“England is a very strange place, making lakes to add to the scenery.” She grinned. “But if you wish to use your knowledge of geography and architecture to overwhelm me, please know that I’m completely aware of your strategy.”
Except that at the moment his only strategy had been to entertain the Indian princess. “You’re the one who wanted to see the Serpentine. But thank you for thinking I’m a genius of subterfuge.”
“You’re also a genius of feigned innocence, my lord.”
“You called me Shay the other day.”
She looked up at him. “Shay,” she repeated softly.
He pulled the horses up so sharply that the tiger nearly fell off the back of the phaeton. “Now who’s using their wiles?”
Her eyes sparkled emerald. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I only uttered one word.”
“It’s the way you said it. Do it again, so I can listen more carefully this time.” And so he could better cover the shiver of his muscles.
“You, sir, are entirely too frivolous,” she retorted with a chuckle.
“Good God, I don’t think anyone’s ever called me frivolous before.” In fact, he was certain of it. He clucked to start the team off again.
“Hm. Does this mean I’ve judged you incorrectly, or that you’re only frivolous in my presence?”
“I have no intention of responding to that, on the grounds that it would be impossible for me to come through in anything but a shambles.” Actually, he seemed to be several things in her presence that he couldn’t be bothered with at any other time or with any other person. Certainly not with a female; if it had been anyone else, he would have complained that she was wasting his time. Here, with her, he couldn’t imagine anything more interesting. Not while they were clothed, at any rate. “If you’re not going to say my name again, we may as well discuss something else.”
“Silks?” she suggested dryly. “I was hoping we could get to that. I’ve been doing some calculations,” Sarala continued, folding her hands together on her lap. “I think a figure of three thousand five hundred pounds would be fair to both sides. What do you say to that?”
“I say that if you’re willing to lower your price by fifteen hundred pounds before we’ve barely begun, there’s probably something wrong with what you’re trying to sell me.” That wasn’t quite true; the price was a fair one. He simply wasn’t ready to pay it yet.
“That is not true, and you know it! You’re the one who told me about the silks, if you’ll recall. I have begun to receive other offers. If you continue to offer me nothing, don’t think I shall refrain from engaging in business with another party.”
Charlemagne lowered his gaze for a moment. “Sarala, I think you know as well as I do that this is not…typical. And neither do I think you would want me to use every means I possess to regain that shipment.”
When he looked up, his eyes met hers. “So I’m to tolerate your flirtations and compliments and insultingly low offers for as long as you wish to entertain yourself with my presence?”
If he’d thought that she meant a word of that, he would have settled the negotiations right then. “You keep agreeing to meet with me, princess, when you know how each previous encounter has gone. And yes, you have the silks, and yes, you could sell them to anyone you choose. And I do believe you have other offers, because I believe you to be a competent businesswoman. But the point is, you haven’t sold yet. So don’t claim that I’ve invited you here under false pretenses, when I think you enjoy my company as much as I enjoy yours.”
“You’re very sure of yourself,” she returned immediately, as they stopped beneath a beech tree. “How do you know I’m not working my wiles on you, ensnaring you to the point where you would give me any price I ask?”
Charlemagne laughed. “How do you know I’m not doing the same thing?” He hopped to the ground as his tiger moved to the head of the team. “You shouldn’t give away your strategy, at any rate. It’ll weaken your position.”
“I hardly need business lessons from you.”
Still chuckling as he circled the back of the phaeton to reach her side, he held his hands out to her. “Don’t be so quick to rebuff my offer of instruction, either. For all you know, there might be several very interesting things I could teach you.”
She met his gaze squarely. “I don’t suppose you’d care to name them, Shay? It is the only way we could both be certain what’s being offered and how interested I might be.”
Good God. Sarala wrapped her fingers around his, and heat ran beneath his skin at the touch. A goose honked from somewhere close by, and he jumped. The feeling of being watched hadn’t returned this morning, but he continued to remain vigilant—or he tried to—nonetheless. Obviously, his mind and his body had other ideas where Sarala Carlisle was concerned. She continued to watch him closely as he helped her to the ground. “Between you and me, Sarala,” he said in a low voice, his hands on her hips as he drew her slowly closer, “a statement like the one you just made would not serve a proper chit well in London.”
Color darkened her cheeks. “You began it,” she protested. “I only responded in kind.”
“So I did. I apologize.” For a moment they stood inches apart, gazing at each other while he tried to remember why he couldn’t just kiss her again. The park. They were in the middle of damned Hyde Park. Charlemagne abruptly released her, clearing his throat as he did so. “I hope you have an appetite, because Cook was extremely generous with the portions in our basket.”
Feeling unaccountably awkward, like a schoolboy on his first outing with a member of the opposite sex, he pulled the blanket from the top of the picnic basket and spread it in the shade of a nearby tree. Whatever he’d said to get her here, he knew full well that this looked like a courtship—and that anyone passing by would likely think so as well. The fact that the word had even occurred to him, much less that he’d applied it to one particular woman, should have stunned him, but everything surrounding every encounter with Sarala seemed both dreamlike and intensely clear.
He gave it all up as madness, and had simply begun for the first time to let things play out as they would—no strategy, no planning required except for making certain that he spent as much time as possible with her. The most dismaying thought was that perhaps she did consider all of this a strategy, and that for the second time she was well on the way to outwitting him.
Hauling the heavy basket over to the blanket, he set it down and offered a hand to the momentarily silent Sarala. He shouldn’t have spoken as he had, but she certainly hadn’t seemed offended. Figuring her out was a devil of an effort—and one he was enjoying mightily.
Rather than take his hand, Sarala sank onto the blanket on her own. “The last time I sat on a blanket,” she said abruptly, “it was to learn how to charm a cobra.”
He grinned, not entirely surprised. “I hope you’re not comparing me with the snake.”
Sarala pursed her lips. “No, but the techniques of business negotiation and snake charming are very similar.”
“How so?”
“Well,” she began, at the same time reaching down to pull off her shoes, “it’s mostly distraction and redirection.” She paused, her eyes on her task. “Is it working?” she finally continued.
One by one the brown walking shoes landed on the blanket beside her, leaving him with a tantalizing glimpse of ankle. Had that been a henna tattoo? Sweet Lucifer.
Absolutely it was working. “Just how bold are you?” he asked.
“This bold.” Leaning forward onto her hands, she stretched out to kiss him softly on the mouth, her bonnet enveloping both of them.
Lightning speared straight down his spine to his crotch. He kissed her back hard and hot, her soft lips molding to his. For Christ’s sake, he should have chosen a more secluded spot for luncheon. The parked phaeton offered some protection from curious eyes, but not nearly enough. Peeling her out of that ridiculous goose-necked gown, freeing her hair from the confines of that en
ormous bonnet…Just the thought left him hard and aching.
Keenly aware of where they were and just how fleeting their privacy was likely to be, Charlemagne reluctantly retreated an inch. “Someone might see us, Saral—”
She turned her head so swiftly to look that she nearly took his nose off with the brim of her bonnet. “I only wanted to see if a third kiss would be as distracting as the first and second.”
He stifled his purely male, prideful smile. “And was it?”
“I meant for you.”
This time he scowled. “Very amusing.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong—you kiss quite well. As a weapon, though, it can cut both ways.”
Charlemagne eyed her. “So according to you, I kissed you previously solely to strengthen my bargaining position.”
“Yes,” she answered succinctly.
“And so you kissed me today to demonstrate that my so-called tactics aren’t working?”
“To demonstrate that I’m perfectly aware of them.” She folded her hands over her lap. “Shall we eat?”
“Twenty-five hundred pounds,” he ground out. He would not be the one to look like a besotted fool. And if she wanted a negotiation, he would give her one.
She blinked. “Those silks are worth far more than that. And if you won’t open the picnic basket, I will.” So saying, she tugged it toward her and flipped open the lid.
If not for the color lingering in her cheeks and the slight tremor in her hands, he would have thought her kiss had been exactly what she claimed—a lesson in turnabout as fair play. No one, however, kissed that hungrily simply to demonstrate a point. One thing he hadn’t anticipated, though, was that she had had lessons in snake charming. He blew out his breath. Enjoy the moment, idiot.
“Ham and currants?” she asked, handing him a cloth-wrapped sandwich.
He made certain his fingers brushed hers as he took it. “Hand me the Madeira and I’ll pour us some.”
“Certainly.” She complied, handing him the bottle and two glasses. “May I ask you a question?”
“You don’t need my permission, but of course.”
“How many of your other business rivals have you taken on picnics?”
Charlemagne laughed at the sly sparkle in her eyes. “None. And if you’re about to ask how many of them I’ve kissed, the answer is the same.” He handed her a glass of ruby red Madeira.
“Very well, I’ll be more broad. How many of your opponents have been females?”
“I got into a bidding war with Lady Adulsen over a nearly two-thousand-year-old marble bust of Caesar, but that’s the only one I recall.”
“And who won?”
Charlemagne grinned. “I’ll invite you to Griffin House for dinner and show it to you. It’s in the billiards room.”
Sarala drank a large gulp of Madeira. “If you can afford to relegate such a treasure to your billiards room, you can afford to pay thirty-five hundred pounds for those silks.”
“Yes, but what I can afford and what I’m willing to pay are two entirely different entities.”
“I see.” She drew a breath and turned to gaze out over the Serpentine. “So you own a Roman bust of Caesar. Have you acquired anything else as ancient?”
It wasn’t just idle conversation; he could hear the genuine curiosity in her voice. Sarala liked antiques. Another oddity for a young, barely English chit. “I’ve been collecting since I was sixteen,” he returned. “On my Grand Tour I returned with so many ‘lumps of stone,’ as Zach called them, that I was forced to open my own house in London to display them.”
“But you live at your brother’s house.”
Charlemagne hesitated. One didn’t share Griffin secrets with anyone not a Griffin. “Melbourne and I work together a great deal. And with his young daughter there, it just made sense for me to stay in residence.” That, and Sebastian had asked all of his siblings to return to Griffin House after his wife had died. Occasionally Charlemagne wondered what Seb would have done, left to his own devices with only a crying three-year-old daughter for company. The answer still kept him awake at night sometimes. And that was the other reason that while Eleanor and Zachary had married and moved to other houses in London, he remained.
“I have to admit,” Sarala said, thankfully lifting him away from the memory of those months after Charlotte had died, “my interest while I was growing up was always English history and its connection to Rome.”
“Truly, or are you just saying that to impress me?” he asked with another smile, digging into the basket for the peaches and grapes Cook had packed.
“I don’t need to impress you,” she retorted, from her haughty tone as amused as he was. “I own the silks.”
“In that case, after luncheon there’s somewhere I would like to take you.”
“And where would that be?”
“Inside the old Tower grounds at the center of Town. You can see the remains of the Roman walls that surrounded the old city of Londinium.”
“Oh, my goodness. I would very much enjoy seeing that.”
“And I would very much enjoy showing them to you, Sarala.” And he was impressed, each day more, by the black-haired princess seated barefoot beside him. And that troubled him as much as it excited him.
Chapter 9
The Duke of Melbourne found his youngest brother sitting at a table in the front window of the Society Club. “Isn’t there somewhere less conspicuous?” he asked, eyeing both the crowded room and the thick knot of passersby and gawkers outside.
“No. I already asked.” Zachary gestured at the head waiter, who immediately began toward them from across the room. “I’m sure Martins would de-chair someone if you inquired, though. Lord Talmidge and his nephews, perhaps?”
With an annoyed glance at Zachary, Sebastian settled into his waiting seat. “And then I’d have to support the nephews after Talmidge’s subsequent apoplexy and death. Thank you, no.”
“Your Grace, we are honored by your presence,” Martins exclaimed in his permanently hushed voice, bowing practically to his knees. “What might I do for you?”
“A bottle of your best white wine and a plate of your best snapper.”
“Orange duck for me, Martins.”
“At once, Your Grace, my lord.”
Once the waiter had rushed away, Sebastian returned his attention to his brother. “All right, I’m here. What did you want to discuss?”
Zachary leaned forward. “First I want a promise that you won’t kill the messenger.”
“Very well.”
His brother lifted an eyebrow. “You’re not going to ask what the message is before you promise not to flay me alive?”
Another footman appeared with their wine, and Sebastian gestured for Zachary to do the tasting and voicing of approval. He’d learned from experience that the most expensive bottles in an establishment tended to equal the oldest, and that that didn’t always equate with the best-tasting. Zachary didn’t turn any unusual colors, though, so Sebastian allowed his own glass to be filled.
“Firstly, Zach,” he said, taking a swallow of the wine, “I’m not likely to flay any family members in public, which we both know. Secondly, since Shay’s not here and you asked specifically that we meet away from the house, I presume this is about him. Thirdly, since I am here, I deduce that you need something you can’t get on your own. So proceed.”
“St. George’s buttonholes, but you’re frightening. No wonder Nell says you can read minds.”
“I can, but it’s rude,” Sebastian said mildly. “Indulge me and speak aloud.”
“Very well. It’s not precisely about Shay, but it is about the Carlisles.”
As he’d suspected. “And?”
“And I invited them to share your box tonight at Drury Lane Theater.”
That, he hadn’t anticipated. “The same box I refused to give over to you and Eleanor because Shay and I wanted to attend in peace and quiet?”
“That very one.”
“So you�
�”
“You said we should take steps to become better acquainted with the Carlisle family.”
“All I said was that gaining knowledge is not interfering.” For the sake of his relationship with all his siblings, he wanted that to remain very clear.
“Yes, well, with that in mind, what better strategy could there be but asking them to share the best box in the house for a premiere when by their late arrival in London they’d been forced to take terrible seats in the back corner of the lower level?”
“And you know this because?”
“I had a meeting with Hanover this morning. He’s renting me some prime grazing pasture just east of Bath.”
“Did he complain about his seats?” The question might sound innocent, but the answer could be significant—dissatisfaction, ambition, it all meant something.
“Not a bit. It came up in passing conversation about the glut of social events this Season. He seemed happy to have acquired tickets at all. Apparently The Tempest is his daughter’s favorite play.”
Hm. It was also Shay’s favorite play. Sebastian wondered whether his erudite brother had mentioned that fact to the chit. Most husband-hunting females named Romeo and Juliet as their favorite. Twelfth Night or Much Ado About Nothing came a close second, but he’d never heard of The Tempest even making the list.
“Am I to send a coach for the Carlisles, then?”
“No. They’ll meet you in the lobby.” Zachary started to say something more, but subsided as their luncheon arrived. His brother obviously had some sort of chemical imbalance that enabled him to eat almost constantly without any ill effects, but prevented him from thinking while doing so.
“When I tell Shay about our guests, whose idea is it supposed to be?” Sebastian prompted after a few minutes. “I certainly don’t want to tangle anyone’s machinations.”
Zachary swallowed a huge mouthful of roast duck. “Oh. It was your suggestion that they might want to join you, since you knew how difficult seats would be to acquire.”
“Of course I did. Have I done anything else I need to know about?”
Something Sinful Page 12
