Proof by Seduction (Carhart 1)

Shock filtered through his features, but Jenny wasn’t finished.

“Do you know what I see when I look at you, Gareth?”

He shook his head.

“I see a strong man. Honest, and good. Perhaps a little inflexible—but smart enough to know his limitations. Clever enough to pick a woman who will push him to be better. I see a man who makes mistakes, but is willing to admit them and work to better them. I see a man who was willing to put aside his own pride for his cousin’s sake. And for mine, just now.”

“What else do you see?”

She pulled his hand to her and set it on her waist. He leaned in, his fingers closing about her. Tugging her next to his heart.

“I see that I’ll say yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I’ll take you. If you’ll take me.”

When his lips met hers, she could taste the smile on his face. He pulled her against him. And when, after a long, leisurely time, he raised his head, he laughed. For one eternal instant, Jenny had no label for the swelling rightness that filled her chest, no words to describe how she felt. But then the thought came.

Ah. So this is what home feels like.

EPILOGUE

IF THERE WAS ONE CONSTANT in the highest echelons of London society, it was the Marquess of Blakely. For nearly two centuries, Blakelys had been a constant edifice. They stood as bulwarks against change; the old guard, reminding younger rabble of the obligation of nobility. Nine generations of cold, chilly men had been counted on to depress the pretensions of those who overreached their stations.

And so, when the ninth marquess purchased an elephant on one day and announced he was married on the next, gossip flurried. Because he had not married the expected peer’s daughter. Nor had he married an heiress, which would have been titillating enough. So who had he married?

Nobody could quite figure out.

Oh, they knew what she looked like. She was a friendly woman with striking dark hair and a pleasant figure and an extremely bright smile. And they knew her married name—Jennifer Carhart, Marchioness of Blakely—but they knew nothing of her family or her fortune. It was a puzzle, because everyone knew that a Blakely simply could not have married anyone unsuitable.

Stories flew.

At first, some insisted that Blakely’s bride was the woman who’d been called Mrs. Margaret Barnard. But that woman had been in society so little, and those who had been closest to the woman—Blakely himself, as well as his cousin, his cousin’s wife, and his sister—insisted it was not so. And besides, Mrs. Barnard had been a distant connection of the Carharts, so distant that polite society hadn’t even bothered to remember her. Blakely would never have stooped to marry her. And that put paid to that guess.

The new Marchioness of Blakely busied herself in the planning of the much larger wedding of Blakely’s sister. High society, not wishing to be left out of the hubbub entirely, busied itself spinning theories.

Someone suggested she was a foreign princess from a tiny country south of the equator.

Someone else insisted she had the look of Gallic nobility, and was thus the last remaining scion of some family that had fled the Terror.

Yet another person claimed that the marchioness had once been a fortune-teller, capable of calling spirits from the ether and lightning from the skies.

By the day of his sister’s wedding, society had divided into bitter camps on the question. When the marquess and his marchioness disembarked from their carriage, outside the church where Miss Edmonton was to marry, they were the object of intense scrutiny. His lordship was impeccably turned out in burgundy velvet. Her ladyship wore a diamond pendant and a dress of blue water-shot silk. They looked at one another a great deal, and touched an unfashionable amount.

After the ceremony, the Countess of Lockhaven pushed through the crowd of the wedding breakfast. She caught Lord Blakely’s arm just as the man found his sister.

“Lord Blakely,” she simpered. “And Lady Blakely.”

Blakely looked down at the hand on his sleeve. His gaze traveled up her arm. That cold expression—for which Blakelys had so long been known—froze Lady Lockhaven.

“Well?”

Lady Lockhaven dropped her hand. “We were wondering if—well, if you could say something about…” In the hush that fell, everyone could hear her gulp. “About your lady’s birth? And her people?”

If Lord Blakely’s face had been cold before, it turned frigid now. He looked the countess disdainfully up and down. Everyone in the crowd suddenly remembered her mother had been a soap manufacturer’s daughter, married for her thousands of pounds. They remembered her husband’s first marriage had been to a country girl he eloped with, who’d had the good grace to die before she embarrassed the family by providing an heir.

“My wife’s birth?” He drawled the words insolently, and the crowd shivered as one. “A damned sight better than your own.”

That was the last time anyone asked the marquess about his wife’s origins.

Not solely because society feared his response. Rather, his conduct directly thereafter settled the debate for once and all.

After Blakely delivered that infamous and much-repeated set down, he transferred his gaze to the new Marchioness of Blakely.

She shook her head, once. Firmly. “Gareth,” she said dryly. “It is your sister’s wedding day. Behave.”

Silence. He’d lifted his chin, in typical Blakely arrogance. The crowd waited for the blast.

And then Lord Blakely shrugged and grinned helplessly.

Grinned. Helpless. A Blakely.

“Oh,” said his sister, from where she stood near him. “Is that how it’s done? I’ll have to practice that.”

Like that, everything society knew about nine generations of Blakelys went up in smoke.

Since that day, there had been no question. Lady Blakely had been granted otherworldly powers at birth. Every smile she coaxed from him, every laugh that she surprised from his lips, stood as testament to her arcane abilities.

And those that questioned her worth still had only to see the look in his eyes when he watched her to find all the proof they required.