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Then understanding dawned.

Good heavens!

Her gloved hand flew to her lips as heat rushed through her. She had known, in the vaguest sense, what occurred between a husband and wife. She was two and twenty, after all, and hardly so sheltered that she believed children arrived through divine intervention. Yet nothing she had ever heard or imagined had prepared her for the sight of a gentleman kneeling between a woman’s parted thighs, apparently intent upon giving her pleasure with his mouth.

Was such a thing truly done?

She stared, unable to prevent her gaze from returning to the woman’s face. Her head was tipped back, one hand tangled in the gentleman’s hair, her expression one of such exquisite abandon that Cordelia felt an answering flutter deep in her belly.

What astonished her most was that the gentleman appeared entirely devoted to the woman’s enjoyment. There was no suggestion that she was merely submitting to his desires. Rather, he seemed to be worshipping her, taking pleasure in the very act of pleasing her.

Cordelia’s breath grew shallow.

She had always imagined that such intimacies were matters gentlemen desired and ladies endured, or perhaps enjoyed in some mysterious fashion that no one had ever thought to explain to her. Yet the woman in the painting appeared neither embarrassed nor reluctant. She looked positively transported.

Cordelia glanced toward the adjoining works, where other couples embraced in varying states of undress. One painting depicted a lady seated before a looking glass, her chemise slipping from one shoulder as she explored her own body. Cordelia's cheeks burned. Another showed a gentleman reclining alone, his nakedness rendered with such startling detail that she hastily looked away.

Her gaze returned to the lovers.

There was something almost unbearably intimate about the tenderness captured between them, something that stirred a longing she had never quite known how to name. She wondered what it might feel like to be desired so completely, to trust a gentleman enough to surrender every last restraint and know that her pleasure mattered as much as his own.

And quite without invitation, she imagined George kneeling before her.

The thought was so shocking that Cordelia took an abrupt step backward.

Good heavens, what is wrong with me?

She had come to discover the truth about his character, not to stand in his private chamber entertaining the most scandalous imaginings of her life. Her cheeks aflame, Cordelia whirled and hurried toward the door. Her fingers had just closed around the handle when his voice sounded behind her.

“You have come this far,” he said quietly. “Why are you running now?”

Cordelia froze. Had he mistaken her for someone else? She swallowed and took another step, resolving to pretend she had not heard him and escape this thoroughly outrageous predicament.

“No answer, Cori?”

Her knees threatened to give way.

Oh God.

CHAPTER 16

The sound of her name, spoken so softly and with such unmistakable certainty, stole the breath from Cordelia’s lungs. She was masked, disguised beneath feathers and ribbons, and surely no one would expect to find a respectable young lady in such a place.

Yet he knew.

Every impropriety she had committed rushed upon her at once: deceiving her parents, disguising herself, entering a pleasure palace without a chaperone, and examining paintings no lady of quality was supposed even to imagine.

She had never considered that George might discover her so quickly.

Or, indeed, that he might discover her at all.

Her pulse thundered in her ears as she stood frozen, caught between the urge to flee and the humiliation of being discovered, painfully aware that in this moment she was neither observer nor judge, but the one being observed. Seen. Unmasked in every way that mattered.

She was not meant to be found here, least of all by the very gentleman she had come to watch.

Then she felt him behind her, standing so close that she could sense the warmth of his body.

When had he moved?