Proof by Seduction (Carhart 1)

She hadn’t expected an answer. But it came anyway, from somewhere deep inside of her.

Who do you want to be?

It was all the answer Jenny needed. The world thawed. Noise returned, almost deafening after that slice of tranquility. But despite the frenetic worry that boiled around her, she carried that still center inside her. It did not waver. No mere fear of poverty could budge it.

Behind Ned, Gareth reached out toward his cousin’s shoulder. He stopped, inches away. Ned huddled in his chair, and didn’t glance behind him. Finally, Gareth drew his hand back and wiped it against his trouser leg.

Jenny smiled and picked her own cards from the leftovers and arranged them in order in her hand, from lowest to highest.

Ned gathered up his cards—a handful of carefully constructed threes and fours—and sighed. He let a card fall on the table. Jenny trumped it easily with the jack she’d dealt herself. She took the next trick, too, and yawned as she did.

She’d managed at least one thing. Ned clutched his cards, holding them as if they mattered. For the first time since she’d seen him that evening, he cared about losing.

Across the thin table, Ned’s despair was as palpable and acrid as the smoky air Jenny breathed. Already, she’d managed to convince him he had something to lose. Jenny wanted to smile. Instead, she played her next card.

It was the two of clubs. Ned stared in disbelief. Every card in his hand could beat it. Tentatively, he selected one and placed it on the table. He won the next round, too. They were left with one card each in their hands, and an even score.

“You’re cruel,” Ned said bitterly. “Trying to show me how close I could come?”

He threw the four of diamonds on the table. Gareth set his hands on Ned’s shoulders.

For one last time, Jenny was Madame Esmerelda again, smiling that mysterious smile at two men who had no idea what would happen next, but every expectation of a poor result.

She placed her card gently on the table.

Ned and Gareth stared, twin expressions of shock writ over their faces. Neither moved. Then Gareth reached out one finger to prod its edge—gently—as if somehow, he could not believe what he had seen.

Ned found his voice first. “You lost. You lost on purpose.” He scratched his head in confusion. “You lost ninety thousand pounds on purpose.”

Jenny hopped off the table and leaned down, picking up the coins Ned had scattered onto the floor. “No, Mr. Carhart. I lost sixteen pounds, five shillings on purpose.” She stacked his winnings gently atop the final cards. “And eight pennies. You shouldn’t forget the eight pennies.”

Ned stared at the coins. “But why? I don’t understand.”

Jenny shrugged. “I told you I was a liar and a cheat. I didn’t tell you who I planned to cheat.”

Ned shook his head. “What kind of idiot cheats himself?”

There was no need to respond to that one, not even with a wry gesture at the culprit. Ned flushed pink.

“When you first came to me, Ned, I had a choice of lies. You wanted to know if there was anything in your future besides unhappiness and irresponsibility. I could have told you the truth. The truth is, people rarely change. The truth is, men who drink too much often lead foolish, irresponsible lives. The truth is, you had too much money and not enough sense to ever grow into the kind of man you yearned to be.”

Ned flinched with every sentence.

“So I lied to you.”

“You told me what I wanted to hear.” His voice was small.

Jenny shook her head. “I told you what you needed to hear. I still see it, you know. When I look at you, I still see a boy growing into a man, honorable and tall. I see a man who will one day command respect.”

Ned’s hands shook and his eyes glistened. “Another lie?” His voice trembled. “You don’t know what it is really like, what I have thought—”

“It is as much a lie today as it was then. And isn’t it strange? Since I’ve known you, you’ve become intensely loyal, unwilling to let others look down on those who matter to you. I watched you grow into that falsehood I told. Not despite the lie, but because of it.”

Jenny picked up the stack of coins on the table. Sixteen pounds. Every penny she owned in the world. She reached across the table and took Ned’s right hand. The metal piled nicely into his palm.

“Just because I cheat,” she said, “doesn’t mean I cheated you. You see, there is nothing on this earth so powerful as a lie that can come true.”

Ned let out his breath in a shudder. “Madame—”

“Jenny.”

Ned shut his eyes. “Jenny. You don’t understand. I’ve made a mess of my life. It wasn’t much to start with. And—” His other hand closed on top of hers. “And you told me the darkness would not return, but it does. How can I fight it for the rest of my life?”

“What do you need to do today? Think of that. Don’t let it out of your mind. And once you’ve taken that step, look to tomorrow. You don’t need to figure out your whole life all at once. Just take one step at a time.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Ned mused.

“That’s an illusion. It’s very, very hard. But if you keep going, you’ll get there.” Jenny stood up and gently pulled her hands from Ned’s grip. She leaned across the table and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

“Goodbye, Mr. Carhart,” she whispered.

And then she turned. Her skirts tangled about her ankles as she hastened from the room.

GARETH TOOK ONE LAST LOOK at Ned. His cousin was staring at the coins collected on the table, a look of shock on his face. He looked up at Gareth. His eyes reflected Gareth’s own dazed confusion. And for the first time since that dreadful evening when Gareth had walked in on that debacle with Lady Kathleen, Ned’s eyes flared with hope.

“Well,” Ned said, “What are you waiting for? Go after her.”

Gareth turned and fled. He dashed downstairs, out of the too-hot hell into the chilled air. She was disappearing into the fog down the street.

He ran after her. “Jenny. Wait.” She turned around. He caught up with her and grabbed her elbow. “You can’t—”

The words choked him. If she’d just demonstrated anything, it was that she could. After all, she had. It was he who hadn’t been able to do what was needed.

“It’s not safe,” he finished idiotically, “for a woman to walk alone. Let me call you a hack.”

She swallowed. “I haven’t any money to pay one.”

“I wasn’t proposing to leave you with the fare.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “I wasn’t proposing to let you walk out without a word, either.”

Not that any number of words would ever encompass what he felt now.

She’d once accused him of seeing the worst in people. Perhaps that was because Jenny saw things outside the bounds of his comprehension. And not only did she see them, she spoke of them. And they became real on the strength of her hope.

Her gaze traveled down to the hand he’d clamped on her elbow.

“Very well,” she said slowly.

He went through the motions of hailing a hackney driver and delivering her direction. Then he followed her into the hired conveyance.

A terrible lump built in his breast.

He wondered how much of Jenny’s success as Madame Esmerelda had been built on the strength of that peculiar talent. Real hope, masked in mumbo jumbo and fraud. If he saw the worst in people, it was because he’d traded his own hope in years ago when he’d let Lord Blakely own the lion’s share of Gareth’s life.

Now he saw hope again and he didn’t want to let it go. He didn’t want to let her go.

Gareth had not believed in Ned. He hadn’t really believed in his own sister. These days he scarcely believed in himself, either. He’d not believed he could find any measure of happiness in London. Before he’d met Jenny, his days had stretched in front of him, false and hollow, a line of dire backbreaking responsibility, untempered by any true joy.

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He desperately longed for her benediction, for a measure of the grace she so easily bestowed on others.

“So.” He kept his tone light. Jocular. He didn’t dare betray how important the question was to him. “You look at my sister and see a powerful woman. You look at Ned and see an honorable man. I must seem a veritable giant of a fellow. Whatever do you see when you look at me?”

She responded to his tone with a casual smile. “Oh, all manner of wicked things.”

Ah. So he was nothing but a bloody good shag. Gareth swallowed his leaden disappointment. I was serious, he protested internally. But maybe she had been, too. Maybe she uncovered by intuition what he had always known by logic: that there was no grace for him. She had told him he must be very lonely. She had been right—she’d seen through his pompous, arrogant mask, right to the bleak darkness inside of him that yearned for companionship and friendship.

Maybe that was all this meant to her. Sex and sympathy.

Gareth shut his eyes and fought for nonchalance. “Wicked things? What am I doing to you?”