Madame Esmerelda frowned at him.
“There’s White,” he finally offered.
“White is…”
“My man of business.”
“Excellent,” Madame Esmerelda said. “Make friends with him.”
“What? Friends?”
“Friends,” she affirmed.
“Insupportable. I’d rather take you to bed.”
It was the most terrible task she had set to date. The worst part was that some treasonous organ deep within him—perhaps his liver—wanted to comply. He wanted to talk to the man, as if it were perfectly normal.
“I can’t make friends with him.”
“Why ever not?”
“He’s in service,” Gareth protested. “Think what his origins must be. Madame Esmerelda, I am a marquess.” He folded his arms and nodded. “Surely you must see I cannot go about making friends of all and sundry.” He was arguing with himself as much as her.
“One man,” Madame Esmerelda said, “hardly constitutes ‘all.’ Nor is the man you yourself hired properly cast as ‘sundry.’”
It wasn’t the prospect of having friends that bothered him; it was the process of making them. Gareth remembered those first years at Harrow. He hadn’t been able to do it then. He’d tried, those first, tentative efforts so painstakingly slow. But the others his age formed their little groups so quickly, he’d been left on the margin. He wasn’t bullied, like some—his lineage had made sure of that—but he had been isolated. Two years of hesitant advances, gently rebuffed; two years standing silently, only thinking how to add to the conversation long after the moment passed.
“Oh, do stop looking so sullen,” she admonished.
What had started as awkwardness and isolation had soon become superiority and a fierce reclusiveness. He’d stopped desiring others’ good opinion. And that, of course, was when they’d granted him theirs. It was a terrible thing she did to him, rousing these old memories. As if she were his equal, free to disturb his past. As if he were the sort of man who could make friends with his man of business. Who could have fun with a woman.
“Friends. Bah.”
She tsked quietly.
Gareth looked down at her. It was not so dark that he missed the rounding of her eyes, the subtle relaxation in her cheeks. He knew exactly what she felt right then.
Pity.
He almost hated her for the emotion. He almost hated himself.
But she shook her head. “My poor Lord Blakely. It must be very lonely being superior to everyone else in the world.”
And that, more than anything else, froze the lust right out of his body.
She was a fraud and a charlatan and a veritable succubus of a ruined woman. But she’d seen right into his desolate heart. And without once touching him, she’d tied him up.
Again.
Chapter Eight
THE TASK MADAME ESMERELDA had laid Gareth had seemed monumental on the dark of the previous evening. In the bright light of the next afternoon, it became clear the task was not just monumental. It was insurmountable.
The scritch of White’s pen reverberated throughout Gareth’s study. The sound should have been dampened by the thick, red-and-gold carpet that lay over the wooden floors. But even the dark velvet curtains covering the windows didn’t swallow the incessant scratch of writing.
Scientifically, Gareth knew that the apparent volume of noise must be the product of his own fevered mind. Logically, he knew noise could not echo in the room; there were no hard surfaces present for the sound to bounce around.
Knowing this did nothing to lessen the irritation he felt at the continuing scrape of nib against paper. It did nothing to ease the sullen ire that lodged deep in his breast.
Madame Esmerelda had the matter completely backward. Gareth had no desire for friendship. He wasn’t lonely. He’d spent weeks at a stretch without human contact in Brazil, and he’d never hungered for conversation.
Well, maybe once. Or twice. A day. But it had been the same sort of longing he’d had for a warm bath or a swallow of brandy—a temporary thirst, one that could be eventually slaked and then forgotten.
Whatever point Madame Esmerelda hoped to make with this latest task was assuredly based on faulty logic. Gareth didn’t need anyone. And even if he did, a friendship with his man of business was not the balm that would assuage the temporary itch in his breast.
Scratch, scratch. Rustle.
Gareth looked up in irritation. White turned over a leaf in the account book, spreading a new sheet of paper on the desk in front of him. No doubt penning a quick suggestion on how best to modernize some mill on one of Gareth’s far-flung estates. Later in the afternoon, they would discuss those ideas. Rationally. Businesslike. At an impersonal arm’s length, as Gareth preferred.
He wasn’t going to befriend the man. The idea was ludicrous. He’d tell her as much. He didn’t give a snap for Madame Esmerelda’s foolish tasks, and he would tell Ned—he would tell him—
But this third task wasn’t about Ned any longer. It wasn’t even about the triumph of science over illogic. No; it was about Gareth. The year his father died and Gareth had been shipped off to Harrow, he had openly hungered for the sort of easy camaraderie the other boys enjoyed. He’d thought that desire had left him. Instead, it had only lurked like some subterranean beast, waiting to be drawn to the surface by Madame Esmerelda.
Gareth damned her.
“White.” The word tasted chilly and forbidding in his mouth. The delivery was just as his grandfather had taught him.
White looked up. “My lord?”
Gareth stared at the man’s pen, the source of his annoyance, in veiled frustration. What was he to say? He couldn’t order the man to leave off doing the work he was hired to do. Gareth made an impatient motion with his hand. The excessively competent White correctly deciphered the gesture as put down that damned pen and listen to what I have to say.
No doubt he expected some discussion of Gareth’s estate. Unfortunate that he was getting small talk. Friendly talk.
“Are you married?”
The attentive look in White’s eyes faded into puzzlement. “Yes, my lord.”
“Have you any children?”
“Four.”
Silence stretched. Gareth bit his cheek and shut the estate book on the desk in front of him with a slam. Befriend his man of business? The very notion was impossible. Their situations were entirely dissimilar. Gareth paid the man’s salary. White was a family man, with children and a wife. Surely, Gareth had nothing to say to him. It was absolutely ludicrous to suppose friendship possible.
Ludicrous seemed to be Madame Esmerelda’s style.
Gareth performed a mental inventory of his library. Volumes on agriculture. Texts in Latin and Greek. Taxonomy; biology; natural philosophy. Mathematics. He’d read them all. Many, more than once.
He could think of no fewer than six ways to prove Pythagoras’s theorem off the top of his head. He had at least twelve ideas for new industries to stimulate employment in his East Midlands holdings.
The ways he could think to continue this conversation totaled zero.
He tried anyway. “What think you of the weather?”
He could hear the cold formality in his own voice. It clanged, unpleasant even to his own ears. He sounded as if he were embarking on his own personal branch of the Spanish Inquisition—perhaps the heretical meteorology division.
“My lord?” Unsurprisingly, White looked uneasy. “Are you feeling well?”
Gareth flung the ledger on his desk open. Numbers—cold, yet comforting—sprang to life in front of him. The sums detailed debits and credits, purchases and sales. Feed for livestock; investments in a new pottery-works on one of his properties that had been recently connected to a rail line. Money flew forth and trickled back, adding up after months and months into substantial sums. Every last penny was accounted for between these pages.
All those books in his damned library. Every shilling in his accounts
.
And after thirty-four years, Gareth still had no idea how to make friends.
“Never mind,” he muttered, and stared furiously at the page.
After a pause, White’s pen started up again. Scritch, scratch. Rustle, rustle. It was only in Gareth’s imagination that the sound magnified to a roar.
THAT EVENING, LORD BLAKELY slammed open the unlocked door to Jenny’s rooms with a bang. Jenny jumped, her heart racing.
He strode inside without so much as a by-your-leave. He was accompanied by a breeze pregnant with all the youthful possibilities of spring rain. None of those possibilities entered the room with him. Instead, he seemed to suck them from the air, until Jenny’s world constricted to the glower on his face.
He didn’t say anything. Instead, he advanced on her, like a general accosting his lowliest foot-soldier. But the heat in his eyes was hardly military. And even the cruelest officer bent on discipline wouldn’t have trapped his subordinate against the wall, his arms forming a cage around her. Lord Blakely’s lips pressed together into one thin, white line.
Jenny felt a touch of irritation. She drew herself up straight and glared at him. “Lord Blakely, you can’t just stroll into my home as if you had permission.”
He snorted. “And who will stop me, do you suppose? Do think the matter through. I am a marquess. And you…” His hands bracketed her face. “You,” he scoffed again, disdainfully.
“Me?” The word squeaked out.
“If I see the worst in people,” he said, each word snapping out in carefully controlled fury, “it is because they won’t see it in themselves. Take you, for instance. There is no excuse for what you are doing to my cousin. You can couch it in whatever pretty terms you like, but ultimately, you are lying to him. You are deceiving him. And you are taking his money.”
Jenny put her hands against his chest. “That doesn’t justify your behavior here.” She pushed, hard.
He didn’t budge. “So you don’t deny it.”
“It’s not like that,” she said. “You don’t understand Ned. You’ve never bothered to understand him. He’s never had one scrap of encouragement in his life. You weren’t around when he was sent down from Cambridge, and you don’t understand—”
“You play on his worst fears. You cannot deceive me. I doubt you can even deceive yourself. You aren’t helping him. The world is not an encouraging or an understanding place. When Ned one day stands in my shoes as marquess, do you think anyone will care if he’s had friends? He doesn’t need to be happy. He needs to be ready. Look at him once through my eyes, Madame Esmerelda.”
Jenny pressed back into the cold wall. “If you had any notion of friendship, you’d never ask me to abandon him.”
“If you can’t think of Ned, then think of yourself. I admit, you present a very pretty package when you haven’t gaudied yourself up to play the part of fortune-teller. And I cannot help but admire your intelligence. But look at yourself once through my eyes. What do you think I see?”
Jenny screwed her eyes shut. She couldn’t stop up her ears, though, couldn’t shut off the prickle of nerves up and down her arms as he leaned closer.
He trailed one finger down her cheek, searing an unforgiving line into her skin. “You’re a fraud and a liar and a cheat. What notion of friendship do you entertain? You’ve bilked Ned of how much money? And you can’t even tell him your name.”
The truth burned the breath from her lungs. He tipped her chin up. When she opened her eyes, her vision swam. She willed the tear not to drop.
It didn’t.
But he did not miss the liquid sheen in her eyes. His thumb touched the corner of her eye and traced a damp track down her cheek. “You can’t tell Ned your name.” His voice dropped. It was so low, she could feel the vibration through his hand on her jaw. “But you can tell me.”
“If you think so little of me, then why are you touching me?”
His hand froze on her jaw. His nostrils flared.
“Because,” he said roughly.
“You see more than you’ve said.” She wanted to believe it. Had to. “When you look at me, you see—”
“I see nothing,” he said in clipped tones, “except a bloody good shag.”
And then he bent his head and kissed her. There was nothing tender or gentle about the embrace. His lips came down on hers with a controlled fury. And heaven help her, Jenny wanted to melt into his arms, wanted to sigh up into his kiss. She wanted him to put his hands on her and ferret out all her womanly secrets. She wanted, Jenny thought bitterly, to pretend that he cared for her.
She couldn’t. He didn’t kiss her as a lover. He kissed her as if she were a falsehood, and this rough embrace the proof of her perfidy. She wanted him, but not like this. Never like this.
Jenny clamped her lips together and turned away from his mouth. “Stop.” She was begging, her breath ragged.
His hand found her chin. “No.” He jerked her face back and leaned in again.
Jenny slapped him. She put her whole body into the blow. His head whipped to the side with the force of her strike.
Slowly his hands dropped to his sides. Disbelief echoed in his raging eyes.
Jenny shook out her stinging palm. “I don’t care who I lied to. I don’t care what your title is. When I see myself, I see a woman worth more than a modicum of your respect. And don’t you dare touch me if you disagree.”
Lord Blakely rubbed his cheek and scowled at her. “Damnation.”
“Do you know what I see when I look at you?”
“I don’t care.” He folded his arms. “I don’t care about you. I don’t care about my man of business. Or friendship. You can all go hang. I’m done trying. It never does any good.”
Pieces fell into place. The inchoate rage storming in his eyes. His unhappiness. His fury. Unwillingly, Jenny saw what had brought on this spectacular tantrum. He had made an effort to make friends with his man of business. And he’d failed. It should not have been surprising. Friendship could not be commanded, and Lord Blakely had little experience with any other sort of interaction.
“Lord Blakely,” Jenny said slowly, “I don’t care how spectacularly you fail at friendship. I will not be made a scapegoat for your frustration.”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” he said sulkily. “I’m acting this way because I enjoy it.”
Jenny sighed. “You’re an intelligent man. On occasion, you even act like one. Don’t make excuses for yourself.”
His hands clenched at his sides. “I just don’t make friends. It’s easy for you to—”
“Friendship is easy, my lord. Even commoners like me manage it. All you have to do is find what you have in common with an individual and talk about it. The rest will follow. Try conversing instead of commanding. Try seeing something good in a person, instead of seeing the worst.”
Lord Blakely pulled at his cuffs, adjusting them with minute precision. He turned his hands over and examined his palms. His jaw worked. And when he raised his head, she saw in his gaze a bleak and unrelenting wilderness, harsh and devoid of inhabitants.
She’d said it once to wound the man. But now, the sentiment escaped her before she had a chance to think it over. “My God, Lord Blakely. You really are lonely.”
The silence stretched. Finally, he turned away. “I had better leave.”
Jenny had nothing to do but shut the door behind him.
THE AFTERNOON AFTER LORD BLAKELY’S INTRUSION, Jenny checked the dark cloth covering her furniture for the third time. It was symmetrically arranged, as it had been when she’d checked it two minutes before. Tiny brass bells blew in the light breeze flowing from the open window. She’d chosen them because their tinkling tones sounded Eastern and exotic. Rationally, Jenny knew she’d perfected the right atmosphere.
And yet as she ushered Ned in, the familiar scent of sandalwood cloying her senses, she sensed something was missing. It was nothing that could be fixed with incense or any quantity of black cloth. No; it was something
more vital. She hadn’t the heart for this any longer.
“Madame Esmerelda,” Ned intoned, “I come seeking advice.”
That old formula. Again.
Jenny held out her palm. “Cross my palm with silver.”
The shillings he piled into her hand were as cold as ice, heavier than lead. Ten shillings. Money that would pay the quarterly rents due in the next week. But the reminder only pricked her conscience further.
Nothing had changed on the outside. On the inside, however, Jenny watched herself through Lord Blakely’s critical eyes. What she saw left her nauseated. She was weak. Greedy. She wasn’t lying to Ned for money. No, she was lying to him for friendship, and that was by far the more devastating fraud.
Jenny swallowed bitter bile and pulled a weak smile into place. “How can I help you, Ned?”
Ned leaned forward, gripping his knees. His eyes shone with a ferocious intensity.
“It’s not working.” He must have read the puzzlement in her eyes, because he explained. “The tasks. They’re not working. Blakely’s not falling in love with Lady Kathleen, and she’s not falling in love with him.”
Jenny met Ned’s gaze. Two weeks ago, she’d have sighed and told him to trust her. She’d have counseled patience and fortitude, and perhaps added occult platitudes. With Jupiter nearing, good things will come to those who wait. But two weeks ago, Lord Blakely had been nothing other than a mythological cousin mentioned by Ned in awestruck tones.
If I see the worst in everyone, he’d told her, it is because they refuse to see it in themselves.
Well. Jenny was seeing the worst of herself now. It was reflected in the hopeful glint in Ned’s eyes. It was mirrored in his clear, unwrinkled forehead, as he awaited her response. Waited for her to solve a problem she’d created.
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