The Courtesan's Secret

by Claudia Dain

  He was just the sort of man to ruin a girl’s hair for the sport of it. The look in his blue eyes as she glanced at him over her fan confirmed it. Blakesley looked ready for fun, and that was dangerous to everyone around him.

  Normally, she enjoyed that sort of evening with Blakesley, but not tonight, not when Dutton was so close and she had Sophia’s counsel ringing in her ears. Tonight . . . tonight anything was possible.

  “You have need of me, Sophia?” George asked of Lady Dalby, but his eyes never left Louisa’s face.

  She was becoming so accustomed to his blatant fascination with her that she failed to blush, which was such a relief. Louisa took a deep breath in satisfaction and held it, lifting her bust to a lovely advantage.

  Blakesley snorted softly in amusement.

  “Yes, George,” Sophia said, “we are engaged in a wager and have need of an arbiter.”

  “A wager?” Anne Warren said, her pretty mouth smiling softly. Louisa didn’t happen to like Anne Warren, but even she could see that the woman had a pretty mouth. It unfortunately was not her only good feature. Mrs. Warren was possessed of a flawless complexion of the creamiest white, lustrous hazel green eyes, and glossy red hair.

  A thoroughly dislikeable woman.

  “What are the terms?” Mrs. Warren said, intruding herself into a private wager without any invitation whatsoever. That said everything which would ever need to be said about her general character and the blatant lack of delicacy in her deportment.

  It was particularly satisfying as Mrs. Warren had made such a mess of it in front of Dutton. Of course, he didn’t seem to grasp the situation at all. Dutton, oddly enough, was looking at Anne Warren with a blatant lack of delicacy, as much as she hated to admit it. But admit it she did. One did not go about seducing Lord Dutton into a proper courtship without the necessity of admitting certain things. Namely, that Dutton was a bit of a rogue.

  Which was completely charming on him, certainly.

  “Ah, another participant,” Calbourne said. “There is nothing so interesting as having lovely women involved in wagers. It leads to such interesting results.”

  “Do not listen to him, Mrs. Warren,” Lord Iveston said. “It is a completely innocent wager with completely reasonable terms. The loser must drink a glass of liquor without taking a breath. Simplicity itself.”

  “Simplicity itself,” Mrs. Warren said, “unless the glass be the size of a demijohn and the liquor be rude gin.”

  “The lady has wagered before,” Calbourne said with a smile. Amelia wilted even further, her bust sinking almost with every breath. “She is wary.”

  “Mrs. Warren lives with Lady Dalby,” Louisa said. “Perhaps she has been tutored to be wary.”

  She had spoken impulsively, more to steal Dutton’s attention away from Mrs. Warren, and his attention had most definitely been on Mrs. Warren. Why, he scarce had been able to look at anyone else since joining their small party within the greater confines of the blue reception room at Hyde House. Impulsive, yes, and perhaps a tad cruel.

  Oh, very well, cruel indeed, but what was a young woman to do when the man she adored was standing before her and did not so much as glance her way? What attention Anne Warren had not garnered, Sophia Dalby had. She and Amelia might have been made of bronze for all the attention they were receiving. Hard times called for hard measures.

  Yes, and a bit of cruelty as well.

  Sophia Dalby saved her, and knew she did, too, which made it all the more horrible.

  Into the slightly shocked silence her observation had merited, Sophia turned her dark and liquid gaze upon Louisa and said, “How clever you are, Lady Louisa, and how very true your words. Mrs. Warren has indeed been under the careful guidance of my tutelage. And an apt pupil she is. I daresay the proof of it, aside from her spectacular marriage to Lord Staverton in a fortnight, is that she is most careful to get all the terms of a particular understanding well defined before plunging.”

  Which, of course, was a direct and cutting remark aimed precisely at Louisa. Any fool could see that.

  “Have you entered into some arrangement with Lady Dalby?” Blakesley said in an undertone, trying to edge her away from the group. As the group contained Lord Dutton, Louisa held her ground and would not allow herself to be moved.

  “Hardly,” she muttered behind her fan. She was going to have to insist that Blakesley stop speaking to her as she could not possibly conduct an adequate seduction of Lord Dutton from behind her fan. She happened to know that her mouth was one of her better features and her teeth were practically a miracle of nature. Small help it would be to her if Dutton were sheltered from their impact.

  “But something,” Blakesley insisted, his hand going to her elbow.

  She shifted her elbow, lifting her hand to touch the back of her neck. She had a lovely neck, too; though perhaps not as slender as Anne Warren’s, it was certainly as white.

  “Nothing to speak of,” she hissed.

  “Speak of it anyway,” Blakesley snarled softly.

  He seemed to care nothing for propriety, or the position of her hand on her neck; Lord Henry Blakesley stepped on the back of her skirt so that she could not move. By some strange concert of movement, Lord Iveston turned his body and shifted his weight from one foot to the other so that in a matter of seconds, she and Blakesley were separated from the wagering clique. The clique that contained Lord Dutton.

  “What are you about?” she said, turning to face him as far as his big foot on her hem would allow.

  “I’m asking that of you, Lady Louisa,” he said. “Kindly answer.”

  The group shifted yet again and now there were three people between them, a barrier comprised of Lord Hartley, his unattractive and unsurprisingly unmarried daughter, and his third wife, Millicent or Margaret or some such thing.

  Blast.

  “Isn’t there a wager we should be a part of?” she said, turning so that she could almost face him. He still stood on her hem. If she twisted much more she would rip a seam.

  “There is a wager we are a part of,” he said, stepping back, releasing her hem. She almost lost her balance, but he still had hold of her elbow so she didn’t tip even the slightest degree. Small thanks for that. “I must speak with you, Louisa.”

  “You are speaking with me, Lord Henry,” she said, trying to move through the crowd to the tallest man in the room, the tallest man in any room: the Duke of Calbourne. They were all still gathered. She could just make out Anne Warren’s red hair and the welcome gleam of Amelia’s blond hair. That Indian, George Grey, who should have been effortless to spot, didn’t seem to be a part of their number any longer. He was likely stealing the silver.

  “Kindly listen to me,” Blakesley said. “I am trying to get your pearls back for you.”

  That got her attention.

  “How?” she said, turning to face him.

  She didn’t often look at Henry Blakesley directly as his gaze was rather too clear-sighted and incisive for comfort. She also rarely, if ever, stood as close to him as she did now because of the very particular discomfort such proximity always engendered in her.

  No, one did not go to Blakesley for comfort. One went to him for amusement of a most jaded and cynical variety. He was not looking very cynical at the moment and amusement was the farthest thing from her mind. She wanted her pearls back, that was certain, and if she could reacquire them through Blakesley rather than through a questionable alliance with Sophia Dalby, well, things couldn’t have looked more encouraging.

  “Did you say we were part of a wager?” she said a moment later. “A wager involving you and I? What possible wager could have us as its heart? Did you make this wager, Blakesley? Because if you did, it was not at all in good taste. I should not at all like being part of any man’s ill-conceived wager. Is it on the book at White’s? I should certainly hope you have enough decency to not bandy my name about in a gentleman’s club.”

  Though it was true that Sophia’s daughter had got her nam
e on the betting book at White’s and it hadn’t appeared to hurt her in the least. She had even heard a rumor to the effect that Sophia had insisted that that particular bet had been the making of Caroline. Preposterous, obviously, yet Caroline had made a stellar match . . .

  “Shut it, can you?” Blakesley snapped, escorting her none too gently toward the rear of the reception room and a small door very tastefully concealed in the paneling.

  Well.

  “If you could force yourself to be quiet and ignore the fact that Dutton is in the vicinity, I believe you’d be interested in what I have to tell you.”

  No, one did not go to Blakesley for comfort.

  They were at the complete rear of the room, and a quiet spot it was, when he finally stopped hauling her about like a load of wool.

  “I’m listening,” she said, not able to resist the urge to cross her arms over her chest in exasperation.

  “I can see that,” he said wryly. “You are very fond of striking that pose when listening to something that you anticipate will annoy you completely.”

  She uncrossed her arms as casually as possible and checked her curl. It felt distinctly droopy. Of course it did.

  “Is that better, Lord Henry? I would so hate to strike a pose which offends you.”

  “Yes, pleasing me has always been your highest priority.”

  “Is that the wager? That I arrange myself in a manner which pleases you? Pray, who would ever be found to arbitrate that?”

  Blakesley’s lips turned up in the most cynical of smiles; really, it could hardly be called smiling, what he did with his mouth. Snarling was the truth of it. Civilized snarling. Blakesley was many things, but he was always and eternally civilized.

  “We require no arbiter, do we, Louisa? Things stand as they have ever done.”

  What the devil did that mean? Of course things stood between them as they ever had done. What else? Of all the tumult of her life, of all the trouble with her father and with snaring Dutton, she found her time with Blakesley to be the most welcome respite of every day.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Lord Henry. Is this to do with the wager you mentioned? Is that what you’ve been doing all day? Making wagers with my name upon them?”

  He smiled again, a soft smile that nevertheless had a sharkish look to it. Blakesley was not himself at all tonight, which was most inconvenient as she had hoped for at least some assistance with Dutton.

  “The wager is this, Louisa,” he said, leaning forward, his shark smile very bright, “and do try not to faint or blush or snap your bodice ties when I tell it. I don’t know how I should explain such things to my mother.”

  Well, really. Blakesley could be so insulting when he was of a mind to be so. Louisa couldn’t help but look across the room to where the Duke and Duchess of Hyde stood to greet their arriving guests. It was purely coincidence, she was almost completely certain, but Molly Hyde was staring at her with undisguised suspicion at that very moment.

  “My bodice is none of your concern, Lord Henry,” she managed, not blushing in the least. She was too angry to waste time in blushes.

  “How well I know it,” he murmured.

  Of course, then she blushed.

  “Could we get on with this, please? I should like to talk to Amelia before we enter for dinner,” she said.

  “About the hunting season, no doubt,” he said, looking over the top of her head to where Amelia still stood, with Dutton, it should be mentioned yet again.

  Blakesley was standing very close to her, too close. If he were not something of a brother to her, and if he had not behaved very publicly in that capacity for nearly two years, it would have looked entirely too intimate. Even with all those qualifiers, she was not entirely comfortable with his proximity. She could smell the faintly blended scents of his linen shirt and wool coat and under those familiar and highly pleasant scents, the scent of his skin.

  It was most distracting.

  His hair looked rather fine tonight, gleaming like old gold coins in the candlelight, and his eyes, gazing out at the crowd behind her, searching the room like a wolf on the edge of the shadows, looked particularly piercing.

  And then he dropped his gaze to hers and she was forcibly reminded that his eyes were a very pleasing shade of blue and that they could see things in her which she much preferred to remain hidden.

  Blakesley was too discerning by half.

  “This is not the hunting season,” she said sternly.

  “There’s not a man in London who doesn’t know that it is,” he said lightly. “Which brings me to my point. Kindly stop distracting me, will you?”

  “I haven’t done a thing to distract you! I’m trying to drive you to the point, Lord Henry, which you clearly haven’t noticed.”

  “True,” he said, nodding amiably, when she knew that he hadn’t an amiable bone in his body. “It must be that I was distracted by your hair. It looks especially pretty tonight. That one curl, just there,” he said, and he touched the curl she had arranged for Dutton, the curl that he had been breathing on from almost the moment she walked into Hyde House. He touched it with his finger, almost carelessly, almost caressingly, and the curl became his.

  She didn’t like it in the least.

  “One perfect curl,” he breathed softly, “fondling your neck, tumbling against your skin, sliding delicately by your very pretty ear . . .”

  Her ear, pretty or not, grew hot and pink in mortification. Blakesley’s breath brushed against her skin, tickled her ear, and heated her face with embarrassment and confusion. He never spoke like this. They might have teased, but they never flirted. He was flirting with her. She’d been Out for two full seasons; she knew full well what flirting looked like.

  Heaven knew, she’d seen Dutton flirt often enough.

  Just because no one had ever flirted with her before did not mean that she did not know it when she saw it. She was an observant girl, after all.

  And, when no one was about, she practiced flirting in the mirror.

  It was easier in the mirror.

  This being coquettish did not seem to be in her nature. She felt something turn over in her belly and squirm about under her ribs.

  She did not like that in the least, either.

  “My hair is naturally curly, as you know,” she said stiffly, arching her neck and her curl away from him. “One perfect curl, indeed. One would think you are a romantic of the worst sort, Lord Henry, to hear you talk so.”

  He released his breath in a sigh that was not romantic in the least. “And you know I’m no such thing, don’t you, Louisa?”

  “I think too highly of you to call you any such thing, Lord Henry. You are far too clever to be ruled by emotion.”

  “Thank you,” he said softly, his clever blue eyes studying her rather more closely than she liked. “And what rules you, Louisa?”

  “I don’t like to think of myself as being ruled by anything.”

  “I know that well enough,” he said, smiling slightly. “Yet each one of us is ruled by something, some ideal or desire, something which drives us onward, even to destruction. Care to name your destruction, Louisa? Or shall I name it for you?”

  He breathed the last, a breath of pain, she would have said, had she a romantic bone in her body, which she joyfully did not. Life did not reward the romantic and she fully intended to get her reward, all those things that had been denied her thus far. It was a perfectly logical goal and she had a perfectly logical plan to achieve it, if only Blakesley would step out of the way and allow her access to Dutton.

  There was that. This delay, this careful seclusion, seemed all too calculated of a sudden. Was Blakesley trying to keep her from Dutton? To what purpose?

  No, it was too ridiculous. Blakesley had nothing to gain by such an act.

  “My destruction?” she said, trying to step away from him, but unable to do so by the wall at her back. Blakesley seemed almost to be looming over her. It was a most uncomfortable sensation and
she didn’t intend to tolerate it for one instant more. “I don’t know what is wrong with you tonight, Lord Henry. Your behavior is highly irregular and most odd. One might conclude that you don’t wish your brother well, to behave to his guests in such odd fashion.”

  “Odd fashion? You find it odd that I take you off to enjoy you in whatever privacy is allowed by the standards of the day?”

  Whatever did that mean? Blakesley was becoming more disturbing to her sense of order and expediency by the minute. After all, she had cultivated his acquaintance precisely because he was so perfectly placed within Society and allowed himself to be used in such noble fashion—namely, her respectable pursuit of Lord Dutton.

  There was no understanding him now. He jumped from one thing to another and not a one of his topics made sense. There was only one explanation for it.

  “Lord Henry, I think you are deeply in your cups.”

  To which, Lord Henry Blakesley laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh. What with Lady Dalby’s practically incessant and unpleasant laughter and now Blakeley’s odd humor, one would think that there was no one left in London who knew how to appropriately laugh. It was certainly clear that far too many instances were found in which to laugh at her, which didn’t make one bit of sense.

  It looked to be a most trying evening and not at all as she had expected when her curls were being so artfully arranged.

  “I find everything about this encounter odd, Lord Henry,” she said, not at all pleased to find her back literally pressed against the wall. “I am not at all accustomed to being cornered and—”

  “And,” he interrupted, leaning over her in a most uncivilized posture, “you are not at all accustomed to being pursued by a man into the quiet corners of a room for a most appropriate, most respectable, seduction.”

  Seduction?

  “I think the time has come, Louisa, when that must change. I would not be at all adverse to being the man who is responsible for the change, and I would not need to be in my cups to do so. I am not drunk,” he said softly but so very sternly.