He seemed to be-well, whatever he was doing, Helene had to admit that it felt-well, it felt... He took his hand away.

"You're not ready," he said to her. His hand lay on her thigh. It felt as if it burned into her skin.

Helene bit her lip and her heart sunk. Trust her body to have got it wrong, somehow. "What do I need to do?" she asked.

"God," Rees said, "you really don't have any idea what happens between a man and a woman, do you?"

"Well, of course I do," Helene said with some indignation. She pulled herself into a sitting position and drew up her knees so that she felt less vulnerable. "I was married to you, if you remember. I mean, I am married to you. And I have perfectly accurate memories of that year we lived together. Not to mention the fact that we reenacted the process last week."

"Nine years ago," he said slowly, running one hand down her shoulder. It felt good. She shivered a little. "That's a very long time to be without bedding." So she didn't sleep with Fairfax-Lacy last spring, he thought to himself, with a distinct throb of pleasure.

Helene smiled at him ruefully. "Yes, but as you yourself said, Rees, I'm not made for this kind of activity. I can't pretend that I missed it."

"I said a lot of stupid things," Rees said. He wrapped a finger and thumb around her wrist. "You're much more delicate than I remember."

Helene caught herself, about to say, and you're much bigger. But perhaps he would construe that as a derogatory remark. It might remind him of how she used to complain of being flattened by his weight.

He was running his fingers up her arm now, almost as if she were a harp. "Do you mind if I touch your breasts?" he asked suddenly, not meeting her eyes.

"But-do you want to?" she asked in astonishment.

"Very much."

"Then of course you may," she said, feeling as if she were granting him permission to smoke a cigarillo in her presence, or something equally mundane. A moment later that thought flew from her head. He touched her with the same passion and strength with which he touched the piano keys. Helene felt herself begin to tremble. It felt-it felt-odd. His fingers were sun-dusted, dark against the cream of her skin, curling around her breast. A thumb wandered across her nipple and she almost jumped out of her skin.

A little smile crossed his lips. "Do you like that?"

She opened her mouth but didn't say anything. What was she supposed to say?

He did it again, and again. "Do you like it, Helene?"

"Well," she managed, "it's acceptable." There was a sense of tension between them that made her unable to meet his eyes. She was naked. Naked! And he was caressing her breasts, almost as if she had the same- The thought of Lina brought a chilly moment of sanity. "Do you think we could progress now?" she asked. She certainly didn't want Lina to think that she was taking up Rees's time or even, horror of horrors, deliberately detaining him in her bedchamber in order to win him back.

"Mmmm," he said, and there was something in his voice that made her whole body thrum.

This time she relaxed her legs and let him feel there without protest.

"I don't think this is going to work tonight," he said, after a moment.

Helene felt a wash of disappointment. "Why not? Is there something wrong? Can't you just go ahead?" she asked, hating the fact that she was almost pleading with him.

"Not without hurting you," he said, shaking his head. "I believe that's why bedding was so painful between us years ago, Helene. I didn't know enough to wait for your body to be ready for me."

She could feel tears pricking the back of her eyes. It was all her fault, her body's fault. "I don't mind if it's painful," she said earnestly. "Please, Rees. Please. It wasn't painful the other night, I promise!"

"I'm sorry, Helene," he said, standing up. "I just don't know very much about bedding ladies." He stared down at her. His hair had fallen over his eyes before. "You were my first, you know."

"First lady?"

"That too," he said, with a wry grin.

"I had no idea! You certainly didn't act as if it was a new experience. I thought you had slept with hundreds of women."

"I wanted you to think that, of course. Back then, I was trying to cover up every imaginable shortcoming by pretending they didn't exist."

"What shortcoming?" Helene said. She was trying to avoid looking at him. Even a glimpse of his muscled buttocks seemed to do odd things to her stomach.

"That I was a virgin, among other things," he said. His smile was sardonic. "I bungled your first time, Helene, and I'm sorry about that."

"I don't see what you could have done differently," she pointed out, liking the apology though. "From what I've heard, every woman dislikes the first time."

"Whereas men are supposed to love it," he said and there was a distinct tone of self-derision in his voice now.

"But you didn't," she said, saddened. "I'm sorry if I bungled my part in it."

He stood up and pulled on his shirt. "I should get to work," he said, obviously dismissing the whole memory from his mind. "We'll try again tomorrow night, shall we?"

"What is going to be different tomorrow?" Helene insisted, watching him pull up his smalls.

He didn't answer, so she persisted. "What's going to be different tomorrow night, Rees? We have to do this every single day in order to ensure conception."

"Every day, hmm?" A flash of amusement crossed his face.

"Unless you have some serious objection. Esme says there's no way to know what particular day is the right one, so we can't miss even one day this month or we might have to continue into next month. And if I disappear for two months people will think I've come down with consumption!"

He pulled on his boots and went to the door, then paused. "I'll speak to Darby tomorrow and ask him about bedding ladies. I've never been the sort to engage in that sort of conversation at the club and my brother-" he shrugged. "Sometimes I feel as if Tom must have been born in that black frock of his. We certainly have never discussed women."

"Thank you," she said, watching him leave.

Chapter Twenty-one.

Andante.

Four hours later, Helene realized that she was not going to be able to sleep. She had been staring at the ceiling for hours, thinking. One sentence kept sticking in her mind: Rees said he was going to ask Darby about bedding ladies. So what was so special about bedding a lady? What was different between her and Lina, for example? Why did she need special treatment? She just wanted him to do it, and get it over with.

Far downstairs, in the depths of the house, she could occasionally hear pings from the piano. Apparently Rees meant it when he said he was going to work throughout the night on that lackluster score of his.

Finally Helene rose and pulled on her dressing gown. He could damn well do to her whatever it was he did to women who weren't ladies. She marched down the stairs, her bare toes curling against the smooth wood. The house was so old that each stair dipped a bit in the middle, presumably from the tramping feet of Jacobean Hollands, making their way up to their wives' chambers.

Outside the music room, she paused. He was still working on the same piece but it sounded a bit more adventurous now. Finally she pushed open the door. He threw up his head immediately and stared at her. The room was lit by two candelabra perched on top of the piano. His hair was standing on end, and there were black circles under his eyes. He looked desperately tired and, somehow, defeated.

Helene gave up the idea of bedding on the spot. "Can I help?" she said, tightening the cord of her dressing gown and walking into the room.

He shook his head as if to wake himself up. "I think it's improving." He played the bit that Helene had heard outside the door. "What do you think of this?"

"I like it." This time it felt natural to nudge him over and sit down.

"What if you ended on D in alt? Can your soprano reach that high a note?"

She played it again. "You could pause here on A-natural, and then either up or down to the D."

"Better the first time," Rees said. "It sounds a little florid with that triplet, but I like this minor chord." He pushed her hands off and played it himself. "Nice! You always were the better musician of the two of us, Helene."

"Not so," she said. "You write real music; I just play with notes. Real musicians don't spend months reworking Beethoven for four hands. They write original pieces, as you do."

He closed the top of the piano over the gleaming keys with a quiet click.

"I write poppycock, Helene. You knew it, even back when we first married, before I'd had a single piece staged. You told me that I was doing nothing more than writing squeaky duets and that my harmonies were unremarkable."

"I didn't!" she said, startled. "I have never said such a thing, and I certainly don't think it either! Last year, for example, I didn't love everything in The White Elephant, but there were parts I thought were brilliantly conceived."

That lock of hair had flopped over his eyes again. He leaned against the closed piano keys and gave her a sardonic smile. She could see wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. "I can list precisely what you disliked in the Elephant. The tenor aria in Act One, the oboe and clarinet duet in Act Three, and the minor scale that opened the Finale."

"True," Helene said. "As I told you last year. But I also thought your delineation of character was dazzling. The repeated pianissimo high F's in the Duke's aria were exquisite. The sense of pandemonium during the thunderstorm, when the elephant is running loose, was brilliantly executed. And the soprano mezzo duet, as everyone in London undoubtedly told you, was a glorious bit of inspiration."

He raised an eyebrow. There was a self-mocking smile lurking in the depths of his eyes. "You never told me."

"I didn't-" She stopped. "I should have. I didn't think you cared."

"Did you really like the pianissimo F's?"

She nodded. "It was daring-but it balanced the second half of the aria perfectly."

"I never thought of it in quite those terms. But did you read the review in the Gazette?"

"Written by Giddlesheard, and he's a fool," she said contemptuously.

A slow smile was growing in Rees's eyes. "He loathed that section."

"More fool he." And: "My opinion matters to you?" she asked, still confused. The answer was in his eyes. And this was no time to stand by her pride, not in the darkness of the music room, with the candles making his hair look like coal touched with edges of flame, his eyes like dark pools. No time for dishonesty. "I have always known that you were the true musician of the two of us," she said. "I never thought you'd want me to praise you." She looked at her hands. "I just wanted you to think that I was clever."

He still didn't say anything. She finally looked up to find his eyes fixed on her face. He had beautiful eyes, with the thickest black lashes she'd ever seen.

"You wanted me to think you were clever," he repeated.

Helene raised her chin: in for a penny, in for a pound. "I listen to your operas more carefully than any other piece of music," she confessed.

"Obviously, I couldn't go more than once. It would seem odd. So I listen for something-anything-I can say to you that will demonstrate my own..."

Her voice trailed off. "I have been wretchedly ill-bred and ill-mannered," she said quietly. "I'm ashamed of myself."

Rees reached out and pulled up her chin so his wife's eyes met his, those astounding honest, green eyes of hers. "Did you truly like parts of the Elephant?"

"I loved it," she said flatly. "Everyone did, Rees. You know that."

"The hell with everyone. Did you?"