Free Red Cloak of Abandon by Shirl Anders Page B

newly
    formed skills upon him . . . in privacy of course!

    Affinity declined for all of them. Somehow, it seemed that paying
    for such intimacy made it feel involuntary, as though taking from Sebas-
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    tian something he would not give freely. Brevity in particular appeared
    quite relieved as she caressed a strand of Sebastian’s hair without him
    realizing it.

    Then, the most amazing afternoon was over and Madame DeJonge
    and Sebastian were taking their leave. “I might not have agreed had you
    not treated me with ziss generosity of spirit and respect that you did,”
    Madame DeJonge said. “Zee tea was very beautiful.”

    Affinity thanked Madame DeJonge, while noticing Sebastian bow-
    ing over Brevity’s hand, kissing it, and when he rose he leaned forward
    to whisper something in her ear. Then, Sebastian and Madame DeJonge
    were both gone, and the door shut firmly.

    “What did he say?” Diversity and Affinity asked Brevity at the same
    time.

    “He ssaid,” Brevity answered, clutching her bosom with her skin
    flushing pink. “Come to me.”

    They all gasped, now they all knew the double entendre of the before
    seemingly innocent word “come.”

    44

Chapter Eight
    Law stood beneath a droopy elm tree in front of Lady Affinity
    Redgrift’s London abode. It was midnight, one week to the hour of their
    last encounter. He was angry and it was hard to contain, and he was
    intrigued and that was even more impossible to control. She had touched
    his dick. No lady did such a thing, but Affinity was a lady. A pure bred
    one. He had not been idle in learning all that he could about Lady Affinity
    Redgrift in his week of confusion and simmering anger.

    Damnation, she had his journal. The seductive minx had his life in
    her hands. It was disconcerting to have his private sexual thoughts pried
    into, but more than that it was devastating that anyone of Affinity’s
    station learn his secret . . . that he was the Benefactor. One wrong word
    from her petal soft lips, or one wrong excited tittering of gossip and his
    mission would be at an end. Then how could he atone, he thought, even
    as he knew there was no possible way he could ever right his wrong doing?

    Law settled his shoulder against the roughened bark of the elm tree
    as he inhaled slowly on a cigarillo. The fog was dense enough that his
    darkly clothed figure became a shadow in the shifting mists. The fog
    condensed everything around him, holding the smoke from his cigarillo
    like a tangible thing, with the scent wafting strongly in his nostrils. The
    sudden image of Magdalena laughing as she coughed ridiculously after
    trying a puff of one of his cigarillos sprang into his mind. Thoughts of
    that time always seemed to haunt him more when he could smell the
    smoke the strongest.

    He had seemed so young then, yet it had only been three years ago
    that he was a first captain in England’s finest military. Then, he had been
    a second son and all second sons dutifully joined the military. His joining
    found him immediately embroiled in the Spanish War. A hellish action
    that no proper English gentleman would have fathomed in their wildest
    dreams. There was no way a man could prepare for the horror of war and
    the complete foreignness of a country so far away, and he knew that
    logically, yet one has to live it to understand the compelling strangeness
    of it all.
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    Nonetheless, that was no excuse for his inexperience and for his
    devastating naiveté. It had cost Magdalena her life. Magdalena, the
    beautiful whore who had saved his life, just as he had ended hers. He had
    berated himself a thousand times and in a thousand different hells for not
    realizing that an English officer’s presence in a Spanish whore’s adobe
    hut could get her killed.

    But, she had to know, Law thought, tilting his head back against the
    tree, she had to know how dangerous it was. He had simply thought that
    if the Spanish found him, they would capture him as a prisoner. A