Proof by Seduction

by Courtney Milan

  He had only thought he was tongue-tied before. Now words deserted him utterly. The rational thing to do would be to keep silent, to dump her back at her home, in hopes that she would cry herself out in her own room. But she was here now, and weeping quietly into her skirts. And he had run away too many times, leaving her to believe she wasn’t good enough.

  Touch is a circuit.

  Gareth swallowed fear and awkwardness. He compressed them into a solid lump in his chest. And then he did something he’d never done before. He crossed the hired coach to sit beside his sister. And he put his arms around her.

  She stiffened in shock. In those first delicate seconds, he almost pulled away. Then she folded into his embrace. To his surprise, he found that the cold really did flow out of him. And it didn’t go into Laura. Instead, her sobs quieted to soft hiccups. They thawed each other.

  Newton would have been flabbergasted. This kind of energy was not conserved.

  By the time her sobs quieted, he’d found the right words. “I learned how to balance accounts,” he said, “instead of how to be a brother. I’m not any good at it, although I’m trying to learn. But, Laura, I loved you from the first moment you pulled my hair. I always have.”

  She inhaled sharply. She tilted her face up to his, her eyes wet and round.

  “Now come,” he said. “Does your Alex love you back, or is he a hopeless idiot?”

  “He loves me,” she said quietly. “But I’m afraid he’ll stop after we marry. He’ll change his mind. He’ll—”

  “He’ll love you more. Trust me.”

  “Really?” She was far too somber.

  “Really.” He had no words to make her smile, and so Gareth tweaked her nose.

  And she giggled.

  It had been a long time since he’d laughed. But despite all those years, he still remembered how. What he’d forgotten was the lightness of his soul when he did so. The moment was perfect.

  Almost perfect. One small corner of blackness coiled beneath his good humor. He recognized it for the unworthy creature that it was, but still it poked its head out, whispering darkness.

  Men leave. Why should Jenny’s last comment sting so? It was no more than he deserved. And Laura, of all people, knew the truth of what she said. After all, he’d been leaving his sister since she was born, returning to his grandfather’s estate after every short visit.

  He’d lost years of Laura’s life to the responsibilities of the marquessate. He’d likely lose Jenny, too. His title eventually devoured everything that mattered. But as he held his sister, he could not identify the purpose of it all. And that frightened him more than anything.

  ONE HOUR PASSED as Jenny waited in trepidation. Then two. She could imagine all too well the cold castigation Gareth might heap on her head. He’d told her not to interfere. And what had she done? Interfered, and in the worst way possible.

  Her own fear gradually gave way to anger. Jenny’s choices were dwindling with her remaining stock of coins.

  The money Mr. Sevin had stolen would no doubt seem paltry to Gareth. But to her, that money had not been mere coin. It had been independence. Without it, she’d lost her ability to pretend Gareth was a lover, an equal, instead of the superior Lord Blakely. If she took his coins now, he would turn into another client, a person she’d have to please at the expense of her own feelings.

  During the twelve years of Jenny’s career, the weight of Madame Esmerelda had closed around her, suffocating. She’d tailored every word she said. She’d listened to every fear that her clients brought to her, and under the guise of a false persona, had given the reassurances they wanted to hear in return. There’d been no room for Jenny Keeble.

  A week of freedom from those stultifying confines had convinced her never to crawl back into that small space. And so she refused to beg Gareth for his good opinion. She’d lived that way once. She’d never do it again.

  Gradually, her feelings came to a roiling boil. How dare he, after all? How dare he look down his nose at her for telling his sister she was strong? How dare he make Jenny feel smaller than an ant? She was his equal—or, at least, she wanted to be.

  Even if she didn’t take his coins, she could not lie to herself any longer. His equal? She wasn’t acting as if she were his equal. She sat here, awaiting his return so that he could pass judgment on her behavior. And so had it been ever since he’d visited her on that fateful night. He decided whether to come to her or not. He waited on no invitation, and of course extended no reciprocal visiting privileges.

  Something snapped inside her. She could do nothing about Mr. Sevin. She had no power to stay in London, once her coins ran out.

  But she’d be damned before she let this dreadful imbalance continue.

  She donned half boots and trundled out the door. The wind tossed her hair on the way and mussed her skirts. She looked a fright. But her anger had not lapsed by the time she reached the great stone edifice Gareth called home. She cast one look at the servants’ entrance and then raised her nose in the air.

  Right. His equal.

  Jenny marched up to the solid black double doors that fronted the street, raising her chin in borrowed bravado. She rapped the brass knocker sharply.

  The door swung open. The butler took one look at her and his face tightened in recognition. He drew himself up, and glanced down his nose at her faded blue dress.

  “Tell Lord Blakely Miss Keeble is here to see him.”

  He pushed a silver salver at her. “Have you a card?”

  “No. But you have a voice. Tell him.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Keeble. He’s not home.” His tone was depressing.

  “Oh, dear. But his lordship specifically said he would be here at this hour.”

  “He is about to leave.”

  “Excellent. I’ll just sit here on the stoop and wait, then.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “Although he may be delayed in his departure. Perhaps for as much as two hours.”

  Jenny smiled angelically. “Then won’t he be angry when he finds you’ve made me wait all that time? Maybe you ought to consult him.”

  The butler grimaced and shut the door. Perhaps fetching reinforcements to oust her? Maybe asking his almighty Lordship what to do about the annoying woman encamped upon his doorstep. Jenny waited.

  It was a bare minute before the door opened again. “His Lordship will see you, Miss Keeble.” To his credit, the butler did not let a hint of his former contempt show.

  Jenny let out the breath she’d been holding. Gareth allowed her entry into his home. She didn’t know what to make of it. The butler led her down the familiar hallway.

  Gareth’s back was to her as she entered his study. He was seated, talking to another man. As the butler opened the door, both gentlemen stood. Gareth turned.

  Any lingering anger on Jenny’s part evaporated. He smiled. Not in polite welcoming greeting; in unpracticed pleasure. The expression was like a sunburst over her heart. And those golden eyes lit at her arrival. Her fingers curled of their own accord.

  “Ah,” said the other man before Jenny could be announced. “The hypothetical Miss Keeble.”

  “White?”

  The other gentleman nodded at Gareth’s terse command.

  “Out. Now.”

  As short and rude as Gareth sounded, Mr. White grinned and raised his fingers to tip an imaginary hat. And then he disappeared. The door shut on him and the butler, and silence fell.

  Jenny ought to start the conversation. But her righteous anger had evaporated with his smile, and it seemed silly to declare war on a man who looked at her with that much pleasure.

  He spoke for her. “Do you know what it’s like to know your sister is afraid of you?”

  His tone was calm, conversational. And like that, he sucked all the air from her lungs. Jenny shook her head, mutely.

  “My grandfather had my guardianship after my mother remarried. He kept me on the estate with him, or here in London. To teach me, he said. But what I lea
rned was not to show any emotion. Most particularly not tears, laughter or enjoyment. Those things, Grandfather said, were softness, inherited from my mother. She remarried as quickly as she dared after my father died. And she did so, knowing it would mean leaving me alone with my grandfather.”

  Jenny looked up into Gareth’s eyes.

  “Eventually, I just stopped showing what I felt. It was easier. And Grandfather was right. Because when you’re a marquess, and you don’t laugh when you should, people jump to make things right. When you’re a marquess and you send a man a cold, cutting glance, he shivers. He taught me to be a scalpel.”

  “Well,” Jenny said slowly, “given your skills at carving, that was foolish of him.”

  A smile fluttered on his lips. “Indeed.”

  “Would you know,” Jenny remarked, “I don’t believe I would have liked your grandfather.”

  “He was a complicated man.”

  Another pause. This one, Jenny felt, she must fill. She walked round Gareth’s desk and glanced at the papers stacked on top. Columns of figures filled them.

  “No drawings of birds this time?” she asked.

  “It’s after noon. I bundle up all the things I care about after noon. Now, it’s only estate business.”

  “Hmm.” Jenny poked under a stack of hot-pressed paper and found more figures. “Where did they go?”

  He crossed to her side and slid out a drawer. A thick sheaf of papers, bound with green cotton tape, lay inside. Gareth removed it almost reverently and untied the ribbon.

  “Here.” He ducked his head as he spoke, as if he were embarrassed. “I’m working on this monograph.” He shuffled pages—charts, drawings, and a great deal of text. When he looked up, there was a sparkle in his eye.

  “You see, I’ve been thinking about Lamarck’s theory—” He cut himself off and suddenly straightened, flattening the paper under flat palms. “That is to say—I fit everything I care for in the mornings. I have another appointment this evening in any event. And you don’t care about Lamarck, anyway.”

  Jenny laid her hand over his. “But you do.”

  He glanced at the door, as wary as a child sneaking sweets from the pantry. “Well…”

  Jenny plucked the pages from beneath his hands. “So this is everything you care for.”

  She flipped through his work before finding the ink sketches at the end.

  “Here,” Gareth said. “That’s a male macaw. I wish I could show you the bright red of those wing feathers. There’s no color here in England to match it. And there’s the female, less splashy—”

  He turned the page and froze.

  Because the sketch on the next page was no impatient ink drawing of a macaw. It was her. He’d even labeled it: Jenny.

  He’d drawn her in the same rough style he employed with the birds, strong, dark lines that hinted at movement and luminosity. Jenny could not have pointed to any one feature that was drawn incorrectly. And yet—

  “I don’t look like that,” she protested.

  Because the woman in Gareth’s sketches seemed ethereal, light bouncing off dark eyes and coiled hair.

  He compressed his lips together.

  “You do to me,” he finally said. He reached for the papers and stacked them together, binding them up again.

  “Gareth.”

  He didn’t look at her but wound the tape savagely around his work and cinched a knot. “I told you those pages held everything I cared about.”

  “Gareth.”

  He hefted his drawings from hand to hand.

  “Some people,” he said, looking down as if addressing the desk, “think that being a marquess means you sit in the House of Lords and collect myriad rents from dreary little tenants. They think it means you enter the dining hall before the earls and after the dukes. They think it means ceremonial robes, and plenty to eat even in times of hunger. They think you can sample a bevy of eager, beautiful women.”

  “And do you not?”

  His hand danced idly down his drawings. “Maybe one beautiful woman. But that is not what it means to be a marquess here in England. You see, somewhere in my distant past there was a first lord, lifted above the common folk as reward for a great service to his king.”

  “What was it, with your ancestors?”

  “Drubbing the Welsh, actually. But you see, the title is a reward with a sting—it is not a onetime payment for services rendered. It is a promise that condemns your firstborn son, and his, and his thereafter. It binds them, through the title, in service to the land. My grandfather was harsh, but there was a reason for it.”

  He set his bound drawings in the drawer and then slowly, firmly, slid it closed.

  “When a marquess takes a man’s pound in rents, he does not just make a profit. He makes a pledge. I cannot sleep at night, sometimes, thinking about those pledges. Should I establish a cotton mill, like the ones in Manchester? On the one hand, they provide employment, and if my dependents are starving, I am responsible. On the other, the accidents that inevitably result…Well, I am responsible for those, too. It did not take me long to realize why my grandfather deprecated laughter. There’s little room for it in the marquessate. There’s too much human suffering, and too little a marquess can do about it.”

  “You don’t have to do this to yourself,” Jenny said. “Hundreds of other lords don’t—” She couldn’t make herself tell him to become like everyone else. “There’s no warmth in your life. How can you stand it?”

  He made a little gesture. “Spare me your pity. Do listen to yourself. Poor Gareth—forced to be a marquess. I imagine the human suffering between me and my tenants is distributed in a relatively inequitable fashion.”

  “Hire an estate manager. Let others share the responsibility.”

  He spread his hands. “And who would I trust? I was born to do this. Nobody else has gone through the training my grandfather required. And it is my responsibility. How could I ask another to shoulder it?”

  It sat between them, that crystalline thing. He’d been taught that he was bound ruthlessly into service, obligated to break his spirit against his iron-hard will. She wished she could despise him for it.

  She could not. In fact, she was very afraid that the emotion that caused her hands to tremble was something close to the opposite. The man who hollowed himself out for the sake of a burden undertaken by his many-times-great-grandfather did not falter from responsibility, nor try to evade it.

  Whatever it was she felt now, she knew it could not be love. Love would not feel like this. She would not feel his own hurt, as if she were clutching shards of glass to her chest.

  “You understand—” He stopped, and took her hand. His fingers seemed cool against her own. His words sounded slow and metallic. “You understand,” he finally continued, “why I am telling you this. It is not so you will pity me. It is because you need to know I will never risk legitimate sons.”

  Jenny’s heart thumped. The corner of his lip curled. Not a smile, but an expression of ineffable sadness.

  “You see,” he explained, “I could never inflict the marquessate on anyone I cared about.”

  All the best of Gareth, Jenny thought, had been bound over to serve Lord Blakely. She turned his hand over in her palm and squeezed.

  “So it won’t bother you to inflict it on Ned?”

  She intended to tease him, to make him forget his own pain. But he merely shook his head—not in answer, she thought, but frustration. “Now,” he said softly, “you understand why I tried not to care for the boy.”

  Jenny looked away. Her chin trembled. He captured it with his fingers and turned her face to his. “And that,” he said gently, “is why I will buy you anything you want.”

  He kissed her as if she were the sole source of sunlight. It felt as if he were spearing her with giant wooden splinters.

  He wanted her to stay. He would give her anything she wanted. But what she wanted was to be able to respect herself. And the more he offered to buy her, the le
ss likely the prospect seemed.

  AFTER JENNY LEFT, grim responsibility once again beckoned to Gareth. He finished dressing. The journey to Ned’s home was short, but weighed heavily on his heart.

  But when he stepped onto the walk outside the stone stairs that led up to his cousin’s door, he stopped in his tracks, unable to believe what he saw.

  He’d pleaded with Ware and finally cajoled the man to agree to a second appointment. He’d informed Ned of the time most specifically. He’d underscored the importance of these discussions: As the days passed, gossip grew. Another tense week, and Ned could be ostracized, perhaps for good. Lady Kathleen was already the object of both pity and scorn.

  But the situation could still be saved for the two of them.

  Rather, it might have been saved, were it not for the scene unfolding before Gareth’s eyes.

  The good news was that Ned was dressed. And washed and shaved. The bad news was, he was not waiting for Gareth in the parlor as instructed. Ned was stepping into a closed carriage. Without Gareth. Too-loud laughter rang from the conveyance as his cousin reached for the door.

  The out-of-kilter sound of that laugh was all too familiar. Gareth remembered that lopsided tempo. At Cambridge, it had always been mixed with loud conversation and the heady smell of cheap spirits. It had heralded annoying interruptions to Gareth’s valuable study time. And complaints, of course, never had any effect on drunken men. Gareth’s skin prickled in visceral reminder. It was still light out, and the men were already drunk. And Gareth had specifically told Ned to wait for him.

  Gareth jumped from his own carriage and strode toward his cousin. “Wait one moment!” he called.

  Ned’s head turned. Gareth couldn’t make out his expression from this distance, but he didn’t need to be able to see his cousin’s face to translate the sharp jerk of his head back toward the carriage. It was no surprise when Ned pulled himself in. Another fellow—hatless, cravat-less, unbuttoned coat flapping untidily in the wind—looked around the street with a secretive air and then ducked inside the carriage, as well.