Or else she had not heard him clearly.A man did not want anything more than death itself.The cab pulled up to the curb.Anne stared through the small, square window; it was smeared with tiny fingerprints—the hands of a child.The brick town house looked different.Older. More conservative.Anne felt different.Younger. Less confident.Last night she had thought to buy the pleasure Michel des Anges could give a woman. She had never, ever thought he would give her access to his body.To his life.Anne tripped as she stepped out of the cab.Clumsy, clumsy old maid.Her hands inside her gloves were clammy.With fear.With anticipation.Last night had changed her body.Living with Michel would change her life.She could never again take her place among those of the respectable ton who were her parents' contemporaries.Anne gave the grim-faced cabby a sixpence.How much had Michel paid the cabby last night? she wondered inanely. More than what she now paid?The door to the town house opened just as Anne reached for it."Miss Aimes." The butler, an attractive man in his fifties with receding sandy hair, stepped aside for her to enter.
