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for all to see, but Esther had managed to escape with a promise to share all that had happened over a morning’s walk through the gardens – a promise she did not intend to keep if she could satisfy Eleanor with evasive half-truths instead.
    The only blessing about getting out of bed to own to at least some of the truth of the passion she had shared with the Comte was that he would be gone by now, thank goodness – only Eleanor and Anton’s closest friends would be staying at the manor until the christening, and the Comte de Rouvroy could not possibly be one of them. If she had to face him at the christening, then so be it, but at least by then enough time would have elapsed that she would have regained both her senses and control of her treacherous body that had responded to his so wantonly.
    Just the memory of the way that the Comte had kissed her was enough to make Esther very grateful that she was alone, for her physical reaction was so vivid that her breath caught in her throat. She closed her eyes and guiltily allowed her mind to fill with the imagined thoughts of how it would have been had she allowed him to accompany her to bed.
    The compulsion to draw up her skirts and reach down between her legs descended upon her with breathtaking force. The mere image of the Comte’s handsome face in the forefront of her mind was enough to send her desire for him soaring once more. Esther gasped out loud, fighting with all her might to cling onto the reasons she had for dismissing him last night; the reasons why she should not even be imagining allowing him to strip away their clothing and fill her with the more than ample length of the cock that had surged so invitingly against her hand.
    She could not have him. The Comte was the living man she hated more than anyone else, for he was the one who had brought shame upon the only family she had remaining.
    Esther’s cousin, Charlotte Tennyson, had been engaged to be married to one of the most prominent lords in the country; it was a prestigious arrangement that her father, Esther’s uncle, had striven hard to make and was deeply proud of, for it would have assured his only child’s security for the rest of her life.
    The young and innocent Charlotte, however, had been seduced into giving up her virginity to a man who was not her fiancé – to the Comte de Rouvroy, the notorious French rake. Understandably, her fiancé had been rightfully enraged when Charlotte had tearfully confessed to him what had happened and he had broken off the engagement to leave her with the stain of the broken betrothal hanging over her head, much to her father’s dismay.
    No-one outside of the family knew the details of Charlotte’s disgrace; and as such, the Comte’s role in her downfall was unknown to all but Esther, her uncle and Charlotte herself.
    Lost in her jumbled thoughts, Esther did not at first register the knock that came on her bedchamber door until it was repeated. The knocking was soft but insistent, and with no maid now to send away the intruder, she had no choice but to climb out of bed and answer the door herself. Anticipating that it would only be Eleanor, she did not bother to even gather up a sheet to wrap around herself before irritably tugging on the door handle – and, to her horror, opening the door to the Comte himself.
    A wicked gleam sparkled in his dark eyes as he held out a heavily-laden breakfast tray towards her. She was deliciously sleep-rumpled; her cheeks were flushed and her tousled hair fanned out, calling to him to fist his hands through it. Patience , Tristan reminded himself, even though the way that his cock was already straining against his breeches again was making it impossible to think clearly at all. “Good – good morning, ma chére ,” he finally greeted her, recovering his composure as her eyes settled upon the evidence of his instant arousal and widened.
    Esther could not prevent her tongue from darting out across her parted lips as, wholly