Proof by Seduction (Carhart 1)

Heat flooded her. She’d kissed like a fool. Coldhearted demon that he was, he knew it.

“In any event, I wager you were not a favorite among the other girls at school.”

Her breath hissed in, and she jerked away from him. Once again, he refused to relinquish her wrist, his grasp as tight as an iron manacle.

“If you had been,” he said reasonably, as if his fingers weren’t pressing against her hammering pulse, “you’d have options far more appealing than fraud. And more fundamentally, to even think of this profession, you must have discovered at a very young age that everyone lies. It’s hard to learn that when you’re a well-loved child. How old were you?”

“I was nine.” The words escaped her lips, unbidden. It was the first time she’d verified his suspicions aloud. And now he knew. He knew everything. Jenny shut her eyes, unwilling to see the triumph of his response.

His fingers tightened about her wrist. His other hand trailed against her jawbone. Reluctantly, she let her lids flutter open. His eyes had focused on her lips again. He ought to have been crowing with delight. But there was no victory in his gaze.

“Precocious,” he finally said, looking away. “I was twenty-one. Ned’s age.”

She could identify no hint of self-pity in his voice. He sounded as scientific as ever, reciting evidence to a lecture hall. And yet the tightness around his mouth suggested the memory was more substantial than mere data. Jenny had a sudden urge to kiss the fingers that encircled her wrist.

“I suppose I should read your future, as well as your past.” He ducked his head, examining her palm again. “You will tell me your real name. It’s not Esmerelda, that’s for certain.”

“It’s not? Why not?”

He shrugged. “An impoverished English family would never name their daughter anything so fanciful. And then there’s all that sandalwood and the ridiculous costume. ‘Esmerelda’ is too convenient. It is just another trapping in your particular subterfuge. Tell me your name.”

Jenny pressed her lips together and shook her head.

“Margaret,” he guessed. “Meg for short.”

“Esmerelda,” Jenny insisted.

That sardonic quirk of his lips again. “It won’t do, Meg. You’ll tell me your name eventually.”

“If Esmerelda were not my name, why would I admit it to you?”

His thumb caressed hers. “Because I can’t let you call me Gareth until you do.”

He spoke so casually. “Why—” Jenny stopped, and squared her shoulders. “My lord, why would I want to call you by your Christian name?”

“I can see that future here—” he traced a line down her palm “—and here—” he touched her cheek near her eyes “—and here.”

His thumb brushed her lips, and her mouth parted in anticipation. And still his expression lost not one whit of its scientific cast.

“I’m not going to marry whatever poor girl you pick out,” he said softly. “I pit your prediction against mine. I predict you’ll call me Gareth. When I bed you, Meg, I’ll be damned if you scream anything else.”

“If you’re trying to prove you’re not an automaton,” Jenny said, “you really ought to consider varying your tone. You might as well be talking about the price of potatoes, for all the—”

He cut her off with a swift kiss. Heaven help her trembling body, she let him do it. And when he pulled back, it was her lips that clung to his.

“You see?” he murmured. “You’ll scream.”

“But we’ve already established that I am not dispassionate. I want to know—what will you do?”

For just one instant, he met her eyes. Those golden orbs glimmered with a fierce light. It was the second hint of emotion she’d detected from him that evening. When he looked sharply away from her, she could almost believe she’d imagined it.

He let go of her wrist, breaking the connection between them. Then he shook his head, and Jenny realized they had been standing in the chilled entry for minutes. She hadn’t even felt the cold.

She did now.

He set his hand on the handle of her door. “You want to know what I’ll do when I bed you? I’ll win.” He turned away and opened her door. The rain had stopped and a light, swirling mist blanketed the street. Seconds later, he strode into the night. The fog muffled the sound of his steps and swallowed his disappearing figure.

Jenny shut the door and turned and sagged against it. Her hands covered her face. But no matter how tightly she closed her eyes, she couldn’t erase the feel of his lips from her flesh or the taste of his mouth from her mind.

What a disaster. He had already won.

He’d seen everything, from the harsh order of the school where she’d been raised to the depths of her unfortunate attraction to him. She hadn’t spoken what she felt in words, but his one kiss had teased out her admission of fraud.

In the scant space of a few hours, he’d unearthed her deepest secrets. Including, it seemed, a few she’d kept from herself. The desire to be touched. The desire to be desired.

One kiss, and she’d verified every dismissive thought Lord Blakely had ever had of his cousin. Because Lord Blakely’s prediction was not just that he’d bed Jenny, but that he’d prove Ned’s valiant defense false.

Once, her profession had seemed a game. It had made no difference what lies she told her clients. After all, few of them truly believed her. They saw her as nothing more than a distraction, an entertainment to be scheduled between boxing matches and the opera.

But Ned had been different. What had it hurt to foretell that he would become a strong and confident man, trustworthy and capable?

When Ned discovered she’d lied, Lord Blakely would never let him forget his foolishness. He’d store it in that brain of his, next to his theories of goose behavior, or whatever it was he studied. And he’d trot out the evidence any time Ned showed a hint of independence.

For all Lord Blakely’s talk of ravenous hunger, he’d been the one to step away. Of course he would willingly take Jenny to his bed. After all, he was a man. That’s what men did. And given the expertise he’d shown with his lips and tongue, she had no doubt he could make her scream if he got her there.

If? It had become a matter of when.

He’d held her close. He’d kissed her. He’d promised to make her scream in bed, and shamefully, she still longed for him to do it. But there was one thing Lord Blakely had not done—not once, in the hours she’d observed him.

He hadn’t smiled.

Jenny took a deep breath. Silently, she made another prediction. Before he took her to bed, she’d break Lord Blakely. She’d make him realize Ned needed more than intellect and insult to sustain him.

She’d make him respect Ned.

Damn it, she’d make him respect her.

Jenny had already lost. But that didn’t mean the marquess had to win.

THERE WAS NO WAY TO WIN, Gareth thought helplessly, as he surveyed the tray that his sister, Laura Edmonton, had laid out in anticipation of this visit. Shortbread. Cucumber sandwiches with the crust removed. Once, many years ago, he’d enjoyed both. Now they lay, marshaled in grim rows, testament to an ongoing war. Gareth could at most hope to achieve a scrambling, ignominious retreat.

His sister—his much younger half sister, if Gareth was going to be precise about the matter—smiled at him. But the expression her eyes reflected wasn’t hope or happiness; it was fear.

“Tea?”

The battle was always joined with tea. “Please,” he answered.

He could direct the products of his estates without blinking. He had braved the rain forests of Brazil for months. But this quiet room, draped in pink silks, with the pleasant burbling of the fountain coming through the window…Well, it vanquished him every time.

Not so much the room as Laura. Her lips were compressed in concentration as she added a careful dollop of cream to Gareth’s tea—precisely the quantity that Gareth preferred.

Every month, Laura tried desperately to please him. Today, she wore the finest morning dress she owned, made of some thin, pink flimsy cotton, the sleeves large and heavy and festooned with ribbons. Her sandy brown hair was pinned up with ruthless exactitude.

Laura handed over a delicate china cup and saucer, as if tea would magically heal the damage between them. It couldn’t. After Laura had been born, Gareth had been too busy learning to be a marquess to become a brother. Now that they were both adults, they’d frozen into this awkward pattern.

Awkward?

Every month, she invited him over for tea. Every month, he accepted. And every month…To call these unfortunate tête-à-têtes awkward would understate the matter by an order of magnitude.

Their afternoons always started this way. Gareth struggled for conversation, and Laura attempted to make up for his taciturn nature by speaking for them both.