eleanor. “A man’s testicles are often referred to as his balls,” he said. “And for a woman to fondle them is an extremely pleasant sensation.” He stroked Eleanor’s throat, just below her earlobe, a touch as light, idle, and deliberate as Mrs. Lightheel’s caress of the billiard balls.

Eleanor shivered.

“And when Mrs. Lightheel strokes the billiard cue, the author clearly wishes us to imagine her stroking the colonel’s bâton.” He let his fingers whisper over Eleanor’s skin again, making her shiver a second time. “The colonel imagines it, too, which is why he asks her to cease.” Mordecai’s fingertips drifted down her throat until they encountered the neckline of her gown. A prim neckline, as befitted Mr. Wrotham’s daughter. “I can’t say I blame the colonel. Seeing a woman touch a cue in such a suggestive manner would bring almost any man’s bâton to a stand.”

Mordecai’s fingers wandered along the prim neckline, a light and tickling exploration that made Eleanor shiver again. He found the hollow of her throat. They were sitting together reading a book, a very sedate activity . . . but Eleanor’s pulse was beating with great rapidity. Mordecai laid one fingertip over that betraying pulse and glanced at her face. Her cheeks were flushed a pretty pink.

Satisfied, Mordecai continued reading aloud. He kept his fingers at the hollow of Eleanor’s throat, stroking lightly from time to time, feeling her shiver, feeling her pulse dance.

Mrs. Lightheel continued with her seduction of the colonel. She removed her gloves—to help her hold the cue more securely—and then, while awaiting her turn, she placed one fingertip between her lips and sucked on it. Mordecai’s cock twitched again. “This is an allusion to a sexual act. You may imagine that Mrs. Lightheel’s finger is the colonel’s bâton—and you can be quite certain that this is what the colonel will imagine, too. If his bâton wasn’t at a stand before, it will be now.”

He laid the book down on his lap, took Eleanor’s hand, and lifted it to his mouth, letting two of her fingertips rest on his lower lip. “Mouths are for more than just kissing,” Mordecai told her. “They’re tools for giving pleasure.” He drew her fingertips into his mouth.

Eleanor shivered, a convulsive movement.

Mordecai sucked gently several times, letting her feel the heat of his mouth, the softness of his tongue, the rhythm he was building. He let his tongue roam over the sensitive pads of her fingertips, then bit lightly, and released her.

Mordecai picked up the book again. He glanced at Eleanor’s face. Her pupils were dilated behind the spectacle lenses, her cheeks deeply flushed. He smiled to himself, and found his place on the page. “Mrs. Lightheel idly drew one rosy fingertip between her lips and sucked, an innocent gesture that wholly captured the colonel’s attention. He missed his shot.

“‘Oh, dear,’ Mrs. Lightheel said, and sucked on her fingertip again.

“The colonel uttered an oath and cast aside his cue. He advanced on Mrs. Lightheel in a rampant state—”

“Rampant?” Eleanor asked.

“His bâton is erect,” Mordecai told her. He continued reading: “He advanced on Mrs. Lightheel in a rampant state, gathered her up in his arms, and flung her upon the billiard table, an indecency to which she most eagerly submitted.”

In a matter of moments Everhard had fought his way through the froth of Mrs. Lightheel’s petticoats, exposing what the author called her “womanly bounty.” That task accomplished, the colonel ripped open his drawers to display his own tumescent member.

“‘Your yardstick is very large,’ Mrs. Lightheel marveled.

“‘All the better to pleasure you with,’ Everhard growled.”

Mordecai didn’t pause to explain what yardstick meant; the context made it clear. He continued reading as Everhard plundered Mrs. Lightheel’s bounty with single-minded vigor, an activity that propelled both participants to such heights of pleasure that Mrs. Lightheel gave a cry of ecstasy and swooned.

On this climactic note, the chapter ended.

Mordecai uttered a crack of laughter. “Good God. What utter nonsense.”

Eleanor Wrotham giggled.

“I hope you’re not expecting to be raised to such heights,” Mordecai said. “If you are, you’ll be sorely disappointed. I may be a rake, but my lovemaking has never made anyone swoon.”

Eleanor giggled again. It was a very unduchesslike sound—and it warmed Mordecai’s heart to hear it.

“It’s a very silly novel, isn’t it?” she said.

“Extremely silly.” Mordecai closed the book and sat quietly for several seconds, savoring the moment: Eleanor leaning against him, soft and warm, the memory of her giggle in his ears, the hum of arousal and anticipation in his blood. He lightly stroked the hollow of Eleanor’s throat, felt her pulse leap beneath his fingertips, felt her shiver, then he dipped his head and pressed his lips to her ear and whispered, “Tell me truthfully, Nell . . . do you still wish to make love tonight?”

Eleanor shivered again. “Yes.” Her voice was low and faintly breathless.

The hum in Mordecai’s blood became stronger. “Your room or mine?”

“I don’t mind.”

“Mine, then,” Mordecai said, because that left the power in her hands. She could come to his bedchamber—or not. And she could leave whenever she wished.