A Game of Persuasion: Extended Prologue for the Art of Ruining a Rake (The Naughty Girls Book 3) (20 page)

He looked appalled. “My situation with Miss Gray has nothing to do with your
disgraceful
behavior!”

As if her passion wasn’t the same as his, because she was a woman! “You
would
think that, wouldn’t you? You’re so accustomed to dismissing my feelings, it hasn’t even occurred to you that our situations might be similar!”

“No, it hasn’t.” He visibly recoiled from the idea she might feel desire. It certainly didn’t surprise her when he changed the subject. “Montborne is an upstanding man. One willing to tell the truth even when it might cost our friendship. If the situations are similar, it’s because what you did to him is little better than what Celeste did to me. Playing on his feelings, for what? To punish me for failing you?”

Great Zeus, Lucy suspected she would never make him understand. “
I
begged Celeste to teach me how to seduce him.
I’m
the one who entranced him. And
I’m
the one who rejected his suit. What has any of that to do with
you
?”

She fairly shook with frustration. How would he ever accept her choices, if he couldn’t admit she had the right to make them?

“If I’d have found a husband for you sooner, none of this would have happened.”

The confirmation she needed. He simply couldn’t accept she was her own person. It seemed her entire life was to be lived according to how her actions reflected on him.

She decided to take a different tack. “Haven’t you realized it yet? I’m in love with him. I always have been.”

Even now, when it cut like a knife to remember the demise of her girlish delusion, it only truly hurt because she’d wanted him for her own.

Trestin stared blankly at the tabletop. She let him absorb her announcement in silence. He shook his head slowly, then massaged his temples. “You’re in love with Montborne, so you invited him to seduce you and then threw his proposal of marriage in his face.”

She barely resisted the urge to clap. He’d heard her! Finally. Even if, embarrassingly, her behavior sounded foolish when phrased that way.

No matter, it fell to her to lead him through her logic. “Would
you
have accepted him?” she asked.

Trestin seemed to consider that. “The marquis is fickle and vain and absolutely penniless. Yet you leave me no choice but to allow him your hand.”

Well, that settled that. He heard the question only from his point of view, and when he thought of her future husband, he never counted Roman among her possible suitors. He didn’t understand her, not one bit.

“I meant,” she said, “if it was you who loved someone, and they finally proposed to you out of a sense of guilt, would you marry them?”

He looked at her as though she’d said the most incomprehensible thing, for there were no shades of gray in his world. “You’re well aware of the rules. You gave yourself to him. He’s yours.”

“Ha.” She glanced away. She would have thought that by now Trestin had realized lovemaking and falling in love were two very different beasts. If he couldn’t separate them, how did he hope to forgive Celeste her past?

“I see nothing funny about this,” Trestin said, as though her miserable laugh could have implied anything but wretchedness. “He is honorable enough to make an honest woman of you. He is kindhearted, and I believe he does feel some emotion for you. By your own admission, you’re in love with him. You will marry him.”

She should never have tried to explain. Trestin was incapable of comprehending how she could love someone and loathe him at the same time. “You cannot force me,” she warned.

“Not a penny from me,” Trestin said, as if he still believed he could force her hand by withholding her dowry.

She scoffed. As if that twenty-five hundred pounds would make the least dent in Roman’s obligations—even if she did marry the marquis, the money would disappear the instant it hit his coffers. He owed every shopkeep in London, or so it was said.

But it didn’t matter if Roman was indebted to his teeth, or wealthy beyond imagining. She didn’t need a single guinea from her brother, because he’d underestimated her yet again. As early as tomorrow, she would pack her trunks and leave London behind. All she needed was the impetus to actually do it.

He was certainly offering it to her.

 
“You’re not the type, Trestin,” she said, because she knew that no matter how dependent upon him he might believe her, he’d never carry through with his threat to turn her out, insolvent.

“Of course I would—”

She sighed. “I don’t credit for a minute that you would turn me out without a shilling.”

He stood straighter, indignant. “I made Delilah the same promise.”

“Did you?” She had to laugh at that. How poorly his threats worked.

Lucy shook her head, more at herself than him. He would never change. Not like she had. “I know you so well, but you continue to misjudge me. I will never be threatened. I have the means to support myself. My school in Bath will open next week, and I will no longer be here to make you miserable.”

He gaped at her, entirely agog to hear her plan explained aloud, and with commitments. “How?”

She folded her arms under her breasts. Not again. She would not, under any circumstances, intentionally reveal Celeste’s role. “Unimportant.”

He didn’t back down from wanting to know. “Did you draw credit? Good God, is it in my name?”

That was the last straw. Lucy looked daggers at him. “Of course not! Have you listened to anything I’ve said? I’m a woman, Trestin. Not helpless.”

“But how?” He continued to stare at her, though what he saw, she could only guess. He certainly didn’t see
her
.

She was weary of him thinking her incapable. “I found a benefactress. She’s provided everything.”

Whatever reaction she’d expected, his mottled face and fisted hands weren’t it. He seemed offended, as if he considered her finding some other way to subsist on her own terms an insult to his capacity to care for her. “Who is it?” he growled, stepping forward.

She wasn’t going to give Celeste’s name away. Not again. “None of your concern.”

A moment passed. Lucy could see his thoughts shifting and settling as he tried to work out the identity of her sponsor.

To her utter chagrin, she knew the instant he decided it was Celeste. His face shuttered with disappointment, the same sad disillusionment he’d bared to his sisters whenever they’d failed to follow one of his rules.

“She can’t do this,” he said flatly, but of course, it had already been done.

Lucy did pity him. It must seem his entire world was upending under him. First Lucy, then Celeste, then—

“Where’s Delilah?” he asked, his gaze slowly narrowing on the empty seat beside Lucy. “Where is she?” he repeated, louder.
“Where is your sister?”

Lucy flinched as his growled demand nearly brought down the house. She’d expected him to be angry when he learned of Delilah’s elopement; it was the reason she’d wanted to be primed to leave as soon as their little family of three dwindled to two. But seeing the heartache on his face almost tore her apart. S

he turned away from his heartrending expression and checked the time on the clockwork behind her. “I imagine she’s married by now. Mr. Conley fetched her yesterday.”

“What?”

Lucy risked a glance at him. His unkempt appearance only magnified his anguish. She searched for something positive she could say, a way to ease his pain. “He’s a good man. Dependable. Not at all like Lord Montborne.”

“You’re the one who chose Montborne!” Trestin braced himself against the chair. His light brown eyes stared blankly at the table. “How could she?” he asked, so quietly, Lucy almost didn’t hear him.

“She loves him,” Lucy tried cautiously, afraid to set him on a tear again. “You would not consent.”

Trestin turned his head away. “He’s not good enough.” His voice stressed against the words.

She sighed. If only making him listen like this didn’t require heating him to his boiling point. Still, she did want him to understand. “I thought you’d have it figured out by now. None of us are good enough. That’s what makes us human.”

“I only wanted the best for you,” Trestin said, without looking her way. “I did everything I could think of…”

She was momentarily confounded by the emotion in Trestin’s voice.

“Oh, Trestin,” she said, coming to stand behind him. She felt like the worst sort of person for pushing him to this breakpoint. Tentatively, she placed her hand on his shoulder. “I had to seduce him. I had to
know
.”

It wasn’t Trestin’s fault. Why did he insist on assuming the blame?

“He wants to marry you,” Trestin said.

She flinched. If Roman had said the same with even half as much emotion, she would have accepted him on the spot. But he hadn’t. He’d offered only because it was the right thing to do, the thing Trestin would have wanted him to do.

She expelled a beleaguered breath and patted her brother’s shoulder. “No, he doesn’t.”

 
“Where did Delilah go?” Trestin asked suddenly. He pushed himself upright and strode to the window near her chair, his ability to argue over Roman seemingly exhausted.

Lucy returned to her chair and collapsed onto it, weary, herself. “I don’t know. She means to settle in Gloucestershire, near his family. She said they were headed to Gretna Green first, but I’m not so sure. She’s above the age of consent.”

Her brother nodded. “She’s in Gloucester, then.”

He sounded flat, defeated. If only she could convince him there was no need for him to shoulder their decisions. “You should marry Celeste. Then you won’t even miss us.”

He didn’t reply promptly, but he did reply eventually. “That you would even suggest such a thing assures me you have no sense of what is right.” Again, his voice tightened, the sentiment at odds with what he desired.

Lucy plucked at the crumbs of toast on her plate. “Celeste is not a monster. She understood my desperation to be with Lord Montborne as no one ever has. Trestin, I wouldn’t mention the whole deal with Roman again, but I feel it’s relevant. She helped me because she’s in love with you.”

Please,
Lucy wanted to add,
love her back.

“If she loved me, she wouldn’t have let you ruin yourself.”

Lucy sighed. He was parroting sentiments he thought were correct but were very, very wrong. “She made me happy, Trestin. She makes you happy, too. Why won’t you admit it?”

“Montborne is not happy.”

“Well.” Lucy couldn’t even begin to imagine the disturbing dialogue they would need to have if she were to explain to her brother the many reasons she knew Roman couldn’t possibly be as disconsolate as Trestin seemed to believe. “He ought to know what it feels like when he disappoints others.”

Trestin raised his head, his expression still fatigued. “Except he’s done no wrong.”

“I’ll never believe he’s as guiltless as you say,” she said tersely, remembering how easily Roman had slipped from her near-kiss into the arms of a supposed lightskirt at Mrs. Galbraith’s ball.

To her relief, Trestin didn’t press.

She let the silence lapse, glad to be done with the worst of it.

“I can’t see the benefit in continuing this conversation,” he said at length. “Montborne is willing to marry you. It’s in everyone’s best interest that you accept. You’re young now, but one day you’ll wish you had married. I’m sure he can be brought around to the idea of your boarding school, if you are bent on having it. I don’t imagine he means to kick his heels in Devon year-round. You should have plenty of time to pursue your own interests.”

She leapt up from her seat and rounded on her brother, feeling like unleashing upon him all the valid reasons why his idea was utter nonsense. “You would have me at
home
while he chases
skirts
in London?”

Of all the inconsiderate, misogynistic things he could say!

Trestin seemed truly surprised by her outburst. “I didn’t mean that.”

“I would never allow it,” she fairly spat. “I would hunt him down and shoot him, like Mother did. And that is why I
cannot
marry him.”

Trestin’s color drained. She shouldn’t have admitted it. Not to him. He’d lived the last seven years in fear of his emotions, shirking the black shadow that haunted their past. But she hadn’t been able to hold it back. Roman’s potential blood on her hands was the only argument she had that was sure to end any insistence she marry him.

When Trestin was good and aghast, she drew a calming breath. Nothing could fully ease the tightness of her chest when she thought of that silver-tongued scoundrel, but it was enough to dull her fury. When she was able, she sealed her vow with a sentiment she was sure Trestin would understand. “I love him too much. I cannot let him hurt me.”

Epilogue