by Claudia Dain
In just a few steps, he was upon her. In those few moments, she thought nothing, she only felt the rising of her heart into her throat and the trembling of her hands. He was a smooth predator, like a mongoose, silkily silent, swift, remorseless.
The Marquis of Dutton laid his large hand upon the side of her throat, pressed his long legs against her fragile skirts, and kissed her. Softly, relentlessly, and thoroughly.
It was everything she had ever hoped for. It was nothing at all that she wanted.
She waited in her response, waited long enough for him to know that she was unmoved and unmoving, and when she was certain he knew that, when his kiss stumbled, she pushed against his very fine ruby damask waistcoat until she broke the kiss.
She broke the kiss. Let him remember that, if he remembered her at all.
“That will quite enough, Lord Dutton,” she said crisply. “Have I passed the test or failed? In all, I find I do not much care.”
Anne had the singular pleasure of knowing that she had rendered the charming and affable Lord Dutton speechless, at least for the moment. On that happy thought, she left the white salon and made her way up the stairs to bed.
IF she could have found herself in bed, with the covers pulled up over her head for good measure, Caro would have been far happier than she found herself now, facing the very frightening aspect of the Earl of Ashdon’s intense regard. It was not that he looked ready to bellow, or break the porcelain, or throw his fist against a wall. No, it was that he looked completely and chillingly civil. If one discounted the quiet and icy rage in his riveting blue eyes, that is.
She was rather too close to him to discount it.
Their breaths, rapidly expelled, mingled.
Their clothes were entangled.
Their gazes were locked.
And as she watched, a rosy red imprint, just the exact shape and size of her hand, appeared on his left cheek. She had marked him. She was not exactly displeased that she had because, in point of fact, Lord Ashdon seemed determined to be unmarked by her. And that, of course, was flatly unacceptable.
She didn’t know quite how she’d come to this pass. She was a logical, practical sort of girl and she lived her life by solidly practical rules and expectations. The trouble was that Lord Ashdon brought out none of those qualities. Lord Ashdon, who hadn’t wanted her but merely his debts settled, who hadn’t had the courtesy to conduct a proper courtship no matter the reality of his debts, who looked at her as though she had insulted him beyond measure for choosing a courtesan’s life over a life with him, brought out the very worst tendencies in her. Tendencies of a violent and, she suspected, passionate nature.
She might, in fact, be more her mother’s daughter than she had at first assumed.
“Not a good beginning to our bargaining, Caro,” Ashdon breathed, shocking her anew by using the intimacy of her given name. “How shall you negotiate a high price when you go about assaulting the man who would pay for you?”
Lord, but she hated him.
“You have no money, Lord Ashdon,” she said coldly. “You cannot afford me.”
“What is your price?” he countered. “See if I can meet it.”
“You cannot.”
“Try me.”
Caro cast a quick glance about the room. Her mother was coming over, no doubt as a result of that slap; the guests were leaving; dawn was pushing against the night sky. She had only seconds to answer Ashdon.
Things were moving too quickly. She was not entirely certain anymore that she wanted to be a courtesan. It seemed a vastly complicated business all of a sudden and she was less than certain she would be successful at it. But Lord Ashdon was staring down at her, his blue eyes just as piercing and challenging as they had been when first she met him, and her mother was going to cast her out of the house in just a few hours unless she did something to prevent it . . . and there was something decidedly delicious about sparring with the devilish Lord Ashdon.
“I believe pearl earrings would suit me very well, Lord Ashdon,” she said softly.
“And what would I get in return for a pair of fine pearl earrings ? ” he whispered.
“Come by at eleven o’clock and I shall tell you.”
Lady Dalby, still looking fresh and perfectly composed as the dawn broke the sky into yellow shards of light, said, “Caroline, I am quite dismayed by your behavior. Must I apologize for her again, Lord Ashdon? I am quite prepared to do so.”
Lord Ashdon bowed serenely and said, “Completely unnecessary, Lady Dalby. Lady Caroline and I have worked things out nicely.”
With just a few more words of parting, he was gone. And Caro was left to face her mother.
Twelve
“WORKED things out nicely?” Sophia said once they were alone and in her bedroom. The servants were cleaning up, the grate was being brushed, the silver polished, the crystal washed, and the tables cleared. Anne was in her bed, asleep. Fredericks was supervising the servants. In short, there was no one and nothing to divert her mother’s attention, to Caro’s great misfortune. “Does that mean you have chosen him, the man you refused as husband, to be your first . . . well, to be your first?”
Oh, my. To be her first. She hadn’t quite thought that far ahead.
“I’m . . . not quite certain,” Caro said as her mother stretched out her long legs atop the elegantly proportioned recamier positioned by the front bedroom windows. Not that anyone interesting would be out at this hour, but her mother liked to keep an eye on things.
“You’d best become certain, Caro,” Sophia said calmly.
“I know, Mother. I know. Everything is just so confused. I don’t quite know how I got to this moment.”
“You decided not to marry and to become a courtesan,” Sophia said softly and not unkindly.
“Yes, I remember deciding that. It seemed so sensible a decision at the time.”
“You mean in the safety of your home, surrounded by your loved ones?”
Caro looked at her mother and felt her eyes fill with tears. “Yes. Exactly.”
“Darling?” Sophia said. “Tell me honestly, do you like Lord Ashdon? ”
“Like him?” Caro said, her tears drying instantly. “I think he’s a horrible man. He’s intemperate and without manners and . . . just . . . horrible.”
“Yes, I quite agree with you, but that doesn’t quite answer, does it? Do you like him? Or let me ask instead, do you want him?”
It was miserable, what her mother was asking of her, to look inside her tumbled heart and try to see what lay hidden in its depths. She was seventeen, too young to be looking into something as darkly treacherous and unpredictable as a human heart.
But as she was looking, the face of Lord Ashdon, that handsome, sardonic, impossible face, looked back at her. Her heart turned on itself and she caught her breath.
“I do,” she said before she had quite got her breath back. “It’s shameful. He’s not the proper sort of man at all. But I do.”
Sophia smiled and said, “I have yet to meet a man who is the proper sort, darling. I think that man must be the invention of poets and playwrights.”
Yes, trust her mother to talk of poets and playwrights when her life was tumbled into the gutter. She had no husband, and no prospect of one, and the very man who had been purchased for her was now on an errand set to purchase her for himself and his debauched tendencies. Her heart did the impossible and dropped into her hips.
“Caro? Are you listening?”
“Oh, yes, Mother,” she said. She had not been listening. She had been listening to her heart, treacherous thing.
“Will you follow my instruction? Do everything exactly as I say?” Sophia asked.
Do everything her mother said? This was some parental trick, a lesson in obedience. What did Ashdon have to do with obeying her mother?
“I . . . I don’t see how you can help, Mother. Things have proceeded too far, too much has been said.”
“And let us not forget that slap,” Sophi
a said languidly.
Oh, Lord.
But he had earned that slap. Why did she want him, anyway?
To make him suffer? That was a good answer, and at least it had the benefit of being founded in pride. Better pride than wretched longing for a man who couldn’t say a civil word to her if ten thousand pounds depended on it.
“I don’t think it very wise of me to want him,” Caro gritted out as she paced the room.
“Wanting is seldom wise, but that doesn’t mean it has to be wrong,” Sophia said.
“That doesn’t make any sense, Mother.”
“Doesn’t it?” Sophia said with a gentle smile. “You slapped him, insulted him, and rejected him. Is he coming back?”
Caro stopped pacing and stared at her mother. “He said he would.”
“And is he bringing gifts? Something rare and costly?” Sophia asked, still smiling.
Caro found that she was smiling as well. “A pair of pearl earrings. I don’t see how he can get them.”
“But he will try, won’t he? You’re certain of that.”
That was the strange part; she was certain. She was almost certain that Lord Ashdon would stop just short of murder to present her with a pair of pearl earrings.
“I am,” Caro said in wonder. “I am certain of that.”
“As am I.”
“But why, Mother? I mostly hate him and he just might have cause to hate me in return. Why would he beggar himself to bring me a gift?”
Sophia stretched her arms over her head in a sinuous stretch. “Because he wants you, Caro, even if it is not very wise of him to do so. Now, will you do as I say, no arguments?”
“Why? ”
“So that you may have what you want, darling; Lord Ashdon for a husband.”
ANNE awoke at ten and knew whom she would marry. She had taken Lord Dutton’s measure, put him up against what she knew of Lord Staverton, and made her decision. It was obvious, really. She was appalled that she’d been blind to it for so long.
Lord Dutton was a rogue.
There, she’d admitted it. She felt immeasurably better.
She was no schoolgirl, far from it. She did not have Caroline’s excuse of innocent trust coupled with a strong habit of invulnerability. No, she had seen the world, too much of the world, at an uncomfortably close proximity. She understood men and she understood what they usually wanted; more, she understood their methods for achieving what they wanted.
Lord Dutton had treated her like very pretty wallpaper, seen once, admired, and then ignored. Until he had heard her confess to Caroline about her mother. Then, he had been all interest, all attention, all charm. So it always was at the start. It was at the finish that a woman had to be sharp and vigilant. Her mother had never learned that, but Anne had.
Anne was not her mother.
Anne, if she tried very, very diligently, might model herself after Sophia.
Sophia would not allow Lord Dutton to distract her. Sophia would see the future, and the future was Lord Staverton and a life as a viscountess. That was a future worth aiming for. Lord Dutton offered nothing, nothing beyond a smile and a torrid kiss.
It had been a torrid kiss.
As long as she was being honest, she should admit, at least to herself, that her husband had not been very accomplished as a kisser. He had had other qualities to be sure, but kissing had not been one of them. That was it exactly. He had not been a quality kisser.
She was not going to plan her future on the basis of a torrid and quite effective kiss.
She was not even going to speculate as to what kind of kisser Lord Staverton was going to prove. A woman could live without kisses, but what she could not live without was a solid roof over her head and a table full of food. Her mother had never learned that, either.
A scratch at the door that connected Caro’s room to hers interrupted her thoughts, and then Caro’s dark head poked around the corner.
“Oh, good. You’re awake. I have so much to tell you.”
“Yes,” Anne said, checking the mantel clock as she sat up fully in bed, “and you had best hurry since it’s just a bit more than an hour before you find yourself thrown upon the streets.”
“Oh, that,” Caro said, coming over to sit upon the foot of the bed. “My mother and I have come to terms. I am not to be thrown out. I am to marry instead.”
“I’m much relieved to hear it,” Anne said, though she felt a bit guilty for thinking of her own marital dilemma while Caro had faced being cast from her home. She was a selfish, self-serving woman and she must think more of others. And now that she had the problem of the tempting Lord Dutton settled, she would. “Are you to marry anyone I know?”
“Of course you know him,” Caro said. “I will marry Lord Ashdon. Who else?”
“Who else? Why, I would have thought anyone else. You refused him.”
“I changed my mind,” Caro said brightly.
“Why did you change your mind?”
“Well, as to that, I’m not quite certain,” Caro said, her smile faltering. “It might have been the cut of his blue waistcoat, or the way his hair sort of tumbles about his eyes. He has rather nice eyes, don’t you think?”
“They’re blue, aren’t they?”
“Definitely blue,” Caro said, staring up at the ceiling with a vacuous look on her face. “The most incredible shade of blue that I ever saw.”
Men with blue eyes ought to be outlawed. What color were Lord Staverton’s eyes? She was ashamed to admit that she had no idea; she tried very hard not to look at his wobbly eyes.
“I thought you told me that he had put you off blue eyes forever,” Anne said.
“Oh, Anne, try to keep up. That was yesterday,” Caro said artlessly.
Oh, Lord, Caro was going to marry a man she despised because she was taken by a pair of lovely blue eyes. Anne, unfortunately, knew exactly how that felt, only she was too experienced to fall completely. No, she had the wits and determination to pull herself out of the trap a pair of beguiling blue eyes could set.
“Caro, what has changed between yesterday and today?” Anne said.
“Well, for one, I slapped Lord Ashdon.”
“You what?”
“I slapped him,” Caro said somewhat proudly. “And he well deserved it, too.”
“Then why do you want to marry him? ”
“Because,” Caro said, grinning, “he wants me now. Desperately. ”
“Because you slapped him?”
“I don’t know if it was because I slapped him, but it certainly didn’t hurt,” Caro said, still grinning like a besotted fool.
Besotted . . .
“Oh, Caro,” Anne said, “do you think you’re besotted by him?”
Never mind outlawing blue-eyed men; they ought to be hanged like thieves for stealing a woman’s future with a mere look.
“Anne, you’re missing the point entirely. I’m quite certain, in fact I shall know in less than an hour, that he is besotted with me. Isn’t it delicious?”
“Do you know, you sounded exactly like your mother just then,” Anne said, getting out of bed and pulling a shawl around her shoulders.
“Did I really?” Caro said, springing up behind her and practically dancing over to the window. There was nothing to see out the window but the mews behind the house. By the expression on Caro’s face, one would think she was surveying the splendor of Versailles. “How perfect.”
“Why shall you know in less than an hour?” Anne asked, ringing for the maid to brush out her hair.
“Because,” Caro said, still staring out the window, “I told him that he must bring me a pair of pearl earrings if he wants . . . you know.”
“You know . . . what? ”
“Oh, Anne !” Caro said, turning to face Anne, her dark eyes lit like lanterns. “If he wants me. What else?”
Anne sighed. What else, indeed?
ASHDON made his way from Westlin’s town house on Upper Grosvenor Street to Dalby’s house on Upper Brook Stree
t by way of Grosvenor Square. He had hoped to avoid curious glances and malicious speculation that way; it proved a futile hope.
“Going back for more?” the Marquis of Dutton asked him after a quick bow of greeting.
Dutton was a bit younger, having come up to Eton as he and Calbourne were leaving it, their paths crossing but lightly in that final year. Ashdon did not know Lord Dutton beyond the gaming tables at White’s or the dining tables of the ton. All to say, he had no reason or desire to talk with Lord Dutton about the events of last evening, no matter that Dutton had been a witness to it all.
