Proof by Seduction (Carhart 1)

None of the activity she heard signified the return of Lord Blakely.

Jenny gradually let go of her arousal. Eventually, she slumped into the disheartening territory of outright discouragement. It was foolish, she chided herself, to engage in preposterous mental games, to come up with reasons without knowing what kept him away. But she could not help but play with possibilities.

Jenny was well aware she was hardly a diamond of the first water. She wasn’t a diamond of any sort of water. When Lord Blakely had left her, he’d been physically excited. But he could easily have found a willing widow, one closer to his class and station, to tempt him. Why, then, would he bother to return?

And now that Ned agreed Jenny was a fraud, perhaps Lord Blakely had no reason to continue his campaign of seduction. Perhaps this was his revenge—this half state of desperate physical desire he’d left her in. Perhaps he was, at this very moment, imagining her shaking her fists in frustration. No doubt he was chuckling evilly, wherever he was.

Now she really knew she was letting her imagination run away with her. It was not in Lord Blakely’s character to behave in such a fashion. He didn’t chuckle.

Once unleashed, though, her imagination veered wildly afield. He could have been struck by a stampeding horse. Or perhaps he’d been abducted by rival ornithologists, intent on torturing him in order to steal his data on macaws.

All lies. Lies and ridiculous stories Jenny invented to avoid thinking about the one possibility that lurked kraken-like beneath the spinning maelstrom of her thoughts.

Lord Blakely had gone to meet Ned. When she’d last seen the boy, she’d told him not to trust her. With Ned cut loose, what reason would Lord Blakely have to return?

She’d been abandoned. Again.

She didn’t even remember the first time it had happened. After all, she’d lived the entirety of her life in its aftermath.

Jenny assumed she had parents. Not only was it a matter of biological necessity, but someone had paid the bills at the Elland School in Bristol. They’d paid for fourteen years, from the time of Jenny’s arrival through to her departure at eighteen. Even before then, Jenny dimly remembered a stocky farmwife employed to look after her.

That unknown someone had paid for her upkeep and arranged for her education, the transactions run anonymously through purchased annuities and a string of whey-faced solicitors. Nobody answered the letters Jenny sent, and she’d penned them from the first moment she’d been able to scratch tentative words.

Jenny’s parents had been nothing more than a set of bank bills, perfunctorily issued at quarterly intervals. At the age of eighteen, she’d been told the annuity providing for her care would be extinguished soon and so she’d best think about finding employment. Whatever emotional connection she’d had with those bank drafts had been severed.

Jenny sighed and smiled wryly. After thirty years, she ought to have been reconciled to that feeling of abandonment. She’d never known anything else in her life. If Lord Blakely had disappeared from her life, he would only be leaving just like everyone else before him.

And yet, stupidly, this latest in her long string of abandonments felt just as devastating as the first. She feared he’d walked out, leaving her mired in a fog of emotion. Just like her desire to make phantom parents out of the solicitors’ payments, she’d be plagued by thoughts of what might have been. What it would have felt like when Lord Blakely entered her body, inch by desperate inch. Whether his bare skin would have been warmer than hers. She would have wanted to see if the expression on his face warmed when he entered her in that most intimate way.

Jenny took a deep breath and allotted herself one minute longer of this ridiculous self-pity. There was little enough room for it. After tonight, she had a new life to claim.

When her minute passed, she brushed her hands and stood up.

“Well,” she remarked to the empty room.

It listened, walls heavy.

“I didn’t want him. Not really.”

The night swallowed her lies.

IT WAS ONLY HALF AN HOUR LATER when something roused Jenny. Disoriented, she jumped out of bed, her heart pounding. The night was quiet, but the tiny back room in which she’d been asleep seemed to crouch, empty but waiting.

A knock sounded. This time Jenny identified the sound she’d heard in her sleep. It was him. She slid trembling hands down her chemise. She couldn’t meet him like this. What was he doing here, at this time of the night? And what was she to do about it?

She fumbled for a wrapper. A third impatient rap sounded. As Jenny raced down the short hall between her rooms, she tried to think of words to hide the fluttering in her stomach. Words to prove that the delay had meant as little to her as it obviously had to him.

You’re late.

You? I had forgotten about you.

She wiped damp palms on the wool of her wrapper and threw open the door. “I suppose you think—”

Lord Blakely’s expression, shrouded in shadows, was as cold as if he’d never sat at her table. As if they hadn’t kissed earlier that evening. As if the last time he saw her, he hadn’t begged for her name with longing on his face. But he was not just cold. He looked wearier than the toll of the passing hours could explain.

It was not his expression that stole the words from her mouth. It was his companion. Ned slumped next to him. He contemplated the threshold of her door. His shoulders sagged and his features wilted.

“Ned,” Jenny said, “what are you doing here?”

No answer. Ned turned his head away, biting his lip.

“Tell her,” Lord Blakely rumbled. “Start from the beginning and go through the end. But tell her what you’ve done.”

Ned heaved a great sigh. Then he pushed past Jenny and flung himself into a chair. Something was dreadfully amiss here—more than the usual bickering that took place between the cousins.

Lord Blakely motioned with a hand, and Jenny preceded him into the room. The door clicked shut behind them, and Jenny felt her way through the darkness until she’d found the candles on her table and the spills on the mantel.

A touch of illumination and everyone’s faces became clear. But the flickering flame shed no light on what had brought the two of them here.

Jenny had no words to break the silence, and Lord Blakely seemed disinclined to prompt Ned further. Finally Ned put his head in his hands and spoke into his fingers. “The tasks weren’t working. So that meant it was up to me to bring Blakely and Lady Kathleen together.”

Jenny let out a little gasp, but Ned continued, oblivious to her horrified response.

“Both seemed recalcitrant, so I arranged for the two to meet each other secretly. And to be caught by—by various people, who would gossip about the arrangement. But Blakely did not come, and when I went to investigate, it was I who was caught.”

“Oh, God, Ned. Why?”

“You said.” Ned’s accusation couldn’t have been more petulant. “You said I had to rely on myself.”

“I was speaking in generalities. I didn’t mean you should force two people into a marriage neither wanted!”

“But they would have wanted it. Eventually. You sai

d so.” Ned raised red-rimmed eyes. “And now it will never happen, and it’s all my fault. I’m not good enough—I’m not strong enough. Madame Esmerelda, you thought I was ready to make do without your advice, but I’m not. I’ve fouled up everything beyond all comprehension, and you have to help me fix it.”

Jenny didn’t need to meet Lord Blakely’s gaze to know he hadn’t brought Ned here to listen to more of her predictions. She should have made herself admit her fraud when last Ned was here. Selfishly, she’d wanted to spare herself the pain of uttering those words. What her selfishness had cost Ned, she was just starting to fathom. His freedom. His cousin’s respect. His own sense of self-worth. He’d lost everything she’d told herself she was helping him achieve with her selfish lies.

Lord Blakely examined his fingernails in the candlelight. “Lady Kathleen’s father finally agreed not to shoot Ned outright.” Lord Blakely’s even voice was a smooth contrast to Ned’s ragged words. “What else may transpire as the result of this evening is still a matter of ongoing negotiation. Much depends upon what Ned believes he should do.”

Jenny didn’t know where to look. Not at Ned—she couldn’t bear to see that despondent fear writ on his face. Nor could she look at Lord Blakely. She didn’t know if she’d see disinterest, displeasure or disappointment. But she didn’t dare lose the courage to do what must be done.

“Ned.” There was a quaver in Jenny’s voice. “When I told you to rely on yourself, I didn’t mean for you to take the matter of your cousin’s marriage into your own hands. I meant—”

She took a deep breath. There was no shying away from the consequence she feared most. She looked one last time into those trusting eyes. She would never see them look at her with devotion again.