by Claudia Dain
“Why did you do it?” he asked softly.
“It was my birthday. I wanted to mark it somehow. It was time for me to be kissed by a man. And so I arranged it.”
Iveston leaned forward, and she resisted the urge to lean away from him. The groom she had been able to control, thoroughly. Lord Iveston was not a groom.
“You arrange for what you want, don’t you, Penelope? For whatever you want? Even if what you want is a man?”
“Of course,” she answered. “I like to get what I want. How am I supposed to get it if I don’t arrange for it?”
“And do you know what you want?”
She did. Or she had. This contest, which had started from nothing and ended here, she knew not how or why, had changed things. She did not like things to change, especially if those things were her very carefully considered plans for herself.
“You, of all people, know that I do,” she answered, avoiding the heart of the question. “I want to marry. Hardly surprising, is it?”
“No, not surprising,” he agreed. “It seems nearly universal. All women want to marry.”
“And all men want to avoid it, which makes things very challenging for a woman, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I think, Miss Prestwick, that very little challenges you.”
“Thank you, Lord Iveston.”
“But I do wonder what else you learned from that groom, besides kissing. Hour upon hour of kissing does lead to—”
“It leads nowhere if the woman has other ideas. And I did. I can assure you of that. Besides, he was my father’s groom. Was he going to step past the boundary I laid down for him? He was not. I chose my man very carefully, Lord Iveston. I do all things very carefully.”
“I am quite certain of that, Miss Prestwick. I do wonder, however, if your boundary would stay quite so firm with a man who is perhaps better at kissing than a groom on a remote estate?”
“It’s hardly remote,” she snapped.
“That is the part of the question which offends you? How interesting,” he said with a quirk of his lips. It was not a smile, but it bore the shadow of one. “Then you are amenable to my proposition? How cordial of you.”
“What proposition? I don’t know what you mean, Lord Iveston, which is hardly unusual, I must say.”
“Why, I thought I made myself quite clear,” he said pleasantly. His voice may have been pleasant, but his eyes were not pleasant at all. His eyes looked quite predatory. “I propose that you give yourself to me for an afternoon of kissing, just to see where it leads. I should like to find myself at least as good as a groom, no matter how remote the estate. Is he still there, at Timperley, by the by? I confess to some curiosity about him, seeing that I have made a wager to wed you and your brother made one that you would marry Edenham. We were going to discuss that, if you remember. I can’t think but that I’ve been made to look a complete fool and I should like the chance to make it up somehow. Besting a groom, a small matter, I hope, would serve me well enough. You will agree, certainly. There is so much you would gain from it.”
“Such as what?”
Truly, she was at a loss for words. She could barely think clearly. He had gone barking mad. She wasn’t going to kiss him. Not anymore, anyway. And she wasn’t going to feel at all guilty for the Edenham wager. It had been Sophia’s idea and it had made perfect sense to her, at the time. Of course now, facing down Iveston, and who would have thought that he could look fierce in any degree, the double wager idea did seem a bit foolhardy and, worse, counterproductive.
“I beg your pardon?” he politely inquired, looking wildly innocent, as if he had not just proposed the most hideously awful thing.
For her to arrange an afternoon of kissing lessons was one thing, but to have a marquis suggest that he be allowed to kiss her was quite another. It was beyond obvious that he had missed the point entirely. She had done it for her future husband, hopefully Edenham. She hadn’t done it for herself. Though it had been pleasant enough, in truth. She had quite surprised herself at how much she had enjoyed it. Which was why she had arranged for the groom to be sacked the very next day. It wouldn’t do at all to have him underfoot after that, would it? Resisting temptation and all that. She didn’t feel at all guilty about it, either. He had, at her suggestion and with a sack of coins to aid him, taken the Holyhead Road by coach to Shrewsbury, where he presumably had sought and gained employment. She was not one to do things without having thought it all out, and she had arranged it all very tidily, if she did say so herself. Certainly she must say so as there was no one else to say it. No one else knew of it, did they? Except Lord Iveston. But he wouldn’t tell, would he?
Would he?
“Lord Iveston, I can’t quite comprehend what it is you are suggesting. You are a gentleman of the first water. I am quite at a loss to explain your behavior. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to just forget this entire conversation, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Miss Prestwick, I think you comprehend very well,” he responded promptly, and without the courtesy hesitation would have implied either. No, he was straight to the point. Quite beyond his normal manner, she was sure. Everyone knew that Iveston wasn’t straight to the point about anything. How could he be when he rarely left his house? “I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you for as long as I think necessary. I consider it a matter of honor, a duty to my class if nothing else. I do think I should have the opportunity to defend my class against the rigors of a mere groom. I also should very much like to test your theory about boundaries. I do think you may have overstated it. And I should like to do my best for your future husband, presuming he is of my class and not to be a groom?”
“Lord Iveston! I can—”
“Miss Prestwick, I know you can. I’ve kissed you myself. I should like more of the same, if you please. Then, and only then, shall I know if your innocence is true, as well as the proper depths of your sophistication. I shall have plumbed them, you see, which you can hardly object to as you’re quite experienced at making calculated assignations and profiting from them.”
“Profiting?” she said, pouncing on that last bit. The bits before were too horrible to contemplate at any length. “Hardly that.”
“Then let’s add profit to the mix, shall we? I have a wager that I am sure to lose, the wager that I will marry you is on the book at White’s. The very least you could do is make it all as enjoyable as possible.”
“I wasn’t aware that losing could be made enjoyable,” she gritted out.
“But you’ll do your best, shan’t you?”
She had heard, and indeed observed, that Lord Iveston was mild mannered in the extreme and could barely tolerate being noticed, let alone spoken to. He did not look mild in any fashion now. He looked, which was quite annoying of him, like a man about to go to war. And she was to be the battlefield.
Penelope found herself nodding, assessing Lord Iveston with new eyes.
“You have made your intentions plain, but how does this fit in to our original agreement, Lord Iveston? The wager has been made.”
“Both of them.”
“That was none of my doing.”
“No? It is not Mr. George Prestwick who made the wager that you would marry Edenham this Season?”
She was not going to tell him about Sophia. He had absolutely no need to know that. In fact, he had no need to know anything. All he had to do was pretend an interest in her. Was that so difficult?
If she thought too long about that question, she would find herself seriously insulted. It was for that reason she pushed it from her thoughts.
“I cannot control my brother, as much as I would wish it,” she said. “I’m certain you can appreciate that as it was displayed brilliantly at my ball that you cannot control your brother Cranleigh. He is as unmanageable as a young bull.”
“That he is,” Iveston said, “yet he did manage to marry.”
“Many manage to marry. I choose to marry well.”
“Are you implying that Cra
nleigh did not marry well by marrying Lady Amelia?”
“I’m implying no such thing. I am only stating in as many ways as I know how that George does what he wishes and I do not appreciate being held to account for his actions. Why, if that standard is used, then I should hold you responsible for the shameful events of the conservatory.”
“Where your roses were put to such infamous use.”
“I don’t wish to discuss my roses at present, if you will excuse me.”
“Oh? When do you wish to discuss your roses?”
Penelope didn’t trust herself to answer him. She felt very close to screaming in frustration. How could everything have fallen into such disarray in only a few hours? Everything had appeared so well managed in Lady Dalby’s white salon.
“By your silence,” Iveston said, staring at her in flagrant amusement, “I would say that not at present, and perhaps not even in future.”
“As I said, Lord Iveston, I would know how this kissing proposal of yours affects our previous agreement.”
“Why, I should think not at all, Miss Prestwick,” he said smoothly. “You wanted me to appear interested in you. I hardly think a few kisses will inhibit that impression, do you? Quite the contrary. I should have thought that was obvious. In fact, it seems ideal in the extreme. You shall get what you want. And I shall most definitely get what I want.”
She was not comforted. Not even slightly.
Fifteen
“I’M going to wager on Iveston,” said Lord Raithby. “I’ve already wagered five pounds on Edenham, but it’s ten on Iveston. As soon as I can find my way back to White’s.”
The drawing room, as must be expected, was filling rapidly. As soon as Iveston had very nearly absconded with Miss Prestwick, and as she made no sounds of protest, and as there were servants in the drawing room, it was decided without a word being spoken about it, that it would be very interesting, indeed essential, to see Lord Iveston and Miss Prestwick together, interacting. And of course it was. Both interesting and illuminating.
There was something there. Something. It wasn’t passion and it wasn’t affection and it certainly wasn’t animosity, but it was something.
“It should be a crush,” Lord Penrith said softly, watching Miss Prestwick and Iveston do whatever it was they were doing. It wasn’t exactly flirting, but it wasn’t exactly anything else either. “I may have to amend my original wager that she would marry Edenham. They look not entirely uncivil, do they?”
“You can’t bet against yourself.”
“I’m not betting against myself. I wagered that she wouldn’t marry Edenham. ’Twas George Prestwick who wagered that she would. I can certainly now wager that she will marry Iveston. It’s entirely proper. And could be financially sound.”
“That’s true,” Raithby said, nodding. “I’d forgotten that bit. You really think she’ll choose Iveston over Edenham? Of course, her children by Iveston would be the heirs. Can’t say that about Edenham. Doesn’t he have three dribbling in the nursery now?”
“Two, I believe, though it could be three.” Penrith shrugged. Did it matter? The point was that Iveston had yet to marry and girls seemed to like being first. As to that, so did men. “Did you happen to see if Sophia Dalby was chatting up Iveston?”
“I saw her with the ladies Lanreath and Paignton, the Indian, perhaps Iveston. Why?”
As Penrith had a quite cordial relationship with Sophia Dalby that had some little bit to do with his mother being friends with her, but more to do with the fact that he liked Sophia quite well on his own, and as Sophia had a way with women and men and a knack for making money on their amorous couplings, he had aided her more than once in the past weeks in placing wagers on White’s book about certain most unexpected matrimonial unions.
After the marriage of her own daughter to Lord Ashdon had been wagered on, and he watched her win a fortune, Penrith had from that point on put his money where Sophia put hers, no matter how unlikely the situation might seem. He had made twenty-five pounds off the marriage of Lady Amelia and Lord Cranleigh, and was not adverse to making more. But off whom? Iveston or Edenham? Sophia had not asked him to place a wager for her, but he knew someone had. It was not like her at all to walk away from a profit, and this Season there was profit to be had nearly every evening. He had never seen such a Season for marriages. It almost made a man skittish to put on his evening clothes. He knew that if his name appeared on White’s book, he was a doomed man and might find himself married by morning. By the look on Iveston’s face now, it looked as if he might have realized the same thing.
“Edenham hasn’t arrived, has he?” Penrith asked, looking about the room. “It would be much easier to know how to wager if one could only get all three of them together in the same room. Comparisons are invaluable in situations of this sort.”
“You sound rather experienced at it,” Raithby said.
“If you’d leave your stables more often, you’d be experienced as well,” Penrith said. “It’s been a whirlwind of sudden marriages this Season, and Sophia Dalby has been directly involved in each one of them.”
“It’s a common female pastime,” Raithby said casually, looking at Iveston and Miss Prestwick with thinly veiled interest, as was more than half the room.
“With Sophia Dalby, nothing is common.”
“You know her well?”
“Well enough. I can see by your calm in the face of what’s certain to become a storm that you know her not at all.”
“Only slightly, that’s true. Still, she’s only a woman, no matter the rumors of her supposed power over men and events.”
“You really don’t know her, do you?” Penrith said, grinning. “Perhaps you’d like to make a wager?”
“Concerning?” Raithby said, his dark blue eyes narrowed in skepticism.
“Sophia Dalby’s success in getting Miss Prestwick married, of course. She is at the heart of this and she will see it done, I promise you. Five pounds? On the book?”
“As long as you’re going to White’s,” Raithby said. “Five pounds it is.”
“I’D wager five pounds that Sophia is involved in this somehow,” Anne Warren said, watching Penelope Prestwick in pointed conversation with Lord Iveston.
“In what?” Lord Staverton asked.
As Lord Staverton had been seeing to his affairs both in Town and out, and as he had not been out in Society for nearly a month since his proposal of marriage to Anne, and as he was a sweet, dear man who might not have noticed the rash of sudden marriages even if he had been in Town, Anne smiled tolerantly at him and slipped her arm through his.
“Miss Prestwick is very much marriage-minded, my lord,” she answered. “I do think that Sophia is helping her make an ideal match.”
Staverton, who was older than Sophia and a good deal older than Anne, and who had a long and intimate history with Sophia that was not at all lurid, smiled benevolently. “Quite nice of her, if true, and I should think it would be true. Sophia always has displayed the strongest interest in the welfare of young women. Why, even as a young thing herself, she was tooth and claw for a woman in need.”
Anne, who knew only the barest details of Sophia’s early years in London, was all ears. Certainly she could well believe it. Hadn’t Sophia done the same for her? Taking her in off the streets when she was the destitute widow of a minor naval hero and delicately arranging for Staverton to propose to her? She was to be married in a fortnight and she couldn’t have been more delighted, particularly as Lord Dutton was so clearly outraged by the idea. Being outraged, and drunk, suited him completely.
She did hope she had a fine heir to bestow upon Staverton so that Dutton would die of apoplexy.
“Did she help my mother?” Anne asked.
Staverton, his warm brown eyes shining in sympathy down upon her, even if one eye did wander erratically, patted her hand. “She did all she could, Mrs. Warren, and it was deemed quite enough at the time.”
“Did you,” Anne said, a sudden c
hill rushing over her skin, “did you know my mother?”
As Anne’s mother had been a very unsuccessful courtesan, it was possible and highly unpleasant to contemplate. Staverton was wonderful, but if he had known her mother, then she couldn’t possibly marry him. Though Sophia would not have arranged such a thing, would she?
No, assuredly not.
Still, she waited for Staverton to answer her.
“I’m afraid I did not have the pleasure,” Staverton said, which was truly such a kind way of putting it as her mother had been just slightly better than a common lightskirt, and his consideration was precisely why Anne was so happy to marry him. He was such a kind man, and men were hardly known for being kind, were they?
“THEY’RE not known for being kind, are they?” Katherine, Lady Richard, said to her brother, Hugh, the sixth Duke of Edenham.
“You’re thinking of Lady Paignton,” Edenham said mildly. “Lady Lanreath is not at all like her sister.”
“You speak as if you know them very well.”
“I know them as well as you, Kay, which is hardly at all,” Edenham said. “Knowing of someone is not quite the same thing as knowing them, is it?”
“Isn’t it?” Katherine answered. “How presumptuous of me.”
Edenham looked down at his younger sister with a great deal of affection and toleration. They were very late to Lady Lanreath’s soiree and the reason they were late was because Katherine had found one excuse after another to delay their departure. First she had to make certain his children, William and Sarah, aged five and three, were properly fed and bedded, a preposterous concern as they were properly cared for each night and Katherine was entirely responsible for that being so.
As a widow, a most unhappy one, she lived with them, a most happy circumstance. Edenham liked a woman in the house and he had always particularly liked Kay. She was his younger sister by eight years, having lost a middle sister, Sarah, to a riding accident when she just a child, and he was very protective of her. Perhaps too protective, but when one saw death as often as they had done, one was perhaps allowed a bit of laxity on degrees of protectiveness and, indeed, morbidity. Of course, when one kept company with Sophia Dalby, one was allowed neither of those things. And perhaps, no, indeed, that was for the best. He and Katherine had become entirely too morbid and utterly reclusive. It was no way to live, and he was going to do better. He was also, with a great deal of resistance on her part, insistent that Katherine also do better. Hence, this evening out. Hence, her delays.
