“I’m not virtuous,” Griselda protested. “How can you say such a thing when I am sitting opposite you, in your own house? And nary a chaperone in sight!”

“Nor a chemise either,” he said, his eyes catching hers.

“No corset,” she whispered, feeling the brush of soft cotton against her breasts.

“No servants.”

Griselda couldn’t quite sort out how it happened…whether she laid back on the table of her own accord, or whether he picked her up. The only thing she could do was think that whatever virtue she had possessed before that night was gone indeed.

For a man who claimed slim experience, Darlington had a powerful imagination. For once she was there, on the table, her dressing gown wrenched open so that she was all creamy curvy flesh, Darlington didn’t leap on her.

No, he carefully placed moist, cool wafer-thin slices of apple about her body, “As if you were an apple tart of the French persuasion.”

And Griselda, caught between laughter and trembling, argued that she was an apple pie, but never a tart.

But then he braced his arms on the scrubbed table and announced a wish to bite each piece of apple without biting her.

And what began with laughter amid nips—he proved to be terribly awkward and was constantly missing the slices of apple—turned into something quite different by a half hour later.

It was entirely the fault of the apples.

The cheese…

Well, that was another story.

34

From The Earl of Hellgate,

Chapter the Twenty-fourth

To say that I was cast into despair is to underestimate the height of my agony. Darling Mustardseed was to save my tarnished soul, keep my eyes from all other women, and put my feet on the path of righteousness. Instead, she died before, in all honesty, Dear Reader, I had managed to persuade her to do more than fumble about under the bedclothes. In short, she died without experiencing a woman’s pleasure; ’tis a burden that will stay with me until my benighted and much-desired death.

I t was her wedding night, and Josie was unable to sleep. Never had she felt like more of a failure. When she attempted to tell Mayne the truth of her unravished state, she lost her nerve, and consequently, he still thought she had been ravished.

If there was any woman in the world capable of being blunt about an embarrassing subject, it was she. Josie knew herself well enough for that. She could have said—there were a million things she could have said.She could have said it elegantly: I am untouched by that loathsome viper.

Bluntly: After I struck him with a shovel of manure, the gentleman in question left with haste.

Even more bluntly: My person is untouched and there is no need for you to marry me.

The most bluntly of all: I am a virgin. Still.

Sentences she could have said to Mayne kept tumbling through her mind. I am not ravished would have worked. Or this one: The man never touched me intimately, beyond a few fumbling grabs at my chest.

The truth was that she spent years thinking about how to trick a man into marrying her, and now that she’d done it, the enormity of her mistake was choking her. Minerva Press novels were just that—novels. No one worried about what the heroine said to the hero once she’d tricked him into marriage.

Her mind reeled, thinking about the enormity of her crimes, to give the act its proper due. She had married under false pretenses. She had allowed Mayne to sacrifice himself, thinking that she was unmarriageable—while really she was unmarriageable because she was a conniving, horrible jade.

But it wasn’t as if she’d stolen Mayne from someone. Josie was certain that Sylvie would never take him back. Not after the way she’d spoken to him with loathing.

Though, of course, Mayne might have wished to marry someone with Sylvie’s exquisite little figure. Josie kept swallowing back tears. Compared to Sylvie, she was a great galumphing beast, all curves and flesh.

Sometime later Josie sighed and rubbed her forehead. She was in a strange house belonging to a man who would likely annul their marriage on the morrow. She had a headache that wouldn’t stop, and no matter how she thought about it, the mortification she faced in the morning would be unlike anything she had experienced before.

Over the breakfast rolls, if not earlier, she was going to be absolutely clear. She would simply tell Mayne that she was virgo intacto. It would be much more comfortable to say such a thing in a foreign language. If there were footmen in the room, they wouldn’t follow her reference. The only problem was that she wasn’t entirely sure of the phrase.

Virgo immaculata also sounded familiar. Immaculate certainly meant untouched by a man. So maybe that was it. She kept going back and forth between the two: was she immaculate or intact?

A half hour later Josie was sure she was going out of her mind. If only she were in Rafe’s house, she would check his Latin dictionary. Finally she made up her mind to go down to Mayne’s library and find the proper words. She just could not bring herself to say I am a virgin in English.

The house was silent as a grave when she crept out of her door. Mayne had a very pretty upper floor, with a curved hallway that belled gracefully over the antechamber below. Presumably, the door just at the top of the stairs was his bedchamber. Josie held her breath and tiptoed. It went without saying that she would die of embarrassment if he woke.

She sneaked down the stairs in the cool wash of moonlight coming through the front door, clutching her dressing gown around her. Still she heard nothing. The antechamber was a wide circle of marble floor, the walls lined with portraits.

A painting of a woman who was likely Mayne’s mother was positioned just in a splash of light. She was colorless in the glow from the moon, but Josie’s eyes flew to the Dowager Countess’s tiny waist. She probably didn’t even need a corset; she was that small. On her face was the utter confidence of a perfect woman, the kind of woman who never experienced a blemish or felt a traitorous desire for another buttered muffin.

The very sight of Mayne’s mother strengthened Josie’s resolve. His mother was French, and Sylvie was French. Everyone knew that Frenchwomen were all slender. Mayne’s house was the sort of house for which Sylvie was an appropriate mistress.

The door to the left surely led to a sitting room. If Mayne’s house were laid out in the same fashion as Rafe’s town house, the second door would be to a dining room, and the third…

She pushed it open softly. The room was dark as pitch. She groped forward into the darkness, stumbling her way to the wall. The first thing her outstretched fingers encountered was a row of books, the cool feeling of their leather bindings unmistakable. Relief flooded her chest.

She felt sideways until she encountered the soft velvet of a curtain. She pulled it back, shivering at the rattle of curtain hangers above her. A French window looked onto a stone railing that glowed oddly silver in the moonlight. Beyond the railing the garden looked magical and rather frightening, as if it were a place where wishes came true and fairies danced.

“Ridiculous,” Josie whispered to herself.

The moon was so bright that it was almost like daylight, except that daylight is a bright amber, and moonlight is a wilder, shimmering light. The whole lawn looked as if it were underwater.

Entranced, Josie stepped forward. The handle of the French door turned in her hand, and she walked outside. For a moment she froze, looking up at the windows of the house. But Mayne was undoubtedly asleep, dreaming the just sleep of a charitable man, a man who treated marriage as a mission by which to rescue maidens in distress. She couldn’t hear a sound from the house behind her.