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It made her neck lurch forward and spill some of what hadn’t indelibly coated her mouth.

“Are you trying to poison me?” she spluttered.

“Not at all, Your Grace,” Pietro replied cheerily. “It’s naught but beef broth, goat’s milk, the yolk of a raw egg, and mashed celery. Added one touch of brandy. Very good for you.”

“How can something that tastes so… abhorrent possibly be good for you?”

If anything, Sophia felt a little queasy.

“Grandmother Vasilka taught me that the worse something tastes, the better it is for your health. She lived till one hundred and two years old.”

“Good for her.” Sophia bit back several insults towards this man and his grandmother.

There’s no point, Sophia. Just smile and do whatever he tells you.

“No, no, good foryou.” Pietro grinned, prompting her to sigh again.

I will get you for this, Thomas. I promise.

She gulped down the rest, cringing all the while. After the initial shock, the rest of the rancid concoction went down smoother, but it still left a foul aftertaste that she had no doubt would linger until at least luncheon.

“Are you sure you are a dance instructor?” she asked, dabbing her mouth with the handkerchief she kept tucked in her sleeve. “You’re not a thespian that His Grace pulled off the street to torment me?”

“Only the best tutor in Europe, Your Grace,” he said proudly. “Now, that country dance! Beginning positions!”

Sophia took a step back and sighed, hands at her waist, echoing the stance she had adopted at her debut. It was the only beginning position of a dance that she knew.

Pietro tsked. “Is this a duchess I see before me or perhaps a fishwife who has been bent over baskets of oysters all day, every day, for a decade?”

“I beg your pardon?” she sniped, too half-asleep to be polite. “You can’t talk to me like that.”

“If you want me to treat you like a duchess, then you need tostandlike a duchess!” Pietro changed his posture and mimicked her, hunched over like some sort of cave-dwelling monster.

“Here”—he lightly tapped the middle of his stomach and halfway up his back—“is an invisible string that goes all the way to the top of our heads.” He pretended to pull on it, his posture straightening into the elegant form of earlier. “It must always be tight. Neck, long. Head, erect. We do not bend, we do not lean, we donotdraw in our shoulders.”

I think I know that string,she mused, her lips curling into a smile.

It was the same invisible string she had felt in Thomas’s study and the library; the channel along which her pleasure crackled and thrummed. Although hers also branched down to her legs and the apex of her thighs.

“Smiling is good!” Pietro cheered. “Always smile.”

Sophia balked, dropping her gaze so he would not see her thoughts written all over her face.

“Your feet—no pigeon-toes. They face forward, heels raised unless you are at rest.” He pointed at his feet and waited for Sophia to mimic his stance. “Your body needs to be in a harmony of controlled relaxation. Not too stiff, not too lax. When you move, you place the ball of the foot first! Not the toes, not the heel!”

She took a frustrated second and adjusted her body, trying to keep the bombardment of instructions in mind. Her thoughts went back to all those times she had seen the older ladies of the ton dancing with their partners during the balls.

Did they also have to go through all of this?

She stopped at a pose she thought was good enough and checked to see Pietro’s reaction.

“Passable.”

“Now what?” she asked through a barely open mouth.

“Now you step. You will step only at my clap. And you will repeat. Observe. One.” He took one step forward. “Two.” And another. “Three.” And stepped sideways. “One, two, three. One, two, three. One, Two, three.”

Pietro moved with faultless precision.