Three Times the Scandal by Madelynne Ellis

lock, positioned herself on the end of Giles’s canopied bed. Hands in her lap and feet pressed together, she faced him primly. Her anger, which had subsided over the length of her confinement, surged again on seeing his face.
    “ Is your orgy over?” she snapped.
    Giles folded his arms and rested his bottom against the back of the door. “They left over an hour ago.”
    She’d expected a denial, or some form of wheedling from him, nothing quite so straightforward.
    “ Did I mean nothing to you? I know I shouldn’t expect anything of you, but I thought the pleasure you showed me meant something. But then you ran straight into the arms of a whore.”
    “ Fortuna, it did mean something.” The floorboards creaked as he moved towards her. “I couldn’t explain earlier. If Oxbury or Littleton had found you...” He shook his head. “That thing...gathering, was not an orgy. I didn’t embrace any whores. It was a meeting of the Society of Free Lovers. If they’d seen you here, they’d have assumed you intended to be part of it.” He stretched out a hand towards her, but didn’t touch her yet. “Some of them stop listening when a pretty girl is within their grasp. Having them find you here would have put you at risk of far more terrible things than their simply revealing your presence to your family or Macleane.”
    She stood. Vexation made her nose tingle. When he’d first shut her in here, she’d wanted to rage, but hadn’t dared make any noise after her first yelp of outrage. Now all that pent up anger needed an outlet. “Yet you call such men your friends. What kind of man are you?”
    “ They’re acquaintances, not friends. And the Society was never supposed to be what it turned into. They’ve distorted it.”
    Fortuna read sincerity in his face, and now within touching distance, the musky scent of his body teased her senses. She realized to her chagrin that she wanted to forgive him, just accept him as he was, and forget the past two hours, but how could she? Did she even dare trust him? He’d locked her in here.
    She clenched her fists, but the desire to lash out had vanished. “Very well.” Her shoulders slumped. “I’ll hear you out. Explain what this Society of Free Love is supposed to be about, if it’s not just a love of fornication.”
    “ Thank you.” Giles perched on the end of the bed, on top of the swathe of blue damask. Fortuna also resumed her seat, but kept a good distance between them. She wasn’t ready to accept his touch yet.
    “ It’s as it sounds,” he said, fidgeting with the tassel on the bedspread. “The idea is that one’s ability to love isn’t restricted by society’s skewed morals and values. We grant ourselves the freedom to explore the affections we feel without unnecessary guilt for the consequences. We eschew all marriage, because it’s absurd to bind yourself to one partner for life, and because all marriage is slavery anyway.”
    Fortuna frowned. That was the second time he’d expressed that opinion. “Slavery?”
    “ Yes, especially for women. You bind yourselves to a man, who can then do with you as he pleases. People should make love because they desire one another, not because the man is invoking his conjugal rights.”
    “ Yes, but...” She blinked, certain she ought to contradict his claims—he was blackening the very foundations of society—but quite at a loss over what to say that wouldn’t make it sound as though she cherished the idea of being bought and sold and ruled over by a series of tyrants .
    “ Fortuna, marriage is all about virtue, about women as possessions. Wouldn’t you rather be a whole person, responsible for yourself, than the asset of some fool husband?”
    “ I don’t see how these things go together.”
    Giles clasped his hand before him and tapped his thumbs to his lips. “All right, tell me this. Why should I find a woman any less desirable as a companion because she’s no longer a virgin? Laying aside the issues