The Courtesan's Secret (10 page)

Yes, well, no wonder he snarled so often. Blakesley had the most abominable knack with women, or at least with women as defined by Louisa Kirkland.

"I wanted to clear my head," Dutton replied cordially. If he wasn't the most cordial, affable fellow of his acquaintance, then he didn't know a thing about affability.

"Optimist," Blakesley said softly, snarling only slightly. Small wonder Louisa wouldn't look twice at Blakesley when perpetual snarling was the reward.

Dutton would have made some remarkably witty rejoinder but his tongue wouldn't cooperate at that precise moment. They turned onto Jermyn Street and were at his front door not a minute later. High time, too. He had to dress for the Hyde House dinner, where he happened to know that Louisa was expected and where he would tell her that her pearls now resided in Blakesley's rather pedestrian pocket. One would have thought that the son of a duke, albeit the fourth son, would have made it a point to have a more presentable coat. The only thing Blakesley seemed to make a point of was Louisa Kirkland, and just look where that had got him.

Women were far better behaved when one didn't focus too much pointed attention upon them, which was exactly what he had done with Louisa Kirkland and just look where that had got
him
.

Really, even with the Melverley pearls, he didn't hold out a speck of hope for Blakesley's chances with Louisa. Which was precisely why he'd proposed the arrangement in the first place. It was going to be amusing in the extreme to watch Louisa darting after him even with the inducement of the Melverley pearls in Blakesley's inept grasp. And it was not beyond possible that Mrs. Warren would find the continued sight of Lady Louisa stalking him through Lon-don's salons a proper prod to give in to his considerable charms.

All in all, it was a plan that, even if it failed, could not fail to amuse.

WILLIAM Blakesley, Marquis of Iveston, heir to the Duke of Hyde, was twenty-nine this very day, very eligible, and avoided absolutely everyone who knew he was very eligible and Hyde's heir, family excluded, naturally. That the family was only very rarely gathered together at any one time, in any one location, had prompted his mother, Molly, many years ago now, to arrange for this annual celebratory dinner for Iveston.

Henry Blakesley had never missed it. None of his four brothers had. His father, who positively loathed evenings of this sort, wouldn't have thought of missing it.

The fact that Louisa was certain to be at the annual Hyde House celebration of Iveston's birth had no bearing at all upon Henry Blakesley's intense anticipation for a dinner that was scheduled to begin in a mere hour. He was not yet dressed for dinner. Molly was not pleased.

"Blakes," she said sharply.
Blakes
was her pet name for him; it was with some relief that no one outside of the family had taken up the habit of it. "You are not dressed. I daresay that Louisa Kirkland is responsible."

"I beg your pardon?" he said stiffly. Never once had his mother so much as mentioned Louisa's name to him, a fact he had taken particular pleasure in.

"As well you should," she said, setting aside her embroidery. "I have been made to understand only recently the depth and scope of your involvement with Lady Louisa. Certainly she is a questionable person at best. Her behavior regarding Lord Dutton has become the stuff of legend. Your own involvement with her has become nothing short of ridiculous."

"I am not in the habit of being thought ridiculous," he said through tight lips.

"I'm afraid that's quite untrue, Blakes. You are particularly in the habit of being ridiculous where she is concerned."

"She is a friend, nothing more."

Molly rose to her full, petite height and fixed him with a hard gaze. "You are still being ridiculous, Blakes. Men and women are never
friends and nothing more
. It is a blatant fact that a man's sole purpose in befriending a woman is to seduce her, which, by your continued friendship, I will assume you have not yet done."

Blakesley could only stare, openmouthed, at his mother. Being from Boston, she had the habit of being plainspoken, but never
this
plainspoken.

"And of course, you should not," Molly continued, walking out of the room and motioning for him to follow her, which he did. "No matter her father's slipshod upbringing of her, no matter her loose behavior with Lord Dutton, you should make it a point never to seduce girls of good family. And her family name is quite good, even if Lord Melverley leaves much to be desired."

"Lady Louisa should not be judged based on her father's handling of her," Blakesley said.

"Perhaps not, but she
will
be judged on her handling of herself. And she is handling herself very ill. The Town does nothing but talk of her, and by extension, of you. This cannot and will not be tolerated, Blakes. You do understand," she said, not asking for his understanding at all. "Think of Iveston's reputation if you cannot be compelled to think of your own."

"Set yourself at ease, madam," he said, the words barely escaping his compressed teeth.

Molly appraised him silently and with obvious skepticism. "Then you'll amend your appalling behavior in regards to Lady Louisa?"

"Completely," he said with a frosty bow of his head. "You are content?"

"Most tolerably," Molly replied sharply, snapping her fan closed in concert with her words. "It is most disagreeable to have one's son disparaged so publicly. Having him disparaged privately is quite disagreeable enough, which is what I must put up with regarding Iveston and his peculiar ideas about socializing with his peers. Ridiculous, to avoid people the way he does. One would think he was damaged in some horrid fashion when, of course, he is the most handsome and pleasing sort of man. But that is beside the immediate point," Molly said. Blakesley sighed and lowered his gaze to the floor in exasperation. "You simply must hold yourself in check, Blakes. This fool-for-love drivel is perfectly fine when played out upon the stage, but it has no value at all in life. One must keep to the priorities."

"Which are?" he said blandly. Really, this was becoming more than intolerable. He was being dressed down like a runny-nosed child of three.

"To make a proper marriage, obviously," his mother said on what was perilously close to a snort. "It is equally obvious that Louisa Kirkland is clearly the wrong sort. Any woman who runs around Town after a man the way she has done will hardly be a fit mother to any man's heirs, for how could he fail to wonder if the heirs are, in fact, his?"

Blakesley held himself very erect and said, "These are matters which, perhaps, a man may judge better than a woman."

"I doubt that very much," Molly said, "but I would prefer to leave the subject of Louisa Kirkland altogether."

"As would I," he said, a gross understatement.

And with that, he left the music room, the heels of his shoes clicking like gunshot against the marble floors.

"ALL you had to do was find one," Iveston said from deep within the tufts of his red leather chair, facing the fireplace as it cast its golden glow. "One woman willing to take you on. And you find Louisa Kirkland."

"If you say anything about love making its mark on my wayward soul, I'll blacken your eye nicely. Explain that to your guests," Blakesley said, tucked within his own chair, brown leather and only slightly smaller, facing the same golden glow.

"Please do," Iveston said. "It would provide the most delightful excuse not to attend tonight's torture. And it would have the added benefit of setting Mother on your tail and getting her off of mine."

Blakesley grunted and hunched his shoulders up around his ears. "I've reached my limit of endurance on that, thank you very much. You shall remain unmarked, at least by me. I happen to know that there are at least ten young and very eligible women coming tonight for the particular purpose of presenting themselves for your approval. Which is to say, they are here to look you over."

Iveston huddled deeper, the red leather squeaking. "As always. I came to the conclusion, and a rather dismal conclusion it is, that Mother has not arranged for these dinners to celebrate my birth in a show of familial devotion and affection, but merely as a sort of marriage fair for the unmarried ladies of the ton. It goes without saying that I am perceived to be the prize."

"How long did it take you figure all that out, Ives?" Blakesley asked sarcastically.

Iveston leaned back in his chair, his long legs stretched out in amiable misery, his blond eyelashes gleaming in the firelight as they shaded his blue eyes. "I believe it was as I was chewing a particularly tough piece of mutton and looked up to find no fewer than eight of the finest women of Mother's acquaintance staring at me in undue fascination and obvious speculation. I was seventeen at the time, so, twelve years ago now? Twelve years of being the fox to a field of matronly hounds, and my own mother the master of the hunt. If I didn't feel that your situation with Louisa Kirkland was so damnably ridiculous and endlessly amusing, I would say I was the most ill-favored man in town. But, of course, you have that distinction."

Blakesley didn't have any trouble at all in knocking his older brother out of his chair and sitting on his chest. He did, however, have trouble keeping him there. In an entirely friendly tussle of not less than three glancing blows, the two men were able to make their point, which was that neither one of them was willing to tolerate being thought of as either ridiculous or amusing. At least not for much longer than they had already done.

When they had straightened their cuffs and smoothed their cravats, they once again resumed their lazy posture by the fire, the creak of leather as they shifted their weight a comfortable accompaniment to their grunts of affable irritation and general surliness.

William Blakesley, better known as Iveston, and Henry Blakesley, lovingly called Blakes by his intimate family, were, in all manner and in every detail, brothers. They were both blond, both jaded to an appropriate and entirely useful degree, and both possessed of a more than sarcastic wit. In that Iveston was heir to a rather substantial dukedom, it was more than enough to convince the most particular observer that Iveston's wit was a shining example of a stellar mind. In Blakesley's case, the determination was more often that he was a scoundrel of the first water.

Such was the price one paid in Society for being the fourth son of a duke.

"I'll say this for Louisa," Iveston mumbled, rubbing his left ear, "she may not hound after you, but she's also never hounded me. She follows her heart and not her purse."

Blakesley grunted and slunk lower in his seat. "Which makes the whole pearl situation more questionable."

Iveston cocked his head at Blakesley and said softly, "Have you considered casting your net in another pond?"

"Have
you
thought of just being done with the entire chase and marrying the biggest dowry in the neatest package?"

"Actually, yes," Iveston said, sighing. "What else is there to it, anyway? A dowry, an heir, one's duty to one's family done in the most ridiculously easy fashion; one can hardly call it hard duty."

Blakesley snorted his amusement. Iveston kicked him on the foot.

"But you want love," Blakesley said, still chuckling. "You want to
suffer
, as I suffer."

"Don't be absurd," Iveston said stiffly. "I will manage it much more efficiently than you have done. Love does not demand suffering. It is a noble emotion, properly managed."

"Yes," Blakesley said dryly, "you've made your point. I should like to see you manage a woman as easily as you speak of managing love. The two do, unfortunately, travel in tandem and women are not so easily managed as all that."

"I should say that depends upon the man," Iveston said loftily.

Which naturally required that Blakesley launch himself in a physical attack upon his eldest brother.

LADY Dalby looked like a woman who expected to be physically assaulted at any moment, and as if she would have enjoyed the experience immensely. It was a look that was peculiar to her and was, by any man's reasoning, the cause for her spectacular success both in Society and out. She looked a woman simply begging to be seduced, though it was a well-known fact that Sophia Dalby never begged for anything.