'Twas the Night After Christmas by Sabrina Jeffries

skepticism. “Are you indeed?” He leaned back in his chair. “What’s your favorite part?”
    She gauged the length of the book and took a guess. “Page ninety-six.”
    He lifted an eyebrow. “Then by all means, do read that aloud.”
    “All right.” So far there hadn’t been anything terribly shocking, so she thumbed through to it without a qualm.
    But page 96 did not contain text. Instead, there was only a crudely drawn illustration so appalling it took her breath away.
    A woman lay on a bed, naked from the waist down, with her legs parted as she prepared to receive a man whose overly large appendage, also quite naked and rendered in some detail, jutted out from his breeches. The female actually had her hand on it, as if to . . . to assess its dimensions.
    Nothing in Camilla’s experience had prepared her for such a blatant display of carnality.
    “Well, read on,” the earl taunted when she hesitated.
    A blush rose on her cheeks. “I can’t.” She lifted her stunned gaze to his. “There are no words. Just a . . . picture.”
    The color drained from his face. Reaching over, he snatched the book from her and stared at it, then shot her a horrified look. “Oh, holy hell. It has pictures.”

7

    I f Camilla hadn’t been so mortified, she would have laughed. “Surely you knew that.”
    “Not exactly.” When she eyed him skeptically, he shut the book and set it down. “I recently acquired this edition as part of a lot of fifty books I won at auction. I hadn’t looked at it since I bought it. My other edition, in London, is not . . . er . . . illustrated.”
    “You have two editions of that?”
    His eyes narrowed. “You shouldn’t be surprised. You read it ‘often,’ remember?”
    The jig was clearly up. “You know perfectly well I’ve never read that book.” She stared him down. “And if that’s what the illustrations are like, I shudder to think what’s in the text.”
    “You have no idea.” He released an exasperated breath. “You, madam, are the most stubborn female I’ve ever met. If not for that picture, I wonder how far you’d have read before throwing the book at my head.”
    “I’d never throw it at your head, sir.” She tilted up her chin. “Just into the fire.”
    “I would have your head if you did. It’s damned difficult to obtain a copy of it. There are only a few hundred.”
    “Yes, I can see why,” she said dryly. “The illustrations are very poorly rendered.”
    He laughed full out. “They are indeed. Perhaps we should choose some other book.” His eyes gleamed at her. “One with art of a higher quality.”
    “Or writing of a higher quality,” she countered. “Poetry, for example.” When he groaned, she added, “Lord Byron’s Don Juan ought to be just your cup of tea. Or perhaps some of Lord Rochester’s poems. I believe he used a great many naughty words.”
    “I believe he did.” He picked up his glass to down some brandy. “But alas, there are no pictures.”
    She forced a stern expression onto her face. “You, sir, are nothing more than an overgrown child.”
    “Indeed I am,” he said without a trace of remorse. “That’s what happens when a man has no real childhood to speak of. He has to make up for it later.”
    Even as she caught her breath to hear him reveal something about his past, he realized what he’d said and added, “But how the devil does a sheltered female like you know of Don Juan ? Or Lord Rochester’s poems?”
    “I’m not so sheltered as all that. As you well know, I was raised in a London orphanage.”
    “Where they fed you on risqué poetry?” he quipped.
    “Well, no. I found out about Lord Byron’s scandalous Don Juan from the newspaper.”
    “Ah. So you haven’t actually read the poem.”
    “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, no,” she said primly.
    He lifted one eyebrow. “Trust me, you’d know if you had.”
    “I suppose you’ve read it.”
    “I have my own copy. But I don’t have