JENNY EXPERIENCED ONE SECOND of blinding clarity before Lord Blakely’s lips touched hers. Madame Esmerelda would have stepped away the moment he extinguished her candle. Madame Esmerelda would never let herself be rooted in one spot with hunger.
With five minutes to think it through, she’d have pushed him away. Her disguise depended on it. But she had one second, and so her reasoning took on an entirely different cast. The heat of his breath against her lip. The spark that shot through her when his hand, ungloved and still wet from the rain, grazed her cheek.
Mostly, though, something vitally feminine deep inside her chest insisted she stay, a bud yearning to unfold after years of lies and denial. Madame Esmerelda wouldn’t have cared. But the pretense of Madame Esmerelda had eroded every bit of real human contact from Jenny’s life for years. Jenny was tired of not caring.
Jenny stayed.
She did more than stay. She stepped into Lord Blakely’s rough embrace and lifted on tiptoes. He didn’t evince the least surprise at her brazenness. Instead, his hands settled on her hips and he pulled her up into his kiss.
For all the carefully controlled power in the strong arms holding her, his mouth descended on hers with surprising gentleness. His lips brushed hers, sweet and lingering. A soft, sensual nip, and then another. Beguiling. As if there were nothing he’d rather do than sample her breath, taste her lips.
He was slow but not hesitant. He coaxed her to give up her every secret, and Jenny was beyond artifice. Every sensation—the sweep of his tongue against her bottom lip, the light brush of her nipples against his chest, the clamp of his hands around her waist—reverberated through her aching body.
She opened her mouth. He entered, as confident as an advancing army. His tongue captured hers, and everything warm and womanly in Jenny welled up in response.
Without breaking the kiss, he pushed forward inside her rooms. Three steps, and her back met the rough surface of her entry wall, his lips and tongue teasing her. His hands tightened, each finger branding her hips through her dressing-gown.
Jenny wanted everything she had denied herself these last long years. She wanted every last scrap of femininity she had hidden behind the voluminous yards of her garish costume. She wanted to touch him, experience flesh pressed against flesh. If only for this moment, she wanted to believe herself safe and secure. It was idiotic beyond all comprehension for her to indulge that fantasy with any person, let alone this man.
But she did.
Lord Blakely pulled away. He swiveled briefly, casually flicking her door shut with one hand. The sharp click of its closing awoke Jenny from her dream.
The marquess turned back to her.
One tentative glance at his face and Jenny understood exactly how foolish she’d allowed herself to be.
The set of his lips was no longer grim, but it was still devoid of warmth. He considered her, his eyes alert and observant, darting from her mouth to the hand she held up to halt his advance. For all the passion she’d imagined in his kiss, the look he gave her was considering. Intellectual. And he wasn’t even breathing hard.
Jenny smiled tentatively at him, her heart slamming painfully against her chest.
His expression didn’t lighten one iota.
She swallowed and looked at the floor. She’d just told him everything, and she hadn’t even spoken a word. Life was brutally unfair, sometimes. But she’d had years to become accustomed.
“I think you’ve proven your point.” She could taste her own bitter shame in every word. It had taken him seconds to breach her defenses. Moments to prove he could command her female response. Mere hours to expose her lies.
For a heartbeat, he didn’t react.
Then he reached out an arm. “Not in the slightest. Give me your hand.”
The nonchalance in his demand stiffened her spine. She took another step back. “You’ve touched me enough for one evening, I should think.”
His gaze skittered down her robe. Her nipples were already peaked. He could not miss those tips poking against the fabric. Nor could he fail to note the pale rose heat that suffused her face and hands.
He shook his head slowly. “I suppose you should think so. But you don’t. You’re as ravenous for me as I am for you.”
A gasp escaped Jenny’s unwilling lungs. “I—I’m not—”
“Don’t bother lying to me.” His voice was dark and deep, scraping like gravel against her senses. “You’ve already told me what I need to know. You’re no fortune-teller.”
Lord Blakely lounged with his back against the door. She glanced down—but the damnable loose cut of his trousers gave no hint as to his physical state, and he exhibited frightening composure for a supposedly ravenous man. Jenny was the one who ached all over. And he was right. She wanted his touch again; she hungered for it.
He crooked one finger. “Now come. Give me your hand. I promise I shan’t bite.”
She swallowed. “Really? Then why ever do you want it?”
A flicker of appreciation flared in his eyes. “I am going to read your palm.”
Confusion sparked in Jenny’s mind. “But you don’t believe in fortune-telling.”
He pushed off from the door and wandered from the tiny entryway into her front room. He paused before her table and lifted the cheap black cotton off the wood with his thumb and forefinger.
“I don’t believe in this.”
He dropped the material to the floor. It landed in a whispering sigh.
He turned to the brass tray where she burned her incense. She’d cleaned it of ash and filled it with fresh sandalwood shavings in preparation for the next client. He picked up a handful of fat curls. “I don’t believe in these, either.”
He clenched his fist, and short stubs of sandalwood rained down on the black cloth.
Lord Blakely turned to face her. His features were still hard and unmoving and his gaze roved around the room, avoiding her. “Let me tell you what I do believe. I believe in intelligence. I believe in clever tricks. And I believe you have no shortage of the two.”
Two steps forward, and he was once again within touching distance. He held out his hand once again. “Give me your hand, and I’ll show you how your trick is performed.”
Jenny shook her head.
He gave her no chance to move away. Instead, his fingers clamped about her wrist and he drew her toward him. Jenny’s skin prickled with the heat wafting off him. But he didn’t take advantage of her proximity. Instead, he flipped her hand palm up and examined it with logical detachment.
“There is no real difference between your palmistry and mine. Except I eschew cosmic references. I’ll explain where I get my oranges and elephants, scientifically speaking.” The pads of his fingers traced a molten line down her palm. “The first thing I see in your hand is that you have been well-educated, almost certainly at one of the small schools that trains gentlewomen in the outlying areas of the country.”
Jenny inhaled. “I—What makes you say—”
He ticked items off on each of her fingers. “You are familiar with bugs pinned to cards. You know the precise degree of deference owed a marquess. When you become angry, you use words like desiccate and ossify. You sit as if you were trained with a book on your head. You speak like a young lady drilled in her aitches, which you enunciate quite precisely.” He paused, tapping his thumb against her smallest finger. “I am out of fingers, and not yet out of observations.”
Jenny pulled against his grip. He didn’t loosen his hold.
Instead, he trailed his fingers along her palm. Years of doing her own cleaning had left her hands rough. She had no doubt that frightening brain of his was calculating the precise amount of laundering she had performed.
“I doubt there was much money in your family—perhaps it was charity that paid for the education?”
Jenny swallowed, and her fingers curled into a ball.
He straightened them out between the palms of his hands. “Or a bequest. A patron. You should have been a g
overness. I suppose that was the point of all that education?”
Jenny had felt less naked that afternoon, wearing nothing but a chemise.
“Either you chose not to, or you were ruined beyond any hope of governessing.”
Don’t, oh, don’t let him see the truth. It would give him far too much power over her. If he knew she were ruined—if he knew that she’d once tried to be a mistress—he would no doubt think she was open to the possibility again.
He looked up from her hand and stared at the wall behind her. “Both, I should think. I have difficulty imagining your acceding to anyone’s demands. If you had wanted to be a governess, you’d have found a way to be one. But you kiss like a temptress.”
Heat flooded her. She’d kissed like a fool. Coldhearted demon that he was, he knew it.
“In any event, I wager you were not a favorite among the other girls at school.”
Her breath hissed in, and she jerked away from him. Once again, he refused to relinquish her wrist, his grasp as tight as an iron manacle.
“If you had been,” he said reasonably, as if his fingers weren’t pressing against her hammering pulse, “you’d have options far more appealing than fraud. And more fundamentally, to even think of this profession, you must have discovered at a very young age that everyone lies. It’s hard to learn that when you’re a well-loved child. How old were you?”
“I was nine.” The words escaped her lips, unbidden. It was the first time she’d verified his suspicions aloud. And now he knew. He knew everything. Jenny shut her eyes, unwilling to see the triumph of his response.
His fingers tightened about her wrist. His other hand trailed against her jawbone. Reluctantly, she let her lids flutter open. His eyes had focused on her lips again. He ought to have been crowing with delight. But there was no victory in his gaze.
“Precocious,” he finally said, looking away. “I was twenty-one. Ned’s age.”
She could identify no hint of self-pity in his voice. He sounded as scientific as ever, reciting evidence to a lecture hall. And yet the tightness around his mouth suggested the memory was more substantial than mere data. Jenny had a sudden urge to kiss the fingers that encircled her wrist.
“I suppose I should read your future, as well as your past.” He ducked his head, examining her palm again. “You will tell me your real name. It’s not Esmerelda, that’s for certain.”
“It’s not? Why not?”
He shrugged. “An impoverished English family would never name their daughter anything so fanciful. And then there’s all that sandalwood and the ridiculous costume. ‘Esmerelda’ is too convenient. It is just another trapping in your particular subterfuge. Tell me your name.”
Jenny pressed her lips together and shook her head.
“Margaret,” he guessed. “Meg for short.”
“Esmerelda,” Jenny insisted.
That sardonic quirk of his lips again. “It won’t do, Meg. You’ll tell me your name eventually.”
“If Esmerelda were not my name, why would I admit it to you?”
His thumb caressed hers. “Because I can’t let you call me Gareth until you do.”
He spoke so casually. “Why—” Jenny stopped, and squared her shoulders. “My lord, why would I want to call you by your Christian name?”
“I can see that future here—” he traced a line down her palm “—and here—” he touched her cheek near her eyes “—and here.”
His thumb brushed her lips, and her mouth parted in anticipation. And still his expression lost not one whit of its scientific cast.
“I’m not going to marry whatever poor girl you pick out,” he said softly. “I pit your prediction against mine. I predict you’ll call me Gareth. When I bed you, Meg, I’ll be damned if you scream anything else.”
“If you’re trying to prove you’re not an automaton,” Jenny said, “you really ought to consider varying your tone. You might as well be talking about the price of potatoes, for all the—”
He cut her off with a swift kiss. Heaven help her trembling body, she let him do it. And when he pulled back, it was her lips that clung to his.
“You see?” he murmured. “You’ll scream.”
“But we’ve already established that I am not dispassionate. I want to know—what will you do?”
For just one instant, he met her eyes. Those golden orbs glimmered with a fierce light. It was the second hint of emotion she’d detected from him that evening. When he looked sharply away from her, she could almost believe she’d imagined it.
He let go of her wrist, breaking the connection between them. Then he shook his head, and Jenny realized they had been standing in the chilled entry for minutes. She hadn’t even felt the cold.
She did now.
He set his hand on the handle of her door. “You want to know what I’ll do when I bed you? I’ll win.” He turned away and opened her door. The rain had stopped and a light, swirling mist blanketed the street. Seconds later, he strode into the night. The fog muffled the sound of his steps and swallowed his disappearing figure.
Jenny shut the door and turned and sagged against it. Her hands covered her face. But no matter how tightly she closed her eyes, she couldn’t erase the feel of his lips from her flesh or the taste of his mouth from her mind.
What a disaster. He had already won.
He’d seen everything, from the harsh order of the school where she’d been raised to the depths of her unfortunate attraction to him. She hadn’t spoken what she felt in words, but his one kiss had teased out her admission of fraud.
In the scant space of a few hours, he’d unearthed her deepest secrets. Including, it seemed, a few she’d kept from herself. The desire to be touched. The desire to be desired.
One kiss, and she’d verified every dismissive thought Lord Blakely had ever had of his cousin. Because Lord Blakely’s prediction was not just that he’d bed Jenny, but that he’d prove Ned’s valiant defense false.
Once, her profession had seemed a game. It had made no difference what lies she told her clients. After all, few of them truly believed her. They saw her as nothing more than a distraction, an entertainment to be scheduled between boxing matches and the opera.
But Ned had been different. What had it hurt to foretell that he would become a strong and confident man, trustworthy and capable?
When Ned discovered she’d lied, Lord Blakely would never let him forget his foolishness. He’d store it in that brain of his, next to his theories of goose behavior, or whatever it was he studied. And he’d trot out the evidence any time Ned showed a hint of independence.
For all Lord Blakely’s talk of ravenous hunger, he’d been the one to step away. Of course he would willingly take Jenny to his bed. After all, he was a man. That’s what men did. And given the expertise he’d shown with his lips and tongue, she had no doubt he could make her scream if he got her there.
If? It had become a matter of when.
He’d held her close. He’d kissed her. He’d promised to make her scream in bed, and shamefully, she still longed for him to do it. But there was one thing Lord Blakely had not done—not once, in the hours she’d observed him.
He hadn’t smiled.
Jenny took a deep breath. Silently, she made another prediction. Before he took her to bed, she’d break Lord Blakely. She’d make him realize Ned needed more than intellect and insult to sustain him. She’d make him respect Ned.
Damn it, she’d make him respect her.
Jenny had already lost. But that didn’t mean the marquess had to win.
THERE WAS NO WAY TO WIN, Gareth thought helplessly, as he surveyed the tray that his sister, Laura Edmonton, had laid out in anticipation of this visit. Shortbread. Cucumber sandwiches with the crust removed. Once, many years ago, he’d enjoyed both. Now they lay, marshaled in grim rows, testament to an ongoing war. Gareth could at most hope to achieve a scrambling, ignominious retreat.
His sister—his much younger half sister, if Gareth was going to be prec
ise about the matter—smiled at him. But the expression her eyes reflected wasn’t hope or happiness; it was fear.
“Tea?”
The battle was always joined with tea. “Please,” he answered.
He could direct the products of his estates without blinking. He had braved the rain forests of Brazil for months. But this quiet room, draped in pink silks, with the pleasant burbling of the fountain coming through the window…Well, it vanquished him every time.
Not so much the room as Laura. Her lips were compressed in concentration as she added a careful dollop of cream to Gareth’s tea—precisely the quantity that Gareth preferred.
Every month, Laura tried desperately to please him. Today, she wore the finest morning dress she owned, made of some thin, pink flimsy cotton, the sleeves large and heavy and festooned with ribbons. Her sandy brown hair was pinned up with ruthless exactitude.
Laura handed over a delicate china cup and saucer, as if tea would magically heal the damage between them. It couldn’t. After Laura had been born, Gareth had been too busy learning to be a marquess to become a brother. Now that they were both adults, they’d frozen into this awkward pattern.
Awkward?
Every month, she invited him over for tea. Every month, he accepted. And every month…To call these unfortunate tête-à-têtes awkward would understate the matter by an order of magnitude.
Their afternoons always started this way. Gareth struggled for conversation, and Laura attempted to make up for his taciturn nature by speaking for them both.
“Do you like my reticule?” She set her saucer on the table with a clink and retrieved a puddle of pink silk that lay nearby. She held it out for inspection.
The object in question was embroidered with pink roses, which in turn sported pink leaves and pink thorns. It was of a size to fit a calling card—a pink calling card. Dyed pink feathers were sewed to the bottom. The handbag was not merely pink. It was fatally pink.
Gareth searched for an appropriately supportive response. “It seems…serviceable?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Oh. Because I took it with me when Alex took me driving, and he said it would spook the horses. He made me sit on it the whole way, and then he only took me in a single circuit around the park.” Laura looked up at Gareth.
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