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aide-de-camp of Lord Elphinstone and the nephew of the Duke of Richmond, and I’ve alwaysbeen a fool for a title. Things had quickly gotten out of hand as far as my shipboard reputation was concerned, but I was in the throes of newly discovered passion and couldn’t have cared a fig.
    George would sometimes come to my cabin, and I would sometimes go to his. The place didn’t matter, it was what began to happen inside that did. I discovered magical sensations vastly superior to those I’d been able to conjure myself during lonely spells. I howled like a banshee the first time I experienced the great sublimation, until George, laughing, put his hand over my mouth and hushed me. George’s body was beautifully smooth and his sandy beard very thick, so that even by noon his cheeks had a reddish shadow. And his member, well! I’d never before known one that had been cut, and soon it seemed to me an eminently superior ritual. He would hold himself unabashedly and fondly, looking down along his body, and when I asked, he told me that his family had always done it. I asked if it had hurt, but he said he had no idea, it was done when he was a baby and he was sure he wasn’t the worse for it, “so come here, cherub.” It never caused him any discomfort, compared with poor, sore Thomas who moaned and writhed in pain even as he sought pleasure. George allowed me to know a man, truly, for the first time; to know what was pleasing to him and to discover what pleased me when I was with him. He told me I was beautiful beyond belief in the most secretive folds and byways, as he made me warble like a nightingale—and sometimes like a raven. Oh, cad, I’d loved you obscenely!
    Blast and damn. How did that blackguard get back into my head? Because, I suppose, at the start of this whole thing—poised for Paris, the earl’s bank draft secreted in the hem of my favourite new striped-tartan gown in case of emergencies—I found myself eager to travel again and easily talked into it. I’d asked very few questions! When I think of that now . . . Was I really so trusting? Or gullible, perhaps? The earl did seem awfully keen for me to travel. Well, I could sense my liaison with him was coming to an end. He had rather neglected his duties at the house, and his wife, he reported, had also complained about the size of the bills that he seemed to be running up, now that he was living in London during the week. Fine, I’d thought, no regrets. He’d cheered me up, set me going again, and that was a wonderful gift in itself. The bitternessof George’s betrayal was behind me, my appetite for men had returned, and life and love beckoned once more. So yes, at that heady juncture, I suppose I decided to congratulate myself on my adventurous spirit and my undeniable talent for leaping off cliffs without a boring backwards glance. Nothing, I thought, could hurt me, because this time, I would betray before being betrayed.
    Perfect for what they had in mind, had I but known it.

A ND ON TO P ARIS

    S EÑOR H ERNANDEZ HAD GIVEN me the name of an hotel not far from the Paris coaching station. Exhausted from the journey (days and days in coaches, jostling through the countryside), I collapsed and slept the sleep of the just, with my hatboxes still perched on the bed. I barely even registered the angelic little room and its amenities, nor the bouquet of fresh flowers that someone had placed on the side table. Outside the window, Paris rolled along in its nighttime delirium, and I didn’t hear it. In the morning, waking to the sounds of the street, I discovered a message had been pushed under the door. It said, “Dear Miss Gilbert, I will be waiting for you at eight o’clock, in the dining room. Please come prepared to spend the day away from this establishment. Very sincerely, Juan de Grimaldi.”
    Heavens! I was in Paris (Paris!), it was already nine in the morning, and he’d been