Proof by Seduction (16 page)

He’d believed he could not be the warm, loving brother his sister longed for; that he could not bring Ned under his wing as a friend instead of a subject, to be ordered about.

She had stripped his illusions away. He’d chosen this life, and what seemed bearable when it resulted from implacable fate became untenable as a matter of option. If he did not change in the years to come, the thought that he had chosen this path would nibble away at him, like a mouse at a sack of grain, until nothing was left.

If only he had the courage to make different choices.

If he was going to have that courage, he could not put the matter off. He could not wait for some far-off time or place in dreams and fairy tales. It was now she demanded. This moment. In his study.

He said the dreaded word. “White.”

At the sound of his name, his man of business looked up obligingly. “My lord?”

There was a cool draft in the room. It didn’t stop Gareth’s palms from moistening with a hint of cowardice. He fixed his gaze on the velvet curtains behind White. Conversation was easier if he didn’t have to look into the man’s eyes. The fabric rippled in the breeze, and Gareth found courage as best he could.

“It occurs to me that we have—” Gareth took a deep breath, and the rest of the words spilled out all in rush “—a number of things in common.”

“We do?”

From the corner of his eye, Gareth saw faint puzzled lines furrow White’s forehead.

Gareth clenched his hand and resisted the urge to punch his leg in frustration.

“Yes,” Gareth said. “We do.” And damn it, there he was again, using that quelling tone. One couldn’t have a conversation if one quelled the person one was attempting to converse with.

“Perhaps my lord would care to enumerate?”

Gareth didn’t care to enumerate, damn it. But he was going to have to try if he ever expected to get anywhere. Gareth shuffled through the dismally tiny selection of facts that he knew about the man.

“Well,” he suggested, “we are both men.”

White put his head to one side. The motion drew Gareth’s eyes from the drapes and forced him to look his employee in the face. Gareth swallowed.

“Yes,” said White. “We are.”

“And,” Gareth plunged forward, “we are of a similar age.”

“Indeed, my lord.”

Gareth tapped his closed fist against his hip. There the known similarities ended. Gareth felt like ten kinds of an idiot—as Madame Esmerelda had no doubt intended. White waited, that curious expression on his face. He reminded Gareth of a pigeon considering a crust of bread held in the hands of a small child. Apparently, he expected something additional. But what could Gareth say?

We are both literate.

We both have fewer than five children.

“And we both enjoy the company of women.”

Stupid, stupid, stupid. He knew it was stupid as soon as the words left his mouth. There was an extremely befuddled pause from White’s side of the room. As if the child had lobbed the entire loaf of bread at the pigeon, and White didn’t know whether to fly away or tear at the bounty.

“Shocking similarities, my lord,” said White. That straight, unblinking gaze seemed subtly mocking in Gareth’s mind.

The tips of Gareth’s ears heated. He grabbed the edge of the desk and squeezed, as if to throttle that damned fortune-teller by proxy. There was a good reason Gareth didn’t attempt to make friends. He wasn’t any good at it. And he
hated
not being good at things.

He was making a scapegoat of her again.

If she ever found out about this, she’d mock him, and she would be right. He knew he used his social status as a shield to prevent this awkwardness. It had worked. It had worked ever since he was twelve.

It was only now that it failed. The import of that failure hit him directly in the chest. If he couldn’t even talk to a man who depended upon him for his livelihood, who would he ever connect with? He would be isolated all his life. Gareth fumbled for a topic of conversation.

“What’s it like, then? Marriage.”

White leaned back. Puzzled lines crinkled the corners of his eyes. “It’s a marvelous state.”

“But doesn’t Mrs. White ever lie to you?”

White was no fool. Those lines relaxed and smoothed away, as if he’d finally understood the reason for the inquiry. “All the time. The benefit of marriage is that it becomes so easy to recognize when one’s spouse lies.”

Gareth frowned. That state of hypocrisy seemed unbearable. It reinforced all his reasons for avoiding lengthy relationships. “What sort of lies does Mrs. White tell?”

White put his hands to the side of his head and batted his eyes in a manner Gareth supposed was intended to be femininely flirtatious. On the man’s sharp, masculine features, the expression was closer to frightening. “Oh, no, William. The shawl was quite inexpensive.”

The high falsetto proceeding from his normally baritone man of business made Gareth sit back in surprise.

“Of course,” White added in his normal voice, “I lie to her, too.”

“Oh?”

“Just this morning, I told her, ‘Nonsense, my dear, you haven’t aged a day.’”

Gareth shoved at the papers on his desk morosely. He had no experience with this sort of interaction. It sounded mundane and comforting. How could it seem both foolish and enviable at the same time?

White laid a piece of blotting paper over the letter he had been working on. “This may be an impertinent question, my lord—but hypothetically speaking, is there a particular woman that you are thinking about?”

“Hypothetically speaking?” Gareth sighed. It was not as if he could possibly lower himself any further in White’s estimation at this point. “Yes.”

“And has this, uh, hypothetical woman perhaps told you lies?”

“Hypothetically, everything out of her mouth has been a lie,” Gareth complained, much aggrieved. “Everything except her kisses. She meant them.”

White nodded, as if he regularly dispensed advice on women to lovelorn lords. “Are you wondering if you can trust her? Hypothetically, of course.”

“Oh, I know I can’t do that. What I really want to know is…” Gareth’s thoughts slowed like sap. He really wanted to know if his near-obsession with a woman whose name he didn’t even know would end if he took her to bed. He wanted to know if he’d ever eradicate that cold, lonely emptiness in his heart, the one that still longed to have people about him he could not intimidate.

He wanted to know when his mind had split on the subject of Madame Esmerelda. One half demanded he take her in simple, sexual conquest. The other wanted to…to make her his friend. He swallowed.

That wouldn’t happen anytime soon. Not after the way he’d behaved.

He doubted he’d ever see her eyes cloud with lust again. Not when he’d shown her what an ass he really was. He glanced up at White, who watched him attentively. Envy at the man’s calm complacence flickered in Gareth’s breast. He’d wager White knew what to do in situations like this one.

“White,” he said uncomfortably, “what I really want to know is—do you know how to apologize to a woman?”

T
HE CLOCK SHOWED
ten minutes before eight. Ned’s gut clenched and beads of sweat dampened his forehead. The Arbuthnots’ annual gathering should have been no cause for consternation. But Ned had a plan and it stewed, like an indigestible lump of gristle, deep in his stomach. His every instinct told him he should stop the madness he’d set in motion before it sprouted heads like a mythical hydra. His infernal sense of honor had been twinging all day. Everything he had ever been taught counseled him that what he schemed was wrong. Really, really wrong, in a life-changing, reputation-destroying way.

This would not have been much of a test if the work had been easy. He knew what needed to be done. Madame Esmerelda had told him the matter was entirely in his hands. Her words tumbled through his mind, over and over.

Don’t trust me,
she’d said.

But how could Ned not trust her? Long ago, she’d predicted he would win free of the deep malaise that gripped him. He had. She’d predicted Ned would make something worthwhile of himself, something worth living for. He hoped that he would. But now, he sensed that awful darkness lurking, a vile monster hiding just beyond the periphery of his vision.

Not trust Madame Esmerelda?

If he couldn’t trust her, he couldn’t trust that she had been right that day so long ago, when she’d told him to live. He couldn’t believe she’d seen a future for him, free of that stultifying despair. If she hadn’t seen the future then all Ned’s hopes for his future were lies.

She couldn’t be wrong. He wouldn’t let her be.

This, Ned concluded, was a test.

He couldn’t rely on anyone else. He couldn’t rely on Madame Esmerelda’s tasks. He couldn’t even assume Lady Kathleen’s icy elegance would bring Blakely to his knees. No. Ned would make sure Blakely married her, even if he had to trap them into it.

But Blakely had not yet arrived.

In the half hour since Ned had arrived at the Arbuthnots’ soiree, he’d been watching Lady Kathleen from the corner of his eye. He would have been aware of her even without his plan. His chest constricted every time she drew breath. It was a perfectly natural response, he told himself, after what he’d planned.

Even now, across the wide expanse of the great room, he sensed her. She was dressed in a white gown that would have been simple, were it not for the hundreds of brilliants sewn into it, in patterns that dazzled his eye every time she moved. They made her blond hair look almost white, as if it were made of platinum.

She, on the other hand, had spent her evening looking everywhere else—at the other men who danced attendance on her, strutting ravens all, at the orchestra performing in the corner, even up at the ceiling, patterned in red paint and gold leaf. She’d looked at him once—a long, searching glance—and then colored and looked away.

Directly opposite his quarry stood his second group of players. To wit: There was Laura, Blakely’s sister. She stood by Ned’s mother, a stick-thin matron, graying hair twisted and curled and adorned with flowers that reminded him of spring. And close by these two ladies was Lady Bettony, an inveterate gossip, whose talent for spreading rumors was surpassed only by the keenness of her observation.

Ned met Laura’s gaze across the ballroom. She gave him a terse nod. She was ready; she understood the task Ned had appointed for her. Laura had been curious, and therefore easily bribed. He’d given her Madame Esmerelda’s address, in exchange for her services tonight.

It was five minutes before eight now, and Blakely still had not appeared.

Lady Kathleen had betrayed tiny signs of nervousness all evening, which Ned detected even from this distance. Her manners were more formal; her light laugh perhaps a touch heavier than usual.

Hardly surprising, given the circumstances.

After all, Ned had sent her a note.

Correspondence with an unmarried lady was a breach of etiquette. Correspondence suggesting that she meet him to explore the unmarked servants’ quarters at the Arbuthnots’ was downright barbaric. But he hadn’t suggested anything truly indelicate. Instead, he’d thought of that look on her face. For all her haughty airs, she’d almost seemed to enjoy talking to Ned. Strange; inexplicable, even. But then, of course fate would serve Madame Esmerelda’s purposes.

He’d turned Madame Esmerelda’s advice over and over in his head. Briefly, he’d considered the horrifying possibility that Madame Esmerelda was admitting she was wrong. That her predictions would not come true. But he couldn’t accept it—wouldn’t accept it, no matter how the possibility ate away at his heart. He had to believe she’d been right that night long ago when she’d told him to live. He had to believe she’d seen his future, free of darkness.

You must stand on your own two feet, without anyone to help you.
No; there was only one conclusion. Given Blakely’s stubbornness, Madame Esmerelda’s tasks could only do so much to bring the fated couple together. The rest was up to Ned and the next four minutes.

Assuming Blakely made an appearance. Ned suppressed the touch of fear that accompanied that thought. Blakely would appear punctually. He was always cutting when Ned missed an appointed meeting by even a paltry minute.

But speaking of time, the first player swished into action. Lady Kathleen didn’t look at Ned. She didn’t even glance in his direction. But she waved her hands prettily, as if making her apologies, and slipped from the room.

Ned shut his eyes and envisioned her walking quietly down the gold-papered hall toward the ladies’ retiring room. The blue dining room was only steps beyond the parlor set aside for that purpose, and from the reports of the servants, it was the perfect venue for this little tableau.

There was only one exit, and nowhere to hide. A couple alone in the room would be seen the instant the door opened.

A hint of desperate nausea turned Ned’s stomach. He was openly sweating now, and his nerves fluttered. One word to Laura, and he could still avert the coming storm. A few phrases of his own to Lady Kathleen—if he hurried, he could catch her still—and the scene would not play out as he’d envisioned. He’d asked her to meet him there, and despite the impropriety of it all, she was going. It had to be fate.

Everything Ned hated about his own life—his powerlessness, the respect he never seemed to command—he was doing to her. He had wanted to control his own life; now he was wresting control from her, trapping her into matrimony. Even in the heated press of bodies in the open room, covered as he was by layers of linen, wool, and waistcoat, Ned shivered.

A last, desperate chivalrous corner of his mind shouted it was not too late. But Ned thought of Madame Esmerelda’s face, so obviously distraught. He thought of the depths to which he could yet fall. And he steeled himself to let events go forward as planned.

As they would, if only Blakely were present. Lady Kathleen undoubtedly thought—as the note Ned sent her implied—she would be meeting
Ned
to discuss the reasons why she slipped from the crowds and wandered in servants’ quarters. He didn’t want to think what it meant, that she’d left to meet him under such improper circumstances.