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faithful to his wife?”
    â€œI’ve met several who are,” Gordon replied, recalling some of the happily married clients who’d passed through his offices.
    Robbie slouched onto an armchair near the sofa and frowned like a petulant child. “Sometimes I forget you’re…” He fell silent and picked at a bit of lint on his lapel with his slender fingers that had never done a day’s work.
    â€œNot of your class?” Gordon finished for him.
    His friend blushed, the fire of his anger apparently quenched as he regarded Gordon with dismay, and the first sign of genuine remorse. “I’m sorry, Gordon.” He spread his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’ll be perfectly honest with you. Yes, I dallied with one of the maids, but I never thought a fiancée or even a wife would really mind. I mean, you were at school. You heard the other boys talking about their fathers’ and brothers’ mistresses and lovers. It’s accepted in our world, or at least condoned. It was just a maid, after all. It’s not like I was keeping a mistress in the house. And I turned her out as soon as Moira learned about her.”
    While Gordon was certainly well aware that many rich and titled men treated women like their personal toys to be used or discarded at will, he didn’t approve of that selfish behavior. And if Robbie thought hearing that the maid had lost her place because of their liaison was going to increase Gordon’s sympathy for his cause, he was even more mistaken. Gordon had helped too many servants who’d been seduced and cast out by their employers, suing for back wages at the very least, to have any sympathy for a master who took advantage of one.
    In spite of his efforts to keep a blank countenance, his face must have betrayed something of his feelings, for Robbie’s next words had more than a tinge of self-defence. “It’s not as if the maid wasn’t willing. She was, I assure you. Very willing. Indeed, I think she seduced me. ”
    Gordon had heard this sort of excuse many times,too. “You were her master, Robbie. She might have felt she couldn’t refuse.”
    â€œOf course she could!” Robbie retorted, hoisting himself to his feet. “I’m hardly some kind of brutal ogre.”
    No, he wasn’t. Nevertheless…
    â€œAnd I was honest enough not to make a promise to Moira that I wasn’t going to keep. But did she appreciate that? No, she looked at me as if I’d committed murder.”
    Robbie ran his hand through his hair before starting for the cabinet again. “Maybe if she hadn’t been so angry…” Wrapping his hand around the decanter, he shook his head. “Oh, I don’t know what I would have done if she’d been calmer.” He walked away without pouring another drink and went to the fireplace. He picked up the poker and vigorously stirred the coals, sending ash swirling upward.
    â€œMaybe instead of suing her, you should be grateful,” Gordon said quietly. “If you’d married her and strayed, and then she found out—”
    â€œWe would have been married and there would have been nothing she could do about it. She would have learned to accept that it’s a nobleman’s privilege, as my mother did and her mother before her.”
    Gordon didn’t like what he was hearing. It smacked of brutal arrogance, of utter selfishness and a complete disregard for the feelings of another human being, the sort of attitude that spurred him to find justice for the weak and abused and cheated, and especially for women, who had so few rights under the law.
    Rising, he went to face his friend, the better to seehis face and read his expression, for eyes often said what words did not.
    As a certain young lady’s eyes had spoken of desire before they’d kissed.
    â€œWhat if your wife took a lover? Would you say then it was simply what people of your