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smiled fully. And what a smile it was: genuinely, brilliantly pleased with both her and with himself. The kind of smile that made his eyes all but vanish and lines ray from their corners.
    And smack : just like that, her wits scattered like billiard balls.
    “No, I suppose I’m not sorry.” He continued to smile at her.
    She really ought to look away, or smile in return, or say something. Anything. But she hadn’t any wits left. Staring was all that was left to her.
    Before her eyes, his smile drifted away, and his expression became more pensive.
    “Since we are chatting, Miss Fairleigh, and since you are, as you say, familiar with the English language, I wonder if I might trouble you for some assistance with my poetry.”
    It was very nearly a humble entreaty, and helping was more familiar to her than sparring. “I know very little about poetry, Lord Rawden, but I should be happy to try.”
    “Well…,” he began almost diffidently. “I am writing a poem about seduction.”
    He might have said: “I am writing a poem about forks.” It made the word less dangerous, somehow. Which in a way, she knew, made it even more dangerous. Still, this was the sort of language this man used. And as she would with luck become a missionary on another continent one day, perhaps she ought to view it in a “When in Rome” light, and try to speak his language.
    “I’d thought you’d already written a book about sed…seduction, Lord Rawden.”
    Too late she realized that this revealed she knew all about his scandalous volume.
    He leaned slowly back in his chair then, with the air of one settling into his favorite topic.
    “Oh, one can never really finish writing about seduction, Miss Fairleigh. I find I’ve a good deal more to say on the topic.” He made it sound nearly academic.
    Sabrina thought of the kiss she hoped she’d get from Geoffrey one day, and of the shadowy things that took place in a marriage bed, which were giggled about and spoken of only in the very, very broadest of euphemisms among the girls she knew.
    But then there had been a girl in the village of Tinbury who had disappeared under a wave of whispers and scandal: she’d been ruined, it had been said. All because of seduction.
    “But…why do you want to . . .” Sabrina cleared her throat. “Seduction implies…enticement. Luring someone against her will. Does it not?”
    “Are you saying it isn’t…well, nice to write about it, Miss Fairleigh?” He sounded concerned. “I thought…well, I truly thought that within every woman is the will to be seduced. That they in truth want to be seduced.”
    “Within the unfortunate women, perhaps,” she corrected gravely. “The ones possessed of weaker wills. There are others of us who are blessed with more fortitude.”
    She knew nothing at all about seduction, but she did know a bit about sermonizing.
    “Ah. So what you are saying is that you cannot be seduced.” The earl nodded sagely, mulling this. “Because of fortitude. And that you think seduction has to do with ‘will,’ and the possession or lack thereof.”
    Sabrina suddenly realized how often the word “seduced” and its variations had been used in the last minute or so. She had the uneasy suspicion that she was being lured out into the middle of a sticky, silky web woven of the word, but wasn’t certain how to scramble back to safety.
    “But we are not animals, Lord Rawden,” she said gently. “We possess the ability to control our actions, and I’m fortunate in that I’ve never experienced difficulty doing so in any circumstance. And as I said, I’ve been blessed with an even temperament, and I’ve nothing but—”
    “—compassion for those of us afflicted by tempestuous animal natures. Oh, yes, I recall. Pray, will you answer a question for me, Miss Fairleigh?”
    “I shall certainly try.”
    “You hail from the country, yes?”
    “Yes, Tinbury is a country town. Nothing at all like London.” She only realized she’d