Proof by Seduction (30 page)

He turned the page and froze.

Because the sketch on the next page was no impatient ink drawing of a macaw. It was her. He’d even labeled it:
Jenny.

He’d drawn her in the same rough style he employed with the birds, strong, dark lines that hinted at movement and luminosity. Jenny could not have pointed to any one feature that was drawn incorrectly. And yet—

“I don’t look like that,” she protested.

Because the woman in Gareth’s sketches seemed ethereal, light bouncing off dark eyes and coiled hair.

He compressed his lips together.

“You do to me,” he finally said. He reached for the papers and stacked them together, binding them up again.

“Gareth.”

He didn’t look at her but wound the tape savagely around his work and cinched a knot. “I told you those pages held everything I cared about.”

“Gareth.”

He hefted his drawings from hand to hand.

“Some people,” he said, looking down as if addressing the desk, “think that being a marquess means you sit in the House of Lords and collect myriad rents from dreary little tenants. They think it means you enter the dining hall before the earls and after the dukes. They think it means ceremonial robes, and plenty to eat even in times of hunger. They think you can sample a bevy of eager, beautiful women.”

“And do you not?”

His hand danced idly down his drawings. “Maybe one beautiful woman. But that is not what it
means
to be a marquess here in England. You see, somewhere in my distant past there was a first lord, lifted above the common folk as reward for a great service to his king.”

“What was it, with your ancestors?”

“Drubbing the Welsh, actually. But you see, the title is a reward with a sting—it is not a onetime payment for services rendered. It is a promise that condemns your firstborn son, and his, and his thereafter. It binds them, through the title, in service to the land. My grandfather was harsh, but there was a reason for it.”

He set his bound drawings in the drawer and then slowly, firmly, slid it closed.

“When a marquess takes a man’s pound in rents, he does not just make a profit. He makes a pledge. I cannot sleep at night, sometimes, thinking about those pledges. Should I establish a cotton mill, like the ones in Manchester? On the one hand, they provide employment, and if my dependents are starving, I am responsible. On the other, the accidents that inevitably result…Well, I am responsible for those, too. It did not take me long to realize why my grandfather deprecated laughter. There’s little room for it in the marquessate. There’s too much human suffering, and too little a marquess can do about it.”

“You don’t have to do this to yourself,” Jenny said. “Hundreds of other lords don’t—” She couldn’t make herself tell him to become like everyone else. “There’s no warmth in your life. How can you stand it?”

He made a little gesture. “Spare me your pity. Do listen to yourself. Poor Gareth—forced to be a marquess. I imagine the human suffering between me and my tenants is distributed in a relatively inequitable fashion.”

“Hire an estate manager. Let others share the responsibility.”

He spread his hands. “And who would I trust? I was born to do this. Nobody else has gone through the training my grandfather required. And it is
my
responsibility. How could I ask another to shoulder it?”

It sat between them, that crystalline thing. He’d been taught that he was bound ruthlessly into service, obligated to break his spirit against his iron-hard will. She wished she could despise him for it.

She could not. In fact, she was very afraid that the emotion that caused her hands to tremble was something close to the opposite. The man who hollowed himself out for the sake of a burden undertaken by his many-times-great-grandfather did not falter from responsibility, nor try to evade it.

Whatever it was she felt now, she knew it could not be love. Love would not feel like this. She would not feel his own hurt, as if she were clutching shards of glass to her chest.

“You understand—” He stopped, and took her hand. His fingers seemed cool against her own. His words sounded slow and metallic. “You understand,” he finally continued, “why I am telling you this. It is not so you will pity me. It is because you need to know I will never risk legitimate sons.”

Jenny’s heart thumped. The corner of his lip curled. Not a smile, but an expression of ineffable sadness.

“You see,” he explained, “I could never inflict the marquessate on anyone I cared about.”

All the best of Gareth, Jenny thought, had been bound over to serve Lord Blakely. She turned his hand over in her palm and squeezed.

“So it won’t bother you to inflict it on Ned?”

She intended to tease him, to make him forget his own pain. But he merely shook his head—not in answer, she thought, but frustration. “Now,” he said softly, “you understand why I tried not to care for the boy.”

Jenny looked away. Her chin trembled. He captured it with his fingers and turned her face to his. “And that,” he said gently, “is why I will buy you anything you want.”

He kissed her as if she were the sole source of sunlight. It felt as if he were spearing her with giant wooden splinters.

He wanted her to stay. He would give her anything she wanted. But what she wanted was to be able to respect herself. And the more he offered to buy her, the less likely the prospect seemed.

A
FTER
J
ENNY LEFT
, grim responsibility once again beckoned to Gareth. He finished dressing. The journey to Ned’s home was short, but weighed heavily on his heart.

But when he stepped onto the walk outside the stone stairs that led up to his cousin’s door, he stopped in his tracks, unable to believe what he saw.

He’d pleaded with Ware and finally cajoled the man to agree to a second appointment. He’d informed Ned of the time most specifically. He’d underscored the importance of these discussions: As the days passed, gossip grew. Another tense week, and Ned could be ostracized, perhaps for good. Lady Kathleen was already the object of both pity and scorn.

But the situation could still be saved for the two of them.

Rather, it might have been saved, were it not for the scene unfolding before Gareth’s eyes.

The good news was that Ned was dressed. And washed and shaved. The bad news was, he was not waiting for Gareth in the parlor as instructed. Ned was stepping into a closed carriage. Without Gareth. Too-loud laughter rang from the conveyance as his cousin reached for the door.

The out-of-kilter sound of that laugh was all too familiar. Gareth remembered that lopsided tempo. At Cambridge, it had always been mixed with loud conversation and the heady smell of cheap spirits. It had heralded annoying interruptions to Gareth’s valuable study time. And complaints, of course, never had any effect on drunken men. Gareth’s skin prickled in visceral reminder. It was still light out, and the men were already drunk. And Gareth had
specifically
told Ned to wait for him.

Gareth jumped from his own carriage and strode toward his cousin. “Wait one moment!” he called.

Ned’s head turned. Gareth couldn’t make out his expression from this distance, but he didn’t need to be able to see his cousin’s face to translate the sharp jerk of his head back toward the carriage. It was no surprise when Ned pulled himself in. Another fellow—hatless, cravat-less, unbuttoned coat flapping untidily in the wind—looked around the street with a secretive air and then ducked inside the carriage, as well.

The door shut.

“Damn it.” Gareth considered his options. Run, and flag down the vehicle. Or let Ned disappear, and miss a second meeting with Ware. Incongruously, he noticed the silhouette of a hat atop the carriage. The driver flicked his whip, and the carriage started off.

Gareth grabbed hold of his own hat and ran. “Wait! You there!”

He caught up with the vehicle before the horses had picked up speed, and he beat on the side of the moving carriage. “You in there! Stop!”

The carriage slowed, and then halted. A burst of laughter rose inside, and Gareth’s spine prickled. He hated being laughed at. A voice inside broke through the cackles. “This will be excellent.”

The door swung open. Hanging on the side was that red-faced fellow Gareth had seen with Ned in the gaming hell the other night.

“How may I be of sher—of service?” The fellow bowed and lost his balance, grabbing the handle of the door for support. The hinges torqued under his weight, but held. For a moment, the fellow swung suspended against the door.

Gareth peered inside. Ned was squashed, like a piece of cake in a hamper, between two men who were as round and red as apples. One of them was tippling from a silver flask. He handed the container to Ned, and Ned took a defiant swig.

Every face but Ned’s stared at Gareth in drunken hope.

The fellow at the door scrambled to regain his footing. “Did you,” he said in suggestive tones, “stop us because of the hat atop the carriage?”

For some baffling reason, this query sent the two apples flanking Ned into a raucous cheer. “Hat on top! Hat on top!”

Ned joined in with a halfhearted raise of his fist. “Huzzah. Hat on top.”

Gareth reached up and placed his hand on the brim of the hat atop the carriage. “No. I’m here for Mr. Carhart.”

He tugged, intending to toss the offending head-covering into the carriage at his cousin. But the hat didn’t budge; instead, his fingers slipped and he lost his balance himself.

The maneuver was not missed by the onlooking drunkards. “Yah!” they screamed. “Hat on top!”

Gareth sighed heavily. “What is going on here?”

Ned didn’t meet his eyes, but the door-hanger laughed and poked Gareth in the chest in an unbecomingly familiar fashion. Gareth stared at the offending finger.

“Hat on top—” the man enunciated his words very carefully, punctuating each one with a jab “—is a game. An
excellent
game. The most excellent game available to gentlemen in Britain. It requires only a carriage and a hat.”

“And penny nails,” shouted out one of the other men. “Don’t forget the nails.”

Gareth grabbed the man’s hand before he could jab again. The palm was slick with sweat.

The door-hanger beamed with all the solicitude of the extremely drunk. “You
nail
the hat to the top of the carriage. Then you drive about, and take wagers about how long it will be until some officious do-gooder stops you, shouting you’ve left your hat atop the carriage.”

The man’s hand fluttered in Gareth’s grip. He looked down and frowned, as if only just realizing his wrist was trapped.

Gareth let go. The only thing more appalling than the man’s clammy hand was the fact that Ned planned to spend his evening playing Hat on Top instead of making things right with Ware and Lady Kathleen. Life wasn’t a game. There was no time for childish drunken bouts. Gareth would have to straighten out Ned’s priorities.

“That,” said Gareth, “is the most puerile game I have ever heard of. It has absolutely no point and I cannot condone it. Come along, Ned. We’re leaving. We don’t want to be late.”

Ned’s friends turned in shock and broke into a babble.

“But we’ve only just started!”

“Come on, Carhart, you know Hat on Top is no fun with only
three.
”

“You’re not even
bosky
yet. And we promised to meet Branning at Gaither’s. He’ll be at the hell any minute, now.”

Ned swiveled his head. He didn’t quite meet Gareth’s eyes. Instead, he stared at a point just past Gareth’s shoulder.

“If you want to speak with me,” he said coolly, “you’ll have to come along. There’s always room for more in Hat on Top. And I’m not leaving.”

Backslaps all around. Ned’s lip curled in distaste.

Door-hanger seemed to think Gareth’s participation was an actual possibility. He grabbed Gareth’s arm.

Gareth shook off the officious grip. “Do you know who I am? I am the Marquess of Blakely. I don’t play ridiculous games. And, Ned, you are coming with me
this instant.
”

His icy tone cut through the drunken merriment with satisfactory efficiency. The youths—they were none of them any older than Ned, if that—exchanged worried glances. Then door-hanger gave Gareth a negligent push in the chest. His sweaty palm left a dark print on Gareth’s silk waistcoat.

“A marquess who was fooled by Hat on Top,” he jeered. Laughter, this time with a nasty, dark edge, rang out. And then the door swung shut.

What logical arguments could one marshal against a fellow who preferred to tool around of an evening with a hat nailed to the top of his carriage, instead of setting the remainder of his life in order? Gareth had never felt so completely and utterly dumbstruck.

The carriage jerked and rolled forward, swaying from side to side as the twin bays pulled in their traces.

For the first time in his life, Gareth acknowledged there were things he couldn’t do. And not stupid, inconsequential things like singing or carving. Important things. What Ned needed was completely outside Gareth’s ken.

And he could turn to nobody now that he’d failed.

Really?

No. He had to admit it, even to himself. There was one person he could turn to. And he needed her now more than ever.

“C
OME WITH ME
,” Gareth said without preamble as her door opened. “We haven’t a moment to spare.”

He held his hand out to Jenny. She stared at him in confusion, her hair falling in wisps around her face. One strand was caught between her lips. She looked up at him, those eyes piercing straight through him.

The words he needed to say stuck in his throat, but he choked them out.

“I need you.” There. He’d said it. There was no use hiding it any longer. He needed her for everything, and she…Well, she didn’t need him for anything. He looked away. “
Ned
needs you. You were right.” His hands clenched with the effort of his admission. “I can’t do this. I need you to—to—”

To what? To work a miracle? To intervene?

“I need you to put things back the way they were.”