Proof by Seduction (20 page)

I
T 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 said 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.

And then she made herself do it.

“I meant,” she continued, “that your cousin is right. I can’t tell the future. I don’t speak to spirits. I don’t have any occult powers. You need to rely on yourself because you cannot trust me.”

Ned flinched with every phrase. But what she saw was not disillusionment, but disbelief. “No!” He looked around the room wildly. “This is some kind of test. To—to punish me for my failure this evening. I know I can show my loyalty.”

Jenny’s heart cracked. “Ned, it’s not a test. It’s the truth.”

“But all your predictions! Your arcane powers. How did you always know what to say?”

“I only told you what you wanted to hear, Ned.”

And still his eyes met hers in denial. His hands trembled. “They can’t be lies,” he said thickly. “What you told me. I need it to be true. I won’t
let
it be otherwise.”

“I have been lying to you for two years. I just—I didn’t intend
this.
”

Ned stared at her. “This is some kind of nightmare. Madame Esmerelda—Blakely—someone tell me I’m dreaming.” He bit his thumb and then stared at the digit, as if somehow it had betrayed him instead of Jenny.

Jenny shook her head sadly.

“But—if you have no powers, why is it that this chamber—”

He stopped, registering the austerity of the room in the dim candlelight for the first time. No black cloth. No crystals. No chimes. Nothing but cheap and rickety wood furniture. No hint of the arcane any longer.

“Your name,” he said next. “With a name like Madame Esmerelda, surely…”

Jenny didn’t have to say anything. The realization hit him. His shoulders stiffened. His nostrils flared. He spread his hands on the table in front of him as if to steady himself. Finally, he had accepted that she was a fraud.

Jenny knew his reactions well. And what she saw in the curl of his lip and the hunch of his shoulders wasn’t the disdain she’d feared. It was even worse.

Because what Ned was feeling was self-loathing.

“Ned—”

“Don’t call me that. Don’t call me by my Christian name as if you know me.” He was trying to snuffle his tears away.

Lord Blakely watched Ned in appalled horror.

“Mr. Carhart.” Jenny choked on the unwieldy name. “I owe you a great debt. One that I don’t suppose I will ever repay.” She could not even look away. There was one final sentence she needed to speak.

She owed it to Ned.

And then there was Lord Blakely. She had few illusions about him. Right now, he knew precisely what her selfishness had wrought. She wouldn’t blame him if he never spoke with her again. Whatever he might once have thought of her, surely she’d now lost his good opinion.

And with reason.

If she told him her name, she might never see him again. At best, he’d stay for that one night. He would abandon her, and she couldn’t blame him for it. It was only what she deserved.

But she’d spent all her adult life masquerading as another woman. She’d become Madame Esmerelda to run away from the options she hadn’t wanted. Until she met Lord Blakely, she’d never asked herself what she wanted to run
toward.
It had taken him two weeks to convince Jenny to claim herself.

On his own merits—ridiculous, excessively rational, and undeniably attractive though they were—she owed Lord Blakely, too. Giving him her name would be the ultimate surrender. In a strange way, he’d given Jenny herself. The least she could do was give herself back to him.

Her mouth was dry, the unformed words tasting like chalk. She forced herself to speak anyway.

“Should you ever need me, my name—” Her voice caught.

Lord Blakely leaned forward. There was no heat in his expression, no hint of longing. Only that blank weariness.

“My name,” she whispered, “is Jenny Keeble.”

Let them do with that as they willed.

CHAPTER TWELVE

J
ENNY
K
EEBLE
.

Gareth held on to the promise of her name all through the oppressing drive back to the more fashionable Mayfair. Ned sat sullenly on the seat across from him, arms folded.

Gareth repeated her name in his mind when his cousin left the carriage with a wordless nod. And when he sent his driver home, alone, to warm stables, he whispered the syllables in staccato counterpoint to the rhythm of his stride.

Jenny. Jenny.

In these dark hours after midnight, the streets lapsed into a silvery silence. The coppery light of gas trickled through London’s dense fog. As he approached her door for the third time that evening, the swirling mist roiled down the steps that led to basement rooms. The dense vapor stifled the sound of his shoes into muffled clops as he descended the stairs.

He knocked.

The mist swallowed the sullen squeak of hinges. Flat orange illumination from the streetlamps dribbled through the crack of the door as it opened. The edges of the light gilded her features into an unforgiving mask. She appeared to be a goddess cast from bronze, a statue draped in white muslin and black shadow. Gareth sucked in a lungful of cold fog.

She swallowed and looked up into his eyes. “You’re here.”

Gareth’s tongue seemed dry in his mouth. “Well, Jenny.” His voice creaked out, thick and husky. It was the first time he’d spoken her real name aloud.

For moments neither moved. Then she curled her fingers about his elbow and drew him into the dark cavern of her room. Her fingertips rested on his arm as the door swung shut behind him. Slowly, he brought his hand up to her face. He could feel the tension in the solid set of her jawbone. He traced the line of her chin, found her mouth with his thumb.

He’d wanted once to conquer her. Now he had. He’d won everything. Her admission of fraud; Ned’s surrender. She’d even given him her respect. This should have been his moment. Rationality had triumphed over illogic.

But his fingers found the secret, sad downward curve of her lips in the darkness. No wet tracks down her cheeks. Just a stubborn, sorrowful desperation as she yielded to his touch.

Gareth hadn’t wanted vindication after all. He’d wanted
her.

“Don’t stop.” Her hand covered his. She pressed his palm into the warmth of her face. Her fingers trembled.

Gareth would shake his head over this inconvenient decision the next morning, but—“You’re not under any obligation because I won our little wager.” He couldn’t resist tracing her lips again.

She stilled under his caress. “You
won?
” His palm swayed gently side to side as she shook her head. “No. You lost. Ned lost. You were correct, but that isn’t winning.”

Her other hand came between them to rest against his coat. But instead of pushing him away, she leaned into him.

Unbidden, his hand found the dark silk of her hair. “Why, then, if not obligation?”

“I lost, too.”

The truth seared into him. In the darkness of the night, they could pretend they had not stolen victory from each other. Her lips trembled against his touch.

“And so what is this?”

“Comfort,” she replied. Her breath heated the tips of his fingers. “That, and farewell.”

Farewell.
Gareth froze. He hadn’t wanted to admit it, but there was no other possibility. Not between a fraudulent fortune-teller who didn’t want to become a mistress and the Marquess of Blakely. For tonight, Lord Blakely would be set to one side. Tonight was just for Gareth and Jenny…and farewell.

Jenny took his hand in the moonlight. She led him in the dark, into the back room, her steps sure. Just this evening, he’d taken tea at the tiny table he felt brush by his legs. Just this evening, he’d seen that bed, and had thought of her lying naked upon it.

That contact—the feel of her warm fingers closing around his, the illusion of the whorls of her fingerprints burning into his hand and branding him—was all the greeting his body needed to leap up in recognition.
You.
It was not so much a word that her touch sparked, but a resonance. Like a glass goblet shivering under a soprano’s song, his soul thrilled at her touch.
Yes. You.

In Gareth’s time with this woman, he’d developed quite a vocabulary for her. Fraud. Charlatan. Madame Esmerelda. Liar.

The quiet night swallowed all those words before he could voice them. They didn’t resonate inside him.

Confidante. Friend.
Lover.
He didn’t speak these, either, but they settled into his flesh nonetheless. A mere touch on her cheek could not suffice. He pulled her into his arms, felt her breasts press and flatten against his chest. Her breath warmed his jaw. Those unspoken syllables surrounded them both.

After all these weeks, he had expected this kiss—the one that preceded intimacy—to shake him with lust. It would burn high and hot, like kindling. After that bright flare had burnt itself out, there would be nothing left but ash.

Ash, and victory.

But from the first moment his lips touched hers, he realized how wrong he had been. Her soft lips did not feel like the temporary slaking of lust, nor did they taste like a stopgap cure for the loneliness that lodged deep in his breast. Her mouth met his, sweet and trusting, even after all these weeks, after everything they’d said to each other. Her hands touched his elbows, slid up his shoulders. Her body molded against his, settling around him as close and welcome as hot bathwater.