Far into the night Maggie labored over her lesson plans, saving the beautiful book of drawings for her own pleasure, when she donned one of her new cotton nightgowns and crawled into bed, propping pillows behind her and wriggling until she was comfortable.

The pleasure Maggie got from that rare book was not exactly the sort she had expected. Closer examination proved that the volume contained a great many renderings of men and women in various stages of lovemaking. Embarrassed but too curious to put the book aside, Maggie settled deeper into the pillows and went right on turning pages, learning more about a subject that had previously mystified her with every flip of the leaves.

The pictures were not ugly or sordid in any way, even though the subjects were nude and engaged in acts of the utmost intimacy. Feeling a warm tingling within the depths of herself, Maggie studied each drawing, sometimes turning the book sideways or even upside down in her effort to understand the rites of pleasure depicted in those pages.

Two of the drawings especially interested Maggie, one showing a woman bending over a man who was sitting in a chair, her breast caught gently in his mouth, her face a study in gentle ecstasy; the other was of a woman leaning back against a wall, eyes closed, lips curved into a tender smile, while a man knelt before her, his face buried in what Maggie sincerely hoped was her belly.

The warm ache between Maggie’s legs told her that the man wasn’t kissing the woman’s stomach at all, and she slammed the book closed in a spate of short-lived righteous indignation.

Soon enough she was sleeping and dreaming of Reeve McKenna and this time her erotic dreams had a sweet likeness to the pictures in that frightening, amazing, beautiful book.

Maggie awakened a great deal wiser and feeling pleasantly miserable, craving a relief she could only imagine and certainly wasn’t about to seek out. She spent the morning avoiding the volume of drawings and working over her lesson plans. By midday she had a headache and a great need of fresh air. Wearing another of her new dresses, this one a pink cambric with tiny sprigs of green embroidered upon it, she set out for a walk.

Having no particular destination in mind, Maggie walked with a brisk aimlessness that soon carried her into a street she didn’t recognize. Was the Kirk town house that way? She turned pensively in the opposite direction. Or that way?

A little girl sat playing on the lawn of a very grand house with pillared porches.

Maggie approached the fence with a smile. “Pardon me,” she called brightly, “but do you know the way to Victoria Street? I seem to have lost my way.”

The child looked up at Maggie with blue-green eyes so like Reeve McKenna’s that she clenched the fence’s pickets in both hands and gasped.