The Lady's Tutor (9 page)

“Your gloves, ma’am.”

Elizabeth stared into Emma’s gray eyes and could see . . .
nothing. No curiosity, no disapproval, no awareness that anything was amiss.

“Thank you, Emma.”

“Don’t forget your reticule, ma’am.”

Elizabeth sighed with relief. At least she had possessed the
forethought to put the Bastard Sheikh’s book and her notes into her desk.

“Mr. Petre.” She slowly fitted her left hand into a black leather
glove. “Is he lunching at home today?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Elizabeth concentrated on drawing the remaining glove onto her
right hand. “Did he inquire as to why I overslept?”

“No, ma’am.”

Elizabeth blindly examined the contents inside her reticule.

It was bad enough that she had to question a servant about the
whereabouts of her husband. Worse yet, she had to ask a servant if he was
interested in his wife’s comings and goings. But far, far worse was to be
informed by a servant that her husband was not interested in her welfare.

A dozen excuses raced through her head. She leapt upon the most
plausible.

No doubt Edward, due to the late hour that he had come home, had
slept late himself and had not realized she was home. It
was
Tuesday.

The horsehair-lined bustle weighting her down suddenly felt pounds
lighter.

Downstairs, a brown-haired footman dressed in a short black coat
and black bow tie stood at attention
by the sitting room doors.

Elizabeth frowned. She did not recognize him.

“Hello,” she said cordially, advancing forward. Up close, he was
older than what she had first thought, probably in his late thirties or early
forties. “I am afraid I do not recall seeing you before.”

He bowed briefly, then as if he were not quite certain what to do
with his hands, he clasped them behind his back and stared over her shoulder. “I
be Johnny, Freddie Watson’s cousin. There be an emergency with his mam, came up
sudden this morning. Yer butler didn’ think there’d be no trouble if I worked
Freddie’s position until he came back.”

Freddie, a young man in his early twenties, had been employed in
the Petre household for a year. Because he needed to help take care of his
mother and younger brother, who both had tuberculosis, he lived at home.

“I am so sorry,” Elizabeth said in all sincerity. “Of course it is
all right. Please let me know if Freddie or his mother need any assistance. I
would be happy to advance him a month or so of wages.”

He nodded his need. “Thank ye, ma’am. I’ll tell ‘im.”

Elizabeth patiently waited. Starting, as if suddenly realizing the
duties of a footman, he leaned down and jerked open the door.

Whatever “Cousin Johnny” did in the normal course of events, she
thought with a flicker of amusement, it was not being a house servant.

Elizabeth smiled. “Thank you, Johnny.”

Inside the drawing room, Edward and Rebecca leaned close together
on the stuffed, floral upholstered divan. Their heads, he with his
midnight-black hair rigidly controlled with an application of macassar oil and
hers capped in black silk, nearly touched. They stopped talking at the sight of
Elizabeth.

Edward stood, as a matter of courtesy rather than welcome. “Hello,
Elizabeth. I was just telling Rebecca that the House is going to repeal the
Contagious Disease Acts.”

Elizabeth searched her husband’s face, the dark, olive-shaped
brown eyes, the neatly trimmed side whiskers and mustache, the generous lips
that always curved in a smile.

He had not come home Sunday night. He had come home at two-thirty
in the morning last night—she had heard the grandfather clock chime the time—
and
all he had to tell her was that the Contagious Diseases Acts were being
repealed?

“Mrs. Butler must be pleased,” she said neutrally.

Mrs. Josephine Butler, the wife of a clergyman and the secretary
of the Ladies National Association, had devoted sixteen years of her life
persuading Parliament to repeal the Contagious Disease Acts.

“It is a victory for all women,” Rebecca pointed out, smoothing
out a wrinkle in her dove-gray wool gown.

Both Elizabeth and Rebecca visited charity hospital wards as part
of their “political” duties. Perhaps she could forget the women who came there
diseased and starving, but Elizabeth could not.

“Not all, Mother.”

Rebecca turned frosty green eyes onto Elizabeth. “Whatever are you
talking about?”

Edward silently watched Elizabeth, brown eyes oddly calculating.
For once that supercilious smile did not curve his lips.

It suddenly dawned on her that Rebecca attended the same routs and
rallies and dinners as did Elizabeth. She, too, must have heard that Edward
kept a mistress.

Why had she not said anything?

Why did she stand beside her son-in-law, defending his politics,
while he made a mockery of his marriage vows?

“The women on the streets will receive no medical care now,”
Elizabeth explained woodenly. “They will die of disease, they and their
children, and they will pass it on so that others will die.”

“The Acts demean these
women,
Elizabeth,” Rebecca sharply
admonished. “Prostitutes must endure routine medical examinations. A woman’s
modesty cannot survive the indignity of a vaginal inspection.”

Elizabeth stared at her mother in shocked disbelief.

Shocked, because she had never heard Rebecca use anything other than
the most euphemistic terms for the human body, “limbs” for “legs,” “bosom” for “breasts,”
“privates” for “genitals.” Disbelieving, because a prostitute daily endured
more than one vaginal inspection—and not by a physician.

Incongruously, she thought of
The Perfumed Garden.

The sheikh reverently described a woman’s vulva as a thing of
wonder and beauty. Her mother spoke of a woman’s “vagina” with her mouth
primped, as if the female body were a thing of shame. And her husband—

She scrutinized his familiar face.

Edward’s brown eyes revealed neither disgust at Rebecca’s
vulgarity nor dismay at her priggishness. He looked, Elizabeth thought, as it
he had no interest... in
any
woman.

She suddenly felt if she did not engage his attention that very
moment, it would be too late and his mistress would have won before Elizabeth
even attempted to seduce him.

“Mother and I can stay home and lunch with you, Edward,” she
compulsively offered.

Edward’s lips curved in his politician’s smile, a smile of
impersonal warmth and uncommitted caring. “I know how you look forward to
spending time with your mother, Elizabeth. There is no need to forgo your lunch
on my account.”

“I want to, Edward,” she quietly, desperately, insisted.

“I have papers to go over, Elizabeth.”

And no doubt a mistress to go over after the House meeting
tonight.

Her lips tightened at the polite rebuff. “Of course. Please do not
let us keep you from your work. Mother. Are you ready?”

Rebecca critically eyed Elizabeth before standing. “I have been
ready this last hour.”

The sky outside the town house was even more gray than the light
inside; coal smoke hung over London in heavy black clouds. Elizabeth was
overcome by such an acute yearning for fresh, sun-warmed air that it was
painful.

Parliament would break for Easter. Perhaps she and Edward could
take a holiday.

It suddenly dawned on her that she had never holidayed with her
husband. Always it had been her and the two boys driving down to Brighton or
Bath or wherever the latest fashionable resort happened to be.

“You really should hire better trained footmen, Elizabeth. I swear
your latest has no notion of the responsibilities his position entails.”

For once Elizabeth was impervious to her mother’s criticism.
Staring at the soot-stained horses and carriages crowding the street, she tried
to imagine her mother and father locked in a passionate embrace . . . and
failed utterly.

Her breath misted the coach window. “When is the last time you saw
Father?”

“Your father is a busy man, as is your husband, Elizabeth. It is
not your position
to
question their politics. You were not raised to do
such. A woman’s duty is to support her husband. Love is not a play that demands
an audience. It is sacrifice.”

Elizabeth turned her head and met Rebecca’s disapproving gaze. “When
did you last see Father, Mother?” she repeated.

Rebecca was not used to being questioned by her daughter. Perhaps
that was why she answered, albeit reluctantly, “Sunday.”

Sunday.

“You will not aid your father and husband if you go on in this
fashion. Tomorrow night we attend Baroness Whitfield’s ball—the baron opposes
your father and husband on a new Act, and it is very important that we win
their favor. Thursday you speak for the Women’s Auxiliary. Andrew and I cannot
attend the Hanson dinner party, so you and Edward will have to go in our stead.
Saturday is the charity ball. I trust you will not take to your bed because you
do not receive the attention that you feel is your due.”

Elizabeth bit back a sharp retort;
There are more important
things than politics.

But there had never been anything more important than politics to
her mother and her father. And now Elizabeth was married to a man who showed
every sign of following in their footsteps. Except, of course, Edward had a
mistress.

The carriage jarred to a stop.

Rebecca had not seen Andrew for three nights and two days. Did
Elizabeth’s father have a mistress too?

Is that why Rebecca dedicated her life to politics . . . because
of her husband’s neglect?

The coach door opened.

If Elizabeth did not change the course of her marriage, would she
one day be like her mother, with nothing but her husband’s career to occupy her
time and conversation?

ou have beautiful hair, Mrs. Petre.”

The door closed behind Elizabeth, sealing her inside the warm
intimacy of the library with the seductive echo of the Bastard Sheikh’s
compliment ringing in her ears.

No one had ever complimented her hair.

She self-consciously raised her hand to her bare head—caught
herself. If she had beautiful hair, then her husband would not now be out with
another woman.

Damn him.
Edward
had not come home
again.

“I have unfashionable hair, Lord Safyre,” she corrected him icily.

The flickering gas lamp on the massive mahogany desk alternately
cast the Bastard Sheikh’s saturnine face in shadow and light, hair shining
first gold then dark wheat. “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.”

“As is a man’s ‘meritoriousness.’ ”

A smile hitched up the corner of his mouth. He gestured toward the
burgundy leather chair. “Please. Sit down. I hope you slept well.”

Holding her spine straight and her head high, Elizabeth crossed
the Oriental carpet. The abrasive rub of her linen shift and heavy wool dress
against the tips of her nipples was an acute irritation. It
reminded her that she had
needs no respectable woman should have,
but she had them
and they had
led her to this, being mocked by a man who could have any woman he wanted while
her husband stayed overnight with the woman whom
he
wanted.

She perched on the edge of the chair, anger simmering inside her,
searching for an outlet. “Thank you. It was not difficult after reading Chapter
Two.”

He cocked his head. “You did not enjoy the sheikh’s writings on ‘Concerning
Women Who Deserve to Be Praised.’ ”

It was not a question.

“Indeed.” She forcefully peeled off her gloves. “The moral of the
chapter is, after all, what every woman yearns to read.”

Especially a woman who showed every sign of losing her husband to
his mistress.

The Bastard Sheikh poured coffee into a blue-veined demitasse cup.
Steam rose like a curtain between them. He added a splash of water to the cup. “And
that is?”

She reached into her reticule for her notes . . . and realized
that she was looking forward to this, to channeling the anger that she had
nurtured the day before and that now blossomed in the new day.

She deserved more from her husband than a casual remark about the
repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts.

After sifting through several pages of notes, Elizabeth found what
she was looking for. “ ‘A man who falls in love with a woman imperils himself,
and exposes himself to the greatest troubles.’ ”

“You do not agree with the sheikh, Mrs. Petre?”

“Do you,
Lord
Safyre?”

He offered her the cup and saucer, so very correct in this most
incorrect schooling. “I believe nothing that is worth having comes easily.”