Chapter 11

… We'll need at least a hundred copies of the new translation of Catullus. And two dozen more of Fanny Hill, I suppose. For a sixty-six-year-old book, it does seem to fly off the shelves.

—from Lady Selina Ravenscroft to Jean Laventille, publisher

The following afternoon, Selina sat at her escritoire and stared blankly down at the paper in front of her.

She knew what it said. She had intended to write a letter to Laventille—he'd passed along word of another inquiry into Belvoir's ownership, this time via a "potential investor"—but she had altogether failed to pen the note.

Instead she had tapped several dozen clustered dots on the top of the page and then written in her quick, neat hand: What the bloody hell were you thinking?

He'd been pretending.

That's what she'd told herself there in the Townshends' li brary, Peter before her, his eyes intent upon her own. He was pretending, he was practicing, he was making it all up because she'd lost her mind and told him to act like he wanted her.

The worst part was, she'd wanted to believe him. She'd wanted to think he meant it, meant every word as he searched her face. She could almost let herself imagine it was true—until he'd called her sweet.

No one, in her entire life, had ever called her sweet. He must have been imagining someone else.

Except then he'd said her name. And then he'd kissed her.

It was not the first time she had kissed another person. But it was the first time she had done so and felt—all of that. Everything in her liquid, her mind cloudy with need.

Marry me , he'd said to her. And he had not been pretending then.

Something dangerous had lit the air between them. In that moment, Selina could name the feeling that had twisted in her chest these last weeks as she'd watched him dance and laugh with Lydia and Iris and Georgiana.

Wanting. She wanted him for herself with a possessiveness she had never before known. She had looked up at him and tasted it on her lips—her yes and the kiss that would follow, his hands in her hair, his mouth on her own.

And then reality had cut through the haze of desire.

She had meant to help him, for heaven's sake. She'd meant to fix things, to make it so his family could be together.

He needed a perfectly English, perfectly scandal-free wife so that he could convince the courts to give him Freddie and Lu. And Selina was always, on any given day, a hairbreadth from social ruin. She couldn't do this to him. She couldn't have him.

Oh, but she wanted .

She wanted his hands on her skin and his body pressing into hers. She wanted the sweet warmth of his brown eyes, his intense focus as he listened to her speak. She wanted him. She wanted everything .

It was some wild, impulsive, uncontrollable part of her that had made her decide to buy Belvoir's and start the Venus catalog. She had been so angry with the deceptions and hypocrisies of the beau monde , the different rules for men and women designed to keep her sex ignorant. Men seemed to do as they pleased—to press their advantages in finances and politics and sexual relations—and Selina had no longer been able to tolerate it. She had taken the privilege that was hers as a wealthy duke's sister, gathered it up in her hands, and thrust herself into reckless action to try to make a difference for naive young women like she herself had once been.

And somehow that same irrepressible fire seemed to come out when she was around Peter. Swimming in the Serpentine, dragging him into the library and locking the door. Telling him to pretend that he wanted her.

He'd frustrated and unsettled her—but in a way that challenged her carefully controlled life. He respected her, more than any man she'd known except perhaps her twin. He asked her questions and really listened to her answers, his gaze so steady and absorbed upon her that she felt like the center of his world.

He made her laugh. He made her burn.

She gritted her teeth, smothering the memory, and turned her attention to the books on her escritoire.

She could not think about Peter like that. She could not let herself feel all that wanting.

The Belvoir's books were bound in emerald-colored cloth—Selina liked how recognizable it made the books, and cloth was far cheaper than the calfskin used for bindings in her brother's library here at Rowland House. But these samples weren't bound at all, merely sewn together, their edges still uncut. The books she chose would be covered in the Belvoir's style and added to the catalog.

Sometimes she made rapid selections at her publisher's office, but she had the Venus catalog options sent to her directly, ever since the memorable afternoon in which she'd flipped open an illustrated text in front of Jean Laventille that had turned out to contain cartoons comparing women's breasts to various pieces of fruit.

Ridiculous. Her readers knew perfectly well what their own breasts looked like. A pamphlet on male sexual organs—now, that was something she might have considered.

There seemed some viable fruit candidates. Bananas, certainly. Cucumber—was that a fruit? Perhaps an aubergine.

She sliced neatly through the pages with a penknife and wondered if she were completely cracked.

The first text was another Covent Garden memoir. She chewed on her lower lip and flipped the pages. She appreciated the frank humor of the memoirs of ladies of the night, but in truth the Venus catalog already held quite a few. She liked having them, though—it made a useful contrast with the romantic novels that fairly flew off the shelves. No declarations of love here. In fact, this one featured a wildly unflattering comparison of the phalluses of the pleasure worker's most frequent customers.

Perhaps she'd add this one to the list.

She sliced through the second set of pages and then glanced at the title. The Use of Flogging in… She blinked and stuffed the pages back into her escritoire. Absolutely not. She was after a gentle introduction to sexual matters for sheltered women of the ton . Definitely no flogging.

Where did Laventille find these books? She'd had to send him a tersely worded note the third time he'd sent her Lady Bumtickler's Revels .

The last set was a translation of erotic Greek poetry. These, too, were popular, and she turned the pages slowly, her eyes catching on the words. Whence is this , she read. What strange tumultuous throbs of bliss? What raptures seize my fainting frame?

She licked her lips and set the pages down, but it was too late. The next line of the poem whispered in her mind.

And all my body glows with flame.

Yes, that was how it had felt. As though her body were glowing. Sparking to life and then catching fire.

She'd burned from the inside out when Peter had touched her, when he'd kissed her.

And she'd wanted more. What she'd read about and seen in illustrations—his mouth on her breasts. His hands beneath her skirts.

She wanted it now, as she thought about the sweet pressure of Peter's lips, his long fingers digging into her hip, the hoarse sound of pleasure he'd made.

She realized that the heel of her palm was pressed hard into her thigh. Somehow her legs had loosened, splaying open wider as she sat at her desk. Her hand drifted closer to the apex of her thighs as if called by the ache there.

It was all tangled in her mind now—her dream of Peter's body, his hands clamped hard on her flesh, his teeth grazing the skin of her neck.

Peter's mouth. Her fingers in his hair. His—

A knock sounded at her door, and Selina let out a strangled cry and leapt to her feet.

"Selina, darling? Are you quite all right?"

It was Thomasin. Sweet, gentle Thomasin.

Selina looked frantically about the room as if for evidence of her erotic crimes. She shoved the book of poetry into the drawer of her escritoire, avoided her flushed and guilty reflection, and hurled herself into her bed.

She buried her face in a decorative pillow and tried to cool her flaming skin. "I'm perfectly well," she mumbled into the brocade. "Come in, please."

She managed to look up as Thomasin entered, her round face creased in a smile. Thomasin made her way to the bed and sat down, unfolding a handkerchief and spreading it out on the counterpane to reveal a handful of dried fruit.

Apricots. She knew Selina had loved apricots since she was a child.

"Just wanted to check on you, dear one. You were quiet at breakfast."

Selina plucked one of the golden fruits from the handkerchief and stuffed it into her mouth to avoid having to respond. She chewed methodically and sought to calm her nerves.

Her brother Nicholas had raised her and Will himself—but Aunt Judith and Thomasin had been there since she and Will were six. They'd arrived the day of their parents' funeral and never left. Thomasin knew Selina better than anyone. It was extremely difficult to hide anything from her.

When she finished chewing, she said, "I'm feeling out of sorts, that's all." Good Lord, what a way to describe gripped by uncontrollable erotic fantasies . "Nothing serious. I'll feel better in a few days. I'm sure."

Thomasin's gray curls bobbed as she tilted her head. "What's going on with Stanhope?"

It was fortunate she'd finished the apricot, or she would have choked. "N-nothing," she stuttered. "I… I don't think of him that way." Oh, Selina, you lying liar.

Thomasin appeared to be smothering a grin. "Indeed. I'd only meant, how goes his marital campaign? But—good to know."

Oh Lord, she had a turnip for a brain. "Right," she said. "It's…"

What did she say? Not too well, I think, considering he spent last evening kissing the single most ineligible debutante in England.

"I'd hoped he would have made more progress by now," she said carefully. There, that was relatively neutral. Not too incriminating. She hoped.

"My darling." Thomasin tucked a wayward strand of Selina's hair behind her ear, and Selina wanted to curl into her soft, rose-scented touch like a little girl. "You don't need to take care of everyone, you know."

She looked down at the pillow in her lap, tracing the brocade whorls. "I know."

"Do you?" Thomasin's voice was gentle, but Selina still felt the faintest bit stung.

"I do know. I know my own limitations." She knew she was too overbearing, that she came on too strong and intimidated people. She knew there was so much in the world that she couldn't fix.

"I am not quite sure I believe that you know your limitations, my dear. But nor do I think you know your own strengths."

Selina drew back in surprise. Her own strengths? No one had ever accused her of not knowing her virtues—if anything, it was much the opposite. She always thought she knew what was best. She always believed she could take on anything and anyone. It was what had made her take up fencing and card games as a girl. It was what had driven her to chase Peter down in Hyde Park and throw herself into the Serpentine.

It was what had made her start the Venus catalog. Society had cast the women of her generation adrift—they were meant to be playthings, meant to be innocent and empty-headed and leave practical knowledge to the men who controlled their lives.

To hell with that. Selina had read books. She had learned. And she had taken it upon herself to change the way the women of the ton saw their own place in the world.

"I'm not sure what you mean," she said to Thomasin, one corner of her mouth rising wryly. "I'm quite confident in my knowledge of both."

Thomasin gazed at her, blue eyes soft. "We both know you can command a room, of course. You can organize a dinner party for twenty without a blink, and you've probably secured marriage proposals for half of the debutantes of the last four years."

Selina tilted her head in acknowledgment. True, true, and—well, half might be an overstatement. She'd had a hand in probably a third.

"Those are strengths, to be sure. But your greatest strength is your heart."

Selina bit her bottom lip and then let it go and pressed her lips together. "I care about my family."

"You care , Selina. About us, yes. About Lydia. But also about Iris Duggleby and Ivy Price and the Halifax twins. About Stanhope and those precious children. You care so much that I worry, sometimes, for you. You cannot solve every problem, Selina, no matter how hard you try." Her face was gentle. "Stanhope may not get the children. He may not marry before his petition comes before the courts, and he almost certainly won't be engaged by the dinner party we're hosting for the Eldons next week. And if it doesn't go as you planned, I don't want you to be hurt."

"I know," Selina said. "Believe me, I know."

If Thomasin knew about Belvoir's, she'd realize that Selina lived every day with the knowledge that she couldn't predict what the future held. If Thomasin knew, she'd realize that Selina's fierce wrangling for control over the rest of her life was bound up in the way that she couldn't control when and how the Belvoir's scandal would eventually break.

Not for the first time, Selina considered telling Thomasin about Belvoir's. Thomasin wouldn't be angry—she was never angry.

But she might be hurt. She might blink back tears of shock and disappointment, and if that happened, Selina didn't think she could bear it.

She was proud of what she'd done with Belvoir's, the difference she'd made for the women of her generation. And she couldn't stand it if her family knew the truth and didn't feel the same way.

"Tell me," said Thomasin quietly. "Does your Stanhope project have anything to do with Will?"

Selina drew a quick breath. "No. No. What would it have to do with Will?"

"After we lost Katherine and the baby. I know how desperately you wanted to fix things for Will."

"I did." Her voice rasped a little, even now, when she thought of her brother's wife and the baby who had died. "I still do. I want him to come home and I want to wrap him in cotton wool and never let him be hurt again."

"But you know you cannot."

She swallowed against the burning in her throat. "I know I cannot. He'll come home when he's ready." It was hard to think of him so far away, to read letters written weeks or months before, not knowing if on any given day he was safe and whole.

She didn't know if her twin would ever be whole again.

"I wondered if you saw Will in Stanhope's younger brother. If you thought by rescuing those children, you might be rescuing Will, somehow. It would be perfectly understandable."

Selina shook her head. "I want to help Stanhope and the children because they deserve to be together. It's not because of Will. I know—" Her blasted voice broke, and she coughed shortly, angry with herself. "—I know I can't fix Will. Nothing can repair what he's lost."

"He'll come home," Thomasin said. "In time. He'll smile again, Selina. I promise."

Her vision was blurred, and she reached up to press the heels of her hands to her eyes. They came away wet. Senseless tears.

"I hate it," she said finally. "I hate that I can't make things right."

Thomasin reached across the abandoned apricots to pull Selina into an embrace. "I know, my darling. I know."

"I love him so much," she said, and let herself be held. Just for a moment. "I wish that was enough to bring him home."

"It is. It will." Thomasin passed a hand gently over her hair, and for once it felt good to let someone else be in charge. To let someone else do the caring. "Love and patience and bravery are always enough. And you have those in abundance."

"Patience?" Selina laughed into the soft roundness of Thomasin's shoulder. "I wouldn't say I have that by the thimbleful, let alone in abundance."

"Isn't this where we started? With your strengths?" Thomasin waited until Selina pulled back and met her gaze, and then smiled up at her. "You have a whole well of patience, my darling. You simply haven't needed to use it until now."