The Courtesan's Secret

by Claudia Dain

  “And of course, you should not,” Molly continued, walking out of the room and motioning for him to follow her, which he did. “No matter her father’s slipshod upbringing of her, no matter her loose behavior with Lord Dutton, you should make it a point never to seduce girls of good family. And her family name is quite good, even if Lord Melverley leaves much to be desired.”

  “Lady Louisa should not be judged based on her father’s handling of her,” Blakesley said.

  “Perhaps not, but she will be judged on her handling of herself. And she is handling herself very ill. The Town does nothing but talk of her, and by extension, of you. This cannot and will not be tolerated, Blakes. You do understand,” she said, not asking for his understanding at all. “Think of Iveston’s reputation if you cannot be compelled to think of your own.”

  “Set yourself at ease, madam,” he said, the words barely escaping his compressed teeth.

  Molly appraised him silently and with obvious skepticism. “Then you’ll amend your appalling behavior in regards to Lady Louisa?”

  “Completely,” he said with a frosty bow of his head. “You are content?”

  “Most tolerably,” Molly replied sharply, snapping her fan closed in concert with her words. “It is most disagreeable to have one’s son disparaged so publicly. Having him disparaged privately is quite disagreeable enough, which is what I must put up with regarding Iveston and his peculiar ideas about socializing with his peers. Ridiculous, to avoid people the way he does. One would think he was damaged in some horrid fashion when, of course, he is the most handsome and pleasing sort of man. But that is beside the immediate point,” Molly said. Blakesley sighed and lowered his gaze to the floor in exasperation. “You simply must hold yourself in check, Blakes. This fool-for-love drivel is perfectly fine when played out upon the stage, but it has no value at all in life. One must keep to the priorities.”

  “Which are?” he said blandly. Really, this was becoming more than intolerable. He was being dressed down like a runny-nosed child of three.

  “To make a proper marriage, obviously,” his mother said on what was perilously close to a snort. “It is equally obvious that Louisa Kirkland is clearly the wrong sort. Any woman who runs around Town after a man the way she has done will hardly be a fit mother to any man’s heirs, for how could he fail to wonder if the heirs are, in fact, his?”

  Blakesley held himself very erect and said, “These are matters which, perhaps, a man may judge better than a woman.”

  “I doubt that very much,” Molly said, “but I would prefer to leave the subject of Louisa Kirkland altogether.”

  “As would I,” he said, a gross understatement.

  And with that, he left the music room, the heels of his shoes clicking like gunshot against the marble floors.

  “ALL you had to do was find one,” Iveston said from deep within the tufts of his red leather chair, facing the fireplace as it cast its golden glow. “One woman willing to take you on. And you find Louisa Kirkland.”

  “If you say anything about love making its mark on my wayward soul, I’ll blacken your eye nicely. Explain that to your guests,” Blakesley said, tucked within his own chair, brown leather and only slightly smaller, facing the same golden glow.

  “Please do,” Iveston said. “It would provide the most delightful excuse not to attend tonight’s torture. And it would have the added benefit of setting Mother on your tail and getting her off of mine.”

  Blakesley grunted and hunched his shoulders up around his ears. “I’ve reached my limit of endurance on that, thank you very much. You shall remain unmarked, at least by me. I happen to know that there are at least ten young and very eligible women coming tonight for the particular purpose of presenting themselves for your approval. Which is to say, they are here to look you over.”

  Iveston huddled deeper, the red leather squeaking. “As always. I came to the conclusion, and a rather dismal conclusion it is, that Mother has not arranged for these dinners to celebrate my birth in a show of familial devotion and affection, but merely as a sort of marriage fair for the unmarried ladies of the ton. It goes without saying that I am perceived to be the prize.”

  “How long did it take you figure all that out, Ives?” Blakesley asked sarcastically.

  Iveston leaned back in his chair, his long legs stretched out in amiable misery, his blond eyelashes gleaming in the firelight as they shaded his blue eyes. “I believe it was as I was chewing a particularly tough piece of mutton and looked up to find no fewer than eight of the finest women of Mother’s acquaintance staring at me in undue fascination and obvious speculation. I was seventeen at the time, so, twelve years ago now? Twelve years of being the fox to a field of matronly hounds, and my own mother the master of the hunt. If I didn’t feel that your situation with Louisa Kirkland was so damnably ridiculous and endlessly amusing, I would say I was the most ill-favored man in town. But, of course, you have that distinction.”

  Blakesley didn’t have any trouble at all in knocking his older brother out of his chair and sitting on his chest. He did, however, have trouble keeping him there. In an entirely friendly tussle of not less than three glancing blows, the two men were able to make their point, which was that neither one of them was willing to tolerate being thought of as either ridiculous or amusing. At least not for much longer than they had already done.

  When they had straightened their cuffs and smoothed their cravats, they once again resumed their lazy posture by the fire, the creak of leather as they shifted their weight a comfortable accompaniment to their grunts of affable irritation and general surliness.

  William Blakesley, better known as Iveston, and Henry Blakesley, lovingly called Blakes by his intimate family, were, in all manner and in every detail, brothers. They were both blond, both jaded to an appropriate and entirely useful degree, and both possessed of a more than sarcastic wit. In that Iveston was heir to a rather substantial dukedom, it was more than enough to convince the most particular observer that Iveston’s wit was a shining example of a stellar mind. In Blakesley’s case, the determination was more often that he was a scoundrel of the first water.

  Such was the price one paid in Society for being the fourth son of a duke.

  “I’ll say this for Louisa,” Iveston mumbled, rubbing his left ear, “she may not hound after you, but she’s also never hounded me. She follows her heart and not her purse.”

  Blakesley grunted and slunk lower in his seat. “Which makes the whole pearl situation more questionable.”

  Iveston cocked his head at Blakesley and said softly, “Have you considered casting your net in another pond?”

  “Have you thought of just being done with the entire chase and marrying the biggest dowry in the neatest package?”

  “Actually, yes,” Iveston said, sighing. “What else is there to it, anyway? A dowry, an heir, one’s duty to one’s family done in the most ridiculously easy fashion; one can hardly call it hard duty.”

  Blakesley snorted his amusement. Iveston kicked him on the foot.

  “But you want love,” Blakesley said, still chuckling. “You want to suffer, as I suffer.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” Iveston said stiffly. “I will manage it much more efficiently than you have done. Love does not demand suffering. It is a noble emotion, properly managed.”

  “Yes,” Blakesley said dryly, “you’ve made your point. I should like to see you manage a woman as easily as you speak of managing love. The two do, unfortunately, travel in tandem and women are not so easily managed as all that.”

  “I should say that depends upon the man,” Iveston said loftily.

  Which naturally required that Blakesley launch himself in a physical attack upon his eldest brother.

  LADY Dalby looked like a woman who expected to be physically assaulted at any moment, and as if she would have enjoyed the experience immensely. It was a look that was peculiar to her and was, by any man’s reasoning, the cause for her spectacular success both in Society and out. S
he looked a woman simply begging to be seduced, though it was a well-known fact that Sophia Dalby never begged for anything.

  The Duke of Calbourne was as fascinated by her as any man, which is to say, he would have seduced her if she gave any indication at all that she was interested in his particular brand of seduction. Unfortunately, she had not.

  Yet.

  Calbourne, having conspired only slightly with Sophia this very week to get his closest friend married to Sophia’s daughter, was under the rather slippery impression that he and Sophia Dalby were friends of a particular sort. Namely, friends who would one day become lovers.

  Naturally, things being what they were and events proceeding as he hoped they would, Calbourne had lost no time in telling Sophia about the wager regarding the Melverley pearls as they pertained to Louisa Kirkland, Dutton, and Blakesley.

  He rather suspected that someone was going to find himself married very soon. As long as he was not the lucky man, Calbourne was very much intrigued to watch Sophia manage things from a safe position. And he was in a very safe position regarding all things matrimonial. Calbourne did not seek a wife as he already had produced one perfectly satisfactory heir in the person of his seven-year-old son, Alston.

  If there was one particular skill at which Sophia Dalby particularly excelled it was in arranging wives for men who were not in the market for wives. Just look at what she had done in a matter of days to his friend Lord Ashdon, who had been minding his own business on a Monday and found himself married by Thursday.

  Chilling bit of management, that.

  “You are intrigued by this news, are you not?” Calbourne asked, crossing his legs as he sat on one of the yellow salon’s more sturdy chairs.

  “Very,” Sophia said softly. “It is endlessly fascinating to watch what a man will do to possess the particular woman of his choosing. Do you not find it so?”

  Given that he had told her of the pearl wager in the hopes of finding his way into her bed, Calbourne felt the sting of indictment in her remark rather more than he would have liked.

  Being a duke, he was not at all accustomed to feeling stings of any sort whatsoever, and he fully intended for it to stay that way. Even if he and Sophia did find themselves tangled in the sheets at some future date, he was not going to allow himself to be manipulated or insulted or any of the other things Sophia Dalby was wont to do to a man. There was no time like the present for making that singular point very clear to her.

  “But, of course, it is always the woman who does the choosing in these matters,” Sophia said pleasantly, her dark eyes shining with mirth, cutting him off before he had even begun to lay down the ground rules of their association. “Not that most men realize that, naturally. But you realize that, don’t you, your grace? It is your most enchanting trait, as you must surely know.”

  He knew nothing of the sort. He was somewhat dimly aware that Sophia had redrawn the lines of their relationship, insulted him, and complimented him all in the same breath. He found himself in the odd position of wanting to agree with her. And that is exactly what he did.

  She was a most confounding woman. Perhaps he did not want to be tangled in her sheets after all.

  “I daresay I understand completely what Lord Dutton hopes to achieve by such a tawdry wager,” Sophia continued languidly. “He is a most forward man, is he not? As for what Lord Henry Blakesley was thinking, well,” she said with a slow smile, “his actions must speak for themselves. I don’t know what his mother will do when she finds out. Surely Dutton will bear the brunt of responsibility for instigating this shameful wager, putting a gently reared girl’s reputation in peril. Of course, one could argue that Blakesley went along with it quickly enough,” Sophia said silkily, “but from your description, it sounds as if he did it to protect the girl from harm, as you have in alerting me to the sordid details of this ill-conceived wager. Lady Louisa must be protected from callous and opportunistic men, must she not? And who better to see to her protection than a duke of the realm? And, of course, a woman well-versed in protecting herself from opportunistic men.” Sophia laid a white hand against her equally white bosom; Calbourne followed the movement of her hand to her breast and found his gaze ensnared. Sophia smiled over a sigh. “Would that be a correct interpretation, your grace?”

  He was being managed. He could feel it.

  He didn’t like it one bit.

  “Completely accurate, Lady Dalby,” Calbourne said softly. One did not get to be a duke by being manhandled by anyone, even a very seductive and entirely too clever woman of extremely uncertain, but entirely intriguing, reputation. “I thought you would be able to . . .” He paused.

  In point of fact, he wasn’t entirely certain what he had thought. He hadn’t thought much beyond the desire to tell Sophia the current state of affairs regarding the Melverley pearls. She did have something of a sliding interest in them as they had been almost directly responsible for Caroline’s quick marriage. Yes, pearls had been the weapon in that particular courtship. It was not too far afield to think they might again play a part in the London Season of 1802.

  “You flatter me,” Sophia said, rescuing him from any attempt he would have been forced to make to finish a thought that was unspeakable. He appreciated her effort. Dukes did not go about mismanaging simple things like pearl necklaces and private wagers. “An activity I find especially appealing.” Sophia smiled slowly and touched the dangling pearl earring in her left ear with the tip of her finger. It was the most devilishly erotic gesture he had seen in a week and he could not possibly have explained why.

  Calbourne recrossed his legs. Firmly.

  Sophia smiled more fully, lowered her gaze, and relinquished the pearl.

  “Certainly, your chivalry is to be admired,” she said. “One hardly expects less of a duke, yet expectations so rarely bear the desired fruit. How thrilling it is to find that the fourth Duke of Calbourne exceeds both desire and expectation.”

  For a man with a most comfortable chair, he was becoming damned uncomfortable.

  He was entirely certain that Sophia was responsible; as a duke, he was not in the habit of being uncomfortable.

  “But I must confess to you,” Sophia said, tilting her head in thought, “I simply cannot allow things to stand as they are.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  " ’Tis simple enough, your grace. I simply cannot allow this wager to continue for, what was it? Three days?”

  “That it is what they eventually agreed upon, and not without some disturbance, I assure you. I suggested a fortnight, Dutton proposed a week, and Blakesley insisted upon three days.”

  “Yes, he would,” Sophia said with a half smile, her gaze lowered momentarily to her lap. “And I do agree with him in theory. In practice, I must do all I can to deliver Lady Louisa from such coils as you rash men have set upon her.”

  “I have done no such thing,” Calbourne said.

  “Of course you have not, not actually, yet you are deeply involved as a sort of referee, are you not?”

  “It is a simple wager, Lady Dalby. You have made more than a few of your own, have you not?”

  “Caught out, I see,” she said, grinning fully at him. “I have been guilty of such, and I daresay will be again, but dear Louisa must be saved, must she not? Only think of my reputation if I do nothing to save her.”

  “Save her, Lady Dalby? There is no force at work here. The lady will do what she will do. She either will pursue her pearls or she will not. What’s to be done?”

  “What indeed?” Sophia said on a soft and feminine sigh of docile acquiescence. “You put it most clearly and most brilliantly. Of course, everything you say is true. The lady will, most reliably, do what she will do. Indeed, I have no doubt at all that Louisa Kirkland will do what any woman would do in similar circumstances.”

  Strangely, it sounded slightly sinister when coming from her mouth, but then that was true of much of what Sophia Dalby said. She had an odd way of phrasing things at times.


  “She will be at Hyde House tonight?” he asked.

  “I believe she was invited.”

  “Dutton and Lord Henry will be there as well. It should prove an entertaining evening.”

  “I’m quite certain it will be,” Sophia said softly. “I wonder, your grace, if you would be interested in a private wager?”

  “Of what sort?”

  “Of the friendliest sort,” she said, shifting her weight so that suddenly her legs were outlined beneath the fragile silk of her gown. Calbourne shifted his own weight in direct response. “I will wager that Louisa Kirkland will make her choice and make it obviously by tomorrow night. Three days . . . nothing of this sort requires as much as three days to decide.”

  “So quickly?” Calbourne said slowly, studying Sophia and learning nothing. “You think she will make her choice known by tomorrow night?”

  “I think, your grace, that she will make her choice known by tonight, if one measures the length of a night by the dawn,” Sophia said with a polite smile. “I’d rather err on the side of prudence, hence, until tomorrow night. Is it a wager?”

  “Done,” he said.

  “And shall we not include the naming of the gentleman?” Sophia said. “I think you men do, at times, put too much upon what is your fluxuating allure and not nearly enough upon the unchanging beauty of a pearl necklace. But I am likely biased in my views, you will allow.”

  He certainly did allow. A woman who had made a tidy sum on collecting pearls and other items from men would see things differently, but Louisa Kirkland was no courtesan.

  “You think she will prefer Blakesley over Dutton?” he asked.

  “Blakesley has the pearls, does he not?” she answered with a smile.

  There was plainly no possibility of Louisa choosing any other but Dutton; she had been doing so for two years and there was no reason for her to change her mind now. It was equally obvious that her pearls had been sold out from under her by her father, and none knew that fact better than Louisa. There was simply no getting them back now, no matter who had them.