A Rose at Midnight by Anne Stuart Page A

someone simply took what she said without questioning. “Thank you, Tony.”
    She’d make an estimable wife and mother, he thought absently, watching her. Sweet, docile, well-bred. But he couldn’t help wondering whether beneath that gentle, faintly worried expression lurked any capability for passion.
    “Everything will be fine,” he said, ignoring his own wayward thoughts. “Nicholas will have decamped, the servants will probably have gotten into the port, and your… friend will be wishing she’d had the good sense to accompany you.” A sudden, decidedly unpleasant thought struck him, as he remembered certain proclivities, ones he’d never thought sweet Ellen would share. “She is simply a friend, isn’t she?” he found himself asking.
    Clearly Ellen didn’t have the faintest notion what he meant. “What else would she be?” she asked. “We’re not related, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    “That’s not what I was asking.”
    One thing he found slightly disturbing about Ellen was her tenacity. She wasn’t a sweet, silky-coated spaniel, she was a terrier gnawing away at a bone. “I still haven’t the faintest notion what you’re saying, Tony, and I wish you’d be more specific. If it involves Ghislaine I want to know. I’m worried enough as it is. Explain yourself, please.”
    Curse his tongue. He didn’t usually make the mistake of letting it flap at both ends. “It doesn’t concern either of you,” he began, hoping she’d let it rest at that. The mutinous expression on her face told him otherwise. He sighed. If he was going to marry the woman, beget his heirs on her, then he might as well begin her sexual education here and now. “Occasionally women develop a relationship that is… shall we say, a bit too intense.”
    She still didn’t appear to understand. “You’ll have to be more specific, Tony. Ghislaine and I have a very close relationship. What, pray tell, is the matter with that?”
    Oh, Lord, he thought. “Occasionally women prefer other women,” he said flatly.
    “What’s the problem with that? I much prefer the company of most women I know to the men I’ve met. We have more in common, we don’t have to discuss ridiculous things like hunting and boxing and politics—”
    “I thought you liked politics,” he said, affronted.
    “Well, I do. But not to the exclusion of everything else,” she said frankly. “So explain, Tony. What are you trying to tell me?”
    In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought, wishing Miss Binnerston would wake up and put a period to this discussion. The damned woman continued to snore, and there was no way out of it.
    “Certain women prefer not just the company of other women, dearest,” he said. “They prefer the bodies of other women.”
    She sat very still, as the notion sank in. If her cheeks had been flushed with pale color before, they were now flaming crimson. “You mean they…?”
    He nodded, finally beginning to enjoy himself. “Indeed,” he said.
    “But how… No, don’t answer that,” she begged.
    He found himself smiling in the dimly lit carriage. “It would be difficult to explain,” he said, “since you probably don’t even understand what goes on between men and women in the first place. Most gently bred English girls don’t.”
    “I do,” she said, surprising him. “Gilly told me.”
    He didn’t waste his time asking how Gilly knew. “That sounds like a most improper conversation to be having with one’s cook,” he observed.
    “Gilly and I aren’t proper, we’re honest. You’re right, most gently bred English girls don’t understand what goes on between men and women. I wanted to know, so I asked Gilly.”
    “You could have asked me.”
    She looked up at him then, surprise stripping her face of its color, but before she could speak Miss Binnerston chose that miserable moment to awaken.
    “Dear me,” Binnie said, pushing her bonnet and her wig back on her head. “I must have dozed off. Have I