The Lady's Tutor Read Online Free PDF Page B

skin; it smelled of soap and
perspiration and his own unique scent. Manhood was stealing Richard from her,
but he still smelled like her little boy.
    She blinked back prickly hot tears. “Your father and I love you
too.”
    Silence greeted her declaration. As if by unspoken agreement,
Richard and Phillip stepped back out of her arms.
    Elizabeth vowed then and there that she would do anything to unite
her family.
    The train ride back to London was agonizingly long and slow. The
monotonous swaying should have lulled her to sleep; it didn’t.
    She thought of Edward and his empty bed. She thought of her sons
and their silent withdrawal at the mention of their father. She thought of the
Bastard Sheikh and the perfume he had been drenched in.
    And no matter how she tried to envision it, she could not imagine
Edward ever taking the pleasure in his mistress that the Bastard Sheikh had
obviously taken in his.
    The coachman was waiting for her at the station. Her husband was
not waiting for her at home.
    Politely but firmly refusing first the butler’s and then her
abigail’s insistence that she take a light supper, Elizabeth prepared for bed.
The moment Emma closed the door to her bedchamber, Elizabeth retrieved the book
from her desk.
    It smelled of leather and fresh ink, as if it had but recently
been printed. Carefully, she flipped over to the title page and read the stark
black print on rich white vellum paper.
    THE PERFUMED
GARDEN OF THE SHEIKH NEFZA-OUI; A manual of Arabian Erotology (XVI Century):
Revised and Corrected Translation. Cosmopoli: MDCCCLXXXVI: for the Kama Shastra
Society of London and Benares, and for Private circulation only. (Pagination:
xvi + 256).
    Erotology.
    Elizabeth had never encountered such a word.
    The printing date was 1886—the book was fresh off the
press.
    Impatiently,
she rifled past the table of contents, stopped when she flipped to the
Introduction. Her gaze seemed to leap by its own accord to the opening
paragraphs.
    Praise be given to God, who has placed man’s greatest pleasure in
the natural parts of woman, and has destined the natural parts of man to afford
the greatest enjoyment to woman.
    He has not endowed the parts of woman with any pleasurable or
satisfactory feeling until the same have been penetrated by the instrument of
the male; and likewise the sexual organs of man know neither rest nor quietness
until they have entered those of the female.
    A
sharp stab of longing shot up between her thighs. It was followed by the memory
of the Bastard Sheikh’s mocking turquoise eyes.
    And she had no doubt whatsoever that he had agreed to tutor her so
that he might humiliate her.
    A man like him would never forgive a woman for forcing her way
into his home by threat of blackmail.
    A man like him would never understand that a woman whose hair
showed the first silvery strands of age and whose body showed the effects of
two children ached with the same needs as did young, beautiful women unburdened
by virtue.
    Grimly, she sat down at the desk and retrieved pen and paper from
the top drawer.
    He need never know the extent of her yearning for the woman’s
pleasure that he had taunted her with. All the Bastard Sheikh ever need know
was that she wanted sexual instruction to keep her husband satisfied.

Chapter 3
    he outdoor gas lamp shone like a beacon. A tinny whicker
penetrated the morning fog—the horse hitched to the hack that waited for her
across the street.
    Fingers trembling, Elizabeth reached for the brass knocker. It was
cold and wet and hard, unadorned reality dangling between the jaws of a lion.
    Every nerve inside her body screamed for her to stop.
    A respectable woman did not appear in public without wearing a
corset.
    A respectable woman did not read sixteenth-century erotology.
    A respectable woman did not seek sexual instruction but she did
and she knew that nothing was going to stop her now.
    The muffled rap of brass impacting brass ripped through the fog.
Immediately, the door