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Yes, he was there in the bath. His gaze, hot and shocked, swept her body, lingering in all the most inappropriate places, feeding the hopeless, rampant desires in her.

Because this was
her
fantasy, he would never do anything improper with his cook—he was not that kind of man. He would leave her to her privacy. But then her handkerchief would slide off and he would see her face.

In reality she could not begin to conceive of his reaction. Would he be glad? Would he be angry? Would he perhaps not recognize her at all? But no, this was not reality, so they could skip over the thorny, complicated parts and proceed straight to a wild, crazed coupling.

With her gasping in mortified arousal, he’d fish her out of the tub, throw a towel around her, and carry her to his bed. His kiss would be rough and impatient. His end-of-the-day stubble would scratch her chin and throat—and she would not get enough of it. She would not get enough of him.

The imagined climax in his bed would happen as soon as he came into her. The real climax in the tub was a peak to rival Mont Blanc. She hadn’t come so hard and furious in a while. And if it hadn’t been for the long practice of keeping quiet and still while she pleasured herself—the walls between the servants’ rooms at Fairleigh Park were thin and her bed there creaked abominably—she’d have shattered the mirror with her screams and made a lake of the bath.

Her ungoverned breathing was loud and prominent in the quiet of the room. Then she heard something that made her whole body seize—the breathing of another person, harsh and shaky. For a moment her mind went entirely blank. Then she prayed feverishly that it was anyone but him. Mr. Durbin, Wallace, the coalman, it didn’t matter.

Anyone but him.

“Madame, you will present yourself in my study in half an hour,” said Mr. Somerset, in perfect French, his tone only slightly uneven.

God.

She couldn’t move for several minutes after he’d closed the door behind him, except to rip off the handkerchief and stare at the door, both of her hands over her open mouth.

Then she leapt into frenzied action, drying herself, throwing on her clothes, wiping down the tub, wiping off the water that had splashed onto the floor. She ran back to her room and, with mostly useless hands, tried to do something with her hair.

He’d called her beautiful once, when she’d been still young. Alas, the wild-looking woman in the mirror was neither young nor very beautiful. Her profession dictated that she spent the preponderance of her waking hours in a milieu entirely hostile to smooth skin and soft hands. She fought back against the travails of the kitchen and the encroachment of time with an array of homemade creams and emollients, but she couldn’t banish the fine lines that already webbed the corners of her eyes, nor could she reverse the slack that she’d begun to notice under her chin.

She shaped her hair into a tight bun at the nape of her neck, tied on a clean apron, and pinned a cameo brooch at her throat. The person who stared back at her in the mirror looked almost respectable, like a governess, or a Salvation Army lieutenant. Not at all the sort of woman who’d be caught touching herself in unspeakable places.

She covered her face and groaned.

The door to the study was ajar. The light was on. She heard him moving about inside, his physical restlessness an echo to the jangling of her nerves.

So this was it, the moment of truth. Three thousand and more days and nights—hopes and dreams, delusions and illusions.

And they did not live happily ever after.

The end.

Chapter Twelve

S
he knocked when exactly half an hour had passed. He’d been waiting—he’d known the moment she’d arrived in the corridor, three minutes ago—and still the knock made his pulse lurch.

“Come in,” he said.

He’d miraculously remembered the kettle he’d set to boil in the kitchen before heading upstairs. So he’d made tea and brought it to the study, along with her shortbread biscuits. But he hadn’t been able to touch either. Instead, it had taken two inches of whiskey and three cigarettes to steady his hands and calm his shattered nerves.

Even now he saw her in his mind, all pretty tits and wicked fingers. He wanted to suck on those fingers, lick clean every last dram of her essence. He wanted to spread her open and fuck her until he went blind.

It was the long abstinence, he tried to tell himself: Such was life that if he remained chaste for ten years, someone entirely unthinkable must come along and make a bonfire of his virtues. But he knew better. There was something about Madame Durant that drew him toward her, an enigmatic pull like that which kept the moon in orbit around the Earth.

He prayed that the power of this heretic hold she had over him derived solely from her mystery, a mystery that would unravel at first sight. He drew in a long breath, moved away from the window, where he’d kept his forehead pressed to the cool glass—he really needed to plunge into a bathing pool and swim a hundred laps—and took his seat behind the desk.

But she did not come in. At the edge of the door peeked a fold of her dress. And if he listened very, very carefully, amid the drone of the evening traffic and the overenthusiastic blare of street musicians on Buckingham Palace Road, he could sieve out the sound of her unquiet breathing.

He rose. Etiquette and decorum be damned.

He was nearly at the door when she spoke.
“Monsieur, éteignez la lumière, s’il vous plaît.”

She wanted him to extinguish the light.

“Why?”

“Because…I’ve too much shame to face you.” Her voice was not the sultry seduction he’d expected, but uncertain and awkward. “If it pleases you, sir.”

He didn’t want to be alone with her in the dark. It was not done. It was highly improper. And it would do nothing to dispel her mystery.

“Sir, please.”

There was more than embarrassment in her voice. There was desperation. He waffled, sighed, and gave in.

He returned to his seat and turned off the desk lamp. For a moment he couldn’t see anything. Her dress soughed, woolen skirt on flannel petticoats. Her footsteps, at first clear, the heels of her shoes clicking against the floorboards, became muted as she crossed the Khotan carpet he’d brought back from India.

His eyes adjusted to the darkness. In the meager light that meandered through the window, he perceived her outline, a solid blackness against the more insubstantial shadows of the air.

He regretted his moment of gallantry already. The entire point of his summons was to see her face, not to further whet his curiosity. He felt along the edge of the desk for the whiskey glass and tipped the remainder of its contents down his throat.

The silence stretched. He let it. He could think of nothing to say that wasn’t either stupid or blatantly prurient.

Do it again. Let me watch. Let me see your face when you come.

“You wanted to see—to speak to me, sir?”

Her voice came from the farther reaches of the room—she’d put as much space as possible between them. The darkness and the distance were no doubt meant to salvage her respectability, but all he could think of was the sweet shadow between her thighs.

“My dinner party,” he said, amazed at the seeming coolness of his tone. “Mrs. Abercromby spoke to you of it?”

She didn’t respond immediately. Was she as surprised as he by the perfect propriety of his end of the conversation? “The dinner for eighteen next week?”

“Yes. You had enough notice?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good,” he said.

Silence burgeoned again. Perversely, he refused to dismiss her. It was a poor gratification to sit fifteen feet from her in the dark, but it was better than nothing.

She broke the silence first. “Would you care to see the menu, sir?”

“No, that will be unnecessary.”

“Would you—” Her voice dropped. “Would you like me to cook something for your dinner?”

His fingers latched on to one of her shortbread biscuits. He bit into it. The sensation was dizzying. Pagan. He imagined crumbling the biscuit over her and licking the crumbs from her skin.

“No. I do not wish to inconvenience you on your half day,” he said.

He couldn’t handle a full meal from her tonight. He would incinerate.

They lapsed into silence once again. Her feet shuffled against the carpet. He broke off another piece of shortbread and let it melt on his tongue, despairing in its divine sweetness.

“Sir, may I—may I be dismissed?”

“I’ve one question and then you may go.”

“Yes, sir?”

He meant to ask whether she needed to send for more kitchen help from Fairleigh Park. It wouldn’t do to be shorthanded for the dinner.

“Tell me, when you were in the tub, what was on your mind,” he said. “What were you thinking of?”

She made a sound that was a choked gasp. Her breaths were fast and shallow. He closed his eyes and tortured himself with another biscuit, the divine sweetness spreading through his veins like hot poison.

How the mighty had fallen. Was it only thirteen years ago that he’d laughed at Bertie for succumbing to the spell of his cook? Now he was the one caught in her allure, an allure that could not be described with any economy of words.

She said something. He barely heard her. It sounded like “New.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You.”

“What?”

“I said I was thinking of you,” she said. “
You,
sir. Good evening, sir.”