The Courtesan's Secret (28 page)

"If the girl's to be married as soon as the license is obtained, it would seem that she'll have no use for me," Edenham said.

"Don't be absurd, your grace," Sophia said, sipping her wine and considering Edenham across the wide table. He was a most appealing man, the more so because he had such a pleasantly jaded view of things. Idealism and youthful exuberance were lovely by degrees, but one could so easily find them intolerable as a constant diet. These young girls and their marriage hopes, while entertaining, could become slightly tiresome. "There is always a use for a duke."

Edenham laughed softly, considering her in the candlelight. She enjoyed the fact that he was taking his time as she knew that she looked particularly well in candlelight.

"Sometimes a man wants to be more than a duke," Edenham said.

"A king?" Sophia said, smiling at him.

"A man," Edenham rejoined.

"But you are always a man, your grace. Did you doubt it?"

"I was only afraid that you might doubt it, or at least forget it."

"Hardly," she said, toasting him discreetly. "I'm not in my dotage, losing my teeth in my soup, no matter what you might have heard."

"You'll be relieved to know that I've heard nothing about you losing your teeth. On the contrary, they seem to grow sharper as the years pass."

"From cutting them on so many bodies, I should suspect," she said, enjoying herself immensely. How long had it been since she'd crossed swords so amicably with a handsome man of means?

Oh, yes, earlier today, with Lord Ruan.

Well, a woman could manage more than one man, if the men were amenable and compliant. And weren't they all?

"Would you care to gnaw upon me, Lady Dalby? Your appetite is not yet sated?" he said, clearly enjoying himself as fully as she. Lovely man.

"Is it ever?" she asked him, scandalizing Westlin, such a nice bonus.

"You're corrupting me," Blakesley interrupted with a wry twist to his lips. "What
shall
my dreams be tonight?"

"Oh, will you sleep?" Sophia said to Blakesley. "I shall have to try harder."

"Harder is not a word I want to hear, Lady Dalby. I am being pressed to the utmost at the moment."

"You or your breeches?" she said, laughing.

"I yield," he said. "But only because my mother can read my lips and will scold me later. I wither upon scolding."

"You must require regular withering, Lord Henry. Whatever shall Lady Louisa do to manage you? Not by scolding, I'll wager. There must be other, more pleasant ways to wither."

"I'm certain we shall manage together very well," Blakesley said, ending their bawdy exchange, which surely was an act of love and devotion that recommended him fully. That such a man as Lord Henry Blakesley should be so fully and obviously in love with Louisa Kirkland, it was almost enough to inspire one to write a sonnet on the glories of romantic love.

Almost.

"I'm equally certain," she said. "You are content with the match?"

"I believe you had no need to ask, Lady Dalby," he said, his eyes narrowed in sarcastic wit. "But if I am to be quoted, I am most content."

"You will speak to Melverley?" she said softly.

"I will," he said. "I am eager for it."

"I don't suppose I could cajole you into allowing me to come and watch. I do so enjoy watching a man fall into spitting fits, and certainly no one could be more deserving of one."

Blakesley eyed her carefully. He was a most observant man; one had to be so very careful around observant men. Fortunately, observant men were rather more the exception than the rule, so she was almost never required to be particularly careful.

"You have a special attachment to Lord Melverley?" Blakesley asked.

"My lord, I either enjoyed or endured a special attachment to many men," she said with a smile. "Do you require specifics?"

There, that ought to close that particular door of inquiry.

"I should say ‘no,' to give credit to my breeding, but it is so very tempting to say ‘yes.' Tell me this and I'll ask no more. Was Melverley endured or enjoyed?" Blakes asked.

"It's such a struggle to remember," she began.

"Not a promising start," Blakes said with a half smile.

"But I believe," she continued, "that at first I endured and endured until finally I found my enjoyment. It was a rough bit of ground, but eventually I found my passage."

Westlin, who was avidly listening to every word, slammed his fork down upon his plate, which resulted in a most inappropriate clang, which drew not a few disapproving glances in his direction, which resulted in a most delicious sense of satisfaction in Sophia.

Really, if one could not torment one's most enduring enemy and first amorous conquest, what was life for?

"I'm delighted to hear it," Blakesley said.

"For my sake or for his?" she replied.

"Why, for the sake of all men," Edenham said, reentering the conversation, "for what man wants to believe that he cannot do his part, especially with so lovely a partner? If Lady Dalby failed to find her feet upon that bit of ground, what hope for the next man who traveled the same road?"

"The point being that a man likes a road well traveled?" she asked Edenham pleasantly.

"Only in that it promises an enjoyable journey. Surely, a point both women and men can agree upon," Edenham said, dipping his head to her in salute.

"I couldn't possibly imagine disagreeing, your grace," she said, dipping her head in reply. "To an enjoyable journey. And to Lord Henry and Lady Louisa, may they find their feet quickly."

Henry Blakesley, who had fallen silent during her exchange with the Duke of Edenham, nodded pleasantly, but his eyes, those sharp blue eyes of his, considered her far too closely and with unpleasant sobriety. Observant men were truly the bane of a woman's life. She thanked Providence almost daily that they were so few of them.

As to that, best to get Blakesley's gaze trained elsewhere.

"You might think of applying for a special license, Lord Henry, to hurry things along," she said, indicating with her glass down the table to where Louisa sat surrounded by Penrith and her nephew George. "George may have yielded Lady Louisa to you, but I would not be as certain of Lord Penrith. He looks more determined than is seemly, though you are perhaps the best judge of that."

With complete predictability, Blakesley looked away from Sophia to stare down and across the table to where Louisa sat. Penrith did, indeed, look quite intent upon Louisa, which required that Blakesley look intently at Louisa as well.

Things were going beautifully.

THINGS were going horribly.

One would think that something as scandalous as being ruined would, well, ruin a girl, but the opposite seemed to be the case. Louisa simply could not dissuade Lord Penrith from making the most flagrant and flirtatious remarks directly to her face, and Mr. Grey, who previously had been most solicitous, now sat in supreme repose and watched it all with a quite savage-looking smile on his face, his dimple winking at her outrageously.

And Lord Dutton! Louisa simply could not fathom Lord Dutton. Whereas for the past two years getting his attention would have required her to break her leg over his very pretty head, now that she was ruined Dutton could not seem to stop talking to her.

The Marquis of Ruan was hardly better, though not nearly as talkative. He only stared at her with an altogether too knowing smile upon his rugged face, when he wasn't staring in what amounted to derision at Dutton, that is.

It was too, too much. It really was almost enough to make a girl want to avoid being ruined. There was such a thing as too much male attention and, clearly, being ruined invited it.

Why hadn't anyone told her?

Amelia was no help whatsoever. Amelia sat in what could only be described as dazed silence whilst Penrith, Dutton, and occasionally Ruan talked about her impending marriage to Blakesley both as if it were a fact already achieved and, simultaneously, a thing which could be avoided by the merest effort on their parts. And they were encouraging her to avoid it, marriage to Blakesley, that is, and yet speaking to her as if she had, in fact, been literally and physically
ruined
.

It was most embarrassing. She did not know at all what was the proper form in the current situation, not that she was convinced that
they
were exhibiting the proper form, but she did like to set an example when at all possible.

It didn't look possible in this particular instance.

"I don't know why I think it should spoil your fun, for you are clearly enjoying this, Lord Dutton, but I am not interested in being your guest at the theater. If I were to attend the theater, you know full well that Melverley has a box for the Season and I should use his."

"I should think you'd not want to share a box with your father," Dutton said. "I was not at all aware that you and Melverley were on such intimate terms as to share a box in the Theatre Royal."

"I am his daughter," she said stiffly.

Really, it was terribly rude of Dutton to allude to the fact that she didn't care to spend any time with her father in his box as it was a certainty that, if her father were in his box, he would not be in it alone and he would not be watching the theatrics. No, her father did other things in his box.

"Ignore him, Lady Louisa," Penrith said, his famous voice washing over her bare shoulder. It was most strange, but ever since she'd kissed and been kissed by Blakes, Penrith and his voice had almost no effect upon her. She could not have imagined a kiss to have such power.

Perhaps it was only Blakesley's kiss which did so?

Pity that she would never be able to put the theory to the test as she would have no opportunity to kiss anyone but Blakesley for the rest of her life. She was determined for that to be the case, for to even speculate otherwise would be to wander into wantonness and she was
not
going to be like her father.

"He only wants to best Blakesley," Penrith continued, and she did find herself looking deeply into his startling green eyes. Some things just could not be ignored. "Don't let yourself become a mere tool to that end."

"And what do you want, Lord Penrith?" Mr. Grey said, leaning back in his chair to look at Penrith behind her back.

"Only what we all want," Penrith said. "To do right by the women of our acquaintance."

"Is that what we all want?" Ruan said sardonically. "I'd always wondered. So good to have that settled, then."

"I've known Lady Louisa for far longer than you, Lord Penrith," Dutton said. "Do not lay your own plans at my doorstep."

"You have known her for far longer," Penrith agreed, "yet have not managed to escort her to the theater before now? How tardy of you, Dutton."

"Perhaps nothing was playing that he wished to see?" Ruan said pleasantly enough, yet entirely sarcastically.

Ruan was older than both Penrith and Dutton by some years; in fact, Louisa thought it highly likely that Ruan was older than Sophia Dalby, which, in some lights, made him seem as old as Adam in a very fallen Eden. In terms of these highly undesirable verbal exchanges, he was more than a match for both Penrith and Dutton combined.

It was patently obvious that both Dutton and Penrith were aware of it. Penrith took it in stride. Dutton was stumbling.

In all her months watching Dutton's every gesture, reading every forkful of food for nuance, she'd never seen him behave so oddly and so awkwardly. She couldn't have been that far off in her estimation of him; something was definitely wrong with him and she couldn't understand what it was.

More strangely, she couldn't summon the interest to actually puzzle it out.

"I've heard that there's a new play starting at the King's Theatre," Amelia said softly, clearly trying to set the course of their conversation back on the proper track, as it were.

"This has nothing to do with plays," Dutton said, staring at her from across the table, "and everything to do with wagers."

Oh, bother. Did everything in Town have to do with wagers?

"You should watch what you say, Lord Dutton," Mr. Grey said ominously. Louisa cast a quick glance at Grey; he looked as ominous as his tone of voice, but then, given that he was an Indian, he had the unfortunate tendency to look ominous for no cause whatsoever. It was likely a helpful quality in the forests of New York, but it had far fewer uses here.

Dutton looked at Mr. Grey and swallowed, his mouth compressed into a firm line.

Well, perhaps looking ominous was not a bad trait to possess on any continent.

"I would speak with you, Lady Louisa," Dutton said in a quietly intense tone of voice. It was most appealing. She could honestly report that she had never before heard Dutton speak so intently and so, dare she say it, passionately to anyone before for any occasion. She was slightly titillated, but only slightly, an important distinction and one she would make to Blakes if she found herself required to do so. "Alone, if you will allow it."

If she would allow it? She'd been trying for two years to get Dutton to speak with her on any topic and in any surrounding. Now, he was desperate to speak with her and
alone
?