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never mind the general strangeness of theatre people. There was never any question of marrying her father. I'd broken it off with Fernand once I realized he only wanted to use me for his cause, before I discovered I was bearing his child. My Lisette lives with my sister and her husband. They've never been blessed with children so they're raising her as their own. I send them money faithfully for her care, but they love her dearly, and would have taken her regardless.” Her chin trembled. “She calls me 'Auntie Bella' when I visit her. It shouldn't hurt, but it does.”
         She swiped away the single tear that spilled over her eyelid. “I suppose you despise me as unnatural for abandoning my child.”
         Her words knifed through his gut. Another mother who'd left her child sprang up in his mind's eye. He could still smell her perfume, sickly sweet and laden with essence of lilac. To this day, he couldn't abide them and had ordered every bush on his estate eradicated as if it were a patch of cankerworts.
         But Sebastian's mother hadn't left him because it was in his best interests. She'd abandoned a five year old Sebastian to his stoic, distant father in order to run away with her lover. And never looked back.
         “I don't despise you,” Sebastian said. Arabella St. George had done the best she could for her daughter under the circumstances. The child wasn't tainted with bastardy. She was being raised by people who loved her.
          And Arabella obviously suffered for her choice. If his mother had ever had second thoughts, Sebastian certainly wasn't aware of them.
         “I was approached by a man the last time I was in Paris, who told me he had people watching my sister's home, watching Lisette. He gave me the envelope and a description of the man who would collect it from me in London. If I didn't do what they asked,” she said, her voice edged with agitation, “Vicomte Gimois would exercise his rights and take her. I'd never see Lisette again.”
         “If a nobleman wants to claim a child as his, he's usually praised for it.”
         “That's not what Fernand will do.” Her face crumpled in fear. “You don't know him. He's ruthless and cruel. Lisette is nothing to him but a tool to be used. He's an assassin. He'll kill her if I don't do what he wants. But you fit the description I'd been given for my London contact and that's why I gave the envelope to you. Then Fernand came and it's all such a horrible muddle. Don't you see?” She grasped both his lapels. “I have to deliver that note.”
          She pressed her body flush with his and stood tiptoe to kiss him, tentatively at first, then in a heated rush that went straight to Sebastian's groin. Her mouth was a wonder and he was pulled headfirst into her dark sensual heat. Her hands slid down his back and kneaded his buttocks. He groaned into her mouth.
         Then, without stopping their deep kiss, she made a little room between them so she could undo the buttons over each of his hipbones. Her hands invaded his trousers and all rational thought fled from his mind. 
          Arabella wasn’t bluffing when she said she’d do 'anything' to secure his help.

 
    “A gentleman should take pains to insure that important decisions regarding his mistress not be made when his mind is compromised by the requirements of his body.”
    ~ A Gentleman’s Guide to Keeping a Mistress
     

Chapter 7
     
         Arabella teased Sebastian's groin with the nearness of her questing fingers, but denied him the relief of her direct touch. White-hot wanting seared him. Her kiss was a drug, a mind-altering elixir more powerful than any poppy extract in a London opium den. Her hands fluttering over his groin threatened to reduce him to mindless incoherence.
         “Help me, Sebastian,” she whispered, between peppering kisses down his neck.
         She grasped his shaft and his eyes rolled back in his head.
         He