Thank you, lovely reviewers for your thoughts on the last chapter. Thanks especially to dedicated reader for the push. Looking back, I think the last was too heavy on allegory and too light on narrative, which made it hard to follow without the key. This one I hope will be easier. Rose/Thad, and Hugh comes for supper.

Mature-ish content.

It had been a hot, sweaty morning in Houston. Rose had driven about town with Thad, first visiting their patient in the hospital, then spending fatiguing hours at the Texas Medical Licensing Board, to discover what additional exams she would have to pass in order to be able to practice in the state.

Both visits had been fruitful - and aggravating - in their own way. The Native girl and her husband were installed in a private room at the City hospital. There had been no further episodes of bleeding. The girl herself seemed in decent spirits, and her husband resigned to remaining in the city until her delivery. From the tone of the words they exchanged with Thad, Rose gathered they were content and grateful, if not happy to be away from home for so long. Thad had hired a nurse to attend them, and Rose was able to speak with the surgeon assigned to their case, and assure herself of his skills. She took the opportunity to be introduced to his colleagues, knowing that such connections would help her in her future career in the city.

"If all goes well, we will go in and get the baby in two weeks," the surgeon told her, after the others had left. "By then, the lungs should be sufficiently developed, and to wait any longer is to risk hemorrhage." He looked at Thad, and then back at Rose. "Has a lot of visitors, that one. Considering who she is."

Seeing Thad's face twitch, Rose quickly added, "her husband works on my fiancé's Ranch. Naturally, we take an interest."

"Nothing natural about it, " the other doctor laughed. "Not many people'd have spent money on such as her, never mind that much money. But each to his own." He beamed at them, and Rose realized their charity had lowered them in his eyes.

Rose saw Thad's arm flex, and put a restraining hand on his sleeve. "Yes," she replied, coolly. "Each to his own." She tugged on Thad's sleeves, turned on her heels and left, career opportunities be damned.

The licensing board brought its own set of frustrations. They were shown in, and, after hearing her case, told to wait. And wait.

After several employees held lengthy deliberations and perused countless volumes of papers, she was told they would defer the oral boards and allow her to practice after her year in Philadelphia, which was better than she had expected. But it had brought up another unresolved issue.

"We have yet to talk about Philadelphia," she had told Thad cautiously on their way home. "I will still want to go, you know."

"Of course," he had said readily, and much to her surprise. She had thought he would attempt to dissuade her. "We won't be able to marry until the adoption goes through, and even then my work is flexible enough to permit lengthy absences. We can take a house in Philadelphia, and I can travel back West when I must."

Rose smiled at him. Marrying an unconventional man had many advantages. Without thinking, she voiced the thought.

Thad had shot her a look through half-lowered lashes. "There are other advantages as well," he murmured.

Rose flushed, miffed that it still took so little to fluster her. She glanced at Thad. Unless she was very much mistaken, there was a gleam in his eyes.

~~oo~~

It was naptime. Charlotte and Ella were presumably asleep, and a buzzing quiet had descended on the house with the noon heat. Rose walked silently through the hallway, and looked around the staircase. There was no one. With sudden impulse, she turned left, and ran up the flights to the third story, her heels never touching the carpet. She had never seen the upper floor in all the many times she had been a visitor in this house. She wondered, now, if it had been deliberately kept hidden from her.

At the top, there was a hallway with four doors: besides the master bedroom, she imagined they concealed a dressing room, a sitting room, and perhaps a private office. Her heart was pounding in her throat as she wondered what she would say to the maid, if she met one. Or, for that matter, to Thad.

She turned into the first room. It was larger than she had imagined, and clearly the master suite, dominated by a dark four-post bed in the center. It was unoccupied. She paused, and looked about.

Her first thought was that it resembled Thad's bedroom at the ranch. The furniture was black mahogany, simply cut, the carpets a plain off-white. The wallpaper was the only elaborate and ornate feature, oriental in design, depicting panels of branches surrounded by black herons, and pale white cockerels, cranes, pheasants and ducks. Over the bed hung an intricately carved African ceremonial mask– Nigerian ebony, which Rose had no way of knowing. The side table contained a black dancer of the same glossy material, at its feet lay volumes of books. She stepped closer, and randomly picked up one. La Princesse de Clèves. How apt, she thought ironically. She dropped the volume back down with a thud.

She peeked through an adjourning door into an equally sparse sitting room. A Baby Grand Piano nestled under large double windows overlooking the back gardens. She briefly asked herself why he would keep such an instrument here, where there would be no one to hear him play. She grimaced at the implications. She withdrew herself back into the bedroom, and turned to survey the other side of the chamber.

There was no framed art, with the exception of a large oil painting on the wall directly across from the foot of the bed. As she walked up to it, her eyes widened in surprise.

She heard footsteps behind her. For a moment, no one spoke.

"How do you like it," Thad murmured, finally. It was not immediately apparent to her whether there was any embarrassment in his voice.

She turned her head and looked at him. He wore his customary black trousers and white shirt, now partially unbuttoned at the neck, showing the thick black hair underneath. His necktie was loose, and his hair still wind-blown from their drive.

"I don't know," she answered, truthfully. She twisted her head to look at it again. Belatedly, she realized the painting had its uses, if only by distracting from her own culpability of intruding into his rooms uninvited.

It wasn't, strictly speaking, an improper oil paining. It was an almost life-size depiction of a young woman, nude from the waist up, her slender form half turned away from the observer. All that remained visible was the smooth line of her back, and the outline of a full breast. Her profile was overshadowed by the mass of black curls that fell down her spine.

"Is she…"

"You?" Thad said, now fully entering the room, and standing before her. "Yes. In a manner of speaking. I had her drawn from photographs by a local artist. Obviously, some things were the result of my imagination." He shot her an ironic glance as she raised her eyebrows at him. "What you see is a compromise between my wish to respect the woman I hoped would become my wife, and my desire to have something more …..explicit , for lack of a better word, to look at. When the girl I couldn't stop thinking about wasn't even on the same continent as I was."

Rose flushed. "When did you have this done?" She dropped down on the bed, her gaze wandering between Thad and the portrait.

He shrugged. "Some years ago. After I came back from Charleston." He saw her contemplative expression, and sat down next to her. "Rose …..if there's something you want to ask me, do. I promise I will answer you as truthfully as I can."

She ran a hand through the same mass of curls that the portrait depicted, pushing them back from her face. She remembered the Baby Grand Piano in the sitting room. "I suppose I am wondering if ….."

"If I ever bring other women up here?" he finished for her. "No, Rose. The only woman who has ever been here in this room with me is you, in my imagination." At her obvious disbelief, he added, "you may have heard rumors, but my habits have never been as profligate as you may think."

The look she shot him was clearly doubtful.

He pushed back his hair as well, as if repeating her nervous gesture. "You know how I grew up, Rose," he said, finally. "Consorting with my mother's brand of women has always been …..extremely distasteful to me."

It took all the studied nonchalance of two sordid years of medical practice to continue her line of questioning. "Surely you are not trying to imply that you remained ..celibate for all these years." It would have been a futile, at any rate, especially in light of last night's revelations.

"No. I am not."

"So you are telling me you kept ….mistresses," she said, with a painful attempt to remain aloof. "Somehow, that does not make things easier."

"Yes. I kept mistresses." He stood up again, his movements as soft as rainwater.

"How many?"

An almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders. "You don't really need to know."

"I do," she asserted, with rising wrath. "I not only want to know how many, but I want to know their names. I do not want to run into one of them at some social function or other, and be unaware that they know my fiancé – or heavens forbid, my husband – much more intimately than I do." She had a sudden, unpleasant flashback to Belle Watling, and the years of history that woman had shared with her father. Her mother, thought Rose, was a much more forgiving person than she herself.

Thad caught both the look and the thought, and his features contorted into a half-smirk. "I don't choose my mistresses amongst women of society."

"How am I to know?" Rose flared. "I know next to nothing of that aspect of your life!"

"I believe," he said ironically, "that that is how most men keep it." He added, softly, "but I am not most men, and you are not most women, Rosey, as I am well aware. And it was, after all, I who insisted on frankness." He once more pushed back the lock of hair that had a habit of falling onto his forehead. "What is it that you want from me? A list?"

"No," she said, coldly. "I don't need a list, as long as there is no one I may inadvertently meet at a tea party." She inhaled, and then expelled her breath in a long, low whistle. "How many in the last …..two years?"

He answered her after only a brief moment of hesitation. "Two."

She smiled mockingly, to hide her disturbance. "Only two?"

He nodded affirmatively. "Yes. One here in Houston, one back in town by the Ranch."

"Someone I've had the good fortune to meet already, perhaps?" Her eyebrows lifted her features into her father's refined, poisonous irony.

"Perhaps," he murmured, thinking of Charlotte's tête-à-tête with Gina. "But neither of them are of any consequence. Nor would you run into them in day-to-day life." He considered telling her of Gina's pregnancy, but thought the better of it. The situation was already volatile enough.

"Did you see them often?" demanded his small interrogator.

He turned his head, towards the window, or simply away.

"Thad…."

"Not often," he replied, unwillingly.

"Why?" she asked, somewhat derisively. "I assume you pay them generously to be …available? I can't imagine you…allowing them to see other customers, and somehow I cannot see you let an investment lay ….barren."

He showed no pleasure at the adroit double-entendre. "I had thought the answer would be obvious."

"I see," she said, more harshly than she had intended. "You saw them so rarely out of a sense of loyalty to me." She knew she was being unreasonable – that, in fact, her entire line of questioning was unreasonable. After all, there had been no commitment between them. She could find no rational way of justifying even to herself that the thought of him with another woman after their dance in Charleston stung like betrayal.

He grabbed her by the shoulders, and stood her up, almost shaking her. "Yes," he whispered, his voice almost a hiss. "I saw them so rarely out of a sense of loyalty to you. Even though I told myself a million times that I was nothing better than a besotted fool. That I should enjoy the spoils that money, and position, had finally offered me, and throw myself into the life I'd denied myself for so long."

"Thad," she murmured, "you're hurting me."

He released her, and on his face there was something like shame.

Rose was not finished. "You will have to stop seeing them," she said, haughtily.

This time, she saw him flinch. "That was rather a low blow, Rose." He paced across the room, before coming back to stand before her. "For your information, I broke off with one of them almost a year ago, and informed the other during my last trip to Houston that her services would no longer be required."

She was relieved, but was too proud to show it. Instead, she merely shifted the focus of her assault. "Why did you keep them at all?"

Thad suddenly grabbed her shoulders again, and pushed her against the wall, beneath a black heron singing on a branch covered with cherry blossoms. His large hands cleared her face of its dark curtain. Rose remained motionless, allowing him to take her lips, noting, with what remained of her conscious mind, that the most valuable spoils of experience was his complete absence of haste. Each soft motion was slowed, each searing touch was magnified and expanded. Rose felt a strange weakness flood through her body. Her knees buckled beneath her, and had he not supported her, she would have fallen. Finally, with infinite slowness, his lips slid down the white column of her neck, until his warm breath knocked against the delicate, u-shaped junction between the clavicles and the sternum.

"It doesn't matter," he muttered against that sensual indentation. His raspy tongue flickered out against her salt-covered skin, tasting her, as if lapping up the rapid pounding of her pulse. "Nothing matters anymore, when I am here with you. You have eyes like the sky and your skin taste like sea-water. Mermaid, Selkie – whatever name you go by, I will always be under your spell." Warmth flooded her body, and there was a tightness in her chest. She wondered if she would die.

However, her resolve was unbroken. "I want to know."

He pulled his body away, removing his warmth. She slumped back against the wall.

"You really don't understand. But then, how could you." She noted, for the first time, that he could change from passion to business as quickly as if a switch had been flipped, and wondered if this was true for all of his sex. "I could give you the conventional answer about men, and their irrepressible needs, and there'd even be some measure of truth to that. But that would be less than half of the truth."

She waited, barely drawing a breath.

"You know how I was raised, Rose. Those years left ….marks, some of which you can see, most of which you can't." She thought of the scars on his leg she had seen that night in his room, and with the memories came other, more confusing images, of the shape of his thigh, and the hard planes of his chest. "It doesn't happen often anymore, but when certain ….memories resurface, losing myself in a woman's touch is about the only thing that helps push them away."

She had to blink to rid herself of the images her mind had conjured up, and focus on his words. His meaning washed over her, and with it, a strange, almost tangible regret. "I'm very sorry," she said, careful to let no pity seep into her voice.

"It wasn't your fault," he replied, softly. "And it would have been much worse, but for loving you. Building a life worthy of you gave me direction, and the incentive to put the past behind me. " She felt his smirk as his hands tightened on her frame possessively. "Minx, Vixen - my life was a merry hell after Charleston. Too many nights I lay alone in this bed, dreaming of our dance, re-imagining that moment in the hallway. What if I'd kissed you? What if I'd gone to your room? And now I have you, here, alone - and keeping myself away from you is becoming harder by the minute."

Turning in his arms, she saw tiny beads of sweat on his forehead, and with the rush of confidence a hint of deviltry came into her eyes.

She leaned forward, allowing her full breasts to spill into his hand. "Who said you must stay away?" He made a sound like a groan, and Rose's lips curved into a smirk. She was exhilarated by her power, or perhaps by his weakness. She reached up to cup his face.

"Rose…"

"Be quiet," she murmured, and pulled his lips down to hers. He did hold still then, briefly permitting the intoxicating, virginal exploration. Something like an electric jerk went through his body when she touched her tongue against his.

"Rose." He pulled his body away this time, and caught her wrists firmly with his hands.

"Spoilsport," she muttered. She slithered from his grasp, and lay herself back onto the bed, twisting her body into an adorable persiflage of Goya's Nude Maya, knees and hips slightly bent, her hands joined together over her head. The black curls cascaded about the pillows, her blue eyes sparkled with mischief. In this position, her ample curves were on magnificent display. Her red lips, swollen from their kisses, were drawn into a pout. She truly looked like a selkie, sea-born, heedless, eternally tempting.

She saw him swallow hoarsely as he watched her. "God, girl. Keep this up, and you will drive me completely and utterly insane."

He turned, and for a heartbeat she feared she had gone to far, and he would leave the room. Instead, he pulled the door closed. She heard the click as he turned the key.

Then he came towards her, and by the look in his eye, she knew their game had ended.

~~oo~~

Later that night, Hugh Rittmeister presented himself for the informal supper at Thad Watling's townhouse in the company of his daughter, Emma. The other girls were surprised, for Thad had told them nothing about this additional visitor, nor had they known Hugh was a widower with a child.

"Hello," Emma murmured, to their confused but heart-felt greetings. Ella especially felt her sympathetic heart open wide. Hugh's daughter was at the ungainly age between twelve and fourteen, and would never be beautiful. She had a head full of wispy, mouse-colored hair that wouldn't curl, held up unsuccessfully by hope and hairpins. Her small features were pretty taken one by one, but somehow did not fit together as they aught. She gave the impression of haphazardly assembled puzzle-pieces. Rose immediately saw that her severe brown dress did not go with her pale skin, and that the girl must have chosen her own ill-fitting hat, and the mismatched shoes.

Her father, on the other hand, had taken the time to dress appropriately, and his long hair was held back correctly at the back with a bow. He cleaned up nicely, Charlotte admitted to herself. His daughter seemed pleasant enough, but did not much favor her father in appearance.

The affable impression did not last. "I didn't want to come here," the girl informed them, marched into the sitting room, and plopped herself down on the sofa.

Charlotte sighed. It seemed the girl had inherited some of her father's traits, after all.

"Please excuse my daughter's manners," Hugh offered to them all, but mostly to Charlotte. "Her mother passed away many years ago, but she has still not recovered from the shock."

Charlotte looked struck, and Hugh looked pleased. Rose lifted her eyebrows at Thad. Thad shrugged.

"I'm so sorry," Ella cried. "Was it an accident?"

"Her coach overturned," Hugh said, briefly. Rose got the distinct impression that there was much more to the story than he let on.

"My dear," exclaimed Ella. "No wonder the poor darling is still distraught!" She went into the sitting room herself, and started speaking to Emma in a low voice. Ella was good with children, as she never spoke down to them, and her genuine sweetness was difficult to resist. Within minutes, she had smoothed the girl's ruffled feathers, and they all proceeded to dinner without further outbursts.

Hugh, to Rose's surprise, proved an amiable dinner companion, displaying none of the ill temper that he had at the ball. She narrowly observed the way his eyes flickered to Charlotte when that damsel was not attending him, and congratulated herself for the time she had spent on Charlotte's dress and hair, despite her cousin's protests. Aquamarine was a pretty color on most blondes, and Charlotte was no exception. The dress itself was low-cut enough to display her excellent figure, but in no way inappropriate for the evening. Pearls gave her skin luster, and Rose had twisted her hair into thick braids that she had then intertwined with each other, and fastened into shells over her ears. A few loose tendrils cascaded about, softening her features. The overall effect was quite pleasing.

Emma, flanked by Ella and Thad, attended to her meal in silence, her sour little face betraying very little animation.

"How long will you be staying," Hugh asked Ella, but his eyes once again flickered to Charlotte.

"We're not sure," Ella replied, cheerfully. "I'm beginning to think we might stay indefinitely. Rose is to marry Thad, and my husband is quite pleased with life out West. Mother and Dad are sure to stay, and even Uncle Charles …welll! If we can persuade Wade and Phoebe to come back to Houston, why, there would be no reason at all to go back."

"Excellent," Hugh replied, and turned to Charlotte. "I sincerely hope you will be staying, too."

Charlotte, who had begun to warm towards him, recalled why exactly he was here, and scowled.

He took no offense at her silence. He smiled winningly. "I intend to visit the Ranch next week. Perhaps you could show me around?"

"I hate Ranches," Emma announced, as if she, too, had suddenly been struck by insight. "And I hate horses, too." She threw Charlotte a dark look.

"I'm certain you have been at the Ranch often before," Charlotte replied with fake sweetness. "I would have nothing new to show you."

"In that case, you must permit me to show you around," Hugh replied, grinning. "We cannot let you leave without impressing upon you the full beauty of the Texas landscape."

"Thank you, but I am thoroughly convinced already," Charlotte said, icily. She wasn't sure what game he was playing, but she didn't appreciate it.

He winked at her with good humor. "Perhaps I can come up with something ….new enough to interest you."

Charlotte scowled once more, mainly because she was not quick-witted enough to come up with a retort. The rest of the evening passed in relative harmony, with conversation made mainly by Hugh and Thad, interspersed with Ella trying to draw out Emma. The girl answered properly enough, but glowered at Charlotte whenever the opportunity presented itself. Charlotte, who felt herself unfairly singled out, in turn scowled at the father. It was, after all, all his fault.

When they left, Hugh bowed so low before Charlotte that it was almost caricature. "It was my great pleasure to see you again tonight. I hope it will not be the last time, my lady." A manservant helped him into his coat, and handed him his hat, and his walking-stick.

Caught of guard, Charlotte murmured something inaudible. He took her limp hand and kissed it, before taking Emma by the shoulder, and ushering her outside. The door fell shut behind them.

"Grrrrr," said Charlotte, shaking herself like a puppy after the rain. She turned, and walked up the stairs.

~~oo~~

It was only later, back in the darkness of her room, that Rose allowed her thoughts to stray back to earlier events.

After closing the door, Thad had lifted her up, and carried her to the sitting room to the Baby Grand Piano. He had placed her on his lap, a position that left little to the imagination of even a maiden like herself regarding the rawness of his desire. Any gently bred lady should have been mortified. Instead, she marveled that he could be restrained, and tender, with such heaviness between them.

His encircling arms lay on the keyboard, and in between speech he played little bursts of Schubert, or Chopin, infused with such exquisite yearning that it left her breathless.

"You see." he murmured into her hair. She closed her eyes, and listened. His breath on her scalp was warm. "Bodies are fickle things, Rosey. Lust has no timing, no sense of right or wrong, and no honor. You are ….so young, and it's perhaps unfair that women are not permitted to play with passion before having to settle down for the real thing." His right hand played Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu as he continued. "But this is the real thing for me, Rosey, and I cannot even begin to pretend otherwise. I cannot change my past, but I can yet shape our future. Perhaps I am selfish. I want our first time to be on our wedding night, surrounded by candles and silk and roses. Memories to build on when the hard times strike -and they will."

Rose leaned herself back against his chest. Outside the window, a summer rain enclosed them like a curtain. In the distance, there was the low rumble of thunder. As his hand continued to softly strike the keys, he murmured into her dark curls all the things a young girl dreams of hearing from her lover.

Selkies are seal-wives from Nordic legends. They look like human women when they shed their skin, but must return to the sea (unless the human lover burns or hides the skin, in which case they are trapped on land, but never lose the sea-yearning).

La Princesse de Clèves is sometimes called the first psychological novel. Two lovers separated by fate (she is forced to marry another, and an intrigue casts doubt on his fidelity). In the end, she is free, but refuses to marry him out of obligation to her late husband, who had asked her on his death bed not to marry his rival. Eventually his love wears out, and she dies. Yep, its that cheerful.

Goya's Nude Maya ….if you haven't seen it, look it up and imagine how shocking that painting must have appeared in 1797 or there abouts.

Cheers!