Educating Caroline (11 page)

Disappointed as he was, at least he was on surer footing now than he’d been before. Business was something he had always had a head for, the same way, the first time a revolver had been put into his hand, he had instantly understood its workings, and had begun at once to devise ways to improve it.

And so he opened a drawer and pulled out a small box, in which he kept the bulk of his ready cash.

“I see,” Braden said. “May I ask how much, Lady Caroline?”

He heard her sudden gasp, and when he looked up inquiringly, he was surprised to note that her cheeks had gone red.

“Not
money,”
Caroline cried, clearly horrified. “I don’t need
money,
sir!”

Braden closed the cash box quickly. He had offended her. He wasn’t quite certain how. Jacquelyn had always been ready enough to accept money from him, but apparently, Lady Caroline Linford was of a dissimilar turn of mind.

“I see,” he said, confusedly, though in truth he did not. “But you did say you would need to be compensated—”

“But not with
money,”
Lady Caroline cried, looking appalled.

Braden, realizing that she was genuinely upset at the suggestion, made haste to put the cash box back in its drawer. He had fumbled, he knew, but he could not imagine how. Then again, society misses were not a segment of the population with whom he’d ever spent great amounts of time.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, in what he hoped was a soothing tone. “I see now that it was not pecuniary interests which guided you here. May I ask just what it is you meant when you said compensation?”

She’d dropped her gaze. She seemed perfectly unable to look up from her lap. Which was odd, because she’d looked him straight in the eye the entire time she’d been discussing her plan to perjure herself, with a directness he’d rather admired.

He was, he had to admit, intrigued. She had gone from being a candied flower in his mind to something a good deal more tantalizing. A peach, perhaps. Peaches, when they were ripe, rarely disappointed. And Caroline Linford looked very ripe indeed.

“There must,” Braden said, after watching her struggle-for nearly a minute to put whatever it was she apparently wanted into words, “be something. As you said, your testifying in court on my behalf will certainly make you an object of some . . . notoriety. It is not a position for any young woman to enter into lightly—”

“I know.” She looked up suddenly, and he was again seized by a sensation of being under a bright spotlight, her gaze was that intense, her eyes that bright.

No, not a peach, he thought to himself. Something even sweeter. A nectarine, perhaps.

“Only it isn’t financial compensation I want,” she said, hesitantly. “It’s . . . it’s something I want you to
do.”

“Do?” He returned her gaze with interest. Definitely a nectarine. “Well, what is it, then?” Again she ducked her head, and seemed to be debating something quite fiercely within herself. He noticed she’d begun worrying the button to her glove again. Recalling the tan—and unable to keep from wondering, quite inexplicably, how far up those well-shaped arms that tan extended—he thought perhaps she might be interested in outdoor sport, and said, “Shooting lessons, perhaps? So you don’t have to drag about that maid of yours? You could shoot at the—what did you call them? Oh, yes— nefarious evildoers, rather than depend upon your maid for protection—”

“Oh, no,” Caroline interrupted quickly, looking up again. “I hate guns.”

He blinked at her, not certain whether to laugh or feel insulted. “Really,” he settled for saying. “I’m sure you wouldn’t feel that way if someone were assaulting you, and I drove them away with a six-shooter.”

“Well, of
course,”
she said. “But firearms are so rarely used for protection. Mostly, they’re used by people like you, to settle a stupid disagreement—”

He had to restrain himself from pointing out to her that he hardly considered his disagreement with his fiancée’s lover stupid.

“—or by footpads,” she went on, “threatening poor unarmed people—like my brother—for their purses.” He did not miss the throb in her voice when she mentioned her brother. “He . . . he very nearly died, you know,” she went on. “And all because of a single bullet.”

Braden said, kindly, “But he’s all right now. I saw him the other night at Dame Ashforth’s, and he was—”

“Fine,” Caroline interrupted, bitterly. “Yes, I know. Thanks to Hurst.”

Braden raised an eyebrow. “Hurst? The Marquis of Winchilsea, you mean?”

“Yes. He was the one who found Tommy. He chased away the footpads, and stopped him from bleeding to death on the street. Tommy would surely have died, if it weren’t for Hurst’s quick actions.”

Braden, who was passingly acquainted with the marquis, found it hard to believe that the handsome dandy he knew, and the man of action Lady Caroline described, were one in the same. “Indeed?” he said, diplomatically.

“Oh, yes,” Caroline said. “It took months of nursing, of doctors coming in and out at all hours of the night, and through it all, Hurst hardly left Tommy’s side. That’s how . . . how he and I came to be engaged. Hurst and I, I mean. Because we were thrown together so much after Tommy’s injury—” She broke off and glared at him, accusingly, almost as if she thought him responsible for her brother’s shooting. And her next words indicated that, in a way, she thought he was.

“Really,” she said, “I think a man like you, who happens to be a genius—at least, that’s what my brother says you are—ought to turn his mind toward inventing something we actually
need,
rather than a new style of—of killing machine. My father, you know, invented a hot water delivery system that can be installed in just about any home. That’s something
useful.”

He coughed. He couldn’t help it. He had to cough, to hide his laughter.

“I see,” he said, after clearing his throat. “I will take that into consideration. And now, Lady Caroline, if you don’t mind, I’d like to know what it is that you believe I
can
do for you. You want me to find the men responsible for your brother’s injuries, perhaps? See that they’re brought to justice?”

She frowned at that. “No,” she said. Then, after glancing about the room, as if to ascertain that they were well and truly alone, Caroline Linford finally leaned forward in her chair, and, dipping her voice conspiratorially, said, “Well, actually, Mr. Granville, what I need is . . . what I need is for you to teach me how to make love.”

8

S
he wasn’t certain, but it seemed for a moment or two that Braden Granville might suffer an apoplexy. Caroline was very alert to apoplexies, as a particularly severe one had carried off her father. And so she leaned forward even farther in her seat, and asked, “Mr. Granville, are you quite all right?”

Braden continued to stare at her, however, with his mouth slightly ajar, and his brown eyes—which, unlike her own,
did
have interesting flecks of mahogany and russet in them—fixed unblinkingly upon her.

“Shall I run and fetch your secretary?” Caroline asked. “Or would you like a glass of wine, or some water, perhaps?”

She’d actually risen from her chair, and was about to go tearing for the door for Mr. Weasel, when the man behind the desk finally stirred, and, shaking his head, said, in a voice that was quite reminiscent of a growl,
“Sit down.”

Caroline wondered who he could have been speaking to, since no one in her life had ever spoken to
her
that way. When it finally hit her that of course he’d been speaking to her—there was, after all, no one else in the room—Caroline sank back down into the chair she’d vacated, but more out of astonishment than any desire to do as the very commanding gentleman had ordered.

“My goodness,” she said, with more temerity than she was actually feeling. “You needn’t order me about as if I were a schoolgirl.”

“Why not?” Braden Granville inquired, in that same growly voice. “You’re acting like one.”

“I most certainly am not,” Caroline said, genuinely hurt. She felt she’d comported herself with a good deal of composure. “And I must say, if this is how you conduct your business affairs—by insulting your clients—then all I can say is, it’s a wonder to me you’ve ever sold a single gun in your life.”

“Yes!” Braden Granville stood up, and pointed a finger at her accusingly as his deep voice rolled across the room like thunder. “That’s it! That’s it precisely. I sell
guns,
young lady. I do not sell
myself.
I am not a paid escort.”

“I never said you were,” Caroline assured him, all temerity fleeing in the face of this sudden explosion. “ Especially considering the fact that I don’t even know what that means.”

“A paid escort,” he said, slowly and distinctly, “is a man who makes love to women for pecuniary gain. It is the male equivalent to a whore.”

Caroline blinked. She was well used, of course, to foul language, having spent an inordinate amount of time eavesdropping upon her brother and his friends. But she had never before had such foul language hurled in her direction.

And then, quite suddenly, Caroline realized why Braden Granville was so angry.

“Oh,” she gasped. “Oh, no. You don’t think—”

He glared at her stonily from where he stood behind his desk.
Oh, yes,
she said to herself.
He
does
think
—

“I assure you,” she said, with all the dignity she could muster, with her cheeks turning a steady crimson, “that you are mistaken. I most decidedly did not come here to ask you to . . . to . . . do
that.”

She broke off, speechless with embarrassment.

It wasn’t as if, she told herself, as she sat there, feeling the fiery blush creep over her face, it hadn’t taken every ounce of courage she possessed merely to walk through the front door to Braden Granville’s offices. And it wasn’t as if she’d lain awake for hours the night before, asking herself if she was really doing the right thing. Because while she’d quite convinced herself that Braden Granville was the answer to her problem with Hurst, she knew perfectly well that she could never—never in a million years—

It didn’t matter. The color that had flooded into her cheeks explained it all. Well, not all of it, but enough so that behind the desk, Braden Granville seemed to relax a little. Some of the stoniness left that face—that face that looked as if it had been chiseled from granite—and he took his fists off his desk. He even came out from behind the wretched thing, and leaned his backside against the front of it, and looked down at her with his arms folded across his chest . . . which didn’t actually make her feel all that much better, since without that vast expanse of desktop between them, she felt quite vulnerable. He was, after all, such a very large, uncompromising figure of a man. Somehow she had managed to put that little detail from her mind, in remembering that night at Dame Ashforth’s.

“To be honest,” he said, his voice no longer growling or thunderous, but somewhere in between, “I wasn’t at all certain
what
you meant, Lady Caroline. But now that it’s clear that what you meant was not what I thought you meant, I think we had better try again.”

Then he grinned. At her. Braden Granville grinned at her.

What shocked her wasn’t so much that he’d done it— grinned at her—but what she felt when she saw that grin. Which was nothing like what she’d felt when he’d grinned at her that night at Dame Ashforth’s. Quite the opposite, in fact. When he grinned down at her now, she was not put in mind of the devil at all. All she could think was that Braden Granville was actually rather nice looking, in a dark—sinfully dark—menacing sort of way.

Good Lord! Nice looking?
Braden Granville?

“Although I do want you to know,” he went on, conversationally, apparently not in the least aware of her discomfort, “that my initial reluctance was not based on any sort of repugnance at the idea, but rather shock that a young lady such as yourself would suggest such a thing.”

Caroline glared at him. She told herself that what she was feeling was not attraction. Not at all! No, it was indignation. She was terrifically angry at him, of course. Why, he’d thought she actually wanted him to make love to her! As if she were so wanting for admirers, she had to go about blackmailing them. Which wasn’t the case at all. Why, Caroline could have had any man she wanted. Really, she could have.

It was what she was supposed to do with them after she got them that she wasn’t exactly clear about. That was where
he
came in.

“But that,” she heard herself grumble, “is the whole problem.”

He regarded her quizzically from the desk. A quizzical look, she was dismayed to see, became him every bit as much as the grin. “What is?”

“Everyone thinks of me as just that. A young lady. I’m
tired
of being a young lady.” What was the point? She’d already made an ass of herself. Why not let the humiliation be complete? “I want to be a
woman.
Only no one will explain to me how it’s done.”

He stopped looking quizzical in exchange for looking annoyed. “Forgive me, Lady Caroline, if I admit that I am not at all flattered that you came to
me
in quest of lessons in how to become more womanly.”

“But don’t you see?” Caroline leaned forward in her chair. “Thomas—my brother—he says that you’ve had more lovers than any man in London.”

Braden Granville looked more annoyed than ever. But even a look of annoyance, Caroline was amazed to see, looked rather nice on him.

“Well, I’m afraid you’re going to have to tell your brother that news of my romantic prowess has been greatly exaggerated,” he snapped.

“But you do admit you’ve been with hundreds of women,” Caroline persisted.

“Well,
hundreds
is perhaps a bit of a—”

“Scores, then. You’ve been with scores of women, at least, haven’t you?”

Those obsidian eyes looked heavenward. “All right. Scores. We’ll settle for scores.”

“Well, you must know
something,
then, about what makes a woman attractive to a man.”

“What makes a woman attractive to a man,” Braden Granville said, dropping his gaze back to hers, and meeting it steadily, “you have in abundance, Lady Caroline. Believe me.”

“I
don’t
believe you,” she said, instantly dismissing his assertion as an attempt to patronize her. “Because if that were true. . . .” If that were true, she would not have discovered her fiancé between the legs of Lady Jacquelyn Seldon. But she couldn’t of course, tell
him
that. “Well, trust me, it isn’t true. Don’t you see, Mr. Granville? I don’t want to be a wife.”

He raised a single dark eyebrow, the one, she couldn’t help noticing, with the scar in it. “You don’t?”

“No. Well, not
just
a wife.” It was so utterly awful, admitting these things to a man who managed to fill out his coat so nicely. She obviously had not gotten a very good look at him that night at Dame Ashforth’s, if she could have thought him so very ugly. Still, she had come this far. She had no choice but to continue. “I also want to be a mistress.”

The first inky black eyebrow was joined by a second. “A mistress.”

Oh, Lord. Why her?

“Yes,” she went on, resolutely. “Wife and mistress, at the same time, to the same man. That way, you see, he’d have no reason to stray. Do you think that’s possible, Mr. Granville? Do you think it’s possible that a man could love just one woman, if that woman was both wife
and
mistress to him?”

Braden Granville opened his mouth, and then closed it again. Then he said, “It’s been known to happen. In very rare cases. But there have, I believe, been precedents.”

“That’s what I want,” Caroline said, jerking a finger toward herself. “That is what I want you to teach me. How I can be wife and mistress both to my husband. Do you think you can help me, Mr. Granville? Because you are truly my last hope. No one else will even discuss it with me.”

“Well,” he said, drily. “I can see why. It’s a bit of a sensitive subject. And you’re a bit . . .”