by Claudia Dain
“I want you,” he said, his voice like a wolf ’s growl. “Don’t pretend you don’t know that, Caro, not when you sit there like the most jaded seductress, mocking me, enticing me.”
“I sit here, dear Ash, with my breasts bared, because I know no such thing. I am well in over my head. I am using every card in my possession. Were I confident of anything, I would not sit here as I am.”
“Then cover yourself, Caro. God knows I can’t take much more.”
She couldn’t either. The desire to throw herself in the way of his hands was almost more than she could bear. Caro pulled up her sagging bodice and retied the string. But for the tear in the side seam, she looked almost presentable and she could enter the house without shame.
Unless, of course, one discounted the shameful fact that she arrived at home from within the dark and private and completely unchaperoned confines of Lord Ashdon’s coach. That bit would be somewhat difficult to downplay. All the more reason for her to marry Lord Ashdon at the earliest opportunity. Tomorrow ought to do nicely.
“I am covered, Lord Ashdon,” she said. “You can look now.”
“Caro, whatever made you think I had stopped looking?” he said. “I have looked and will look again, whenever the opportunity presents itself. And if it does not conveniently present itself, I will make my own opportunity. You were quite right about your breasts. They are lovely. Do your other parts compare as favorably?”
“Lord Ashdon! This is hardly an appropriate conversation for us to be engaging in!”
“You would prefer not to engage in conversation but in some other activity? I daresay I agree with that.”
“That is not at all what I am proposing,” she said stiffly. “You have the most determined talent for avoiding the point, which is,” she said quickly, when he took a breath to interrupt her, “that you have proposed marriage and I have accepted. When is the blessed event to occur? Given your preoccupation with my . . . parts, I would say that tomorrow would suit us both.”
A well of silence enveloped his side of the coach, like a tangible pall of misery. He was the most emotional man, first determined lust and then, quick as rising sparks, dejected gloom. It was going to take a very considerable amount of effort to stay abreast of his moods.
“You have an objection to tomorrow?” she said. “I know it will take a special license, but I believe my mother has—”
At that, he interrupted her by laughing. To say that Lord Ashdon suffered from an extremity of mood shifts was putting it delicately.
“Is something amusing?” she said.
“You are,” he said. “You are supremely amusing, Caro, the more so because you are so blind to it.”
“If this is an attempt at flattery, it is a failed attempt.”
“I do apologize,” he said, sounding anything but apologetic. She couldn’t help but return to her original supposition that Lord Ashdon was completely foxed.
“I do accept,” she said, sounding anything but accepting. “Now, shall we plan the wedding?”
Ashdon once again pushed his morose silence all over her wedding plans.
“Is there something you wish to say, Lord Ashdon? I would prefer it to this deafening silence,” she said.
“I’m taking you home, Caro,” he said softly.
“I was never in any doubt of that.”
“I’m taking you home and I shall do what I can to redeem your reputation, little enough as it may be, and I shall not see you again.”
This after she had let him see her bare breasts? He was foxed. And she was ruined, beyond repair or redemption.
“I’m sorry, but that will not do,” she said calmly, ignoring the pounding of her heart and the shortness of her breath. “I have been ruined, by you, Ash, and you shall make it right.”
“I’m trying to make it right, Caro,” he said under his breath.
“Marrying me will suffice.”
Again, his silence spoke for him. It was with the utmost irritation that she realized she was beginning to be able to read his silences.
“You are not going to marry me,” she said slowly. “You believe marrying me would serve me more ill than ruining me.”
“I do,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you, Caro. I don’t believe I ever did.”
“How reassuring,” she said stiffly, sniffing against the cold night air. It was not emotion that made her sniff and wipe discreetly at her eyes. All wild emotion resided within Lord Ashdon’s twisted heart, not her own. “If I may be so bold, why did you give me these pearls, Lord Ashdon? Why did you make a mockery of my good name in the Duke of Hyde’s dressing room? Why did you kiss me? Why did you . . . touch me?” she said, wiping the single rebellious line of tears running out of her right eye with brutal ruthlessness. No tears. Not now. Not ever. Not over this . . . miscalculation. “You have ruined me, Lord Ashdon. Was it not done willfully? ”
“You said you wanted to be a courtesan. You said you did not want to be my wife,” he said softly.
That again. She was not going to be distracted by that, not when it had taken place as long ago as yesterday. Not when everything had changed since then. Everything, it seemed, except Lord Ashdon.
“I have reversed both positions, Lord Ashdon. Did you fail to notice?”
“Some positions may not be so easily reversed.”
“Yet your heart is surely not to be counted among the constant and irreversible.”
“My heart has no part in this.”
Caroline snorted indelicately, crossing her arms over herself like a welcoming vise. “I quite agree. Your heart, surely, is to be discounted among all such conversations and considerations, Lord Ashdon. Your heart, if it beats at all, beats a false tempo.”
“Do not do this, Caro. Do not tear your heart up over this.”
“Do not worry about my heart, Lord Ashdon. It is well beyond your reach.”
“I will make it right. I swear it, Caro. I will right this wrong upon your name.”
“And how will you do that, Lord Ashdon? Will you take back your kisses? Your promises? Your pearls, at least those are easily returned.”
She lifted the pearls from over her head, and he barked at her, “Leave them! The pearls are yours, no matter what else. Wear them. I would that you would wear them every day of your life.”
“Which I’m certain you pray will be short indeed.”
“You want me to suffer,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, sniffing back her pointless tears, “I want you to suffer miserably. Can you do that, Lord Ashdon, or will you renege on that as well?”
He was silent, his favorite response.
It occurred to her, in that stilted silence, that she was mishandling him completely. Her mother would never engage in such dreary tactics. Her mother would entice and charm and cajole and, more importantly, her mother would get her way. Caro used Ashdon’s silence to rethink everything, trying to see the world and the men who galloped across it, from behind her mother’s eyes.
It was a remarkably insightful view.
The most important fact facing her was that she must get her way in this. Ashdon must marry her. She was ruined, yes, but she would only be completely ruined if Ashdon slipped the net. Married, the whole pearl escapade became an amusing story, the sort of story that enhanced a woman’s reputation instead of destroying it. With the proper handling, obviously. Caro had no doubt that her mother could manage the story. What was essential now was for her to manage Ashdon. He simply must be managed into marriage.
“You have me at my worst,” she said. “I apologize, Lord Ashdon, for my temper. Of course I will keep your pearls, as a remembrance of you. Each time I wear them and they fall upon my breasts, I will remember you . . . and your hands.”
Ashdon shifted his weight on the squabs and grumbled something. She took it for a good sign.
“I hope that when you see me wearing them about Town, you will remember as well, the fit of your hands . . . there, and the way I responded to yo
u.” She paused and sighed seductively. When she heard him take a rattled breath, she added, “And, obviously, I will keep them because I have earned them.”
She could almost make out the coarse word he used, but not quite. Well, onward and upward. She would do better.
“You have told me, reminded me, really, of my first impulse to follow the courtesan’s path. I had thought to do so. Until I saw you. Until I met you. Seeing you, feeling as I do about you, about your tumbled hair and piercing eyes . . . did you know what I first thought about your eyes, Ash? I thought that they would pierce me through, and my next thought, I blush to admit, was how some other part of you would pierce me. And of how much I wanted that.”
“Stop, Caro,” he growled. “Stop it.”
“I don’t want to stop,” she whispered, slowly taking off her right glove, sliding it down her arm, tugging it from each finger. “I want you to know everything, now, as we part. You must have noticed I have an addiction to honesty, Ash. I don’t want to be turned from it, especially not now when everything is lost to me. When you are lost to me.”
“I’m trying to do what’s right,” he said, his voice gone hoarse as he stared at her gloveless hand. Remarkable how seductive and erotic a simple woman’s arm could look, bare and white in the darkness.
“I know you are,” she breathed. “But I wonder if you understand where you’ve left me. How can I be a courtesan now, Ash, when you are the only man I want to touch me?”
“It will pass,” he gritted out. Did he say, God help me? She wasn’t certain. She’d like to think so.
“It may,” she sighed. “But what a pity that would be. I like this, Ash. That is my guilty secret. I like what I feel for you, the heat, the hammering, the blind dizziness that assaults me when you look at me, when you touch me. I don’t think I can find this with any other man. Or am I wrong? How many men will it take to drive the imprint of your touch from me? How many beds? How many arms? How many mouths pressed against my skin will drive the memory of your kiss from my heart?”
“God, Caro! Stop this!”
Ashdon grabbed her by the arms and shook her twice. His touch was a scald against her bare arm that they both felt. He jerked back against the squabs like a wild thing bayed by hunting dogs.
“I can’t stop,” she said, leaning forward to lay a hand against his cheek, well aware that her bodice dipped and the weight of her breasts spilled forward. “I wanted to be wanted. I told you that. It is nothing but the stark truth. But shall I tell you another truth, Ash? I wanted you to want me. You.”
“I do want you,” he murmured.
His eyes were glittering and his cheek was hot, his beard rough beneath her fingertips. He was breathing though his mouth, his air moist and hot on the inside of her wrist. She shivered with longing and let him feel it.
“I believe you,” she said softly, letting her breath wash over his face. “Your desire is more gift to me than these pearls could ever be.”
She leaned forward and kissed his cheek, her lips pressing against the sharp bite of his beard. A parting kiss, not unlike the simple kiss of a friend. And nothing like it at all.
“I want you, Ash,” she whispered against his face. “I want you right now. What sort of courtesan can I be when the only man I want between my legs”—she moved her mouth to lightly touch his lips—“is you?”
Twenty-three
THEY were married at eleven the next morning. It was simple, really. Her mother had acquired a special license on the same day she had acquired Lord Ashdon’s debts. Lord Westlin was invited, naturally, and, naturally, did not choose to attend.
Ashdon did not seem particularly concerned. In point of fact, Ashdon did not seem particularly anything. One would think a man crossing into marriage would display some emotion, but Ashdon displayed only resolve. Caro did not think resolve qualified as a particularly flattering wedding day aspect, but Caro was, ironically, resolved to ignore everything about Lord Ashdon’s aspect and be happy. She had won the man she’d targeted, her mother’s rather violent description for a courtship, and she was going to rejoice in it and in him.
Just because it had been a rather unusual courtship was no reason not to enjoy herself now. She had the husband she had sought. He had come into the marriage willingly, one might even say eagerly after the episode in the coach. And everything, now that it was all concluded, was going to be wonderful. Things would settle down. Lord Ashdon would stop displaying his resolve, and she would stop having to display her breasts to get him to do the most mundane of things. Like marry her. Like want her. Like . . . love her.
For a very logical girl, it was more than disturbing to realize that, while she had the husband she’d aimed for, she wasn’t at all certain she had the husband she’d planned for.
It seemed to her that she’d been rather more logical before she’d set eyes on Lord Ashdon. He had a way of muddling every thought just by looking at her. A skill of that sort could lead to a most disturbing state of affairs in a marriage, unless it was his thoughts being muddled by merely looking at her. That would have been quite nice. But, looking at him across the table at the lovely wedding breakfast her mother had arranged, he did not look at all muddled. He looked, she couldn’t help repeating, resolved.
“A lovely wedding,” her mother said from the head of the table in the capacious dining room. “Quite the loveliest of the Season, I daresay.”
Anne and the Duke of Calbourne made murmuring noises. Ashdon did not make noises of any sort. He probably couldn’t think what precise noise would sound resolved.
“Have you made plans, Lord Ashdon, as to where you and Caro will spend the next month or two?”
“I have not, Lady Dalby,” Ashdon said. He seemed to be moving from resolved to grim. Lovely.
“Might I suggest France? Absolutely everyone is there now since the treaty has been signed. If you have any desire to see France, now is the time. I daresay that this peace will not last, as no peace between France and England ever shall last. Still, France has the most delightful fashions and quite the best gardens.”
“It’s a cynical position you take regarding politics, Lady Dalby,” Ashdon said, “particularly as it is strongly rumored that you are French.”
“I?” Sophia said with a smile. “I am not French. And as to politics, how can one not be cynical about politics?”
“I did not know you had an interest in politics, Lady Dalby,” Ashdon said. “It is perhaps the one thing not whispered about you.”
“Really? How very odd,” she said softly. “Yet, one of the pleasures of family, darling Ashdon, is that we should have no secrets between us.”
“Should I excuse myself?” Lord Calbourne said, pushing back his chair.
“Not at all necessary, your grace,” Sophia said. “I just don’t understand where these silly rumors are born and why they never die. I am not French. I have never claimed to be French, though I should not mind being French.”
“Then you are . . . ?” Ashdon prompted.
“Why, English. What else?” Sophia asked with a grin. “Isn’t it obvious? ”
No one answered her, but it was quite obvious to everyone that there was nothing at all obvious about Sophia Dalby, unless it was her charm and appeal. Sophia and Caroline were as unlike as any mother and daughter could ever be and as soon as Ashdon realized that she was nothing but a pair of breasts, which surely even he must eventually tire of, the marriage would be over, or as over as marriages in the ton ever were. He would live his life. She would live hers. They would toil out two or three children between them and then see each other occasionally at parties.
Ashdon had likely reasoned that out already, which would explain both his resolve and his descent into grim. She could quite feel herself following him.
“Where would you like to go, Caro?” her mother asked.
“Oh, I suppose France would be amusing,” she said, staring down at her napkin.
“I do believe my daughter is suffering from brid
al nerves,” Sophia said lightly. “You will be considerate of that, won’t you, Ashdon?”
For answer, Ashdon merely stared at her, grimly.
“I think, Lady Dalby, that Ash is suffering a bout of nerves himself,” Lord Calbourne said in an attempt to cover the awkward silence. “It is not only brides who feel the jangle of nerves upon the event of marriage.”
“Were you a nervous groom, your grace?” Anne asked softly.
“I was convinced I had lost three teeth, they were chattering so violently,” Calbourne said.
“And you were an eager groom?” Sophia asked.
“I’ll go so far as to say I was willing,” Calbourne said. “I don’t know that I had the intelligence to be eager. I was but twenty and there was little in my thoughts but gambling, hunting, and—”