When You're Desired by Tamara Lejeune Page A

like the throaty purr of a cat—irritating, but arousing, too.
    â€œLord, but she’s a pretty child!”
    Turning his head slightly, he discovered that Lord Torcaster and Miss Rogers had followed him. Torcaster had spoken.
    â€œI remember the first time I saw her,” he went on. “She was Shylock’s daughter in The Merchant of Venice. This would have been before your time, my dear,” he added, patting Miss Rogers’s hand.
    â€œNot at all. I was Portia,” she coolly replied.
    â€œReally? Then you know her?”
    Selina lifted a shoulder. “Slightly.”
    â€œShe had a scene in the play where she elopes with her Christian lover,” Torcaster said, returning to his narrative. “When St. Lys went down the ladder backwards in those breeches, there was not a man in the house who did not sit up and take notice. For weeks, I searched in vain for that raven-haired Jewess. Months later, I found her: Cordelia in King Lear . Blond, by God, and a Christian!”
    â€œDreadful production,” Miss Rogers said, shaking her head.
    â€œWorst Lear I ever saw!” Torcaster said with feeling. “What can they have been thinking? Edmund Kean was fine in the role, but they killed Cordelia! It’s as though they’d never read the play. Cordelia marries Edgar. Lear regains his throne, and Cordelia marries Edgar. Everybody knows that. Her death made a tragedy of the whole thing, and that cannot be what the Bard intended.”
    Selina laughed. “But that is exactly what the Bard intended. They changed it in the seventeenth century. Mr. Kean thought it might be fun to change it back again.”
    â€œFun! I don’t go to the theatre to see beautiful girls murdered.”
    Simon smiled faintly. “The first time I ever saw St. Lys was in the role of Desdemona.”
    Selina sniffed. “That part should have gone to me. St. Lys is more suited to comedy, don’t you think? I don’t say she is a bad actress, only that some roles are just too big for her.”
    â€œIt was the role that made her famous,” said Simon, shrugging.
    â€œOnly because you men came back from the war hungry for blue-eyed blondes,” she said. “All you men were in love with her in the summer of ’fourteen. Dark girls like me didn’t stand a chance in those days. She still has a certain fondness for a red coat,” she added, glancing across the room.
    â€œShe’s always had the most deplorable taste in men,” said Torcaster. “Lord Palmerston had her first, of course. Then there was that demmed Frenchy—”
    â€œOh! The Marquis de Brissac, as he called himself,” sneered Selina.
    Torcaster grunted. “Got himself killed in a duel, didn’t he?”
    â€œNo, my lord. You remember. When Napoleon escaped from Elba, he rushed back to France to stand with his king and got himself killed. Anyone would have thought she was his widow the way she carried on!”
    â€œShe seems to have recovered from her grief,” Simon observed.
    â€œYes,” Selina agreed, laughing.
    Torcaster shook his head. “Poor thing,” he murmured. “She could have had me.”

Chapter 4
    â€œNo, Clare; I beseech you,” Celia protested weakly even as she took her third glass of champagne from the young man’s hand. “You promised. One glass.”
    â€œThere’s no such thing as one glass of champagne,” he replied. “Look! They made it pink just for you.”
    Awestruck, Celia held up her glass. “How did they do that?”
    â€œBy adding three drops of claret.”
    Celia laughed, and touched her glass to his.
    â€œWhat are we drinking to?”
    â€œTo Mr. West, of course,” she said, looking down at the Honorable Thomas West, upon whose strong young back she was seated. Looking down made her feel slightly dizzy. “Are you all right, Tom?”
    â€œTom’s all right,”