by Claudia Dain
“Certainly women,” Sophia interrupted, laughing. “I’ve yet to meet a man of twenty whose thoughts were not preoccupied with women.”
“Preoccupied, yes,” Calbourne acknowledged, “but a tangle of fear and longing that only confused me.”
“How honestly you put it,” Anne said. “May I congratulate you, your grace? Most men would not admit to confusion and never to fear.”
“Do not put too much upon it,” Calbourne said. “I can admit it now because it is long ago and I am well past it. Women no longer frighten me,” he said with a wry grin.
“How fortunate for women,” Sophia said with an answering grin, before turning her attention to Anne to ask, “And was your husband a nervous groom, Mrs. Warren?”
“I think he was,” Anne said with a smile of remembrance. “I didn’t know it at the time, of course. He seemed to me all that was strong and true and brave.”
“Which is precisely how a bride should see her husband,” Sophia said.
At which point all eyes turned to look at Caro. Even the footmen standing against the walls were looking at her.
Resolve, resolve, resolve.
Unfortunately, she could not find resolve. All she could find was fear, longing, and a large dose of anger. Let Ashdon be Resolve. She would be Anger, though perhaps more refined. Let it be called Outrage.
“Once more I find myself stepping out of tune,” Caro said, looking at her mother with a sarcastic smile frozen on her face. “I am clearly the most unlikely of brides . . . with the most unlikely of husbands.”
Ashdon jerked his head up from his contemplation of his beefsteak and stared at her. He did not look resolved. She considered it a vast improvement.
“If I am not mistaken,” Calbourne said politely, “that is the entire point. Most husbands on their wedding day feel completely unlikely, though most brides are not able to see it. You are very astute, Lady Caroline.”
“I daresay, your grace, that I should not be praised for what even a blind beggar could discern,” Caro said. “Lord Ashdon has been artfully maneuvered into this marriage and, far from seeing him as strong, brave, and true, a more honest description of him would be cornered, caught, and, because he is a gentleman, resolved . Do I do you an injustice, Lord Ashdon? ” she asked sweetly.
“You do yourself an injustice, Caro,” Ashdon said, staring forcefully into her eyes. “All women set their traps, indeed they are taught to do so from the nursery, but when a man is cornered, as you put it, he is the one who decides whether or not he will be caught. And since we are sharing secrets with what Lady Dalby has so graciously deemed family, I will share this: there is not a man married who does know that it was he who was the hunter, he who set the trap, he who cornered, and he who caught the woman he had set his eye upon.”
Sophia clapped lightly and said, covering Caro’s stunned silence, “Well said, Lord Ashdon. Charmingly put.”
“You will agree to what I’ve said, Lady Sophia?” Ashdon said.
“I would be a fool argue it,” Sophia said serenely.
Yes, well, Caro would most definitely argue it, fool or not.
“I do apologize for this,” she said, turning her gaze to Anne, Calbourne, and her mother, “but I’m certain I’m not revealing anything you don’t know, however vulgar it is to speak of it.”
“It is best to avoid vulgarity whenever possible, Caro,” her mother said. “Perhaps we should leave you to discuss this privately. Shall we take coffee in the yellow salon?”
And before Caro could take another breath, Anne, Calbourne, and her mother were out of the dining room, closing the door behind them.
“I suppose you’re going to chastise me for vulgarity as well,” Caro said to Ashdon once they were alone.
“Not at all,” Ash said, looking pointedly at the footmen until they blushed and left the dining room as well. “Say what you wish. I have no desire to be heavy-handed with my wife.”
“You have no desire to be anything with your wife,” she said. “You didn’t even want a wife!”
“Don’t be absurd, Caro,” he said, cutting into his beefsteak. “It was my duty to take a wife.”
“That is not the same as wanting a wife.”
Ashdon looked up at her, his blue eyes piercing into hers. She was getting rather sick of that as well. Ash could go about with his piercing eyes elsewhere, where he could blissfully pierce some other woman with them.
Which only showed how outraged she was since she would happily kill any woman who was pierced, blissfully or otherwise, by Ashdon’s eyes . . . or any other part of his anatomy.
“You know very well I wanted you,” he said.
“And I know very well what you wanted me for,” she said, pushing her chair back and standing up. She felt the overwhelming urge to pace and she saw no reason not to give in to her urges.
“I should think you would,” he said, leaning back in his chair, tipping the front legs off the floor, “as you worked diligently and most provocatively to bring me to that state of desire.”
“So you admit I trapped you.”
“I admit nothing of the sort. Do you think yours are the only kisses I have enjoyed? The only breasts I have fondled? The only nipples I have—”
“Yes, yes, I take your point,” she said, feeling a blush rising from her nipples, one pair out of thousands he had apparently tasted, the brute.
“I don’t think you do, Caro,” he said, breaking off a bit of muffin to pop into his mouth. That he could sit quietly and calmly eating while she was trembling in fear and longing and confusion, like any normal bridegroom, made her want to poke him in the eye with something sharp.
Honestly, she had never had a violent thought in her life until she had met Ashdon. He was a horrible, degrading influence on her. She wouldn’t be past her rights to kill him for it.
“Oh?” she said sharply. “Wasn’t your point that you’ve seen thousands upon thousands of breasts and chose mine from among the throng because it was time for you to marry?”
“Well, they are lovely breasts,” he said with a smile. “Quite as advertised.”
He had the nerve to laugh at her? Caro looked around for something sharp, something that would look like a plausible accident. The candlesticks on the dining table might do the job. She could say he had an attack of some sort, fell forward, and impaled himself on the silver. It was such a pleasing image.
“So glad that you found them satisfactory, Lord Ashdon,” she said. “I don’t know what I would have done had you found my breasts less than pleasing to your jaded eyes.”
“Oh, I’m not as jaded as all that,” he said, popping another bit of muffin into his mouth. Hadn’t there been a general back fifty years or so ago who had choked and died on a muffin? Certainly it was possible for it to happen again, perhaps with a bit of help?
“Another muffin, Lord Ashdon?” she asked. “I’m sure cook has more.”
Ashdon brushed off his hands and pushed his chair back from the table. “No, thank you.”
“Not at all,” she said. Well, if not muffins, then she was back to considering the silver candlesticks.
“We were discussing my jaded eyes and your lovely breasts,” he said, laying his napkin on the table.
“If we were discussing anything as vulgar as that,” she said, “it was only because I was making the point that you only married me because you felt compelled to.”
“And weren’t we discussing that most men feel compelled to marry, in one form or another?”
“It’s hardly flattering,” she said, walking toward one of the three windows along the back of the house.
“It’s very flattering, Caro,” he said, coming up behind her, his breath fanning her hair. “A man must marry, but it does not follow that he must marry anyone.”
“We both know why you married me,” she said, misting the glass with her breath. She simultaneously wanted to throw herself out the window, throw Ashdon out the window, and tumble with Ashdon to the carpete
d floor in an ecstasy of bare breasts and hot kisses.
She was a tattered mess of a girl.
“Caro, I tried to tell you this last night, before you attacked me with your breasts,” he said, laying his hands on her waist, preventing her from spinning out of his reach so that she could hit him with a candlestick. “I tried very hard, one could almost say desperately, to avoid marrying you.”
“I’m so glad you made it a point to inform me of that,” she said, trying, one could almost say desperately, to step down hard on his instep. He was wearing boots. She was wearing slippers. It was a failed attempt, but she felt better for trying.
“Caro, listen to me,” he said, his voice harsh and low in her ear. His breath on her skin made every nerve shiver in what could only be called delight. Unfortunately. She ignored his breath and the unfair things it did to her. “You know what enmity exists between my father and your mother.”
“It’s all on his side,” she said, interrupting what she felt certain was going to be a lecture on every detail of why he hadn’t wanted to marry her. “My mother never even thinks of Lord Westlin, and she certainly never speaks of him.”
“Is that so?” Ashdon said softly. “I wonder if that’s true?”
“Of course it’s true!”
“Yes, well,” he said, crossing his arms about her so that his hands cupped her breasts. She expelled her breath sharply and tried to twist free, but that only resulted in her nipples rubbing against the hard heels of his hands. A jolt of fire rippled through her breasts, sending a bolt down to her loins.
She twisted again, as innocently as possible.
“As I was saying,” Ashdon said, rubbing his palms over the crests of her breasts. And she wasn’t even twisting, the cheat. “I don’t think you understand just how determined Westlin is to get revenge upon Sophia. He has made it his life’s work, in a sense, and he has trained me to be his . . . tool.”
“How nice for both of you,” she said, throwing her weight against his hands in what should have been a convincing attempt at escape. That her breasts were pressed more deeply into his palms was merely a happy coincidence.
“No, Caro,” he said, holding her tightly against him, his breath suddenly harsh and labored. “It wasn’t nice at all.”
She held her breath against the pain she heard in his voice, all games of seduction and broken bodice ties and even silver candlesticks flushed from her thoughts in a torrent. She was certain of one thing: she did not want to hear one more word about his father.
“Did you never wonder why I gamble?” he asked.
“I assumed it was because you enjoy gambling, bad as you are at it,” she said.
She’d meant to sound saucy and bold, but her voice came out thready and frightened. Ridiculous. Everyone gambled. It was the way of things. There was nothing mysterious about it.
“I’m not bad at it,” he said, still holding her close to him. They did not move; she scarce dared to breath. Ashdon had some weight upon him, clearly put there by his father, and he was attempting to dislodge it onto her. Unfair! Yet, did not married couples share their burdens? She supposed so, but not before they’d shared their hearts.
There it was. Caro tried not to flinch before the stark pain of the thought. Ashdon had not given her his heart and perhaps more dismally, he had not asked for her to share her heart with him. Was this marriage, so new, truly just a bargain made and kept? Was she to be nothing more than a would-be courtesan who had snared a husband by seduction?
Yesterday, the thought had been seductively amusing.
Today, she was not amused.
“You seem very bad at it,” she said.
“Yes, don’t I? ” he said. “It was Westlin’s idea, you see. He instructed me to gamble and, whenever possible, to lose.”
Ashdon laid his chin softly on the top of her hair and continued, holding her very fast, but not allowing her to turn and look at him. She knew without question that his avoidance of her scrutiny was entirely intentional.
“That seems rather stupid,” she said. “Who makes a plan to lose money?”
“My father,” Ashdon said simply. “He didn’t want me to lose a lot of money, only enough to attract your mother’s attention. He believes, you see, that Lady Dalby is quite ruthless, particularly where men are concerned, and most particularly where Westlin is concerned. You can see how my being his heir would make me irresistible to her, or so he claimed. As it turns out, he was right. Sophia bought me, as you well know, by paying off my debts.”
“She was just trying to help me find a husband,” Caro said. “It had nothing to do with Westlin.”
“Didn’t it?” Ashdon said, kissing the top of her hair in an almost parental fashion. Things were just going from bad to worse. “I lost rather more than Westlin had instructed, which he was furious about, by the way, but I wanted to put myself beyond Sophia’s interest, the debt so high that no one would willingly pay it off. She paid it off, Caro.”
The flush of desire faded from her eyes as they stood so, staring out at the mews and the treetops beyond the first-rate homes of Mayfair. Below them, she could hear the muted voices of men, stableboys and grooms, perhaps a footman or two hunkered down on their haunches, gambling when they should have been working.
She had gambled, had she not? She had gambled on Ash, and she wasn’t certain anymore what winning was supposed to look like. He was her husband. Was that enough? What did she want in a husband? She didn’t know anymore, all she still knew, even now, was that she wanted Ash.
Was that very wise of her?
Probably not.
“She paid it,” Caro said quietly. “She bought a husband for me, but before he married me, he ruined me. Was that part of the plan?” She had to be quiet now, quiet and careful, because everything was falling apart, breaking into fragments, and if she were not very careful she would break into fragments, too.
“I married you, Caro,” he said, turning her in his arms to face him. She looked into his eyes because she had to. She had to see what was there, wondering if she would recognize deceit or devotion or anything at all. “I married you, and you’ll be the Countess of Westlin. That was never in his plans.”
“Then what was the plan? How does going into debt, attracting my mother’s attention, function as a revenge?”
He said nothing and the silence pummeled her. Logic. Reason. She’d always been the most reasonable, the most sensible of girls. She knew what the revenge was supposed to have been. It was so obvious. Everything wasn’t falling apart, it was falling together, the picture of events finally clear.
What a fool she had made of herself.
“How you must have laughed,” she said, staring down at his polished boots. She never wanted to look in his eyes again. A strange marriage that was going to make. “Of course now that I understand things, I can see how determinedly you were trying to avoid me while you put yourself in my mother’s path. So difficult, wasn’t it, to get her alone, to make an impression on her, whilst her ignorant and ridiculously unsophisticated daughter was throwing herself at you. Did my mother know?” Caro chuckled flatly. “Of course she knew. Lovely men come to her house to see her; they do not come to see her innocent daughter. No man ever wants Caroline. How absurd to even contemplate it.”
Ash grabbed her by the arms and pulled her to him. As if that mattered now. “I wanted you, Caro. I wanted you so much that I married you to have you.”
“Yes, well,” she said lightly, ignoring the wash of tears that blurred her vision, “that might simply be a new version of the plan. There must be hundreds of ways to punish my mother for what happened twenty years ago through her gullible daughter. You and Lord Westlin will have such fun working them out together, a true father and son bond the likes of which has never before been seen. What a pair you’ll make, Lord Westlin striding about London’s drawing rooms snarling insults about Lady Dalby while Lord Ashdon keeps Lady Dalby’s daughter well out of Town so that he may pile all sorts of abuses u
pon her in his father’s name. What delicious fun.”
“It will not be that way,” he said through clenched teeth. Rot his teeth. She wanted to pull them out, one by one.
“Told your father that, have you?” she said, yanking free of his grasp and striding to the dining room door that led to the yellow salon. It was rather difficult to stride in her narrow gown, but she did what she could. Ash caught up with her in two strides and stood in front of her. He was obviously intelligent enough to know that to touch her now would be extremely unwise. “What happened, Ash? Did my mother ignore you? Did she fail to fall to your rather too obvious charms, forcing you to make do with her second-rate daughter? I don’t think I shall be much of a revenge for you, I’m afraid. As unnoticeable as I am, certainly a revenge with me at its heart would be equally unnoticeable.”