The Problem with Seduction (11 page)

He squirmed. “Not
that.
” After rejecting his misunderstood offer to take her to his room, he hadn’t expected her to turn this subject in a direction that risked his sanity. While he was glad to be off the topic of his twin, her suggestive glance did uncomfortable things to his anatomy. It had been awhile since he’d been with a woman. A normal, duck-between-the-sheets-and-that-was-all kind of woman.

“But you do like
women.
” A small smile played on her lips. She was toying with him.

It took him a moment to realize it. He’d never been teased this way by a woman. “Of course I do,” he replied too quickly. Then for good measure, he added, “I just can’t afford them.”

“If you don’t gamble and you don’t whore,” she said, smiling when he flinched at her foul language, “why, then, are you light in the pockets?”

He shrugged, back to wishing she’d leave off the serious topics. “It’s not difficult to be suddenly short when you don’t have much to begin with.”

She laid her top card on the table and folded her hands over it, abandoning even the pretense of playing the game. “Most people who can’t afford to do so don’t become ‘suddenly short’ ten thousand pounds. What kind of endeavor have I involved myself in?”

He stiffened and folded his own cards into the palm of his hand. He didn’t like it when his brothers swept in and inserted themselves into his doings. It didn’t feel better when a woman whose favors he wasn’t even tasting did the same. “I wouldn’t phrase it that way. You’re
not
involved.”

“I suppose it
is
none of my affair.” She tried to look abashed but he wasn’t fooled. “I’m curious, though—and we do have all night. What are you into that has left you ‘suddenly short’ a staggering sum of money?”

What business of it was hers? Verbalizing his bad decisions didn’t make them any more palatable. “I’d really rather not speak of it.”

Her eyes laughed at him as she gathered her cards from the table. She fanned them before her face. “Oh, there is no
fun
in prying at a man who wishes to keep his secrets. What should we talk about instead?”

If they were to avoid talking about how she’d come to be running from her ex-lover, and give a wide berth to his disastrous credit situation, they had absolutely
anything else
to choose from. Not that a single more suitable subject came to mind…nor did he trust her not to think up something worse.

He glanced at the window. The last of the sun’s rays were about to seep into the earth. Still too early to sleep, for a London man-about-town like himself.

“If I don’t tell you now,” he grumbled, “you’ll wait until the wine has had its effects and ask again. I won’t be able to explain it in a way that makes sense, and you’ll come to believe I’m the greatest buffoon. There is nothing for it, then, but to tell you that my situation is terribly embarrassing to me and I hope that what I’m about to reveal will remain a confidence kept between us.”

She leaned forward, and he was finally able to see a hint of cleavage. “I would not divulge it for the world,” she replied dramatically.

A knock at the door seemed fortuitously timed to the precise moment Con required the aforementioned wine. It would be easier to explain his situation with a bit of warmth in his veins.

He rose and returned with a tray bearing two glasses and a decanter. After sitting again on the mattress and tipping the spout over each of their glasses, he said, “I made a few bad investments.”

Her brow arched. “To the tune of—”

“Not ten thousand pounds. God, no.”

She sat back, taking with that his opportunity to look down her gown. “That’s quite the mistake.”

He couldn’t keep sarcasm from his voice. “Yes, thank you. Being moments away from being hauled off to the gaol did nothing to apprise me of that.”

She ignored his acerbity. “What were they?”

He shrugged and studied the imprint curling across the back of the cards without seeing it. Now that she had him thinking about it, he actually
had
made ten thousand pounds’ worth of bad investments. Dare was a god-awful investment. But a few thousand of those quid had been his own choices. Terrible ones, as it turned out. “A few different interests,” he hedged. “There’s a project in Devon that the Grand Canal Company can’t be bothered to complete; that’s the main one. Luddites destroyed a cotton mill in Lancashire several months ago. That cost me a pretty penny. My schools were never intended to be profitable, but other investments aren’t providing the returns I’d anticipated and children are confoundedly expensive creatures.” And his twin brother was just one more child to care for. A spoiled one. He looked up from the cards. “It adds up monstrously fast.”

Her lips were parted just enough that he could see the pink of her tongue, as if she wanted to say something but it hadn’t quite rolled off yet.

“What?” he asked, feeling very sure now that he shouldn’t have told her. Women pitied men who floundered.

“
Schools?
As in, more than one?”

Her odd little puckered brow wasn’t about his failings? He felt a bit better.

“I had no idea you were involved in anything so noble as the upkeep of
schools,
” she explained. “Whenever anyone speaks of your debts, it’s assumed you’re a gambler or a womanizer or both.”

He was careful to keep a smile pasted on his face. “No, just a poor capitalist.” He wouldn’t tell her twice how discomfited it made him to know he’d chosen his investments so poorly time and time again. Keeping his brother and himself out of the clink was starting to cripple him. At some point, shouldn’t he learn what constituted a worthwhile venture?

No, he needed a subject that might hold her interest without making him deuced uncomfortable. “I wonder where those rumors originated,” he mused, keeping his voice charmingly light. “Shouldn’t there be witnesses? Men who have sat at the tables with me and women who can tell stories about my prowess in bed?”

She laughed despite
his
crass language. “There are always women willing to lie for the honor of claiming to have seduced you,” she replied sagely, proving he needn’t mind his tongue with a woman as worldly as her.

“Do I have a lover, then?” he asked with a wolfish smile. “Is she beautiful?”

She glanced at the bed behind him. As though she couldn’t help but connect their conversation to their current, intimate situation.

His body hardened in response.
She was supposedly his mistress.
The idea wasn’t as far-fetched now as it had been when he’d blurted it out earlier.

His gaze caught hers. A pink flush stained her cheeks. Her gaze dipped and she reached for her wine. “Surely gentlemen do not invest in schools often, though. That can’t be a regular interest.”

 “Nor a particularly profitable one.” He sounded a touch defensive, despite his growing desire. Hell, he felt defensive. The more he wanted her, the more he wanted to protect her opinion of him. “As I said, I never expected it to be. The headmistress is a family friend who can be frighteningly convincing at times. I should have asked for more specifics, but I heard the word ‘children’ and my pocketbook opened itself.” He shrugged. He wished he felt as indifferent about his failing as he sounded. “After I gave her institution a thousand pounds, I felt I should do the same for my own sex. She’s keeping her head above water, but the Academy for Inopportune Young Men threatened to close its doors last month.”

He felt like a fool for admitting his loss, but Elizabeth was looking at him as though a heavenly light had broken through the rafters to shine down on him. He sat up a little straighter as she asked, “I take it you were moved to contribute?”

It
was
nice to have her admire him for his good intentions, especially given what they’d cost him. He did sleep easier knowing fifty orphaned boys would have meals and beds for the next year, even if it meant he hadn’t been able to treat himself with the money left over from paying his and Darius’ debts. “I couldn’t bring up the entire donation asked of me, but I found a few quid and it was enough to save the school from immediate penury.”

Her lips twitched. “You found a few quid just jingling in your pocket?”

“Something like that.” He returned her smile, knowing as well as she must that if she hadn’t happened upon him, he never would have had the money to help.

She played a card. He hadn’t consciously realized they’d restarted the game. “I imagine the men extending you credit are unsavory sorts,” she said, looking up from beneath long, black lashes.

He turned up another ace and tossed his winning card onto the table. He flashed his teeth charmingly. “What can you possibly mean? Men who loan money to people who have little hope of paying it back—why, those must be the
nicest
men in all of Britain.”

She laughed. She had a husky, pleasant laugh that left little goose pebbles on his arms. “Why not marry a rich girl and be done with it? Why chance a thrashing, or prison, when you might simply sell your bloodlines to a wealthy merchant’s daughter and have done with it?”

He recoiled from her suggestion. “I’m not a ware.”

Her gaze remained steadily on him. “What about me? I’ve bought your services, haven’t I?”

“That’s different.” He wasn’t sure why. He’d never laid out his thoughts on the subject, but he didn’t need to do so just to know it felt wrong to him. “You paid me to do a job. The job is done. I’m not at your beck and call. Our arrangement left us free to go our own ways.”

Her eyebrow rose. “Like how you followed me?”

He ground his jaw. He couldn’t perfectly account for that. “I was worried.”

She blinked as though taken aback. Then her lips pressed together. “About Oliver?”

“A bit of that.” Actually, exactly that. But the way her eyes dimmed a bit made him add, “I thought I’d offended you.” Which
was
true. He’d initially returned to her house because he’d felt like a fool for disappointing her.

She looked so perplexed by this, he felt even sillier for admitting it just to win her favor. “Really? How?”

Of course
she hadn’t been offended by his bungled proposal. She’d said as much at the time. There must be some ridiculous streak of romanticism in him that made him
think
he’d hurt her. Either that, or he was conceited.

He was possibly conceited. “I botched my proposal like a stupid oaf. I thought I’d hurt you.”

She looked stunned. “It wasn’t the finest masterpiece, I’ll grant you that.”

He wasn’t going to stay conceited very long if she kept this up.

After a moment of silence, she tapped the long edge of her cards on the table. “It wasn’t anything to do with you.”

“I know that now.” He’d been pretty quick to realize she hadn’t given him a second thought after he’d walked out of her door.

She half-laughed at this. “You must regret your rashness. But…” She raised her eyes to his. “You followed me all the way to Shropshire—the very middle of nowhere—because you thought you’d hurt my
feelings
?”

He wasn’t sure if she was testing him for a lie or if she really couldn’t believe he’d done something so stupid. The way she kept asking him if he liked women and if he leaned toward histrionics made him feel like she doubted his virility. “I thought it was strange of you to up and disappear. I feel a bit responsible for you now.”

She looked horrified. “You’re not.”

He smiled sheepishly. “I suppose not.”

He’d just said he wasn’t. She’d paid him for a job. The job was complete. Why, then, had he followed her?

She was quiet a moment. “Did you go to my parents’ house, too?”

He cringed. Now here was a topic that strayed safely away from his own misfortune. “Lamentably, yes. I knew your parents were in that county—my brothers have done little else of late but lecture me on you. I missed you by a few hours. I’m sorry about my mother, by the way. I had no idea. Certainly, I didn’t put her up to it.” Maybe he
should
have married by now. His mother deserved to have at least one of her children settled and carrying on the family name. He hadn’t realized she was desperate enough for a grandchild that she’d traverse half of England to appeal to two of the most horrendously snobbish people he’d ever met. He felt responsible for exposing her to their abuse.

“My father threatened me,” Elizabeth said suddenly, breaking into his thoughts. “Did he tell you that?”

Con shifted uneasily. He’d had a distant relationship with his own father, whose detestableness had culminated in the near-destruction of their family’s finances and returned in his youngest son’s ghastly affliction.
Her
father had done nothing to improve Con’s opinion of fathers. Lord Wyndham terrified him. “He gave me an earful. I’m not sure I remember all that he said.” Mostly because Con’s instinct had been to get out of there as quickly as possible before Lord Wyndham pointed a fowling piece at his head.

Elizabeth’s eyes blazed. She tossed her cards facedown onto the table and flattened her palms on either side. “Allow me to summarize for you, then. I have one month to give Oliver over to either you or Finn, or my father is going to help Finn take me through the courts, where I’ll be massacred.”

No, he
hadn’t
heard that. He set his own cards down. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to run.”

“
That’s
why you’re traveling toward Ellesmere,” he guessed aloud. Then he heard what he’d just said. She was going to
Ireland
? There must be a better solution than leaving the country entirely. There had to be, because her leaving with Oliver was the last thing
he
wanted.

“And now?” he asked, as if she might have reconsidered since a moment ago. Since he’d become involved.

She pursed her lips, looking at once lovely and disgusted by his question. “Do you think your catching me changes anything?”

Not in and of itself, no. He didn’t think he made a difference. And yet… “You
can’t
run.”