The Courtesan's Wager

by Claudia Dain

  “So you have heard of the wager?” Penrith asked mildly, one brow cocking in sardonic amusement.

  “There are many wagers on White’s book,” Cranleigh said. “Certainly it is not a topic for Lady Amelia’s ears.”

  Cranleigh, aside from kissing her all over Town, was never one to want her to have any amusement at all.

  “Yes,” Penrith said, “I suppose that, now that she is to marry, it should be her husband’s decision as to what to tell her. Or not to tell her, as he determines.”

  How perfectly dreadful. She was certainly not going to endure a husband like that.

  “I am not going to,” she said, “that is, I have not agreed to marry Lord Cranleigh. Indeed, I have not agreed to marry anyone. As yet.”

  “As yet?” Edenham said, walking most elegantly toward the Aldreth House stairs. “That does sound encouraging. May we not come in out of the rain, Lady Amelia? As Aldreth is At Home, it would be convenient to call upon him. And his daughter.”

  Oh, dear.

  Amelia had never stood quite so close to the Duke of Edenham before now. In fact, most women kept a healthy distance from him, the rumors of his lethal quality being what they were. Amelia now perhaps wondered if Edenham was lethal in an entirely different manner.

  He was devastatingly handsome. Truly and remarkably handsome. Tall and lithe, dark brown hair and eyes, a brow worthy of a sonnet, and the most elegant nose she’d ever seen. Lethal, yes, most assuredly.

  “You’re not going to let them in,” Cranleigh snarled softly in her direction. “Not when I’ve thrashed half of London to keep them out.”

  “It is my father’s house, Lord Cranleigh,” she said, sounding more brittle than was attractive. Edenham smiled fractionally. Amelia felt something skitter along the backs of her knees. She might have giggled; she did hope not. “I wouldn’t think of turning away Aldreth’s guests.”

  “Hell and blast, Amy!” he said in a rumble of annoyance. “You’re doing this to torment me.”

  “Am I?” she said sweetly. “How convenient.” Cranleigh looked at her in such a fashion then that she turned quickly away from him. When he got that look in his eyes, well, dragging her off into a closet to kiss her senseless was his usual next move. She did hope he could find a closet quickly. “Gentlemen? I do believe the Duke of Aldreth is At Home.”

  And, before Cranleigh could reach her, Amelia scooted past the footmen and into the house.

  Nineteen

  “IT looks like she’s admitting them,” Sophia said from her post at the front window. “How clever of her.”

  Aldreth, who was standing at Sophia’s side, looked askance at her.

  “You intend her no harm, Sophia?” he asked softly, his blue eyes both cynical and vulnerable.

  “Is that what Westlin told you? That I wanted to hurt you by hurting your daughter?” Sophia asked.

  The rest of the men in the room, Sophia’s family and Aldreth’s, kept themselves apart, talking quietly amongst themselves in the far corner of the room. Hawksworth was even on his feet, a rare sight.

  Aldreth nodded fractionally, his gaze not leaving Sophia’s face. He had aged well in the twenty years they had known each other, but then, so had she.

  “Aldreth, I forgave you long ago,” Sophia answered, looking at his profile, seeing the muted trace of the angled jaw of his youth. “That night at the theater, that night when you rescued Zoe from the streets, was enough to settle any differences between us.”

  “Rescued her by making her my whore?” Aldreth said softly.

  Sophia smiled. “Don’t think you can lie to me, darling Aldreth. The uninformed rabble may think she is your whore, but you and I both know she is your salvation. And you love her for it.”

  Aldreth grunted in answer, his eyes smiling, though his mouth did not. “Westlin was very certain that you wanted me away on the Continent so that you could work some mischief against me, my house, my heir.”

  “Westlin is very certain of very many things. It is quite remarkable that any one man can be so often wrong on such a wide variety of topics,” Sophia said.

  “You hate him,” Aldreth said, studying her face.

  “But of course, darling. However, that Caro is married to Westlin’s heir is quite satifying.”

  “And you did not serve your daughter ill by seeing her mated with Ashdon?”

  “They are well mated. She loves him. He loves her in equal measure.”

  Aldreth nodded again, almost serenely. “You are certain that Amelia will be well mated by the end of this?”

  “Well mated, well loved, Aldreth,” Sophia said. “Trust me to see it done.”

  “There are many who would call me a fool for trusting you, Sophia,” he said, his blue eyes twinkling.

  “And all go by the name of Lord Westlin,” she said lightly. “What does Zoe think?”

  “Zoe trusts you nearly as much as she trusts me.”

  “Oh, more, I should think,” Sophia answered with a smile. “We have no contracts between us, legalizing neither trust nor payment.”

  Aldreth lost his pleasant look. “That is for Jamie. I would not leave either of them without … without …”

  “Without,” Sophia said, laying a hand upon his forearm briefly in pacification. “Which is precisely as it should be, for a man of honor, your grace.”

  “Your brother, he is a man of honor as well, I think. If Mr. Grey had been with you twenty years ago when you first saw London, I think none would have touched you, Sophia. He is not a man to provoke, is he?”

  “No, he is not,” she said, using her fan to hide her mild agitation at the memories his question aroused in her. Memories she kept carefully bound. “If John had been with me … but he was not. He was in the forests of Canada and I was here. It took years for us to find each other, years and continents. The world is wide, Aldreth. The world is very wide.”

  “That it is,” he said simply. “They look at us, Sophia, and they wonder what binds us.”

  “John can guess,” she answered, “but the others, these young men of ours, they likely believe I am trying to seduce you.”

  Aldreth ducked his head and smiled. “Zoe would have my head on a platter.”

  “And I would hand her the carving knife,” Sophia said with an answering smile.

  “I wonder what they’re discussing?” Dalby said, looking at his mother and Aldreth across the room from them.

  “They have known each other for many years,” John Grey answered quietly. “They share many memories.”

  “That sounds pleasant,” Dalby said.

  “Does it?” John asked.

  “Shouldn’t it?” Hawks said, looking at his father, noting how Aldreth looked very nearly relaxed. Odd. Aldreth never relaxed, and certainly not in his own home.

  “What do you know about it, John?” Dalby asked his uncle.

  John looked at Lord Dalby with all the emotion of a piece of flint. Matthew Grey, John’s youngest son, chuckled. Dalby fidgeted with his cuff and dropped the subject.

  “I didn’t think Aldreth knew Lady Dalby,” Hawksworth said. Having spent many confusing hours with Dalby’s Indian relatives had taught him that most topics of conversation that would be considered innocuous by anyone were not considered proper by these particular Iroquois. As he did not know any other Iroquois to make a comparison, he was not willing to do so. After all, Sophia’s relatives might be peculiar.

  He was inclined to think so.

  John Grey, Sophia’s brother, looked precisely how one would expect an American Indian to look. He was hard-featured, dark-skinned, laconic of speech. He was, to be precise, a most dangerous-looking man. His behavior did not dispel the impression.

  George Grey, John’s eldest son, was on his way to becoming famous for his blatant pursuit of Hawksworth’s cousin, Louisa. It was even being whispered by some that, if not for his blatant pursuit, Louisa might not have found herself wed so quickly. Hawks did not agree with that assessment in the slightest. Lou
isa had got herself well and truly ruined and George Grey had had nothing to do with it. George was, however, the most talkative of John’s three sons. He thought British customs were unusual and sometimes comical, and he was not shy about saying so.

  John, the middle son, was called Young, as he was the younger John. He rarely had anything to say, but was a very watchful sort. He resembled Dalby quite strongly, except that Dalby was far more conversationally inclined.

  Matthew, the youngest, had startlingly blue eyes in a very dark-skinned face. That was the first impression. The second impression, albeit likely due to the fact that Matthew was barely out of boyhood, was that Matthew was very often bored—unless he was hunting. In the very brief time that Hawks had spent in the fields with the Greys, he had been astounded by their skill at the hunt.

  It was very nearly chilling.

  “There is much a son cannot know about his father,” John Grey said in answer to his speculation.

  “Or a son about a mother?” Dalby asked.

  “In the making of a life, a history is made,” John said. “Sophia and Aldreth have a history.”

  “I had no idea,” Hawksworth said. “But then, I rarely see Aldreth.”

  John nodded, but it was clearly not in approval. “A man wants his sons about him.”

  Which was preposterous as Aldreth didn’t want anyone about him, unless it was his French mistress. She’d been about him for as long as Hawks could remember.

  “My mother has a history with quite a few men,” Dalby said. His tone of voice was not what one would call cordial.

  “You are very young, Mark,” John said, using a very abbreviated version of Dalby’s name. “You know very little.”

  It was not the most polite of remarks, but then Hawks had realized within minutes of meeting John that one should not spend time with him if one required civility.

  “I know enough,” Dalby said.

  “Yet nothing of importance,” John said. That remark, which could truly be termed a rebuke, ended all conversation for the moment. The sounds coming from the vestibule, male sounds, preempted whatever conversation might have been forthcoming.

  “Here they come,” George Grey said, his dark eyes shining in mirth.

  Mirth? There was nothing remotely amusing about the situation. Why, Amelia was being made a laughingstock, at the very least.

  Before Hawks could say anything, not that he was convinced he would actually have said anything, the door to the library opened and Amelia came in, looking a bit harried, truth be told, followed by a score or more of gentlemen. A score of gentlemen could harry the best of girls, which Amelia certainly was. Or had been.

  It was a tangle, wasn’t it?

  Twenty

  IT was a complete tangle, and she had no idea how to go about untangling it. Cranleigh was at her side, scowling, as was his practice, and surrounding her were more dukes and earls and lords of this and that than she knew what to do with.

  One husband. She only required one husband. What was she supposed to do with the rest of them? Throw them out upon the street? Having just got them off the street, and away from Gillray, who she was almost certain she saw at the edge of the Square, scribbling, she was not eager to toss them back out upon it. It was entirely possible that another satire might erupt from this … this tangle.

  How looking for a husband among the cream of London’s crop had turned into this she had no idea.

  Amelia’s gaze strayed to Sophia, who stood next to Aldreth, smiling. She had some idea, anyway. Sophia was flirting outrageously with Aldreth. It was nearly obscene. At least it was better than watching her ogle Cranleigh.

  The men made their bows, the women their curtseys, and Yates, followed by four footmen, brought in more glasses and more refreshments. It was a quite busy day for Aldreth At Home. He didn’t look too terribly displeased, which was slightly inexplicable. The fact that Sophia stuck to his side like a, well, like a thorn, might have explained part of it. The rest of it? Could it possibly be that Aldreth was that eager to get her married off?

  It didn’t seem likely, unless that satire had changed everything, which of course, it had.

  “If you’d just left the Prestwick ball from the conservatory, none of this would be happening now,” Cranleigh said at her side.

  “With my dress torn to pieces? How was I supposed to do that?” she snapped.

  “I meant the first time in the conservatory,” Cranleigh said. “When I pushed you.”

  “You didn’t push me. I wasn’t pushed! I would never allow you to push me, Lord Cranleigh!”

  “Right,” he said on a snort of air.

  “Did I hear you correctly?” Lord Penrith asked politely, when it could hardly have been polite to blatantly overhear their private conversation. “You weren’t pushed into the roses by Lord Cranleigh?”

  “I most certainly wasn’t,” Amelia said. “I merely misstepped and found myself snagged.”

  “Quite a misstep,” Lord Dutton said.

  One would have thought that, having been thrashed, Dutton would have slunk home, or at least into a corner of White’s. How he had the gall to come into Aldreth’s very home with the dust of the street on his pantaloons perfectly displayed the arrogance of the man. She had never liked Dutton. Now she knew why.

  “Lord Dutton,” she said, feeling quite put-upon and entirely exhausted by it, “I do think that you should hie off and pull yourself together. You look entirely too … shopworn.”

  The Duke of Edenham chuckled.

  “I should think, Lady Amelia, that you would be the last person,” Dutton said, the bruise Cranleigh gave him coming up nicely purple, “to use that particular phrase.”

  The Duke of Calbourne coughed.

  Amelia felt Cranleigh at her side, felt the solid mass of him, the waves of his anger rolling against her, and found herself caught up in it. Caught out of her shame and annoyance, lifted into something stronger and harder, something hot and urgent. Cranleigh always did that. Cranleigh always freed something within her, something she was certain was slightly sordid and not at all pleasant, but something most assuredly free, even fearless.

  Before she could answer Dutton, and did she want to, Cranleigh said, “And I should think, Lord Dutton, that you would understand that you have no place here. I can demonstate that for you, again, if necessary. Will it be necessary?”

  Dutton’s gaze flickered, his blue eyes shadowed for a moment, and then he bowed to her and left without another word. Amelia let out a sigh of both relief and disappointment. She could have got off at least one insult if Cranleigh hadn’t bullied Dutton out of the room.

  “I can’t think what’s got into Dutton these past few days,” Penrith said. “He used to have a reputation.”

  “He still does,” Cranleigh said, “though perhaps not the one he wants.”

  Amelia very nearly sniggered.

  “I, for one, don’t care a fig about Dutton or his reputation,” Calbourne said. “I do care about redeeming myself in regard to Lady Amelia’s list.”

  “You’re off, Cal,” the Duke of Edenham said. “Learn to live with it. I, however, have yet to be interviewed. I am on your list, am I not, Lady Amelia? Please don’t tell me that I have been discarded without being fully considered.”

  He was very handsome and his title was very, very old. But he did have that nasty habit of killing off his wives, who by all reports had been exceedingly agreeable and quite proper. And Cranleigh still hadn’t properly asked for her hand. He’d done nearly everything but, and as Edenham was so very eager to be considered and it would enrage Cranleigh so …

  “Why should you want to be considered?” Calbourne asked tartly, distracting her from her thoughts. “You have two children. Your line is secured.”

  “And you have your heir as well, Cal,” Edenham answered. Turning his rich brown eyes upon Amelia, he said, “A man should have a wife for more than the heirs she provides him.”

  “Oh?” Cranleigh said. “And what
is that?”

  “The civility she brings to his home, for one, and for another, her sweet companionship,” Edenham said.

  “Which will lead most swiftly to more heirs,” Calbourne said. “Toss him out, Lady Amelia. Turn your attention upon me.”

  “Her attention is now and forevermore turned upon me,” Cranleigh said, sounding not at all pleasant. The sound of his voice, however, and the sentiment he expressed sent a shiver of awareness down her spine to settle in her hips, where no proper woman wanted to experience sensations of awareness.

  “If Lady Amelia’s attention is truly turned upon you, Cranleigh,” Lord Raithby said, “then her list parameters have clearly widened. That being so, I should like to be interviewed. Would you be so kind as to consider adding me to your list, Lady Amelia? I am most respectable, have a quite lovely estate in Lincolnshire, and am in the pink of health.”

  “I’ve seen his estate,” Penrith said. “It’s a bit small for you, I should think, Lady Amelia. And does anyone truly want to live in Lincolnshire?”

  “Why are you involved, Penrith?” Calbourne asked a bit rudely. As he was a duke, no one thought it particularly offensive. “Do you seek placement on this famous list of gentlemen?”

  Famous list of gentlemen? Is that what it had become? Amelia cast a glance at Sophia, who was now in polite discussion with her brother, the Indian. They were not looking in her direction, which ought to have relieved her, but didn’t.

  “Not at all,” Penrith replied. “My mother has declared that I am entirely too young to marry, and I quite agree with her. I am involved only as an interested third party, a moderator of sorts. I hope that does not offend you, Lady Amelia?” he asked, turning his remarkable green-eyed gaze upon her.

  “No, I—” she began to say, not at all certain what she would say that would sound respectable, not at all certain there was anything that would sound respectable. Cranleigh, as was to be expected, cut her off completely.