The Trouble With Being Wicked (21 page)

No, they couldn’t know. She’d lose not one but three friends.

 
“Well, in that case,” Roman murmured, “I’m honored to partner Miss Lancester.”

Lucy bristled at this dismissive-sounding invitation. Thankfully, however, she didn’t argue. Delilah looked on, happy to be a spectator. The water didn’t agree with her constitution, she’d said.

Celeste tried to catch Trestin’s eye but he avoided her probing look. Instead he turned to Roman. The men traded a speaking glance that left Celeste feeling very much afraid.

Then Trestin released her hand and slapped the marquis on the back, propelling him into action. They walked ahead to secure the boats, Roman at a markedly less enthusiastic pace.

Celeste felt as reluctant. Trestin had held onto her until he’d felt assured she wouldn’t run. He wanted to talk to her. It couldn’t be good. Surely he wouldn’t forgive her for lying to him.

Lucy whirled and clutched Celeste’s arm. “This is terrible. He doesn’t want to row with me. Worse yet, I am a
wonderful
rower! Now I will have to allow him to look virile, and what with his injured shoulder, that cannot be an easy task. I will look foolish.”

Celeste’s gaze didn’t stray from Trestin’s broad back. The carriage wheel seemed to be rocking back and forth across her heart. “The only time a woman makes a fool of herself is when she tries to win a man.”

Lucy’s fingers dug into her arm. “What do I do?”

If Celeste could answer that question in a way appropriate to a gently bred young lady, she wouldn’t be in the position she was in. She pulled Lucy into step instead. “Apply yourself. I insist you do. That will leave your mind free to focus on the unfamiliar.”
 

Lucy’s brow furrowed. “Such as?”

How to explain to a young lady who’d never played the game? How to instruct her, without telling her everything?

Was it even worth doing, when surely Roman was unsuitable?

“He lives to play the gallant,” Celeste said carefully. “He is kind, considerate and romantic. He is drawn to women who make him feel like a man. Due to his sore shoulder, his pride will already be fragile. You must allow him to prove himself in other ways.” She felt a sense of power as she said this. Roman would never appreciate the irony of a woman using tricks on him, the same types of tricks he used against her sex. He might have destroyed Lord Trestin’s opinion of her, but Celeste wasn’t entirely at his mercy.

Her next thought was less empowering and more guilt-ridden. What if he found himself enamored of Lucy? Would he suffer, knowing Lord Trestin would never allow a penniless reprobate to court his sister?

Did it matter if he suffered? Perhaps he would come to appreciate how it felt to be
not quite worthy
of everyone else. She had precisely two friends right now. One clung to her arm, hanging on her every word. The other sat on the beach. Celeste patted Lucy’s hand. “I suspect with your…independence, you’ve never truly captured his attention.”

Lucy looked haughtily down her nose. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

“Of course you are. As am I. That is not the point. Nobody,
nobody,
can make a man feel as a woman can. This is your only task, to make him feel as nobody but a woman can. Do you understand?”

Lucy nodded. But how could she understand?

Then she whispered, “I am desperate for him.”

Celeste stopped them mid-step. “He should be desperate for you. He may have your smiles, your laughs, the fleeting touch of your hand. But not you. A man measures a woman by how easily he believes he can have her. There is no challenge in a woman who surrenders her only asset.” She had a sickening feeling she was about to learn just how true that was.

Lucy gazed toward the men securing the boats. “My smile? He has never taken notice of it before.”

Celeste watched Trestin’s muscles bunch as he coiled a thick length of rope. “Likely true. Roman prefers the company of women who are…” She couldn’t finish. Surely Trestin wouldn’t approve of this conversation.

“Freer. I know.” Lucy lowered her voice. “I would go to him tonight, if he would have me.”

That settled it. She had to help, if only to keep Lucy from doing something rash. “It should be he who risks all, not you. Marriage must be your asking price. Else he isn’t the one.”

Lucy’s gaze trailed from the beach. “Do you really believe that, Miss Smythe? Do you think a man capable of putting a woman first, above his own needs and desires?”

Celeste regarded her young friend mutely. She’d never fallen in love, herself. The situation she described was simply something that must be true. In her deepest, most fragile place, it had to be true, because if love was a myth and there was only sex, then she’d seen everything there was to see. That journey had left her an empty, cold shell of a person.

But even if there was no such thing as love, if it was nothing more than a figment of her imagination, at least she must convince Lucy to keep her virtue intact. And so, with a reflexive glance at Lord Trestin, Celeste replied, “A very good man would.”

“Lucy!” he called from down the beach. The sun cast his chiseled face in shadow, but Celeste could see his eyebrows were drawn together in disapproval. He indicated Roman standing knee-deep in the bay waiting to help Lucy into the boat.
 

“We aren’t finished,” Lucy hissed. She grabbed Celeste’s arm and dragged her across the shore.

They diverged at the water, Lucy to Roman’s boat and Celeste to Lord Trestin’s. She wasn’t even in the boat yet and she already felt nauseated.

Lord Trestin turned to her. “Would you like me to carry you?”

The thought of being that close to him while he was angry with her sped her pulse. She nodded anyway, for she had no other way of getting into the boat. He stepped toward her. His body blocked the wind for a moment, then he bent and lifted her into his arms. She clung to him as he waded into the bay. When he set her in the vessel and went to the rear, she felt the chill of the sea air again.

He lowered his weight across from hers and paid no heed to the water pooling from his boots into the bottom of the boat. Her hand flew to her belly as if to quiet it, but her growing dread couldn’t be comforted from outside.

He took up the oars, flexed his arms a few times to limber up, and pushed off the beach. Her stomach continued to churn as the boat skittered across the surf. Lord Trestin’s movements were too jerky for a leisurely row. He meant to get them as far away from Lucy and Roman as quickly as he could make it possible.

Celeste was left to watch him toil. She imprinted his handsome, tense face on her heart as his upper arms strained against the force of the waves. He wasn’t near enough to be considered improper, but their knees almost touched in the small craft. She could smell his scent drifting on the breeze. If only it weren’t all about to come crashing down. If only…

She closed her eyes, tilting her face to the sun. Wind whipped through her hair and tugged at her pins. She wanted to stay here, just like this. Forever.

When she opened her eyes, it was to see him regarding her. She gripped her hands together. A muscle twitched at his jaw. A very proper cravat concealed the darkened hollows of his throat, and her mind returned briefly to the previous day. She remembered the feel of his chest hard beneath her hands. The indentation of his naked collarbone. She raised her gaze higher, admiring his burnished skin and the honey-gold of his eyes. Surely she would want this memory later.

His eyes slowly became angry. Accusing.

And she would just as assuredly want to forget what was to come next.

Chapter Fifteen

She tried to keep her voice even. “Is aught amiss, my lord?”

His gaze fixed on a point behind her head. His muscles sent them gliding effortlessly along the waves. She wasn’t fooled. Constrained emotion powered the oars, not brute strength.

She bit her tongue, restraining her questions. If he wished to reply, he would. It seemed she was a captive audience and at his behest.

But she couldn’t stand the silence forever. “My lord?” she tried again.

After sending the skiff several more yards ahead of Roman’s, Trestin stopped rowing. The boat continued to jet over the roughening sea. “It seems we always have more to talk about, Miss Smythe. I think we ought to start at the beginning, don’t you?”

She nodded mutely, wrapping her arms around herself to ward off the sudden chill.

“My father was a whoremonger. Did you know that?”

The certain knowledge that he was somehow blaming her crept along her spine. She didn’t nod, but he didn’t need her to.

“Mother put a bullet through his back, then took her own life. I’ve always thought that incredibly selfish of her. With her dead, she left me no one to hate. Because my deplorable father was dead, too, Miss Smythe. They were both dead.”

Celeste’s lips parted, but she had no comforting words to offer. She knew the story. Had heard it told with devilish giddiness. It had flown over glasses of wine and slipped between dance sets. Every Cyprian knew of Adam Lancester, their cherished reprobate. Indiscriminate to a fault.

As with every scandal, it had eventually been replaced by a new
on dit.
Celeste had only known him by association. She hadn’t been particularly troubled by his death, or his fade away.

Yet Trestin hadn’t forgotten. He regarded her with hard, angry eyes. “Unfortunately, my loathing did not die with him.”

“I’m sorry,” was all she could say. Her throat was thick, her mouth dry. She wanted to cry. She never imagined she’d feel personally responsible for Adam Lancester’s death. As though she were accountable for the actions of her kind.

Trestin pulled hard against the oars, sending them skimming over the bay. “I see we understand each other now.”

Celeste blankly watched the water churn. It was easy to envision the fallout such horrendous news had caused, and it didn’t take too much to comprehend this was why Lucy had never married. Celeste was well-acquainted with the ways of the
ton
. Their entire family had been ruined. Perhaps still was.

“Sometimes I think I made a mistake keeping Lucy home,” Trestin said, as if reading her mind. He watched her with an intensity that made her lungs squeeze hard. “I ought to have braved it out. I was too young to know that most men have mistresses and it was simply my father’s bad fortune to have a wife with good aim.”

Celeste jerked her gaze away. How bitter he was. She wanted to apologize for his hurt, explain everything she’d done was for a reason. Fall in his arms and sob until he
knew
why she’d kissed him. Defend her deception, her past, her loneliness. Her impossible wish that…he would love her.

“I’d come to regard you highly,” Trestin said roughly. Harshly. She looked up in confusion. Surely she hadn’t heard him correctly.

His eyes were soft yet heated. “You were a good little temptress, Celeste. I had no idea what I was up against.”

She gripped her hands together lest she slap him. “Don’t say such things.”

“Don’t play coy. That only makes it worse.” His bitterness left her cold. He didn’t know what he was saying; he was lashing out at her. He
wanted
to hurt her. She clutched her cloak tightly to her breast. Was
this
love?

Celeste’s heart grew heavy until it sank to the bottom of her belly. Lord Trestin would never love her. She represented everything he loathed in a woman, every sin he’d ever condemned. And was he wrong?

She could have drowned in her own shame. Roman was right. Trestin loathed his attraction to her. She was no better than the strumpets who had seduced his father and forced his mother to unspeakable acts.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. She looked up at the sound of his indecision. He was watching her with a warring, crestfallen expression. “Good God, Celeste. You were supposed to slap me. Instead you look—your eyes—”

A large wave smacked the boat. It listed right. Her shriek was choked by fear. She leaned left, praying they did not overturn.
 

Instinctively, it seemed, Lord Trestin leaned forward and grasped her arms. His knee struck the bottom planks as he came out of his seat. Suddenly, he loomed over her. The oars fell into the bay. He ignored them. The plane of his chest, covered in fine white lawn and a green striped waistcoat, hovered inches above the thrust of her cleavage. Her silent scream stuck in her throat.