Beginning today. I will send a package as soon as I return home – or at the earliest respectable hour, anyway."

And he named a weekly sum that had her heart thumping in amazement.

Could courtesans possibly earn /that/ much?

"That will be satisfactory," she said coolly. He had stopped calling her /Cassandra/, she noticed. "You will not be sorry, Lord Merton. I will service you very well indeed."

A light flashed deep inside his eyes.

"I do not wish to be /serviced/, ma'am," he said, getting to his feet,

"as if I were some sort of animal that functioned on blind lust alone. I doubt there /are/ such animals, anyway, except those of the human variety. I will be your protector. Technically you will be my mistress.

But I will bed you when our desire is mutual. I will bed you when you wish to be bedded and desist when you do not. We will be /lovers/ or we will be nothing. Your weekly salary will not depend upon the number of times you make your body available to me upon that bed or any other. Is that clear to you?"

She gazed at him in some surprise. She found herself almost afraid of him. Not afraid in any physical sense. She was reasonably sure that he would never hurt her. But he was… She did not even know what he was, what it was about him that had made her suddenly afraid.

Was it the fear that she could not manipulate him as she had expected to do? He was young and good-natured and gentlemanly – and there was a definite air of innocence about him. She had expected him also to be rather weak, or meek anyway – to be easily controlled by the power of sex.

She might have misjudged him.

It was a ghastly possibility.

But he had agreed to be her protector for an indeterminate length of time. And he was paying her more than handsomely. She had been planning to demand a little more than half what he had offered.

"Oh, very clear," she said, standing up after kicking off the other slipper, and stepping closer to him. She lifted her arms and busied herself with straightening his neckcloth and restoring some of its intricate folds. "We have an agreement, then, Lord Merton."

"We do," he said, and he lifted his hands to take her by the wrists.

She raised her face to his and smiled.

He did not smile back. His eyes searched hers.

"You do not have to wear it with me," he said softly.

"/It/?" She raised her eyebrows.

"Your mask of cold contempt for the world and all its human creatures," he said. "You do not need to wear it. I am not going to hurt you."

She felt real fear then and would have turned and run after all if he had not been holding her wrists, though his grip was not a tight one.

She smiled instead.

"How lowering," she said, "to smile at one's lover and protector and be told that it is an expression of cold contempt. Perhaps I ought to frown at you instead."

He lowered his head and kissed her briefly but hard on the lips.

"You are going to Lady Carling's at-home this afternoon?" he asked.

"I believe I might," she said. "The lady did invite me, and I think it would be amusing to watch the reaction of her other guests."

"My sisters will be three of them," he said. "They will treat you with courtesy, and Lady Carling herself will be kind. I will bring my curricle there and take you for a drive in the park afterward."

"You will do no such thing," she said, drawing back from him. "You have nothing to gain and a great deal to lose by consorting with me publicly."

"I will visit you here discreetly at night and with all due care to your reputation," he said. "But you are not a courtesan, Lady Paget. You are a lady, and one whose reputation with the /ton/ is in need of restoration. I do not know what happened with your husband, though you have told me the bare bones. I believe there is more – much more – and we will speak of it as time goes on. But your reputation does need to be restored. It will be done at least partly in my company. And if you believe my reputation will suffer great harm from it, you do not understand the double standard with which the beau monde – and all of society for that matter – judges the behavior of men and women. Sherry, for example – Sheringford – is in the process of being forgiven, while the lady with whom he eloped would have had a far more difficult time of it if she had lived and chosen to return here. My reputation will remain virtually unsullied if I escort you about London. Yours will gain from association with me."

"You do not need to be kind to me, Lord Merton," she said.

"If the word /protector/ means merely that I have exclusive and unlimited access to your body," he said, "I do not really want the position. If I am your protector, then I will /protect/ you as well as sleep with you."

She sighed deeply and audibly.

"I believe," she said, "I found myself a monster last evening when I merely expected an angel – a /wealthy/ angel. Your sisters, no matter how courteous they are to me this afternoon, will be quite appalled when you arrive at Lady Carling's to bear me off to the park with you."

"My sisters," he said, "live their own lives, and I live mine. We do not control one another. We merely love one another."

"It is their love for you," she said, "that will cause their horror."

"Then they must be horrified," he said. "I will come for you at half past four."

"You had better go home now," she said, "before Alice gets up and frowns at you. She will grow accustomed to you, but at first she will frown.

You would not wish to face those black looks when you are at a disadvantage. Your coat and breeches are sadly wrinkled and your neckcloth is quite irredeemable. Your curls are breaking free and attempting to riot."

He smiled – the first time he had done so in several long minutes.

"The bane of my life," he said.

"Then you ought not to try taming them," she said. "Any red-blooded female would find her fingers itching to run through them and become entangled in them."

He bowed to her and raised her right hand to his lips.

"I will see you this afternoon, then," he said. He looked up into her eyes. "And I will send that package this morning."

She nodded.

And he was gone, closing the door quietly behind him.

She crossed to the window and stood looking down until he emerged from the front door. She did not hear it either opening or closing. She watched him walk with long, easy strides down the street until he disappeared around a corner. And even then she stood looking after him.

After a while she realized that she was crying. She went back into the dressing room and bent her face over the bowl.

She never cried. She never /ever/ cried.

Alice must not see the trace of tears on her face.

/7/

STEPHEN had always been blessed with an even temper and a naturally cheerful outlook on life. Even as a boy he had very rarely lost his temper with any of his playmates or fought them with any degree of ferocity or lingering animosity. It was true that he had popped Clarence Forester such a good one a few years ago that the coward had fled with a bulbous nose and two black eyes rather than fight back like a man. It was true too that his fists had itched to do even worse to Randolph Turner a year or so after that, though he had been forced by circumstances, alas, to quell the urge.

But there had been perfectly good reasons for both those forays into violence – or potential violence. In both cases his sisters had been threatened, and he would probably kill if he had to in order to protect any of the three of them.

There /were/ suitable occasions for anger and even violence.

He was angry today. /Furiously/ angry. But this time it was on his own account.

The first person he took it out on was his valet, who had always served him well but who, in the nature of valets, liked to rule him with an iron thumb too whenever he could get away with doing so. He took one look at Stephen when the latter rang for him at a little past six in the morning, and began scolding and threatening as if he were dealing with a naughty boy.

Stephen let it go for a minute or two and then turned on him with cold eyes and colder voice.

"Pardon me if I have misunderstood the situation, Philbin," he said.

"But are you not employed to serve my needs? Are you not employed to care for my clothes, among other duties? To have them clean and ironed and ready when I need them? I will expect these clothes to be all three when I next call for them. In the meantime you may have bathwater brought up for me and then set out my riding clothes while I bathe. You may then shave me and help me dress. If in your deepest fantasies you imagine that one of your duties is to talk to me while you work and offer your opinion on my behavior and the condition of my clothes when I return them to your care, then you must be forced to face reality – and forced to seek employment with someone who is foolish enough to allow such daydreams to flourish. Do I make myself clear?"

He listened in some surprise to his own tirade. Philbin had been with him since he was seventeen, and they had always had a perfectly amicable master/servant relationship. Philbin grumbled and scolded when he felt he had cause, and Stephen cheerfully mollified him or ignored him, whichever seemed appropriate to the circumstances. But he would not apologize now. He was too angry, and Philbin was too convenient a target. Perhaps some other time he would make his peace with his man.

His valet stared at him with half-open mouth, and then he shut it with a clacking of teeth and turned to busy himself with hanging up Stephen's horribly creased evening coat. Stephen had a ghastly suspicion that Philbin was blinking back tears, and he felt horribly guilty – and even more irritated than he had before.