A Season of Seduction (13 page)

“Becky?” He touched her hair, lightly stroking his fingers over the braided strands twisted at her nape. “I would make you happy,” he said, his voice quiet but emphatic. “I swear it.”

“Would you?” Turning back to him, she searched his eyes and found nothing but promise in them.

“I swear it,” he repeated. His lips descended on hers again, sweet and warm. His gentle touch swept through her, softening her muscles and her resistance.

“Marry me,” he whispered against her lips.

“No,” she whispered back. Then she winced as he stiffened. “Jack… I…”

His hands curled around her shoulders, but he didn’t pull away.

“I don’t mean it to sound so final.”
Give him a chance
, Kate had said, and she was right. It would be ridiculous, not to mention foolish, to dismiss Jack out of fear that he might be another William. “You must give me time.”

The tightening of his fingers on her shoulders was subtle, but she felt it. “I want you, Becky. Now.”

“I’m not ready.”

With a harsh, frustrated breath, he drew back, thrusting his hand through his blond-streaked hair. “I’m going to convince you otherwise. You’re afraid because of what happened to you last time. But you keep forgetting:
I’m not him
.”

“I know. Just… please. Be patient with me.”

“I’m not a patient man.”

“It will take time for me to learn how to trust again.”

“And once I win your trust?”

A small thrill wound through her at his insistence, at the steely determination in his eyes. “Then… if it can be done… yes. I will consider marrying you.”

He squared his shoulders. His brown eyes bore into hers in direct challenge. “I will win your trust, then. It won’t take long.”

He seemed very convinced of that, but she knew herself better than Jack did. “I hope you’re right,” she said with a small smile.

“I am right. By month’s end, we’ll be at the altar.”

He seemed to relish this challenge, and his cocky confidence melted her further. Her smile widening, she pressed her body against him, looking up at him from beneath her eyelashes. “Do you think so?”

“I know it.” He lowered his lips to her brow. “I cannot wait to make you mine.”

Jack sat stiffly, his fingers clamped around his wineglass, his neck prickling. He resisted the urge to yank off his cravat. He hadn’t desired his father and brother’s presence tonight, but the duchess had invited them, and he was in no position to naysay the woman.

To his annoyance, he’d not been seated near Becky. Instead, her aunt, Lady Bertrice, who incessantly peered at him through a monocle, sat on his right. Her magnified rheumy blue eye was so suspicious it made his skin crawl, though if he were being reasonable he’d remember there wasn’t any way she could know anything. If the Duke of Calton could discover nothing of interest in his exploration into Jack’s private affairs, surely an old woman couldn’t either.

Still, he didn’t like the way that blue eye pried under his skin.

Lady Westcliff sat on Jack’s left, separating Jack from his father. Bertrand, Jack’s eldest brother, sat across from them, flanked by Becky in a glorious cream-colored silk gown and Lady Devore. Jack’s father and Bertrand behaved with an obsequiousness toward the duke and his family that made Jack’s gut churn.

Viscount Westcliff, sitting at the duke’s right, was the most affable presence at the table, deftly balancing the surliness of the duke with the fawning of Jack’s family, and it was he and his wife who kept the conversation from sinking to banality—or ceasing altogether.

After the second course was served, Jack’s father sighed and leaned back in his chair, resting one hand on his protuberant belly while the other lifted his wineglass, his little finger raised in an effeminate gesture. He spoke loudly, so his voice could reach the other end of the table. “I should like to thank you again, Your Grace, for convincing my son to take the proper course and do right by your lovely sister. I only regret that the lady has declined.”

Everyone fell silent, and Jack glanced across to Becky. The edges of her lips thinned, and she stared at the table linen beyond her plate of oyster-stuffed venison.

The duke leveled a cold stare at Jack’s father. “I convinced your son of nothing. He was the one who decided that marriage would be the best course of action.”

Jack didn’t look at his father. Not for the first time, he wondered how it was possible that anyone, much less a king of England, could have enough faith in the man to make him a privy councilor. Then again, the Right Honorable Edmund Fulton had always sunk far more effort into his political career than he would with anything related to Jack. And considering King George IV—well, perhaps not so surprising, after all. Jack had never met the current king, but from all he’d heard, the man shared many traits and habits with Jack’s father.

Jack had always been his mother’s child, his mother’s favorite. His father had showered his attention and his love on his two eldest sons, and Jack had never earned much notice from him, except on occasion as someone to vent his frustrations upon when life was not going his way.

When he was six years old, Jack had been blamed for the crops at Hambly rotting due to too much rain. When he was eight, he’d been accused of swaying a particularly important decision in Parliament. When he was twelve, he was solely responsible for the failure of an investment his father had made in a canal.

Between the ages of twelve and eighteen, Jack had gone away to school and had managed to avoid his father for the most part. But when he was eighteen, the murder of the Marquis of Haredowne had coincided with the failure of Jack’s middle brother, Edward, to win a promotion to the rank of post captain in His Majesty’s Navy. Of course, that was Jack’s fault, too.

After the charges against him were dismissed, Jack was sent away forthwith, and weeks after he’d left England, his mother had died suddenly. Jack hadn’t heard of her passing until months later. They’d been anchored in Sydney, and in the midst of his anguish and grief over his mother’s death, Jack had received a letter from his father.

She’d died because of him, his father said. Because she was brokenhearted about the embarrassment Jack had caused to their family.

Jack knew it was nonsense. His mother had remained his most steadfast, staunchest supporter through every second of the ordeal. Yet a part of him had shriveled and died at those words, and he’d crumpled that letter, held a candle to it, and watched it burn, promising himself that he’d never again listen to a word his father said.

Becky’s lips thinned further as Jack’s father chuckled. “To be sure, sir, I never imagined my son settling down and marrying, especially into a family as fine as yours. He’s a scoundrel of the first order, does naught but toss away his allowance on hells and women.”

Jack ground his teeth. Not only were those words inaccurate—the man had interacted very little with Jack for the past twelve years—but they would do nothing to ingratiate Jack to the duke.

Jack had never understood his father. He never would. He could only count the hours until this night was over. He’d have to interact with his father and his brother—fortunately his middle brother had finally been promoted to the rank of post captain and was currently at sea—only at his forthcoming nuptials, and then he’d be free of them until the next family obligation arose, which Jack prayed wouldn’t be anytime soon.

The duke shrugged. “You may trust I have looked into his affairs. I found nothing out of the ordinary.”

Jack’s father continued blithely. “Indeed, I never thought he’d be tamed. Fidelity is not a strong suit in our family, is that not so, Bert?”

Bertrand, who often left his wife in the country only to be seen at various events in London with his mistress on his arm, choked down the wine he’d been holding to his mouth and swallowed, patting his napkin on his lips. Jack felt little fraternal affection for his oldest brother, who’d spent the better part of their childhoods reminding Jack and Edward of his superiority as the eldest son and heir.

The Duke of Calton’s blue eyes narrowed into slits, and Lord Westcliff cut in, bringing his champagne glass to his lips. “We are certainly ahead of ourselves, aren’t we? They are yet to agree on forging a permanent connection.”

“Surely marriage is the best solution. Indeed, the
only
solution,” Jack’s father said.

Bertrand chose this moment to open his fool mouth. “What my father says is absolutely true. Ever since their—ah—
discovery
, my brother and the lady have been made fools of up and down the streets of London. I have heard that a playwright is fashioning the story of their discovery into a farce about the morality of the upper orders.”

Jack thought that playwright would do better to base his work on his brother’s life rather than his own, but he felt no impulse to respond. He couldn’t open his mouth without showing his disgust for his father and brother’s behavior, and he wouldn’t show his loathing here. No matter how compelling the temptation to put them in their place, the truth was that he was of their blood, and he would not further the damage either was doing to his estimation in Becky’s family’s eyes.

Beside him, Lady Bertrice muttered something unintelligible and poked a fricasseed pea into her mouth.

Jack’s father leaned forward and spoke past Jack and Lady Westcliff. “What was that you said, ma’am?”

Lady Bertrice swallowed her pea and raised her fork meaningfully. “Said it was a fine thing for my niece to suffer, when she is among the most principled of her class.”

Jack’s father and brother raised matching disbelieving brows. “Is that so?” asked his father.

“Mm.” Lady Bertrice raised her monocle again and peered through it, her gaze sweeping from the duke at one end—still looking mightily annoyed—to the duchess at the other.

“I’d wager any one of you seated at this table tonight could easily surpass Rebecca in debauchery—both in thought and in deed.”

Westcliff gave an easy chuckle. “No doubt you’re right on that score, Aunt.”

Lady Bertrice’s enlarged eye focused on her niece, who sat at the other end of the table, across from her. Becky stared back at her aunt, her shoulders tight beneath the luxuriant silk.

“Of course, she could make it easier on all of us if she weren’t so deuced stubborn.” Lady Bertrice’s eye slid toward the duke. “That comes from our side of the family, no doubt, because you’re the same way, boy.”

“It’s not stubbornness.” Becky spoke stiffly, still gazing at her aunt.

Becky had thrust away the openness she’d shown him before dinner; she’d stiffened and grown cold. With an aura of regal aloofness and a crown of ebony hair, she’d transformed into the Queen of Winter in ivory silk. She was beautiful.

“Pray tell me what it is, then, if it not be stubbornness,” Lady Bertrice demanded.

“It’s common sense.”

Jack’s father choked out a short laugh. “Common sense? Really? How can it be common sense to encourage a scandal?”

“Indeed,” Bertrand added, “I should think that sense requires—no, it demands—marriage.”

Becky shook her head as she carefully placed her fork on her plate and then looked up at Jack’s brother, who sat beside her to her left. “It doesn’t, in fact. Common sense demands caution. Marriage is a permanent state and hence it requires a thoughtful, careful approach. Jumping into it in a reckless fashion could wreak far more damage than playwrights, artists, and gossips could ever hope to.”

She spoke from personal experience, Jack knew.

“I agree, Becky,” Lady Westcliff said. “And you point out a common shortcoming of our class—the tendency to leap into such matters without forethought.”

The duchess sat at the end of the table opposite the duke. She had spent most of the evening in contemplative silence, but now she spoke. “Indeed,” she agreed. “I always am saddened to see the unhappy marriages prevalent in our class. So many wives voluntarily spend months separated from their husbands, and when I search for the root cause, it is invariably because their marriages were founded on financial considerations rather than a mutual regard.”

Lady Westcliff and the duchess were attempting to steer the conversation to more general topics and away from Becky and him marrying. Jack was grateful for it. They’d been sitting here for over an hour, and during that time, he had observed the weight of the pressure building on Becky’s shoulders and felt powerless to stop it.