Why shouldn’t Lady Lillian take the chance of a night’s fun and freedom, hidden from high-society an out of reach of the duke’s continual criticisms? She’d lost enough of her life while married to a man who didn’t deserve either her patience or her fortitude. Starting tonight, she’d take control of herself and rebirth the confident and happy person that only appeared now when she was staying at her father’s country estate.

She’d been excited about this night for weeks and she’d no intention of running away before she’d explored and widened her experience, though only visually. Not even if Brenton threatened to expose her, or worse, visit her father and reveal where she’d been. Stiffening her spine, she took Brenton’s hand and, after muttering a quick apology to her cluster of admirers, led him straight to one of the balcony doors. She didn’t stop until they were in a darkened section of the balcony where no one could overhear their conversation.

She dropped his hand and turned to lean on the veranda rail and stared out at the garden. ‘What are you doing here?’ She spoke without turning to face him, both mortified and terrified that he’d discovered her here.

‘Michael dragged me here.’ He caught her wrist and tugged her around to face him. ‘Who is that woman you are with? Did she bring you here?’ He ran his hand through his hair, trying to calm himself and dampen down his anger. ‘Of course she brought you here. You wouldn’t have known to come to a place like this otherwise. Did she coerce you in some way?’

Lillian chuckled. ‘Do you truly believe me such an innocent that I don’t know the location of brothels or the estate houses that hold balls where the main guests are ladies of the night? I’m not that naïve, Brent. When I was a married woman, the other married ladies spoke constantly about the state of their marriages. Those conversations included such things as where their husbands, fathers, or brothers went to visit paid women, and what happened in those places.’ She snorted. ‘They’d no idea that my own marriage was so dismal that the only times my husband touched me in bed was those rare occasions when he remembered he was supposed to breed a son and so made an appointment for the next night to visit my bedchamber. Even during those ten dreadful minutes he spent with me, he never thought to explain what happened between a man and a woman, or about how children were conceived. My mother, the duchess, gave me a one sentence explanation on my wedding day of how to act with my husband and the need to create a child, but she unfortunately never gave me the information I needed about what physical intimacy entailed, so the first time my husband lifted the hem of my night dress, I panicked.’

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