When, precisely, had he made that decision?
And yet . . . it wasn’t a terrible idea. Perhaps by offering his own knowledge, he might guarantee a good, solid match for Daniel. Someone who could wipe away the memory of Miss Smithson once and for all.
Her amusement faded and she grew quiet for a moment, considering. “And you would just . . . give this information to me freely?”
“Nothing worth having comes without a price, love. Think of the fate of poor Prometheus when he gave fire to man. He was punished by Zeus every day for the rest of his life, chained up, his liver a ready feast for an eagle.”
“Lucky for you, I know how to make fire, and I have no desire for your liver or any other part of you.”
He held up a finger. “Ah, but you do desire to make matches. For that, you’ll need my instruction.”
“Tell me, Lord Edgemont—”
“Nicholas.”
She expelled a huff and continued. “Tell me, my lord, if you already know so much about men and women, then why are you interested in helping me? Surely, you could find a match for both of your cousins without my assistance.”
“The truth of the matter is that you have far more access to debutantes, and I should prefer to keep it that way. Once a titled gentleman with a fortune begins making appearances at too many polite societal events, the eager swarm of husband hunters follows.”
He could not imagine a worse fate.
She tilted her head in scrutiny, her lips curving in a slow, beguiling grin. “And even though you profess a disinterest in marriage, you’re still taking steps to ensure the nuptial bliss of your family. When it comes to them, you’re quite tenderhearted, aren’t you? And here I thought you wouldn’t have any redeeming qualities.”
“How very kind of you to notice,” he said dryly.
“I am in earnest,” she declared and proceeded to tick items off with her fingers as if she were making a list. “Thus far, you’ve demonstrated a selfless regard for your family’s contentment. You’ve been chivalrous, at least once, when you rescued a debutante without interfering with her person. Always a plus. You’ve professed to having a fortune and innumerable titles. And you even care for the children you do not yet have. Unless . . . of course, you do have illegitimate offspring.”
“I do not have any bastards. I’ve made certain of that, though I don’t see how—”
“How do you make sure of it?”
For an instant, her question interrupted his train of thought. He wasn’t prepared for the full potency of her undivided attention, or how it quickened his pulse. Gazing at her eager countenance, he was tempted to tell her everything she wanted to know.
Then reason took over, warning him that one question from her would likely lead to another. And besides, she did not need to know that he always used French letters and never spent his seed inside any of his paramours. Or that, after previous experience, he’d learned never to take the chance. No, indeed. He did not want to have that conversation with anyone.
Instead, he redirected, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. “Pray, why were you listing my more favorable attributes just now?”
“Because I’m going to find you a bride.” She shrugged her shoulders as if the matter were of little consequence.
Ah. Another one of her scenarios. “As I said before, if I wanted a bride, I would have one. You’ve essentially promised me air to breathe when it isn’t even yours to control.”
“It would be if I were smothering you with your own cravat.” She smiled sweetly, her dark humor adding another element to her overall appeal.
A ghost of warning whispered in his ear to be careful of such thoughts. Naive debutantes were not on a rake’s menu.
“Besides,” she continued, “finding a bride for you will be excellent practice.”
“Only in failure.”
“You say that now, but just wait until you meet her. She’ll be completely irresistible.”
The jangling of that ghost caused a shiver to coarse through him. “There isn’t such a creature.”
Reaching out, she pulled a forgotten arrow from his grasp, the shaft leaving a trail of tingles over his palm. “The challenge you’re presenting only gives me additional incentive to find her.”
“Additional?”
She looked down, her finger grazing the feather’s edge. “Well, I don’t suppose I would be violating any privacies by telling you—and I’ll have to tell Temperance anyway—so, I’ll just come straight out with it.” She drew in a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I’ve accepted a challenge to find a bride for the most irredeemable rake in London, which happens to be you. There. All settled.”
Nicholas stared at her, stunned. It wasn’t often that he was taken by surprise, and yet Briar Bourne had a knack for it.
“It’s best to have everything in the open, since we’re in the midst of striking a bargain,” she continued. “And we are striking a bargain, are we not? Your lessons for my assistance in matching your cousin, and I’ll throw in a bride for you absolutely free of charge.”
His head was spinning. “So then, you knew who I was when you accepted this challenge?”
“I had no idea that you were . . . well, you. An oversight on my part. All I knew at the time was your name. And since the Earl of Edgemont is Temperance’s cousin, I believed you couldn’t have been all bad.”
“Oh, but I am, love,” he warned, and watched her gaze dip to his mouth. When her cheeks colored, he felt the warmth of it rush through his veins. “By the by, how much did this challenger promise to pay you?”
She sniffed. “It was about far more than money. So if you’re thinking of buying your way out of this, it won’t work. I’m quite determined.”
He had been thinking of doing just that. “If it isn’t about money then what do you stand to gain?”
“Put simply, if I do not succeed in this, then I will serve tea and file applications until the day I become so crippled with age that I can barely shuffle down the hall. My hands will curl into knobby claws, shaking from all the years of careful pouring. Of course, I would surely expire by the time I reached your age, just a winnowed husk of the person I might have been.” She sighed. “So you can clearly see that I have nothing left to lose.”
He didn’t know whether to laugh or to beat his forehead against the brick wall between his and Lord Penrose’s garden. “Somewhere along the way, I’ve given you the impression I’m apt to change my mind at any given moment. That isn’t true. So I’ll say this plainly . . . I. Do. Not. Want. A. Bride.”
She grinned patiently as if he were a child. “Love isn’t something you can predict.”
No doubt she was under the delusion that love was a wondrous thing. He would let her discover the truth on her own. “Why don’t you focus all that determination on making matches for my cousins, hmm?”
“Oh, I will. I promise not to rest until I find each of you your ideal counterparts. It isn’t in me to give up.” She twirled the arrow between her fingers. “When do we start? Right this instant?”
“Now wait,” he said, holding up his hand, “we have yet to come to an agreement. You’ve just added a new element to our bargain and the scales are tipping largely in your favor. After all, you’ll still keep Temperance’s subscription, which I’ve already been funding, and you’re about to gain another client with Daniel. But secretly. I cannot have his name listed in your registry. If he ever discovered that I hired someone to find him a bride, I’m sure that would only lengthen the duration of his melancholy. He is of a romantic nature—a concept, I’m certain, that is familiar to you. He would only be happy by believing he met his bride by happenstance.”
She agreed with a resolute nod. “He will never know otherwise.”
“So this leaves us to barter over the price of my tutelage.” Turning possibilities in his mind, he grazed his knuckles across the edge of his jawline.
He wasn’t aware of the gesture until he watched her gaze follow, her pupils
slowly expanding, turning to spills of inky black surrounded by a ring of blue. She likely had no idea that her simple glance revealed a certain degree of interest, an innocent curiosity. Doubtless, if he mentioned how the rake in him had learned to notice such things, she would blush and stammer. She might even balk and abandon her ludicrous challenge.
And suddenly, the kernel of an idea formed.
Perhaps there was a way to dissuade her from her futile attempts to find him a bride, torturing him with endless scenarios about happiness and felicity in marriage. There was only so much a man could take.
“The way I see it,” he continued, “providing you with my accumulated knowledge is the most valuable asset. Therefore, I deserve something more tangible in return. After all, I have years of experience, love. Thousands of things I could teach you. So, for every lesson, I should like a kiss as payment.”
Her gaze dipped to his mouth once more. “Wh-why would you want a . . . kiss from me? You’ve already stated that you have an endless list of women vying for you.”
“A little token for my troubles. Besides, I recall how fascinating you were as a voyeur, and I’m curious about how you would be as a participant.”
She pointed at him with the arrow, her cheeks a brighter pink. “You’re a wicked man.”
“True. Though, I could have asked for something else. A kiss isn’t much, especially from someone as determined as you. And you’ll be the one receiving the accolades from making the matches. Not to mention, the respect of your sisters, and future clients for years to come.” He stepped closer, drawing the pad of his thumb over his bottom lip, her gaze flitting downward once more. “Of course, you could always give up on that challenge, instead.”
Her breath caught, her nostrils flaring like a perfumer drawing in a scent. Still, she held her ground and pressed her lips together as if to guard them. “I’m not about to give you a thousand kisses. Think of the scandal, and neither of us could afford the consequences. I’m just about to start living, I don’t want it ripped away from me.”
“And yet, you are tempted. I can see it in the way your eyes have turned to the darker blue of a summer sky every time you glance at my mouth.”
“I only did that to see if someone as ancient as you still had teeth.”
He grinned, feeling a tug low in his gut that was in direct opposition to his intention. Instead of using the kiss as a means to shock her, he was starting to warm to the idea. “I’m offering everything you want and for just a small price.”
“Drat you, horrible man. You’re making it impossible for me to refuse.”
He chuckled, and didn’t bother to point out that she hadn’t even attempted to barter with something else. “Then say, ‘Yes, Nicholas.’”
Hearing the voices of his aunt and Temperance, he looked over his shoulder to the empty terrace doorway. They would arrive at any moment.
Eyes wide, she glanced to the open doors and back to him. “Surely you wouldn’t . . . kiss me here? Now?”
No, but he wanted to. Suddenly he was feeling exhilarated, more alive than he had in months. Perhaps even years. “I only want your answer. But the offer will not stand once my aunt and cousin have joined us.”
Briar was breathing fast, her eyes darting from the doors to his face, to his mouth. She wet her lips. And then at the last possible instant, she whispered the words he wanted to hear.
“Yes, Nicholas.”
Chapter 8
“Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations . . .”
Jane Austen, Emma
That evening, Briar was grateful for the distraction of the Duchess of Holliford’s dinner party. She didn’t want to spend another moment thinking of her bargain with Lord Edgemont.
It should have eased her thoughts of uncertainty when he’d left on an errand before taking tea that afternoon. But it hadn’t. Instead, her mind had become preoccupied, conjuring one scenario after another about what it might be like to . . . submit her payments. All of them had left her shamefully breathless. And as a woman whose sole interest was in finding wholesome, respectable matches for her clients, she should not be this curious about kissing a rake.
Tucking those thoughts inside her bonnet as she handed it to the duchess’s maid, Briar stepped into the parlor.
The Duchess of Holliford’s residence in Mayfair was like a second home to Briar. Many members of the ton vied for an invitation to the weekly dinners, but the Bourne family always had a place at the table. Briar and her sisters were like the daughters—or more aptly, granddaughters—that the duchess never had.
Greeting her with unabashed fondness, Briar dipped into a curtsy that brought her to eye level with the diminutive figure before her. “How lovely you look this evening, Your Grace. I dare say, that dark teal shawl quite matches the lustrous color of your eyes.”
Beneath an elegant nest of dove-gray hair, the Duchess of Holliford looked sideways at Briar, a faint vellum-creased smile bracketing her pursed mouth. “Tush, girl. You’re beginning to sound like that flattering uncle of yours. Where is Eggleston, by the by? Surely he didn’t send you alone.”
“No. He is here with me,” Briar said, pressing a kiss to the proffered lilac-scented cheek. “However, as we disembarked from our carriage, we met with another of your guests—Mrs. Richards, I believe—who dropped her handkerchief. Supposedly by accident. Uncle Ernest bid me to go in without him while he rescued the fallen silk and accompanied her up the stairs.”
The duchess drew in a patient breath and lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “The viscount is never in want of admirers.”
“Very true,” Briar agreed as her uncle appeared across the room.
When they’d first arrived in London, she’d thought his appeal came from the fact that he’d aged so well, with waves of silver-sand hair, lapis blue eyes, and only the slightest paunch to his lean physique. Yet lately she’d come to realize that it wasn’t his handsomeness or charming mannerisms. Women were drawn to him because the years of his life and the trials he’d born had never darkened his soul. He treated each new love as if it were the very first and the very last.
Already she knew that her uncle would stay awake this night, writing a sonnet to Mrs. Richards. He truly loved women, whether he was wooing them or simply in their company. And no matter what transpired between him and his latest loves—the details of which Briar did not want to even imagine—they would always part as friends. Or rather as what he called affectionate friends.
Briar supposed that was the best of ways to end a love affair. With an amicable separation, neither party would have to endure any crippling heartache, and only suffer from the occasional sigh of fond remembrance as Uncle Ernest often did.
“Your uncle should use the resources of the agency to find himself a wife, lest he steal any more hearts.”
Briar grinned. “But if you ask him, he’ll tell you that he finds the perfect wife at least three times a week. Even so, he isn’t allowed to fall in love with the client. None of us are.”
“Ah, but your sister did, and all turned out well in the end.”
“Yes, but with her amnesia, she couldn’t remember that she wasn’t supposed to. And besides, the ton was quick to forgive the new Duchess of Rydstrom.” It was unfortunate that Briar’s misstep hadn’t yielded a similar consequence.
“I see you fretting, my dear, but do not worry. I forbid anyone this evening from speaking of the slight oversight at the agency.”
If Briar had been a dog, she would have had her ears down and her tail between her legs. As a woman, her shoulders wanted to slump forward in shame. But she refused to give in to the impulse. What was the use in overthinking a mistake she’d already made? She would rather look past it and contemplate the future.
“What’s this I hear? Women discussing business? Scandalous!” a low voice said from behind her, the sonorous timbre all too familiar.
Briar was stunned into utter stillness. It wasn’t possible. A man lik
e Nicholas would never be permitted to set a single roguish toe into the ever-proper Duchess of Holliford’s residence.
Eyes wide, Briar slowly turned. And there he was, indeed, moving into their circle and bending to kiss the duchess’s papery cheek. The same cheek she’d kissed a moment ago.
What was he doing here? And, more importantly, why?
Her pulse quickened with indefensible awareness, their bargain storming to the forefront of her mind.
“Unconventional, perhaps, but hardly scandalous,” the duchess said, patting his arm fondly. “Though it is rather serendipitous that Miss Bourne and I should be discussing her uncle’s matrimonial agency in the same instant you happened our way.”
Nicholas grinned rakishly—though a man such as he likely had no other way of grinning—and inclined his head toward Briar, his gaze skimming over her flushed cheeks. “You must forgive my godmother, for she occasionally confuses the definition of serendipity with contrivance. She waved me over when she spotted me at the door.”
Godmother? Briar eyed him with suspicion. He’d conveniently neglected to mention an association with the duchess when Briar had mentioned Her Grace earlier.
“Pay him no heed, Miss Bourne, but allow me to present to you my godson, the Earl of Edgemont.”
“My lord.” Briar dipped into a curtsy by rote, pretending she didn’t know him at all. Then again, she didn’t. Not really . . . and yet, she’d said yes. Yes, Nicholas.
“Miss Bourne, a pleasure indeed.” Reaching out, he took her hand and pressed a kiss to her gloved fingertips. Wayward tingles waltzed down her limbs, beneath her skin.
“He has just returned from his estate in the country, and can you guess the recipient of the first social call he paid?” The duchess splayed her small hands over the brooch pinned to the gathers of her paisley shawl, her tone warm and eyes bright with pleasure. “Such a pleasant visit. We chatted for more than an hour before I had to shoo him out the doors and adjust the plans for dinner.”
Ten Kisses to Scandal (Misadventures in Matchmaking) Page 8