The Wicked Wallflower (11 page)

It was a new feeling, that. Having worked for something, especially a woman's affections. Imagine if she surrendered completely . . .

 

Chapter 9

I shall just sit back, ogle the opera singer and wait for everyone else to trip up. The fortune will be mine. . .

—­
D
ELUSIONAL FANT
ASY OF
L
ORD
D
UDLEY

I
MMEDIATELY AFTER
B
LA
KE'S
performance, Lady Agatha departed and the evening became more interesting. Had she retired or merely visited the ladies' retiring room?

Many glanced at the tall grandfather clock, watching the minutes tick by as the horrendous cacophony droned on. Blake and Emma caught each other looking longingly at the clock and shared a private, knowing smile.

Five minutes passed, then ten. Fifteen minutes passed and then, finally, thirty minutes had elapsed from the moment Agatha had beckoned her footman and quietly slipped out of the drawing room.

Lord Pleshette was the first to make a move. When Angelica Scarlatti finished a song and everyone mustered polite applause, he took the opportunity to murmur, “Excuse me, but I have had enough this evening” to Lord Dudley as he stood and exited the room.

Everyone watched as he slowly approached the door, which was just slightly ajar. He slowly pushed it open, first one inch and then another and then:

“Aaarrrrgh!”

Pleshette emitted a truly bloodcurdling scream as a bucket of flour crashed from its precarious perch on the top of the door, knocking him on the head and—­the worst of all possible fates—­thoroughly plastering his fine wool coat in a shade he had proudly described as “pine forest at dusk,” and which complimented his satin waistcoat in the precise shade of “fresh spring mint at dawn.”

“No, oh no, not the coat,” he said with a strangled cry of distress, dizzily stepping about and frantically trying to brush off the flour, which served only to ruin his fine kidskin gloves, in the perfect shade of buttery caramel, which only distressed him more.

The music screeched to a halt.

From the hall, a cackling was heard.

“Do you not like the musicians I have hired for this evening, Pleshette?” Lady Agatha asked. Everyone was quiet, the better to overhear the conversation that took place in the doorway.

“Miss Scarlatti and her players are magnificence personified,” Pleshette answered obsequiously. “I merely needed to . . . answer the call of nature.”

“Hogwash,” Lady Agatha barked. “The musicians are awful.”

“We were merely honoring the lady's wishes,” Miss Scarlatti explained. “We do not usually play like this.”

“This is madness,” someone was overheard to say.

“This is the Fortune Games,” Dudley said dryly.

“Shhh,” Lady Bellande admonished.

“Do you know what I think, Lord Pleshette?” Lady Agatha inquired. He wisely kept quiet, as it was clearly not a question to be answered by him. “I think that you were going to retire for the evening, thus abandoning your fellow guests to this auditory torture. Or perhaps your daring escapade would have inspired a mass exodus, which would have traumatized the tender feelings of my musicians and gravely insulted the effort I went to in order to provide this entertainment.”

“Lady Grey, my intentions were pure. My heart is good.” Lord Pleshette dropped to his knees before her.

“Does anyone care to vouch for him?” Lady Agatha asked.

No one did. In London he might have been a friend or family member, but at the Fortune Games he was just one more person standing in the way of a ninety-thousand-pound inheritance.

“Instruct your valet to pack your things,” she directed. “You and your staff shall leave at first light.”

“Lady Grey, I implore you . . .” Lord Pleshette made one last, desperate plea, hands clasped and pressed against his breast.

“Play on, Miss Scarlatti,” Lady Agatha said with a wave of her hand. “The night is still young.”

The music began anew, transformed from a horrific cacophony to the sweetest, most harmonious and soul-­stirring sounds. The pianoforte had not been out of tune, the player had simply been striking the most discordant combination of keys possible. The violin now played the same song, and Miss Scarlatti had a voice like a lark, like sunshine, like gold, like a burbling brook.

The beauty of the music made one marvel all the more over the evening's events. There was only this moment, full of hope and possibility. Yet everything was a test, every step a potential trap, and disaster might befall one at any second.

One moment, Emma had been enjoying Blake's terrible performance on the flute, admiring the determination with which he seized the moment and accepted the challenge. The next, there was a stark reminder that Lady Agatha wasn't joking.

Emma's heart was still pounding.

This was a game, and one could be asked to leave at any moment, given her unknowable whims. Emma realized she ought to take care. No more jokes during the music or slipping away from the day's activities. Not if she wanted to win. She had to, for losing now would ruin her forever.

“She is definitely singing in Italian now,” Blake murmured. Emma felt the vibrations of his voice tremble down her back. “Would you like me to translate it for you?”

“That would be lovely,” she whispered. Emma wanted to know the words, to lose herself in the song and cease worrying about the Fortune Games and Benedict, who might not have her now if she lost.

But then Blake began to speak. His voice was low, so only she might hear. His arm was around the settee again, then around her shoulders, urging her close to him.

She was enveloped by his embrace, his scent, his presence, his warmth, his everything.

“Il pescatore è stato perso sul mare . . .”

He grinned wickedly and translated, murmuring the words so only she might hear. She wasn't sure if she should trust his translations—­didn't
pescatore
mean fish?—­but she couldn't help falling under the spell of his low, rich voice and the vibrations it cast upon her skin.

“I long to taste your kiss, your passion, your lips . . .“

Her lips parted. She closed her eyes to block out everything but this beautiful music and Blake's voice.

“Il pescatore ha cercato terra, terra asciutta!

“I hunger for the touch of your skin, soft, white, glowing in the moonlight . . .”

A heat began to steal over her, starting in her belly and spreading across her skin. Like a blush, like sunshine, like the warmth of a man's touch, or so she imagined. Lord above, did she imagine. Even though she could have sworn
terra
meant earth and that Blake was lying. Couldn't she just pretend?

But it wasn't just any man's touch she imagined, caressing every inch of her bare skin. Where she fought to picture Benedict, her traitorous brain wouldn't allow it. Blake was all she saw, all she could think about.

“Il pescatore ha visto scure nubi tempestose. . .

“I dream of knowing you intimately . . .”

He couldn't possibly mean that. The words Angela Scarlatti sang couldn't mean that either. Nothing made sense. Not him . . . not her . . . But truth be told, she wanted to know him intimately, too. She was desperately curious about his kiss. His touch. His passion. His lips, on hers.

“Here,” Blake whispered, tracing his fingertip from just below her earlobe down to her bare shoulder. She couldn't help it, she tilted her head to grant him more access. Traitorous self!

“I want to kiss you here,” Blake said, pressing his fingertips to the delicate hollow of her throat, then he traced his fingertips lower, to her breasts. “Imagine it,” he commanded.

Her eyes flew open and she turned to face him.

“Why?” Why should she imagine such a wicked, impossible thing? Why should he ask—­nay, order—­such a thing of her? Why was he attempting this . . . seduction?

“Why not?”

Gazing into his dark eyes, she did not have an answer for him.

Emma knew she was plain. She knew she was not the sort of woman who inspired wicked thoughts in men. She could not afford to believe otherwise.

Moreover, she did not possess the temperament to smile coyly, or glance smolderingly over her shoulder, or move seductively. No, she smiled to be nice, she glanced to see, and she moved to get from here to there, with zero intentions of seducing a man along the way.

And Ashbrooke asked her why she should
not
imagine that she possessed a body a man like him would want to kiss.

Think of Benedict.
He respected her. He treated her well. He understood her completely, as she was. She was not the kind of woman the Duke of Ashbrooke found beautiful or alluring, or anything.

And yet . . .

“Perhaps I might feather kisses from here . . .” He pressed his mouth against her inner wrist, and she bit her lip. “. . . to here.”

Here being up higher and higher until Emma panicked and jerked her arm away. The audacity of the man was breathtaking. Taking such liberties with her, when they were in a room full of ­people who saw them as enemies, along with an eccentric old woman who could banish them at any moment.

Emma considered all of that, but she also thought,
And then what will you do?

She did not dare voice that question, so she kept the words to herself.

“Do you want to know where I would kiss you next?” Blake asked in a voice that was pure wickedness.

Her corset was suddenly too tight. She couldn't breathe.

“Not particularly,” she answered, breathlessly.

“Here,” and he pressed two fingers against the nape of her neck. Then he dared to trace a line down her spine to the small of her back. “Perhaps lower,” he suggested.

Why are you doing this?
The question echoed around and around her brain, doing battle with wanton imaginings and desperate pleas for Ashbrooke to touch her everywhere, anywhere.

But then she remembered that he was Ashbrooke and she was London's Least Likely, and he had resolved to woo her just to prove he could have any woman he wanted.

“This is highly inappropriate,” she said, straightening her spine and stiffening her resolve. She would
not
be another conquest for him.

“Which is half the fun of it,” he murmured, grinning devilishly. “The other half is imagining how it might feel if I kissed you, Emma, in all those places. Are you imagining it?”

“No. I am thinking of B—­” She stopped herself because Benedict was
hers
. The minute she said his name aloud to Blake was the minute he because fodder.

“Ah, the other man. Your lover boy,” Blake remarked dryly. For a second she thought he might be jealous, but she dismissed that thought as madness. If anything, Blake was just peeved that she saved herself for another man. “Did he ever kiss you like that? Or at all?”

“Your Grace,” Emma said strictly, sounding for all the world like she was a Prim, Proper Matron of Impeccable Virtue. Like
she
was the one the ton called Prissy Missy. When just a moment ago she had been a young woman nearly swept away and seduced by a rogue.

Her heart yearned to be that girl, but her pride wouldn't allow it.

“I know, I know. My manners are appalling. I do apologize,” Blake said.

The hauntingly beautiful music continued, and Blake tragically kept his hands to himself, along with his mouth and his compliments and his hints of seduction. Emma reminded herself of the world as she knew it and she planned it to be.

But she stole glances at the gorgeous man beside her and desperately missed those few moments when she quite nearly surrendered to him.

 

Chapter 10

“I am not so sure about Blake and that girl. It's all too convenient, and love rarely is.”

—­
A
UNT
A
GATHA, TO
A
NGUS

The next day

The Hunt

B
L
AKE WATCHED AS
Agatha returned to the house on the arm of her handsome young footman and constant companion. This year she had devised a bizarre scavenger hunt that was sure to keep everyone out of doors all day. In other words, out of her way.

In previous years she had watched the games' activities with glee, marked by her cackling laugh and devious smile. Her loss of enthusiasm saddened him.

Blake turned away and strolled through the gardens with Emma until they found a secluded bench, offering privacy from their competitors.

“What does the list say?” Emma asked. He glanced at the sheet in his hand. Across the top of the page were the words:
The Fortune Games Scavenger Hunt.
Then he skimmed the list of items they were required to find.

“Oh dear God,” he muttered. “She must have gone mad.”

Emma leaned to have a closer look, her breasts brushing against his arm. She did not stiffen—­though he might have. For once she did not shun a sign of affection toward him. It only served to remind him how long it'd been since he'd had a woman. Days, at least. Perhaps even a week. Maybe longer.

“First on the list: ‘a spark,' ” Emma said.

“That is easy. I have matches,” Blake suggested.

“What are those?” Emma asked, predictably. His obsession with the newest inventions meant he was often asked such questions.

“Matches are a new, slightly dangerous method of starting a fire, lighting a cigar, or illuminating the darkness for just a few fiery seconds,” he explained. “They are the future. Much like the Difference Engine you all disdain.”

The very future Aunt Agatha probably wouldn't give him the fortune to create. Had she known of his new obsession? Is that why she had not invited him?

“I don't disdain the Difference Engine,” Emma said, and he lifted his head in surprise. “I think you should try to build it.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. I think building a machine that will dramatically improve the world will be an excellent use of your half of the fortune,” she said. And then, grinning, she added, “If you win it.”

“My half?”
If he married her, he could have it all.

“We had an agreement, Your Grace. I have plans for my share,” Emma said. “Might I remind you that my ser­vices as faux fiancée are not free, nor are they cheap.”

“ ‘Your Grace'? Are we back to that?” Blake asked, forcing himself to hide a scowl of annoyance and another emotion he couldn't identify. He didn't want to be “Your Grace” to her, nor Duke, nor Ashbrooke.

Had he begun to confuse their forced intimacy with a genuine one? What a miss-­ish thing to do.

She took the paper from his hands, her fingers brushing his, and began to read.

“What else is on the list?” he asked.

“Beauty. A Lady Grey rose will do nicely for that,” Emma murmured, not lifting her eyes from the page.

He wanted her to look at him. Instead, he leaned close and glanced over her shoulder to read what else they would spend their day searching for. He also leaned over to be near, to inhale her scent, to possibly press a light kiss on her cheek . . .

“ ‘The sound of music,' ” Emma read. She didn't move away. But neither did she lean into him, catch his eye, or indicate that she was aware of him at all.

“That is easy. I shall play my flute.”

“It says the sound of music, not auditory torture,” Emma replied, but she was smiling. Teasing him. Women never teased him. They batted their eyelashes, pouted seductively, and took any opportunity to brush against him. They agreed with whatever he suggested.

The novelty of Emma's teasing and refusal to simper was intriguing. He didn't know what she would say next. He didn't know if she would agree, refuse, laugh, or change the subject. Blake found himself all the more attuned to her because of it.

“What are we to do for the feeling of love at first sight?” Emma asked. Aunt Agatha had outdone herself with the bizarre and impossible scavenger hunt tasks.

“My interpretation of this is highly inappropriate, as you would say.”

“Love, not lust. Well, dearest fiancé,” Emma said with a charmingly crooked smile. “How did you feel when you first met me?”

Blake burst out laughing. She did, too.

Miraculously, they could find humor in the situation now, even though the memory still provoked the same feelings of terror, as if he were suspended on a limb not knowing when or where it was about to break.

He recalled swaggering into her drawing room, only to be confronted by an audience of women with whom he was not acquainted—­including the one to whom he was supposedly betrothed. Addressing the wrong woman would have ruined them both. Addressing the right one was impossible.

Then Emma had stood and offered her hand, saving them both from humiliation. He had been so relieved he could have kissed her. Then he noticed, with great relief and the stirrings of pleasure, that she was pretty. Which meant they might be able to pull this off.

Then he forgot her name.

“I felt relieved,” he said. “Also, terrified. Along with a sense of urgency and a spark of opportunity.”

“That is actually poetic, Blake,” Emma said softly. “I think it feels like butterflies in your stomach. That's how I feel every time I see . . .”

Her voice trailed off. She had a daydreamy look about her, and Blake knew that even though she sat beside him—­so close as to be touching and warmed by the same sunshine—­in her heart and thought she was off with lover boy.

It rankled, that.

“Who is he? You still have not told me his name. I am beginning to suspect that he does not even exist.”

“What purpose would telling you serve? I can't imagine any,” Emma replied, still keeping her eyes firmly fixed upon the list in hand.

“Sating my curiosity,” Blake suggested.

He was dying to know what man had bested him for the heart of this wallflower. It wasn't about winning his own wager either. After all of his calculated smiles, smoldering gazes, delicate touches, and tempting kisses . . . he was the one falling for her.

“Oddly enough, sating any feeling of yours is not high on my list of priorities,” Emma said primly, and he made a sound somewhere between strangled laughter and a cough. Did she realize how that sounded? No, not this innocent. “Now let's see, what else is on this utterly mad list?”

“ ‘Happily ever after'?” Blake read, skeptical how to find that in an afternoon.

“ ‘The truth,' ” Emma read grimly. “The truth about what?”

Blake read the next item on the list.

“ ‘Eternity.' The woman put ‘eternity' on a scavenger hunt,” he remarked, leaning back, closing his eyes, a position of defeat.

“I think it's all remarkably clever. Certainly it is far more interesting than a rock, or a leaf, or a stick,” Emma said. “Though I suppose you would prefer that, given that it requires far less ingenuity.”

That
caught his attention. That sly insult so lightly and primly remarked upon in a dulcet voice. As if he would hear her tone and not the words, and thus not comprehend that she had just called him an idiot.

“What makes you say that?” he asked coolly.

“I don't know. I am sorry—­”

“Do you think me some half-­wit, Emma? Some hulking ignoramus?” Blake focused his complete attention upon her and drew himself up to his full height. Being an orphan, he didn't have an example of haughty, overbearing ducalness to follow. He seemed to have inherited it, along with the name and title.

Typically, ­people began to cower and quiver when he stared them down. Grown men begged for his pardon. Women fluttered their lashes and cooed.

Emma just shrugged.

“It's just that you are so . . . handsome,” she explained. “So you needn't be smart. You only have to smile and act rakishly charming to get what you want.”

“I see. By that logic, you think you are plain, and therefore clever,” he said.

“I
am
plain. And I am at least well read if not clever,” she replied calmly.

“What if I don't find you plain?” Blake asked the question, and a truth revealed itself to him in the slight pause of his heartbeat.

He did not find her plain.

She wasn't the sort of beauty who stopped a man in his tracks from across a crowded ballroom, but the more he saw Emma, the more he knew her, the more he wanted to know her. Intimately. Completely.

“If you think me pretty, then I do think you are a half-­wit,” she said dryly.

“Your logic is interesting, Emma. In simple terms, if you are not plain, then you are not clever. Or perhaps you are pretty and clever.”

“Not in any world I know,” she muttered as she lowered her gaze, refusing to meet his eye.

It slayed him, that.

She and the rest of the world had labeled her Wallflower or London's Least Likely, and neither she nor the rest of the world ever reassessed that opinion. She took it to heart and let them ignore her. She didn't deserve that.

And yet here she was, on the arm of a duke and refusing his overtures.

As if she didn't believe he meant them.

Not being a complete idiot, Blake understood that if he wanted to seduce her, it would take more than a sensual touch, more than a passionate kiss. His pace quickened as it occurred to him that she might refuse him because she did not even believe him.

He would have to make her believe she was worthy of seduction.

“Emma, we are participating in Lady Agatha Grey's Fortune Games. We are not in any world anyone would recognize,” he replied carefully. “Therefore any rules or previous ‘truths' do not apply.”

“I still want to win,” she said, lifting her blue eyes to meet his. The wanting was unmistakable. Wanting for her lover boy and whatever daydream life they led. Blake gazed at her, knowing his eyes were also full of desire, and wanting.

“I as well,” he said, and he was no longer speaking just of the games.

A spark

Blake and Emma spent the morning among the roses in the garden, capturing butterflies to contain in a glass jar, to approximate the feeling of love at first sight.

Next they wandered through the garden, searching for truth and eternity.

Blake heard footsteps crunching on the gravel—­they were not alone. Should they be discovered in a compromising position, it would be an opportunity to allay any lingering suspicions that he and Emma weren't engaged as they claimed to be. With George having departed—­that morning they'd heard the cannon fire indicating a contender's exit from Castle Hill and the Fortune Games—­the one person who knew the truth was gone. But who knows what he might have said . . .

It was the sensible thing to be caught kissing his fiancée in the gardens. Blake would have laughed, for he usually endeavored
not
to be discovered thusly. Truly, though, he thought only of tasting Emma.

“Emma, come quick . . .” He reached out for her hand and led her off the path and into a grove of trees. Momentum sent her crashing against his chest, and he clasped her against him. His breath hitched. Certain parts of his anatomy hardened. She took only a small step back when he reluctantly loosened his embrace.

“What is it?” Of course she didn't trust him. She shouldn't. She really shouldn't. His intentions were utterly wicked.

“This,” he said with a murmur, and pulled her close again.

Then he lowered his mouth to hers. Just for an instant. Just enough to make it seem real, and romantic, and as if they were actually in love. Just enough to prove themselves to whomever was approaching.

“Really, Lord Copley, this is utter nonsense.” Lady Copley's sharp voice sliced through the pleasant hum of the summer afternoon. “Trying to light a fire with your spectacles.”

“You don't have a better idea, wife. Or any idea at all,” Lord Copley countered.

“What are you doing?” Emma whispered against his kiss. But she didn't stop. Thank God, she did not stop.

He didn't know. He'd meant to allay suspicions of their false betrothal. He meant to seduce her—­at first to confirm to his own pride that he could. But more and more he hungered for her warm looks, true smiles, her playful banter and her taste . . . like innocence and desire all at once. It wasn't just a game to him anymore.

The truth was, he wanted the same thing as Lord Copley out there—­a spark.

“Just a kiss,” he whispered.
Just a kiss. Just a spark.

No, he wanted a wildfire. Burning hot and bright and leaving the world utterly changed.