Charlotte approached the leather chair, prodding gently at it as if she expected it to explode before her eyes. “How exactly does one conduct a ravishment in a chair?”

Both of Dare’s eyebrows rose.

“Where, for instance, do the legs go?”

His eyebrows rose even higher.

“And what about the…instrument? How exactly is it wielded in such a situation?”

Dare mused upon his luck in having thick hair, for if he had not, his eyebrows would have found themselves at the back of his head. “Lady Charlotte—”

She stared at the chair with a puzzled frown, one hand holding her unbuttoned breeches together. “I simply cannot picture it. Not even in Vyvyan La Blue’s famed Guide to Connubial Calisthenics is an armchair mentioned.”

Dare opened his mouth to take his leave once and for all.

“I would have remembered such a thing if it were!”

He shook his head. He had to gather his wits, and do it now, else he’d be lost in the mad twirl of her thoughts.

“It wouldn’t be an easy thing to overlook, and I paid diligent attention to the chapters on creative use of furnishings as Antonio was so very fond of brocade.”

“Regardless—” Brocade? Surely he was not hearing her correctly.

“You wouldn’t think a man would find brocade a thing of enjoyment, but Antonio loved to have me wrap him in long lengths of it, then use a carpet beater on him.”

“I must be…did you say carpet beater?”

She nodded, tracing a finger down the curved back of the chair. “Yes, he said it made the brocade soft and pliable and soothing to the skin, although how he could appreciate that with all the twitching and spasming and moaning he did as a result of the application of the carpet beater is beyond my understanding.”

He thought that was the least of what was beyond her understanding.

“Still, he looked forward to the brocade beating sessions, so I guess there must be some merit in what he said.”

Dare took a good, firm grip on his wits, and made one last effort to save his sanity. “Lady Charlotte?”

Charlotte turned to him with a sweet, completely misleading expression on her bearded face. “Yes, my lord?”

He looked deep into her lovely eyes, fathomless and clear, and he knew a yearning not felt since he was young and foolish and in love for the first time. But he was no longer young, and foolish though he might be, he had no place for love in his life. “Good evening.”

“But, my lord…”

He walked to the door and unlocked it, glancing back over his shoulder to forever burn the image in his mind of the woman who had somehow, against his will, stayed in his heart after five lonely years. She was beautiful. Ethereal. A goddess, still as marble, clad in rumpled silk stockings, her ruff skewed slightly to one side with her exertions, the long lace fall of her linen shirt tangling with the hand that clutched her breeches together, the codpiece dangling in disarray. Her face was pale against the burning red of her beard, making her eyes glitter bright and clear as the bluest of summer skies.