The Courtesan's Daughter (10 page)

Lord Staverton coughed and said, “I’ll drink nothing but brandy for the next fortnight.”

Sophia grinned and toasted him with her wineglass. “To the next fortnight, and an unstinting supply of brandy. We shall make you a husband yet, Stavey, never fear.”

 
“BUT I am not going to be a husband, and most particularly not your husband, am I, Lady Caroline?” Ashdon said in a soft growl. “Rumor has it that you have chosen a different course for yourself entirely.”

“By rumor I suppose you mean my mother,” Caro snapped, determined to open the space between them and unable to. Ashdon had her backed up against the window ledge. It was either face him down or go tumbling out of the window. She almost preferred tumbling to staring into his relentless blue eyes.

“Does it matter?” he said, running his hand down her gloved arm in a manner that could have been a caress if it hadn’t been so rough. The man was intemperate in all things, obviously. “A woman in your position, with your ambitions, certainly could only benefit by some careful advertising.”

“I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood the entire thing, Lord Ashdon, and you’ve certainly misunderstood me.”

“Have I? ” he breathed. He smelled of clean wool, fresh linen, and brandy. The scent of him was an unwelcome assault upon her senses. Far better for her if he smelled of sweat and dirty feet. “Explain it to me, will you? I want to get the details exactly right when I mention your name at White’s.”

“I would prefer it if you did not bandy my name about in the clubs of St. James Street,” she hissed softly, looking over her shoulder at her mother.

Sophia was engaged in conversation with Lord Staverton. They’d been talking for close to an hour now; what could they possibly have to discuss? Not Anne, certainly. That subject had been closed. Would that she could close the current subject with Lord Ashdon. There was something decidedly coarse about discussing her future plans as a courtesan with the man who might have been her husband.

“I suppose then that you’d not be pleased if wagers were placed as to how soon and with whom you tumble into your chosen … well, what to call it?” He frowned and looked up at the ceiling. She tried to pull her arm free while he was distracted. He didn’t release her a fraction. Obviously, he was difficult to distract.

“You needn’t call it anything,” she said, still pulling against his grasp. “And there will certainly be no wagers placed with my name attached to them.”

“On the contrary, Lady Caroline,” he said, pulling her toward him fractionally, his eyes boring into hers with all the finesse of a hot poker. “I intend to place the first wager myself.”

“You have ill luck at wagering, Lord Ashdon. I would refrain, were I you,” she snapped, yanking her arm free, no matter how rude she appeared. Maintaining appearances was beyond her when dealing with the profligate Lord Ashdon.

“Not this wager,” he murmured intently. “I intend to wager that Lady Caroline will become the
fille de joie
of Lord Ashdon by noon this day. It’s a good wager, Lady Caroline. I’d be more than happy to place a bet on your behalf.”

It was then that she slapped him.

 
 
“WELL, that was worth waiting for,” Lady Louisa Kirkland, the unmarried and slightly scandalous daughter of the Marquis of Melverley, said from her perch on a small carved chair. Lady Louisa didn’t particularly care for gambling or for Lady Dalby or for Lady Caroline, but she did care particularly for Lord Dutton. Lord Dutton was a frequent guest at Lady Dalby’s, and so Louisa developed a taste for Lady Dalby’s particular brand of amusements.

Her father was not pleased with her tastes. Her father could go to the devil.

“Let’s call it a matter of opinion, shall we?” remarked Lord Henry Blakesley, fourth son of the Duke of Hyde. Blakesley was lounged in apparent discomfort, his long legs stretched out before him, his fragile chair tipped back to rest against the dining room wall. His longish blond hair was tangled and his blue eyes were rimmed red. As ever, his expression was one of boredom and cynicism. Louisa enjoyed his company thoroughly.

“Don’t tell me you saw that coming?”

“A pigeon on the spires of Westminster saw it coming three hours ago,” he said, closing his eyes and leaning his head against the wall.

Blakesley was a lean, muscular sort and, conversely, it was never so apparent as when he was completely relaxed. Not that she had ever seen him completely relaxed. Lord Henry Blakesley was a bit like a faulty gun in that one never quite knew when he would go off. Nor, it seems, did he. Consequently, being around him was a bit like frolicking with a venomous and irritated snake.

Her father absolutely distrusted Lord Henry. She liked that about him as well.

“What do you think he said to make her slap him?” Louisa asked softly.

“A guess?” Lord Henry lazily replied, his eyes still closed. “He told her what everyone has been saying about her all night.”

“That she’d refused him to be a courtesan? Why slap him for telling the truth?”

Lord Henry cocked an eye open to look at her. “You like the truth paraded out directly in front of you, do you? I shall have to remember that.”

Louisa shifted her weight, straightened her skirts, cleared her throat, and fussed with her fan. Lord Henry had closed his eyes again, ignoring her. He really did do too much of that of late. He was entirely too easy in her company. It simply wouldn’t do for Lord Henry to be easy in her company, not to the point of snoring, which he was close to approaching now.

“Well, we’ve seen the explosion,” she said. “I suppose we might as well leave now.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t leave now, not without being asked,” he said softly.

“Why not?”

“Because, my dear, that slap, if I don’t miss my guess, is going to bring Ashdon to life in a way you have not yet seen.”

“Really?” Louisa said, leaning forward avidly.

“Besides, I can’t imagine that you want to leave Dutton and Mrs. Warren alone in the white salon without knowing what they’re engaged in. Misses the point, doesn’t it? Why else do you hunt him throughout London if not to encourage him to catch you?”

Lord Henry Blakesley could be rather insulting and entirely too direct. She did not particularly like that about him, but as he made a very willing and very commendable escort, she held her tongue on the matter. But she did
not
like it.

 
 
“I don’t particularly like being forced into a room, Lord Dutton,” Anne said firmly.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Warren. I had no intention of forcing you. I merely wanted to be alone with you and assumed you wanted the same.”

“You have no basis for such an assumption.”

Lord Dutton smiled and cocked his head, looking at her skeptically. “I stand corrected. The last thing I want to do with you, at this particular moment, is to argue with you.”

“At this particular moment? ”

“Or at any moment.”

Calm reason itself, on its face, but she didn’t trust him. She wasn’t even going to bother feeling guilty about it. Some instincts were just too urgent to be ignored.

“Now, what were we discussing, besides your abduction into the famed white salon of the famed Lady Dalby? Oh yes, we were discussing you, Mrs. Warren, and your mother.”

“I was discussing no such thing,” she said, walking to the doorway that led into the entrance hall.

“I don’t mind, you know,” he said softly, and the words stopped her cold. “It doesn’t bother me that your mother was a courtesan, just as it doesn’t bother me that Lady Dalby started life on that foot.”

“No one starts life on that foot, Lord Dutton,” Anne said, turning to face him.

“Of course not. Excuse my poor choice of words,” he said, bowing crisply.

He looked very contrite and very sweet and, of course, very handsome. She found that the voice of instinct became an annoying whisper when faced with the sweet expression in the Marquis of Dutton’s vivid blue eyes.

“I ask your pardon, Lord Dutton,” she said with a curtsey. “It is late and I am of an uncertain temper.”

“I must disagree, Mrs. Warren,” he said softly, “for I have found your temper to be ever certain, ever agreeable. In point of fact, you prove the exception to the tale that women with flaming ginger hair must in fact also be of flaming temper.”

Just as she was opening her mouth to thank him in some socially respectable way, some way that preserved the emotional distance they must maintain between them, he added, “Unless your passionate temper is revealed at other, more intimate moments? Shall we put it to the test, Mrs. Warren? Shall we test the veracity of your glorious red hair?”

In just a few steps, he was upon her. In those few moments, she thought nothing, she only felt the rising of her heart into her throat and the trembling of her hands. He was a smooth predator, like a mongoose, silkily silent, swift, remorseless.

The Marquis of Dutton laid his large hand upon the side of her throat, pressed his long legs against her fragile skirts, and kissed her. Softly, relentlessly, and thoroughly.

It was everything she had ever hoped for. It was nothing at all that she wanted.

She waited in her response, waited long enough for him to know that she was unmoved and unmoving, and when she was certain he knew that, when his kiss stumbled, she pushed against his very fine ruby damask waistcoat until she broke the kiss.

She broke the kiss. Let him remember that, if he remembered her at all.

“That will quite enough, Lord Dutton,” she said crisply. “Have I passed the test or failed? In all, I find I do not much care.”

Anne had the singular pleasure of knowing that she had rendered the charming and affable Lord Dutton speechless, at least for the moment. On that happy thought, she left the white salon and made her way up the stairs to bed.

 
IF she could have found herself in bed, with the covers pulled up over her head for good measure, Caro would have been far happier than she found herself now, facing the very frightening aspect of the Earl of Ashdon’s intense regard. It was not that he looked ready to bellow, or break the porcelain, or throw his fist against a wall. No, it was that he looked completely and chillingly civil. If one discounted the quiet and icy rage in his riveting blue eyes, that is.

She was rather too close to him to discount it.

Their breaths, rapidly expelled, mingled.

Their clothes were entangled.

Their gazes were locked.

And as she watched, a rosy red imprint, just the exact shape and size of her hand, appeared on his left cheek. She had marked him. She was not exactly displeased that she had because, in point of fact, Lord Ashdon seemed determined to be unmarked by her. And that, of course, was flatly unacceptable.

She didn’t know quite how she’d come to this pass. She was a logical, practical sort of girl and she lived her life by solidly practical rules and expectations. The trouble was that Lord Ashdon brought out none of those qualities. Lord Ashdon, who hadn’t wanted her but merely his debts settled, who hadn’t had the courtesy to conduct a proper courtship no matter the reality of his debts, who looked at her as though she had insulted him beyond measure for choosing a courtesan’s life over a life with him, brought out the very worst tendencies in her. Tendencies of a violent and, she suspected, passionate nature.

She might, in fact, be more her mother’s daughter than she had at first assumed.

“Not a good beginning to our bargaining, Caro,” Ashdon breathed, shocking her anew by using the intimacy of her given name. “How shall you negotiate a high price when you go about assaulting the man who would pay for you?”

Lord, but she hated him.

“You have no money, Lord Ashdon,” she said coldly. “You cannot afford me.”

“What is your price?” he countered. “See if I can meet it.”

“You cannot.”

“Try me.”

Caro cast a quick glance about the room. Her mother was coming over, no doubt as a result of that slap; the guests were leaving; dawn was pushing against the night sky. She had only seconds to answer Ashdon.

Things were moving too quickly. She was not entirely certain anymore that she wanted to be a courtesan. It seemed a vastly complicated business all of a sudden and she was less than certain she would be successful at it. But Lord Ashdon was staring down at her, his blue eyes just as piercing and challenging as they had been when first she met him, and her mother was going to cast her out of the house in just a few hours unless she did something to prevent it … and there was something decidedly delicious about sparring with the devilish Lord Ashdon.

“I believe pearl earrings would suit me very well, Lord Ashdon,” she said softly.

“And what would I get in return for a pair of fine pearl earrings ? ” he whispered.

“Come by at eleven o’clock and I shall tell you.”

Lady Dalby, still looking fresh and perfectly composed as the dawn broke the sky into yellow shards of light, said, “Caroline, I am quite dismayed by your behavior. Must I apologize for her again, Lord Ashdon? I am quite prepared to do so.”

Lord Ashdon bowed serenely and said, “Completely unnecessary, Lady Dalby. Lady Caroline and I have worked things out nicely.”

With just a few more words of parting, he was gone. And Caro was left to face her mother.

Twelve

“WORKED things out nicely?” Sophia said once they were alone and in her bedroom. The servants were cleaning up, the grate was being brushed, the silver polished, the crystal washed, and the tables cleared. Anne was in her bed, asleep. Fredericks was supervising the servants. In short, there was no one and nothing to divert her mother’s attention, to Caro’s great misfortune. “Does that mean you have chosen him, the man you refused as husband, to be your first … well, to be your first?”

Oh, my. To be her first. She hadn’t quite thought that far ahead.