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her waist. She snatched at the cloth constricting her shoulders, attempting to drag it higher.
    He shook his head. “Let that go for the moment, though you will need to wear something with more ease as we progress. Now. Raise your heels until you are on your toes. Lower again. Raise and lower. Again, and yet again. Excellent. This is the movement you will do a hundred times each morning, and again each evening, in order to strengthen the leg muscles. You see?”
    â€œI see.” What she saw was the flexing of the long muscles in his legs and the faint impression of manly parts at his crotch. That was before she dragged her gaze upward to where amusement glimmered in his eyes. He apparently understood her discomfiture but thought it misplaced, or else that she had brought it upon herself so had no right to protest. Nor would she, though she clenched her teeth until the muscles of her jaws ached.
    â€œ Bien. Now lunge toward me—like so.”
    He launched himself, hand closed as if he grasped a foil. The movement was well-oiled, from thousands upon thousands of repetitions, as natural to him as breathing. It was swift, silent and so powerful that his fist came within inches of her chest. His features were set and his eyes suddenly opaque, as if he had closed off all feeling, retreating inside himself to a place where none could reach. If there had been a sword in his hand, she knew without question that she would be dead.
    She had not flinched or moved. It was some consolation.
    Sudden anger boiled up inside her as he retreated to his former stance. She surged in his wake with her own imaginary sword gripped tight. Her aim was low, held by her sleeve and so angled downward. When she stopped, her tight fist grazed his groin.
    They stood in frozen tableau. An instant later, his lips twitched and bright hilarity leaped into his eyes. With a crack of laughter, he reeled away, his upper body racked by chuckles that had a rusty sound.
    Mortification held Ariadne immobile for long seconds. She spun then, clapping her hands to her fiery cheeks as she put her back to him.
    She knew, oh, she did know, what lay behind the smooth front of his pantaloons where her knuckles had grazed him, knew the meaning of the steel-like firmness she had touched. That she’d had the temerity, or the bad luck, to land just there was one thing, but that he could laugh at her for it was quite another. She saw nothing remotely funny about it.
    That something in the lesson thus far had aroused him left her aghast as well. Men were indiscriminate in their passions, or so she gathered from her sojourn in Parisian society, but this was most unsuitable. How was she to continue if she had to worry that he might press unwelcome attentions upon her?
    Even so, she was aware of the slow, hot shift of some half-realized feeling inside her. Part of it was gratification that a man of such dangerous reputation could see her as desirable. For the rest, she preferred not to look too closely.
    Passions of the fevered, desperate kind portrayed between doomed lovers in her favorite operas were foreign to Ariadne. She had been fond of her husband in a mild fashion, had honored him for his kindness and attention to her comfort. Allowing him to make love to her had been a duty, one never too onerous or particularly unsettling. Afterward, he had always been so grateful, so very loving that it was nearly enough. Yet sometimes when he had fallen into snoring sleep, she had lain staring into the dark while her body jerked with nerves and unsettled yearning and tears tracked slowly into her hair. And she had wondered then, as she did now, if it might not have been different with another man.
    But not this one. No, never, ever this one.

Four
    H er face, her face…
    Gavin choked, trying to control the unholy amusement that shook him. His glacially superior pupil could not have looked more appalled if she had discovered he had a jungle snake in his pantaloons. He