The Courtesan's Wager (25 page)

She did look at Cranleigh. His coat was torn at the collar and his pantaloons filthy. He had a bruise coming up on his left eye and a bloody lip. He didn’t look at all alarmed by any of it. No, in fact, he looked energized. Empowered. Alive. Male.

“He is quite a dashing-looking man, if you like the sort,” Sophia said, staring down at Cranleigh. “If I weren’t so close to his mother, I do wonder . . .”

“Wonder what?” Amelia snapped.

Sophia smiled fractionally and, her gaze trained on Cranleigh, which was most annoying, said, “It’s difficult to explain to a virginal girl.”

“Try,” Amelia said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I am good friends, old friends, with Molly,” Sophia said, watching Cranleigh with an ardent gleam in her eyes, “but even so, I can’t help but wonder how he’d be.”

“How he’d be what?”

Sophia laughed lightly, the sound clawing at Amelia’s nerves.

“In bed, darling. How he’d be in bed. Like a tiger, I should think. Ravenous. Powerful. Perhaps even a bit ruthless. Which, as I hope one day you will find out, is quite a delicious experience.”

The only reason, the
only
reason why Amelia did not physically assault Sophia in the next instant was because Yates entered the library at that precise moment.

“My lady? Are you at home for the Earl of Cranleigh?”

“I most certainly am,” she said, glaring at Sophia.

Sophia merely smiled and sat herself down in languid ease on the sofa.

“I’ll stay as chaperone, shall I?” Sophia said. It was not actually a question. Amelia could plainly see that Sophia was in the library to stay, perhaps for all time.

Cranleigh entered the library like a, well, like a tiger. Surely the only reason Amelia would think such a thing was because Sophia’s bewitching words were still ringing in her head. A tiger. Yes, perhaps Cranleigh was a bit like a tiger.
Ruthless in bed.
There was an image to make a virgin blush.

Amelia was not blushing. All those kisses had clearly rubbed the fear off of her, at least where Cranleigh was concerned.

Cranleigh was covered in dust, his blue eyes blazing white, and something was crushed in his hand.

“Have you seen this?” he said, looking at Amelia, ignoring Sophia completely, which was quite nice of him.

“Good day, Lord Cranleigh,” Amelia said stiffly, forcing him to keep to protocol, or at least trying to force him. Tigers did not readily submit to force.

Cranleigh swallowed heavily, bowed, and said, “Good day. Lady Amelia. Lady Dalby.”

“Lord Cranleigh,” Sophia said silkily, her dark eyes shining, “how fit you look, quite robust. The manly arts clearly agree with you.”

“You saw?” he said, looking at Amelia. “You see what’s happening? ”

“Well, I only arrived just before you did, Lord Cranleigh,” Sophia said, answering when Cranleigh had obviously not been speaking to her at all. Really. The woman was so forward. “But I certainly saw enough to be both impressed and entertained. Well played, my lord. Of course, Lady Amelia deserves every bit of the credit for managing thing so well.”

“Managing things?” Cranleigh snapped. “Things are not managed, Lady Dalby, not in this fashion. She is made a laughingstock and a scandal, her name all but ruined.”

“All
but
ruined?” Sophia said casually, checking the seam on her glove. “Well then, that’s nothing to be upset about, is it?”

“No man will marry her now,” Cranleigh said, staring at Amelia. Amelia could only stare back at him. He did look rather lovely, all dusty and bruised.

A tiger in bed.
What would that entail, exactly?

“No man?” Sophia chuckled. “Impossible. I can think of three who’d take her today.”

“Lady Amelia,” Sophia said, “I do hate to be a bother, but could you ring for refreshment? It’s been an invigorating day. Perhaps something to settle the blood, cool the ardor?”

“I’m so sorry. Of course,” Amelia said, hurrying to the door to call for Yates. “Tea?”

“Madeira,” Sophia said.

“Yates. Madeira,” Amelia said briskly and then turned back to Sophia and Cranleigh.

“Impossible you say?” Cranleigh said. “You have yet to see this?” And he uncrumpled what he’d had clenched in his fist, shoving it at Sophia.

Sophia barely glanced at it before saying, “But of course I’ve seen it, Lord Cranleigh. It’s a perfectly delicious print, isn’t it? The rendering is quite well executed, I must say, and so quickly done. I got mine the moment the shop opened and there was quite a run on them, according to Freddy. I’m surprised there are any left.”

“There weren’t,” Cranleigh said. “I got this one off Dutton.”

Ah, the hit to the belly was now fully explained.

“A print?” Amelia said, feeling herself go light-headed. “A satire? ”

“Yes, darling,” Sophia said in clear delight. “Gillray did one up and it appeared in Humphrey’s shop this morning. Quite a coup for you, naturally, as Humphrey only carries the best and Gillray only does the most compelling
on dits
. Why, I can’t think of a girl who’s had a satire done of her at your stage of life. You truly are the talk of the Town.”

Amelia’s knees—far from collapsing, which she did wish they’d do, to be followed by a healthy faint, which would take her out of this situation—locked in place and her breathing stilled in her lungs.

A satire. Of course there were duchesses who’d had satires made of them, the Duchess of Devonshire first and foremost among them, but they did not have satires made of them
before
they became duchesses. That was an important distinction.

Aldreth would send her to a nunnery in Castille. Did they still have nunneries?

“And when Aldreth hears of it?” Cranleigh asked Sophia, not at all politely.

“Isn’t he out of Town?” Sophia asked in return, as if that solved anything. Yes, he was out of Town, but no one stayed out of Town forever.

Yates knocked at that moment and brought in the Madeira on a tray with many more than three glasses. When Amelia looked at him, the question in her eyes, Yates responded, “In the event that any of the other callers are admitted, my lady.”

Yates, very forward thinking, but not altogether practical in this instance.

“How very clever you are, Yates, quite up to form,” Sophia said. “I should think that Lady Amelia will begin admitting one or two at a time very soon now.”

Yates? Did Sophia know Aldreth’s butler?
How
did she know Aldreth’s butler?

“She’ll be admitting no one,” Cranleigh said, beginning to pace the library as if on a very short leash.

She did wish he’d stop doing things that reinforced Sophia’s tiger reference. She had enough problems already without imagining him prowling into her bedchamber, kissing her raw.

Amelia shuddered at the thought, and not in distaste, which was most inconvenient at the moment.

“Whyever not?” Sophia said, looking at Amelia. “They’re here, practically storming the gates. They’ve seen the print,
everyone
has seen the print, and they are not alarmed by it as Lord Cranleigh so clearly is. Why is that, Lord Cranleigh? Don’t you enjoy prints?”

“I am not going to do battle with you over this, Lady Dalby,” Cranleigh said tightly, the veins in his neck showing most clearly.

“Aren’t you?” Sophia said, leaning her dark head against the pale blue damask sofa cushion. “That sounds rather pointedly like you, Lord Cranleigh.”

Cranleigh stared at Sophia, his jaw muscle working, his eyes like January frost.

“I haven’t seen the print,” Amelia said into the tension. “I should like to. Actually, I shouldn’t like to at all, but I think I must.”

Cranleigh tore his gaze away from Sophia and walked over to where Amelia stood by the Madeira. Without a word, with only the look in his eyes to prepare her, Amelia took the crumpled print from his hands and spread it out on the secretary.

It was typical Gillray, which made it very bad indeed.

How often had she laughed at the satires done of others in her class?
Constantly
would be an accurate summation. Having a satire done of oneself was not at all laughable.

It was a rendering of the Prestwick conservatory. Amelia, looking more voluptuous than she was in fact, was shown surrounded by pots of roses, their blooms reduced and their thorns increased. Her dress was torn, her body exposed, her expression delighted. She had been made to look debauched and thrilled by the fact.

Cranleigh had been made to look worse, which should hardly have been possible. Cranleigh was a rose. He had a rose for a head, from which his face peered out from the shadows of the petals, and his hands were thorns. With his thorny hands, he was ripping her dress. Hence her delighted expression.

Oh, and another part of Cranleigh’s anatomy had been made into a gigantic thorn. It protruded out of his breeches and curved wickedly in her direction.

The caption read
Lady A gets pricked
.

“Isn’t it marvelous, Lady Amelia?” Sophia said. “It’s quite a distinction. The Duchess of Devonshire, who has had quite a few satires done up of her, never achieved one
before
becoming a duchess. But you have. Only think what you will manage once you are a duchess in fact.”

Amelia sat down slowly on the chair by the secretary, the sounds of the brawl in the street coming clearly through the library windows. “I shall never be a duchess,” she whispered, still staring at the satire.

Why had Gillray drawn her as being so delighted to be mauled by Lord Cranleigh? Why should he think that a girl of good family would be delighted by such a thing, by such an act, by such a man?

By such a man.

Her gaze drifted up to Cranleigh’s, who was looking at her in such stern protectiveness that it caused her breath to catch in her throat.

“Never be a duchess?” Sophia exclaimed. “Don’t be absurd, darling. You are eminently more appealing now than you were a month ago. Just look out the window if you doubt me.”

Cranleigh, his eyes never leaving her face, slowly dropped to one knee at her side.

“Is it still all of dukes, Amy?”

All of dukes?
Did he think that was what she was, what she wanted? Hadn’t he understood what kissing him meant? That all other men were dust; all other men and all other dreams were dead because Cranleigh breathed himself into her heart?

And then, because he was Cranleigh and because the library was quiet, and because he had that look and when he looked at her that way there was only and always one result, he kissed her.

Sophia was forgotten.

The satire was forgotten.

The brawl on Berkeley Square was forgotten.

It was all of Cranleigh and his mouth and his heat and his touch. He swept her up, swept her out of herself and her fears until there was only Cranleigh and only Amelia and nothing else. And nothing else was wanted. Because all that there would ever need be was right here, right now, in Cranleigh.

His mouth on hers, open and hot and seeking.

Her mouth opening in welcome, their tongues meeting like old lovers, starved for contact.

She put her hands on his chest, near his throat, and felt his heat and his strength.

His mouth moved down to her throat and she leaned her head back, letting him kiss her neck, his breath covering her, his scent enfolding her.

And then the door to the library from the vestibule opened, letting in an unwelcome rush of chill air and harsh reality.

“Amelia!” her father’s voice rang out. “Remember yourself!”

Amelia jerked and pushed against Cranleigh’s massive chest. Cranleigh did not jerk. Cranleigh, his expression as hard and resolved as she had ever seen it, rose to his feet, turned to face Aldreth and said, “I have just asked Lady Amelia to marry me. She has accepted. Will you give your consent?”

“I will,” Aldreth said stiffly. “Is a special license necessary? ”

By which he meant, was she possibly pregnant? She wanted to crawl under a rug.

“No, but I would prefer one, if you can arrange it,” Cranleigh said.

How was it that Cranleigh was not quaking when confronted by Aldreth? Everyone quaked when facing Aldreth. Although, Sophia likely did not.

Whatever had happened to Sophia?

Sophia was seductively sprawled on the sofa, her head nestled against the cushions, her neck arched back and exposed. Her eyes were closed and her breathing heavy. Asleep?

“I can,” Aldreth said, scanning the room. “Where is Lady Jordan? And why is Lady Dalby here?”

“Oh,” Sophia said, seeming to come awake on hearing her name spoken. “I should never drink Madeira. I have no head for it. Your grace,” she said, rising to her feet, looking not at all embarrassed, but then, she never did, “back from France so soon? You didn’t find Paris to your liking?”

Aldreth’s pale blue eyes narrowed at Sophia. Sophia smiled indulgently at him in response. Amelia would love to know how she did that, how she had acquired that fear-no-man attitude to the most intimidating of men.

“Lady Dalby,” Aldreth said, his eyes glinting suspiciously, “how is it that you are in the position of chaperoning my daughter? Inadequately, I might add.”

“Inadequately?” Sophia said, rising to her feet to approach Aldreth. To actually approach him! Who drew nearer to Aldreth when his eyes had that particular glint? “Have you not seen your front door, your grace? Your daughter can choose from any man among them. Is that not the point of having a Season in Town? As this is her third Season out, I should think that you would have got round to the idea of her actually marrying.”

“She is to marry me. The issue is settled,” Cranleigh said, in a most unhappy tone of voice.

Amelia felt the very tiniest prickling of annoyance.

“Is she?” Sophia said. “I must have missed that. Did Lord Cranleigh actually propose, Lady Amelia?”