The Courtesan's Wager

by Claudia Dain

  Sophia was forgotten.

  The satire was forgotten.

  The brawl on Berkeley Square was forgotten.

  It was all of Cranleigh and his mouth and his heat and his touch. He swept her up, swept her out of herself and her fears until there was only Cranleigh and only Amelia and nothing else. And nothing else was wanted. Because all that there would ever need be was right here, right now, in Cranleigh.

  His mouth on hers, open and hot and seeking.

  Her mouth opening in welcome, their tongues meeting like old lovers, starved for contact.

  She put her hands on his chest, near his throat, and felt his heat and his strength.

  His mouth moved down to her throat and she leaned her head back, letting him kiss her neck, his breath covering her, his scent enfolding her.

  And then the door to the library from the vestibule opened, letting in an unwelcome rush of chill air and harsh reality.

  “Amelia!” her father’s voice rang out. “Remember yourself!”

  Amelia jerked and pushed against Cranleigh’s massive chest. Cranleigh did not jerk. Cranleigh, his expression as hard and resolved as she had ever seen it, rose to his feet, turned to face Aldreth and said, “I have just asked Lady Amelia to marry me. She has accepted. Will you give your consent?”

  “I will,” Aldreth said stiffly. “Is a special license necessary? ”

  By which he meant, was she possibly pregnant? She wanted to crawl under a rug.

  “No, but I would prefer one, if you can arrange it,” Cranleigh said.

  How was it that Cranleigh was not quaking when confronted by Aldreth? Everyone quaked when facing Aldreth. Although, Sophia likely did not.

  Whatever had happened to Sophia?

  Sophia was seductively sprawled on the sofa, her head nestled against the cushions, her neck arched back and exposed. Her eyes were closed and her breathing heavy. Asleep?

  “I can,” Aldreth said, scanning the room. “Where is Lady Jordan? And why is Lady Dalby here?”

  “Oh,” Sophia said, seeming to come awake on hearing her name spoken. “I should never drink Madeira. I have no head for it. Your grace,” she said, rising to her feet, looking not at all embarrassed, but then, she never did, “back from France so soon? You didn’t find Paris to your liking?”

  Aldreth’s pale blue eyes narrowed at Sophia. Sophia smiled indulgently at him in response. Amelia would love to know how she did that, how she had acquired that fear-no-man attitude to the most intimidating of men.

  “Lady Dalby,” Aldreth said, his eyes glinting suspiciously, “how is it that you are in the position of chaperoning my daughter? Inadequately, I might add.”

  “Inadequately?” Sophia said, rising to her feet to approach Aldreth. To actually approach him! Who drew nearer to Aldreth when his eyes had that particular glint? “Have you not seen your front door, your grace? Your daughter can choose from any man among them. Is that not the point of having a Season in Town? As this is her third Season out, I should think that you would have got round to the idea of her actually marrying.”

  “She is to marry me. The issue is settled,” Cranleigh said, in a most unhappy tone of voice.

  Amelia felt the very tiniest prickling of annoyance.

  “Is she?” Sophia said. “I must have missed that. Did Lord Cranleigh actually propose, Lady Amelia?”

  Sophia was staring at her. Cranleigh was staring at her. Aldreth was staring at her. Both Cranleigh and Aldreth looked impatient and slightly hostile. Sophia did not. Sophia smiled at her pleasantly and tilted her dark head in inquiry.

  “No,” Amelia found herself saying, “not actually.”

  Cranleigh jerked slightly and scowled. Aldreth scowled. Amelia found she was not intimidated in the least. It was quite refreshing.

  “Well then, shall we fling wide the doors to Aldreth House and let the gentlemen enter?” Sophia said, lifting her hands to check the condition of her hair.

  “We shall not fling wide anything, Lady Dalby, as I’m sure you must know,” Aldreth said.

  “Whyever not, your grace? Surely you must want your daughter to marry.”

  “She will marry,” Aldreth said. “She will marry the man who ruined her.”

  “Ruined her? How completely absurd. I’ve been in the room the entire time and Lord Cranleigh did not ruin Lady Amelia in the least.”

  “Not in the least? He was kissing her as I entered!” Aldreth said, raising his voice.

  “A girl is not ruined by a single kiss, your grace. Certainly it requires more than that to force a girl into a premature marriage,” Sophia said, apparently unmoved by Aldreth’s temper. “Wouldn’t you say so?”

  For some reason, that remark resulted in Aldreth closing his mouth and turning to the window, to look down on the scores of men jostling in the street in front of his house.

  “What of her dress? What of Gillray’s satire?” Cranleigh said, his voice just as sharp as Aldreth’s.

  “You, of all people, Lord Cranleigh, know the truth of that,” Sophia said. “Lady Amelia’s dress was torn on rose thorns.”

  “But the satire,” Cranleigh said.

  “Certainly Mr. Gillray must make his way in the world like everyone else,” Sophia answered, walking over to the window that faced the street. “If he should take the fact of Lady Amelia’s torn dress, a dress innocently torn on an innocent rose shrub, and make a few pounds off his artistic and highly fictionalized account of how her dress became torn, should Lady Amelia be held to account? Indeed, should she be forced into marriage because of a satire?”

  Put that way, it did sound absurd. Why should Amelia allow Mr. Gillray to choose her husband for her? Ridiculous. She was a duke’s daughter, wasn’t she? Who was Mr. Gillray to manhandle her?

  “You’re twisting things,” Cranleigh snarled, pacing the room. “You’re always twisting things to get what you want.”

  “I?” Sophia asked innocently, dark eyes twinkling in anything but innocence. “I have no wants here. But you, Lord Cranleigh, you have wants. I should say, based on your abrupt behavior of just minutes ago, and your being the one to have … invited Lady Amelia into the conservatory in the first place, that … well, someone had to give Gillray the idea for his satire.”

  Aldreth turned from the window at that remark and considered Cranleigh coldly. “That’s very true,” he said.

  “It may very well be true,” Cranleigh answered, just as coldly, “but I am not the man responsible.”

  Aldreth nodded and said, “Certainly it can’t be proved.”

  When Cranleigh narrowed his eyes at that, looking exactly like a man who was about to call another man out onto the dueling field, Sophia spoke.

  “Oh, proof,” Sophia said with a negligent wave of her hand. “There has never been any proof required by anyone regarding satires. Proof resides in a court of law only, and barely there.”

  “What did you mean, Lady Dalby, when you said Cranleigh invited Amelia into the conservatory?” Aldreth asked. “How did she and Cranleigh find themselves there, together, alone?”

  “You could ask me,” Amelia said, feeling very much annoyed that no one apparently thought it important to speak to her about any of this and very much tired of being overlooked by absolutely everyone, Cranleigh most especially. “I was there, after all. I should know how I got into the conservatory.”

  Aldreth looked at her as he usually did, with arrogance dipped in civility. “And how did you?”

  “I walked in, obviously,” Amelia said. “I walked in and … and the flowers were lovely.”

  “She walked in because I forced her to,” Cranleigh said, standing next to her. It was quite nice, very nearly chivalrous.

  “You did not force me to anything,” Amelia said over her father’s stern gaze at Cranleigh. “I cannot be forced.” Because it was the sort of thing that required a dueling field and she didn’t want to see anyone hurt, not even Aldreth.

  When both Cranleigh and Aldreth looked at her in blend
ed pity and disbelief, Sophia said, “How true that is. You must know, as you are here in London again, Aldreth, that Lady Amelia and I have formed an alliance, the purpose of which was and is to find her a most specific sort of husband. Your daughter, much like her father, is quite, quite specific and, dare I say it, relentless in her standards. She knows what she wants and she cannot be turned from it.”

  Amelia forced herself to stand in dignified silence while her father and Cranleigh stared at her in something akin to alarm.

  “Why, she has already declined the Duke of Calbourne and he, as you must be aware as you know his character, is most put out. He simply cannot believe he has been passed over. But there you are. Lady Amelia has found him lacking. She will not change her thoughts about him simply because Calbourne wishes it to be so. No, nor even though he even now is pressed against the doors of Aldreth House like a hound seeking shelter from the rain.”

  “You rejected Calbourne? ” Aldreth said, looking at her most strangely. In fact, it was a rather strange occurrence for Aldreth to look at her at all. He did not seem to enjoy spending time with his children, which was not at all remarkable in a duke, but was not at all pleasant either.

  “I did,” Amelia said, looking at Cranleigh. Cranleigh did not look back at her, the oaf. He truly was excessively dull not to understand all she had done.

  “Of course she did,” Sophia said. “It must be perfectly obvious to everyone that Lady Amelia is not the sort of woman to be picked up and carted off by the first interested party. She has standards and she holds to them. You must be so proud, Aldreth.”

  “Of course,” Aldreth answered a bit awkwardly. “Yet there is this situation and it cannot be talked around. There is the conservatory and there is the satire. And there is Lord Cranleigh.” He did not look at all pleased by the recitation, but then, Aldreth rarely looked pleased about anything.

  “There certainly is,” Cranleigh said. “I am not to be talked around either.”

  “But, darling, no one is trying to do that,” Sophia said, turning her back to the window fully. “It is only that you have made your somewhat tepid offer of marriage under a false presumption, that being that Lady Amelia has been ruined, however accidentally, by you. As we have determined, she has not been ruined. No satire can ruin her. No dress torn on a careless thorn can ruin her. Certainly the men below do not see her as ruined.”

  Cranleigh looked like he wanted to strike something. Sophia, most likely. Sophia, as Amelia was coming to expect, did not look alarmed in the least by Cranleigh’s hot expression of impotent rage. Impotent, not a word she had ever before conjoined with Cranleigh.

  “They see her as something,” Cranleigh said on an explosion of air.

  “Available?” Sophia offered.

  “Extremely available,” Cranleigh said.

  “How absurd,” Amelia snapped. “Has it just not been demonstrated that I am not extremely available? I am certainly not available to the Duke of Calbourne, much to his surprise, I should say. I, also, Lord Cranleigh, am not available to you, extremely or otherwise.”

  Aldreth looked at her in almost complete shock. Cranleigh did not. Cranleigh looked at her in annoyance, which he did often enough, whenever he wasn’t kissing her. He was a terribly contrary sort of man. She couldn’t think why she’d tolerated his kisses for all these years.

  Oh, very well. She could, and much more than tolerate, too. Crave was a word that came to mind.

  Why couldn’t he have asked her to marry him two years ago? If only he had done, this all could have been avoided. But he hadn’t and, worse, he was leaving England on the first ship he could find, and so she had been required to do something.

  She hadn’t anticipated precisely this, of course.

  “Well then,” Aldreth said slowly.

  “Well then,” Sophia continued, “I do think that, the excitement of the satire behind us, the gentlemen be allowed entry. Perhaps by fours? That should whittle them down to a manageable number before we must dress for dinner.”

  “Lady Dalby,” Aldreth began.

  “Lady Dalby,” Cranleigh said, cutting off the duke in his very own house, “I know this is rare fun for you, but there shall be no whittling, no interviewing, no dining room escapades such as befell Amelia’s cousin Louisa. There shall be nothing of the sort. Lady Amelia is not under your care.”

  “And I am not under yours, Cranleigh!” Amelia said sharply. “I am not yours to order or coddle or protect. The event of the conservatory was … a mistake, a mischance, a …”

  “Mésalliance?” Cranleigh asked softly, his blue eyes smoldering. She was not going to let smoldering eyes hinder her.

  “Yes, that,” she said, walking up to him, staring up into his eyes, showing him that she could resist him and that she was not going to tumble into his arms every time he touched her. Why had he waited two years? Mustn’t he answer for that? “All of that. Completely that. I have formed an alliance with Sophia Dalby and I will see it bear fruit. I will. Do not mistake me in this, Cranleigh. Believe me,” she said, aware that she was whispering by the end of her declaration.

  “Amy,” he whispered, “do not mistake me. No mercy. No quarter.”

  “No quarter?” Sophia said briskly. “Is that what I understood you to say, Lord Cranleigh? How very martial.”

  “For once, we are in agreement, Lady Dalby,” Cranleigh said, and with a glance at Amelia, he made his bow and left.

  The room felt empty without him. It always did.

  “What brought you home, Aldreth?” Sophia asked, pointedly changing the subject. “I’ll never believe you found Paris lacking.”

  Aldreth turned his very cynical gaze upon Sophia. Sophia soaked it up like a sponge. “I was warned to return to London, Lady Dalby.”

  “It sounds thrilling. No one ever warns me about anything,” Sophia said with a tilted smile. “You clearly took the warning seriously.”

  “Clearly,” Aldreth said, his voice a dangerous rumble. “I was warned to make haste to Aldreth House or see my daughter ruined completely.”

  “And how reassuring to see that she is not ruined completely at all,” Sophia said. “But who warned you, Aldreth? Someone who clearly did not have your best interests at heart, to ruin your trip abroad so callously.”

  Aldreth almost smiled. It was a rueful movement of his mouth, a twinkling in his light blue eyes that he quickly damped down into sodden arrogance again.

  “ ’Twas the Earl of Westlin, Sophia,” he finally answered. “Which I do not believe surprises you one whit.”

  “Not even two whits,” Sophia said. “He does love to spoil anyone’s good time. He’s most reliable that way. I’m somewhat surprised that he was able to … manage you so well, your grace.”

  “Yes, I do feel managed,” Aldreth said, this time almost actually smiling in fact.

  It was quite rare to see Aldreth smile. Amelia was not certain she had seen it even ten times in her entire life. And how did Sophia manage Aldreth so well? No one managed Aldreth. Well, perhaps with the exception of his mistress. By every rumor, she managed Aldreth like a trained bear.

  The analogy was entirely intentional.

  The door to the library opened abruptly yet again, causing Amelia to jump. At least this time she wasn’t kissing Cranleigh, or rather being kissed by him. That was truly the more accurate summation. Stupid of her not to remember it properly. The events of the day had clearly unsettled her.

  It was Hawksworth, looking dirty and tired and rumpled. And not the least bit pleased. The shock of seeing Hawks dirty was quite enough of a jolt. One did not often get dirty from continual napping.

  “Amy! What’s—oh, good afternoon, Father,” Hawks said, nearly skidding to a stop on the polished wood floors upon seeing Aldreth in his own home. Aldreth had never developed the habit of being home much. “I thought you were on the Continent. Lady Dalby! I did think to see you here.”

  “Did you? What a cordial remark, Lord Hawksworth. You have managed to p
roduce the most cordial, accommodating, and pleasant of children, Aldreth,” Sophia said, smiling winsomely at Hawksworth. What Sophia did not say and what was hanging silently in the air above them all was the question: How could Aldreth have done it? Aldreth was not cordial in the least.

  “But what are you doing here, Hawks?” Amelia said. “I thought you were for the country, a bit of hunting, wasn’t it?” For how else could she communicate in front of Aldreth her absolute horror at seeing her brother present at the most important moment of her life? That of snaring a husband by the most unorthodox means possible. And by that she meant Sophia Dalby.

  “Yes, well,” Hawks stammered, glancing at Aldreth, who looked entirely too interested in both Hawksworth’s departure from Town and his unexpected arrival. “I, that is …”

  “Don’t tell me you weren’t welcomed warmly at Marshfield Park, Lord Hawksworth,” Sophia said. “I shan’t believe that my son closed the door upon you.”

  “He did not,” Hawksworth said, for he was not such a fool as to insult Sophia’s family in such a way. “Nor did Mr. Grey, who was most hospitable, it was only that he, we, it was thought, that is, it was decided that being in Town might be preferable. At present. And it does seem so, doesn’t it?”

  As Hawks was clearly speaking to Amelia, she had to form some sort of answer that would be acceptable to her father. She couldn’t think how it could be done. Aldreth found very little acceptable in the best of circumstances. This was hardly the best of circumstances.

  She was saved from having to answer Hawks by the entry into the library of the Earl of Dalby, his uncle Mr. John Grey, and his three sons, the various Mr. Greys of the Iroquois nation. He had dragged them home, here, now? Hawks was entirely worthless.

  The introductions were made in a perfunctory fashion and then Hawksworth said, “You’re to marry Lord Cranleigh, then? I had not thought, that is, I had not considered him to be someone of interest to you, Amelia.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Amelia said stiffly. “I am not going to marry Lord Cranleigh. Not at all. Whyever did you think so?”