The Jezebel by Saskia Walker Page A

and why, she did not expect that she would enjoy it herself—and she had, immensely. Nor did she expect the man she had chosen by default, in exchange for her passage to Dundee, to seem so thoroughly sated and pleasured by her company.
    “There is one thing I do not understand.” He considered her, his gaze encompassing her body, stretched upon his bunk, as he spoke. “It is true that you have not lain with a man before—that much is plain to see.”
    He paused and lifted the cover, the look in his eyes brooding as he considered her intimate womanly flesh at the juncture between her thighs, so freshly invaded by his rigid manhood, and the lingering streaks of blood on her inner thighs.
    Maisie trembled. Every sensation she had experienced—from pleasure to pain, and back again into ecstasy—was so close in her physical memory that when he looked at her that way it ran through her flesh like myriad lightning strikes. How strange that was, that she had been so thoroughly affected by him. Maisie marveled at it, her heart racing as she contemplated the intense pleasure that had been borne out of the pain.
    “How is it then,” he continued as he lowered the cover, “that you seem to be so skilled, that you know so much about giving yourself willingly, and pleasuring a man?” He asked the question in a forthright manner, as seemed to be his way.
    But how was she to answer? The explanation would sound strange to anyone she might offer it to, and she would not blame a man for not believing it.
    A virgin who was highly educated about fornication.
    It was little wonder his brow was so furrowed. Maisie could not give her answer aloud. Instead, she rose up to kiss his firm, masculine mouth, in order to distract him.
    It is because I was taught everything I would ever need to know by my guardian, my keeper, and that included detailed study of the nature of physical congress and all it can bring for a woman such as I.

CHAPTER SIX
    At his wife’s request Cyrus Lafayette allowed “young Margaret” several weeks to grow accustomed to her new life in their Islington home before he began her education. Even though her guardian waited for her to settle in, Maisie could tell he was impatient. He wanted her instruction to begin. She soon discovered that her education was of great importance to Cyrus, although it was not until she was much older that she fully understood the reasons why.
    The Lafayette house was large and overwhelming, and it took some time for Margaret to think of it as her home. The hallways were filled with sculptures and paintings, and the many rooms each had a different purpose, unlike the small croft cottage in which she had spent her infancy, and later the rented room she and her siblings had shared with their mother in the Lowlands. Maisie’s favorite place was the garden, where she felt closer to nature, but also safe, because of the high walls that surrounded it and kept it private. There were mulberry and crab apple trees, and neatly planted borders either side of the path. Cyrus often reminded her that she was safe inside those walls, indicating that would not be the case if she ventured beyond.
    Margaret learned that the house was located in London, close to the cabinet where Cyrus was known as an influential government orator, and near the fashionable coffeehouses where he engaged in intellectual discourse with other important men. In those ostentatious environs Cyrus discussed subject matter for many of the articles he wrote on important issues of the time, essays that were circulated far and wide in books and then pamphlets and newspapers.
    The passage of time did settle her, eventually, and it helped that the Lafayette household was run with strict routine, according to the master’s instructions, the servants and the mistress of the house following his orders without fail. So it was that Maisie adopted their strange but somehow comforting regimen. As the Lafayette ward, she did not want for