Proof by Seduction

by Courtney Milan

  Feathers eyed Jenny with open curiosity. “The rumor that swept the ballroom is that this lady is a distant cousin. I didn’t know we had any Barnards in our family.”

  Lord Blakely grimaced. “Restrain yourself, Ned. Do recall we are at a very crowded ball. And, Laura, she is not your cousin.”

  The lady sighed. “Carhart side? Still, a cousin of yours is a cousin of mine.” She looked at Jenny and smiled almost shyly. “Isn’t that just like my brother, to ignore me when I’m so obviously angling for an introduction? What is Ned jabbering on about?”

  Ned put his hands on his hips. “Well, don’t ask the great Marquess of Blakely for explanations. Or introductions. He can’t even be bothered to deliver his own elephants. He doesn’t believe anything unless it’s right in front of his nose.”

  The blue feathers in the lady’s coiffure bobbed earnestly. “Oh, don’t I know.” She glanced at Jenny again, and then imparted in confiding tones. “He doesn’t even trust my fiancé to handle my funds in the future. He doesn’t trust anything he can’t see and smell and taste.”

  Lord Blakely didn’t act either to scold or to assuage his sister’s obvious worries as to how her teasing would be received.

  “Actually,” Jenny interjected earnestly, “he’s even more discriminating than that.”

  Lord Blakely’s shoulders stiffened. His lips pressed together and a furious warning lit his eyes. Jenny met his angry gaze and dropped one lid in a lazy half-wink.

  “Believe me,” she said. “He really doesn’t believe everything he tastes.”

  Lord Blakely’s mouth dropped open a fraction. His eyes dropped to her lips; he was undoubtedly remembering the hot openmouthed kiss they’d shared. He froze, almost as if he’d experienced a great stabbing pain. And then a miracle occurred.

  He smiled.

  The expression changed his whole face from serious and frozen to warm and tinged with the pink of embarrassment. The effect was immediate and electric. He looked almost ten years younger. Jenny’s toes curled in her uncomfortable heeled slippers and she caught her breath.

  No wonder the man never grinned. He would have posed a serious danger to womankind if he did so more than once a decade.

  He blinked, horrified, as he suddenly realized what he was doing. The corners of his lips turned down sharply. He blew out his breath and turned abruptly to his sister.

  “If I failed to greet you earlier, Laura, it was precisely to avoid this moment. I have no intention of introducing you to this woman.”

  Jenny felt as if she’d been smacked with an icicle. It was almost as if she’d been back at school. As if the girls were talking about that Jenny Keeble again, pretending Jenny was not standing right in front of them.

  The feathers drooped as Laura bowed her head. “Surely, in the family—”

  Lord Blakely interposed his body between Jenny and his sister. He dropped his voice, but pitched his words loud enough for Jenny to hear. She had no doubt he intended her to absorb every last hateful sentence. “She’s not a Carhart cousin, either. She’s not any sort of relation. She’s a fraudulent fortune-teller who has sunk her claws into Ned, and she’s not fit for you to know.”

  Not fit. Every word he said was undoubtedly true. It still hurt, scraping a wound that was raw even after a dozen years. Jenny had run away from school to escape the snide remarks about her family and her likely fate. Even after all these years, it stung to hear them repeated.

  “Oh, dear.” Laura peered around the marquess’s lean form. “Do you really tell fortunes? Can you tell mine? Do you pay house calls, or shall I visit you?”

  Jenny could imagine Lord Blakely’s teeth grinding.

  “She’s fabulous at it,” Ned answered. “Two years and she’s never been wrong. And now she’s predicted Blakely’s marriage.”

  The marquess winced. “Hush,” he remonstrated. “There’s no need to shout—”

  But his sister’s eyes lit up like two candles. “You want Blakely to marry? Capital! I knew I liked you.” She sidestepped her brother and linked her arm in Jenny’s.

  Jenny looked at the arm in hers. She was too shocked to do anything other than goggle. She hadn’t expected a friendly face smiling into hers after the marquess’s cold dismissal. A lump formed in her throat.

  Naturally, Lord Blakely interrupted.

  “Mrs. Barnard,” he emphasized coldly, offering her his arm, “I do believe we have terms to discuss. Laura, I’ll see you—I’ll see you next month.”

  The smile slowly slipped off his sister’s face as she realized she’d been dismissed. She unlocked her arm from Jenny’s, pausing only to give Jenny’s hand a squeeze. Her brother’s visage darkened at the gesture.

  He opened the servants’ door they had just come through and led Jenny a few steps down the dim hall before brushing her hand off his arm and turning to tower over her. He stood inches away, his features implacable.

  “Ned is one matter,” Lord Blakely said. “He is my responsibility. Do not doubt that no matter what else may occur between you and me, I will eradicate your influence over him. But my sister…”

  “Your sister seems a pleasant enough young woman.”

  His lip curled. “Miss Edmonton,” he emphasized icily, “is no consideration of yours. She is my junior by sixteen years, and I don’t mean to see her hurt. I tell you this as a warning, not an invitation. Interfere with my sister, and I will destroy you.”

  Jenny put her hands on her hips. “Is that what you think I see when I look at her? A potential dupe?”

  “I saw the way you looked at her when she took your arm. As if she’d handed you a gift.”

  Jenny looked down to hide the sharp pain in her eyes. She felt like the twisting fibers in the carpet at her feet—threadbare and a bit frayed. In Lord Blakely’s scintillating world, both it and she would have been traded to the ragman. “I bow to your perceptive talent, Lord Blakely. It takes a special sort of intellect to make out only the worst in those around you.”

  “Is that what you think I’m about?” He took her chin, turning Jenny’s face toward his. She couldn’t escape that searching gaze. “I can’t risk your lies on this point.”

  Lies. Jenny swallowed shame. He dismissed her so easily. In a way, she shouldn’t have been surprised. She knew how the upper classes saw her all too well.

  She’d given up on being good because her behavior made no difference. No matter how kind or good or sincere she may have been, they would all condemn her just the same. No matter what she did, she would remain baseborn, her parents unknown to her. What had she to lose by becoming a fraud?

  If a gentleman saw her as anything other than an extra panel on the wainscoting, he saw what Lord Blakely did—a potential vessel for his seed, worthy of his notice only for the space of time it took to use her for sexual release. She’d escaped their world, but the only thing that had changed was the face of the man making the offer.

  A week ago, Lord Blakely had seen clear through to the truth of her lonely childhood. Now he deemed her unworthy. Looking up into his eyes, she felt the most awful desire to kiss him. It was like the urge to pick off a scab—painful, idiotic and sure to start the bleeding all over again. Had she really been stupid enough to think this man different?

  Aside from the sheer physical heat that dwelt between them, he was exactly like everyone she’d ever known.

  “Tell me,” he growled at her. “Tell me truthfully you’ll not interfere with her.”

  No. Not exactly alike.

  There was one way he differed. He deemed her unworthy, but she was not alone in receiving his condemnation. Ned, his sister—he’d spoken harshly of them both. To him, everyone was wainscoting. He might as well have been alone in that crowded room out there.

  His fingers dug into her chin. “Say the words,” he ordered.

  She wondered, suddenly, how he saw himself. Cold, undoubtedly. Different, and superior to everyone else. He saw himself as the kind of man who could make a woman scream while he e
xperienced little more than inconvenient lust. Maybe Lord Blakely despised lesser mortals who let their control lapse into such gauche and unforgivable errors as the giving of trust, the acceptance of affection.

  The poor man.

  “I don’t see your sister as a potential mark, my lord. My only surprise is that you do.”

  He searched her eyes in the dim light. He must have found the truth in them, because he released her chin.

  Jenny rubbed the spots where his fingers had pressed. Five points were emblazoned into her jaw. It hadn’t been painful, but she felt humiliated. After all these years, she should have been used to the feeling. At least, she thought bitterly, Lord Blakely had some real reason besides her birth to believe her dishonest.

  He shook his head disdainfully. “I try to see the truth even in those I care for. I have no desire to fool myself. What else should I see?”

  There were a million answers. Jenny hesitated, searching for the perfect response. Finally, she picked the cruelest possibility. She picked the truth.

  “I thought you would see a younger sister who, despite everything you said to her, still adores you.”

  His lips whitened. His hands clenched.

  Oh, he strove to hide it. But that miserable flinch showed that Lord Blakely could care about someone, much as he tried to deny it.

  This tantrum, she realized, was her punishment, unjustly meted out for winning his smile. For breathing warmth into the ice of Lord Blakely. It was his rage, that he’d caused his sister pain, when he’d meant only to keep her safe. Jenny was not the object of his anger, just its recipient. It shouldn’t have made her feel better, to play the scapegoat. And yet it did.

  Jenny stretched up and placed her hand against his cheek. A moment of heat; a hint of stubbled roughness.

  And then he recoiled as if a beetle crawled across his skin.

  Yes. She was going to make him pay for this moment in the very currency he rejected. Heat. Smiles. And, oh—perhaps just a touch of humiliation. He must have seen the promise in her eyes because he backed away.

  “Think whatever you like,” he said, retreating toward the crowded, well-lit hall. “Just stay away from my sister.”

  JENNY’S HEAD ACHED from exhaustion. Only the sharp chill of the evening and the throb in her feet kept her from falling asleep while standing. Her little party waited for Lord Blakely’s carriage on the stone path leading away from the ball. She’d come from a room crowded with oppressively bright fabrics, rich dyes, jewels and food that must have taken the poor servants days to prepare. But just outside those white stone walls, Mayfair shared the same night as all of England.

  No amount of money could drive away the pervasive London fog that shrouded the street in dimness. In the darkness of night, lords and commoners looked much the same.

  There were differences. Ned drooped next to Jenny. He yawned; his teeth reflected dim gaslight from the windows behind him. But Lord Blakely stood as straight and crisp as he had at the start of the evening. Jenny was willing to wager his feet didn’t ache in the slightest. Unsurprising; if they were cut from the same stone as his features, they likely lacked nerves with which to feel pain.

  “I looked for her,” Ned mumbled through a yawn. “But I couldn’t find her again. Now how do we track her down?”

  Lord Blakely looked straight ahead into the gloom. “Simple. We ask for Lady Kathleen Dunning. She’s the Duke of Ware’s daughter, and it appears she’s made her come-out this year.”

  “Good.” Ned yawned again. “Your way is clear. Now where’s the carriage?”

  Lord Blakely clasped his gloved fingers together. “Coming ’round the corner. Right…now.”

  At Ned’s startled glance, Lord Blakely sighed. “I heard it coming. I know the gait of my own cattle. And if you’d pay any attention to your surroundings, you’d know it, too. Just as you’d know your dear Madame Esmerelda nearly matched me with my own sister. Had you not called attention to the matter with your coughing and hacking, you’d have undeniable proof of her lack of skill at this moment.”

  That, at least, Jenny told herself, was unfair. She’d been warned off the lady in question the instant Lord Blakely pretended interest.

  “Even then,” Ned mused, “I was wondering—can you unmake sisters the same way you make them?”

  A long exhalation from Lord Blakely. “Make sisters?”

  “I read about it in a book of Norse mythology. Well, I read about brothers, really, and the making of a blood oath. You cut your palms until they bleed, and press them together so the blood mingles—”

  “More claptrap. Must you believe everything you read? One cannot manufacture brotherhood. It arises out of biology and breeding. As you would surely know if you thought at all.”

  Ned tried not to react, but Jenny could read his hurt in the turn of his shoulders away from the approaching conveyance. And when it rumbled to a stop, Ned’s fingers clenched hers in bitter shame as he handed her in. Lord Blakely arranged himself precisely on the opposite seat, unaware of the devastation he’d wrought.

  Oh, yes. Jenny was going to make him pay.

  She leaned forward. “Lord Blakely,” she said, “for all your rational bent, I notice you’re hard at work performing your own particular sort of alchemical magic.”

  The marquess’s hand dropped slowly to his knee. “I beg your pardon? Did you accuse me of alchemy?”

  “Yes, Master Paracelsus, I believe I did.”

  “Explain yourself.” His words huffed out, colder than the clammy fog enveloping their carriage.

  “The typical alchemist attempts to transmute lead into gold. But, being stubborn and perverse, you of course have insisted on reversing the process.”

  “You’re talking nonsense.”

  When Jenny had said the words, she hadn’t known what she intended. But there he was, attempting to distance himself from any hint of irrationality. A plan burst into her mind, brilliant as the midday sun.

  “Oh, you’ll figure it out,” she said. She grinned so hard her cheeks hurt. “I’m speaking of the second task.”

  For several seconds, the only sound was the clatter of their passage over cobblestones.

  “You want me to convert gold into lead?” A hint of bafflement; a touch of disappointment. “I suppose, I should be delighted you have been defeated so easily. After all, if something downright impossible is a precondition for your prediction, you admit your fortune-telling will never come to pass.”

  Jenny leaned forward and patted his cheek. “Oh,” she said, “you silly naturalist. Are you always so literal-minded? I’ve watched you turn gold to lead ever since I met you.”

  As she’d hoped, he growled deep in his throat in response. The vibration rumbled through the hand she had rested on his cheek. It served him right; he subjected everyone around him to his constant arrogance. It was her turn to give him a taste of his own condescension, and see how well he liked it.

  “I do hope you’re planning to give more explanation than that. Those of us who are dangerously literal require something less ambiguous than an occult mumble.”

  “I’ve watched your interactions with your cousin all this time. Anyone can see Ned has a heart of pure gold.”

  Ned made an embarrassed motion with his hands—adolescent language Jenny deciphered as “I would rather be stabbed to death with a toasting-fork than receive an honest compliment.”

  “Given your constant criticism and bullying, I can only conclude that through some arcane alchemical process, you are intent on transforming your cousin into some baser metal.”

  “A diverting analogy, Madame Esmerelda.” There was no amusement in Lord Blakely’s harsh voice. “I assume you are getting to the part where you explain the task?”

  “Change lead back into gold,” Jenny said. “Simple, is it not?”

  He tapped his lips, working through the implications. “You want me to find something good to say about Ned here?” His dubious tone implied the task she’d set was as imp
ossible as alchemy.

  That, above all, was why she’d assigned it. She’d learned early on that telling her clients what they wanted to hear produced more income. But when she said those nice things, she’d begun to believe them herself. The act of searching for good engaged her sympathies. If the same happened with this arrogant man, it would be a fine start on his payments.

  Thinking of his debt sparked a second gleeful, wicked impulse inside Jenny. Humiliation, too. “Oh, the process should be more open than that, don’t you think? The spirits demand that you sing his praises in public.”

  “Announce it? Well.” He appeared to consider this. “I suppose I could manage a public compliment or two.”

  “My comments about transmutation were metaphorical. But when I told you to sing his praises, I meant that. Literally.”

  The stony silence was broken only by the muted clop of the horses’ hooves. Even that sound seemed dampened, as if the animals knew better than to interrupt their master’s fury.

  Lord Blakely drew himself up, a frightening tower on the opposite seat of the carriage. “You want me to sing? In public?”

  “An ode of your own composition, if you please.” She smiled at him.

  No answer. He sat in baffled outrage. A streetlamp they passed sent a rectangle of light over his hands, where they quivered on his knees. The horses clacked on, a serene counterpoint to the tension building in the close quarters.

  “You’re trying to humiliate me.”

  Absolutely. Among other things.

  “It won’t work,” he told her. “Better men than you have tried and failed.”

  Jenny shook her head. This was an even better idea than the elephant. The horses drew up as they reached Jenny’s home. As the footman opened the carriage door, Jenny delivered her deathblow.

  “Oh, and, Lord Blakely?”

  No acknowledgment. Not even a twitch of an eyelash in her direction.

  Jenny grinned and wagged a finger. “You are required to mean every word.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  GARETH STARED GLUMLY at the two sheets of paper laid in front of him. His desk was laden with hundreds of other papers, all demanding his attention. Both Lord Blakely’s work for the estate and his personal scientific correspondence weighed heavily on his shoulders. But his mind was blank. Depressingly blank, like the sheets in front of him.