by Claudia Dain
“Give me time. I will borrow the funds. I will pay off this debt.”
“By borrowing? Is that not incurring yet more debt? Have you learned nothing at all?” Sophia ran a finger over the swells of her creamy breasts, considering him solemnly. “I do not know that I want my daughter to marry a man of such profligate ways. She is much opposed to risk and would prefer a more stable, mature man at her side. I cannot say I disagree with her.”
Now he was not good enough for the daughter of a courtesan? Insult upon insult.
“Westlin will never allow it,” he said. “My father has his own plans for me, and they do not include your daughter.”
“I would wager that Westlin’s plans do not include the payment of a thirty-eight-thousand-pound debt, sir. Will you ask him to pay it? And before you answer, let me ask you another question. Do you think he can pay it, should he be so inclined?”
The look in her eyes, the shock of her question throughout his bones—the combination of the two sent realization thrumming through him.
“Yes,” she said, nodding, like a tutor pleased with a pupil. “He cannot pay your debt, Lord Ashdon, because he cannot pay his own. Serve me in this, in this one small deed, and your debt is cancelled. You will be free to gamble yourself into penury again, if that is your inclination.”
“And your daughter? You would see her so served?” he said softly.
“My daughter will be protected from intemperate men, never doubt it. I will have the papers drawn and you will sign them. Gamble as freely as you wish with your money, but hers will be set aside for herself and her children. You and your father shall not touch it. Are we agreed?”
He had no choice as things now stood. By every device laid before him, his future was gambled upon the seed of a courtesan.
“We are agreed,” he said, rising to his feet. “Her name?”
He meant to insult her. He knew her daughter’s name from years past when his father had found the scent of Dalby’s widow and pursued her again through the salons of London. Had Westlin succeeded? Ashdon did not know. Given Westlin’s feelings about the woman, it did not seem likely.
“Caroline,” she said, smiling up at him, her very posture smug. “You may begin courting her this very day.”
“A courtship? After this bargaining?”
“Of course a courtship. A courtship always follows on the heels of a bargaining and is, by the bounds of civility, required,” she said, coming to her feet with languid grace. “What else did you think a marriage was, Ashdon?”
He wanted to kill her.
“Come round later this afternoon, will you? You may begin then,” she said. “And change your shirt. The one you are wearing has the tiniest spot on the cuff, just there.” And she touched his hand above the wrist to show him, a fleeting touch, a spark of female warmth that burned his pride. On the tide of that touch, she laughed her way out of the room.
Four
“WELL, that’s settled,” Sophia said as she entered the white salon. “Such a fuss over a simple marriage settlement. He played the outraged child to perfection. One wonders if he practices such theatrics at home.”
“You don’t blame him,” Viscount Richborough said from his leonine lounge on her milk blue damask sofa.
“Don’t I? ” she said, sitting politely on the twin sofa facing him. “Why don’t I? ”
“Because, my dear Sophia, he has obligations to his family and his name.”
“As do I, Richborough.”
“And your obligation is to see your child well married. That is Westlin’s charge as well. You seek the same ends.”
“Along different paths, is that your point?” she said softly. “Caro shall be married well, at least as well as I have done.”
“A high mark to set for her. She hasn’t your . . . natural advantages.”
“Careful, Richborough,” Sophia said with a smile. “I am still annoyed with you for whatever happened between you and Caro this morning. To judge by the look on her face, I should probably throw you out. Should I throw you out, Richborough? Did you abuse my daughter shamelessly and did she bruise your considerable pride? Why else for you to insult her now?”
“Insult her?”
“Caroline has every advantage a girl needs in this world. How very odd that you cannot see that. She must have rejected you quite firmly,” she said, watching him as he held her gaze with all the innocence of a puppy. And all puppies had the unfortunate habit of relieving themselves upon the smallest whim and upon the very best carpets.
“Nothing happened beyond the normal meaningless conversation that one reserves for virgins,” he said, leaning forward to take her hand in his. She allowed him that, suspecting where it would lead. As long as he left off his speculation about Caro, she would allow him to lead the conversation elsewhere. “I understand that you are ambitious for your child, as any mother would be. I understand,” he said, kissing her fingertips, “that you would see Westlin turn upon the point of your knife for failing to offer marriage to you when he offered everything else.”
“You speculate,” she said, watching him take her index finger into his mouth and suckle it. “You were a boy at school when I first met Westlin. All you know is the gossip you have heard in the clubs of St. James.”
“Is anything truer than the rumors that swirl in the air of the clubs? He has never forgotten you, madam, why else for his son to resent you as he does?”
“Because I hold the paper on his debts? ” she said as she watched him seduce her by way of her hand.
“You have bought Ashdon’s will, for a time. Do not think you have bought the man.”
“What a fine point you put on it, Richborough,” she said, removing her hand from his. “Ashdon will do what I want him to do because he must. He has no skill for poverty, I think, nor does he wish to develop such skills. Let him think what he wants of being bought or free, his thoughts are his own. I only require that he do what I need of him, and that is to court and marry my daughter. She will be the Countess of Westlin and the Countess of Ashdon. She deserves as much.”
“Are you certain this is about what she deserves or what Westlin deserves, having your daughter spewing out the future Earls of Westlin?”
“You mention nothing of what I deserve,” Sophia said, looking at Richborough’s dark brown eyes and fashionably windblown dark brown hair. He was a handsome man, knew it, and played upon it, which she thought very wise of him.
“I thought I was giving you what you deserve,” he said, reaching across the space between the matched sofas to cup her face in his hands.
“Given that I have a high opinion of my worth, I have always enjoyed getting what I deserve,” she said with a sly smile as Richborough’s mouth came down upon hers.
Five
CARO sat at her mirror and stared at her face in brutal self-analysis.
She had a good face. She had her mother’s complexion, creamy and smooth, her father’s dark blue eyes, and her mother’s black, softly curled hair.
All in all, she thought she could have a moderately successful run as a courtesan.
Her figure was good, a nice full bust, her hands slender and her fingers well shaped. Beyond that, she did not know how to compare herself to the rest of the female population. She did not know, beyond a clear complexion and a firm bust, what a man found attractive.
But there was clearly something more. Richborough had been insultingly tepid in his response to her completely blatant invitation to debauch her in some small fashion. If the fault was not with her, and she certainly hoped it wasn’t, then the fault must lie with Richborough. He was either profoundly stupid or, and this was not beyond reason, he was afraid of stepping wrong with her mother. That was entirely possible. It might have nothing at all to do with her. She might be the most fatally desirable woman since Helen and all those ships.
It might not be a bad idea to ask her brother, John Markham Stuart Grey Trevelyan, the ninth Earl of Dalby, when he got home.
On second thought, it might be a very bad idea.
Judging by Anne’s reaction to her decision, she didn’t suppose Markham would respond any better. It was a good thing that he was out of town or he might try to do something foolish, like talk her out of it. What her mother would do when she found out she did not dare to think, though it was not in Sophia’s style to go about talking people out of things. No, it was much more her style to talk them into things. Like marriage.
All the talking in the world was not going to change the fact that no worthy man would take her to wife. The world was reasonable and predictable and logical, and there was nothing reasonable about Caro’s situation. She was the perfectly respectable daughter of a famously unrespectable mother.
No, there was nothing for it. She was going to follow fully in her mother’s footsteps and make her way in the world as a courtesan.
She only hoped she had what it took to be famously unrespectable. Judging by Richborough’s reaction to her, she was not off to a very promising start. The only thing to do was to stop thinking about Richborough and his disappointing performance.
“I thought he’d never leave,” Sophia said, coming into Caro’s bedroom with an exaggerated sigh of exasperation.
“Who?”
“Richborough. He gives a fair imitation of the most debauched man in London. I think he’d die of shame if I told him that he is only an imitation and nothing approaching the real thing.”
“I think he’s besotted, Mother.” And if he were, then that might explain why he had behaved so dismally in not even giving the appearance of wanting to seduce her. Why, he hadn’t even tried to kiss her hand, the dullard.
“Do you really think so?” Sophia said, insinuating herself onto a chaise longue covered in blush-colored silk damask. Sophia ran a hand over the back of her hair and smiled like a cat.
“We both think so,” Caro said with a grin, putting off thoughts of the excessively dull Lord Richborough. “How do you do it, Mother? ”
“Do what, darling?”
“How do you make a man besotted? How do you, especially at your age, make a man . . . want you?”
“I was enjoying this conversation until you said ‘at your age’ in that dumbfounded fashion. Really, Caro, I’m only thirty-four. You make me sound eighty.”
“Which reminds me, you had two children by the age of eighteen. I can scarcely match you in that as I am fully seventeen now.”
“I was precocious.”
“I am on the shelf,” Caro rejoined.
“On the shelf? Don’t be ridiculous, Caro. You are at the peak of your beauty and desirability. Let your mirror guide you in that truth if my words do not.”
“Yes,” Caro said, squirming a bit on her silk-covered cushion. “I’ve been thinking about that, actually, and I’ve come to a decision. I won’t be talked out of it, Mother, I’m telling you that now. I am quite firm, quite decided.”
“Really?” Sophia said, sitting up, eyes alight. “What have you decided? I’m breathless in anticipation.”
“I’m,” she began, but the words suddenly stuck in her throat. Thinking about being a courtesan and talking about it with her mother were entirely different propositions, but Caro was nothing if not forthright and determined, or at least she wanted to believe so. “I’ve decided that, since a worthwhile marriage is out of the question, I’ve decided that . . .”
“Yes, darling, you’ve decided what?”
“That I want to be . . . I intend to become . . . a courtesan.”
The words, far from shining with promise and excitement in the air between them, fell like lead shot to plunge into the parquet floors beneath their feet.
“A courtesan,” Sophia repeated solemnly, blinking.
“Yes. Like you.”
What was intended as a compliment of sorts came out rather more like an indictment.
“Like me? Your declaration has something to do with me?” Sophia said, her voice rising.
“Well, actually, what I meant to say was that, well, it seems a likely start for someone like me.”
“You mean someone of your upbringing, education, and privilege ? ” Sophia said, her voice crisp with sarcasm.
“Someone of my limited prospects,” Caro said.
“You have the prospect of a life of ease before you, married or not, that is certainly true.”
“But I don’t want to live an aimless life, Mother. I want to do something, be someone in my own right.”
“In your own right? You clearly have no understanding of what it is to be a courtesan, Caro,” Sophia said stiffly.
“Then tell me. Teach me,” Caro said, rising from her stool and walking to her mother across the luxurious bedroom so that she could sink onto her knees at her mother’s feet. “I want to succeed at something, Mother. I would wish to be a wife to a worthy man, but if I cannot, then let me at least be the object of a worthy man’s attention. Teach me how to make a man want me. Teach me how to make a man besotted.”
Sophia sat back upon the chaise, rubbing her ring finger over her lower lip, deep in thought, her dark eyes upon Caro. Caro could never read her when she assumed that look, that contemplative, lost-in-speculation look. Her father had claimed to have feared that soulful introspection, but she didn’t believe that. Her father had feared nothing, not even the scandal of marrying Sophia Grey, courtesan.
“Does Richborough have anything to do with this?” Sophia asked.
“Nothing at all,” Caro answered honestly.
“And your conversation in the yellow salon with him this morning? ”
“Dull beyond description,” Caro said in brutal honesty.
“You want me to believe you’re serious.”
“I am serious,” Caro answered.
“Then you’re a fool,” Sophia said dismissively.
“Not a fool, Mother, just desperate,” Caro said, meeting her mother’s darkly penetrating gaze. “I want a man to want me. I want to be desired and pursued.”
“And caught,” Sophia said. “To be a courtesan is to be pursued and caught, and caught, and caught.”
“But at least pursued, and caught only when I decide. Isn’t that so?”
“It is usually your empty stomach that decides for you.”
“I just want to be like you, Mother.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, darling. There is no one like me. I arranged that most deliberately,” Sophia said softly, her dark eyes looking quite mysterious all of a sudden.
Caro actually didn’t care what her mother’s eyes did in that precise moment; she was not going to be distracted or discouraged. She was going to become a courtesan, and she was going to become famously wonderful at it.
“Mother, I am going to do this. I am going to be a courtesan.”
Sophia smiled and patted her on the head. It was meant to be insulting, and it most definitely was. “You have everything now, at your fingertips, that a courtesan works for. You have money, a lovely home, jewels, protection. What do you think this is, Caro? A game? Women become courtesans because of what they lack. You lack for nothing.”
“I lack purpose.”
“A courtesan’s purpose is to find a protector and to keep him happy.”
“I can do that,” Caro said, hoping she wasn’t blushing.
Sophia shrugged and walked across the room. “You shall have no opportunity to find out. I’ve lived the life you seem determined to pursue. I know what it is. I will not throw my daughter into it. Besides,” she said, turning, her fingers toying with the strand of pearls at her throat, “I have done what you have deemed impossible. I have arranged a marriage for you.”
“You have? When? With whom?”
“I have, just now, with Lord Ashdon, heir to the Earl of Westlin. A tidy match, wouldn’t you agree?”
Caro walked toward her mother, the pearled light of London casting gentle light upon them both. “He offered for me?”
“We have reached a marriage arrangement.”
&n
bsp; That was rather too carefully worded for comfort.
“He did not approach you?”
Sophia shrugged and turned from Caro to walk over to the fireplace where she fussed with the arrangement of tulips there. As a very strict rule, Sophia did not fuss.
“How was this arrangement proposed?” Caro asked.
“If you must know, he had some outstanding debts, which I covered, and now, well, darling, I hoped you’d be happy. I paid his debts and now he is going to marry you. Isn’t that lovely? You could hardly wish for a better match, and he is both young and handsome enough to credit you.”
