The Courtesan's Daughter (30 page)

“Yes, yes, I take your point,” she said, feeling a blush rising from her nipples, one pair out of thousands he had apparently tasted, the brute.

“I don’t think you do, Caro,” he said, breaking off a bit of muffin to pop into his mouth. That he could sit quietly and calmly eating while she was trembling in fear and longing and confusion, like any normal bridegroom, made her want to poke him in the eye with something sharp.

Honestly, she had never had a violent thought in her life until she had met Ashdon. He was a
horrible
, degrading influence on her. She wouldn’t be past her rights to kill him for it.

“Oh?” she said sharply. “Wasn’t your point that you’ve seen thousands upon thousands of breasts and chose mine from among the throng because it was
time
for you to marry?”

“Well, they
are
lovely breasts,” he said with a smile. “Quite as advertised.”

He had the nerve to
laugh
at her? Caro looked around for something sharp, something that would look like a plausible accident. The candlesticks on the dining table might do the job. She could say he had an attack of some sort, fell forward, and impaled himself on the silver. It was
such
a pleasing image.

“
So
glad that you found them satisfactory, Lord Ashdon,” she said. “I don’t know what I would have done had you found my breasts less than pleasing to your jaded eyes.”

“Oh, I’m not as jaded as all that,” he said, popping another bit of muffin into his mouth. Hadn’t there been a general back fifty years or so ago who had choked and died on a muffin? Certainly it was possible for it to happen again, perhaps with a bit of help?

“Another muffin, Lord Ashdon?” she asked. “I’m sure cook has more.”

Ashdon brushed off his hands and pushed his chair back from the table. “No, thank you.”

“Not at all,” she said. Well, if not muffins, then she was back to considering the silver candlesticks.

“We were discussing my jaded eyes and your lovely breasts,” he said, laying his napkin on the table.

“If we were discussing anything as vulgar as that,” she said, “it was only because I was making the point that you only married me because you felt compelled to.”

“And weren’t we discussing that most men feel compelled to marry, in one form or another?”

“It’s hardly flattering,” she said, walking toward one of the three windows along the back of the house.

“It’s very flattering, Caro,” he said, coming up behind her, his breath fanning her hair. “A man must marry, but it does not follow that he must marry anyone.”

“We both know why you married me,” she said, misting the glass with her breath. She simultaneously wanted to throw herself out the window, throw Ashdon out the window, and tumble with Ashdon to the carpeted floor in an ecstasy of bare breasts and hot kisses.

She was a tattered mess of a girl.

“Caro, I tried to tell you this last night, before you attacked me with your breasts,” he said, laying his hands on her waist, preventing her from spinning out of his reach so that she could hit him with a candlestick. “I tried very hard, one could almost say desperately, to avoid marrying you.”

“I’m so glad you made it a point to inform me of that,” she said, trying, one could almost say desperately, to step down hard on his instep. He was wearing boots. She was wearing slippers. It was a failed attempt, but she felt better for trying.

“Caro, listen to me,” he said, his voice harsh and low in her ear. His breath on her skin made every nerve shiver in what could only be called delight. Unfortunately. She ignored his breath and the unfair things it did to her. “You know what enmity exists between my father and your mother.”

“It’s all on his side,” she said, interrupting what she felt certain was going to be a lecture on every detail of why he hadn’t wanted to marry her. “My mother never even thinks of Lord Westlin, and she certainly never speaks of him.”

“Is that so?” Ashdon said softly. “I wonder if that’s true?”

“Of course it’s true!”

“Yes, well,” he said, crossing his arms about her so that his hands cupped her breasts. She expelled her breath sharply and tried to twist free, but that only resulted in her nipples rubbing against the hard heels of his hands. A jolt of fire rippled through her breasts, sending a bolt down to her loins.

She twisted again, as innocently as possible.

“As I was saying,” Ashdon said, rubbing his palms over the crests of her breasts. And she wasn’t even twisting, the cheat. “I don’t think you understand just how determined Westlin is to get revenge upon Sophia. He has made it his life’s work, in a sense, and he has trained me to be his … tool.”

“How nice for both of you,” she said, throwing her weight against his hands in what should have been a convincing attempt at escape. That her breasts were pressed more deeply into his palms was merely a happy coincidence.

“No, Caro,” he said, holding her tightly against him, his breath suddenly harsh and labored. “It wasn’t nice at all.”

She held her breath against the pain she heard in his voice, all games of seduction and broken bodice ties and even silver candlesticks flushed from her thoughts in a torrent. She was certain of one thing: she did not want to hear one more word about his father.

“Did you never wonder why I gamble?” he asked.

“I assumed it was because you enjoy gambling, bad as you are at it,” she said.

She’d meant to sound saucy and bold, but her voice came out thready and frightened. Ridiculous. Everyone gambled. It was the way of things. There was nothing mysterious about it.

“I’m not bad at it,” he said, still holding her close to him. They did not move; she scarce dared to breath. Ashdon had some weight upon him, clearly put there by his father, and he was attempting to dislodge it onto her. Unfair! Yet, did not married couples share their burdens? She supposed so, but not before they’d shared their hearts.

There it was. Caro tried not to flinch before the stark pain of the thought. Ashdon had not given her his heart and perhaps more dismally, he had not asked for her to share her heart with him. Was this marriage, so new, truly just a bargain made and kept? Was she to be nothing more than a would-be courtesan who had snared a husband by seduction?

Yesterday, the thought had been seductively amusing.

Today, she was not amused.

“You seem very bad at it,” she said.

“Yes, don’t I? ” he said. “It was Westlin’s idea, you see. He instructed me to gamble and, whenever possible, to lose.”

Ashdon laid his chin softly on the top of her hair and continued, holding her very fast, but not allowing her to turn and look at him. She knew without question that his avoidance of her scrutiny was entirely intentional.

“That seems rather stupid,” she said. “Who makes a plan to lose money?”

“My father,” Ashdon said simply. “He didn’t want me to lose a lot of money, only enough to attract your mother’s attention. He believes, you see, that Lady Dalby is quite ruthless, particularly where men are concerned, and most particularly where Westlin is concerned. You can see how my being his heir would make me irresistible to her, or so he claimed. As it turns out, he was right. Sophia bought me, as you well know, by paying off my debts.”

“She was just trying to help me find a husband,” Caro said. “It had nothing to do with Westlin.”

“Didn’t it?” Ashdon said, kissing the top of her hair in an almost parental fashion. Things were just going from bad to worse. “I lost rather more than Westlin had instructed, which he was furious about, by the way, but I wanted to put myself beyond Sophia’s interest, the debt so high that no one would willingly pay it off. She paid it off, Caro.”

The flush of desire faded from her eyes as they stood so, staring out at the mews and the treetops beyond the first-rate homes of Mayfair. Below them, she could hear the muted voices of men, stableboys and grooms, perhaps a footman or two hunkered down on their haunches, gambling when they should have been working.

She had gambled, had she not? She had gambled on Ash, and she wasn’t certain anymore what winning was supposed to look like. He was her husband. Was that enough? What did she want in a husband? She didn’t know anymore, all she still knew, even now, was that she wanted Ash.

Was that very wise of her?

Probably not.

“She paid it,” Caro said quietly. “She bought a husband for me, but before he married me, he ruined me. Was that part of the plan?” She had to be quiet now, quiet and careful, because everything was falling apart, breaking into fragments, and if she were not very careful she would break into fragments, too.

“I married you, Caro,” he said, turning her in his arms to face him. She looked into his eyes because she had to. She had to see what was there, wondering if she would recognize deceit or devotion or anything at all. “I married you, and you’ll be the Countess of Westlin. That was never in his plans.”

“Then what was the plan? How does going into debt, attracting my mother’s attention, function as a revenge?”

He said nothing and the silence pummeled her. Logic. Reason. She’d always been the most reasonable, the most sensible of girls. She knew what the revenge was supposed to have been. It was so obvious. Everything wasn’t falling apart, it was falling together, the picture of events finally clear.

What a fool she had made of herself.

“How you must have laughed,” she said, staring down at his polished boots. She never wanted to look in his eyes again. A strange marriage that was going to make. “Of course now that I understand things, I can see how determinedly you were trying to avoid me while you put yourself in my mother’s path. So difficult, wasn’t it, to get her alone, to make an impression on her, whilst her ignorant and ridiculously unsophisticated daughter was throwing herself at you. Did my mother know?” Caro chuckled flatly. “Of course she knew. Lovely men come to her house to see her; they do not come to see her innocent daughter. No man ever wants Caroline. How absurd to even contemplate it.”

Ash grabbed her by the arms and pulled her to him. As if that mattered now. “I wanted you, Caro. I wanted you so much that I married you to have you.”

“Yes, well,” she said lightly, ignoring the wash of tears that blurred her vision, “that might simply be a new version of the plan. There must be hundreds of ways to punish my mother for what happened twenty years ago through her gullible daughter. You and Lord Westlin will have such fun working them out together, a true father and son bond the likes of which has never before been seen. What a pair you’ll make, Lord Westlin striding about London’s drawing rooms snarling insults about Lady Dalby while Lord Ashdon keeps Lady Dalby’s daughter well out of Town so that he may pile all sorts of abuses upon her in his father’s name. What delicious fun.”

“It will not be that way,” he said through clenched teeth. Rot his teeth. She wanted to pull them out, one by one.

“Told your father that, have you?” she said, yanking free of his grasp and striding to the dining room door that led to the yellow salon. It was rather difficult to stride in her narrow gown, but she did what she could. Ash caught up with her in two strides and stood in front of her. He was obviously intelligent enough to know that to touch her now would be extremely unwise. “What happened, Ash? Did my mother ignore you? Did she fail to fall to your rather too obvious charms, forcing you to make do with her second-rate daughter? I don’t think I shall be much of a revenge for you, I’m afraid. As unnoticeable as I am, certainly a revenge with me at its heart would be equally unnoticeable.”

“You have it wrong,” he said in a growl of temper. “You have everything wrong.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, facing him with her chin up, her tears gone. “Shall I review the lesson as I’ve learned it? Your father is angry with my mother and has been angry for twenty years, which certainly must exhaust him, but being a stalwart and resourceful sort, he arranged for you to share the burden of revenge with him. You were to be his tool, as you put it, and as his tool, you were sent to … oh, how to put it delicately? There is no delicate way, is there, Ashdon? You were sent, by way of debt, to be my mother’s plaything. A male courtesan, as it were. She was to buy you, and she did, but the problem was that she did not buy you for herself, but for her unappealing daughter. How else to find a man for poor Caro unless to buy her one? Certainly my mother has no need to buy herself a man when they throw themselves at her twice a day in the worst of weather and six times a day in the best.”

“Caro, that’s—”

“No! You started this. You will allow me to play it out,” she said coldly. “I am a part of this farce, certainly I should be given the opportunity to say my lines without interruption.” Ashdon held his tongue, his expression once again grim. She could well understand that particular expression now. “What I don’t fully understand is how becoming my mother’s bed thing would have paid the debt of revenge Westlin so earnestly seeks. I don’t understand that bit, Ash. I don’t understand anything, do I?”

Ashdon continued to hold his tongue. It might well be a new habit of his. She rather thought he needed one, and this one would suit her on most occasions. The hard reality was that, no matter how it had started, it had ended in marriage. They were hooked, and there was no unhooking them.

Life had never looked so long nor, she dared say it, grim.

“Do you know, Ashdon? Will you tell me? I am as you found me, revoltingly innocent. Were you to insult her in some fashion?” He stared at her, silently. It was growing more than slightly irritating. Habits should not be practiced to the exclusion of all else. It made one a rather dull companion. “How does one go about insulting a woman?” she said, the sounds of light male laughter mingling with female conversation coming to her from beyond the door to the yellow salon. Lord Calbourne seemed to be enjoying himself. “Particularly as that woman is beautiful, don’t you find my mother beautiful, Ashdon? But of course you do. All men find my mother irresistible.”