“Which I lack,” she retorted, spinning round to face him. “I grant you the semblance of elegance and grace, but that’s all it is, a semblance, a manufactured look produced by artificial garments made of cords and whalebone invented by men to create just for them their ideal shape of a woman.” She spun back to the mirror. “Look at me. I look like Clothilde Delmont. Is that what you want, Guy? Is that really what you want? Because if so, why the hell did you marry me?”

“Because you’re not Clothilde,” he said softly into the pulsating silence.

Petra’s mouth opened, then closed as she struggled for words. She was ready to fight and with that soft statement he had cut the ground from beneath her feet.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve told you that you need never give Clothilde a second thought, Petra.”

“Yes . . . I know,” she stumbled. “But then you go and do something like this, trying to make me look like her.”

“Nonsense, you don’t look remotely like her, corset or not,” he retorted. “You have a lot more in common with the Macedonian guerrilla than the vicomtesse.”

“Oh,” Petra said. “Did she ever wear a corset?”

“Good God no. I don’t think she ever wore anything but britches and a jerkin,” he said.

Petra grinned. “That sounds more my style, I’ve always wanted to wear britches.”

Guy looked pensive. “I can think of certain scenarios where that might be appealing.”

Petra fumbled with the buttons at the back of the crimson gown. “Get me out of this, Guy, quickly.” His simple statement had sent the familiar electric jolt of arousal into her belly and she struggled to catch her breath, which had little to do with the corset’s constraint.

“Must I?” he teased.

“If you don’t want me to expire on the spot.”

“That wouldn’t suit my plans at all.” He spun her around and unfastened the tiny buttons at the back of the dress, then attacked the laces of the corset, observing, “Mrs. Young certainly believes in tight lacing.”

“No, she doesn’t, she hates selling these abominations,” Petra told him, hurling the despised garment to the ground. “Look at the marks it’s made.” She lifted the bottom of her chemise and gingerly touched the deep welts on her skin. “And I only wore it for a few minutes.”

Guy was too familiar with the disfiguring aspects of corset wearing to respond, saying instead, “I assume then that Mrs. Young is a member of the WSPU, like Dr. Garrett Anderson.”