The Courtesan's Daughter (13 page)

What had surprised him, being as familiar with the rumors of Sophia and the Earl of Dalby and the Earl of Westlin as anyone else in London, was that Westlin seemed to want his son to succeed with Dalby’s daughter.

But so few things were as they seemed and Ruan knew that better than anyone.

Ashdon landed a particularly solid blow and his sparring partner went down onto the mat. Whatever else could be said of Ashdon, he looked a man able to handle himself efficiently in a fistfight, though that skill would hardly help him in his tussles with Lady Caroline.

The Marquis of Dutton approached the ring and called to Lord Ashdon, “You anticipated our appointment by more than a hour, Lord Ashdon. Who am I to pummel now? You can hardly be at your best.”

“I’ll wager that less than my best will be good enough for you, Lord Dutton,” Ashdon called back, brushing his dark hair out of his eyes with gloved hands and grinning like a fool to see Dutton climb into the ring to face him. “Five pounds says you are down in five minutes.”

“You have a reputation for poor wagering, Ashdon,” Dutton said, grinning in return. “Can you afford another loss added to your account?”

“Only if I double my bet,” Ashdon said with a hoarse chuckle. “Ten pounds. Five minutes. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Dutton said cheerfully.

Ashdon landed the first blow, a solid hit to Dutton’s well-sculpted jaw. Ashdon seemed to take particular satisfaction in it. What had occurred between these two? Was Dutton after the hand of Lady Caroline? He’d heard nothing of it.

“I suppose he’s getting his back, after last night,” Lord Henry Blakesley said pleasantly.

Ruan turned slightly, nodded a greeting, and asked, “Ashdon ? ”

“You haven’t heard?” Blakesley said, his voice clipped with amused cynicism. “Lady Caroline, Lady Dalby’s daughter, slapped him across the face last night in her mother’s dining room.”

Lord Ruan considered that for a moment and then said, “She must have been provoked.”

Blakesley nodded and said, “I suppose it depends on whom you ask. The story as it is being reported is that Lady Caroline took it into her head to become a ladybird. Hard to see what could be said to her that would cause offense after that, if you take my meaning. I happen to have been present during the assault, mild as it was, and from what I could gather it looked as though Ashdon offered to be her protector and she refused him. Rigorously. You hadn’t heard?”

No, he hadn’t heard.

One could almost feel some sympathy for Ashdon.

 
“I don’t feel a bit sorry for him,” Caro said to Anne as they sat to tea in the white salon. “I practically threw myself at him so that all he had to do was
catch
me, and he fumbled even that.”

“He didn’t catch you?”

“Not in the way that he should have done,” Caro said snippily.

Anne nodded and kept stirring her tea. She had spent most of the day in her room, contemplating the realities of either accepting or denying Lord Staverton’s suit, if he made a suit, if she hadn’t fumbled her own chance and not put out her hands to catch the willing Lord Staverton. If he was still willing.

Oh, this was a coil that had done nothing but give her a pounding head. She heard Caro talking, heard her words, but couldn’t quite attend to exactly what it was she was saying. Something about Lord Ashdon, certainly. Ever since Caro met Lord Ashdon, her thoughts had been consumed by him. It was never to the good when a man consumed a girl that way.

What had consumed Anne’s thoughts was how she would spend her future. And, to be fair, how Caro would spend
her
future. It was perfectly clear to her that both she and Caro would be best served in very reliable, very serviceable marriages. That was utterly in the realm of possibility and she intended to make every effort to achieve the possible, and she was going to make equal effort to see that Caro did the same.

A future as a courtesan was simply no future at all.

“What does your mother say?” Anne asked, courtesans and being consumed still invading her thoughts.

“Oh, she’s as pleased as a cat,” Caro said. “She feels the whole thing is going beautifully, and I have to admit that she foresaw Ashdon’s reaction down to the last snarl.”

“But you are not to be a courtesan, are you, Caro? You are serious about marrying Lord Ashdon. Marrying anyone would be better than being a courtesan.”

Anne had obviously revealed more than she intended because Caro’s dark eyes filled with compassion. “This is about your mother, isn’t it? How could I not have guessed that small truth when since our first day together we clacked along like two old draught horses that have walked the same field season upon season? Our mothers, our histories, are so alike.”

“Alike?” Anne interrupted sharply. “They could not be less alike, Caro.”

“I’m sorry, Anne. I didn’t mean to upset you,” Caro said, leaning forward to take her hand. Anne’s hands were as cold as January, again revealing far more than she’d intended. “I can’t help but think we are alike. Are we not?”

“Caro,” Anne said softly, “your mother is unique, and because of her, your life has been equally unique, at least for the daughter of a courtesan.”

Anne could see the questions in Caro’s eyes, but Caro held her voice and silenced her questions. If Anne were going to tell this tale, and it looked as though she must, she would need to find her way carefully, cautiously, because it wound through a dark and tangled wood in her memory. She did not tread there willingly, but out of friendship. If Caro still had any lingering and clearly romanticized thoughts of pursuing a courtesan’s path, she wanted to pull those thoughts from her, and if she had to revisit her childhood to do so, she would.

Anne stood up and walked to one of the front windows in the white salon, letting her gaze drift over the street, seeing nothing but her memories.

“My mother,” Anne began, “ran off to be married, but she did not marry and that circumstance was both the beginning and the ending of all her plans. She could not go home. She could not make him marry her. She could not undo her ruination. All that was left for her to do was to find a way to survive. She found a way, perhaps the only way,” Anne said softly.

“She sounds very brave,” Caro said gently.

“Brave? I think she was desperate,” Anne said. “She had one asset to her credit and that asset was beauty. Beauty alone is not enough, Caro. A woman cannot survive long on beauty; for one, beauty does not last, and for another, beauty wears thin without other qualities to magnify it. My mother had only beauty.”

“Do you look like her?”

“Yes,” Anne answered, turning to look at Caro in her sumptuous home wearing her fine clothes. “I have always thought so, but then, I do not know my father.”

“Oh, Anne,” Caro said softly. “Was he not the man your mother intended to marry?”

Anne turned back to the window. “No, Caro. I came along much later than that. My mother passed through many men’s hands. Some of her liaisons lasted for as long as a year, but not often. She tumbled her way from man to man and as her beauty faded, so did the men. She rarely attracted men of title. She never could hold men of great wealth. She drifted, and I was forced to drift with her.”

“Which is why you won’t drift now,” Caro said.

Anne turned again to face Caro, her dark eyes almost smiling, her expression compassionate. “Exactly. It does no good for a woman to rely on beauty because beauty is fleeting. It is better for a woman to rely on intelligence and planning, as your mother does.”

“You are saying that it was not for her beauty that men became besotted.”

“I am saying that and more. Your mother is no longer a courtesan, Caro. She left that life as soon as she could. To walk into it would be the rashest folly. Promise me you will never make that choice.”

“An easy promise to make,” Caro said, standing and walking toward the window. “I have other plans now.”

“Plans that include Lord Ashdon? ”

“Precisely. You should have stayed last night instead of retreating to your room before the party was fully dead. Speaking of that, what did you and Lord Dutton discuss last night? I never saw you after the two of you wandered into this very room.”

“Never mind Lord Dutton. What happened after I left?”

She was
not
going to discuss Lord Dutton and what had happened in the white salon; if she thought about Lord Dutton and his wicked blue eyes too much she’d come too close to throwing all her fine advice about the perils of a courtesan’s life right out this very window. Lord Dutton had that unfortunate effect on her.

“After I slapped Lord Ashdon, I had the most amazing epiphany, Anne. I don’t want to be a courtesan anymore. All I want is to be Lord Ashdon’s wife.”

“I’m delighted, obviously. But, why the change of heart? Why marriage to the very man who was purchased for your use?”

“He was, wasn’t he? I don’t mind the sound of that as much as I did before,” Caro said with a smile that was entirely wicked. “I wonder if I shall find cause to slap him once we’re married. I do hope so.”

 
“SHE
slapped
him?” Westlin roared, his fair complexion going quickly ruddy.

The Marquis of Ruan nodded and took another mouthful of whiskey. It was never too early in the day to drink when one was keeping company with the Earl of Westlin. Westlin was the most predictably ill-tempered man he’d ever met.

“The girl wants to be a cyprian, and that ill-favored son of mine manages to provoke her to violence?”

“That’s what they’re saying,” Ruan said evenly. “If it helps, according to Blakesley, Lady Caroline didn’t look too terribly unhappy, even if she did slap him. I gather the general impression was that they were engaging in some sort of primitive fore-play.”

“Primitive,” Westlin grumbled, fumbling to light his pipe. “That fits.”

“I thought you should know,” Ruan said. “Just how far is this arrangement to go, Lord Westlin? I can’t be skulking about after your son for the rest of the year. I have my own appointments to keep, after all.”

“It won’t take the rest of the year,” Westlin said, scowling down at his pipe.

“Hardly comforting,” Ruan said with a wry smile. “I’d like to set a time limit on this agreement of ours.”

“I’m sure you would,” Westlin said, looking up at him, his blue eyes cold under his bristling brows. Westlin’s hair still carried the echo of his ginger-haired youth, but gray had softened the heat of his coloring. It was too bad the same couldn’t have been said about his temper. Age hadn’t done a thing for him there. “Give it until the end of the Season. I won’t hold you to any longer than that. The property will be yours the first of July. Are we agreed?”

Three months spent trailing after Ashdon, who would in all likelihood be trailing after Lady Caroline, who would predictably be trailing after her mother, Lady Dalby… . Come to think of it, it wasn’t a bad way to spend a few months. Finding out more about the famous Sophia, arranging an introduction, perhaps getting to know her intimately, well, the more he considered it, the more spending the next few months learning the shape of Ashdon’s backside as he camped on the Dalby doorstep seemed like a fascinating way to spend the Season in Town.

“We’re agreed,” Ruan said, and he took a deep swallow of whiskey to seal the bargain.

 
ASHDON and Dutton sat in companionable silence as they drank their whiskeys down in the pleasant and familiar atmosphere of White’s. Dutton had taken a solid pummeling, delivered a respectable return, and had done so with good cheer. It was enough to be said of any man, and Ashdon, taking a careful breath against the bruise on his ribs, was considering Dutton in a more favorable light. A good fight could do that for a man.

Could the same be said of women? Caroline had certainly changed after slapping him, not that he wanted to invite that sort of behavior in a woman, no matter the result. But, as hard as he looked at the thing, he couldn’t ignore the fact that once the slap had been administered, she’d changed, gone a bit soft on him, if he could judge. And he could judge. He’d been judging females for more than a few years now, and he judged with some degree of confidence that, with the right handling, he could have Caro … for the price of a strand of pearls.

It was that last bit that galled.

She still wanted to be a courtesan, though the logic of that choice defied him. Then again, women weren’t famous for being logical. She likely had some romanticized view of the whole thing, fed by her mother, and thought she could have the best of all worlds by being free to choose a man, or not, instead of being properly under the guidance and control of a man.

He was supposed to have been that man. He was supposed to have wooed her, won her, and discarded her, all for the public eye. All to the amusement of the ton, but most especially for the amusement of Westlin. It was to have been a morality play, acted out with the express purpose of punishing Sophia for her gall in publicly, and to the ton’s vast amusement, discarding Westlin for Dalby twenty years ago.

Nothing, not from the very start, had gone as his father had planned. It was with some familial disloyalty that Ashdon could admit that nothing Westlin did with, for, and to Sophia seemed to go as planned. He had always blamed Sophia for that, as his father had done, but having met her he was surprised to find that he could almost like her. And what he felt for Caroline went far beyond liking. Caroline Trevelyan, with her expressive and fiery eyes and flawless skin and delectable mouth, and, to be honest, her volatile temper, did something to him that he had not expected and did not welcome.

Ashdon had Westlin’s plans before him and Caroline was to have been the means to a very deserving end. The trouble was that Caro was not going to sit quietly and be the means to anything. Caro was most definitely an end in and of herself. She would not be bound by expectation or necessity or any of the other things that bound women into society. Caro was a force, an erratic, tempestuous force.