Robin Schone Read online

  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

  The 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 swung open.

  Elizabeth braced herself, but it was not the hostile Arab butler in his flowing white robe who greeted her. A demure-faced girl in traditional English-servant garb of white pinafore and cap curtsied, as if a woman visiting the Bastard Sheikh without a chaperone at four-thirty in the morning was an everyday occurrence.

  And perhaps it was, Elizabeth thought grimly, stepping inside.

  “Good morning, ma’am. Beastly outside, it is. M’lord, he said to take you to him directly. If I may have your cloak, please?”

  Elizabeth clutched her reticule underneath the heavy black wool. Her breasts without support of a corset felt heavy and full, her nipples stiff and abraded. “That won’t be necessary.”

  For a second the maid looked as if she were on the verge of protesting; curtsying again, she murmured, “Very good, ma’am. Follow me, please.”

  The mahogany walls of the hall were inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The bright overhead light created a latticework of wood and shell, shadow and light. Man-sized porcelain vases guarded the bottom of a circular staircase. A bright yellow and red Oriental carpet marched up the steps and disappeared into darkness.

  No doubt the Bastard Sheikh had ordered the hall lights turned high so that she could see the folly of her desperate attempt to bribe him twenty-four hours earlier.

  It worked.

  What a fool she had been, to think that she could sway the Bastard Sheikh with money. Obviously, the wealth of his sexual expertise was surpassed only by his material possessions.

  If—as she suspected—this morning meeting arose out of his desire to humiliate her, it would be her one and only lesson. Whatever knowledge she gained would come only through sheer determination and an absolute disregard of English sensibility.

  The introduction and the first chapter in The Perfumed Garden of the Sheikh Nefzaoui had contained much that she did not understand. She was determined to learn at least that much.

  The maid softly scratched on the library door before swinging it open.

  The scene that awaited Elizabeth was not the one she had anticipated. She had expected the library to be blazing with cold, sterile light as it had the morning before.

  It was not.

  The Bastard Shiekh sat in a tweed morning coat behind a massive mahogany desk, head bent over a book, golden hair gleaming in the gas lamplight. Yellow and orange flames danced in the beautifully crafted mahogany fireplace immediately to his left. Hot steam rose from a demitasse cup by his right elbow—coffee, the rich aroma filled the air. A silver tray with a matching silver pot perched on the edge of the desk.

  His very Englishness sent off a fresh peal of alarm inside her head.

  Sex was mysterious and exotic and foreign. If he dressed in Arab garb—as his servant yesterday had worn—she could sit across from him and study with equanimity the art of erotic love. Discussing it with a man who could easily preside over her dinner table took sexual gratification out of the philosophical realm and became the forbidden fruit that she had been denied for sixteen years.

  The maid softly cleared her throat. “Excuse me, m’lord. I’ve brought the lady to you. Shall I get you anything else?”

  Either the Bastard Sheikh did not hear the maid—or he ignored her.

  Or perhaps he ignored Elizabeth, to demonstrate how unimportant she was to a man like him.

  She suddenly felt like her English rose garden, old and out of season. As he no doubt planned that she should feel.

  She drew her shoulders back . . . and wondered if her plants felt as naked and vulnerable without their leaves as she did without her corset.

  Long, interminable heartbeats passed before he closed the book with a snap and raised his head. “Thank you, Lucy. Please take Mrs. Petre’s cloak and bring another cup and saucer.”

  Elizabeth felt the blood drain out of her face. Dimly, she was aware of the maid dropping a curtsy, then the heavy cloak slipped off her shoulders and the library door clicked loudly in the silence.

  The Bastard Sheikh—and yes, Elizabeth thought as shock gave way to fury, he was a bastard—stood up and waved a hand toward a burgundy leather chair drawn up in front of his desk. “Please take a seat, Mrs. Petre.”

  Elizabeth had never felt so angry—or so betrayed. She had expected him to try to humiliate her. She had not expected him to lie.

  “Siba, Lord Safyre.” She compressed her lips to stop their trembling. “You assured me that an Arab man does not compromise a woman.”

  He raised his eyebrows in mock surprise, a slash of golden brown several shades darker than the leonine gold of his hair. “And you think I have?”

  “If I wished to be identified, I would not wear a veil. There was no need to address me by name. Servants talk.”

  “And English gentlemen do not, I take it?” The light mockery remained in his eyes, tinged with something darker. “If you did not wish English servants to know you, Mrs. Petre, you should not have left your card with one.”

  “Your butler is Arab,” she said tightly.

  “Is he? What am I, do you think? Arab or English?”

  It took all of her self-control not to tell him exactly what he was.

  “Your nipples are hard, Mrs. Petre. Does anger stimulate you?”

  Elizabeth’s breath caught in her throat.

  Suddenly, he smiled, flashing even, white teeth.

  It was an inviting smile, full of warmth and mischief.

  She was irrepressibly reminded of Phillip, her younger son. He smiled just so when he did something totally outrageous and wished to avoid punishment.

  “Please, Mrs. Petre, sit down. My servants are too well trained to repeat the names of my guests. In Arabia, disrespectful servants are whipped or sold.”

  “In England, it is illegal to whip one’s servants,” she retorted icily. “Nor do we condone slavery.”

  “But it is not illegal to buy a servant a one-way passage onto an Eastern freight steamer. Ah, here is Lucy. Place the cup and saucer on the tray . . . there. Thank you. We will not need you again.”

  Elizabeth fought her body to keep it from independently following the maid out of the library. Even if the Bastard Sheikh had not betrayed her, he had used the word nipples.

  Common sense, however, told her she had sought him out to tutor her in the ways to please a man. If she could not survive a member of a woman’s anatomy passing through his lips, how would she react when he discussed a gentleman’s anatomy?

  As if unaware of her inner struggles, he poured a surprisingly black brew into the extra demitasse cup, then added what looked to be a splash of water. He offered her the co
ffee, formally presenting it by holding the edge of the saucer. “Come, Mrs. Petre. Sit down. Unless you’ve changed your mind, that is.”

  He had neatly tossed the gauntlet into her lap. If this lesson failed, it would be her fault and her fault alone, that tauntingly correct gesture implied.

  It was a challenge she could not refuse.

  Elizabeth stiffened her spine; it thrust her breasts forward, increasing the friction to her nipples. Slowly, she crossed the wide expanse of Oriental carpet that separated them and perched on the edge of the burgundy leather chair.

  Proper etiquette decreed that a woman remove her gloves if she intended to visit for more than fifteen minutes. Just as it decreed that she not hide her face behind a veil.

  Coolly, methodically, she peeled off her gloves, then tucked the veil over her bonnet. Balancing the gloves and her reticule on her lap, she reached for the blue-veined porcelain saucer. “Thank you.”

  The coffee was thick and sweet and so strong it nearly crossed her eyes. It was also boiling hot.

  Gasping, she hurriedly set the saucer and cup onto the desk. “What is that?”

  “Turkish coffee. It is best when freshly boiled. You should blow on it, then quickly drink it down. Did you read the designated chapters?”

  She brought her hand up to her throat—it felt as if the inner skin had been scalded. “I did.”

  He leaned back in his chair, his face a study of light and shadow. “And what did you learn?”

  The turquoise eyes were no longer mocking. They were the eyes of a painfully attractive man summing up a painfully plain woman.

  The pain in Elizabeth’s throat was immediately forgotten. Composing her features into the bland expression that society demanded a respectable woman wear in public lest she betray common, vulgar emotion, she rummaged inside her reticule and produced his book and a sheath of papers. The first she laid on the desk beside the demitasse cup and saucer; feeling as if she were a young girl back in the schoolroom, she consulted the latter.

  “The Perfumed Garden of the Sheikh Nefzaoui is estimated to have been written in the beginning of the sixteenth century. The author is presumed to have been born in Nefzaoua, a town situated on the shore of the lake Sebkha Melrir in the south of Tunis, hence his name, Sheikh Nefzaoui, as many Arabs take their name from their birthplace. While The Perfumed Garden of the Sheikh Nefzaoui is not exactly a compilation of authors, it is likely that several parts may have been borrowed from certain Arabian and Indian writers—”

  “Mrs. Petre.”

  Elizabeth ground her teeth.

  The Bastard Sheikh pronounced her name as if she were indeed a schoolgirl—a rather stupid one at that.

  She glanced up. The turquoise eyes were shadowed by thick dark lashes.

  “Yes, Lord Safyre?”

  “Mrs. Petre, I did not tell you to read the ‘Notes of the Translator,’ did I?”

  Her fingers clenched, crimping her notes. “No.”

  “Then let us dispense with the history of the book and the author and proceed to the section otherwise known as ‘General Remarks About Coition.’ ”

  He smiled, daring her to continue.

  Elizabeth thought of her husband with another woman.

  She thought of her two sons, estranged from their father.

  She took a deep breath to still the pounding of her heart. “Very well,” she said calmly, returning to her notes. “The sheikh claims that man’s greatest pleasure lies in the natural parts of woman and that he knows neither rest nor quietness until he”—raising her head, her gaze locked with his—“enters her.”

  She refused to look away from those turquoise eyes. Just as she refused to acknowledge the tightening in her breasts.

  Suddenly, Elizabeth wanted to humiliate him as he planned to humiliate her. She wanted to be the one who embarrassed and shocked him.

  “So, Lord Safyre, it appears your remark yesterday morning that all men are of the same nature holds true. I am confused, however, about the sheikh’s reference that a ‘man is at work as with a pestle, while the woman seconds him by lascivious movements . . .’ ”

  The hiss of the gas lamp on the table was loud over the roar of her heart. The burning logs in the fireplace snapped and sizzled.

  Finally, softly, “In what way are you confused, Mrs. Petre?”

  The time had come. There could be no more pretense of modesty.

  Sex was not a modest subject.

  Elizabeth wondered if he could hear the drumming of her heart.

  “Before I became wed, my mother instructed me to lie still when my husband visited me. I do not understand how a woman can move without hindering the actions of the man.”

  The Bastard Sheikh sat as if turned to stone. Even the steam drifting up from his coffee seemed to freeze.

  She had succeeded in shocking him.

  She had succeeded in shocking herself.

  It was one thing telling a stranger about her husband’s infidelity. It was another thing entirely telling him about her marriage bed.

  The heat in the library was suddenly unendurable. Blindly, she groped for her gloves and her reticule. “I’m sorry—”

  A sharp creak of wood snapped her head upright.

  The Bastard Sheikh leaned forward in his chair. His turquoise eyes blazed in the light of the lamp.

  “In Arabic the word dok means to pound, to concuss. It is a combination of the thrusting motion that a man uses to bring himself to climax inside a woman and the grinding of his pelvis against hers to heighten her sensation, hence the ‘pestle’ simile. Hez is a swinging motion. A woman may thrust, or swing her hips upward, to meet the downward thrust of a man, or she may swing her hips side to side to complement his grinding motions. There will come a point when the motions of the man are too rapid or too powerful for the woman to move without dislodging him. At that time she may best please both him and herself if she wraps her legs around his waist and simply holds on while he brings them both to climax.”

  Electric sensation jolted Elizabeth’s body.

  The Bastard Sheikh’s words suddenly became visual images, as if she watched mechanical slides in a magic lantern show. The pictures, however, flashed behind her eyes instead of onto the wall before her. They were not the innocent hand-painted slides she showed to her sons to amuse and educate them. They were erotic pictures, explicit pictures illuminated by a light far hotter than was the limelight inside a magic lantern.

  There was the man, naked, images advancing in rapid succession so that he alternately thrust and rubbed his dusky brown body between pale, outstretched legs that hitched higher, higher over lean, muscular hips. For the first time in her life, the auburn-haired woman underneath him was completely open and vulnerable. There was no stopping the man, he pounded and ground himself into her softness and there was nothing she could do to hold back her pleasure—

  Reality returned with the distant echo of a door slamming shut.

  Elizabeth blinked.

  The palms of her hands were wet. As were other, unthinkable parts of her body.

  And they were not even halfway through the first lesson.

  She squared her shoulders. “Excuse me, may I borrow pen and ink? I would like to make notations.”

  The breathtaking hypnotism of his eyes frosted over. “Do you plan on consulting your notes when your husband comes to your bed, Mrs. Petre?” he asked acidly.

  “If need be, Lord Safyre,” she returned imperturbably.

  He pushed a brass inkwell across his desk in reply. Opening a drawer in his desk, he produced a pen.

  A heavy gold pen.

  It warmed between her fingers as if it were made of flesh instead of metal.

  Determinedly dipping the nib into the inkwell, she poised the gold pen above her notes. “Would you repeat what you said, please?”

  The forbidden images were blessedly absent in his colder, more terse explanation.

  “Thank you, Lord Safyre.” She finished writing with a small flour
ish and again consulted her notes. “The Introduction ends by giving the full title of the sheikh’s work, The Perfumed Garden for the Soul’s Recreation. Shall we go on to Chapter One?”

  The Bastard Sheikh smiled, a male smile, planning his revenge. “By all means.”

  “The sheikh claims that men are excited by the use of perfumes—”

  “You are ahead of yourself, Mrs. Petre. Not only have you skipped the beginning of the chapter, you have omitted two sub-chapters, ‘Qualities Which Women Are Looking for in Men’ and ‘Various Lengths of the Virile Member.’ ”

  Virile member echoed inside her ears.

  Elizabeth gripped the thick pen to calm her quickening breathing. This was the moment she had dreaded, but now that it was there, she felt strangely exhilarated.

  “I found little that was noteworthy, Lord Safyre,” she lied.

  “A pity, Mrs. Petre. You will remember that the Introduction ended with the sheikh’s friend and adviser urging him to add to his work a supplement to include such things as how to remove spells and methods to increase the size of the virile member. Chapter One is named ‘Concerning Praiseworthy Men.’ The sheikh places great emphasis on a man’s genitals. If your husband suffers from sexual despondency, you must be able to judge whether it arises from the size of his member, in which case you must know the correct length to, ah, stretch it.”

  The turquoise eyes glinted. He was enjoying his efforts to embarrass her.

  “According to the sheikh, a ‘meritorious’ man must have a member which is ‘at most a length of the breadth of twelve fingers, or three handbreadths, and at least six fingers, or a hand and a half breadth.’ ”

  Elizabeth struggled to keep the heat that traveled through her chest from spreading to her face. “Is that three handbreadths of a woman’s hand or that of the sheikh’s hand?”

  He laid his hands one above the other on top of the desk, the first a rich dark wood, the latter dusky warm skin. “You be the judge, Mrs. Petre.”

  She had never seen her husband; she had only the size of her two sons when they were small children to compare a man to.

  Curiosity outweighed prudence.

  Clutching pen and paper in one hand and gloves and reticule in the other, she leaned forward.