One Tempting Proposal

by Christy Carlyle

  She could still smell his clean masculine scent on her skin and imagined his jacket now smelled like her gardenia-­jasmine perfume. The notion that they’d imprinted their scents on one another shook her nearly as effectively as his touch.

  Glancing at her, eyes hooded and expression inscrutable, Sebastian started toward the balcony door.

  “She’s one of your secrets, then?” The words came before she could stop them. He was to be her fiancé for the next few weeks. Their names would be linked in every scandal rag and dance on the tongue of every whisperer in the city. Didn’t she deserve to know of an entanglement that might complicate their plan?

  He didn’t turn or acknowledge her question, but he froze in place, his back stiff, hands fisted.

  Kat waited several beats and then started past him. He could stand out in the cold all night if he wished it. Without the warmth of his coat, her skin had turned to gooseflesh. But he caught her, lifting his arm to hold her back, not touching her, thank goodness, but indicating she should stop.

  “If you truly wish to know my secrets, then I want to know yours. Every mistake, every regret, all the secret parts of your history you’d prefer to keep from judgment and scrutiny.”

  He held his breath, waiting for her answer.

  She inhaled sharply, a sound of fear. He didn’t want that. But nor did he wish to lay his soul bare for the woman. Her changing scent confused him as much as the many sides of her character. She was one moment the simpering debutante, the next a dedicated horticulturist, and now a master schemer. She was a tantalizingly snarled riddle of a woman, but sorting out her secrets would mean revealing his own. And that didn’t interest him at all.

  “Not so appealing, is it, Kat?”

  Refusing to look at him, she stared straight ahead, shoulders back, chin up high, all the lines of her face limned by the moonglow. He almost wished he was willing to let her see inside, to let her learn of all his failings and fears, just so that he could glimpse the woman beyond her flawless façade.

  Her refusal to answer brought as much relief as disappointment.

  “No, I don’t think so either, my lady. Let’s see this plan through to its end. We’ll see Oliver and Harriet married and put the rest behind us. No more questions about my past, and I won’t ask any about yours.”

  She glanced down at his arm where he held it up, not quite touching her chest. “Very well, Your Grace.” Looping her arm under his, she grasped it lightly as a lady might take a gentleman’s arm during a promenade in the park.

  Seb let himself breathe again, deeply, drawing in long drams of frosty air. The garden was overflowing with shrubs and blooming flowers, but he could only detect Kat’s scent on the breeze.

  “You should dance with me again,” she commanded.

  “I didn’t step on your toes too much during our waltz?” Whether it was the chill in the air or her arm clasped in his, he felt lighter than he had all evening. The notion of reentering the ballroom and facing Alecia held no appeal, but the prospect of dancing with Kat again lured him. He fought his tendency to analyze, to worry over what a danger she might prove to be to his peace of mind. He would allow himself to enjoy a dance with her and avoid sifting the black thoughts Alecia stirred.

  ­“People should see us dancing together again. At least once more, perhaps twice. Even if your Lady Naughton says nothing, we’ll set tongues wagging about our budding romance.” Kat’s tone had gone flat, her voice low and bereft of its usual lilt. Focus, determination—­she would be all about the game now. He’d set the rules and would have to abide by them.

  He loosened his hold on her arm, touching her now as lightly as she held onto him.

  “Ready?”

  “Of course.”

  The noise and heat of the room attacked his senses and he blinked against the brightness until his eyes adjusted. He expected stares, whispers, perhaps even words of congratulations, but the glances of dancers skimmed over him, past Kat, and onto the others in the room. They seemed to be attracting no more attention than any other ­couple. Only one man kept his gaze fixed in their direction—­the one his aunt had identified as Lord Ponsonby.

  Seb scanned the room for the one woman he hoped never to see again. Several dark-­haired ladies moved in the steps of a lively dance and a few gathered on the ballroom’s edges, but none possessed frost blue eyes. He didn’t see Lord Naughton’s towering frame among the crowd either, though it was most likely he could be found wherever they were serving drink. Or perhaps in the cardroom with Lord Clayborne.

  “I haven’t had a chance to speak to our hostess yet this evening. I’ll return before the next dance.” Kat unlatched her arm from his and strode away, leaving him as exposed and out of place as the moment he’d entered the ballroom.

  Securing an uncrowded corner, he darted his gaze from one feminine face to another. They were all strangers. None of them were Alecia, and that brought a rush of relief. The shock of seeing her had chilled his blood, like one of those doomed characters from the ghost stories Pippa loved to read. Most shocking of all, he hadn’t burned with the loathing he’d expected. She was smaller than he remembered, almost fragile, somehow diminished. Not the temptress and ruiner of men he’d once known her to be. But he’d still wanted nothing more than to get away from her. Whatever time had done to alter her, there’d never be a place for her in his life again.

  Years ago, she’d been so persuasive. If she’d turned her energies to something other than attainting a title and a rich husband, she might have been a leader, a reformer, a woman who inspired others to action. She’d certainly inspired him to act, leading him to a clearing in the woods on the far side of the River Cam to confront the man who’d purportedly ruined her. Poor Charles Page had been told an equal and opposite lie, expecting to save her from Seb’s clutches. Seeing them together, the man hadn’t bothered with questions before taking aim at Seb and firing his pistol. Luckily, he’d been a very bad shot.

  One glimpse of Alecia brought it all back, and in that moment, Kat had seemed the antidote. A moment alone with her, a private moment away from the light and heat and noise was all he’d wanted. And then she’d touched him. Or he’d touched her. He couldn’t recall the order of it. But their bodies connected as they had during the waltz. For a moment in the garden, she’d been his alone. No lords or eligible gentlemen could leer or lean on her.

  Just one bloody fool who let a few whiffs of her gardenia scent scramble his senses and melt his resolve.

  How had a moment in the shrubbery turned a lie into a solution? Why had he agreed to feign a betrothal with the woman when he’d never been able to pull off a real engagement with any success at all?

  A few weeks of courting her only to allow her to jilt him. That sounded like a prescription for pure misery.

  At least he had practice at it.

  What the hell have I done?

  He’d begun the evening determined to refuse Kat, manage a single waltz without bruising her toes, and return to Wrexford House. He had plenty to do and none of it involved dancing or strutting around a ballroom. Only halfway through decoding the estate’s ledger books when they departed for London, he’d insisted on bringing them along. The daunting pile of correspondence that seemed to breed on his desk at Roxbury had somehow followed him to London, and an unfinished paper he was due to present to the London Mathematical Society awaited a final polish.

  “She’s a beauty.”

  The barking volume of the man’s voice disturbed Seb nearly as much as turning to find Lord Ponsonby looming by his side. For a bulky man, he approached with surprising stealth.

  Seb crossed his arms, ignored the man’s question, and cast Ponsonby a wary glance. His tone as he spoke of Kat’s beauty, and the creeping way he trailed his gaze over her as she moved across the ballroom raised Seb’s hackles, and he resisted a moment before shaking the man’s offered hand.

>   “Wrexford, is it? Ponsonby, though I suspect your aunt has already told you my name. She offered to make an introduction, but she’s no doubt orchestrating a match between some chit and her swain or overseeing a naval treaty or some such. Busy woman.”

  “She is indeed.” Although Kat had gone in search of his aunt, he could now see no sign of either lady in the ballroom.

  “I acquired a Rembrandt last week, Wrexford.”

  Seb was familiar with the Dutch master. His mother had been fond of art and made sure her children had a passing knowledge of art history. How the man’s acquisition related to their stunted conversation, Seb hadn’t a clue.

  “Well done.” Seb offered the accolade lightly as he reached up to straighten his waistcoat, preparing to take his leave of the rambling Ponsonby and go off in search of Kat.

  “The seller refused my first three offers, but I wasn’t daunted. Once I’ve fixed on my prize, I’m not a man to be easily dissuaded.”

  Seb focused on the wall sconce in his line of vision, gaslit, and with four crystals dripping from its gilded base. He worked to steady his breathing as he watched Ollie and Lady Harriet moving past him in the ballroom. She wore the same flower as Kat had in her hair. Ten waxy white petals framed by two glossy leaves. He flexed his fingers, but held the rest of his body still, resisting the urge to turn and tell the one pompous fool at his elbow just what to do with all his bluster.

  The older man cocked his hip and leaned on the silver-­handled cane under his right hand. He’d been watching the ballroom as he spoke, never quite meeting Seb’s eye. Now he swiveled enough to gaze up at him.

  “She is not on offer, Ponsonby.” Seb turned to face the nobleman as he said it, enunciating every word so there could be no doubt as to his meaning.

  “Nonsense, Wrexford. She’s only refused me three times, and her resistance now will only make my eventual victory sweeter. Indeed, her refusals make her the only woman in this ballroom worth having.” The man’s hard gaze didn’t match his jesting tone.

  She’s mine. A possessive impulse rushed Seb like the burn of single malt Scotch, a delicious fizz in his veins. Never mind that it was false. Never mind that it was temporary. Kat wouldn’t be marrying this irritating nobleman, and that was a victory worth savoring.

  “Perhaps you should take the lady at her word and accept her refusal.”

  Not that accepting a woman’s word always made for a happy ending. Alecia had taught him that lesson well. Yet Seb wasn’t foolish enough to expect dishonesty from all women any more than he expected honesty from all men.

  “Ha! You’ve much to learn, Wrexford. Lady Katherine refuses all her suitors. That’s her game.” Ponsonby’s barking chortle was as annoying as his booming voice.

  The notion that Kat liked to play games with men and their emotions set the muscle in Seb’s jaw ticking. Perhaps it was true. Was he not a player in her latest scheme?

  Seb and Ponsonby glared at each other a moment, taking the other’s measure, and then the elderly viscount snapped his head, sniffing the air and searching the ballroom as if he sensed Kat’s approach.

  She glided toward them and offered the nobleman a slight grin, but the corners of her mouth fell when she met Seb’s gaze.

  “Lord Ponsonby, has Wrexford not told you our news?”

  The man’s forehead furrowed and he stacked his hands on the head of his cane, leaning toward Seb with a menacing glint in his eye. “He has not, my lady.”

  She’d been unstoppable in her determination to blurt the news to Alecia, and yet now Kat stood watching him, slim arms crossed.

  An echo of that liquor-­heat rush of victory welled up again, especially when she attempted to glare at him and only one eye truly narrowed, as if she was winking at him instead. Then his eyes locked on the beauty mark, the one at the corner of her mouth.

  Kat pursed her mouth, drawing his gaze to her lips.

  Lips he’d tasted, and wanted to kiss again.

  A clicking sound set his teeth on edge and he turned to find the cause, only to realize it was her foot, slapping the parquet floor and flicking the edge of her dress.

  “We’re to be married.” She blurted the words as unenthusiastically as he’d ever heard any news imparted.

  Ponsonby’s jowls began to quiver. “Impossible. I spoke to your father just this evening at the club. He said nothing.”

  Seb cut in. “I have yet to speak to Lady Katherine’s father, but I am confident of his consent.” At his only meeting with her father, Lord Clayborne had all but demanded Seb propose to Kat. Surely the marquess would be pleased to hear the news.

  Ponsonby hung his head a moment and his shoulders sagged with defeat, but then he pushed against his cane and straightened. “Who gave you a title? You cannot even ask for a woman’s hand properly. What kind of a gentleman are you?”

  Kat moved as if to intervene, but Seb stepped forward to stand between her and Ponsonby.

  “I am the gentleman she didn’t refuse.”

  Kat stepped back, away from Ponsonby’s gaze, but she clasped her hands in front of her, as if locking herself off from conversation or contact. Ponsonby nearly toppled forward to get a glimpse of her before sketching an awkward half bow and stomping toward the refreshment room.

  Seb wasn’t certain whether he pitied Ponsonby more for believing he’d ever had a chance to marry Kat, or himself for being the fool who’d be stuck by her side for weeks before being snubbed just as decidedly.

  Chapter Eleven

  WAITING IN CLAYBORNE’S sterile drawing room to ask the man for Kat’s hand in marriage was far worse than pacing the halls had been as a first-­year Cambridge student before a test. Seb rapped his knuckles against the arm of the chair and then began counting the polished studs at the edge of upholstery. He’d stolen a few moments in the morning to work on his paper for the Mathematical Society, and read a bit of Boole’s The Laws of Thought, but anticipation, a sort of Ollie-­like giddiness, had plagued his efforts to indulge in algebraic logic or any sort of useful thinking at all. Even now his pulse jumped in his throat and he couldn’t keep his fingers from tapping the arm of the chair. He tried for a Fibonacci sequence—­might as well have some order even if he couldn’t achieve it in his mind—­but lost count and had to start again.

  It was ridiculous. Their whole engagement would be a ruse. Nothing to be so damned pleased about, man.

  The only numbers that truly mattered now were the days until he could put the scheme behind him. A month, perhaps two? After Ollie’s wedding, there’d be no reason to remain in London. A broken engagement with a marquess’s daughter wouldn’t earn him many invitations to balls and dinner parties. He would close up Wrexford House early and return to Roxbury. The grand estate still didn’t feel like home, but he’d accepted it as his future, and his responsibility.

  “Grab her! Get Persephone before Wiggins does.”

  Kat’s voice rang out, high-­pitched and panicked, and Seb shot up from his chair. Moments later, a blond girl bounded into the room, head down, arms pumping, and stopped just short of barreling into him.

  She appeared to be about nine or ten, and her honey blond hair and green eyes reminded him so much of Kat that he deduced the girl was her younger sister, who he’d yet to meet.

  As he studied her, the child planted a hand on each hip and speared him with a withering glare.

  “Are you Persephone?” If he’d been told the name of Kat’s youngest sister, he couldn’t recall it.

  “No, I’m Violet, and you’re in my way, sir.” As she spoke, her eyes darted around the drawing room floor. “Have you seen her?”

  “Seen who?” The room had been empty from the moment the maid ushered him in and asked him to wait for Lord Clayborne.

  The girl huffed out a sigh and rolled her eyes. “Persephone, of course. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

 
When he didn’t immediately answer, the child stepped around him and crouched down to look under a table. “Aha.”

  Her satisfied exclamation, like Sherlock Holmes finding the mystery-­solving clue, intrigued him.

  “You’ve found her?”

  The girl pointed to the legs of an end table and Seb squinted at the polished wood before finally glimpsing the tip of a fluffy gray tail flicking against the rear left leg. Stepping back, he could make out the whole ball—­all gray fluff except for two lime green eyes.

  “Persephone’s a cat.” Stating the obvious didn’t impress the girl, and she twisted her mouth at Seb as if he still had it all wrong.

  “She’s my kitten, but she’s also a Greek princess who lives under the world.” She frowned a moment. “Not my kitten, of course. She’s English, not Greek. And she’s not a princess.”

  Then the child who’d treated him with such gruff indifference began cooing lovingly at the ball of gray fluff. “Are you, Persie? Are you a princess?”

  “Where is she?” Kat rushed into the room and skidded to a halt at the sight of her sister crawling under the table to retrieve the kitten. Then she noticed him.

  “Wrexford. You’re early.”

  “Sebastian.” He reminded her to use his given name.

  “Violet, come and bring that little mischief-­maker.”

  “She won’t come out.” Violet straightened and looked down at her kitten with the same irritated glare she’d given Seb.

  Kat crouched slowly, clearly trying for stealth, to retrieve the kitten.

  “So you’re the man Kitty’s going to marry?”

  In that moment, with her chin tilted high and one eyebrow arched, Violet reminded him more of Lord Clayborne than Kat.

  “She did say she would.” Seb watched Kat as he said it. Her long skirts had pooled around her as she knelt down and reached out to retrieve the recalcitrant kitten.

  “Then she will. My sister always does what she says she will. That’s why she couldn’t accept any of the others.” Violet leaned toward him and whispered, “And because they were all odious.”