Then Comes Seduction

by Mary Balogh

  The ensuing interview had been brief, hostile, deuced uncomfortable, and relatively civil. And the result of it was the afternoon call he was about to make.

  Was there any way he could have predicted all this twenty- four hours ago? Would that damned weasel have dared open his mouth last night if he had gone to that infernal soiree instead of leaving the field clear for Katherine Huxtable—who also had not been there?

  But dash it all, there had been rumblings of gossip even before Clarence had orchestrated them to a veritable roar.

  Hell and damnation! His mind followed up that mild beginning by dredging up every foul word and phrase he had ever heard or uttered. When he had covered the list, he went back through it again for good measure.

  He felt not one whit better when he arrived outside Merton House.

  He half expected that he would be tossed from the door by some burly footman hired for that express purpose and that that would be that—reprieve, freedom, and a guilt that would doubtless nag at him for at least the next decade or two.

  Damnation!

  When had he developed a conscience? At Vauxhall on a certain memorable occasion? It was a dashed uncomfortable thing. He did not like it at all.

  He was not tossed from the door or even informed politely that he must go away as Miss Katherine Huxtable had decided not to see him within the next billion years or so.

  He was admitted and shown into the library just as if this were any afternoon social call—the same library where he had seen her for the first time in years when she had let herself into the room to greet Con.

  A fateful evening, that. If he had not accepted Merton’s invitation to come here for a drink… If she had stayed upstairs and been content to wait a day or so before seeing Con… But fate had been playing one of its fiendish little games. He might as well add that if he had not invited his friends back to his house on his twenty- fifth birthday, then he would not be here now

  And if his father had not met his mother… Or his grandfathers his grandmothers …

  But there was no time to go all the way back to Adam and Eve with his reflections upon the vagaries of fate, and no time to collect his thoughts and rehearse one more time the words he must speak. He discovered in some surprise that she was in the room before him.

  Alone.

  She was standing in front of one of the long windows, between the desk and one of the bookcases—in almost the exact spot, in fact, where he had stood that evening, feeling rather like a rat caught in a trap. She was not even standing with her back to the room, pretending to admire the view She was facing the door. Her eyes were fixed steadily on him.

  She was dressed in white muslin, an unfortunate choice today, perhaps, as it offered no contrast to her pale complexion. Her hair had been brushed ruthlessly back from her face and twisted into a knot behind her head.

  She certainly did not look like a lady preparing to receive her suitor.

  She held her hands clasped loosely in front of her. She did not smile.

  Of course she did not smile.

  She did not say anything either.

  It was all a trifle disconcerting.

  He advanced farther into the room.

  “One thing I have to admit about Clarence Forester,” he said, “is that he has a certain degree of intelligence. He always did. He always knew unerringly just how best to avenge himself against any insult or worse I happened to toss his way He is, in fact, quite ruthlessly vicious.”

  “Lord Montford,” she said, “let me save you time. My answer is no—unequivocally and irreversibly.”

  “Is it?” He took a couple of steps closer.

  “You have done the honorable thing,” she said. “You called upon my brother and brother- in- law this morning, and now you have called upon me. A proposal of marriage is to follow, I understand. It may remain unspoken. My answer is no.”

  “Ah,” he said. “You will not allow me to make amends, then.”

  “There has been nothing this year for which to make amends,” she said. “I have danced with you—once. At a ball, where the whole purpose was for ladies and gentlemen to dance with each other. I have received you and your sister with my own sister and brother in my brother’s drawing room here. I have walked with you— once—in Hyde Park with our relatives. I have sat talking with you in a glass pavilion at a garden party, whose primary function was that guests converse with one another in the setting of the garden.”

  She had been counting off their meetings on the fingers of one hand.

  “Ah,” he said, “but there was also Vauxhall three years ago.”

  “Where nothing happened,” she said, jerking her chin higher. “You need not make amends for that, Lord Montford. We both know that I was not innocent in that sordid encounter.”

  “Because you would have capitulated to the practiced arts of an experienced and determined seducer?” he said. “You were as innocent as a newborn babe, Miss Huxtable. You must allow me…”

  “I was twenty years old,” shesaid. “I knew the difference between right and wrong. I knew that what was happening was wrong. I knew you were a notorious rake. I chose to ignore what was right because I wanted the excitement and self- gratification of what was wrong. The wager was… disgusting. Naming me as its victim was more so. But I might have said no as soon as you offered me your arm when we were on the grand avenue with the others. I did not say no either then or later, and so I am as guilty as you. You do not have to make amends. You may go away now, satisfied in the knowledge that you have at least done what society demands of you today.”

  “Even if you had refused to take my arm that eve ning and made it quite impossible for me to win my wager,” he said, “the wager would still have existed, Miss Huxtable. It would still stand in the books. Clarence would still have found out about it and told the whole world with the implication, of course, that we became lovers that night and resumed the liaison this year.”

  “I cannot control what people choose to believe,” she said, color in her cheeks at last. “I do not care what they believe. I am going home to Warren Hall tomorrow—where I belong and where I am happy.”

  He could turn and leave. He had come. He had made an effort to set things right. Good Lord, he had been prepared to take on a leg shackle for the sake of her reputation. She did not want him—hardly surprising. She would not have him—for which she was to be commended. He had even tried adding a little persuasion, but she was still adamant.

  He could leave.

  He could be free.

  And perhaps things would not be too drastically bad for her after all. Merton and Moreland would put it about that he had offered and she had refused. Perhaps the ton would assume that she must be innocent if she was prepared to do something as foolhardy as refuse him. Perhaps they would forget in a year or two or ten and she could return.

  He could be free.

  If he did not marry, though, Charlotte would suffer. She would have to go to Lady Forester. Seth Wrayburn had made it clear that he would have no option but to give his vote to Clarence and Jasper’s vote would count for nothing.

  And if he did not marry Katherine Huxtable, she would be permanently ruined. He was fooling himself if he chose to believe otherwise just because he wanted to. The ton, with its rather peculiar notions of morality, would take back to its collective bosom a lady who had lost her virtue to one of its wildest rakehells provided she married him when caught out. It would never forgive a lady who was courageous enough to declare her innocence by saying no to the said rakehell and thumbing her nose at society’s opinion.

  “Are you quite sure scandal will not follow you even to Warren Hall?” he asked her.

  “If it does,” she said, “it will be my problem to deal with, Lord Montford, not yours.”

  “And your sister’s problem too?” he asked her. “And your brother’s? Are you sure the scandal will not touch them also?”

  Those large eyes of hers grew luminous and she turned pale again. He
knew he had touched a weak point.

  “This is all so ridiculous” she said then, her voice somewhat thinner and higher pitched though she still had not moved. “So ridiculous! Why should my freedom be curtailed by the ton? Why should yours? Why should my family be affected by what I have done—or not done?”

  “Welcome to the beau monde, Miss Huxtable,” he said softly, raising one eyebrow. “Are you only now discovering for yourself what I told you not so long ago? That there might be wealth and comfort and pleasure in privilege, but that there is precious little freedom?”

  “Wi l lMeg suffer?” she asked, looking very directly at him. She had moved at last. Her arms had fallen to her sides. And her hands were fidgeting with the sides of her skirt. “And Nessie? And the children? And Stephen? Oh, surely not. It would be so absurd. And so unfair.”

  He clasped his own hands loosely behind his back.

  “Will Miss Wrayburn suffer?” Her eyes widened.

  He pursed his lips but did not answer. There was nothing to say that she did not already know.

  “Your aunt wants to have Miss Wrayburn under her own roof,” she said. “She wants to prepare her for her come- out next year. She thinks you an unsuitable guardian. But are you not her guardian? Can your aunt take her away even after this scandal?”

  “Charlotte’s father appointed three guardians,” he explained to her. “Clarence’s father, now Clarence himself, me, and Mr. Seth Wrayburn, Charlotte’s great-uncle. Her fate on any matter can be decided by any two of the three of us.”

  “And where is Mr. Wrayburn?” she asked.

  He pointed downward.

  “Here in London,” he said. “He is a recluse. He is not amused at the flurry of activity in which he has been involved during the past week. He does not like either Clarence or his mother, and has always preferred to leave things as they are with Charlotte living with me. But he is annoyed with me today He gave me an ultimatum when I called on him this morning.”

  It did not take her long to understand.

  “Miss Wrayburn can remain with you,” she said, “provided you squash the scandal and silence the gossips by marrying me. Is that the ultimatum?”

  “More or less,” he said.

  “More or less?”

  “More rather than less,” he admitted. “He did suggest a few days ago that if I do not want Lady Forester in charge of Charlotte’s come- out next year I had better marry so that my wife can sponsor and chaperone her instead. Today, though, he indicated that my choice of bride has been narrowed to one candidate.”

  “Me.”

  He pursed his lips again.

  “This is why he did it, then, is it not?” she said. “Sir Clarence Forester, I mean. He did it so that Mr. Wrayburn would have no choice but to grant custody of Miss Wrayburn to his mother.”

  “Charlotte is very rich,” he said, “or will be on her marriage. And Clarrie is very poor and very single.”

  “He means to marry her.” Her voice was flat. And then she laughed suddenly, though there was no hint of amusement in the sound. “I always imagined that when I finally gave serious consideration to a marriage proposal, I would have only myself to consider—and the man who was making the proposal. Did I like and respect him? Did I have an affection for him? Did he like and respect and have an affection for me? Would I have a reasonable expectation that we could be happy together for the rest of our lives? Was there—oh, was there that extra spark of … of what? Of romance, of magic, of… of… of love?”

  “And you cannot answer any of those questions in the affirmative now?” he asked her. “None of them?”

  She shook her head slowly.

  Double damnation! He did not need this. But then, neither did she.

  “I am being asked,” she said, “to think of what other people will think of me— some of them people I do not even know, all of them people I do not even care about. I am being asked to think about the good name of my sisters and brother, of my niece and nephew. I am being asked to save your sister from a fate that seems quite unthinkable. I am being asked to marry, not for something, but to prevent a whole lot of things. Marriage ought to be about only the two people concerned and their feelings for each other. Instead it is about a whole society. Society does not care if we will be happy or miserable, does it? It does not care that we will certainly be miserable.”

  Will be?‘As opposed to would be?

  “Are you so sure,” he asked her, “that we would be miserable together, Miss Huxtable?”

  Suddenly she was hurrying across the room toward him. She stopped when she was no more than a foot away and glared directly into his eyes. Her hands, he noticed, had balled into fists at her sides.

  “It is a mask,” she said. “It is how you hide from the world. Open your eyes. Look fully at me. And tell me we would be happy together—for a lifetime.”

  He felt jolted by her sudden anger. And rather shaken by her accusation that he wore a mask, that he was afraid, perhaps, to face the world with wide- open eyes.

  He obliged her and gazed steadily back at her.

  “I wantyou,” he said curtly If it was honesty she was asking for, then by God she would have it. “And you want me. You cannot deny that, Miss Huxtable. I would not believe you.”

  She laughed again—that harsh sound that was not really a laugh at all.

  “You want to go to bed with me,” she said, and suddenly her pale cheeks flamed with color. “And I want to go to bed with you. Very well, I will not deny it. It is a fine recommendation indeed to marriage, Lord Montford. We are certain to be blissfully happy for the rest of our lives. We will be married. We may go to bed with each other as often as we please without incurring any future scandal. Thank you. All my misgivings have been blown away”

  He had not been feeling even one faint spark of amusement since walking into the house—not since he had stepped into White’s this morning, in fact. But he smiled now— slowly and with genuine amusement.

  He wondered how often in the future she would be tortured with embarrassment at the memory of talking so explicitly of going to bed with him.

  “It would be one consolation for being forced into marriage, you must confess,” he said. “Making love at night, during rainy mornings, during the sleepy afternoons, out in the woods at any time of the day or night, in the bottom of a boat, underneath—”

  “Stop it!” she commanded. “Stop it this minute. And open your eyes. Marriage is not sex, Lord Montford.”

  Roses bloomed in her cheeks again. Scarlet ones. And they flamed rather than bloomed.

  He smiled again and said nothing. He did not open his eyes.

  “You do not understand, do you?” she said. “You do not understand about friendship and companionship and mutual respect and togetherness and affection and—and l-love. It is inconceivable to you that a man and a woman can share any of those things and need them all if the marriage is to be a decent one. You think it is nothing but s—” She lost her courage with the second mention of the word.

  “—ex,” he completed for her. “Is a marriage only friendship and respect and affection, then? It sounds yawningly dull to me. How are children to be begotten?”

  Roses turned into flames in her cheeks and she swallowed awkwardly

  “You just do not understand,” she said.

  And he supposed he did not. Except that he did like her—it was not alllust he felt for her. He even—yes, he did—felt a certain affection for her. He certainly liked her better than any other woman he had ever met. Per haps even as well as he liked and was fond of Charlotte. But was not the fact that they wanted to bed each other the best consolation they could find for being forced into marrying each other?

  Apparently not.

  You just do not understand.

  “Then perhaps,” he said abjectly, “you can make it your mission in life to make me understand, Katherine.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “I have not given you permission to make free with my
name,” she said.

  He let his eyes smile alone this time.

  “And yet,” he said, “you speak of our marriage as something that will happen. Am I to address you for the rest of our lives, then, as Lady Montford?”

  He watched her swallow again.

  “I have not said I will marry you,” she said.

  “Indeed,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “I do not believe I have even asked you, Miss Huxtable. May I, though? Ask, that is?”

  Something happened to her eyes. They grew larger and deeper and bluer, and for a moment he had the sensation of falling into them. Then they filled with tears and she lowered her eyelids over them and looked down at the carpet between them.

  “I do not want to marry you,” she said, “and you do not want to marry me. Why should we be forced into what neither of us wants? No, do not answer that. We have dealt with all the reasons why and will start to talk ourselves in circles if we continue.”

  He heard her inhale slowly.

  “Very well, then,” she said, “you may ask.”

  He took her right hand in both of his. It was limp and cold. He warmed it in his own.

  “It will not be so bad,” he said, trying to console himself as well as her, “if we choose not to let it be. The expectations of society and our concern for the well-being of our family may force us into marrying, Miss Huxtable, but they cannot force us into being miserable forever after. Only we can do that. Let us not do it. Let us make each other happy instead.”

  Good Lord, where were the words coming from? What the devil did he know about making a woman happy? What the devil did he know about making himself happy, for that matter? What was happiness?

  But what else was there to say? Except…

  “Miss Huxtable,” he said, dipping his head a little closer to hers, “will you do me the great honor of accepting my hand in marriage?”

  The dreaded words that surely inhabited every single man’s nightmares.

  Spoken at last.

  Perhaps he ought to have made a complete ass of himself and gone down on one knee. Too late now