The Courtesan's Wager

by Claudia Dain

  Well, that was something. Iveston, when he did venture out, which was a rare occurrence, looked more often uncomfortable than amused, so perhaps it was not a bad strategy after all.

  “It seems that Lady Amelia has been introduced to Lord Cranleigh,” Dutton said to Anne as casually as he possibly could. It was a bit of a stretch.

  Anne looked particularly fetching tonight in unadorned white muslin with a few pearl pins scattered in her brilliant red hair. She looked like a goddess, though not quite as pure as goddesses were supposed to be. So much the better. He would lure Anne Warren into his bed, married or not. Staverton would never know, if Anne married him at all. It was not impossible that she might be induced to change her mind.

  Dutton was very well aware that Lord Ruan was not ignorant of the fact that he was slightly obsessed with Anne Warren. Ruan, discreet to a fault, had not made an issue of his knowledge, which Dutton appreciated as it was embarrassing in the extreme. For a marquis of England to have anything more than a casual interest in an insignificant widow of reduced circumstances was in the worst taste, and he was not in the habit of displaying bad taste. He couldn’t help but think that Ruan’s plan would rid him of his obsession with Anne by delivering Anne into his bed, where all obsessions sputtered to a damp and predictable death.

  So it would be with Anne. If he could only get her to bed and so begin the end.

  “He does seem to have … alarmed her somehow,” Anne said mildly. “I can’t think what he might have done to earn such a response.”

  “Can’t you, Mrs. Warren?” Dutton said suggestively. When was she to wed Staverton, a week from now? Two? Why couldn’t she simply make matters simple for him and tumble into his bed? “Perhaps I could help you solve that particular mystery.”

  Anne, far from looking alarmed, which he had half intended, looked nearly amused. And superior. Superior-looking women did not often tumble into beds, at least with the men they were acting superior toward. What the devil had gotten into Anne? Why, before she had got herself engaged to Staverton, he could raise a blush in her cheeks by simply looking at her directly for more than a few seconds.

  To be blunt, she had stopped her blushing habit the moment he had kissed her in Sophia’s white salon, but he didn’t like to dwell upon that. Coincidence, most likely. Make that definitely. Definitely coincidence. Anything else was unthinkable.

  “Lord Dutton,” Anne said sweetly—too sweetly. “You are at your most amusing when you try so very hard to act debauched, a seducer of girls in shadowed corners. I am no girl, my lord. Had you failed to notice that?”

  “And I am very hard, Mrs. Warren. Had you failed to notice that?” he countered, a bit rashly. Oh, dash it, very rashly. This was not the sort of conversation to woo a woman into bed. It was too hasty, too rough. Though … it might work, with a certain type of woman. Was Anne that type?

  Anne allowed her gaze to travel down the length of him, at his straining breeches, at the precise place where he was hard.

  “Lord Dutton, there is nothing about you that I have failed to notice, including your belief that I must fall into your arms simply because you think I should. It is a very boyish quality, this blind belief that your every whim must be met, but I have outgrown my fascination for boys and prefer a man. Lord Staverton, to be precise. Now, if you will excuse me,” she said, her sweet tone belying the sharpness of her gaze. When he opened his mouth to, it must be admitted, stop her, she said, “And even if you will not—”

  “What of my desire to be introduced to Lady Amelia?” he interrupted.

  “But you have met Lady Amelia, have you not? Were you not intimately involved in her cousin’s engagement to Lord Henry Blakesley? If you wish to speak to her, go to. There is no one here to stop you. But I should warn you, Lord Dutton, that you do not meet her qualifications in the slightest. Nor, I fear to tell you, do you meet mine. Good evening.”

  And with that, she pushed her way through the crowd. Yes, pushed. He was, he was ashamed to admit, left standing with his mouth open and his plans thwarted. Again.

  THE musicians did try. They were tuned. They were ready. It was only that no one was lining up for the dance. How could they? They were all too busy staring at and speculating upon Lady Amelia and Lord Cranleigh.

  “The entertainment appears to be stalled,” Sophia commented. “I wonder, is there anything to be done about it?” As she was looking inquisitively at Cranleigh as she said it, he was well aware what she wanted. In point of fact, he was of the same mind.

  “I shall remove the hindrance, shall I?” Cranleigh said, and without waiting for approval or disapproval, took Amelia Caversham by the arm and led her from the ballroom.

  She did not go willingly. No, he could feel her stiffness, her reluctance, but she daren’t do anything so bold as to defy him.

  “I don’t care to leave!” she said, locking her knees, defying his expectations. Again. Horrible habit of hers. She really ought to be rid of it.

  “But when others care for you to leave, you really should do the polite thing and leave,” he said grimly. Grimly, yes, because being forced to touch her was not at all to his liking.

  She was forward and presumptuous and unruly. Traits he abhorred in anyone, man, beast, or woman, and in that order, and he could not abide them in her, this woman who sought to drag his mild and mannered brother to the altar simply because of an accident of birth. Let him be the firstborn, the heir to Hyde, and she’d face a different quarry, one not so pleasant and certainly never docile. Would she want the future Duke of Hyde if that man were he?

  He knew the answer to that.

  He dragged her, as politely as possible, through the throng, who did part to let them pass as curiosity aroused them as very little else did; out of the ballroom; through the drawing room, which still held far too many people for his purposes; and into the conservatory.

  She did not stop protesting the entire way, which only proved how stubborn she was. When there was no stopping something, the thing to do was to go along with it as gracefully as possible. But perhaps this was as graceful as she could get. Though, he had thought of her as being more graceful than this. The night of Blake’s ruination of Louisa, the night that it was decided, almost by vote, that they would marry, Amelia had sat upon a settee, looking very innocent and unblemished and screamingly virginal, at least when she suspected Iveston was looking at her. When Iveston was not looking at her, the majority of the time, and she’d been studying Iveston, an entirely different look had crossed her features. One of determination. For his title. That was all. That was eminently plain.

  Little Amelia, blond and bored, wanted to be a duchess.

  Little Amelia could go rot. She was not going to use his brother for his title. Iveston deserved better.

  The conservatory was not exceptionally large, particularly crowded as it was with large pots of roses. Roses in every shade of pink to purest red, a wide range of rosy color, a delicate and aromatic backdrop for Amelia in her white muslin gown, her golden hair gleaming beneath the three crystal chandeliers suspended above them.

  It was a very pretty picture, a setting for seduction, which was flatly ironic.

  She looked a spitting fury as he released her, taking in instantly that he was blocking the only door back into the main portion of the house.

  “If you think to ruin me, Lord Cranleigh, I shan’t allow it!” she snapped.

  Ruin her? Is that what she thought he’d dragged her in here to do?

  He could ruin her. It would be simple enough. It would take little effort on his part, and certainly his brother had ruined her cousin in a similar manner just days ago, a fact that must be as fully in her thoughts as it was in his.

  It was a simple thing to ruin a girl.

  Ruin her? He wouldn’t ruin her because then he’d be forced to marry her. And he didn’t want her. Not one bit of her. Not her crystalline blue eyes, nor her golden hair, braided and twisted into something vaguely Grecian, not her mouth, which was
a bit on the thin side, wasn’t it? Just a tiny mouth with lips not at all lushly drawn, but rather, perhaps, if one took the time to study them, just a bit more elegant than lush, but so easy to devour. So effortlessly simple to taste her.

  “You shan’t?” he asked, taking a step closer to her, his coat brushing against a rose shrub, pink petals scattering onto the brick floor. “How shall you stop me? Will you push me?”

  He took another step.

  She took another step. Backward. Her eyes were quite large, quite her nicest feature.

  “I’ll do more than that, Lord Cranleigh,” she said. “Very much more.”

  She let the warning fade, hoping to intimidate him, no doubt.

  Couldn’t she see that he couldn’t be intimidated? It wasn’t in his nature. And certainly never by a mere bit of a girl, blond braids gleaming, a single braid looped into a loose coil, nearly begging to be pulled out and set free.

  “What will you do, Lady Amelia?” he asked softly, taking another step. Another rose shuddered and fell to the floor in a pink cascade of petals. There was something symbolic about that, but he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, think what. “Have you learned how to fight for your honor? Have you learned how to defeat the advances of very proper young gentlemen who pursue you rather too vigorously?” None of that, he knew. Not a bit of that. “Or have you learned,” he continued, “that if you want Iveston for a husband, you’ll have to go through me to get him? You think I’d just let you snatch him up?”

  She stopped backing up, which was a pity. He had almost come to enjoy chasing her slowly into the roses.

  “Why not?” she snapped. “He must marry and I must marry.”

  “He must marry. But he must not marry you.”

  “Why not me?” she said, her eyes large and demanding, her voice sharp. “I am available, aren’t I? I’m so very available, Lord Cranleigh.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Why to what?” she asked, surrounded by roses, buried in blooms. The candlelight twinkled through the prisms of the chandelier, like starlight through midnight leaves. Midnight leaves? He was being ridiculous.

  “Why Iveston? Because you want to be a duchess, Amelia, that is all. Iveston is nothing to you beyond a title. And I have made up my mind that he shall not be cast at your hem for you to pick up like a broken flower.”

  He said it hotly, angrily, when he had meant to be cold and distant, to hold her beauty away from him, to keep her off, to keep her out.

  She studied him, unmoving, perhaps unmoved by his declaration.

  “Why not, if he wants to be plucked?” she asked. “I shall make him a fine wife.”

  “A fine duchess?”

  “Again, why not?” she said coldly.

  “But being a wife is not the same as being a duchess,” he said, taking another step nearer to her. “Can you simply pick a man’s name from Debrett’s, spreading your life and your legs out for him? Can you do that, Amelia?”

  He was being crass, to shock her, to scare her. She did not so much as flinch.

  “It is done every day, Cranleigh. Every single day. Why should it be any different for me?”

  She backed up, just a sliding step, almost casually, but another step removed from him. Or so she hoped. How far would she retreat to avoid him? How far would he push her into the conservatory? Until her back was pressed against the cold glass? Until her hair was caught and snagged by rose branches? Until the word duchess was driven from her?

  There was no place that far. No place on earth that far.

  “Why, Cranleigh?” she said, her blue eyes wide and imploring. “Why are you fighting this so? I must marry. Why not Iveston? ”

  “Never Iveston,” he said. “You think he cannot see what you are? ”

  “What I am?” she countered, her eyes clear of tears, which he had not expected.

  “Taken,” he snarled, taking another step nearer, pushing her back into the roses, the petals encompassing her, the thorns grabbing at her gown. And still she stepped away from him. Still she would not relent in her pursuit of Iveston. He could read it in her eyes.

  “Taken? Taken, Cranleigh?” she said, lifting her chin. “I am the furthest thing from taken.”

  “No, Amy,” he said, his voice hoarse in own ears. “Not the furthest thing.”

  “Nearly, my lord,” she said. “Who has taken me? Who has ruined me? No one. And no one shall. Now let me pass.”

  “No.”

  “Let me pass, Cranleigh,” she said again, more firmly.

  She was trapped within roses, could she not see that? She couldn’t get away now, not even if he allowed it. Even so, he could not resist. He never could. He never had.

  He raised his arms out toward her, and with his fingertips, he pushed against her shoulders. She stumbled back slightly, more fully wedged in rose petals, the thorns grabbing at the muslin, holding her fast, holding her deep within their embrace.

  Embrace, yes, that was the word.

  He moved forward, lifted her chin with a fingertip, gazed once more into her luminous eyes, and for what had to be the last time, what must be the last time, kissed her on the mouth. She opened beneath his lips like, yes, like a flower. Warm and moist and ready. And the kiss deepened and lengthened far beyond what he had intended, though he had intended none of this, and he fought the urge to pull her against him, but he kissed her still.

  Kissed her amidst the roses.

  Kissed her in the dark quiet of the conservatory.

  Kissed her, knowing that he would never be the man she wanted.

  And when the kiss ended, when he ended it, let it be remembered, he pulled away from her slowly, studying the passion-glazed look in her lustrous blue eyes, ran a hand over her hair, knocking the braid loose so that it fell in a line across her shoulder, and stepped away from her.

  She was breathing heavily, as was he. Just like before, that long-ago kiss in that long-ago time, before she had entered Society and before he had learned that she planned to be a duchess and nothing less.

  “Pass, Amy,” he said, his voice still hoarse. “Pass and be gone. You will never marry Iveston. I shan’t allow it.”

  And then he turned and left her there, stranded amidst the roses and caught up in thorns, the sound of her harsh breathing echoing against the glass.

  Fifteen

  IT was something of a mystery as to where Cranleigh had dragged Lady Amelia, but after Cranleigh reappeared at Iveston’s side only ten minutes after leaving the ballroom, it was supposed that Lady Amelia, who had only barely escaped ruination, which was a delight to her chaperone and a disappointment to all else present, had left the Prestwick ball.

  It was not until fully fifteen minutes had passed that Lady Amelia had appeared, the first set well under way, her fine muslin dress torn irreparably and, it looked, repeatedly.

  Naturally, all eyes had gone immediately to Lord Cranleigh. Cranleigh, as he was a stalwart fellow, had ignored them all nearly blissfully.

  Amelia, it was duly noted, gave a fine performance of ignoring Cranleigh.

  Well, what to think but that Cranleigh had dragged the girl off to some dark corner and practically ripped the clothes from her very shapely body?

  The most peculiar, that is to say, interesting facet of the entire thing was that Lord Iveston did not seem to be bothered by any of it in the least. Nor, it should be mentioned, was the Duke of Calbourne, who made his way to Lady Amelia’s side almost immediately and began talking her up.

  Well. If that didn’t put a fine spin on things. The room nearly exploded with speculation, not the least of which came from the younger Blakesley boys.

  “Do you think he’s responsible for that?” Josiah asked his brother George, obviously referring to Cranleigh, who, if it were not already too late, would be referred to as he by the entire company for the rest of the evening. And perhaps into next week.

  “I can’t think why he should be,” George Blakesley answered, looking slightly less sure of himself than u
sual, “but I can’t think that he didn’t.”

  “Because of Iveston,” Josiah said solemnly, studying Cranleigh as he stood next to Iveston, his expression a stony mask of social boredom.

  As they were all standing within six feet of each other, it should not be supposed that Cranleigh did not hear every word spoken by them. If he had a comment to make regarding his guilt or innocence, he refused to make it. Both George and Josiah—particularly Josiah, who was the youngest and did have a need for more experience where women were concerned, a fact he was grossly aware of—logically felt that, by discussing the situation in Cranleigh’s hearing, he would, by necessity, have to defend himself, his actions, and his honor. Cranleigh rarely, if ever, felt required to do anything of the sort. They ignored that fact. What else could they do?

  “But what did it accomplish? Except to ruin a very nice dress,” Josiah said. Unlike his four older brothers, he did not have blue but pale aqua green eyes. Other than that, he looked much like the other Blakesleys in that he was well-formed and blond-haired. He could not, by all appearances, take his pale aqua green eyes off of Amelia Caversham and her torn gown. “I should think she’d go home, wouldn’t you?”

  “Which is what it was supposed to accomplish,” Cranleigh said, not turning his ice blue eyes anywhere near the vicinity of Amelia Caversham. Which did strike one as being excessively deliberate. “Her dress, though not the lady herself, is ruined. One would suppose that she’d hie off home, glad to have escaped with only a ruined dress.”

  “One would think so,” Iveston said mildly, looking at Amelia. “I find myself surprised by how well it looks on her, torn as it is. I hadn’t thought myself the sort of man to enjoy seeing a woman so disheveled and, frankly, tossed about, but … she is lovely, isn’t she? There’s something so pleasant about her. Even torn.”

  Cranleigh swore mildly and then held his tongue. Most inconvenient. How was anyone to find out what had happened in the conservatory if he wouldn’t speak of it? Cranleigh had always been a stubborn lad, fully the most stubborn of them all.