by Mary Balogh
“She undoubtedly has country morals too, then,” Charlie said with a theatrical shudder. “Puritanical values and unassailable virtue and all that. Even Monty with all his good looks and legendary charm and seductive arts would not stand a chance with her. It would be cruel of us to pick her for him.”
It was again the wrong thing to say
No challenge was ever more exciting than one that was impossible to win. There was no such thing, of course, but proving it to himself as well as to those who wagered against him was the breath of life to Jasper.
“She is the golden- haired one, is she?” he said. “The tall and willowy one with the inviting smile and the fathomless blue eyes.” He pursed his lips as he pictured her. She was a beauty.
There was an appreciative roar from his friends.
“ Oh- ho, Monty,” Sir Isaac said. “Been scouting her out, have you? You have a secret yearning for a leg-shackle, do you, her being an innocent and Merton’s sister and all that?”
“I thought,” Jasper said, raising one eyebrow, “the object was to seduce the woman, not marry her.”
“I vote that we name Miss Katherine Huxtable as the lady to be seduced, then,” Hal said. “It cannot be done, of course. Only matrimony will tempt females like her. And even that might not tempt her if you were the one offering, Monty, no offense meant, old chap. But you do have a reputation that scares off innocents. For once I will feel quite confident of making something back on my bet. It will be a veritable investment.”
“By seduction,” Sir Isaac said, “we mean full intercourse, do we?”
They all looked at him as if he had sprouted a second head.
“Stealing a kiss or pinching her bottom would hardly be a challenge worthy of Monty,” Hal said, “even if the said kiss and pinch had to be willingly granted. Of course we mean full intercourse. But not ravishment, mind. That goes without saying.”
“Then why say it, Hal?” Jasper raised both eyebrows and realized that they were all very, very drunk and were going to regret this tomorrow—or whenever after tomorrow their minds were restored to sobriety. He also realized that none of them, even when sober, would back off from the wager that was about to be made and would soon be written formally into a betting book at one of their clubs and opened to bets from any other gentleman who cared to risk his money It was not in any of their natures to back off from a dare once it had been made and accepted.
Least of all in his.
They seemed to possess, he thought in a rare moment of moral insight, a somewhat skewed notion of honor.
But to the devil with conscience and with honor too for that matter. He was too drunk to be burdened with any notion that might further addle his brain.
“The wager is, then,” Motherham said in summary, “that Monty cannot seduce Miss Katherine Huxtable into full sexual intercourse within the next… what? Month? Fortnight?”
“Fortnight,” Charlie Field said firmly. “The outcome to depend upon our trust in Monty’s word.”
They proceeded to a discussion of the monetary details of the wager.
“Agreed, Monty?” Motherham asked when all had been decided upon.
“Agreed,” he said with a careless wave of his hand. “Miss Katherine Huxtable will be bedded and enjoyed within the next fortnight. And, it might be added, she will enjoy it too.”
There was a ribald burst of laughter.
Jasper yawned hugely This was certainly something new for him. He had never done anything like this before. But there were no really interesting challenges left that he had not already taken on and won. This would at least be interesting. Also challenging.
The seduction of Agatha Strangelove had been neither really. It had basically been the other way around, in fact, except that it could not be said that he had exactly been seduced. Miss Katherine Huxtable was a rare beauty. He had seen her a number of times so far this spring and had even taken the occasional second look. She was the young Earl of Merton’s sister, as someone had just pointed out. Her elder sister had recently married Viscount Lyngate, who was Merton’s official guardian—and possibly Miss Huxtable’s too. Now there was an interesting thought.
A formidable man, Lyngate.
As was Con Huxtable. And Jasper was not as sure as Motherham was that Con hated his cousins—at least this cousin. Jasper had met him one day driving her and another young lady about town, presumably showing them the sights, and—significantly—he had not stopped to introduce them. He had probably been protecting their innocence, an unlikely shepherd guarding the lambs from the wolf.
Con would very probably not be pleased with this wager or its inevitable outcome—for it was, of course, inevitable.
Which fact merely added titillation to the challenge, for Con was, of course, his friend.
The other men were preparing to leave, he saw. He was very glad that he was already at home, though even the thought of hauling himself to his feet and climbing the stairs to bed was daunting. He had better make the effort, though, or his valet would be in here within a half hour with a burly footman or two to carry him off to his bed. It had happened once, and Jasper had found it more than a mite humiliating. Perhaps that had been Cocking’s intention. It had never happened again.
And so less than half an hour later, having seen his friends safely off the premises, he weaved his way upstairs to his rooms, where he found his valet awaiting him despite the hour, which was late or early depending upon one’s perspective.
“Well, Cocking,” he said, allowing his man to unclothe him just as if he were a baby, “this has been a birthday best forgotten.”
“Most birthdays are, milord,” his man said agreeably
Except that he was not going to be able to forget it, was he? A wager had been made. Another one.
He had never lost a wager.
But this time?
For a few moments after he had dismissed his valet and crossed his bedchamber to open a window, Jasper could not remember what it was he had wagered upon. It was something that even at the time he had known he would regret.
He did not usually look too closely at each year’s new crop of young marriage hopefuls. There were often a few notable beauties among them, but there was also too much danger of being ensnared in some matrimonial trap—despite what someone had said earlier about the innocents not wanting to marry him. He was, after all, a wealthy, titled gentleman, two facts that could easily wipe out a multitude of sins.
But he had looked closely more than once at Katherine Huxtable.
She was more than ordinarily beautiful. There was also a very definite aura of countrified innocence—or naïveté—about her. But an air of good breeding too. And there were those eyes of hers. He had never seen them from close up, but they had intrigued him none theless. He had found himself wondering what was behind them.
It was most unlike him to wonder any such thing. He was a man of surfaces when it came to other people and even when it came to himself. He was not in the habit of looking within.
Perhaps part of the lady’s appeal was the fact that she was Con Huxtable’s cousin and Con had made a point of not introducing her to him.
Now he was pledged to seduce her.
Full sexual intercourse.
Within the next fortnight.
Devil take it! Yes, that was it. That was the wager. That was what he had agreed to do.
It was a sobering thought—literally He felt as he climbed into bed as if he had progressed straight from deep drunkenness to the nauseated, head- pounding aftermath.
One of these days he was going to renounce drinking.
And wagering.
And sowing wild oats, or whatever the devil it was he had been sowing for more years than he cared to count.
One day Not yet, though—he was only twenty- five.
And he had a wager to win before he set about reforming his ways. He had never lost a wager.
2
K A T H E R I N E Huxtable was one of the most fortunate o
f mortals, and she was well aware of that fact as she took a brisk morning walk in London’s Hyde Park with her sister Vanessa, Lady Lyngate.
Just a few short months ago she had been living in a modest cottage in the small village of Throckbridge in Shropshire with her eldest sister, Margaret, and their young brother, Stephen. Vanessa, the widowed Vanessa Dew at the time, had been living with her in- laws at nearby Rundle Park. Katherine had spent a few days of each week teaching the very young children at the village school and helping the schoolmaster with his other classes. They had been living a life of genteel poverty, which had meant that there was almost no money except for food and the essentials of clothing—and what Meg had been saving for Stephen’s education.
And then suddenly everything had changed. Viscount Lyngate, a total stranger at the time, had arrived in the village on Valentine’s Day, bringing with him the star-tlingly unexpected news that Stephen was the new Earl of Merton and owner of Warren Hall in Hampshire as well as other sizable and prosperous properties —and a huge fortune.
And all their fortunes had changed. First they had all moved to Warren Hall, the mansion and park that were Stephen’s principal seat, taking Vanessa with them. Then Vanessa had married Viscount Lyngate. And then they had all come to London to be presented to the queen and the ton and to participate in all the busy activities of the spring Season.
So here they were, she and Vanessa, walking in the park as if there were nothing better to do in life. It all felt shockingly decadent—and undeniably enjoyable too.
Suddenly they were in possession of all sorts of new and wonderful things—money, security, fashionable clothes, vast numbers of new acquaintances, and more entertainments than there were hours in the day during which to enjoy them. And suddenly for Katherine there was the prospect of a glittering future with one of the numerous and eligible gentlemen who had already shown an interest in her.
She was twenty years old and still unattached. She had never been able to persuade herself to fall in love when she lived in Throckbridge, though she had had a number of chances. The trouble was that she still could not here in London even though she genuinely liked a number of her admirers.
She had just admitted in response to a question Vanessa had asked that there was no one special among the gentlemen of her acquaintance.
“Do you want someone special in your life?” Vanessa asked with perhaps a thread of exasperation in her voice.
“Of course I do,” Katherine admitted with something of a sigh. “But that is it you see, Nessie. He must be special. I am coming to the conclusion that there is no such person, that I am looking for a mirage, an impossibility.”
Though she knew romantic love in itself was not an impossibility. She had only to consider her sister’s case. Vanessa had been deeply in love with Hedley Dew, her first husband, and Katherine strongly suspected that she loved Lord Lyngate just as much.
“Or perhaps,” she admitted, “there is such a person but I just cannot recognize him. Perhaps the fault is in me. Perhaps I was just not made for soaring passion or tender romance or—”
Vanessa patted her reassuringly on the arm and laughed.
“Of course there is such a man,” she said, “and of course you will recognize him when you find him and feel all the things you dream of feeling. Or after you have found him, perhaps, as I did with Elliott. We were married before I knew how much I loved him—or that I loved him at all, in fact. Indeed, I have still only just admitted it to myself, and I am not at all sure it would not alarm him dreadfully to know it, poor man.”
“Oh, dear,” Katherine said. “This does not sound at all encouraging, Nessie. Though I am sure Lord Lyngate would not be alarmed.”
They looked at each other sidelong and both chuckled.
But perhaps the fault really was in herself, Katherine thought in the coming days and weeks. Perhaps she had too rigid a notion of what the man of her dreams would look like or behave like. Perhaps she was just looking for love in the wrong places. In all the safe places.
What if love was not safe at all?
That startlingly unexpected and really rather alarming question occurred to her when she was at Vauxhall Gardens one evening.
Margaret and Stephen had just gone back to Warren Hall to stay, Margaret because she was upset over the recent news that Crispin Dew, her longtime beau, had married a Spanish lady while with his regiment in the Peninsula—though she would never have admitted it if confronted—and Stephen because at the age of seventeen he could not yet participate fully in the social life of the ton but could get back to his studies and prepare himself for Oxford in the autumn. Vanessa and Lord Lyngate had gone with them to spend a few days at Finchley Park, their home nearby Although Katherine would have been more than happy to go too, she had been persuaded to remain in London for the rest of the Season to enjoy herself So she was staying at Moreland House on Cavendish Square with Viscount Lyngate’s mother and his youngest sister, Cecily, who was also making her debut this Season. The dowager Lady Lyngate had promised to keep a maternal eye upon Katherine.
But that eye was perhaps not quite as watchful as it ought to have been, Katherine concluded during the evening on which she and Cecily joined a party at Vauxhall Gardens organized by Lord Beaton and his sister, Miss Flaxley Their mother had undertaken to take charge of the party of young people, and the dowager Lady Lyngate had decided upon a rare evening of relaxation at home.
It was a party of eight young persons, not counting Lady Beaton herself—and it included Lord Montford of all people.
Baron Montford was a gentleman who had been specifically pointed out to Katherine as one of London’s most disreputable and dangerous rakehells. The warning had come from one of his friends and therefore someone who ought to know—from Constantine Huxtable, in fact, her wickedly handsome, half-G reek second cousin, whom she had met for the first time only recently when she had moved to Warren Hall with her family Constantine had been obliging enough to take both her and his first cousin, Cecily, under his wing here in London, escorting them about town to see the sights and to meet new people whom he considered suitable acquaintances for them. No chaperone could possibly have been stricter on that point, though Katherine suspected that he knew any number of less savory persons and was perhaps even friendly with them.
There was Lord Montford, for example. That gentleman had approached them in the park one day, calling a greeting to Constantine as if he were his closest friend in the world. But Constantine had merely nodded to him and driven on by without stopping to make introductions. It had seemed almost rude to Katherine.
Baron Montford was mockingly handsome, if such a word could be used to describe a man’s looks. Even if Constantine had not proceeded to warn her against him after that chance meeting, Katherine was sure she would have taken one look at him and known that he was a rake and someone best avoided. Apart from his good looks, the careless, expensive elegance of his clothing, the assured skill with which he rode his horse—all attributes of numerous gentlemen she had met during the past several weeks — there was something else about him. Something—raw. Something to which she could not put a satisfactory name even when she tried. If she had been familiar with the word sexuality, she would have known it as the very one for which her mind searched. He positively oozed it from every pore.
He also oozed danger.
“If I should see either of you so much as glancing his way at any time for the rest of the Season,” Constantine had said after Lord Montford had ridden by and he had explained who the man was and why there had been no introductions, “I shall personally escort the culprit home, lock her in her room, swallow the key, and stand guard outside her room until summer comes.”
He had grinned at each of them as he spoke, and both of them had laughed merrily and protested loudly, but neither Cecily nor Katherine had been left in any doubt that he would do something dire if he ever caught them consorting in any way at all with that particular friend of his.
All of which, of course, had piqued Katherine’s interest—quite against her will. She had found herself stealing curious glances at Lord Montford whenever she saw him—and because they moved in largely the same social circles, that was often enough.
He was even more handsome than she had thought from that first glimpse in the park. He was tall without being too tall, slender without being thin, and firmly muscled in all the right places. He had thick, dark brown hair, which he wore rather longer than was fashionable, and there was one errant lock of it that was forever falling over the right side of his forehead. His eyes were dark and slumberous—though perhaps that was not quite the right word. They looked sleepy because he often kept his eyelids drooped over them, but Katherine had come to realize that the eyes beneath those lazy lids were very keen indeed. Once or twice she had even met their gaze and been forced to look beyond him on the pretense that she had not really been observing him at all.
Each time her heart had thumped rather uncomfortably in her bosom. He was not the sort of man one wished to be caught observing. It was at such moments that the word mocking leapt to mind.
He had a handsome, arrogant face with the right eyebrow often cocked higher than the left. His finely chiseled lips were usually slightly pursed, as if something rather improper were proceeding in his mind.
He was a baron and was reputed to be enormously wealthy But his company was not courted by the very highest sticklers of society. Constantine had not exaggerated about his reputation for unbridled wildness, for taking on any mad and dangerous challenge anyone was willing to wager on, for hard, reckless living and wicked debauchery. Several matchmaking mamas, even some of the more aggressively ambitious ones, avoided him as though he had a permanent case of the plague. Or perhaps they avoided him more because they feared he would turn those keen, mocking eyes on them, raise his right eyebrow, purse his lips, and make them feel as if they were three inches high if they presumed to suppose that he might pay court to their daughters —or even dance with them.