Proof by Seduction (12 page)

She’d been burnt before. She scrambled off his lap while she still could and beat a hasty retreat across the room. He watched her go and then stood, somewhat awkwardly, shuffling round the chair until he could reach the knot she’d made of her stocking.

Jenny backed to the door, preparing to run.

He looked up. There was a lightness about his expression. “Tell me, which did you enjoy more? Outwitting me, or allowing me to run my hands over you?”

“Both, I should think.” She put her hands on the door handle. “Which did you enjoy more? Kissing me, or tricking me into running away so you could untie yourself?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he jerked his hand free and straightened. “You were right about one thing.”

“Pardon?”

“Lord Blakely—his responsibilities do not extend to seducing you. I reserve that pleasure for myself.”

And on that incomprehensible note, Jenny fled.

G
ARETH HELD HIS BREATH
until the door shut behind Madame Esmerelda. He should have followed her out and made sure his servants did not harass her. But he was too confounded by what had just transpired to move from his seat.

She’d seduced him. She’d seduced
Gareth.
Oh, not all the way, unfortunately. But those clear eyes of hers had seen right past Lord Blakely. Past the title that bound him. One word—his Christian name—and he’d let her tie him in knots, of both the literal and figurative varieties.

Where would be the fun in that?
she’d asked. Lord Blakely had no room in his life for fun. Even when he made time for the sexual act, he kept the transactions as cold and business-like as possible. Impersonal exchanges, money for temporary physical satisfaction. It had never been about fun; it had been about relief from his body’s demands.

Gareth clenched his hand. The specter of his title had robbed everything good and convivial from his life. His mother. His sister. His own chance at a family. But Gareth would allow himself this one thing: this woman, in his bed. Until he no longer risked forgetting that there was a man beneath the mask of Lord Blakely.

And if, in addition to the physical longing that racked him, she awoke some deeper wistfulness…He looked down at his fist. He was still clutching her stocking in his hand. Fun. Wistfulness.
Loneliness.

Physical pleasure would purge these longings from his system. It
had
to. And if it didn’t work the first time, he’d do it over and over, until finally her hold over him dissipated like smoke.

In the meanwhile, he’d send back the dress.

But this time, he’d send along a maid.

CHAPTER SEVEN

N
ED WAS VERY FIRM
in his notion of what constituted an enjoyable time. It started with a few good friends and a tankard of ale. Add in a horse race or some kind of boxing match, and a girl who wouldn’t mind showing her ankles. There followed jokes and laughter. More liquor. More ankles. In the two years since Madame Esmerelda had helped him banish his black despair, he’d learned to enjoy the finer things in life.

And so this musicale, attended in his dour cousin’s company, was hardly his idea of fun.

As a general rule, a good time did not include starched ladies whose voluminous gowns rejected the notion that women existed below the waist. Especially if one of those ladies was the cold and lovely Lady Kathleen.

Lady Kathleen sat as far from Ned as she could get in the ordered rows, and behind him, so that he had to turn his head to even get a glance at her.

Ned had neither the need nor the desire to look at her regularly. She was destined for Blakely.

Still, Lady Kathleen drew his eyes. Perhaps it was the confidence in her carriage, the assurance in her every movement. Perhaps it was the way her eyes snapped to his when he turned in her direction.

Perhaps it was just that there were not so many other people worth ogling. For instance, there was the stiff baroness who served as the hostess for this horrible event, standing to announce the next performance. She looked as if she’d turned into fossil before ankles were even invented. Ned suspected if he lifted her skirts, he’d find nothing but layers of lace and petticoats.

Ned sighed. At least looking was better than listening. Ned had no ear for music. He shifted impatiently in his chair.

“Next,” warbled the hostess, “we are in for a special treat.”

Yes, yes. The opera singer. Hired to give a professional performance, and somehow convince all these people to sit through the amateurs. Why Blakely had insisted Ned come to this event was a mystery. Perhaps, Ned thought longingly, Blakely had heard that Lady Kathleen would attend. That had to be it. After all, Blakely had come with Madame Esmerelda in tow—and she’d come dressed in London finery, making her a surprisingly pretty lady. Why else had Blakely come here, if not to impress his future wife?

Perhaps his interest in her had sparked. He would marry her, and Madame Esmerelda would be proven right.

“Lord Blakely,” continued the baroness, her Chinese-screened fan fluttering in her hand, “will honor us with a performance.”

Shocked, Ned remembered that Blakely had promised to deliver an ode to a crowd. Surely he didn’t intend to sing in
this
crowded venue? But Blakely stood up, calmly as ever, and made his way to the front.

The baroness’s fan fluttered at an increased rate. And no wonder. What a coup this must be for her. The reclusive Marquess of Blakely had not only come to her musical evening, but—for the first time ever—he’d also offered a public performance.

The hostess was not the only one beaming in obvious interest. Around him, he saw women lean forward. A hush fell, and so when Blakely paused by the baroness, everyone in the room heard their exchange.

“My lord,” she twittered, “will you need any accompaniment?”

Blakely cocked his head to the side, as if considering. It was one of his affectations, Ned knew—meant to make him look intelligent. Not that it didn’t work; just that he hardly needed to pretend.

“The work I intend to perform,” he eventually said, “is of my own composition. And it is in a style that, were it performed in Brazil, where I have visited, would likely be called
terrivel
.”

“Oh, my!” The baroness almost dropped her fan in excitement. “Brazil! How exotic!”

Blakely could not have looked more bored with her enthusiastic response. He looked away, across the room. “Which is to say, it could not possibly be improved by accompaniment.”

She looked shocked. “The style of—uh—ta heevil? No. Of course not. I understand completely.”

Blakely nodded, high-handed dismissal writ across his face, and continued to the front of the room. He faced the crowd. His gaze swept over the gathered throng as if it were a mass of lepers. Then he clasped his hands behind his back, and sang.

A frog croaking a tuneless, off-key baritone would have handily beaten Blakely in a singing competition. Ned’s expectations had risen as high as the soles of his shoes. They’d been too high.

This wasn’t an ode. It was carnage.

Ned put his hand in his mouth and bit down. It didn’t do much good. His shoulders still shook with laughter.

And then there were the words. Dear God. How long had it taken him to come up with them?

“One thing about Ned that will never spoil,” Blakely sang, “Is that he is indefatigably loyal/No matter the troubles in which they’re embroiled/He will not from his friends recoil.”

Ned bit harder. Teeth pierced glove and ground into flesh. He chanced a look around him. The faces nearest his were very guarded in response. Everyone’s, that is, except Madame Esmerelda’s. Her eyes were lit by a mischievous joy.

Happily, Blakely was not yet finished. “Ever jolly is Ned’s disposition/For this much, at least, he deserves recognition/He would make a fine politician/If ever he stood for a good proposition.”

Ned wasn’t sure whether that worked out to a compliment. “Ever jolly” certainly bore no resemblance to the truth. He chanced a look behind him. Unlike the rest of the crowd, Lady Kathleen was not watching with pretended interest. She looked carefully from side to side, her fingers cinched around the arm of her chair. As if the details of the room were of greater interest than the spectacle Blakely presented.

Blakely continued. “Ned is worthy of great esteem/For he is precisely as he seems/He has no plots or deceitful schemes/Unlike the one I intend to make—”

Blakely drew out that last note—if you could call that low, cracking tone by so innocent a name. He was looking directly at Madame Esmerelda, and Ned tried to fill in the rhyme to come.
Make dream? Steam? Scream?

Madame Esmerelda blushed pink, one hand on her throat. How strange.

“—wince as I finish the last line without any sense of meter or rhyme,” Blakely concluded.

There was a moment of silence.
Blessed
silence. The glances around Ned all said the same thing—
Dear God, please tell us it’s over.
Blakely eyed the gathering with his typical lofty indifference, daring them to boo.

They did not dare. Ned could see the thoughts skim through their minds. He was a marquess, after all. Perhaps things were different in Brazil. The performance was exotic. It was short. And it wasn’t much more dreadful than the Chinese opera that had been performed last year.

“Bravo!” Ned called. He applauded madly. Thankfully, everyone joined in.

Blakely bowed, rather stiffly, and picked his way through the rows toward his seat. He didn’t even make eye contact with Ned, didn’t acknowledge that Ned had just saved him.

Ha. Just because Blakely had no humility didn’t mean Ned couldn’t try to humiliate him further.

“Encore!” Ned shouted.

Blakely fixed Ned with a look that promised eventual dismemberment. Luckily for the future attachment of Ned’s limbs, nobody else took up the cry. Blakely made his way through the seats amidst very polite, and not particularly encouraging, applause.

He brushed by Ned and had reached his seat on the other side of Madame Esmerelda, when the annoying woman on Ned’s right leaned over.

“Lord Blakely,” she said. “What an
unusual
style. I just want to know—who is Ned?”

Ned suppressed a grin. That, perhaps, was the best part. Almost everyone thought of him as Mr. Carhart. Just Carhart, to the friends he’d made at school. Only near family—he included Madame Esmerelda in that number, of course—called him “Ned.”

Blakely arranged the tails of his coat and sat down, straight-backed, before answering. “A person.” No further encouragement passed his lips.

“Oh.” A pause. “Is the style
intended
to be sung like that?”

Ned felt perfectly free to twit his own cousin, but he’d be damned if he let anyone else do it. “Dissonance,” Ned said airily, “is all the rage abroad this year. It’s such a shame London is behind the times.”

Blakely’s brows drew down and he shot Ned an unreadable look.

Ned decided to feel encouraged. An unreadable response was heaps better than an unprintable one.

Two tasks completed; one more to go. Now Ned only had to sit through the remainder of tonight’s entertainment—which had suddenly become much more entertaining. Was Lady Kathleen watching Blakely? Had she been won over by that awful performance? For the fourth time that evening, he swiveled in his seat and glanced toward Lady Kathleen’s position. Four, he told himself, was a commendably low number. He might have glanced at anyone four times. Perhaps five would not be—

Except she wasn’t in her seat. Ned looked up, to see her brushing her way past the last seats in the row. Nobody looked at her; all eyes were riveted on the opera singer who had just begun an aria far more melodic than the previous song. Lady Kathleen glanced around the room and Ned quickly turned away.

When he looked back, she was ducking through a door. How odd. It was the second time Ned had seen her leave some entertainment through a servants’ entrance.

Without thinking, he stood. And he followed.

As soon as he’d closed the tiny door, muting the music behind him, he dashed after her. “Lady Kathleen!”

She turned around. “Oh. It’s Madman Carhart. And you’re alone.”

Ned halted. She’d discovered his name—good. But she doubted his sanity. Bad. Very bad.

She shook her finger at him. “We haven’t been introduced. I don’t think you should speak to me. And you definitely should not be with me unaccompanied.”

“Nonsense,” Ned said. “You know my name. I know yours.” He put out his hand. “Let’s just shake like gentlemen and be friends.”

Her gaze arrested on his outstretched fingers.

“Right.” Ned balled his hand into a fist and pulled it back slowly. “Ladies don’t shake hands. Never mind, then.”

Her gaze had followed his hand. “Do you realize there are
toothmarks
on your glove?”

Ned whipped his hand behind his back. His ears burned. “I bit myself,” he explained. “I was trying not to laugh at Blakely. You would have done it, too.”

“Bit you?” She raised one eyebrow. And then, as if she’d realized what she had said, she flushed. It was the first hint of unease Ned had seen her exhibit. But she didn’t turn away in embarrassment. She didn’t even glance away demurely. She met his gaze steadily. “Your entire family is mad, you know.”

“Oh, no,” Ned said. “Just Blakely. He’s been like that for ages. I, on the other hand, am completely sane. Just—just a little—nervous, you know.”

“You should be, following me like that.” She shook her head. The motion was almost severe, but the tone of her voice had softened. “You really ought to leave, I suppose, before someone spies us alone like this and assumes the worst.”

Ned was not yet willing to be dismissed. “Well, if you didn’t go charging off alone into the servants’ corridors, you wouldn’t have that problem.”

Her eyes widened. Something like real surprise flashed in them. “I’m not—that is to say, I don’t—”

“Yes,” Ned corrected, “you do, too. Every time I’ve met you, you’ve been off, invading dimly lit corridors. It’s a mystery. I shall have to get to the bottom of it. I shall consult Madame Esmerelda.”