The Wicked Wallflower (8 page)

It was lies, all lies.

She would pay him back in spades.

“Lady Emma, what have you discovered about the duke that no other woman knows?” Lady Bellande asked. Was she
truly
asking for tips on how to seduce her fiancé? Or was she, like the rest, in utter disbelief that a man like
Ashbrooke
would ever bother with a girl like her? Well, she
was
one of London's Least Likely, after all.

“Is there anything?” Emma replied sweetly.

“Surely, there is something,” Lady Agatha said.

“He's incredibly sweet, tender, and romantic,” Emma said, thinking not of Ashbrooke, but of Benedict. And then she let her imagination take over. “He wept as he proposed. It was the most touching moment.”

“Wept?” Blake asked skeptically. A few of the men quickly masked their laughter with coughs.

Lady Agatha cackled with amusement.

“I had to lend you my handkerchief, remember?” Emma replied, feigning innocence. “The one you requested I embroider with our initials entwined in pink thread.”

Stealing a glance at her “fiancé,” Emma saw that his brow was raised. Perhaps it was the wine, or perhaps it was his attention, fixed upon her, but her heart started to beat rapidly as if she were giddy. As if she were enjoying this dueling romantic story.

“How did he propose?” Miss Dawkins asked. Emma heaved a dramatic sigh before spinning a story of her own wishful thinking.

“On bended knee. At the gazebo where we had first met, on a warm, moonlit night.”

“After I fought off a band of thieves,” Ashbrooke said casually, leaning back in his chair.

“That pack of poor, unfortunate children? They couldn't have been more than twelve years of age. They were merely begging for bread,” Emma replied, and he scowled mightily across the table at her. Much to her delight.

“They were heavily armed. A veritable artillery,” he retorted. “I risked my life to protect your virtue.”

“His nerves were overset that evening,” Emma explained kindly to the table of skeptical—­but riveted—­faces. “Our courtship had been a whirlwind, and he was not sure if I would accept or not,” she said, adding another outrageously unbelievable lie to the mix.

“It is amazing that no one in London discovered your courtship. What a
secret
whirlwind that must have been,” Lady Bellande said, insinuating the very worst. Just when Emma was starting to enjoy herself.

“Oh, we traded numerous love letters,” Emma said, thinking quickly. How else to explain a love match no one saw developing?

“I should love to have a reading of those,” Lady Agatha said.

“They're private, Aunt Agatha,” Blake said. “Not everything under the sun exists for your amusement.”

“An inconvenient truth I like to ignore,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Where is your betrothal ring, Lady Emma? Don't tell me you didn't get her one, Ashbrooke.”

“Oh, I must have left it in my bedchamber! I'm not used to wearing it yet,” Emma said quickly.

He hadn't gotten her a ring! She glared at him across the table.

He shrugged, slightly.

They were horribly unprepared for this. They ought to have spent their journey concocting a story of how they met and determining the details of their fictional courtship. Instead he had thought about seducing her merely to prove a point, and she endeavored to maintain her virtue and dignity by refusing him.

If they survived this house party she would eat her bonnet.

 

Chapter 6

“Do you believe they are truly betrothed? The entire affair is highly suspicious if you ask me,” Lady Copley murmured to her husband over tea in the drawing room.

“I didn't ask you. And it doesn't matter what I think. Only what your batty old Aunt Agatha thinks is true,” Lord Copley replied.

Later that evening

“T
HAT WAS A
disaster,” Blake said flatly. He and Emma had bid good-­night to the group after the conclusion of supper and the customary drinking of port and tea until the hour grew late.

For the sake of appearances, Blake linked arms with Emma as they quit the drawing room and proceeded past the monstrous urn in the foyer and onward to their respective bedchambers through shadowed corridors, dimly lit by the flickering candlelight contained in crystal sconces fixed high on the damask-­papered walls.

Keeping his hands occupied properly would limit his ability to strangle her, which he desperately wanted to do after her theatrics at the dinner table. He didn't even want to know what outrageous tales with which she regaled the women over tea.

It was either that or kiss her hard so she was left breathless and unable to speak her own name, let alone make up any more ridiculous fictions.

“It was a complete and utter failure,” Emma agreed. “We have probably lost the games already. I knew no one would believe us.”

“They might have if you hadn't told the most absurd and unfathomable stories. You told everyone I fought a band of children.”

He turned to glower down at her. She peered up at him, small and defiant.

“You said they were heavily armed! Poor, starving orphan street children!”

“And what of the nonsense about the gazebo? I'm afraid to ask how you came up with this rubbish. I shudder to think of what novels you have been reading that put such nonsense in your head.”

“It's romantic. If we still have a chance of winning, it's because of my ingenuity. Besides, you have not offered a better idea.”

She was a stubborn little thing. The problem was, he was, too.

“I said we could have met at a ball. Everyone knows I'm always disappearing with different women. It would have been completely believable.”

“Except that I spend every ball properly in view just in case . . . “ Emma's voice trailed off and he knew what she meant to say. Just in case someone asked her to dance.

Blake thought of all the wallflowers at balls, their indistinguishable, hopeful-­but-­trying-­not-­to-­be-­desperate faces attempting to catch the eye of any gentleman who drew near. Occasionally he thought of waltzing with one of them just to give her a moment's happiness. But knowing that such an invitation would be tremendously misconstrued by the girl, her mother, and the entire haute ton, kept him at a distance.

“Not that I would ever be missed,” Emma added darkly.

Blake was not inclined to pity. Not when every time he was “missed” resulted in some scandal or another. The ton's insatiable interest in his pleasure made it impossible for his business of securing funds for the Difference Engine.

“What's done is done,” he said briskly. “Now I must learn the blasted flute and let it be known that I wept while proposing to you.”

“We're even. Sherry makes me sick and now I shall have to drink it morning, noon, and night,” she retorted.

“Hit the bottle too hard one evening?”

“Precisely,” Emma said in a clipped voice.

“Now I am intrigued,” he said. He tried to imagine her in the throes of a sherry-­induced drunken spree and failed. She was London's Least Likely to Misbehave, after all.

“I'm not telling,” Emma said darkly. So the wallflower had secrets and got into trouble, did she? He glanced down at the woman on his arm. No longer quite so plain. It wasn't just the candlelight or the port he'd drunk either.

“Pity, that you shan't regale me with stories of your debaucheries,” he said. “In return, I could tell you about the time I drank an excessive amount of ratafia. The story involves a nun, a swan, and a portrait of the third Duke of Ashbrooke. I was only thirteen years old.”

“Now
I
am intrigued,” she said. Another glance at her told him she was intrigued in spite of herself.

Feminine resistance to his charms. What a novelty.

They had arrived before her door. Strangely, they lingered.

“Well I can't tell you here in the hallway,” he said.

“We shall have plenty of time to converse on the morrow, when we walk all twelve thousand acres of your aunt's estate. Perhaps we could also use that time to concoct more stories. There are bound to be more questions.”

“Everyone is far too curious,” Blake said frankly, leaning against the wall. Emma's hand rested on the doorknob.

“Of course they are! Look at you. And look at me. We do not belong together.”

The thing was, he had looked at her and they saw vastly different things. He saw a pretty girl; she saw a plain one. She saw a wallflower; he saw a girl who deliberately stuck her nose in a book when spending two days in a carriage with an eligible bachelor. No wonder she was unwed during her fourth season. But knowing women as he did, Blake knew better than to say any of that.

“It's nobody's damn business,” he said.

“I can assure you,” Emma said coldly, “no one heard about that law and no one is obeying it or enforcing it. I want to win this, Ashbrooke.”

He sighed. “You had to mention love letters, didn't you.” He had a reputation, and it did not include composing romantic drivel. Until now. He, too, wanted to win. He had a future to build and a past to redeem, all of which depended upon either a massive infusion of wealth or his reputation reformed.

He leaned in close. Her lips parted. He reached behind her. Twisted the knob and pushed the door open.

“What are you doing?” Emma asked in an appalled whisper.

“We're going to write some damned love letters and get our story straight, darling Emma,” Blake murmured. “Even if it takes all night.”

He tugged her into the bedchamber and closed the door behind them. He ignored all her protestations about propriety and what ­people would think. Instead he pointed out that it would serve their story if ­people thought them madly, wildly, dangerously attracted to each other.

An awkward silence fell over the room, disturbed only by the crackling fire in the grate. The drapes were open, allowing moonlight into the room. Candles flickered beside the bed.

His intentions had been pure, noble, not at all lusty or nefarious. Past tense.

Funny how, in spite of his talents with advanced mathematics, the presence of a bed and a woman added up to one and only one thought in his simple male brain.

Even though that woman was scowling at him. His instinct to charm, to soothe, to seduce did not fail him.

“It pains me to admit it, Emma, but you are right. We ought to get our story straight. God only knows what other embarrassing habits you will attribute to me. Though I can't imagine anything worse than weeping, fighting a band of street children, and playing the unmanliest instrument ever, save for, perhaps, the harp.”

“The sooner we obtain this fortune, the sooner we can part ways,” she said. Then she could run off to her mystery man. Who the devil did she prefer to him? It was a matter of pride, really. Certainly nothing other than the simple desire a man felt for a woman.

“So you agree we should write some lover letters,” he suggested. “And confirm the details of our secret love affair.”

“Now?”

“I suppose we could do it tomorrow,” Blake mused. “In the drawing room. In front of everyone who stands to gain upward of ninety thousand pounds if they are able to prove our fraudulent engagement.”

“Ninety thousand pounds?” Emma gasped. Her knees buckled slightly. It was an enormous sum. It was an unfathomable sum.

“Give or take a few,” he said with a shrug. “Not including the annual income. That's another forty or so, I believe. But I haven't perused the account books lately. Too busy with the Tarleton twins, Norton's mistress, and whatnot.”

The point was, the fortune was A FORTUNE and possibly theirs, so long as no one—­especially Agatha—­ever uncovered their deception. Blake experienced a stab of pain somewhere in the region of his heart, which someone else might have attributed to guilt, remorse, or a sense of moral failing.

He ignored it and instead focused on Emma's surprisingly delectable backside as she bent over and rummaged through her things, only to then stand with her arms full of writing supplies.

Love letters it would be.

The only place to sit happened to be on the bed, and Emma glanced at him warily as he settled in beside her. Had she been Lady Bellande, she'd have crawled onto his lap and divested a few articles of clothing by now. But this was Emma, and she was proper and an Innocent, and he probably ought to offer her some reassurance.

“Yes, I am thinking of ravishing you because you are a female and we are on a bed,” he said. “But I promise to keep my hands to myself and focus on composing odes to our secret love affair.”

“I'm so glad we're clear on our priorities,” she said, a faint smile upon her lips, handing him a sheet of paper and pen. With the writing box open on his lap serving as a desk, he began to write.

“ ‘Dear Emily . . .' ” Blake began to narrate as he wrote.

“Emma! My name is Emma!” she said, not at all aware that she was adorable when she was exasperated—­her cheeks pinked delectably—­which only made him want to work her up into such a state.

“Shhh,” he cautioned. “You don't want anyone to hear us, remember.”

“If you cannot even get my name correct, how do you expect to fool everyone into believing that we are in love?” she asked in a furious whisper.

“First, I was teasing,
Emma,
” he said, looking her in the eyes. “Secondly, we are to be in love now?”

“Our whirlwind courtship, remember,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. His gaze lingered over the swells of her breasts. He liked what he saw. Buxom indeed. “Only love can explain why you have chosen
me.
”

She didn't need to repeat that trite saying, “Love is blind,” for him to know she was thinking it. He shook his head and kept writing. Silly girl.

“ ‘Dear Emma,' ” he wrote. “ ‘When I happened upon you this morning at the abandoned gazebo, I was riveted by such beauty.' ”

“No one will believe that,” she said, utterly frustrated.

“Why not?” he replied, equally annoyed. Writing love letters was a blasted difficult thing to do, especially with the lady in question commenting on every line.

“I am not beautiful,” she said frankly.

“You're one of those women. I should have known,” Blake said.

“What do you mean?” Emma asked. He set down his pen and turned to face her.

“Some women have a warped sense of perception regarding their appearance, especially what they view as beautiful in contrast to what a man actually lusts after,” he explained. Her lips parted, though she remained speechless.

He gazed upon her ready to offer assurance that she was pretty with all his tried and true phrases and his practiced expression of adoration.

He was prepared for that. He was not prepared for what actually happened when he fixed his gaze upon her face.

If one glanced at Emma, they would see a plain English girl. But when one looked at her, really looked at her . . .

Blake saw smooth, pale skin and high cheekbones with a pale pink blush. She had a heart-­shaped face framed by hair she would probably describe as plain brown but a more poetic person might call chestnut, sable, or chocolate. It was fashionable to be blond and fair, but he'd always preferred the dark-­haired girls. They were more clever, and thus more trouble.

Her mouth was a little rose pink bow, and she sighed, anxious under his gaze.

In her lovely eyes he saw the wish for his ­approval—­he saw that often, it came with being a duke, and not an ugly one at that. But he also saw that she desperately did not want to care what he thought of her. There was a perfect storm of emotion in her deep blue eyes.

She was beautiful.

She just didn't know it.

He had only just discovered it.

“You are beautiful, Emma,” he said softly. He kept looking at her, for there was more to see. The slender column of her neck, the delicate curve of her shoulders, the generous swells of her breasts (his gaze lingered there) . . .

“But—­”

Given his vast experience with women, Blake knew better than to waste his breath trying to explain to her that she was pretty and he wanted to do naughty things to her.

Instead, he returned to the letter.

“ ‘Dear Emma, when I happened upon you this morning at the abandoned gazebo, I was riveted by your beauty. The way your soaked gown clung tantalizingly to your breasts . . .' ”