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her. He had taken mistresses before his marriage, and they had all been worldly, not wide-eyed and shivering with pleasure. He feared Lysandra might be eaten alive in that world those kinds of women inhabited.
    A strong urge to protect her swelled up in him and he sank into the closest chair to ponder it. Vivien had asked him to tutor Lysandra in the ways of pleasure in order to prepare her for the life of a mistress. But perhaps in the process of that tutelage, he could shock Lysandra into reality with his touch, his kiss, his passion.
    Perhaps he could convince her that this path was not the right one for her. And in the process, slake these unwanted desires and feelings.
    Either way, the next few weeks promised to be heady with pleasures. And he had never looked forward to, nor dreaded, something more.

Chapter Five
    Lysandra jerked her head up at the knock on her door. She had been waiting for this knock for two days, and now the moment had come. Only one person knew where she lived; even her mother wasn’t truly aware of her circumstances, and that was by Lysandra’s choice. That left only one man with a reason to contact her here.
    The knock sounded again, this time louder, and Lysandra stood up from the threadbare bed that was shoved into the tiny corner of the room in the boarding house and hurried to the door.
    Her landlady, a nasty woman with a wart on her nose the size of a large pebble, stood outside, a letter clutched in her dirty fingers.
    “Miss Hoity Toity has a missive,” the woman spat.
    Lysandra flinched. “Thank you, Mrs. Cringle.”
    She reached for the note, but the woman held it out of her reach. “Paper looks expensive, lovey.”
    Normally, Lysandra was intimidated by the woman. After all, she could throw Lysandra into the street without a cause or a care at any moment. But today she was in no mood for the woman’s nastiness and a strength she often kept in check rose in her.
    Her eyes narrowed. “Give me my letter, Mrs. Cringle.”
    With a throaty chuckle, the landlady gave over the missive. “Rich men, they’re hard to keep, chit.”
    Lysandra slammed the door in the woman’s face and spun around to lean on the doorframe. The horrible wretch had actually come closer to the truth than she knew. But Lysandra’s duty wasn’t to keep Andrew. It was to learn from him in the hopes she could secure a future for herself and for her mother.
    She paced to the bed and sat down to open the seal that held the pages together. The message was brief at best, only an address where she was to come at once and the instruction that she could give up the rooms she was letting, for this home would be considered hers for the duration of their affair.
    Lysandra set the note aside and let out a sigh she felt like she’d been holding in forever. Part of her was relieved. She could leave this horrible place and, if her life went as planned, never look back.
    But there was a stronger part of her that dreaded what Andrew’s curt missive required.
    For two days, she had been able to think only of him. Of his touch, his mouth so hot on her flesh that she lost all control of her body, and his dismissal when their first encounter was over. She didn’t know much about the requirements of a mistress, but she had a sneaking suspicion that she wasn’t supposed to think of her protector night and day.
    “Perhaps there is still another way to make money,” she said as she folded the note and put it in the pocket of her pelisse.
    But how? She had already racked her mind in the months before she gathered enough nerve to speak to Vivien in the first place and thought of nothing but this end. She just hadn’t counted on this man who would make her feel so shivery and weak.
    “Mama,” she whispered under her breath as she shoved those unwanted thoughts of Andrew away once again.
    No, she couldn’t tell her mother the details of what she was doing, but sometimes just being around her mother helped Lysandra see life more