The Courtesan's Wager (33 page)

He had ignored it.

It would not be ignored.

He had watched her that first day in her father’s house. Watched her play the pianoforte. Watched her at cards. Watched her walk in the gardens. Watched her as she wandered into the gallery.

He had followed her. He had spoken to her, which had made it all worse, a thousand times worse. She was such an odd sort of a girl, so careful and proper, so cautious and deliberate. On the surface. Just beneath, she raged with passion and ideas. She sent off sparks of wit and wry humor. Did she know he had seen through her mask of demure propriety? Had she let him see past her defenses because he was a man she would never marry?

He hadn’t thought so. Not at all. Not then.

He had approached her in the gallery, drawn to her nearly magnetically. Her hair had played with the light of the room, soft eastern light, yet she sparkled in it. Her eyes, her smile, her voice, had beckoned, called to him like nothing had ever called before and he, listening, had fallen.

Fallen and still falling.

Kissed and still kissing.

A hard fall, a forever fall.

What was to be done?

What a man did when he fell like that for a woman like that. Leaving her, he had sought out Aldreth and Hyde, eager to gain their permission to marry Amy, certain he would be granted it. Why not?

He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but voices carried so very well over marble and glass. Aldreth saying that he did expect Amelia to marry well, his voice low and deep as he murmured that he had hoped Iveston would have come, that the pairing of their two children would have been a tidy arrangement for both their houses. Hyde murmuring in response that if any girl was suited to being the next Duchess of Hyde, it was the delightful Amelia Caversham.

He was no fool. A casual conversation between two dukes, discussing their marriageable children, was not a thing to make a man change his life’s course. But it was a thing to make him pause and consider.

He was a second son with brothers aplenty behind him. He was not needed to ensure the Hyde line, the proof being, if proof were required, that he had been sent off to sea with his American uncle without a single restraint put upon him. He was, not to put too fine a point on it, expendable, or at the very least, replaceable. Did a father who sought a duke for his daughter want such a man?

Yet he was an earl and that was no small thing.

It was when Aldreth then told Hyde that Amelia had cherished the thought of being a duchess from her youth and he would willingly see her attain her desire that Cranleigh felt his plans crash into dust. But not his heart. His heart stayed true, centered on Amy, but he could not act. Not beyond seeking her out, kissing her, tormenting her for rejecting him before he had even had the chance to win her.

She wanted to be a duchess. It was a fact well known, but he had not known because he had been at sea. Her father wanted her to be a duchess. His father thought that she would make a fine Duchess of Hyde.

That was where he had rebelled. A small rebellion, but important. She could not marry Iveston. Anyone but Iveston. He was aided in that Iveston rarely went out in Society. Hyde would never push for a loveless marriage and Aldreth was forced to let the matter drop. And Amelia, little Amy, was without her duke, Iveston or otherwise.

And as far as he could tolerate it, she was without him.

He only kissed her whenever he could not resist. His resistance was pathetically inadequate. But he had not touched her, not fully, not as a man, not the way he wanted. Some small honor remained, and he would not compromise her. He wanted her to have what she wanted for herself and what her father wanted for her.

He did not know how else to love her.

Let her have her duke, then. Let her find some duke. But not Iveston, not his brother. He would not, could not, imagine her in Iveston’s bed, in Iveston’s arms. His brother. Not that close, not in his own family.

She could have another. But not Calbourne. Calbourne was too coarse.

And not Edenham. Edenham was too experienced, too many wives had Edenham enjoyed. Where would Amy fit among that list? Just another wife. Another woman to bear another child.

That damned list.

Everything, while not fine, had been regular, had fit the pattern of his life. Amy wanted her duke, but no duke, indeed, no man noticed her. She was too quiet, too proper, too careful. It was not like her, not truly, but if she thought a man wanted that, wanted proper and careful, he said nothing to dissuade her. He had some honor left him, but he wasn’t a fool.

Invisible to them, but not to him. He had hoped, in time, that she would want more than his kisses. He had hoped that, his kiss still hot on her mouth, she would abandon her dream of dukes and want him.

And then there came the list and everything had broken loose. He had sworn not to ruin her, not to dishonor her that way, and he had not. Barely, but he had not. But with the list, all rules were shattered. The list, the interviews, the scandal of it—her reputation was hanging by a thread. She was, by most measures, already ruined.

He could have her now. He could ruin her in fact, if she would only act like a ruined woman.

She wanted a duke, that was all. She wouldn’t allow him to ruin her because she would have her duke at any price.

That blasted list, Sophia’s list, he was certain. It was just like Sophia to think of a list, to make a list of men. And it was just like Amy to agree to it. She wanted her duke. She would risk anything to be a duchess.

But Lord Raithby was not a duke. Neither was Lord Penrith.

He was willing to give her up to some nameless duke, not the dukes he knew of course, but some other one yet to be determined, but he was not willing to give her up to anyone or anything less. Raithby’s father was an earl and Penrith was a marquis. Very well then, a marquis was ranked just lower than a duke, but he was an earl in his own right and that ought to count for something in her mercenary little heart.

“You look like you want to kill someone,” the Earl of Dalby said. He was very young and Sophia’s son, not at all experienced, hardly worldly, but at that, he was correct. He wanted to kill everyone, starting with Raithby and working his way up, or down, however it fell out.

“Ridiculous,” Cranleigh said. “Maiming will do.”

Dalby chuckled. Hawksworth, Amelia’s inconvenient brother, did not.

“Lord Cranleigh,” the Marquis of Hawksworth said, “I believe there is some history between you and my sister, some bad feeling perhaps, some misunderstanding.”

“No, no misunderstanding, Lord Hawksworth. We understand each other entirely too well,” Cranleigh said.

“If that is true,” Hawksworth said slowly, watching him, “then you know she deserves the best in life. I would see her get it.”

Cranleigh dragged his gaze away from Amelia to look at Hawksworth. He was young, inexperienced, and he was Aldreth’s heir. Hawksworth would be a duke.

The best in life. A duke for a husband. Is that what Hawksworth meant?

Of course it was. Brother and sister, they would see the world through the same eyes, value life on the same scale.

“As would I,” Cranleigh said softly.

“The best in life,” George Grey said mockingly. “What is that? You English.” And he shook his dark head in derision.

“And you’re not English?” Cranleigh asked. “You are Sophia’s nephew.”

“Our family history is a tangled one,” John Grey answered softly. “Sophia is my sister, our mother English, our father Mohawk. That is a true and clean answer. The deeper truth is not so clean.”

“Is any family history clean and simple?” Cranleigh said. “I know of none.”

“Then take your woman,” George said gruffly. “Make a tangled history with her.”

“She is not my woman,” Cranleigh said, the words tearing out of his heart.

“Then she will be Raithby’s woman,” George Grey said. “She will go, as women do, to the man who steps forward to fight for her.”

Cranleigh stared at George, then at John, then at the two younger Iroquois sons. They stared into his eyes, measuring him.

John said, his dark eyes glistening. “Would you lose your woman by not fighting? It is a hard thing, to lose a woman.”

“If I fight for her, I will win her. But in that, I may lose her completely,” Cranleigh said, saying more to these savage men than he had to anyone in his life.

“You speak like an Englishman,” George Grey scoffed.

Likely true. He was an Englishman. But he was also a man.

“Cranleigh,” Dalby said quietly, “what have you to lose?

Amelia, once and for all. Amelia.

It was then that Raithby smiled and Amelia laughed and something burst free inside him. Let her hate him. Let her curse him for robbing her of her duke. Raithby was no duke. If she could consider Raithby, then she could and would consider him. And take him.

He meant to have her.

L
ORD Raithby was very handsome and very amusing. Lord Penrith was very handsome and very compelling. Neither one, however, was Lord Cranleigh, who was handsome, compelling, and not one bit amusing. Lord Cranleigh was a stubborn sod who wouldn’t know if a woman was throwing herself at him if she wrapped herself around his neck.

Which she might yet do if things grew truly desperate.

Things were not quite truly desperate as yet because Cranleigh was in the room, watching her, smoldering in anger, and that was as good a beginning to a proper courtship as she could imagine. Having never seen a proper courtship her standards were perhaps a bit low.

Of course, while flirting with Raithby and Penrith, who was more amused by her efforts than was flattering, she kept her eye upon Cranleigh. He did look furious. She was not encouraged. He often looked furious and did nothing about it. Nothing but kiss her, that is, when no one was looking.

“You must put me on your list, Lady Amelia,” Penrith was saying. “I’m simply too young to endure being discarded so completely. My mother has no tolerance for such slights. She’s Italian, you know, and they have such strong opinions about marriage and suitability. She would rail for a month if I failed to meet your standard of perfection. It’s a heavy burden I bear, I assure you.”

“You look to bear it very well, Lord Penrith. I shan’t pity you in the slightest,” she said, with a smile aimed precisely at annoying Cranleigh.

At that instant, Cranleigh walked across the room like a wild animal, graceful and purposeful, his light blue eyes hard with intent. One could only hope
amorous
intent.

“Lord Penrith, Lord Raithby,” he said in greeting. It was not a very pleasant greeting as he looked like he wanted to knife someone. She did hope it wasn’t her. “Lady Amelia,” he said in an undertone. A shiver went up her spine and down again. “This business of your having a list, it’s true that you have compiled one?”

He looked furious and . . . something else, some expression she had never seen before. She tried to ignore it. Cranleigh and his various disapproving expressions had never hindered her before and they would not now.

“Yes, it’s true,” she said, lifting her chin proudly. “I can’t believe you doubt its existence. Certainly these gentlemen don’t.”

When Cranleigh stared at the gentlemen, his blue eyes gleaming with a dangerous light, they merely smiled weakly in response. She didn’t fault them in the least; Cranleigh was behaving very aggressively, which did bode so well for her.

“Very well then,” Cranleigh said, stepping nearer to her and very nearly looming over her, “as there is a list, I insist on being first upon it. That won’t be a problem for you, will it, Amy?”

Amy?
He called her that here, now, in sight of Penrith and Raithby and . . . her father? Aldreth. Her heart leapt up and plummeted down. What would her father think of her? She had lived her life as an exemplary example of womanhood, the perfect daughter for a powerful, distant duke. He hadn’t seemed to notice. And so she had been more perfect. He hadn’t seemed to notice that either. The conclusion she’d finally reached at the advanced age of nine was that dukes and duchesses were free of the requirement of perfection, yet able to require it of others. Once she was a duchess, she could leave off trying to be perfect. All she had to do was to marry a duke and then her life could begin in truth.

Yes, well, the initial problem with that plan was in finding a duke to marry her.

And the second problem, which had arisen approximately a week after meeting Cranleigh, was that Cranleigh had, by repeated effort and seductive force, caused her to forget about dukes entirely.

“I’m afraid you don’t fit the requirements, Lord Cranleigh,” she said politely. Then hissed under her breath, “And don’t call me Amy in front of Aldreth . . . and everyone else!”

“I don’t fit the requirements?” he asked, taking a step nearer to her, which forced her to take a step back, nearly bumping into Yates with a tray of refreshments. “I think we both know I fit them perfectly. Top of the list, Amy, and tear the rest of it up.”

“I most certainly will not! And I decide who qualifies, Lord Cranleigh, not you. It is
my
list!”

“And you are quite done with it,” he said, taking her arm.

She shook off his hand, which did not put her in the best light but she had such trouble remembering to be proper and perfect when Cranleigh was in the room. When he touched her, she couldn’t remember it at all.

“I am quite done with
you
!” she snapped.

“No, Amy,” he said, “you are not. You are not done with me and you never shall be. In fact, we have only just started.”

Her mouth dropped open as she stared up into his eyes. Was he actually . . . was he actually ordering her about? In her father’s own house? Was that look in his eyes that she couldn’t identify lunacy? Had kissing her driven Cranleigh round the bend?