Proof by Seduction (Carhart 1)

Blakely fixed Ned with a look that promised eventual dismemberment. Luckily for the future attachment of Ned’s limbs, nobody else took up the cry. Blakely made his way through the seats amidst very polite, and not particularly encouraging, applause.

He brushed by Ned and had reached his seat on the other side of Madame Esmerelda, when the annoying woman on Ned’s right leaned over.

“Lord Blakely,” she said. “What an unusual style. I just want to know—who is Ned?”

Ned suppressed a grin. That, perhaps, was the best part. Almost everyone thought of him as Mr. Carhart. Just Carhart, to the friends he’d made at school. Only near family—he included Madame Esmerelda in that number, of course—called him “Ned.”

Blakely arranged the tails of his coat and sat down, straight-backed, before answering. “A person.” No further encouragement passed his lips.

“Oh.” A pause. “Is the style intended to be sung like that?”

Ned felt perfectly free to twit his own cousin, but he’d be damned if he let anyone else do it. “Dissonance,” Ned said airily, “is all the rage abroad this year. It’s such a shame London is behind the times.”

Blakely’s brows drew down and he shot Ned an unreadable look.

Ned decided to feel encouraged. An unreadable response was heaps better than an unprintable one.

Two tasks completed; one more to go. Now Ned only had to sit through the remainder of tonight’s entertainment—which had suddenly become much more entertaining. Was Lady Kathleen watching Blakely? Had she been won over by that awful performance? For the fourth time that evening, he swiveled in his seat and glanced toward Lady Kathleen’s position. Four, he told himself, was a commendably low number. He might have glanced at anyone four times. Perhaps five would not be—

Except she wasn’t in her seat. Ned looked up, to see her brushing her way past the last seats in the row. Nobody looked at her; all eyes were riveted on the opera singer who had just begun an aria far more melodic than the previous song. Lady Kathleen glanced around the room and Ned quickly turned away.

When he looked back, she was ducking through a door. How odd. It was the second time Ned had seen her leave some entertainment through a servants’ entrance.

Without thinking, he stood. And he followed.

As soon as he’d closed the tiny door, muting the music behind him, he dashed after her. “Lady Kathleen!”

She turned around. “Oh. It’s Madman Carhart. And you’re alone.”

Ned halted. She’d discovered his name—good. But she doubted his sanity. Bad. Very bad.

She shook her finger at him. “We haven’t been introduced. I don’t think you should speak to me. And you definitely should not be with me unaccompanied.”

“Nonsense,” Ned said. “You know my name. I know yours.” He put out his hand. “Let’s just shake like gentlemen and be friends.”

Her gaze arrested on his outstretched fingers.

“Right.” Ned balled his hand into a fist and pulled it back slowly. “Ladies don’t shake hands. Never mind, then.”

Her gaze had followed his hand. “Do you realize there are toothmarks on your glove?”

Ned whipped his hand behind his back. His ears burned. “I bit myself,” he explained. “I was trying not to laugh at Blakely. You would have done it, too.”

“Bit you?” She raised one eyebrow. And then, as if she’d realized what she had said, she flushed. It was the first hint of unease Ned had seen her exhibit. But she didn’t turn away in embarrassment. She didn’t even glance away demurely. She met his gaze steadily. “Your entire family is mad, you know.”

“Oh, no,” Ned said. “Just Blakely. He’s been like that for ages. I, on the other hand, am completely sane. Just—just a little—nervous, you know.”

“You should be, following me like that.” She shook her head. The motion was almost severe, but the tone of her voice had softened. “You really ought to leave, I suppose, before someone spies us alone like this and assumes the worst.”

Ned was not yet willing to be dismissed. “Well, if you didn’t go charging off alone into the servants’ corridors, you wouldn’t have that problem.”

Her eyes widened. Something like real surprise flashed in them. “I’m not—that is to say, I don’t—”

“Yes,” Ned corrected, “you do, too. Every time I’ve met you, you’ve been off, invading dimly lit corridors. It’s a mystery. I shall have to get to the bottom of it. I shall consult Madame Esmerelda.”

She frowned at him, as if to deny the charge. But what she said was, “Madame Esmerelda?”

“Yes,” Ned said soothingly, “She’s the one who predicted the match between you and Blakely.”

Her eyes widened even more, and she stepped back. “Match? Predicted? Blakely? What match?”

“Ah.” Ned winced. “Hmm. What match?”

“You’re trying to match me with a man you just told me is mad? That’s why you’re following me?” Her eyes had widened, and she drew herself up. She still stood inches shorter than him. “You’re following me for your cousin? I thought—”

Ned raised his palms soothingly. “I can explain. What I said just now about Blakely—the madness and all? Not true. He’s not—well, he’s not so bad. In fact, he has several good qualities.”

“Well. I suppose. There is his singing, after all.”

“Um,” Ned said. “Maybe not that particular quality, so much. But he is a marquess.”

She gave a brusque shake of her head. “Well, he can’t exactly take credit for that, can he? He was born that way.”

“He’s tall. Women like tall men, don’t they?”

“He was born that way, too.”

“No.” Ned’s confidence returned. “He wasn’t. He was born a baby, just like everyone else. He only grew taller later on.”

She blinked at him for a second, and then lifted a glove to her mouth. “Yes,” she said, “but he doesn’t make me laugh.” She looked at him, her gaze direct. “This is another one of your jokes, I assume. You don’t really mean to give me to him, do you? He’s so old, after all.”

She looked up at him, and Ned felt an uncomfortable spot of warmth in his stomach. He shouldn’t have felt encouraged, that she was rejecting his cousin. Still, in comparison with Blakely, Ned felt ungainly, all clumsy elbows.

“Blakely is very responsible,” Ned said dutifully. “Heaps more responsible than me.”

She frowned dubiously. “Which is why he’s sending his younger cousin to arrange a match for him? That won’t wash.”

“Look at him.” Ned leaned against the wall easily. “Can you imagine him falling in love without a little prodding from someone like me? He’s so scientific and cold and rational. He needs me. Why would any woman want him?”

In the silent seconds that followed, Ned realized precisely why these moments of too-bright clarity seemed so familiar. He’d reached the apogee again. Twice before, he’d experienced this crystalline sense of over-reaching. It heralded an inevitable loss of control, and a descent into darkness.

Ned knew. He’d fallen before.

But Madame Esmerelda had broken that cycle of dark following light. She’d promised he could live without fear of that downward spiral. She’d told him he was not mad, and for two perfect, brilliant years, she’d been right.

And here he was, fouling everything up again.

“Why would any woman want your cousin?” Lady Kathleen echoed Ned’s last words with a shake of her head. She glanced again down the hallway, and sighed. “Don’t match me for his sake. But if you want to talk with me…” Her voice trailed off and she looked up at him, a hint of inexplicable wistfulness washing over her features.

He shook his head in confusion, and she pointed a finger behind him, directing him back toward the music room. Faint strains of applause drifted down the hall.

“Just go,” she said.

Ned went.

GARETH ESCAPED out the open doors of the music hall onto the ver

anda. After the thirteenth polite inquiry into the singing styles of countries of South America—excessively larded with exuberant compliments that could not possibly have been sincere—he needed fresh air. He gulped it in.

Of course, the air was only London-fresh. At least it wasn’t perfumed with the bouquet of packed bodies. But the word that came to mind instead of fresh was heavy. Night brought thick fogs, barely pierced by dim blurs of gas lighting. Every lungful of air he took in was moist enough that he might well have been some kind of amphibious salamander. That extra moisture carried all the fragrances of London. Wet soil from the small back garden he’d escaped to. The scent of unfurling buds and mulching leaves. Green smells; nature smells. They didn’t mask the underlying stink of London: particles of coal suspended in vapor and—even in this fine neighborhood—the distant smell of sewage.