In the process, she convinced everyone a duke (my dear friend Jeremy Sheffield) had mercilessly broken her heart and so completely won her parents’ sympathies that they hardly balked when a few months later she’d accepted the proposal of a don at Oxford. She had admitted to being rather astonished at having agreed to marry anyone but said that some charms could not be resisted, and Mr. Michaels had them in abundance. It had all turned out brilliantly.

“I don’t like it at all,” Colin said, turning over and rubbing a gentle hand over the now blooming purple marks on my arm when I’d finished reading the letter. “How on earth did this happen?”

“It was entirely inadvertent,” I said, not wanting to confess that I’d angered the sultan. “A guard was leading me out of the palace, and you know how steep the paths are at Yıldız. His grip was firm and I bruise easily.”

“No one’s grip is that fierce by accident.”

“I’d never before considered the possibility of deliberately violent eunuchs.” I folded the letter and tossed it aside, then scrunched the ends of my pillow and dropped my elbows in the center of it, resting my chin on my hands. “But perhaps that’s precisely what he is.”

“If only I’d been there to defend you.”

“Rest assured I have no need of rescuing.”

“I’m well aware of that.” He pulled the pillow out from under me, rolled onto my back, and kissed my neck, the feeling of his legs against the backs of mine bliss itself. “But I do think, my dear, that you underestimate the value of being saved from dire circumstances. You might find it more than a little titillating.”

“I promised you no unnecessary danger, and you must promise me no rescues.”

“I wish you’d rescue me,” he said, biting my ear.

“Stop. I’m being serious,” I said.

“I’m all too aware of it. It’s not so glamorous and invigorating as you think, necessary danger.”