Proof by Seduction

CHAPTER TWO

GARETH CARHART, Marquess of Blakely, had allocated one hour to this endeavor. Fifteen minutes to travel to the fortune-teller’s lair, fifteen minutes to return home. Half an hour, he had supposed, would suffice to shred her lies like the insubstantial foolscap that they were.

“I can’t go.” Madame Esmerelda’s voice was soft and uncertain.

“Why ever not?” Ned turned to her, a look of genuine befuddlement spreading across his face. Gareth’s young cousin sat with his hands on his knees, his whole body canting toward the woman. And therein lay Gareth’s problem.

When Gareth had left England years before, Ned had been a child, whining and hanging on at every opportunity. Now, he was barely twenty-one—but still damnably vulnerable. And Ned believed every word that this woman spoke.

With Ned’s father dead, Gareth was the closest thing Ned had to a patriarch. Ned was his responsibility—and responsible marquesses did not let their young cousins fall into the clutches of fortune-tellers.

“I’m sure Madame Esmerelda had a perfectly legitimate reason not to come.” Gareth raised an eyebrow at the woman and dangled his bait. “I suspect she had another appointment at the same time.”

Let her agree. When she did, he would ask her to name the date of the ball. She wouldn’t be able to, despite her vaunted powers and he would end this foolish charade before it even began.

But she did not take the easy way he offered. Her nostrils flared, and she pressed her lips together. “You’re attempting to trick me, my lord.”

Gareth barely transformed his jerk of surprise into an arrogant chin-lift. “I assure you,” he said in his coldest tone, “I had no such intention.”

She rolled her eyes. “You want this to be a scientific test? Let it be a scientific test. But don’t set little verbal traps for me. And don’t ever lie to me. You intended precisely such a thing.”

Electricity prickled the hairs on his arms, and Gareth sat back, the silence pressing uncomfortably against his skin. Madame Esmerelda leaned toward him, her hands gripping her skirts. It had been a long while since anyone had spoken to him in that manner. He had lied to her. He had intended to trick her into playing her hand too soon. He just hadn’t expected her to notice.

“You’re trying to change the subject,” he accused her. “Why can you not go to the ball?”

“Because I wasn’t invited,” she snapped. And then she looked down. “And besides, I have nothing to wear.”

Ned gave a high crack of laughter.

And no wonder. It was such an absurdly ladylike thing to say. He glanced at her again. In that moment—a trick of the light, perhaps, or the way her lashes obscured her eyes—Gareth felt a jolt. Madame Esmerelda was not a lady, but she was most definitely a woman. A pretty one at that. She’d hidden her femininity beneath those unflattering layers of dark paint and the kerchief. Lies, those; just ones composed of fabric and powder instead of words. He wondered idly how far down her back that mass of hair would reach if it were not bound up. She lifted her chin and met his eyes.

Gareth didn’t believe in fortune-telling. He was a scientist; he’d devoted years to a naturalist’s expedition in Brazil. He’d only returned to England when his grandfather died, and responsibility required he take on the demands of the title. He had come here because responsibility also demanded that he free his cousin from Madame Esmerelda’s grasp. But he would take it as a matter of personal pride to strike a blow against the illogical superstition that this woman represented.

Her particular choice of lies, however, would take far longer than his allocated hour to disprove. He should have been annoyed. And yet he couldn’t intimidate Madame Esmerelda.

In the year since he’d been back in England, he hadn’t faced anything like a real challenge. Now he did. It was going to be extremely satisfying when he exposed her as the fraud that she was.

He relished the prospect of matching wits with her, of pulling the truth from her.

Gareth snapped his fingers. “The invitation,” he said, “I can fix. The clothing I can fix. I’m willing to do much in the name of science.”

“Oh, no. I couldn’t.” She looked away again. “Besides, I can’t accept—”

Disparate details collided in Gareth’s mind. The proper curtsy she had dropped. The educated precision of her intonation. Her reluctance to accept a gift of clothing from a man. These facts all added to one overwhelming conclusion: Madame Esmerelda had been educated as a gentlewoman. What on earth could have driven her to tell fortunes?

“Of course you can,” he insisted. “Madame Esmerelda, if this is to be a scientific test, I don’t believe you should lie to me, either.”

Some emotion flickered in her eyes. She shook her head—not a denial, but a swift, short shake, as if she were putting everything to rights. And when she met his gaze again, her face was smooth.

She had thought of something, Gareth realized. She saw a way out of the mess he had created for her.

He should have been disappointed.

Instead, he couldn’t wait to foil her plan.

IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG for Gareth to regret his eagerness. He hadn’t realized finding Madame Esmerelda appropriate attire would turn into an ordeal. But Ned had thought it necessary to take the woman to the modiste himself. And Gareth knew if Ned had a moment alone with the charlatan, she would find a way to turn his head inside out. Again.

Which is how Gareth found himself in his closed carriage the next afternoon, accompanied by his chattering cousin, a fraud and a growing headache.

“So,” Ned babbled, “we’re going to the ball next Thursday, and then we’ll meet Blakely’s wife. I should like to see him fall in love. I’m rather looking forward to it.”

Madame Esmerelda adjusted the kerchief on her head—red, this time—and slanted a careful look at Gareth. “Identify.”

“Identify?” Ned repeated. “What do you mean, identify?”

“We are going to identify the woman in question. I never said your cousin would meet her that day. In fact, the time for their meeting is not yet here.”

Gareth inhaled in trepidation. “Not yet here? How long will this take?”

The smile touched her eyes, if not her lips. “Oh, I couldn’t say. The time is not measured by years, but by tasks. Three of them.”

“Tasks?” repeated Ned, incredulously.

“Tasks?” Gareth said sharply. “You said nothing of tasks.”

“Oh? What did I say, I wonder?” She looked up at the roof of the carriage, innocently.

Gareth drew out his notebook and fumbled for the page. “At precisely ten o’clock and thirty-nine minutes, you will see the woman you are to marry if only you approach her in …” He faltered, and looked up.

That innocence had faded from her eyes. She’d known what she’d said. Baited him into this, no doubt, to make him look foolish.

“If only I approach her in the manner you prescribe,” he finished dully.

“Ah, yes. The manner I prescribe.” She smiled. “And I prescribe tasks.”

He’d thought himself so clever, trapping her into making an easily disprovable statement. All he had to do, he’d thought, was not marry a girl. He’d succeeded at not marrying women all his life. He’d been too confident, too sure he’d backed her into a corner.

He’d underestimated her. He’d been so intent on winning, on disproving her statement, that he’d not seen the exit she planned for herself.

He could walk away at any moment. But if he did, he’d leave her influence over Ned unabated.

“I never got tasks,” mumbled an aggrieved Ned.

“Of course not,” Madame Esmerelda soothed. “But you must think how monumental an undertaking it will be for your cousin to convince a woman to care for him. If I didn’t set him tasks, he’d use logic instead, and just think how that would work out. You don’t need tasks. Everyone likes you already.”

Gareth clenched his hand in suppressed fury and pushed his knuckles into the leather squabs. “And what,” he snapped, “is the first task? Mucking out stables? Killing lions? Or must I chop down an entire orchard of citrus trees?”

She tapped a finger against her lips. “It is a trifle premature to tell you. But I suppose it can’t hurt. You must carve an elephant out of a piece of ebony.”

“An elephant?” Gareth looked up at the roof. “Why is it always elephants?”

The coach slowed to a halt. The footman opened the door, and dust motes danced in the rays of sunshine in front of Madame Esmerelda. They made her look … well, mystical. Drat her.

“I am,” Madame Esmerelda said, “just a poor conduit for the spirits. As you will be a mere conduit for the elephant. You will give your future wife the elephant when first you meet.”

Her eyes danced, and she exited the conveyance. Gareth bit back a pained yelp.

No doubt he could find a way to present such a gift in a dignified manner. If she thought to make a fool of Lord Blakely, she was vastly mistaken. But maybe she intended to fight him to an impasse. If she made those tasks onerous enough, she doubtless thought he would walk away. And with her conditions unfulfilled, he would have no proof she was a fraud—and that meant his cousin would continue to see her. Unacceptable.

By the triumphant spring in her steps as she approached the shop, she thought so, too.

Gareth’s thoughts boiled as he entered the little shop. He paid little mind to Ned bothering Madame Esmerelda, whining about some irrelevant trifle. Bolts of colorful fabric decorated the front waiting room; they faded to dim gray in his mind. He didn’t even notice he was pacing the floor, scarcely saw when Madame Esmerelda was whisked away to the back room. He wanted to rip the fashion plates off the walls and shred the sample cards laid demurely out on the tables.

Gareth did not like losing. He would not be outdone by some fraud. He’d looked forward to the challenge when he thought he would vanquish her. The situation became far less entrancing when her victory was possible.

Tasks. He couldn’t let this continue.

He turned to Ned, who was fidgeting on the edge of his seat. “Ned,” he said.

The boy looked up attentively.

“Do you think Madame Esmerelda will need a shawl?”

“I suppose—”

“Go buy her one.” Gareth fumbled for a bank note and held it out.

Ned frowned, his fingers closing on the paper. “Why can’t the modiste just choose one? What I know about ladies’ shawls, I could fit—”

Gareth fixed Ned with his coldest look. “I think it would mean more to her if you chose it yourself. Don’t you?”

Ned offered a few more halfhearted protests. Easy enough to dismantle those; soon his cousin scurried out the front door.

The workroom door swung open, and one of the seamstresses popped out, her arms flowing with colored silks.

Gareth took a deep breath. This charade had gone on long enough. “Is Madame in a condition to receive me?”

She sniffed primly. “My lord. As you wish, my lord.”

But as soon as he ducked through the doorway the servant indicated, he halted. A half-mirror stood on the otherwise empty wall, and Gareth’s lungs contracted at the profile reflected in it. Rounded hip, and a swell of breast.

Madame Esmerelda wasn’t wearing a fashionable dress. She wasn’t wearing much of anything at all—nothing but a thin, worn chemise. The seamstress must have assumed he was the fortune-teller’s lover, or she’d never have sent him back here. His body moved of its own accord, turning toward her, like a plant tracking the path of the sun.

Christ. Underneath the colorful skirts, now lying in a discarded heap, Madame Esmerelda had a waist. She had a bosom. She had a damned remarkable bosom. From five yards away, he could see the hazy outline of her legs through worn muslin. He could even make out the dark nubs of her nipples. The curling ends of her hair fell all the way to the small of her back.

She wasn’t anything like the slender sylphs society favored. She was a Grecian fertility goddess, round and soft all over. And with her rosy lips frozen, half-open, she looked almost inviting.

Not that her invitation extended to him.

Gareth’s brain tumbled to a halt. What remained in his head was no rational thought, but simple greed. His mouth dried, and every muscle contracted in anticipation of the feast on display before him.

She stood, rooted in place, her eyes wide in horror. If she were a lady, he would have apologized profusely and left the room. Not that he could help his own reaction. It was more than just the sight of a beautiful, nearly naked woman that set his heart hammering. It was the way she’d challenged him, the way she’d undermined him. It had been years since anyone had out-thought him. And so what he felt was a sharp desire to possess her. To obtain her surrender in every way a woman could surrender to a man. It was lust, pure and simple.

But this woman was trying to make an idiot of Gareth and a dupe of his cousin. There was nothing pure or simple about her. And so he stuffed his physical response as best he could behind the safety of a cold, businesslike demeanor.

“Madame Esmerelda,” Gareth said, “you win. There will be no tasks. No elephants.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Get out.”

“One hundred guineas, if you tell Ned you’re a fraud and disappear from our lives.”

She inhaled and her chest expanded. She pointed to the door. “Get out now.”

“Think it through. I doubt you’ll be able to milk that much from him in your entire acquaintance. He’ll outgrow your advice soon enough. And you could live for years on the money.”

She took a deep breath, and those remarkable breasts shivered underneath the thin chemise. “I wouldn’t do it for a hundred—” she began.

Gareth covered his rising lust with a nonchalant shrug. “Two hundred.”

Her lip curled, and she shook her head in outrage. “Not for two thousand. Not for ten.”

“Oh?” He flicked an insultingly familiar glance down her chemise. “You’d do it for ten. But you’ll do it for two hundred.”

She started toward him, her fingers curved like claws. He deserved to be slapped, and more, for the insult his look had implied. If he was right, and the woman was gently bred, she’d not appreciate the aspersions he’d just cast on her character. But he couldn’t let her near him. He feared his own response if she came within arm’s length.

“Really, Madame. Once you dispose of your fabricated outrage, you’ll realize this is the best solution for everyone.”

Gareth inclined his head, all sardonic politesse, and stepped back through the opening. He eased the door into place behind him, and let the insolent sneer slide off his face.

He leaned against the wall, his breath ragged. The challenge between them had become more than a territorial war over Ned’s future. Now it was sensual.

Madame Esmerelda was extremely intelligent. She was devious. And if she had any idea how she affected him, she’d take advantage, unscrupulous creature that she was. And how idiotic that he wanted her to take that advantage. He wanted her to befuddle his wits until he lost all control and took her.

Gareth gripped his hands into fists. In his time in the jungles of Brazil, he’d cataloged close to a thousand insects. Now he let them march through his mind. Cockroaches. Poisonous, furry caterpillars. Maggots. He thought of every creeping thing ever to mar the face of the planet. He imagined them crawling about on his skin. And he didn’t stop until his ardor subsided and the memory of her body dissolved from his mind.

It took a lot of millipedes.

JENNY HADN’T REGAINED HER COMPOSURE by the time she fastened, with shaking hands, the final layer of Madame Esmerelda’s outrageous costume. Bad enough that this whole experiment had extended the lie of Madame Esmerelda far outside Jenny’s usual sphere of business. Worse still, she’d been made to endure the pricks and pokes of the contemptuous seamstress who’d assumed the worst of Jenny’s relationship with Lord Blakely.

But the crowning glory had been when the marquess had marched in on her as if he owned her body. He hadn’t even bothered to avert his eyes. She wasn’t sure which had been more insulting—the look he gave her, or his assumption that she’d be willing to abandon Ned if only he offered a high enough price.

Not since that first day, that first hour, had she been tempted by Ned’s money. She wouldn’t leave the poor boy to suffer under his cousin’s unemotional auspices.

Jenny stormed out into the front room, her loose hair tangled around her shoulders.

Lord Blakely leaned against a wall next to an unclothed dress form. His eyes snapped open as she slammed the door behind her. But she didn’t let him move. She jammed a finger into his chest and glared up at him.

“Just because you ignore everything around you except facts does not mean everyone else can be reduced to a number.”

He looked down at her, astonishment in his eyes. “What the devil?”

She poked his chest again. “There are some things in life for which there are no figures. You don’t comprehend what your cousin really needs or why he finds it necessary to speak with me. No matter what number you choose, you will never, ever be able to describe him. Not with a hundred guineas. Not with a thousand.”

“Very well.” He swallowed, focused on some spot on the ceiling. He didn’t even bother to meet her gaze. “I shan’t offer you bribes again.”

“That’s not enough. If it’s not money you enumerate, you’ll latch on to some other figure. The number of times I make an accurate prediction. The degree to which I specify what is to happen. Attach as many numbers as you like to my relationship with Ned, but they will not help you understand.”

She was Ned’s confidante. She’d be damned if she sold that role for mere money. She wouldn’t let Lord Blakely reduce her to that level.

The man drew himself up. “You can disparage figures all day long, but that’s what proof means. It means one has a factual basis for one’s assertions.”

“You call what you’re doing proof,” Jenny snapped. “But you prod and poke and pick. You have no interest in proving anything.”

“What do you know of scientific proof?”

“Oh, you’re the sort to pin insects to cards in order to study them. After several months spent perusing their desiccated carcasses, you’ll announce your triumphant discovery: all insects are dead! And you’ll delight in the ascendancy of scientific thought over human emotion.”

Lord Blakely cocked his head and looked at her, as if searching for some hidden meaning in her face. “I study animal behavior. It’s imperative I not kill the subjects of my inquiry. Dead macaws rarely flock.”

“There’s no need to murder the analogy by overextending it, atop your other crimes.”

His gaze slid down her body. “The only question in my mind was whether you believed your own lies or were actively attempting to defraud Ned. I suppose it is a compliment to you that I have decided you are too clever for the former.”

“Naturally. You don’t believe anything you cannot taste or touch.”

“I believe in Pythagoras’s theorem, and I can’t taste that. I believe there may be some truth to Lamarck’s theories on inheritance of traits. But no, I do not believe in fate or fortune-tellers.”

“Fate, fortune-telling—or feelings.” Jenny snapped her fingers in his face. “The important things in life cannot be bound like so much paper to form a monograph.”

The insouciant look on his face faded into cold steel. “A monograph?”

She inhaled, sharply. “Listen to yourself. You cite Lamarck instead of talking of your cousin’s future. I have never seen you laugh. I’ve never even seen you smile. No wonder Ned would rather listen to me. You’re a cold, unemotional automaton.”

“An automaton?” His shoulders jerked and he stiffened.

Jenny wasn’t done with him. “Just because you’re as dispassionate as sawdust and as brittle as old bone doesn’t mean everyone around you must ossify.”

“Ossify.” His nose flared and his chin lifted, as if parroting her syllables constituted some kind of brilliant argument. He looked down at his right hand, clenched into a fist in front of him. The muscles in his neck tensed. Jenny took a step back and wondered if she’d gone too far. Madame Esmerelda would never have let anger carry her away.

Then he looked up, and her doubts froze like so much lake water in winter. His eyes reflected some boreal wasteland, inhabited only by wind and a cold sweep of snow. Jenny felt the chill through every layer of Madame Esmerelda’s costume, and she shivered.

When he spoke, there was no emotion in his voice at all. “You should have taken the two hundred guineas. After that outburst, I shall enjoy proving you a fraud.”

BY THE TIME the carriage rumbled back to the Blakely home in the heart of Mayfair divested of all inhabitants but Gareth, it had begun to rain. It wasn’t the warm tropical downpour he’d enjoyed in Brazil; instead, it was the frigid, anemic drizzle that typically plagued London. Drop after sullen drop sank to the earth.

So he was a cold, emotionless automaton? Strange, then, that he felt so damned furious. Gareth gritted his teeth as he stepped outside the carriage. Servants swarmed around him, attempting to rush him inside, out of the wet.

He brushed away their hands. “Leave me. I’m going for a walk,” he snapped. They exchanged glances—his servants often exchanged glances—but they let him go.

Walking was an eccentricity he had developed in Brazil. It was, after all, the only way to make his daily rounds of observations. He’d brought the activity home with him. In London, the habit was inconvenient at best. The streets were all muck, and there was no overhead cover—neither wide-leafed jungle trees nor thick canopies—to speak of. But at a time like this—with his thoughts disordered, his mind awhirl and his body as ready to ignite as tinder—he needed this solitary exercise more than ever.