Beyond Innocence Read Online Free PDF Page A

Madame Victoire, her hands on Miss Fairleigh's shoulders. "How does that make you feel?"
    Miss Fairleigh touched the waist of the figure-hugging gown as if the silk might burn. "I think it frightens me."
    Madame smiled and smoothed a fallen lock into her customer's coiffure. Miss Fairleigh's hair was ruler straight and, if the dressmaker's expression was a guide, quite pleasant to touch. Again he felt that dark frisson of the forbidden. The girl did not know what Madame was doing. The girl could not guess what such gestures conveyed.
    "You are seeing your feminine power," said the dressmaker, "without that ugly black dress to dim its light."
    Miss Fairleigh lifted her chin in the first hint of stubbornness Edward had seen her display. "A woman shouldn't be powerful just because she's pretty."
    "Shouldn't she?" The dressmaker clucked in her droll French way. "Why do you worry about 'shouldn't'? This is the way things are, cherie . Women walk a hard road in this world. We must use our weapons where we find them. Just as you must use yours, non ? You must hunt the nice husband. If your beauty brings him close enough to see how nice he is, what is wrong with that?"
    "I've never liked being stared at," Miss Fairleigh confessed.
    "Oh, la!" Madame trilled out a laugh. "I would tell you to get used to it, but I know your shyness is part of your charm. Like honey to the bee. When you quiver and blush, you make the men feel big and strong."
    Without warning, Miss Fairleigh laughed, as if the absurdity of her complaint had just then struck her. The sound was an infectious warble that seemed to come from deep within her chest. "I shall stop!" she declared between the merry bursts. "I shall never blush again."
    And the dressmaker laughed, because her client's face was rosy even then.
    * * *
    Edward stalked tothe carriage without waiting for an escort. He was angry with himself for staying so long, angry for being attracted to the hapless country miss, angry at Alastair Mowbry for putting an innocent in that position. That the man had been right about Miss Fairleigh did not calm him in the least, nor did the thought that, most likely, a wish for her well-being had played some part in the
solicitor's scheme.
    Worst of all was his sense of violation. Edward was sweating with arousal, still half hard beneath his clothes. The minute Mowbry saw him he would guess what he was feeling—as Madame Victoire must have guessed, and the little maid, and perhaps even the seamstresses down the hall. This, to Edward, was intolerable. As wrong as it had been, his experience in that chamber should have been completely private.
    His mood was as thunderous as the sky by the time he ducked into the waiting Greystowe brougham. The coachman did not tarry for instructions, but snapped the horses sharply into motion.
    Mowbry sat in the shadows of the opposite seat. Silent. Knowing.
    "You will fill that peephole at once," Edward said in his coldest, darkest voice.
    If the solicitor's expression changed, Edward did not see it.
    "It is only for private use," he said. "A game between myself and Madame Victoire. You are the first outsider to have seen it."
    His tone was entirely neutral, free of insinuation or censure. Edward forced his hands to unclench. Obviously, he was in no position to judge this man.
    "She is all you said," he admitted gruffly.
    Wisely, Mowbry didn't take this as an invitation to repeat his estimation of Miss Fairleigh's charms. Edward didn't think he could have borne that. Instead, the solicitor brushed a bit of lint from the bowler he held in his lap. "Have you a sponsor in mind, my lord?"
    "My aunt Hypatia," he said, "the dowager duchess of Carlisle . She can bring her forward as some sort of country cousin."
    Mowbry simply nodded. He must have known his approval was neither necessary nor welcome. Despite his fury, Edward's estimation of the lawyer rose. Without question, he had behaved abominably, but he had carried it off with rare