Seductive Starts

by Courtney Milan

  “So I was good.” Her matter-of-fact delivery only drove the ice deeper into his bones.

  “It may be hard to believe, but I was quiet and polite and…and honest. At that age, at least. I never wept, not even—well, you can imagine how cruel young girls can be.”

  Gareth had seen how the boys at Harrow tormented those not from the oldest of families. How they’d singled out the awkward and the quiet. He could extrapolate.

  “I was uncommonly good until I turned nine. Then one of the other girls pushed me down and I skinned my knee and got mud on my dress. Nothing unusual, you understand. And while I was telling myself it would all come right when my mother came for me, I realized it had been years. She wasn’t coming for me. Nobody ever would, no matter how good I was. Mrs. Davenport had lied to me, and I was all alone.”

  Gareth swallowed the lump in his throat. “So what did you do?”

  Her shoulder blades leapt under his hand in what Gareth supposed was a fatalistic shrug. “I stopped being good. And here I am.”

  Here they weren’t. She shifted and smiled at him. Pretending it didn’t matter.

  “But all this talk of me is boring. What of you? Twenty-one, was it, when you discovered everyone lied?”

  Gareth paused, reluctant. In part, he held his tongue because he wanted to learn more of her than she did of him. But he also didn’t want to air his petty complaints to her. Not now, in the barren aftermath of her revelation.

  “The usual,” he eventually said. “Delusions of love.”

  “A woman?” He must have made some sign of acknowledgment, because she covered his cold hand with hers. “And another man, I would imagine.”

  “And more than one man,” he corrected. “One of whom was my grandfather.”

  Her breath hissed in. “Good Lord. How did that—I mean—why?”

  “It was a wager. I’d planned to ask her to marry me. My grandfather—he had the training of me after my father died—thought she wasn’t good enough to be the future Marchioness of Blakely. I said she was. He wagered he could prove otherwise.”

  “What do you mean, wagered she wasn’t good enough? That sounds horrific.”

  No more horrific than sending Gareth’s mother away from her son just because she remarried. Gareth waved his hand. “It was part of his lessons. Learn about the estates. Accept responsibility. Noblesse oblige. He said I had plebeian instincts, and he needed to drive them from me.”

  “So he—he—”

  “So he shagged the woman I intended to marry, yes.”

  “And he called that a lesson? It sounds more like a travesty. How did he dare tell you what he’d done?”

  “There was no need. He made sure I overheard them. She called his name, you see.”

  Long silence. “At the time,” she finally said, “he would have been Lord Blakely, yes?”

  Thank God for intelligent women, who understood the import of his little speech without him having to bare himself any more than he’d already done. Gareth traced his hand down the curve of her spine.

  “So since you inherited—” she started.

  “It’s been years. And no. Since I became Blakely myself, I haven’t been able to hear that name on a woman’s lips. Not like that.”

  At twenty-one, he’d had as much perspective on life as an ant had of the horizon. He felt rather like that ant now—as if he were utterly trivial. A pimple on the face of an enormous mountain situated in a massive range.

  She’d had nothing. By all rights, Jenny should have followed the path of doomed women everywhere. Increasing desperation. Sexual immorality. It should have culminated in her dramatic death in some snow-filled alley, as if she were some desperate female in one of those gothic serializations. But Jenny had not made a serial of herself.

  Instead, it was her arm that fell comfortingly over his chest, her head that rested against his shoulder. She gave succor to him, and he, selfish creature that he was, sucked in all her heat, hoarding it as selfishly as he’d taken her body.

  Years ago, he’d traded the uncertain comfort of companionship for the surety of superiority. It had been his grandfather’s last gift—or perhaps his curse. If this was what he’d given up all those years ago, could he justify those years of loneliness?

  Gareth shook his head and sent the dark thoughts back from whence they came.

  Twilight had passed, and now he could make out nothing of her features in the thick darkness. He pulled her against him. She was limp and no doubt weary. She hadn’t slept much the previous evening. Neither, for that matter, had he.

  The last of the light faded as he held her close.

  Chapter Fifteen

  WHEN JENNY AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING, the side of the bed next to her felt cold. He must have left sometime in the night. She opened her eyes. Pale light touched the walls. Outside, she could hear the sounds of early morning in London. A cart rumbled by, and the market a few streets down was coming to life. A butter-maid’s shout punctuated the dawn. “Freshly churned, freshly churned!”

  Jenny sat up and looked around the room, stricken. Every scrap of clothing he’d set on the chair the previous night had vanished. After the conversation the previous evening, she had begun to believe she meant something more to him than a mere sexual relationship. She had thought that they had formed a deeper attachment.

  The secrets they’d shared on the previous night had left her feeling vulnerable. Apparently, it had passed him by completely. It would be foolish for Jenny to harbor illusions about Lord Blakely. He wouldn’t care for her. For him, this was a temporary circumstance. It was physical pleasure. And no matter how close he held her, he would one day leave. When he did, she would not let her life be as empty as this room.

  She swung her feet to the side of the bed and stood up. She’d slept in nothing but his arms. She reached for her clothing, heaped in an uncertain pile on the floor. Drawers first, and then her shift. The working woman’s stays that provided support rather than shaping.

  As she dressed herself, she realized one last thing: Her desire to be loved hadn’t lessened during the decade since she’d embarked on that first disastrous affair.

  Her feelings for Gareth had passed the point of danger. She was desperate to take everything he said as an indication that he cared for her. But aside from a few comments made in the heat of the moment, he treated Jenny as if she were nothing more than a mistress. And that she’d vowed never to become. Not again.

  There was no good way to take his departure in the morning without so much as an explanation. No doubt he’d come back some other evening—and no doubt, he’d try to buy her participation in the sexual act with another piece of furniture. Perhaps he’d give her a silver bracelet when he was done with her.

  Perhaps by that time she would be desperate enough to take it, to accept the bare monetary value he placed on her heart.

  Jenny vowed not to let him fool her again. She’d let her own desperate loneliness overwhelm her. She had more important things to think about. Such as how she was to rescue her four hundred pounds from Mr. Sevin’s clutches. And what she was to do with the funds once she had them in hand.

  She hugged her knees.

  Had she not foolishly told Gareth about her childhood last night, she could have withstood this. But she had felt naked and exposed—and afterward he’d held her so gently. She’d felt as if she’d come home. She’d never had a home before.

  Damn him. The facts were simple. He was a lord. She was a ruined woman he had taken on as a mistress. She accepted as payment the casual kindnesses he offered.

  It had been many years since Jenny had allowed herself to cry.

  She did, now. She cried hot tears for her own stupidity. For that raging desire that still burned inside her, her determination to be strong and respected. She buried her face in her blanket and sobbed. It felt strangely exhilarating to let her tears loose.

  She’d always thought it weak to indulge in tears, but nothing else seemed to answer for the situation
. Crying didn’t solve any problems, but not crying hadn’t proven particularly effective, either. She let herself weep.

  The creak of hinges interrupted her. Heavy footsteps sounded in her front room, and a metallic scrape. Jenny looked up through tear-blurred eyes in time to see Gareth come down the short hall between her rooms. His hands were full; he held a bundle under one arm, and the kettle from the other room in his hand. He set the kettle on the hob-grate over the fire.

  Then he glanced over at Jenny and froze in shock. The cloth he’d used to hold the kettle fell from his hand and fluttered to the floor. It landed with an ignominious plop.

  “I’ll be damned,” Gareth said slowly, “if I ever have any idea what to say at times like this.”

  Jenny sniffled. “You didn’t leave?”

  He looked at her as if she belonged in Bedlam. “Of course I left. I was hungry, and I couldn’t find anything to eat. I bought a loaf and some cheese. And oranges.” He set his paper-wrapped package on the table. “Wait. You mean, you thought I had left. Without saying a word to you. Would I do that?”

  He drew himself up, cold and affronted.

  Jenny nodded.

  His jaw clenched. “Damn it. You know better than most I’m no good at these things but even I am not that bad. Really, Jenny. Why would you believe such a thing of me?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, mulishly. “Maybe because you once told me all you wanted from me was a good shag?”

  “I said that?” He looked surprised, then contemplative. Then, apparently, he remembered, and winced. “God. I said that? Why did you even touch me?”

  She glanced away so he could not see her heart in her eyes.

  Steam was billowing from the kettle. Gareth stooped and plucked the cloth from the floor and grasped the handle. Jenny watched in fascination as he poured water into her teapot.

  “What kind of a lord are you? You make your own tea?”

  He set the kettle down with a faint sniff. “I’m not completely helpless. I lived with only a small entourage in a Brazilian rain forest for months. I can make perfectly respectable tea. And coffee. And porridge, for that matter.” He gestured with the cloth. “You like oranges. Here. Let me peel one for you.”

  Jenny hiccuped through her tears. “How do you know I like oranges?”

  “Why else would you have had one in that sack the day I met you? Now, come over here and eat. You’ll feel better.”

  Jenny wrinkled her nose at him, but he was undoubtedly right. She sat and he handed her a section of orange.

  “Tears,” he said as she popped the tangy fruit into her mouth, “are irrational. You needn’t fear I’ll leave you with nothing but a silver bracelet. I’ll take care of my responsibilities.” He handed her a piece of cheese.

  Jenny held up her hands in protest.

  “No,” she said in a low voice. “You won’t.”

  “What do you mean, I won’t? Of course I will. You can’t imagine the money would mean anything to me, and so why wouldn’t I—”

  She jabbed a finger into his chest. “You won’t,” she said, “because I won’t let you. I have…I have enough money. Saved. In a manner of speaking.” Where that manner of speaking was exaggeration. She licked her lips. “And I don’t want to be your responsibility.” That she was more certain about. “I’m never going to be your responsibility. Do you think I want a periodic payment from you?”

  “Why ever not? Most people would.”

  She shook her head mutely. Then she burst into tears again.

  Gareth stared at her in horror. “What? What did I say this time?”

  She kept crying.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” he cried. “It’s inexplicable. You’re an intelligent woman, Jenny. There’s no need to cry because a man offers to provide a little financial assistance.”

  The admonition had no effect.

  She had harbored girlish dreams about her mother. She’d never wondered, though, what her mother had experienced. Had she, too, been shunted off when some man she cared for coldly offered her a stream of dreary coins?

  Jenny wouldn’t accept it for herself. She’d lived on that sort of payment all her young life. Someone had employed a stream of uncaring women to raise her. She hadn’t run away from a life as a governess to lapse into another man’s responsibility. Because what a woman felt as cold obligation, a man saw as salve for his conscience. Financial absolution, as it were, in lieu of emotional ties.

  She would not do this again. She’d become Madame Esmerelda because she didn’t want a master. She’d felt pushed into one box or another. She didn’t want to be another bloody line in his ledgers, and she’d be damned if she depended on another person again.

  “Look,” Gareth said a bit desperately, “I’ll—I’ll send financial assistance. And an occasional fruit basket.”

  Jenny couldn’t help it. She laughed at him through her sniffles. “Oh, listen to you. ‘A woman is not a millpond. She is a science.’ Good God, if the Linnean Society could hear you now, they’d drum you out of their ranks.”

  “Well,” Gareth huffed, “I don’t know what to do. I was serious about the fruit basket. Or at least I would be, if it would make a difference.”

  “I know. Why do you suppose I started laughing? Honestly, Gareth. Could you be any more helpless?”

  “Helpless?” Gareth frowned. “I’m not helpless. I just can’t think of anything to say. And since you won’t tell me what the matter is, I can’t solve the problem.”

  “If you could solve the problem, I wouldn’t be crying, would I?”

  “What the devil am I supposed to do about a problem I can’t solve?”

  Oh, if only Jenny knew the answer to that one. But her future loomed ahead of her with frightening blankness. There was no home for her to return to; no back to go back to.

  “It would help,” Jenny said, her voice thick with tears, “if you would come over here.”

  He pulled his chair next to hers and sat, somewhat awkwardly. “Like this?”

  She nodded. “And you could put your arms around me.”

  “Like this?”

  She relaxed into his hold. “Almost like that,” she said, “but tighter. Right. Like that.”

  It was an illusion, and one she’d browbeaten him into displaying. But for a moment, she could imagine that he cared.

  The mirage lasted only a moment. “This isn’t a rational way to address a problem,” he complained.

  “Hush. Listen. Sometimes answers flow without words, through touch.”

  “Like completing an electric circuit?”

  Jenny had heard only bits and pieces about the new theories of electric flow, and couldn’t answer that. After a space, she spoke again.

  “As much as I may find to deplore in my past conduct, I can’t see what I would change. The life I rejected seemed very dreary to me, without possibility of reward or thanks. I know any God-fearing woman would not quail at such a thought, but God had never shown me particular favor. I felt as if I were being forced into a coffin, and told that if only I would lie rigidly enough, the screams of the damned would soon fade into gentle murmurs. I saw the teachers around me—cold, humorless women. They had no friends, no family. I couldn’t join their ranks. I was eighteen, Gareth. It was too young to die. But now here I am. I’m not sure how to go on.”

  He ran his hand down her hair. “For now,” he said, and then stopped. He leaned down, his nose brushing against her forehead. “For now, I’d like you to go on with me.”

  “See?” Jenny said. “That was good. A comforting gesture, and completely unprompted on my part. You’re a quick study. Even you will have to admit that, despite your appeal to logic, touch works. All the cold in me flows to you.”

  “Cold can’t flow,” he said, pulling her closer. “Only heat. Thermodynamically speaking—”

  “Gareth?”

  He looked down.

  “Don’t ruin this.”

  He didn’t.

  H
OURS LATER, JENNY DUCKED HER HEAD inside the bank. There were three cashiers about. None of them, Jenny saw with some relief, was Mr. Sevin. She approached another man, one with whom she had made deposits before. He regarded her with attentive politeness. Thank God; Mr. Sevin had not spread tales about her.

  “Perhaps you can help me,” Jenny said. “I seem to have, um, misplaced my passbook. And I had hoped to make a withdrawal.”

  “Of course,” said the man. “I recognize you. Have you your account information?”

  Jenny handed over a slip of paper. He scanned it and then disappeared into a back room. When he returned, he carried a sheaf of papers. His mouth contorted into a puzzled frown.

  “Madame—Esmerelda, is it?”

  Jenny thought about explaining further. But no. She’d learned last time not to admit to identifying herself under a false name until after she had her money in hand.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, this is very strange. Typically, we do not maintain accounts when the balance sinks so low.”

  Jenny sighed. She’d heard this before. “I know. When I opened the account…” Well. She didn’t want to alert him to Mr. Sevin’s involvement. If he decided to talk to the man, goodness knows when she’d see her money.

  “Exceptions were made,” she said carefully. “The account was opened.”

  The man made a dismissive motion. “Yes, of course. We all make exceptions from time to time. Technically, we are not authorized to do so, but, well.” He shrugged sympathetically. “It is just that nobody ever wants to maintain an account with a balance this low. There are no benefits to storing such a small sum, as the fees will eat any paltry interest.”

  Trepidation fluttered through Jenny. Bank cashiers were not usually wealthy fellows. They would not call the twelve or thirteen pounds she earned every year “paltry,” no matter how flush the pockets of their clients.

  “What amount is it that you see?”