Free Perilous Pleasures by Jenny Brown

about it—explaining how a first sexual encounter with an attractive man could cause a dangerous state of mental instability that made young girls long for proposals of marriage where none were possible and kept them from accepting more profitable arrangements that were.
    Zoe had thought her good sense would render her immune to it. She had no romantic expectations—she’d never had them—and she’d known exactly what she was getting into when she’d entered Lord Ramsay’s chamber. She hadn’t dreamed the virgin’s sickness would afflict her. But apparently she’d been wrong. For her body burned now with the yearnings the sleeping lord had awakened in her—though all she had awakened in him was disgust.
    She told herself there was no point in dwelling on what she couldn’t change and forced herself to stare through the raindrops that drizzled down the coach window at the monotonous moor that stretched away in all directions. But it was no use.
    Why had his eyes looked so unexpectedly kind this morning? Why had he made her feel as if he could sympathize with the pain she felt—the very pain that he himself had caused?
    She forced her attention back to the window just in time to see a circling raven swoop down on some invisible prey. It seemed like an omen. Could Ramsay really be a wizard? She recalled those odd words that had burst out of him when he had discovered her fallen knife: The Dark Lord’s heir must not touch iron .
    There was only one kind of creature that feared cold iron—a witch. She was too good a student of science to believe in witchcraft, but still, he had read her thoughts, more than once. And though he was an educated man—far better educated than she was— he obviously believed in wizardry. She couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps what he believed in was more than just a fantasy.
    Men had been hanged for witchcraft in Scotland within living memory. There must still be some there who practiced the ancient ways, and if they did, where better to practice their grim rites than on a remote island far from the reach of the authorities? Whatever she might believe, what had taken place the past night in Lord Ramsay’s darkened chamber left no room for doubt about the power he attributed to sexual purity—which made all the more worrisome the Dark Lord’s insistence she be a virgin.
    In spite of herself, she shuddered.
    She couldn’t allow him to take her to the island. She must flee before he brought her to his master. She would do it tonight, when they stopped at the next inn. She would have to.
    At least she need not fear that when she was out on the road alone some brigand would ravish her. Lord Ramsay had made it clear that, as her mother had always told her, no man would ever want her in that way.
    B ut that night they didn’t stop at an inn. They barely stopped at all, and when they did it was only to change horses. Though Ramsay was soaked to the skin from the dreary mizzling rain that had been falling much of the day, he seemed possessed by some fury that drove him to keep on traveling.
    When they did stop to change horses, he ordered hampers of food to be brought out to them, but except when she went to answer the call of nature, he didn’t let her out of his sight. At their last stop before nightfall he informed her that they would ride all night. The skies had cleared and he wanted to take advantage of the full moon to make more progress on their journey.
    Zoe’s despair grew as the horses clattered each lengthening mile from the city. How would she ever get away?
    It was close to midnight when they stopped yet again to change horses at an inn that stood in the center of a tiny village. Zoe had fallen asleep, but woke at the sound of Ramsay’s voice calling out an order to the postilion. By the time she was fully roused, he was gone. Through the window of the chaise she saw him striding into the