The Courtesan's Secret (15 page)

"The wager is this, Louisa," he said, leaning forward, his shark smile very bright, "and do try not to faint or blush or snap your bodice ties when I tell it. I don't know how I should explain such things to my mother."

Well,
really
. Blakesley could be so insulting when he was of a mind to be so. Louisa couldn't help but look across the room to where the Duke and Duchess of Hyde stood to greet their arriving guests. It was purely coincidence, she was almost completely certain, but Molly Hyde was staring at her with undisguised suspicion at that very moment.

"My bodice is none of your concern, Lord Henry," she managed, not blushing in the least. She was too angry to waste time in blushes.

"How well I know it," he murmured.

Of course,
then
she blushed.

"Could we get on with this, please? I should like to talk to Amelia before we enter for dinner," she said.

"About the hunting season, no doubt," he said, looking over the top of her head to where Amelia still stood, with Dutton, it should be mentioned yet again.

Blakesley was standing very close to her, too close. If he were not something of a brother to her, and if he had not behaved very publicly in that capacity for nearly two years, it would have looked entirely too intimate. Even with all those qualifiers, she was not entirely comfortable with his proximity. She could smell the faintly blended scents of his linen shirt and wool coat and under those familiar and highly pleasant scents, the scent of his skin.

It was most distracting.

His hair looked rather fine tonight, gleaming like old gold coins in the candlelight, and his eyes, gazing out at the crowd behind her, searching the room like a wolf on the edge of the shadows, looked particularly piercing.

And then he dropped his gaze to hers and she was forcibly reminded that his eyes were a very pleasing shade of blue and that they could see things in her which she much preferred to remain hidden.

Blakesley was too discerning by half.

"This is not the hunting season," she said sternly.

"There's not a man in London who doesn't know that it is," he said lightly. "Which brings me to my point. Kindly stop distracting me, will you?"

"I haven't done a
thing
to distract you! I'm trying to drive you to the point, Lord Henry, which you clearly haven't noticed."

"True," he said, nodding amiably, when she knew that he hadn't an amiable bone in his body. "It must be that I was distracted by your hair. It looks especially pretty tonight. That one curl, just there," he said, and he touched the curl she had arranged for Dutton, the curl that he had been breathing on from almost the moment she walked into Hyde House. He touched it with his finger, almost carelessly, almost caressingly, and the curl became
his
.

She didn't like it in the least.

"One perfect curl," he breathed softly, "fondling your neck, tumbling against your skin, sliding delicately by your very pretty ear..."

Her ear, pretty or not, grew hot and pink in mortification. Blakesley's breath brushed against her skin, tickled her ear, and heated her face with embarrassment and confusion. He never spoke like this. They might have teased, but they never flirted. He was flirting with her. She'd been Out for two full seasons; she knew full well what flirting looked like.

Heaven knew, she'd seen Dutton flirt often enough.

Just because no one had ever flirted with her before did not mean that she did not know it when she saw it. She was an observant girl, after all.

And, when no one was about, she practiced flirting in the mirror.

It was easier in the mirror.

This being coquettish did not seem to be in her nature. She felt something turn over in her belly and squirm about under her ribs.

She did not like that in the least, either.

"My hair is naturally curly, as you know," she said stiffly, arching her neck and her curl away from him. "One perfect curl, indeed.

One would think you are a romantic of the worst sort, Lord Henry, to hear you talk so."

He released his breath in a sigh that was not romantic in the least. "And you know I'm no such thing, don't you, Louisa?"

"I think too highly of you to call you any such thing, Lord Henry. You are far too clever to be ruled by emotion."

"Thank you," he said softly, his clever blue eyes studying her rather more closely than she liked. "And what rules you, Louisa?"

"I don't like to think of myself as being ruled by anything."

"I know that well enough," he said, smiling slightly. "Yet each one of us is ruled by something, some ideal or desire, something which drives us onward, even to destruction. Care to name your destruction, Louisa? Or shall I name it for you?"

He breathed the last, a breath of pain, she would have said, had she a romantic bone in her body, which she joyfully did not. Life did not reward the romantic and she fully intended to get her reward, all those things that had been denied her thus far. It was a perfectly logical goal and she had a perfectly logical plan to achieve it, if only Blakesley would step out of the way and allow her access to Dutton.

There was that. This delay, this careful seclusion, seemed all too calculated of a sudden. Was Blakesley trying to keep her from Dutton? To what purpose?

No, it was too ridiculous. Blakesley had nothing to gain by such an act.

"My destruction?" she said, trying to step away from him, but unable to do so by the wall at her back. Blakesley seemed almost to be looming over her. It was a most uncomfortable sensation and she didn't intend to tolerate it for one instant more. "I don't know what is wrong with you tonight, Lord Henry. Your behavior is highly irregular and most odd. One might conclude that you don't wish your brother well, to behave to his guests in such odd fashion."

"Odd fashion? You find it odd that I take you off to enjoy you in whatever privacy is allowed by the standards of the day?"

Whatever did
that
mean? Blakesley was becoming more disturbing to her sense of order and expediency by the minute. After all, she had cultivated his acquaintance precisely because he
was
so perfectly placed within Society and allowed himself to be used in such noble fashion—namely, her respectable pursuit of Lord Dutton.

There was no understanding him now. He jumped from one thing to another and not a one of his topics made sense. There was only one explanation for it.

"Lord Henry, I think you are deeply in your cups."

To which, Lord Henry Blakesley laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh. What with Lady Dalby's practically incessant and unpleasant laughter and now Blakeley's odd humor, one would think that there was no one left in London who knew how to appropriately laugh. It was certainly clear that far too many instances were found in which to laugh at
her
, which didn't make one bit of sense.

It looked to be a most trying evening and not at all as she had expected when her curls were being so artfully arranged.

"I find everything about this encounter odd, Lord Henry," she said, not at all pleased to find her back literally pressed against the wall. "I am not at all accustomed to being cornered and—"

"And," he interrupted, leaning over her in a most uncivilized posture, "you are not at all accustomed to being pursued by a man into the quiet corners of a room for a most appropriate, most respectable, seduction."

Seduction?

"I think the time has come, Louisa, when that must change. I would not be at all adverse to being the man who is responsible for the change, and I would not need to be in my cups to do so. I am not drunk," he said softly but so very sternly.

When had Blakesley learned how to be stern? And yet it could certainly never be said that he had ever been soft.

"A man does not need to be foxed to find your company compelling. Whyever would you think so?"

A thousand responses rose in her mind, but strangely, none could find their way to her lips. She was, for perhaps the first time in memory, too stunned for speech.

His face was very close, too close. She could feel his nearness like a fire in a winter room, his hair gleaming gold and hot, his eyes blue and piercing. This was not Blakesley as she knew him. This was not Blakesley as she wanted to know him. This man was too much the man and, though it galled her to admit it even to herself, she was not adept at managing men. She was no Sophia Dalby and that was the sad truth of it.

"Speechless, Louisa?" he taunted. "I would not have thought it possible."

Which, naturally, was exactly the prod she needed to find her tongue.

"I wish you
were
drunk, Lord Henry, for that would be some excuse, however feeble, for presuming there ever could be such a thing as a respectable seduction. I thought you knew me well enough to know that I am not particularly interested in behaving respectably, and I am not at all interested in being seduced. You misspoke completely. If you are not drunk, you should get drunk at the earliest opportunity. I know I shall, if only to wash this memory from me as thoroughly as possible."

It was a good speech, a fine speech. It was both clever and cutting, a pairing she particularly liked.

It was so unfortunate that Blakesley did not respond appropriately. It was completely like him.

Blakesley grinned, showing fully half his teeth, the imbecile.

"How fortunate that you don't care particularly for respectability or for seduction, Lady Louisa. It makes my proposal ideal for you. You shouldn't have any trouble at all in arranging yourself and your schedule to the terms of the wager," he said.

She didn't have the faintest idea what he was talking about, naturally, but she did know that her evening was not going at all as planned. When did it ever?

"Are we back to the wager? I was beginning to think you made it up to get me alone," she said sarcastically.

They were hardly alone, the room being almost full now, but she wasn't anywhere near Dutton and that was all that mattered.

"Alone? We have never been alone, Louisa, not truly," he said, echoing her own thoughts, which was highly annoying as she wished her thoughts to be her own and no one else's. "If we ever are alone, you shall surely note the difference."

"Yes, I'm sure," she said dismissively. "A great difference, as you say, but as we shall never put it to the test, it is hardly the subject for a wager. We were talking of a wager that concerned me, were we not?"

She did not particularly care for the look in his eyes as it was rather more speculative than was entirely complimentary. Not that Blakesley was ever complimentary in the slightest, but this look was almost rapacious. The small hairs on her arms stood up in rigid alarm.

She most definitely needed a strong drink. This evening was becoming more uncomfortable by the instant and Blakesley, her comfortable ally on every other evening for the past two years, was the cause.

Men were such a nuisance.

"Yes, Lady Louisa, the wager," he said softly. The room was not at all crowded, it was simply too large for that, but it was noisy and full and they were hardly alone. Yet the look in his eyes, the tenor of his voice, captured her as nothing had done for years. Nothing with the exception of Lord Dutton, of course. "As we are not alone," he said, his gaze leaving hers to scan the room. He echoed her thoughts again and it was as equally annoying as it had been the last time.

"I believe that point has been made and made again," she interrupted. "Can we not move from it?"

The fact that they weren't alone and would never be alone was becoming a point of increasing irritation. Blast it all, but now she wondered what it
would
be like to be alone with him.

A minor point. She was quite certain it would pass.

"Certainly," he said, sounding not at all amiable. "I'll state it plainly, shall I?" He did not pause for her consent. It was completely like him. "A wager has been made, a wager concerning you and your pearls—"

"They are no longer my pearls, are they?" she interrupted. "They are in Lord Dutton's possession, are they not? A condition made most obvious in this very house not a week ago."

"And the wager springs from just this foundation," he said. "You would like to reclaim the Melverley pearls, wouldn't you?"

"Of course, but—"

"Then you must do as I tell you, Louisa, and you must do it quickly and without argument."

If that wasn't the most likely of male orders to a female, well, then she didn't know men at all. And she did know men, she understood them very well, she just couldn't seem to manage them efficiently. Certainly it was a skill which could be learned?

"On the points of a wager?" she said with no little sarcasm. "Not at all probable, Lord Henry."

She felt a stirring behind her and turned her head slightly to look, which put her precious and not so perfect curl dangerously near Blakesley's shoulder; he could muss it beyond repair with a shrug. He probably would, too. He was in the most peculiar mood tonight.

"Why is the Marquis of Penrith coming this way?" Blakesley grumbled.

It was with great delight that she answered, "I met him for the first time just this afternoon at Dalby House. He's a most
agreeable
man, don't you think?"

She had turned slightly more and saw Penrith sliding through the crowd. Penelope Prestwick, that cow, turned a simpering smile upon him, but Penrith slipped past her efforts. Good man.

"How lovely Miss Prestwick looks tonight," Blakesley said. "I see she's wearing diamonds."

"Yes, doesn't she always," she said tartly. Penelope Prestwick had the annoying habit of wearing diamonds on every occasion. It was becoming something of a joke about Town.

"And they look so well on her," Blakesley said softly, looking down at Louisa with a very amused expression. "She's such a pleasant girl, so agreeable."

"Is she?" Louisa said stiffly. "I hadn't noticed."

"No, you wouldn't."

"You were going to tell me something, Lord Henry? If not, I would like to rejoin my cousin," she snapped. "Perhaps Lord Penrith will escort me. He looks so very eager to reach my side, does he not? I am almost certain he will do whatever I ask. Such an
agreeable
man."