The Lady's Tutor (49 page)

Clutching
the key in one hand and her reticule in the other, she gently closed the front
door and traversed the steps, veering just in time to avoid the loose board.
She pressed her ear to the door of her husband’s bedroom—there was no sound
inside, but she could feel—an energy, a presence—
something.

Heartbeat
drumming inside her ears, she eased open the door. There was her husband—he was
dressed in trousers and a waistcoat. He stood facing his bed with his head
twisted down and to the side in what looked like a kiss.

Feeling
giddy with victory, Elizabeth pushed the door all the way open.

A woman
dressed in a corset and drawers stood in profile; her hands were hooked around
Edward’s neck, holding his head down to hers in what was most definitely a
kiss. She had mannishly short, graying auburn hair. Her legs, surprisingly
muscular, were free of hair, as had been the countess’s. Elizabeth stared at
the woman’s flat stomach below the corset for several moments before she
comprehended what she was seeing.

A penis
jutted out of the woman’s drawers.

Elizabeth’s
gaze shot up to the face of the man who greedily kissed her husband.

The
bedchamber suddenly tilted, righted itself.
It could not be.

But it
was.

“Oh, my
God!”

Her
husband and her father jumped apart. Andrew’s hazel eyes that matched Elizabeth’s
widened in horror; Edward’s brown eyes were round with surprise. A third
man—no, he was only a boy, a nineteen-year-old golden-haired boy who had yet to
grow hair on his chest—kneeled on the bed between them. He was naked. His lips
were slack and his cornflower-blue eyes dazed.

Elizabeth
had seen the boy at the charity ball, dressed in formal black and white evening
wear. He had looked older with his clothes on.

Unable to
stop herself, she stared at the swollen red penis that protruded from Edward’s
gaping black trousers. It was shiny wet.
From the boys saliva.

No
wonder Edward had said she had udder breasts and flabby hips. It was hard to
compete with a boy,
she
thought incongruously.
It
was hard to compete with a
father.

Suddenly,
the men’s shocked immobility erupted into a flurry of activity. Andrew wrenched
the comforter off the bed. Edward caught the golden-haired boy just as he
catapulted to the floor and stood him upright. He was neither as tall as the
Chancellor of the Exchequer nor as short as the prime minister. His penis was
flaccid, unlike that of his mentors.

Clutching
the comforter against his exposed body, Andrew’s face contorted in the same
rage-filled mask that he-had worn when he threatened to kill her. “Get out of
here, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth
stared at the prim white corset peeping above the forest-green comforter. In
her mind’s eye she could still see his dark penis jutting out from between the
seamless vent in the women’s drawers.

This was
the man who had stood up at the charity ball and boasted of his two
grandsons—future prime ministers.  He had proudly announced his political plans
for his son-in-law. A son-in-law who was
his lover.

Something
flitted through her brain, something so obscure and so fantastic that she could
not immediately bring it forward into consciousness. Edward’s speech that
night. . . Something about wives and sons . . .
And now I would like to
thank the two women in my life. One gave me my wife and the other gave me two
sons, whom I will train to follow in my footsteps as Andrew Walters has trained
me to follow in his.

Suddenly,
all the clues that Ramiel had told her she would see when she was ready for the
truth fell into place and the puzzle was complete, but
she was not ready for
this.
Her gaze snapped up to Edward’s eyes.

“Richard,”
she whispered.

“I am
afraid that our son to date shows no talent for power, Elizabeth. Whereas Matt,
here . . .” Brown eyes glittering with malice, Edward deliberately pulled the
golden-haired boy against his side and wrapped a bandaged hand around his waist
so that it rested on his flat stomach only inches away from a golden thatch of
pubic hair. “Matt shows great aptitude. Perhaps Richard will fill a less
important position in politics. There are other P.M.’s who are looking into his
future career.”

Edward had
sounded like that when he had rejected her sexual overtures. Smug. Omnipotent.
Heedless of anyone’s life but his own.

All
rationale splintered. She had lived with this man for sixteen years, a helpmate
if not a wife. She had managed his household, campaigned for him, sacrificed
her needs for his.
And he had done this to her son.

“You
despicable bastard!” she screamed, body hurtling forward, propelled by the
maternal instinct to hurt him as he had hurt her son.

Hard,
unyielding arms wrapped about her, held her immobile. The three men were in
front of her, she thought irrationally; how could they be holding her from
behind?

Raw heat,
familiar heat, seeped through her cloak.

Oh, no,
no, no.
Not him, please,
don’t let it be him.

You
know who his mistress is, don’t you?
Siba,
Elizabeth ...

The pressure
inside Ramiel’s chest owed nothing to the press of Elizabeth’s body. He had not
wanted her to know.
Not like this.
Allah. God. Her father was dressed
like a woman and her husband’s prick hung out of his pants, while a boy not
much older than her son stood naked between them.

“Let me
go. You
are
a bastard. Let me go this instant!”

Ramiel
ignored her struggles more successfully than he ignored her barbed words.
Yes,
he was a bastard.
In every sense of the word. “The divorce, Petre. Quietly.
Quickly. Or you will never be prime minister. That I guarantee you.”

“The price
is her silence, Safyre.”

“So be it.”

“Never!”
Elizabeth’s body strained to get away from him. “He abused my son!”

Ramiel
lowered his head and nuzzled the scratchy wool of her bonnet aside to whisper
against her cheek. “Think of Richard, Elizabeth. Come with me now and no one
will ever hurt your son again. You cannot prove anything. If you fight them,
Petre will have you committed and both of your sons will be his.”

Elizabeth
did not struggle when he backed her out of the room, turned her around, and
walked her down the hall, down the steps, and out into sunshine. Ramiel’s
carriage waited in front of the town house. Muhamed sat in the driver’s box,
looking neither left nor right.

“You knew.”
Elizabeth’s voice was brittle. “All along when I asked you who my husband’s
mistress was, you knew.”

Ramiel
neither agreed nor disagreed. He had not known everything “all along.” But he
had known about her husband and her father when she last asked him.

“You
should have waited until I woke up,” he said impassively.

“Would you
have told me?”

“You will
never know now, will you?”

Nor
would Ramiel.

Would he
have told her? Or would he have tried to cling to her innocence for a little
while longer?

“Where is
my hack?”

“A half
sovereign is a bigger bribe than a florin.”

She
flinched at this final betrayal. Only it was not the final one, he thought
bleakly.

He opened
the carriage door.

Her bottom
lip quivered. “I want my hack.”

“You
wanted the truth; you shall have it. All of it. Get in.”

Elizabeth
had no choice but to step inside the carriage. She sat in the far corner, as
far away from him as she could get. Ramiel bowed his head to enter behind her.
At the same time, he saw her reach for the door handle on the opposite side.

With
lightning-quick reflexes—the same reflexes that had allowed him to slam the
desk drawer on Petre’s hand the night before—he threw himself forward and
grabbed her wrist. “I told you I would not let you go.”

Easing
onto the seat beside her, he reached out, forcing her to lean with him away
from escape, to slam shut the coach door that the two of them had entered
through. The carriage lurched forward. Ramiel let go of her wrist. Her body
beside him remained stiff and inflexible.

“Where are
you taking me?”

To
hell.

“Where it
all started.”

“You know
where my husband and my father became lovers?” she asked bitterly.

He did not
answer her right away. Instead, he studied the top of her bonnet. “This is the
carriage in which I suckled your breasts until you orgasmed. I am the man who
buried myself so deeply inside your body last night that you screamed. Then you
took me into your mouth and made me cry out. Yet you still do not trust me.”

“You
allowed him to abuse my son.” Her fear and shock metamorphosed into anger. She
jerked her head toward him.
“Why did you not tell me?”

He did not
look away from the accusation in her gaze. “Would you have believed me?”

Yes.
No.
Ramiel could read the
conflict in her eyes. Conflict. . . and suspicion.

“How is
it, Lord Safyre, that you happened to be at Edward’s house at that precise
moment?”

“Muhamed
woke me with the news that you had left the house unescorted. I knew that you
left either to return to your husband”-—
because I had frightened and
disgusted you
—”or you left to confront him.”
Because I was afraid to
tell you the truth.
“Neither option was acceptable. So I came after you.”
And
did not catch you in time.

She turned
her head and stared out the window, presenting him with the top of her bonnet.

Muhamed
and he had discussed more than Elizabeth’s departure while they sat together on
the driver’s box and sped through the streets of London. She would soon learn
about the results of their conversation. But it would not come from him.

He briefly
toyed with the idea of telling her, and if not telling her, preparing her in
some way.

But there
was no way to prepare her for what would come. The only thing he could offer
her was the reaffirmation of their bonding. And hope that, in the end, it would
be enough. As it was for him.

“Calling
me by my title will not erase what happened last night,
taalibba,”
he
said softly. “Nor will it lessen the pain of what you have seen. I took you
like the beasts in the fields and I would do so again. Do not confuse
el
kebachi
with your father’s and husband’s performance. Animals do not engage
in what you witnessed today.”

She did
not respond. As he had known she would not.
But he wanted her to.
He
wanted her to turn to him and tell him that she would not send him away when
the next hour was over.

Ramiel
watched her watch the passing carriages and buildings. Surely she recognized
key landmarks. Surely she realized that the truth had barely been scratched.

But
perhaps not. He would spare her this too, but he knew she would not be safe
until she experienced the final betrayal.

When the
coach stopped, Elizabeth stared at him in surprise. “Why are we stopping here?”

Opening
the door, he climbed out of the carriage and held his hand out for her.

She
pressed her back into the leather cushion. “There is no need to tell my mother.”

Ramiel
ached for her ignorance. “You do not have to tell her. She has something to
tell you.”

“How do
you know? My mother would not speak to the likes of you.”

Dark red
splotched her white cheeks. Elizabeth’s politeness went deeper than superficial
etiquette. She derived no pleasure in being rude.

“Come,
Elizabeth.” He lowered his eyelashes, ruthlessly playing on her softness. “Or
are you ashamed of your Bastard Sheikh?”

She
reluctantly scooted across the seat and allowed him to help her down. “You are
not mine.”

But he
was.
He had felt her womb
contract against the palm of his hand and had known that she accepted him
fully, bastard, Arab, animal, man.

Elizabeth
stubbornly tilted her chin. She still retained enough innocence to defy him. “There
is no need to accompany me.”

“There is
every need to accompany you.”

“I want to
be alone with my mother,” she insisted coldly.

But Ramiel
was already striding toward the Tudor mansion. The fan window over the double
doors was like a great unwinking eye. Twin white marble pillars guarded the
entrance.

He tried
to imagine Elizabeth growing up there and could not. A child should have been
sucked up into the coldness and the corruption, but she had not been. It defied
imagination.