The Wicked Wallflower (5 page)

“Is there anything you wish to tell me, Emma? Is there another man? Are you in a particular condition?”

“We might pose as a happily betrothed ­couple, but you should know my heart belongs to someone else,” she said, oddly delighted that he thought she, London's Least Likely to Misbehave, could possibly have gotten herself ruined or in a particular condition.

“So you'll say yes,” he repeated.

“Apparently I already have,” she remarked dryly.
For the fortune. For Benedict.

Ashbrooke broke into a smile, a grin of pure happiness. The force of such radiant, beautiful joy hit her like a runaway carriage pulled by a half-­dozen charging stallions.

The duke wrapped his arms around her, swept her off her feet and whirled her around—­right there, in the garden, with all the gossips of London watching. And then he kissed her—­another swift brush of his warm, firm mouth against hers. She thought of fireworks, and a strange feeling of warmth and desire surged through her. She did not think of Benedict.

She thought of the Ashbrooke Effect.

It was real. It knocked her breath away, along with her wits.

“Pack your bags, Emma Wallflower,” Ashbrooke said in a happy, laughing voice. “We have a house party to attend and a dowager to charm out of her fortune.”

 

Chapter 4

According to the betting book at White's, the odds are decidedly not in favor of Ashbrooke and his betrothed winning the Fortune Games. Dear reader, do not inquire how I came about this information.

—
­“
F
ASHIONABLE
I
NTELL
IGENCE” BY
A
L
ADY

OF
D
ISTINCTION,
T
HE
L
ONDON
W
EEKLY

A few days later

En route to the Fortune Games

A
FTER AN HOU
R
into the journey it became clear to Blake that he had betrothed himself to London's Least Interested in Him.

She didn't flirt, act coy, or lean forward to show off her bosom to its best advantage, as women were wont to do near him. Though her lovely and curvaceous figure had not escaped his notice.

Ever since their departure, Emma's attention had been fixed upon a
book,
while he alternated between staring out the window and stealing glances at the curious woman seated opposite him.

It went without saying that this was not the usual state of affairs when he found himself in a carriage with a woman.

After an hour, he could tolerate it no more.

“What are you reading?”

She replied without once taking her eyes off the page.

“I am reading the sort of sentimental novel men dismiss as rubbish but could actually stand to learn a thing or two from.”

“That's an awfully long title,” he remarked dryly. She peered at him, as if to discern whether he was bamming her.

“Indeed,” she remarked dryly.

Outside the carriage, miles and miles of pasture and wheat fields.

Inside the carriage: a challenge. Could he engage her in conversation? Could he tease a smile from her lips? He was Ashbrooke, after all. A legend. Women loved him. The Buxom Bluestocking should be no exception.

“Have you any questions about the Fortune Games? Given that it's your first time, I thought you might be curious.”

She placed a red ribbon upon the page she was reading and looked up, fixing her dark blue eyes on him. He noted that she had very beautiful eyes—­large, intelligent, and tilting up ever so slightly at the corners. But they were dangerous, those eyes. Like she saw right through him.

“Yes, Your Grace, perhaps you could tell me what I might expect from my first time. My nerves are tingling in anticipation.”

He grinned, and replied, “Some ­people find the event to be unpleasant business, but I've found that if one anticipates the pleasures it affords—­and has the right partner—­it needn't be a tedious affair.” To her credit, she did not blush.

“I thought I'd just lie back and think of the fortune,” she remarked, and he felt his mouth crooking up into a slight smile.

“That is one way, though there are more stimulating and pleasurable possibilities,” he said smoothly, noting a faint blush stealing across her cheeks.

“You speak a lot of pleasure.”

“Would you rather I show you?” He gave her one of his devastating smiles that tended to make women swoon right into his arms.

“I thought you were going to tell me about the house party,” she replied, completely unaffected.

“Is that not what we were discussing?”

“I heard that Lily Beekman died one year. Is that true?”

Blake shifted uncomfortably. “I'm sure Aunt Agatha has now learned that snake charming lessons are best done without using poisonous cobras expensively imported from India. Regular garden snakes will do.”

“I suppose card games cease to be amusing after a while. One must keep entertained at a house party.”

“ ‘Entertained' is one word for it. One year we were expected to learn juggling. With her priceless collection of Roman pottery and Ming vases. Another year we played a game of her own invention, Dueling Debrett's, in which we competed to see who could flawlessly recite the lineages of peers back two hundred years.“

“I'd win at that,” Emma muttered. “Any unmarried woman would.”

“Come to think of it, all the unmarried ladies performed exceptionally at that task,” Blake noted. “They didn't fare as well at archery competition. For targets, we shot at apples placed precariously atop portraits of long-­dead Ashbrooke family members. But only the ones Agatha didn't like.”

“This certainly is not a typical house party activity,” Emma said.

“The Fortune Games are not for the faint of heart or foolish. For all we know, we could be sent home on the first night. Or perhaps nerves have gotten the better of you and you'd like to return to London now?”

“Or perhaps we might win,” Emma said with fierce determination and an adorable tip of her chin.

He lacked the courage to tell her that they had not been invited.

Queen's Head & Arms Tavern

Somewhere in Sussex

At suppertime they arrived at the coaching inn where they would dine, rest the horses, and spend the night before the final stretch of their journey on the morrow. After securing two adjoining bedchambers, Blake turned to Emma.

“I'm starving,” he declared. “Would you care to join me for supper?”

“Thank you for the invitation, but I'd prefer a tray in my room,” she replied.

“I'll speak to the innkeeper about a private parlor,” he said before her words sank into his brain, causing him to pause, register
a refusal from a lady,
and feel—­possibly for the first time—­a noxious mixture of befuddlement and embarrassment.

He expected that a bluestocking spinster wallflower would be immensely flattered by his invitation and say yes.

But she had refused him! Blake pushed his fingers through his hair, frustrated and challenged all the same. Having persuaded her to go along with the charade, he could persuade her to share her company for the evening.

“Perhaps a drink, then? Would you care for a glass of sherry?”

She pulled a face, revealing that he had said exactly the wrong thing.

“What's wrong with sherry? Besides the fact that it is revoltingly sweet. I thought ladies loved sherry.”

“If I never have another glass of sherry so long as I live, I will be a happy woman. But thank you for the offer anyway,” she said. She started up the stairs, obviously finished with his company.

“Are you forgoing my company to read quietly by yourself?” he asked, warily eyeing the book she clasped firmly to her breasts. For the first time in his life he was jealous of a book. A book! “Are you forgoing the pleasures of a duke's company for . . .
Miss Darling and the Dreadful Duke
?”

“It is a rather captivating story,” she said with a shrug. “I was not able to finish it on our journey today.”

“It must be,” he muttered. “You know, you are the first woman to refuse my company.”

“How strange that must be for you. Never fear, the tavern maid seems like she'd be more than happy to be entertained by you.”

Yes, but he didn't want the tavern maid. He wanted London's Least Likely. The realization of which made him badly want a drink.

Later that night

After concluding
Miss Darling and the Dreadful Duke,
the wickedly good novel she'd been reading, Emma found herself wide-­awake and restless. She had not heard Blake return to his adjoining room, and she suspected that he was frolicking with the tavern maid as she had suggested.

She had not expected the ensuing vexation by what was surely the natural order of things. But she wondered where he might be and with whom, and then her traitorous brain imagined what romantic activities they might be engaged in.

Emma settled into bed with a copy of
The Sights and History of Sussex: Unabridged,
which, as expected, was a rather large and heavy volume. Alas, it was not as sleep inducing as she hoped it would be.

In fact, she had reached chapter four,
The Flora and Fauna of the Region,
when she heard Blake barge into his chamber and address his valet, Jepson.

“Your Grace has enjoyed himself this evening,” his valet remarked dryly. Emma slipped out of bed and crept over to the adjoining door, where she pressed her ear against it and eavesdropped on every word. Naturally.

“Hardly. But a man deserves a pint or two after a day of traveling with a woman,” Blake said. Emma scowled. She'd hardly been a bothersome companion.

“Lady Emma seems like a nice young lady. You couldn't have chosen a better fiancée,” Jepson said, and Emma's heart surged with affection for him.

“You know very well that I did not chose her,” Blake replied.

“Someone has a remarkable sense of humor to have placed that betrothal notice. I wonder who has done so. Do you not as well, Your Grace?”

Do not wonder such a thing!

“I'm not sure if I owe them a note of thanks or if I should call them out. It depends upon how we fare at the Fortune Games,” Blake replied easily.

“Have you informed Lady Emma that you were not invited to attend this house party?”

Not invited?

Emma gasped at his breathtaking deception. She had half a mind to burst in and give him a piece of her mind. The duke had ruthlessly persuaded her to leave London and her true love, to compete for a fortune when they had
not even been invited
?

She could wring his neck right now. Or perhaps she could bash his beautiful face with her copy of
The Sights and History of Sussex: Unabridged.

Or she could keep quiet and keep listening. What else was this duke hiding from her?

“There's no point in telling her. The lack of invitation hardly signifies,” Blake replied, and she begged to differ.

“What if Lady Grey chucks you both out?” the valet asked. “It's likely that she would.”

“Then we travel back to London and break off the engagement and pretend the whole thing never happened,” Blake said. “I don't know why this has to be such a difficult drama.”

She would wring his neck
and
bash him in the head with
The Sights and History of Sussex: Unabridged—­and
spread a rumor that he was impotent. She would send that gossip to
The London Weekly,
which clearly printed anything.

“I doubt Lady Emma will be able to pretend the whole thing never happened,” the valet said. Had she mentioned her love for Blake's valet? His concern for her was the only thing mollifying her temper.

Which was in great need of mollification, especially given what the duke said next: “Lady Emma is not my most pressing concern.”

She exhaled slowly. It took all of her self-­restraint to keep listening instead of flying into quite a rage.

“Is that because she is not throwing herself at you, like all the other women do?” the valet inquired oh-­so-­politely. Truly, she LOVED HIM. She added Jepson to the list of possible names for her firstborn.

“What the devil are you talking about, Jepson? Just because she needed some persuading to go along with this sham, and just because she spent the entire day reading a blasted book, doesn't mean I couldn't have her in an instant,” Blake said sulkily. “If I wanted to.”

“Ha!” A burst of shocked laughter escaped her. She was right: he was as arrogant and cocky as she had suspected. She was glad she had spent the day with her nose buried in a book and that she did not reveal how achingly aware of him she'd been. Her mind had wandered to wicked thoughts of what else they might do in the carriage . . . but now she would keep her sights firmly set on that fortune and on making sure the duke knew that she was the one woman who would not fall into his bed.

“Of course,” Jepson replied consolingly. “No woman under the sun is immune to the Ashbrooke Effect.”

“Basically,” Blake said.

“I think she is completely immune to you,” Jepson said.

“I am,” Emma muttered. Though she occasionally had momentary lapses when she was not at all immune, her pride would not allow her to surrender to the duke's flirtations.

“I'll prove to you she isn't,” Blake challenged. “I'll seduce her by the end of the Fortune Games.”

Emma's jaw dropped, her eyebrows peeked high.

He did
not
just wager upon seducing her! What a rogue! What a scoundrel!

“Your Grace, I will not participate in such ungentlemanly and base wagers,” her beloved Jepson said. That's right, she thought. But truth be told, one had to marvel at the fact that the Duke of Ashbrooke was wagering upon his attempted—­and to-­be-­thwarted—­seduction of one of London's Least Likely.

They would marvel even more when she jilted him. And she would resist his attempts at seduction and jilt him if it was the last thing she did.