Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore

Chapter 12

Harriet found him in his gymnastics room the next morning while he was busy pounding the sandbag to hell and back. He stopped punching the moment he noticed her, but his labored breathing was loud in the silence between them. The fierce blush rising above her collar was visible from across the room. Rather too flustered by the sight of a half-naked man, considering she had had his hand between her pretty thighs last night. He wiped his forearm across his brow and reluctantly reached for his shirtsleeves, which were draped over the ropes. His back and chest were hot and slick with sweat and the fine cotton garment stuck uncomfortably to his damp skin.

She hovered on the doorsill when he approached, clutching a flower to her breast.

“I came to thank you for the bouquet,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes.

Ballentine had it right about the flowers, then—at least she was here and speaking to him rather than hiding in her rooms. She was still a far cry from the perky miss he had first known, and it grated on him alongside his unspent lust. How bloody little he had planned for this, the time and effort it would take to get used to a wife. Specifically, a high-society wife, raised to be absurdly modest when supposedly their main use was to bear plenty of heirs and spares—no logic in that. Harriet wasn’t even cold. Last night she had said no, but she had been soft and wet, and presently she couldn’t keep her eyes off him: her gaze snuck furtively over his shoulders and lingered on the places where his shirt clung. But he reckoned she wouldn’t understand why she felt the urge to do so. She was twisting the flower stem between restless white fingers, and her neck was blotchy again.

“You looked very practiced in the ring,” she said as she dragged her gaze from his biceps to his face. “Is pugilism a pastime of yours?”

“Yes.”

“Is it how you broke your nose?”

“It was, yes.”

If she’d ask him how exactly it had happened, he would tell her the truth: it had been a bare-knuckle match against a mean beast of an Irish fellow when he had still boxed for money. He’d make himself decent for her if he must, put on his shirt and such, but this morning, he had decided to give up any pretense at being more refined than he was, because who was he fooling? Right now, he was contemplating stealing a kiss from her, coarse and sweaty as he was—he found he enjoyed kissing her, and in her pale face, her rosy lips drew his attention as though she had painted them.

Her lashes lowered. “I hadn’t meant to disturb your exercise,” she said. “I shall leave.”

“It’s no trouble.”

He glanced at the clock next to the door. It was surprisingly late, time for lunch soon. He took off his hand wraps and rolled them up, then he untied the leather string that held his hair in a knot at the back of his head. Harriet wasn’t leaving; her eyes were following his movements intently, and it occurred to him that she was an artist and probably trained to be far more observant than a regular person. Something to keep in mind.

“Have you eaten lunch yet?” he asked.

Her smile was apologetic. “I had a light breakfast just now.”

“You’re a late sleeper.” It shouldn’t surprise him—he’d gleaned that ladies often had a habit of sleeping until noon.

“I am,” she said. “I tend to work late and loathe rising early. Do you mind?”

“Nah.” An ill-rested woman across the table was hardly a useful addition to his morning, was it? “But I’m taking lunch in the East End at half past twelve,” he said. “Accompany me.”

She hesitated. “Of course.”

Her unenthusiastic acceptance rankled, but he’d take it. He wasn’t a patient man, but he knew a thing or two about biding his time.

She was less reserved by the time the carriage pulled into sunny Shoreditch an hour later. “This is far more exciting than the West End,” she said, her nose near touching the window glass. Music halls lined the street outside, shoulder to shoulder with colorfully painted coffeehouses, minor theaters, and the few remaining luxury furniture stores in the area, all wrestling for attention from reveling crowds with flags and boldly lettered signs.

“It’s the livelier district,” he said. “Renowned, too. The National Standard Theatre, which we’ll reach in a moment, is one of the largest theaters in London.”

“I heard.” She turned to him. “Do you enjoy the theater?” Her tone was polite. She’d be making conversation at formal events with newly introduced gentlemen this way.

“No,” he said. “Nor the opera,” he added to preempt the next question.

She didn’t appear rebuffed as much as curious. “Why not?”

He considered it. “I haven’t the habit of it,” he then said. “One does not need a habit of enjoying unintelligible singing for hours when the same hours could be used in better ways.”

“For creating a stock portfolio, I imagine,” she said. Was that sarcasm in her tone?

Not for the first time since she had taken her place across the footwell, he caught himself staring at her. It was because her scent filled the small space, burnt vanilla instead of roses today, and every time she moved, it teased his nose and made him look at her. Pink mouth and chocolate eyes. The red curls framing her face bounced whenever the carriage rattled over a rough patch. She had pinned one of the flowers from his bouquet to her bodice, not quite over her heart but not just to the emotionally neutral front, either. Diplomatically adept, his wife.

“Stock portfolios,” he finally said. “Among other things, yes.”

She smiled slightly. “You sound quite like my brother Zachary,” she said. He remembered young Greenfield and his outrage when the marriage deal had been agreed, and he remained silent.

“I’m wondering,” she said, “I’m wondering how you obtain the information required to invest as successfully as you do if you keep to yourself so much.”

He met her inquisitive look with an ironic one. “I do interact with other men of business, you know.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she replied. “Your name might be in many mouths, but it is rarely in the papers.”

“People prefer to keep silent about my participation in their ventures, until recently at least,” he said. “So I use aliases for doing business or let my intermediates handle matters. And a lot of the intelligence I piece together by myself.”

“By reading The Economist?”

“The Economist and trade and science journals,” he said. “And by analyzing data from merchant tables and government blue books. Then I extrapolate.” He realized he was rubbing his neck as he spoke. Reading for hours made his back feel as if he’d done a shift underground. His body, and his temperament, were more suited for physical labor in any case, but here he was, building his wealth and power on … reading. The irony of that was never lost on him. “As for the stock markets, there’s no impartial balance sheet,” he said. “There’s no rule of law, no inevitable logic that governs a stock price; they are beasts, and they’ll lash out at you after long periods of pretending normalcy.”

She nodded along. “My family has heated debates about the very morality of stock investments.”

“And in the meantime, they make profitable use of them.”

“What does your regular day look like?” she asked, unperturbed. “I know you rise early and begin with, erm, exercise. What next?”

He said aloud what crossed his mind: “You’re very curious.”

“I’m afraid so,” she murmured, and glanced down at her hands.

“As you said, I rise early,” he said, wanting to keep her engaged. “I exercise. Then I read the papers and take note whether there are new companies forming, any consortiums advertising for an investor, or troubles brewing for supply chains. I read my correspondence”—including any information supplied by his spies in various industries and the demimonde—“and I read the analyses from the men I hire to read the trade journals that I can’t fit in. Then I make portfolio decisions.”

“Where to expand, where to consolidate, where to wait and see?” she singsonged, as though she had heard it all before. Probably at her family’s infamous dining table.

He had never envisioned a wife who understood his business dealings. Admittedly, it was a practical thing as far as having a conversation was concerned.

“Then I meet men of business for lunch,” he said. “Men who work in iron, or cotton, or mining.” Or the lieutenants of shady figures from the art-dealing world, but that was none of her concern. “Probably once a week I travel to some stock exchange city in the Home Counties to tap local information sources,” he said instead. “And I visit my factories.”

She looked impressed. “I hadn’t realized you were so actively pursuing entrepreneurship, too.”

“I need to put the money somewhere,” he said. “And it makes sense to own ironworks, which are fueled with coal from my mines, which produce railroad tracks and cars for the railway companies where I have shares. I spend a good deal of my time integrating and eventually splitting businesses again.” And before she could prod some more, he added, “And, in my evenings, I read the newspaper sections and government white books on economic policies.”

Her ears seemed to prick up. “You have an interest in politics?”

“You can’t separate business from politics,” he said evasively.

“The Duke of Montgomery will introduce an amendment to the Married Women’s Property Act in a while,” she supplied.

“Ah,” he said. “They try that every few years, don’t they?”

“Would you say you oppose women’s suffrage?” Her neutral expression was fairly convincing, but he knew she ran with the suffragists. His man, Carson, had reported it after investigating her background in Oxford, and he hadn’t been surprised at all.

“I don’t oppose it, no,” he said. “I haven’t given the matter much thought.”

She failed to hide her disappointment over the latter statement, and he felt the sudden need to loosen his cravat.

“Well, you work a lot,” she said. “Perhaps too much?”

He scoffed. “Nah.”

“What do you like to do for pleasure, then?”

He gave her a wry look, and when the meaning seemed lost on her, he said, resigned: “Stock portfolios.”

She shook her head. “You do work too much.”

“Is it work when one enjoys it?” he asked. “I would have thought as a paintress, you’d understand.”

Her expression became serious. “I paint because it feels like a necessity,” she said. “It can be enjoyable, but it is more a matter of it becoming unbearable when I don’t do it.”

“Unbearable?”

“It’s an urge,” she said. “Colors and patterns have an effect on me; it’s as though they stimulate my appetite, for lack of a better word. If I don’t engage, it begins to feel like a living thing beneath my skin. Well, I suppose that sounds hysterical—I assure you I’m not. Unfortunately, I’m not nearly as consumed by my art as I should be.”

“Should you be?”

She nodded. “I have this notion that proper artists are servants to their inspiration and must constantly create, whereas The Urge aside, I experience long, dull, uninspired stretches and must be disciplined to complete my works. Sometimes, I wonder whether this makes me an imposter ….” She stopped herself, seeming to remember whom she was speaking to, and he felt a pang of annoyance. He understood, he did—the urge to strategize his portfolios and maximize profits was a compulsion, too, alive beneath his skin, as she’d put it.

“You changed your perfume,” he said instead.

She shot him a quick glance. “Do you mind?”

“No.” He did mind; she smelled delicious, and he wanted to reach across and pull her onto his lap. Then kiss her. Then fondle her lush breasts. Perhaps put a hand up under her thick skirts to finger the soft skin at the back of her knees, and move up to the softer place between her legs until she was moaning against his neck.

“My mother insisted I wear the rose scent,” she said. “But I prefer this.”

Her brother, her mother. It proper quelled his surging arousal.

She seemed to enjoy the restaurant; she was still studying her surroundings with keen eyes after the waiter had seated them in his private booth. The first time he had lunched here, he had been reluctantly impressed by the décor, too. The domed ceiling was painted in a fancy white-and-gold pattern, while the large potted fig trees and creeping ivy added a rustic touch. The air was fragrant with the scent of French herbs and spices from the subcontinent. Harriet’s family must visit the same old places in Soho if the atmosphere here excited her so. Perhaps she was simply excitable.

“Why do you favor this restaurant?” she asked as she tugged off her gloves. “It’s far from Belgravia.”

“It serves the best rice and curry dishes,” he replied. “The head chef and co-owner is from Gujarat.”

She smiled. “Do you prefer your foods sweet or spicy?”

He looked her in the eye. “Sweet. Why?”

“Knowing your preferences would help me with the meal plan.”

“Meal plan,” he repeated, confounded.

She tilted her head. “For your cook? He keeps a tidy kitchen, but the pantry looked a little bare this morning.”

“Right.” In any regular household, wives were indeed in charge of the weekly meal planning. He felt oddly relieved when a waiter approached him with the menu.

“Want to take a look yourself?” he offered when he noticed Harriet peering at the menu across the table, and her eyes brightened.

“Yes, please.”

He hadn’t just offered to indulge her independent streak. In loftier London restaurants the menu was invariably written in French, which was the bane of his lunch experiences, for he didn’t speak French, nor had he the time to study it. It had made for some terrible surprises when he had chosen blindly in the past; best to stick to the dishes he knew he enjoyed.

“It seems that except for select Gujarati cuisine, all the dishes are French,” Harriet remarked.

“You’ve no trouble with foreign languages, then, or with reading?”

She glanced up, wariness shimmering in her eyes. “Reading poses no problem.”

“What is the problem?”

It was bad conduct to mention her impairment, but he did want to understand it.

“The trouble is the writing,” Harriet said. “Even if I were to copy the same lines I just read, I’ll likely make an error. The same applies to rows of figures.” She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t know why. Words that are spelled similarly apparently look the same to me. Some letters dance.”

“Dance?” he said, baffled.

“Yes. Some are more agile than others.” She slid the menu toward him. “The baked goat cheese with the pear chutney, please.”

Her smile was overbright, like the too-white brilliance of a false diamond. Her affliction troubled her.

“You’re up at Oxford,” he said, feeling an urge to make it better. “Your brain won you a place, unless that was bought and paid for.”

“You can’t buy a place at Oxford,” she said indignantly.

“So you convinced Ruskin. He’s no fool.”

Her false smile turned sarcastic.

“You think he’s a fool?” he asked.

The waiter returned to take their orders and pour some white wine.

Harriet enjoyed a few sips before returning to his question. “Ruskin is no fool,” she said. “He is a titan in the art world, and I idolized him long before I made his personal acquaintance. I first met him for my admission interview, in his office, and he rose from his chair and said, ‘Ah, but you look too lovely to be clever.’”

Even he could tell that this was a shite compliment. “Badly done,” he said.

“Men say such things frequently, so I’m quite inured,” Harriet said, her cheeks turning rosy from the wine. Her skin hid nothing, one of several things that intrigued him about her. “Except that in my family,” she continued, “I was the Lovely One. Flossie and Mina were the Bright Ones. I thought it was perfectly fine to be lovely, until Ruskin made me think it was a synonym for silly. …” She interrupted herself, just like she had earlier in the carriage. Remembering that she didn’t trust him yet. Perhaps she never would.

“The male students,” he asked. “How do they treat you?”

“Oh, they were rather excited about the female cohort,” came the vague reply.

His gaze narrowed. “They bother you?”

She shifted on her seat. “No.”

“Not at all? No comments, no staring?”

“Well, sometimes. When I visit one of their lecture halls. Or pass them by on the street. Or bump into them in Blackwell’s or the Bodleian. But the naughty comments, they usually say in Latin. Which, admittedly, I understand well enough.”

Floppy-haired, pompous little twats. “I see,” he muttered, feeling the tension in his face.

Harriet looked alarmed. “You said you wouldn’t object to my studies,” she said.

“I don’t,” he replied. “I’ll introduce you to Carson later today—your new protection officer.”

Her face fell.

“Do you know what happened to your old officer?” he prodded.

She avoided his gaze, as if embarrassed. “I asked my father to write him a reference,” she finally said. “I understand he returned to work for the Metropolitan Police.”

That had been the decent thing to do, give him a reference, though in his opinion her officer deserved to be fired for his poor performance.

She looked subdued behind her wineglass, so he changed the topic.

“The house,” he said. “Is it to your liking?”

She gave a polite nod. “It is, yes.”

“Make changes, if you want.”

“Thank you.” She put down her glass. “May I ask why you don’t keep any staff?”

She had noted the absence of regular staff last evening and, to her credit, hadn’t fainted.

“Cook and Tommy the lad weren’t to your liking?” he asked, for he did keep some staff.

“No, they seemed decent,” she said quickly, “though Tommy seemed rather young.”

“He’s twelve,” Lucian said. “Old enough. I’ll employ a girl to tend to the fire in your rooms but thought you might want to choose her.”

“I would, thank you,” she said. “But what of a butler? A valet, a housekeeper? Parlormaids? Footmen? Grooms?”

“I’ve no need for them. I use few rooms, I prefer to dress and shave myself, and I value privacy over convenience.” Besides, he hadn’t been born into the habit of perceiving other humans as part of the inventory as long as they wore a uniform, and he didn’t care for feeling surrounded by crowds. Harriet looked a little nervous, unsurprisingly. The new etiquette book for gentlemen on his nightstand had reminded him that upper-class rules were plentiful and specific. Harriet probably knew the type of velvet a woman was allowed for trimming the lapels of such and such a jacket and all the various ways of how to properly sign off a letter depending on the recipient, and by those standards, his household was barbaric.

“I assume Mr. Matthews is your man of all work, then?” she said.

“Of sorts.”

“He plays the flute,” she said. “I heard him last evening, and again this morning.”

He supposed he’d have to hire more staff so she could organize social events at his house, and he loathed it already. Perhaps he should give her a house just for holding dinners and the like. Then again, making nice with society had been the plan all along. “You’ll find he plays obsessively,” he said. “Matthews.”

“He plays very well,” she replied. “He must have enjoyed an excellent musical education. How did he come to work for you?”

He did not, for a while, understand why he told her the truth that moment. “He was in debtors’ prison when I found him.”

She looked intrigued rather than shocked. “Why?”

“Because he has a gambling problem. Might explain his obsession with his flute,” he added. “Obsessive minds tend to obsess about more than one thing.”

“I meant why would you recruit your closest assistant from the jail?” she whispered.

“Leverage,” he replied. “My assistant knows more about my affairs than any other man in London. Matthews won’t blab.”

“And how long has he been in your employ?” Her expression was troubled now.

“Three years.”

She’d be proper shocked if he told her he had bailed out Matthews specifically because he had been in Rutland’s employ as his secretary. A source had alerted Lucian that Rutland had left the man to rot. The information about Rutland’s business affairs and weak spots he had squeezed from Matthews during his first week of unexpected freedom had been worth its weight in gold.

Their meals were served, and Harriet ate in contemplative silence while he watched her between his own bites like a lecher. He couldn’t help it; she handled her cutlery with an innate lazy gracefulness that a part of him found hopelessly mesmerizing. Perhaps sensing the turn of his mind, Harriet attempted more conversation.

“Why aren’t you in New York?” she asked. “I understand the New York Stock Exchange is vastly more developed than the London Stock Exchange.”

“It is.”

“Is it true that Americans are more appreciative of self-made men?”

“Americans don’t care where the money comes from as long as there’s lots of it,” he confirmed. “So society in New York invented other criteria to create hierarchies—how far back one’s ancestors arrived to make their land grab, for one.”

She waggled her tawny eyebrows. “I noticed the number of dollar princesses invading London determined to marry a title for prestige grows by the year.”

“You mind?”

“I don’t mind it at all,” she said with a shrug. “But it does strike me as wanting your revolutionary cake and eating it, too.”

“Old King George is rollin’ in his grave,” he agreed, and her small burst of almost laughter nearly made him smile. He felt compelled to look at his plate while her gaze shied to her lap. A strange thought occurred to him as he watched her from beneath his lashes: that he had enjoyed this lunch. An unfamiliar lightness, an ease, had filled his chest throughout. He wondered whether she felt the same. Unlikely. The table separating them was small and yet the distance between them was still palpable. She was like one of her precious artifacts, on display but beyond his touch behind an invisible barrier. His usual course of action was to break whatever blocked his path. The usual way did not apply. He needed a tactic. She had already told him what she wanted in the Blue Parlor: to build her own world with a friend. Well, he wasn’t the man for that. She was shiny and preoccupied with colors; he had breathed and ingested darkness, had stared at it for so long it had begun to stare back into him. Darkness was a part of him now, encrusted in his soul like coal dust in a miner’s skin. But for the last half hour, he had had a glimpse beyond the veil, what it could have been like, and it left him thinking he needed a tactic.

Her first day as a married woman had slipped into evening, and beneath the quiet of the Belgravia house, tension began to simmer in step with the sinking sun. Another wedding night was looming. Presently, Lucian was ensconced in his study—after he had introduced her new protection officer, a Mr. Carson. Mr. Carson’s head was bald and shiny as a billiard ball, and he was larger and certainly meaner than Mr. Graves. She dared not ask in which jail Lucian had found him. Safe to say, it would be nigh impossible to run from Carson.

She spent an hour lolling around on her plush new bed, trying to absorb the contents of the new Woman’s Suffrage Journal, but her focus was too scattered. She wasn’t well on her own these days, and had to yet write to her friends. She finally closed the periodical and decided to visit Lucian’s private chambers. After the terrible awkwardness last night, she hadn’t expected a thoughtful bouquet this morning. Nor a pleasant lunch. Perhaps her husband was hiding other, promising things.

She inched open the connecting double doors and felt pleasantly surprised. His bedchamber exuded warm elegance, with rich shades of burgundy, navy blue, and dark woodworks.

She slipped inside quickly.

In contrast to the rest of the house, the décor here was sparse: an armchair in cognac leather next to the fireplace, a secretary against the wall, a large wooden chest with metal fittings at the foot of the bed. The bed was vast and square and covered by a tartan blanket patterned in earthy browns and greens. The MacKenzie tartan? Looking at the bed made her feel shy, so she moved on to a side door. His walk-in wardrobe. It was spacious and neatly organized: glossy cherrywood shelving from floor to ceiling and an armchair at the center. The lingering fragrance of his shaving soap drew her deeper into the small room. She trailed a fingertip over silken waistcoats. She stuck her nose amid the freshly starched shirts and inhaled. He might not have been her choice of husband, but she would bottle his scent if she could. She pulled out drawers and paused when she found his braces rolled up in neat coils. On impulse, she grabbed a pair and stuffed it into her skirt pocket, but the moment her loot had been securely stashed she felt like a terrible intruder. Her heartbeat picked up as she slid the drawer soundlessly back into place, and she hurried out the door. She screeched like a loon, for Lucian stood next to the bed.

“Good evening.” His tone was mild but his gaze was coolly assessing.

“Mr. Blackstone,” she said.

He approached, and now her heart was pounding at double speed. He halted with his toes an inch from hers, his expression opaque. “What were you doing?”

She had been in his wardrobe, sniffing his shirts.

“I wanted to see where you sleep,” she said. As if that was a less disturbing explanation.

His eyes narrowed slightly. “Why do you want to see where I sleep?”

The beginnings of a beard shadowed his cheeks and jawline. This morning, in his exercise room, he had been perfectly clean-shaven, and it crossed her mind that he must have shaved last night, just before coming to her bed, for his face had felt smooth against hers ….

She gave a nervous cough. “I wished to become more closely acquainted with you.”

“By … looking at my room,” he said. “When I’m not in it.”

“It does sound rather silly when one says it out loud.”

His shoulders relaxed and his eyes were warming. “Learned anything interesting?”

Her wits scrambled. “You hold Scotland close to your heart?” She nodded at the tartan counterpane.

He looked at the bed, then back at her. His eyes were hot. Her heart dropped to her belly.

“You know,” he said casually, “there are more expedient ways to become acquainted with one another than snooping through a wardrobe.”

“Expedient,” she echoed.

He cupped her face in his palm, and feverish heat swept over her skin. His gaze sank into hers while he lightly traced her cheekbone with the pad of his thumb, back and forth, with a deliberate, mesmerizing languor that rendered her mute. Taking her stillness as acquiescence, he slowly slid his other arm around her waist and leaned down. Stubble whispered across her cheek. Her nose was against the warm skin of his neck, right against the source of his delicious scent. Lucian made a low groan when his mouth found the bare inch of her throat above her collar. His fingers delved into her hair and he carefully angled her head back, then she felt the fluid strokes of his tongue below her ear. She sagged against him, her legs turning liquid, and Lucian’s hold on her tightened. The solid feel of his chest caused the tips of her breasts to ache with pleasure. She arched into him, seeking relief, as if a reckless woman had slipped into her skin and enjoyed his attentions. He raised his head. His eyes were hazy, and the brush of his breath across her lips made them sensitive. Kiss me, she thought. He complied. She felt the flick of his tongue against her mouth like a touch much farther down, and a tiny moan escaped her. He pushed his tongue in deeper, and the embrace lost its restraint. Her hands roamed over hard shoulders and up into thick curls. Her nipples were chafing against the delicate chemise, and as if Lucian knew, his hand slid down to her chest and squeezed. She sighed, and when his thigh pressed between hers through the thickness of her skirts, it felt glorious. Until the edge of the bed bumped against the back of her legs. She broke the kiss and cast an apprehensive look around. They had crossed half the room while locked in each other’s arms. She had been as absorbed in his kisses as she became lost in a painting.

She glanced back up at him and found his eyes were black with his pupils dilated to the size of pennies. This was the tipping point, the second between remaining upright and lying down on a bed. For a heartbeat, she saw herself giving over to him, a man she barely knew. Saw herself lying skin to skin with him, his strong body moving over hers as she cradled his hips with her thighs …. She shrank from him. She wasn’t ready, she just was not.

“I’m indisposed,” she said, avoiding his eyes.

A quietness came over him. He knew she was fibbing. She didn’t know why she had done it; she must have panicked.

“Why not rest, then,” he suggested.

“Yes,” she said quickly. “It’s late.”

They both glanced at the rectangle of afternoon light stretching brightly across the floor.

When she walked past him, he caught her hand. His gaze was steady in a way that made her a little breathless. “You needn’t lie to me, you know,” he murmured. “I know when you do, anyway. Just say no.”

Heat crept up her nape. He called it lying, when she and every normal person in London would have called it politely excusing oneself.

Back in her room, she wandered in circles, wishing Lucian would heed the unwritten rules that allowed women to safely withdraw from situations rather than demand that she bare her private thoughts to him. It made her feel both like a coward and a little rebellious. Her thoughts were her own; he should not pry. But he wasn’t wrong—honesty was a virtue. Still, no was a difficult word when it had to be said in cold blood. Besides, he confused her deeply. She obviously enjoyed his kisses, but she also had no notion who she was when in reaction to his presence. This morning, when witnessing him thrash his boxing bag into oblivion, she had been alarmed by the raw violence that had guided his punches, realizing that her husband could kill other men with his bare hands. It troubled her. It had also, perversely, enthralled her a little, and that troubled her most of all. She had thought of herself as impulsive, a free spirit, and yes, a bit of a coquette. But not as base. Not as a wanton filled with pitiful urges. And in the end, none of her compunctions mattered, because sooner or later, she would have to let him in.