The Courtesan's Wager

by Claudia Dain

  Into Cranleigh’s stubbornness strode Sophia Dalby, looking quite relaxed and full of cheer, even though her current pet project stood across the room in an alarming state of dishabille.

  “A woman of such beauty and poise looks lovely no matter her state of dress,” Sophia said, “or undress. As to that, I’ve asked Miss Prestwick to allow Lady Amelia to borrow some sort of covering as Lady Amelia seems determined not to leave the ball. Stalwart girl, isn’t she? Such a pleasure to see girls with a bit of spine to them. Ah, and there’s Miss Prestwick now, and isn’t that a very pretty shawl she’s handing her? Such a generous gesture.”

  The fact that Sophia had needed to prod Miss Prestwick to make the gesture was not deemed worthy of comment.

  “As Lady Amelia is staying,” Sophia continued, “and as there is some speculation as to the manner in which her dress sustained injury, well, to be perfectly frank, it is nearly destroyed, isn’t it?” She looked at Cranleigh as she said it. Cranleigh returned her look and said nothing. Damned Cranleigh, never letting loose of his tongue. It made learning anything at all nearly impossible. “The only way to silence the most aggressive of rumors is for you, Lord Cranleigh, to ask her to dance.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Cranleigh said stiffly.

  “Oh, I shall speak so you cannot fail to understand me,” Sophia said with deceptive civility. Deceptive surely, for the air fairly sizzled between them. Of all the Blakesley brothers, Cranleigh was the only one who had never had a pleasant word to say about Sophia Dalby. The others may not have had any word to say, not knowing her, but Cranleigh was one of the few men about Town who didn’t seem to care for her in the least. Which made everyone very curious indeed. “The music is rather loud. I shall repeat then, shall I? You must dance with Lady Amelia, Lord Cranleigh. There is simply no other way to salvage her reputation and you surely must want that. I can’t think why a gentleman of your reputation would want it bandied about that he’d ruined a girl merely to keep her from his brother.”

  The silence that comment engendered could have been cut with a sword. And Cranleigh looked like he wanted to do just that.

  “I would be delighted to dance with Lady Amelia,” the Marquis of Ruan said.

  Sophia did not so much as turn to look at him. “How amiable of you,” Sophia said dismissively. “But as this does not concern you, Lord Ruan, and as you clearly don’t understand the intricacy of the situation, you should, by all means, find your entertainment elsewhere.”

  “I can’t imagine being more entertained than I am at this moment,” Ruan said with a pleasant smile. His intent was not at all pleasant and that was obvious to all of them. Ruan, fulfilling his reputation to perfection, did not seem to care a whit whether anyone but himself was pleased or not.

  “Such a limited imagination,” Sophia said. “I would hardly have thought it. You did imply otherwise.”

  She gave Ruan a look of amused annoyance, much the look one would give to an irritating but beloved pet. Ruan bowed crisply and said, “Whatever you imagine, Lady Dalby, shall be fulfilled. That I promise you.” And then he wandered across the room in the general direction of Lord Penrith. Sophia watched him for a moment, watched as Ruan turned when he was perhaps fifteen feet from her, winked at her in bold flirtation, and continued on.

  Sophia very nearly chuckled. She swallowed the sound whole.

  “As I was saying,” she said when Ruan was gone, “it must be Lord Cranleigh, mustn’t it?” The Blakesleys stared at her, not quite able to make the shift in conversation as quickly as she could. “As his name is linked to hers, poor dear”—and it was not clear exactly who was the poor dear, Cranleigh or Amelia—“and as her dress is evidence of something, it must be Lord Cranleigh who silences every possibility of scandal by dancing with the girl.”

  “I fail to see what that will accomplish,” Cranleigh said.

  “You are not so untutored, Lord Cranleigh, that you cannot anticipate precisely what it will accomplish,” Sophia countered. “If you had ruined the poor dear”—ah, so Amelia was the poor dear—“then you would naturally avoid her now. If nothing unfortunate happened in the conservatory, then you would be as guileless as a lamb in approaching her now.”

  As no one in the northern hemisphere would ever accuse Cranleigh of being guileless, no matter what the cause or what the evidence, that was pushing the point a bit too far. But no one argued the point. To what purpose? No one wanted to see Lady Amelia ruined.

  Not even Cranleigh.

  “I would have thought that, by approaching her,” Cranleigh said, “I would be confirming whatever suspicions might be entertained. Surely, giving the lady a refined distance is all that is required.”

  “My lord Cranleigh,” Sophia said softly, “a gentlemen must do more than is required, must he not, particularly where a lady is concerned? Oh, but perhaps another solution is presenting itself even now. The Duke of Calbourne is at her side, which surely must please them both. They certainly look well pleased, and as this set is ending, it does appear that they will dance the next set. How perfectly lovely,” Sophia said cheerfully. “It looks as if you are not needed after all, Lord Cranleigh. I should think that the duke will handle things admirably, as dukes so often do.”

  What to say to that?

  “I would not put my duty to Aldreth’s daughter upon some other man’s shoulders,” Cranleigh said abruptly, leaving their party to make his way across the crowded floor, everyone in the room watching his progress. Everyone, that is, with the exception of Lady Amelia, who kept her back aimed precisely at the spot where Lord Cranleigh had been. Miss Prestwick, still somewhat bound by hospitality and feminine concern over something so horrendous as a torn gown, and nearly rooted to the spot by the fact that the Duke of Calbourne had joined their small party, was at Amelia’s side when Cranleigh reached them.

  “I do think you should prepare yourself, Lady Amelia,” Penelope said, staring at Cranleigh in something very nearly a trance.

  Amelia knew precisely what could induce a fine, healthy girl to get that approximate look: Cranleigh. He was good at freezing innocent girls with a mere gaze. She did not find it a relaxing experience in her own case and found it even less enjoyable when watching it happen to another female.

  “Prepare myself for what?” Amelia said in abundant unconcern. “I have been through the worst, Miss Prestwick, a torn gown at the most fashionable ball of the Season. I shall fear no mere man.”

  “Even if he steps upon your toes, Lady Amelia?” Calbourne asked with a smile.

  “Even then,” she said. “I can and will defend myself. You have been forewarned,” she said with a teasing smile as Cranleigh joined their circle. The smile was directed at Calbourne, but it was meant for Cranleigh.

  “ ’Tis a woman’s right,” Calbourne said.

  “ ’Tis a woman’s duty,” Cranleigh interjected, refusing to look at her, directing his gaze to Miss Prestwick instead. “Is it not so, Miss Prestwick? A woman’s first concern is to protect her honor? ”

  “I believe the word you mean is chastity, Lord Cranleigh, which seems to become a man’s first concern upon leaving the nursery,” Amelia said as Penelope was forming her answer. “He seems equally determined to either want to rob her of it or cast her high upon some distant shelf where she will die of dusty chastity.” Calbourne’s mouth hung agape. Miss Prestwick seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. Cranleigh bore his usual expression of grim annoyance. “I see I haven’t shocked you, Lord Cranleigh, which certainly proves my point. But excuse me, Miss Prestwick, I spoke hurriedly, yet would you not agree? ”

  Miss Prestwick, to her credit, rallied quickly. “I suppose it must depend upon the man,” Miss Prestwick said. “Certainly a brother is a man and yet he does not seek to steal his sister’s … honor, does he? A certain logic must be applied, don’t you agree? ”

  “A logical woman,” Calbourne said wearily, a fact he didn’t bother to hide. “I suppose you have been educated, Miss Prestwick? ”


  “I know my alphabet, your grace,” Penelope answered, looking extremely uncomfortable.

  “And your numbers, too, I should hope,” Amelia said. “It is to a man’s advantage to keep a woman uninformed, uneducated, and untutored. How else to keep her from besting him?”

  “She could always fight him in a duel,” Cranleigh said sarcastically.

  “Pistols or swords, Lord Cranleigh?” Amelia swiftly replied, staring at him sharply.

  “Are you adept at either, Lady Amelia, or would you cajole a man into taking action on your behalf?” Cranleigh snapped. “I do think that is the way a woman gets what she wants.”

  “As long as she gets what she wants, Lord Cranleigh, and the man gets a good fight in the bargain, then both shall find themselves well content. It is no secret that men of a certain vigorous disposition do enjoy a small battle or two; even you should be aware of that, by hearsay at least. Though I don’t recall asking you what you think about the matter, Lord Cranleigh,” Amelia said. “But I do care what you think, Calbourne,” she said, turning her gaze from Cranleigh and his icy rage to Calbourne’s startled expression. “Do you think a woman should be kept ignorant? ”

  “Of certain things, yes,” Calbourne said.

  “Of maps and mathematics, of art and philosophy?” Amelia said earnestly.

  “Of pistols and swords?” Cranleigh sniped.

  “Or merely of men who use pistols and swords?” Penelope said, falling into the rhythm if not the tone of the game.

  Into the stilted silence that followed, Amelia found it almost impossible not to glare at Cranleigh, and really, why shouldn’t she? He had tried by the most unchivalrous and calculated way possible to drive her from the ball. What a horrid shock it clearly was for him that she refused to be driven. She was not to be distracted by something as ordinary as a tear in her gown, though it was rather more than a single tear and there had been something more to distract her than ripped fabric.

  He had kissed her. Again. She had not wanted it, she had not sought it, and she had not run from it. But that was only because she was trapped within roses and couldn’t move. That was the sole reason she had stood stock-still and allowed him to kiss her.

  She had reasoned this out while trying to disentangle herself from the roses, and she was fairly well pleased by her summation of events.

  As to why she had kissed him back, she hadn’t worked that out yet to her satisfaction. But she would. All she knew at the moment was that her heart had hammered and her skin had flushed and her breasts had … Well, he couldn’t possibly know what her breasts had done as a result of his touch so there was little point in counting that. In this secret war they had been conducting between them for two years, only obvious defeats and victories counted. Or that’s what she had decided. She didn’t know or care what Cranleigh thought of any of it. He probably didn’t think at all, he just scowled and snarled and reacted in any fashion he thought right to him.

  Sailor.

  What he did not yet realize was that she had taken their war public.

  She never should have let him kiss her that first time. It had been unwise in the extreme, and just look at how it complicated everything. Of course, he had taken the kiss rather than asked for it, and no matter how she went over it in her mind, and she went over it far more than was necessary or helpful, she couldn’t see how she could have prevented it. It was going to be a tad difficult to be married to Iveston with Cranleigh kissing her at almost every opportunity; a fact which ought to be perfectly obvious to him.

  Could he stop? It hardly appeared so.

  Could she stop? Most assuredly not. He had started it, after all, yet it was perfectly obvious that she would have to finish it. If that wasn’t just like a man.

  Certainly Cranleigh had muddled things up nicely. It was all his fault, every bit of it. She hadn’t been the one to kiss a man at the innocent age of eighteen, especially as that man wasn’t likely to become a duke. She did have her priorities in order, and had done since the age of six, at the very latest. By ten, her resolve had only firmed up into something akin to mortar. By sixteen, seeing that her teeth were straight and white, her bosoms firm and round, her skin clear of pox, she had known it for a fact; she would wed a duke. She had everything needed to acquire one.

  At the age of eighteen, the year of her come out, she had met Lord Cranleigh, and that had changed everything, instantly. Not that he seemed aware of it.

  Cranleigh, older and wiser and certainly more experienced, had used his wiles and his magnetism and pure brute force to take her in his muscular arms, press her against his hot chest, and kiss her boldly. It had taken him the better part of a day to get round to it, too, which really had been most annoying of him. She had thought he was never going to make his move, then he had, and then he had done nothing about it. Nothing at all. Not a marriage proposal in two long years. Nothing but torrid kisses and a few mostly innocent caresses, and no proposal. He was clearly the most obstinate, stupid man in England.

  If she didn’t know better, she might begin to think he didn’t want to marry her!

  The only thing that had kept her at all sane during the two years from that first kiss to this moment was that no one, no one, knew what had happened between them. She was quite pleased about that, nearly proud. Certainly Louisa would be shocked, as Louisa believed she knew every thought in Amelia’s head. She very nearly did. Some thoughts, however, were not meant to be shared and what she thought of Cranleigh fit firmly in that category.

  They did meet each other less than she would have liked as he was not the most sociable man she had ever met, not that it diminished his appeal. No, far from it. In fact, the danger inherent in their encounters added quite a nice dollop of excitement to what, it must be admitted, were rather boring social affairs of the most repetitive type. Cranleigh dragging her off into an alcove to kiss her at the odd recital made the pianoforte nearly bearable.

  And when he could not drag her off, it was miserable.

  There had been one near moment on the night Louisa had been ruined by Lord Henry Blakesley, Cranleigh’s brother. They had been in the same room, not alone naturally, for nearly an hour. That had been a challenge. They had ignored each other as best they may, not an easy task as Cranleigh was flatly impossible to ignore. He had scowled at her a few times and she had turned her back on him a few more, and they had got through it.

  She did try to be a proper duke’s daughter, but Cranleigh made it so difficult.

  Then there had been that unfortunate weekend spent at a house party at the Earl of Quinton’s estate. Quinton’s heir, the handsome Lord Raithby, had very nearly stumbled upon Cranleigh kissing her in the maze. She had not wanted to be in the maze, mind you, but as it was the afternoon’s entertainment, she had been obligated, as a good guest only. That Cranleigh had found her there had been purely by chance, she was nearly certain. Upon reflection, and she had reflected upon it often since then, it had seemed to her that Cranleigh had hunted her down. How else to explain his luck at finding her in a maze? In that particular instance he had come toward her at a trot, grabbed her round the waist before she had the wit to protest, bent her backward and begun kissing her on the swells of her breasts, securely and demurely tucked away beneath scads of sturdy fabric, and proceeded upward until he had her mouth firmly beneath his. As she had been bent backward, what was she to have done? She’d held onto his waist and tried to keep as quiet as possible. It was a house party, after all, and they were out in the open. Anyone could have come upon them, and nearly did in the form of Lord Raithby.

  There had been other instances over the years, all of them similar in basic substance, all of them amorous assaults on her person that should have resulted in a speedy proposal. No proposal had been forthcoming, yet he could not stop kissing her. Ridiculous, really, as she was not the sort of girl to go about letting a man have his way with her without benefit of marrige. Or she hadn’t been that sort of girl until meeting Cranleigh.


  She really considered it a service to the Hyde name that she hadn’t made public what an absolute barbarian Cranleigh was. He truly fit the description of a sailor on shore leave, and looked like one as well. If they only knew how it had begun, how innocent of all guile and false purpose she had been and would still be if not for falling in love with the most inconvenient, impossible man. And now she was reduced to using guile to attain him, for what else was the dukes list but a bit of guile? Just look how he had changed her! At eighteen, what had she known of guile?

  Oh, very well, some little bit even at eighteen, but Cranleigh had started it. Cranleigh always started it.

  She remembered that first kiss vividly, as was surely to be expected.

  It was late winter, the eighteenth of March, to be exact, and Aldreth was at home on one of his rare visits to Sandworth, the ancestral estate. As he was at home and as it was winter and as he was bored, he allowed that a small and intimate party of not more than forty guests were to be invited to entertain him, and each other, if it so happened. Oh, and his children, who were rarely offered any sort of entertainment whatsoever.

  Naturally, Aldreth being what he was, a duke, a widower, and a father, in that order, did not make mention of any of those particulars, but Amelia and Hawksworth, not being completely dull, understood that that is what had occurred.

  The guests who arrived were the Duke and Duchess of Hyde, along with most of their sons, Lord Iveston markedly absent, the dowager Countess of Dalby and the Earl of Dalby, Lady Caroline, at fourteen, being forced to keep to her lessons, the Duke and Duchess of Edenham, his third wife who was in the very first flush of pregnancy, and various others who were too unimportant to bother about. Naturally, she had been very excited about meeting the Marquis of Iveston. It would not have been at all amiss and she certainly would not have minded in the least to have snared Iveston before even her come out. It would have saved so much bother and, indeed, been something of a coup to formally enter Society as the wife of the heir apparent to the Duke of Hyde.