My Pleasure by Connie Brockway

into their drawing rooms when the tutor or governess who has custody of their offsprings’ character isn’t allowed through the door?”
    He stopped before a blooming topiary. “Oh, not every drawing room door.” He flashed a smile. “Some people maintain standards.”
    “You sound as if you despise the skills you teach.”
    “No. Not a bit of it,” he corrected her with unwilling gravity. “But then, I was taught swordplay as a discipline, not a sport.”
    “A discipline?”
    “Yes. The mind translated to physical expression, precision and instinct honed by long years of practice before being married to imagination. I never even held a sword until I had mastered the elemental footwork. It took me a year to do so, and I was an adept student.
    “Given my druthers, I would teach it the same way. Hone my students’ skills like my masters honed their blades. But I haven’t the time. I haven’t—” He broke off, essaying a brief, shattering smile before turning his bright gaze away from her, concealing once more the core of him.
    “Be damned!” he drawled. “As improbable as it is, I swear I begin to bore even myself! I commend you, miss, on your apparent ability to perambulate while asleep. Because I cannot for the life of me conceive how you could have remained awake during that self-aggrandizing little sermon.”
    “On the contrary, I found it fascinating.”
    “Did you?” he asked, looking amused and cool and invulnerable. “Lud, my dear, you must contrive to get out more often. Shall we continue on?”
    He set out to charm her, droll and wry and a little bit wicked in his observations. He led her from amusement to amusement, purchasing ribbons and silk flowers to pin to her sleeves, plying her with the delicious arrack punch and tiny iced cakes, and stopping once beneath a giant beech tree to listen to a string quartet play one of Handel’s sonatas. In short, he did exactly as he had promised. He showed her a new world and made her feel irresistible.
    Luckily, she had been admired before. Luckily, she would not read anything into that. Luckily, her head could not be turned by the intensity of his regard. She knew better. She would not become smitten with him. Ramsey Munro was adept at making a lady feel attractive and interesting. Wasn’t that a rake’s stock-in-trade?
    Their path eventually led them toward the crescents of dinner boxes lining either side of The Grove, where a party of masked revelers had begun a riotous country reel. Helena had paused, her foot tapping to the beat of the snare drum, when she felt a slight chill creep up her spine. She looked about, unable to shake the unpleasant feeling that sinister eyes watched her, but she saw no one. She glanced at Ramsey.
    “See that lady over there?” he asked, nodding at a buxom American Indian princess twirling arm in arm with a young sailor.
    “Yes?”
    “She is a famous marchioness as well as a newly made grandmother. Her reputation is impeccable, and her social hauteur alarming by any standards. Yet here she is, enjoying herself immensely all because she knows she can be as anonymous as”—his gaze slipped down and touched her face—“as you.”
    Helena regarded the breathless woman collapsing, laughing, into the arms of her sailor. “Who is the sailor?”
    “A sailor.” He grinned at her skeptical look. “Truly. He is a junior lieutenant in His Majesty’s Navy. I spoke with him earlier. His ship arrived from Egypt last week.”
    “But if she is so great a lady, is she wise to risk being here?”
    “Wise?” he asked. “Perhaps not. But she may well feel the risk worth the reward. She will go home tonight happy and tomorrow will perhaps be a bit brighter for remembering what it was to be young and carefree. And dance a reel.”
    She looked up at him and his smile was almost winsome, hiding nothing. “And the young lieutenant,” he continued, “will someday tell his children how once upon a time, for a few bright