by Claudia Dain
Ashdon should be just the thing.
Sophia smiled as she greeted her guests, making it a point not to encourage a meeting between Ashdon and Caro. Things of that nature proceeded best when a bit ignored.
On the other hand, there was nothing like a good, solid dam to make the waters surge and the pressure build.
“Caro, darling,” she said, taking both her daughter and Anne by the arm and casually but very purposefully leading them to a quiet corner of the yellow salon, the bigger of the two salons. “I’m so sorry. Naturally, I felt I had to invite him, what with the marriage arrangement and all. Even if it did fall out today, I didn’t feel it quite right to refuse him admittance. Are you terribly put out? Shall I send him off or can you bear up under the strain of seeing the man who might have been yours?”
Caro looked across the room to where Lord Ashdon stood talking to Viscount Staverton, an old acquaintance of her mother’s. How old and in what way they were acquaintances Caro had never had the cheek to ask. Though now that she was supposed to be launching a life as a courtesan, a very well-paid courtesan, she should probably ask those exact sort of questions.
She didn’t. It didn’t seem the time, what with Lord Ashdon, her almost husband, standing just across the room.
He certainly dominated a room.
He was very tall and very handsome and very romantic looking. His hair was tossed forward so that it brushed in dark curls against his brows. With his dark hair and black jacket, his eyes appeared that much more blue. He hadn’t looked at her yet, they hadn’t even been introduced, but she could just imagine how those blue eyes would pierce her.
If she were to become a courtesan, it was clear that something would pierce her, and very soon.
Oh dear, where had that thought come from?
“Caro?” her mother said, taking her hand and rubbing it. “Are you quite all right? You look jumbled all of a sudden. A broken engagement can do that, I suppose, though I hardly speak from firsthand experience since no man ever broke an engagement with me, of any sort.”
Anne blushed and ducked her head.
Caro glared at her mother and felt herself becoming less . . . jumbled. “I’m fine, Mother. I’m not the least bit jumbled.”
“I don’t suppose I should introduce you,” Sophia said, looking across the room at Ashdon, who was not looking in their direction. He hadn’t looked at Caro since entering the salon.
Was he intentionally snubbing her? It wasn’t as if he could be upset that she was rejecting his pursuit of her since he hadn’t pursued her at all. He’d been bought and paid for, like a bit of lace or a saddle or a bonnet. She hadn’t gambled herself into penury. She hadn’t agreed to a marriage just to keep the creditors off her doorstep. She was the one who should be snubbing him. Though, watching how thoroughly he ignored her, and she the daughter of the hostess no less, she thought that perhaps snubbing him might be exactly what he would want.
If there was anything she’d decided in the last few moments of furious introspection it was that Lord Ashdon did not deserve to get what he wanted and certainly not from her.
“Oh, I think we ought to be introduced,” Caro said, slipping her arm through her mother’s and catching Anne’s hand in hers. “After all, we have something of a connection now. I think it only proper that I meet the man you bought for me.”
“Really, darling,” Sophia breathed, “there’s no need to be coarse.”
“I’m only being honest,” Caro said in an undertone as she made her way across the room, practically pulling Anne and her mother behind her.
“If being honest results in being coarse,” Sophia said, “it is far better to dissemble gracefully than to be vulgarly truthful.”
She might have been able to think up some clever rejoinder if Lord Ashdon hadn’t suddenly become alarmingly close, turning from his conversation with Viscount Staverton to impale her with his piercing blue eyes.
She’d been right about those eyes.
He was wearing a black coat, a lapis blue silk waistcoat, and white knee breeches and cravat. He looked . . . delicious, if one discounted the bored and superior look on his face.
She decided not to discount it since he probably thought she should discount it.
Was there anything worse than a man who could be purchased? Definitely not. He had nothing to feel superior about. Why, with the snap of her fingers, she could have had him delivered to her doorstep like a barrel of oysters.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if she threatened him with just that?
She didn’t bother to wonder where that thought had come from because she knew exactly where it had come from: wounded pride. First Richborough and now Ashdon; was there a man alive who found her desireable? It was becoming perfectly obvious that not only would a man not choose to marry her, he would not, unless pressed past all endurance, choose to debauch her. The situation, at this precise moment, looked hopeless. One could hardly be a well-paid courtesan if well-heeled men refused to pay for the promised delights. And as to marriage, if she didn’t have a hope of marrying well without having her mother buy her a husband, the least Lord Ashdon could have done was refuse to be bought.
“Lord Ashdon, I do not believe you have met my daughter, Lady Caroline Trevelyan?”
“A pleasure, Lady Caroline,” Lord Ashdon said, bowing slightly.
Caro dipped her head and curseyed just as slightly.
What was it about this man that drove needles into her joints and pokers into her heart? She disliked him on principle . . . and she couldn’t stop staring at him.
Which was just one more reason to dislike him.
“You remember Lord Staverton, of course,” her mother said, smiling at Lord Staverton. Lord Staverton, looking the height of fashion, was ruddy cheeked and fifty if he was a day.
He had known her mother from her first days in London and, according to a passing comment her father had once made, seemed to have been one of her mother’s first friends. She had never quite warmed to Lord Staverton. It might have been because he still looked at her mother as if she were a treat he wanted to partake of at any moment. It might have been because one of his eyes was crossed. It might have been because she didn’t like to think of her mother having had . . . friends.
But that was all going to change now, now that she was going to have friends of her own.
“Delighted, Lady Caroline,” Lord Staverton said warmly.
Whatever one could say about Lord Staverton, he did have lovely manners. Lord Ashdon had barely said one word in greeting. Lord Ashdon was eyeing her like an unruly carthorse. Lord Ashdon could go to the devil.
“And you must remember Mrs. Warren,” Sophia said, whereupon Anne curtseyed gracefully, a curl of her shining red hair tumbling forward to land in her flawless cleavage. Both men’s eyes went to Anne’s cleavage, and stayed there for approximately four seconds too long.
“Of course, and how are you this evening, Mrs. Warren?” Lord Staverton gushed, his good eye twitching back and forth between Anne’s face and her cleavage.
The unsubstantiated rumors of Lord Staverton’s interest in Anne as a possible wife seemed slightly more substantiated.
Was everyone in the world going to be married while she was busy being a courtesan?
“Very well, thank you, Lord Staverton,” Anne said mildly.
This conversation was boring beyond words and was taking her nowhere in her inexplicable desire to make Lord Ashdon wretched.
“I’m so glad we’ve had the opportunity to meet, Lord Ashdon,” she said. “I daresay we have our mutual curiosity to satisfy.”
There. In with both feet and not a moment’s regret.
A startled silence spread out from their small group to touch the others in the room so that conversation stalled and stilled until only the most hesitant whispers could be heard in the far corners. Oh, dear. And those blue eyes were so chilling and so still, as if she were the only person in the room and still of no interest to him. Horrid man. She’d had quite enough
of being undesirable for one day and she was in no frame of mind to tolerate it from this man.
She half expected her mother to say something to smooth the moment; her mother excelled at that sort of thing. But her mother said nothing.
“As to curiosity,” Lord Ashdon said, his voice low and controlled, “yes, that itch is scratched. As to satisfaction,” he almost purred, “no, Lady Caroline. Not at all. I am far, far from being satisfied.”
“To your misfortune,” she said, caught in his cold blue gaze and fighting back with her tongue. “I find myself most satisfied, all my questions answered.”
Somehow, with some hurried breath of words, her mother and Staverton left them. Anne probably wished to escape, but could think of no excuse that would carry her off. Caro reached back and grabbed Anne by the arm, linking them. Anne turned away and looked at a vase of early roses on the sideboard as if she had never seen pink roses before. Caro felt more alone with Lord Ashdon than if she had been locked in a cupboard with him, though being locked in a cupboard brought to mind all sorts of delicious sensations and dangers, not that Lord Ashdon looked at all as if he would participate.
She gripped Anne’s arm tighter.
“You’ll pardon me,” Lord Ashdon said, staring into her eyes, “but you do not look satisfied. Far from it.”
“Your eyes deceive you,” she declared.
“Something is endeavoring to deceive me,” he said. Was that a smile? No, he was too surly for smiles.
“Surely you are not implying that I practice deceit.”
“I would certainly never imply that you have perfected deceit.”
Anne tried to pull off. Caro held on.
“Lord Ashdon, this conversation is entirely too familiar,” Caro said, raising her chin.
“Lady Caroline,” he said—he was smiling—“perhaps more than our conversation could be entirely too familiar, then we might both be well satisfied.”
Caro, in spite of all logic, felt a thrill tumble down her spine. If she was not mistaken, Lord Ashdon had made a comment with a decidedly debauched tone to it. She could hardly keep herself from grinning, which would have been a completely inappropriate response. No, she should be insulted, and she was. She was just very, very delighted that he had clearly felt the irresistible urge to insult her. Anne wrenched her arm free and was halfway across the room before Caro could stop her.
“Look what you’ve done,” she snapped under her breath, truly irritated. It was far easier to be delighted by a debauched sentiment and a wicked blue gaze when one did not have to face wickedness and debauchery alone.
“Managed to get you all to myself? I’d say I’ve done well,” he said.
“Lord Ashdon,” she said, throwing her shoulders back and thrusting her chin out, “I was under the assumption that we both understood our current standing. You and my mother”—she paused, embarrassed—“well, the agreement that you reached between you is not to my, that is, I don’t plan to marry.”
“Yes, Lady Dalby said as much,” he said, taking one step closer to her, pushing all the air out of the room. He was very tall and very broad and his eyes were very, very blue. “You don’t want to be my wife. You would rather be a courtesan.”
He was furious. She could feel it in the air all around him. She hadn’t thought he would be furious about her refusal; after all, they didn’t even know each other. But to be refused so that a courtesan’s life could be pursued . . . yes, that might make a man angry.
Where was her mother when she needed her? The entire room seemed to have emptied out, leaving her alone to face a furious man. He would likely strangle her, letting her inert body fall to the floor before anyone dared to gaze in his direction.
“Come, come, Lord Ashdon,” she said, taking a step back. If he were planning on strangling her, he’d have to catch her first. “Let us not color it too prettily. You had debts to pay and I was the means to pay them. I would not be any man’s purse. Strangely, I would like to liked for myself.”
“And you shall have ample opportunity to be liked for yourself, and to measure your likeability on the strings of any man’s purse. Any man who can pay your price.”
“How very crude you are,” she said, taking another step backward.
Unfortunately, he was very tall, his steps were rather larger than hers, and he was still following her.
“Perhaps,” he said softly. “But is that not the life to which you impetuously aspire?”
“I am not impetuous. I am practical.”
“If you were truly practical, you would have accepted the husband arranged for you.”
“Don’t you mean to say ‘bought for me’?” she snapped as she tripped over the train of her skirts and heard a small rip. Horrid, horrid man.
“As you say,” he snarled softly, the muscles in his jaw rippling. “But do you pretend to be my superior? Are you not prepared to go to any man who can afford your price? Are you not, Lady Caroline, arranging a future for yourself where you will be bought and traded? You refuse me as husband. Can you afford to refuse me as patron?”
It was then that she backed into the sideboard, knocking the vase of early pink roses to the floor and flooding the back of her white dress with water.
Eight
THINGS were going beautifully.
It wasn’t that Ashdon had planned to engage in a snarling salon battle with Caroline Trevelyan, but that, having done so, he was enjoying himself immensely.
Yes, she was beautiful. He had expected as much of her, knowing her mother. Even Stuart Trevelyan, the eighth Earl of Dalby and Caroline’s father, had been fashionably attractive in his day. Lady Caroline ran true to her bloodlines; that was clear in her ivory skin, dark blue eyes, and black hair. What was not as clear was her temperament.
Was Sophia as fiery? Certainly not in public.
Had Dalby been as stubborn? Perhaps, though rather more elegantly.
Caroline, all proclamations to the contrary, certainly had a lot to learn about being a courtesan if tonight’s example was to be her calling card. Courtesans did not provoke, unless the provocation be erotic. Courtesans did not argue. Courtesans did not insult. Courtesans did not back into furniture. Courtesans did not knock over vases. Courtesans did not repair upstairs for a change of clothes without inviting a man along to help loosen water-drenched stays. An extra pair of strong hands would surely be needed to pry her out of her gown.
Ashdon shifted his weight against the growing bulge in his breeches. The salon of Sophia Dalby was no place to lose control.
“I thought I was good, but I hadn’t heard even the first rumor of a marriage arrangement between you and Lady Caroline,” Calbourne said.
“But you’ve heard now,” Ashdon said, turning to face the fourth Duke of Calbourne.
He and Cal had met at Eton on their first day, at a fight actually in which they’d both found themselves, along with five other boys. What the fight had been about was inconsequential now. What they had found was that the field had cleared and they’d been back to back, fists raised. They were still in that position, and Ashdon got great pleasure from it. If there were anyone to have at one’s back, it was the Duke of Calbourne. Cal stood a full head taller than any man he’d yet to meet, raised his fist, but not his voice, at a moment’s notice, and was the most cheerfully irritating person in the whole of England.
“Only enough to whet my appetite,” Cal said, staring across the room at Sophia Dalby. Half the men in the room were staring at Sophia Dalby. It appeared to be some sort of rule. “Care to expound?”
“I do not, but that won’t end it, will it?” Ashdon said.
“Of course not. You can either relinquish all the details gracefully or be hounded until you bleed from a thousand cuts. I would choose the graceful option, were I you,” Cal said, grinning.
“I agreed to marry the girl, she declined, that’s the short of it,” Ashdon said.
“No, it won’t do,” Cal said crisply. “Lady Caroline must be of fresh dre
ss before dinner is served. You have at least fifteen minutes to tell me the long of it. Proceed.”
Ashdon scowled and motioned for Cal to walk with him to a relatively secluded alcove at the least populated end of the room. Given what had occurred with the vase and his stalking of Lady Caroline, the other guests seemed well content to have him move off.
“I have had some debts pile up and the Countess Dalby made good use of them. She sought to buy a husband for her girl.”
“You?”
Ashdon bowed in acknowledgment.
“What sort of debts?” Calbourne asked.
“The usual sort. Gaming debts.”
Cal raised his eyebrows and made a rolling motion with his hand. Ashdon continued.