Seductive Starts

by Courtney Milan

  Ned had been caught sharing an indiscreet embrace with Lady Kathleen, who was now considered thoroughly compromised. In the intervening minutes since this had happened, Ned had been punched in the nose, and he’d bled through somewhere between two and five handkerchiefs. Whether the punch had been thrown by the lady herself or by her father, the Duke of Ware, was unknown.

  Bad enough on its own. But matters grew worse.

  Even if the duke hadn’t thrown the punch, it was clear the man had not stood idly by. There was a challenge. A duel, in this day and age. Pistols or swords, Ware had offered, and Ned had little experience with either weapon. Not that it mattered, because Ned couldn’t fight a man well in his sixties, and a peer of the realm.

  The hostess’s attempts to calm the man had been to no avail; the point, Ware had apparently announced to the titillated hordes, was not to satisfy honor but to slay the bastard who’d touched his daughter.

  “Oh, Blakely. Thank heavens.”

  Gareth halted at the gasping words. They were the first anyone had dared speak to him all evening. Even through the stress and strain and tears that threatened to choke the speaker, he recognized her voice.

  He turned to greet his sister.

  Laura skidded to a halt in front of him. For one horrendously awkward moment, he thought she might actually throw herself into his arms. In public. With everyone watching. The flowers in her hair dangled on broken stems and her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy.

  Unfortunately, she checked her impulse toward affection. Gareth drew himself up, straight and tall. It was just as well. He wouldn’t have wanted to comfort her in front of all these people, anyway.

  “Where—” He didn’t even have time to start.

  “Come with me. You have to come with me.” She was hoarse. Little pockets of interested silence formed around the two of them. Everyone managed to look not quite in their direction, heads cocked and ears open.

  The spectacle clearly had not yet finished. Gareth had no desire to play out this scene for public consumption, knowing it would be repeated ad nauseam in every last London drawing room for the next weeks. He’d go to the devil before he heard his sister’s name on everyone’s lips.

  As Laura turned to lead him away, Gareth realized his options were extremely limited. He was already on the devil’s doorstep.

  Gareth followed his sister. The crowds parted for them, and the murmurs grew to a roar. They walked sedately, not touching. Not that it would have mattered if they’d linked arms and skipped the length of the hall, because all eyes were on them nonetheless. Once they entered a hallway, Gareth felt relief from the pressure of that attention almost immediately. No suffocating crowds. No watching eyes.

  He need only deal with whatever madness Ned had managed to create. Laura paused before a door, squared her shoulders and opened it.

  Inside, all the parties had congregated. This, then, was the room where the incident had taken place. A long table stretched end to end. The chairs were strewn about the room in a chaotic whirl, arranged for a madman’s tea party. Lady Kathleen huddled in one corner, her mother fluttering over her like a protective warbler. Ned’s own mother sat in the corner, watching Ned with dark, sad eyes. And there in the middle, straddling an upholstered chair, sat Ned. He slumped miserably, his arms folded against the back of his seat.

  Next to him, the Duke of Ware towered. The man’s bald pate shone in the orange gaslight. He, too, was gesturing. And talking at—definitely at rather than to—Ned. At Gareth’s entrance, he curtailed his tirade.

  “Blakely.” The older duke had clearly been waiting for this moment.

  Gareth returned his nod. “Ware.”

  Gareth walked closer. Ware stepped carefully around Ned to make room for them both. The careful dance reminded Gareth of two predators circling the same carcass, each uncertain whether to share the kill or fight for solitary rights.

  “Your boy here—” Ware jerked his head in angry indication “—can’t explain himself worth a damn.”

  “That’s hardly news to me. Nonetheless,” Gareth said, “I can’t allow you to kill him. His death would be a terrible inconvenience for me.”

  Ware snorted. “If this is a sample of his behavior, his death couldn’t be so inconvenient as his life.”

  Ned didn’t even wince at that blow. Undoubtedly he’d been showered with compliments in a similar vein ever since this scene had collapsed in on him.

  And collapse it had. A man with half Gareth’s intelligence could easily make sense of everything that had taken place. Ned believed that Gareth was supposed to marry Lady Kathleen. And Gareth had been supposed to arrive half an hour earlier.

  If it hadn’t been for Madame Esmerelda and her tea, Gareth, rather than Ned, might have been caught in this scrape.

  “Ah,” Gareth said.

  Ned buried his forehead deep into his arms.

  The damned thing was Gareth couldn’t even work up a proper temper. He should have been angry. He should have been fuming at Ned’s machinations.

  What he felt instead was a terrible sympathy for the boy folded into that chair. What Ned had done was wrong. But Gareth understood what drove that impulse. It had been pride, a desire to be right at all costs, and that damned, trusting loyalty.

  It was the same impulse that had driven Ned to offer Lady Kathleen the elephant, that had pushed the boy to his feet, clapping and shouting, after Gareth finished that terrible song. Ned had somehow convinced himself this was the right thing to do.

  “Blakely.” Ned’s voice was obscured by so much superfine sleeve. “It wasn’t supposed to be me here. It was supposed to be you.”

  “What?” Ware purpled, and grabbed the back of Ned’s coat. “You compromised my daughter, and you didn’t even want her for yourself?” He hissed the words. “If you ever tell her that, I’ll—”

  Gareth held up his hand. There were not many men who would have the effrontery to silence a duke. There were fewer still who could do so successfully. By some small miracle, Gareth discovered he was one of the lucky few. Ware relaxed his hold on Ned’s jacket.

  “Ware. We will talk to you. First, however, I must ascertain what has transpired here, and why.”

  “I’ve been trying to ascertain the whys all evening,” Ware growled, “and your boy here hasn’t made a lick of sense.”

  “I need to talk with him alone. At this point of the proceedings, I doubt we could settle anything in an intelligent fashion. Take your daughter and your wife home, and we can discuss this later.”

  “But I want to kill him now.”

  Gareth met the man’s eyes. “You want to kill him. But you’ll take your daughter home instead.”

  The duke’s square jaw snapped shut. For a long while, he met Gareth’s gaze, clearly longing to lay waste to marquess and hapless cousin alike. Then he turned on his heel. “Come, poppet. No sense staying where tongues will wag. Let’s get you home.”

  Gareth escorted the remaining players from the room. But even as he shut the door on the last one, Ned remained slumped in his seat on the chair. He hadn’t even lifted his head from his sleeve.

  “I shall make your confession easy.” Gareth tried to gentle his voice. It didn’t work. Instead, his words came out a fierce rumble. “I have already determined it was I who should have been trapped in whatever elaborate and idiotic tableau you had planned.”

  Ned didn’t lift his head. Instead, he mumbled into his sleeve. “I did it for your benefit. It was supposed to be for the best. Someone has to be able to fix this.”

  That someone, Gareth thought, was going to be him. Responsibility again. Responsibility and, he realized, fault. He’d been a cold, unfeeling brute to Ned. Now, perhaps, he had a chance to patch matters up.

  “I’m sorry,” Ned said. “I knew it was up to me. And I—I just couldn’t do it. She told me to rely on myself,” Ned continued. “I did. And so it has to come out right. Doesn’t it?”

  “She?” A cold chill collected in Gareth’s lu
ngs. “Ned,” he said slowly, “I need you to do something for me. I need you to tell me as best you can exactly what Madame Esmerelda told you to do.”

  IT HAD BEEN MORE THAN AN HOUR, and Lord Blakely had not yet returned.

  Unable to sleep, unable even to rest, Jenny paced up and down the front room. At first, every noise she heard set her heart fluttering in anticipation. The leisurely beat of shoe leather against cobblestones started her pulse racing. She rushed to the windows—and then turned away in disappointment as an elderly ragman tramped by in the gloom. The warm spring night brought many such disappointments—noises that could have heralded his return. The passage of high-stepping horses. The slap of reins against hindquarters the next street over. London streets teemed with activity, even at this late hour. If one expected company, every last sound brought hope.

  None of the activity she heard signified the return of Lord Blakely.

  Jenny gradually let go of her arousal. Eventually, she slumped into the disheartening territory of outright discouragement. It was foolish, she chided herself, to engage in preposterous mental games, to come up with reasons without knowing what kept him away. But she could not help but play with possibilities.

  Jenny was well aware she was hardly a diamond of the first water. She wasn’t a diamond of any sort of water. When Lord Blakely had left her, he’d been physically excited. But he could easily have found a willing widow, one closer to his class and station, to tempt him. Why, then, would he bother to return?

  And now that Ned agreed Jenny was a fraud, perhaps Lord Blakely had no reason to continue his campaign of seduction. Perhaps this was his revenge—this half state of desperate physical desire he’d left her in. Perhaps he was, at this very moment, imagining her shaking her fists in frustration. No doubt he was chuckling evilly, wherever he was.

  Now she really knew she was letting her imagination run away with her. It was not in Lord Blakely’s character to behave in such a fashion. He didn’t chuckle.

  Once unleashed, though, her imagination veered wildly afield. He could have been struck by a stampeding horse. Or perhaps he’d been abducted by rival ornithologists, intent on torturing him in order to steal his data on macaws.

  All lies. Lies and ridiculous stories Jenny invented to avoid thinking about the one possibility that lurked kraken-like beneath the spinning maelstrom of her thoughts.

  Lord Blakely had gone to meet Ned. When she’d last seen the boy, she’d told him not to trust her. With Ned cut loose, what reason would Lord Blakely have to return?

  She’d been abandoned. Again.

  She didn’t even remember the first time it had happened. After all, she’d lived the entirety of her life in its aftermath.

  Jenny assumed she had parents. Not only was it a matter of biological necessity, but someone had paid the bills at the Elland School in Bristol. They’d paid for fourteen years, from the time of Jenny’s arrival through to her departure at eighteen. Even before then, Jenny dimly remembered a stocky farmwife employed to look after her.

  That unknown someone had paid for her upkeep and arranged for her education, the transactions run anonymously through purchased annuities and a string of whey-faced solicitors. Nobody answered the letters Jenny sent, and she’d penned them from the first moment she’d been able to scratch tentative words.

  Jenny’s parents had been nothing more than a set of bank bills, perfunctorily issued at quarterly intervals. At the age of eighteen, she’d been told the annuity providing for her care would be extinguished soon and so she’d best think about finding employment. Whatever emotional connection she’d had with those bank drafts had been severed.

  Jenny sighed and smiled wryly. After thirty years, she ought to have been reconciled to that feeling of abandonment. She’d never known anything else in her life. If Lord Blakely had disappeared from her life, he would only be leaving just like everyone else before him.

  And yet, stupidly, this latest in her long string of abandonments felt just as devastating as the first. She feared he’d walked out, leaving her mired in a fog of emotion. Just like her desire to make phantom parents out of the solicitors’ payments, she’d be plagued by thoughts of what might have been. What it would have felt like when Lord Blakely entered her body, inch by desperate inch. Whether his bare skin would have been warmer than hers. She would have wanted to see if the expression on his face warmed when he entered her in that most intimate way.

  Jenny took a deep breath and allotted herself one minute longer of this ridiculous self-pity. There was little enough room for it. After tonight, she had a new life to claim.

  When her minute passed, she brushed her hands and stood up.

  “Well,” she remarked to the empty room.

  It listened, walls heavy.

  “I didn’t want him. Not really.”

  The night swallowed her lies.

  IT WAS ONLY HALF AN HOUR later when something roused Jenny. Disoriented, she jumped out of bed, her heart pounding. The night was quiet, but the tiny back room in which she’d been asleep seemed to crouch, empty but waiting.

  A knock sounded. This time Jenny identified the sound she’d heard in her sleep. It was him. She slid trembling hands down her chemise. She couldn’t meet him like this. What was he doing here, at this time of the night? And what was she to do about it?

  She fumbled for a wrapper. A third impatient rap sounded. As Jenny raced down the short hall between her rooms, she tried to think of words to hide the fluttering in her stomach. Words to prove that the delay had meant as little to her as it obviously had to him.

  You’re late.

  You? I had forgotten about you.

  She wiped damp palms on the wool of her wrapper and threw open the door. “I suppose you think—”

  Lord Blakely’s expression, shrouded in shadows, was as cold as if he’d never sat at her table. As if they hadn’t kissed earlier that evening. As if the last time he saw her, he hadn’t begged for her name with longing on his face. But he was not just cold. He looked wearier than the toll of the passing hours could explain.

  It was not his expression that stole the words from her mouth. It was his companion. Ned slumped next to him. He contemplated the threshold of her door. His shoulders sagged and his features wilted.

  “Ned,” Jenny said, “what are you doing here?”

  No answer. Ned turned his head away, biting his lip.

  “Tell her,” Lord Blakely rumbled. “Start from the beginning and go through the end. But tell her what you’ve done.”

  Ned heaved a great sigh. Then he pushed past Jenny and flung himself into a chair. Something was dreadfully amiss here—more than the usual bickering that took place between the cousins.

  Lord Blakely motioned with a hand, and Jenny preceded him into the room. The door clicked shut behind them, and Jenny felt her way through the darkness until she’d found the candles on her table and the spills on the mantel.

  A touch of illumination and everyone’s faces became clear. But the flickering flame shed no light on what had brought the two of them here.

  Jenny had no words to break the silence, and Lord Blakely seemed disinclined to prompt Ned further. Finally Ned put his head in his hands and spoke into his fingers. “The tasks weren’t working. So that meant it was up to me to bring Blakely and Lady Kathleen together.”

  Jenny let out a little gasp, but Ned continued, oblivious to her horrified response.

  “Both seemed recalcitrant, so I arranged for the two to meet each other secretly. And to be caught by—by various people, who would gossip about the arrangement. But Blakely did not come, and when I went to investigate, it was I who was caught.”

  “Oh, God, Ned. Why?”

  “You said.” Ned’s accusation couldn’t have been more petulant. “You said I had to rely on myself.”

  “I was speaking in generalities. I didn’t mean you should force two people into a marriage neither wanted!”

  “But they would have wanted it. Eventually. You sai
d so.” Ned raised red-rimmed eyes. “And now it will never happen, and it’s all my fault. I’m not good enough—I’m not strong enough. Madame Esmerelda, you thought I was ready to make do without your advice, but I’m not. I’ve fouled up everything beyond all comprehension, and you have to help me fix it.”

  Jenny didn’t need to meet Lord Blakely’s gaze to know he hadn’t brought Ned here to listen to more of her predictions. She should have made herself admit her fraud when last Ned was here. Selfishly, she’d wanted to spare herself the pain of uttering those words. What her selfishness had cost Ned, she was just starting to fathom. His freedom. His cousin’s respect. His own sense of self-worth. He’d lost everything she’d told herself she was helping him achieve with her selfish lies.

  Lord Blakely examined his fingernails in the candlelight. “Lady Kathleen’s father finally agreed not to shoot Ned outright.” Lord Blakely’s even voice was a smooth contrast to Ned’s ragged words. “What else may transpire as the result of this evening is still a matter of ongoing negotiation. Much depends upon what Ned believes he should do.”

  Jenny didn’t know where to look. Not at Ned—she couldn’t bear to see that despondent fear writ on his face. Nor could she look at Lord Blakely. She didn’t know if she’d see disinterest, displeasure or disappointment. But she didn’t dare lose the courage to do what must be done.

  “Ned.” There was a quaver in Jenny’s voice. “When I told you to rely on yourself, I didn’t mean for you to take the matter of your cousin’s marriage into your own hands. I meant—”

  She took a deep breath. There was no shying away from the consequence she feared most. She looked one last time into those trusting eyes. She would never see them look at her with devotion again.

  And then she made herself do it.

  “I meant,” she continued, “that your cousin is right. I can’t tell the future. I don’t speak to spirits. I don’t have any occult powers. You need to rely on yourself because you cannot trust me.”

  Ned flinched with every phrase. But what she saw was not disillusionment, but disbelief. “No!” He looked around the room wildly. “This is some kind of test. To—to punish me for my failure this evening. I know I can show my loyalty.”