Eyes narrowing, Durand glanced from him to Clarissa. “Your fiancé, eh? If that’s true, then why is this the first I’m hearing of it?”
“We’re keeping it secret until my cousin returns.” Clarissa sounded far calmer than Edwin felt, though the surprising strength with which she gripped his hand belied her tone. “Edwin hasn’t had the chance to ask Lord Knightford for my hand formally.”
“Why not?” Durand crossed his arms over his chest. “Knightford brought you to town only a couple of days ago, didn’t he?”
Edwin’s gut twisted into a knot. The man knew her comings and goings that well? “Not that it’s any of your concern, but he had to leave right away again on business.” Edwin stared down into Clarissa’s face with what he hoped was a convincing lover-like expression as he prepared to lie his arse off. “Besides, I wanted to speak to her before I approached him. So I did. Yesterday. Unfortunately, by then he was already gone.”
The Frenchman scowled. “I don’t believe either of you. Here’s what I think happened.” Ignoring Edwin entirely, Durand sidled nearer, and Clarissa pressed herself against Edwin’s side so instinctively that it worried him. “Knightford had to leave on business, and he was afraid that if he left her ladyship alone, I might persuade her to give me a chance. So he asked his good friend to stand in for him as her protector.”
“And why would I agree to that?” Edwin asked.
“Yes,” she said swiftly. “Why would he agree—or then make up a story about an engagement? And why would I support it, instead of just telling Edwin to leave you and me alone?”
Durand fixed his gaze on her. “Because they’ve poisoned you against me. But don’t worry. I shan’t relinquish my pursuit just because this arse is trying to keep you from me.”
Edwin pushed between her and Durand. “Come near her again, and I will make you regret it.”
Durand chuckled. “She let me kiss her, you fool.”
“I did not!” Clarissa cried.
“And the minute your back is turned,” Durand went on, ignoring her, “she won’t be able to resist finding me. You’ll see. All that this ploy of yours does is delay the inevitable.”
A cold chill ran down Edwin’s spine. The man was mad. And madmen were always dangerous. “Get. Out.” Edwin stared him down. “Before I decide to give you that demonstration in pugilism after all.”
The arse held up his hands. “Whatever you wish, my lord. I shall look forward to proving you wrong about Lady Clarissa and me.” After casting a lingering look at Clarissa, he left.
She collapsed onto the settee like an automaton falling to bits. It alarmed Edwin. He didn’t like her color. Or the fear in her eyes. He should have taken Warren’s concerns more seriously. But what the devil was wrong with Durand? Why would he want a woman who so obviously didn’t want him?
After walking to the door to make sure the Frenchman was truly gone, he filled a glass of brandy from a nearby decanter and returned to her side. “Drink this.”
“Isn’t it a bit soon in our engagement to be plying me with spirits?” she quipped, but she took the glass from him with shaky hands. She sipped some and grimaced. “Good Lord. Gentlemen drink this swill routinely?”
He knew a desperate attempt to hide distress when he saw one. With some difficulty, he tried to match her light tone, hoping to encourage her to talk about what had just happened. “We have it for breakfast. And I’m sure our host would be appalled to hear you calling his fine French brandy swill.”
She gulped some, obviously having discovered its power to help one forget, and he took the glass from her. “Not too much; you’ll make yourself sick. And I don’t want to have to carry you out in my arms and cause a scandal.”
“No, though that would probably convince Durand of our engagement.” She stared off across the room, her eyes distant.
“Better now?” he asked, fighting the urge to seize her and hold her. She would not appreciate that.
“I’m fine.” She forced a tremulous smile. “Really. He merely . . . took me off guard is all.”
Edwin might not be good at reading people, but he knew one thing. She was not fine. “Perhaps I should call in your mother.”
“Don’t you dare!” A bitter laugh escaped her. “Mama wouldn’t be any help. And anyway, she’s the reason I ended up in here in the first place. A servant told me that she was ill and needed me in the drawing room, so I came.”
“He lured you here, in other words.”
Rubbing her arms as if to bring warmth to her chilled blood, she nodded. “I can’t believe I fell for it.” She was silent for a long moment. Then she started, and her gaze shot to him. “Edwin, I didn’t let him kiss me, you know.”
“I didn’t think you had.”
As if she hadn’t heard him, she went on hastily, “When I wouldn’t fall into his arms, he . . . he . . .”
“Pushed a kiss upon you,” Edwin said tightly, wishing he’d torn the man off her by force.
A haunted look crept into her eyes. “I should have . . . slapped him or scratched him or something, but I . . . froze. I couldn’t fight, I couldn’t do anything. I—”
“You were afraid. He had you trapped.”
“Yes!” The gratitude in her eyes fairly slayed him. She rose to face him. “He mistook my rigidity for acquiescence. But it wasn’t. And I didn’t encourage the kiss. I truly didn’t!”
“I believe you. I can tell when a woman is avoiding a man.” He approached her. “And this incident proves that he’s still obsessed with you. Disturbingly so.”
She began to pace in short, quick steps that matched her short, quick breaths. “I had hoped the blackguard would have forgotten about me by now.”
How could anyone forget about Clarissa? She was vibrant, alive. Everything most men wanted in a woman.
Most men. Not him.
Liar. “Clearly he has not.” He gazed steadily at her. “Was he always like this?”
She shook her head. “Not at first. He simply courted me like any other gentleman. I—I suppose he took my flirtatiousness for encouragement.”
“No,” he said firmly. The words reminded him too much of his mother’s for comfort. “A gentleman always proceeds with caution until he’s sure of his reception.”
“He’s French. Perhaps he doesn’t know how to behave.”
Edwin snorted. “He was born and raised here, was he not? He knows the rules. He simply chooses to ignore them. You cannot possibly think that bribing a footman to lie about your mother being ill and then accosting you alone, with no chaperone, is considered acceptable behavior anywhere, here or in France.”
“No, I suppose not. Though when he proposed and I refused him, he accused me of leading him on.” She lifted her gaze to Edwin. “I swear I did not.”
“Of course not.” He hesitated before raising a delicate subject. “Why did you refuse him, anyway, if he’d behaved honorably up until that point?”
She worried her lower lip with her teeth. “He kept trying to get me alone, and he sent me private notes. I don’t like that sort of . . . behavior. He always had something, well, off about him. Not quite normal, you know?”
“I do know.” Edwin had known another man like that. The one who had ruined his mother’s life. “Which is why it’s imperative that you not go off alone again for any reason. Take me with you if you must venture out. It’s best to err on the side of caution, since the man is obviously behaving irrationally.”
An anxious frown crossed her brow as she whirled on him. “True, but you shouldn’t have told him we were engaged. I have no intention of marrying you.”
He stiffened. “Of course not.”
As if she realized what she’d said, she winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it—”
“It’s fine. I know how you feel about me.” He was grumpy Edwin, the fellow whose company no woman could abide for long. The man who knew love was a lie.
He would resent the reputation, except that it was all true.
“It-it’s not you,” she said hastily. “I have no intention of marrying anyone. That’s the other reason I didn’t consider accepting Durand’s proposal.”
“Right.”
She was merely trying to soothe his pride. The damned woman was too softhearted for her own good.
“I’m being honest,” she persisted. “It has nothing to do with you or—”
“I was only trying to get him away from you, devil take it! I didn’t mean anything by it.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss.”
She swallowed hard. “Because Durand will run off and tell everyone, and then the two of us will be placed in a difficult—”
“He wouldn’t do that. It wouldn’t suit his plan.”
Clarissa gaped at him. “What plan?”
“To win you. If he tells the world that we’re engaged, he lessens his own chances at getting you back.”
“He has no chance of getting me back.”
“I know, but he clearly doesn’t know that. Or acknowledge it. And he has to realize that ending an engagement publicly would be messy for us; he’ll assume that we’d rather marry than cause a scandal. So it’s better for him to keep it secret, too, in hopes that he can end it privately by winning you. That’s the better strategy.”
“Do you always think in terms of strategies?”
Edwin shrugged. “I’m a chess player. And in life, as in chess, strategy is everything. Durand knows that. So, as long as we give him enough evidence to believe that we’re telling the truth, while at the same time not alerting the rest of the world to it, we’ll be fine.”
“You’re suggesting that we—”
“Pretend to be ‘secretly’ engaged for Durand’s benefit. Yes.”
She blanched. “That won’t work.”
“Why not?” He lifted an eyebrow. “Surely you can be nice to me long enough to convince him. And no one expects me to be nice. All I have to do is be attentive.”
“Oh, Lord, that alone will start people speculating about our new intimacy. And since telling Mama any kind of secret is just asking for trouble, she’ll spin a future for us out of what she witnesses, and will start insinuating that we have an understanding, and next thing I know I’ll be trapped into—”
“For God’s sake,” he bit out, growing annoyed by her obvious loathing for the idea of ever wedding him. “If anyone will lose anything by having our supposed ‘engagement’ found out, it will be me. You said you’d never marry me. So you’d have to jilt me to get out of it.”
She blinked. “Well . . . yes. Exactly.”
“And since I’ve been jilted once already,” he went on irritably, “being jilted again would make it even more difficult for me to find a wife. So if I’m not worried about the consequences if our ‘engagement’ is revealed, I damned well don’t know why you should be.”
“I just don’t . . . see how it would work.”
“Do you have a better suggestion? I’d call the arse out, but that would almost certainly lead people to assume there’s something serious between you and me.”
To his surprise, horror suffused her features. “You are not dueling with that scoundrel. Don’t even think it!”
“I do know how to handle a pistol.” Blast it, did she consider him incapable of winning a duel?
“That’s not the point.”
“Fine. What’s your plan?”
She let out a long sigh. “All right. Let’s say we pretend to be ‘secretly’ engaged around Durand. How are we supposed to convince him that it’s real if we can’t actually behave like an engaged couple?”
“I have no idea. You’re the expert on flitting about society. Perhaps we should make sure he sees us holding hands in private, or even kissing or—”
“You’re such a man,” she cut in. “All of you go right to the physical.”
He eyed her askance. “Shall we have him read our minds instead?”
“Very amusing.” She pursed her lips. “But we can be more subtle. Give the illusion of your being on the verge of making an offer to me. We can flirt, tease, dance—” When he groaned, she added, with an arch glance, “Yes, we must dance as often as is proper without declaring ourselves. That’s a given.”
“Bloody hell,” he muttered.
“Stop cursing. Besides, you’re a better dancer than you let on. You’ll be fine.” Her expression softened. “Who knows? You might even learn how to put some poetry into your poussette.”
“Since I don’t know or care what a poussette is, I’m not sure how I could put poetry into it. And I really don’t see how my circling woodenly about a ballroom with you proves anything to anyone.”
“It proves you’re willing to endure a pastime you’re not fond of, just for the chance of touching me and holding me. Besides . . .”
As she went on describing the advantages of gamboling together in public, he slid behind a chair to hide the effect her words had provoked. He was stuck on the “touching me and holding me” part. Because he wanted to touch and hold her.
Years ago, Samuel, his practiced seducer of a brother, had told him that women responded very well to the usual kisses in the usual spots, but also to ones placed on strategic points all over the body. His brother had even claimed that some women could find their release merely from such caresses.
Though Edwin was skeptical about that last, he’d always wanted to try rousing a woman the way Samuel described. And the idea of doing it with Clarissa now filled his head. He imagined kissing Clarissa’s inner arm, dragging his tongue along the soft skin of her throat, brushing his hand over the tiny dip in her—
“Edwin?” she prodded. “Do you agree?”
“Er . . . yes, of course.” God only knew what he was agreeing to. That’s what he got for woolgathering—that, and an arousal growing more prominent by the moment.
What the devil? This hadn’t happened to him since he was a green lad lusting after tavern wenches. “But you’ll have to help me with the flirting. It’s not my strong suit.”
“Don’t worry. Just follow my lead, and listen to your instincts. I’m sure you have them. You just ignore them.”
Or suppress them whenever it came to her, which he must continue to do. Because his instincts said to pull her close and kiss her the way Durand should have—like a lover, not a bully. His instincts said she might welcome such a kiss.
His instincts were doubtless quite wrong.
As if she could read his mind, she sharpened her gaze on him. “Are you sure you want to do this? It hardly seems fair to you.” She approached him slowly. “I mean, how long are we talking about continuing this sham?”
He fought to clear his head of erotic images. “However long it takes for Durand to get the message.”
“But that might be ages. What if you have to spend the entire Season pretending to court me for Count Durand’s benefit? How does that help you find a wife?”
“You let me worry about that.”
“You’re not getting any younger, you know.”
God, what did she think—he was doddering on the edge of the grave? “Thanks for reminding me.”
“Seriously, Edwin—”
“I doubt our sham will go on too long. Consider it this way: If you help me with my flirting and courting and such nonsense, then by the time we’re finally rid of that fool, I’ll be so far advanced in my strategies to secure a wife that it will take me no effort at all.”
She gazed heavenward. “Oh, Lord. I’m really going to have my work cut out for me, aren’t I?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Coming up next to him, she slid her hand into the crook of his arm. “Well, first of all, stop referring to flirting and courting as ‘nonsense’ in front of any woman you’re actually interested in. And second, you have got to stop thinking in terms of strategies and ‘securing a wife.’ The important thing to remember is . . .”
His mind wandered again as she led him from the room, inst
ructing him the whole way. But this time his thoughts weren’t on undressing her. This time all he could think was that he’d gained himself yet another fiancée who was never going to marry him.
Bad enough that Jane had thrown him over. Though they’d never been more than friends and the only thing Jane had hurt was his pride, watching her fall for another man’s claptrap about “true love” had still stung. It had been unexpected, too, since she was a sensible woman otherwise.
But Clarissa wasn’t Jane. She took nothing—other than Durand’s obsession, apparently—very seriously. And even if she wanted to marry Edwin, he would never consider marrying her. If he ever got close to the bright flame that was Lady Clarissa Lindsey, she would singe him but good. He’d rather be alone than to wed her and find that her infatuation was temporary.
He refused to have his heart pummeled when she lost interest in her husband and moved on to her next conquest. He refused to wake up one day, like his mother, to discover that his marriage was all a lie. That his spouse had never been in his corner. That Clarissa’s love or infatuation or whatever one called it could not withstand the rough times of a marriage.
Edwin had watched his mother die with his father’s name on her lips and her heart breaking, and all because Father had been off at a private opium club in London, indulging in his favorite vice to erase his memories of the past. Even “love” had not prevented his father from sinking into that abyss.
Before Edwin would risk having that happen to him, he would settle for a perfectly conventional, boring union with some responsible chit who was happy to live the usual life of a well-bred lady—bearing him children and managing his household and not making him think or feel.
Because quiet comfort with any ordinary female was surely preferable to a possibility of untold pain with a certain frivolous beauty.
Five
Meeks’s Mechanical Museum had probably never seen such an influx of people. But having been appropriated by Lady Maribella’s parents for her eighteenth birthday, it was overrun with the beau monde in full flower, oohing and ahhing over such creations as a tiny clockwork coach drawn by two horses, and a mechanical flute player, which, once wound up, entertained an entire room.
The Study of Seduction: Sinful Suitors 2 Page 5
