The Courtesan's Daughter (2 page)

Yes and no, and that was the problem. She was Sophia’s daughter, the daughter of a former courtesan, and therefore her pedigree was a disaster. And yet, though she was Sophia’s daughter, she had none of her fire, certainly none of her mystique, and most definitely none of her experience. Fully intentional on her part, on both their parts to be honest, yet it left her in the strange situation of being chillingly proper and completely unacceptable in the same instant.

To say she was disheartened was to say it politely. She was, hopelessly and irretrievably, on the shelf. There was not an eligible man of her station and her situation who would even dare to speak with her beyond the most cursory exchange of pleasantries. An invitation to Almack’s was beyond hope.

It was not as if she were overdramatizing the situation. She had been considering her prospects since the age of fourteen, when she had realized that her dancing instructor had beautiful eyes and her riding instructor had quite a spectacular seat. Men, she had discovered, were fascinating. Unfortunately, it had become simultaneously obvious that men were not fascinated by her.

Of course, the daughter of an earl did not go about marrying dancing masters or riding instructors, and she had logically tested the waters in a more proper pond.

The pond was frigid. One might even say frozen.

Her mother, too well connected and too well married to ignore, was fully in Society, which meant that Caro was as equally in, but that did not mean that the proper sort of man, one who would chat her up at a sedate dinner, considered her the proper sort of wife.

She had received no offers. In point of fact, she had received not the barest glimmer of interest. Logically, there was but one conclusion to draw: she was ummarriageable.

Marriage, no matter how she longed for it, was out of reach.

“You may have hope,” she said to Anne. “I do not.”

“Learn to find hope or you will perish of despair, Caro. Find your hope where you may, but find it.”

Caro looked at Anne, at her ginger-haired beauty and her solemn gray green eyes, and said, “You know where I thought to find hope. You argued against it.”

“And I still do,” Anne said. “You should talk to Sophia about your … plans.”

“Plans,” Caro said with a crooked grin. “You mean to say folly, but you are too polite to be that openly brutal in your assessment.”

“Since you said it first,” Anne said with an answering grin, “then let us call it folly, for folly it most certainly is. Ask your mother and see if she does not call it the same or worse.”

“She won’t discuss such things with me,” Caro said. “For a past courtesan, she is most prudish.”

“She is trying to protect you.”

“From what? From the only avenue open to me? I am a woman. I want to live as a woman. I may be my mother’s daughter, after all. It is said that blood will tell,” Caro said softly, running a hand down her thigh. “Did you not just say it? I am my mother’s daughter, am I not?”

“Oh, Lord, what are you planning now?” Anne said.

Caro looked up and pierced Anne with her gaze. “I know that I have no future as a wife. But perhaps I can, like my mother before me, have a future as a courtesan. Certainly I should have some experience before I plunge into the courtesan’s life.”

“You don’t even understand what it is you’re saying, that’s the frightening part,” Anne said, standing up and beginning to pace the bedroom. “You have no idea what it is to be a courtesan.”

“Yes, yes, you’ve said that before. Well, if I don’t understand, there’s only one thing to do,” Caro said. “I must get myself some experience at these sorts of things, musn’t I? ”

“These sorts of things? I presume you mean men?”

“Of course. What else?” Caro said with as much sophistication as she could manage; not much, she was afraid.

And she was afraid, that was the whole problem as well as the entire point. She was Sophia’s daughter and Sophia was infamous. Unfortunately for her, she was not at all infamous, not for any reason. She was not infamously beautiful nor infamously reckless nor infamously desireable. She was Sophia Dalby’s very invisible daughter; a well-brought-up daughter of a peer with nothing at all remarkable to distinguish her, unless it be her remarkable mother.

Being the unremarkable daughter of an infamously remarkable mother had effectively closed the door to respectable and profitable matrimony. Of course, she could marry unprofitably, to some minor baron or, worse, a man of industry, but she was enough her mother’s daughter to find an unprofitable marriage completely unacceptable. Better profit than respectability.

Yes, she was fully Sophia’s child in that regard. And so, her decision. She would be a courtesan, just like her mother before her. Men would bankrupt themselves for a single kiss from her virgin lips. Of course, her lips, as well as other parts of her, would not remain virgin for long, so it was absolutely imperative that she bankrupt as many men as possible before all her virginal qualities were spent. And then she would move on to bankrupting men for her distinctly
un
virginal qualities. It was a plan that pleased her as it had the air of being so very sophisticated and so very luridly debauched; exactly the sort of plan a practiced courtesan might hatch.

Of course, the fact that she knew little or nothing about the details of being a proper courtesan was just the tiniest fly in the ointment. But she could fix that with almost no effort at all. There was a very convenient man waiting downstairs for her mother even now and he would do nicely; she could practice her seductive skills on him. The fact that he was, she strongly suspected, her mother’s current lover was just the least bit inconvienent. Still, one had to work with whatever, or whomever, was available.

Viscount Richborough was just available enough.

 
 
LORD Richborough was pacing the yellow salon as Caroline softly entered the room. Softly, because she didn’t intend to startle him. Softly, because she had just managed to shush Anne and leave her in the foyer, where she suspected Anne was listening avidly at the door. Caroline did not enter softly because she was afraid. Far from it. She was going to find out if she had any skill at seduction at all before commencing a life of profitable seduction. A perfectly logical plan, as anyone would attest. Anyone except Anne. Anne was ridiculously conservative about things of this nature, which Caro considered quite odd since Anne
had
been married and certainly had a working knowledge of such things, such things being those acts that occurred between men and women.

Richborough was a man and she was a woman. Things ought to proceed nicely from there, oughten they?

As men went, Richborough was above average in appearance; quite above average. Her mother wouldn’t have tolerated him otherwise. He was tall, slim without being fragile, possessed of remarkably even features capped by a luxuriant cap of tousled dark brown hair that was a complete match to his dark brown eyes. Naturally, as he had been coming round to see her mother, she’d had a fair chance to study him. If he wore his jackets a bit snug across the shoulder and if his wit was a bit thin, she didn’t suppose anyone would notice those small deficiencies. But she did.

She knew her mother did as well. Nothing escaped Sophia’s notice, though perhaps quite a lot escaped her comment. There was likely some proverb about age and the wisdom of discretion, but as Caro was seventeen, she didn’t suppose she should be expected to know it. Or practice it.

Attempting to seduce her mother’s lover was hardly discreet, but she did need to know if a man could find her appealing, and this man would just have to do. It was almost a scientific experiment. In fact, if her mother found out about her attempted seduction of Lord Richborough, she would claim exactly that. A scientific experiment, nothing at all personal about it.

She didn’t suppose Lord Richborough needed to be told that, however. What she knew of men indicated that they were rather humorless about things of that sort. Dour things, really, but strangely compelling in spite of it.

Lord Richborough stopped pacing and turned upon hearing the door close, and her heart did a little flutter. He was such a tall man and not a little imposing in that particular way men had of imposing themselves upon absolutely everyone, no matter the occasion. All in all, she rather liked that about men.

“Lady Caroline,” he said, bowing gracefully. “How good to see you again.”

“Thank you, Lord Richborough,” she said, curtseying quickly. “You’re calling early today. My mother is not yet receiving. I’m afraid you must make do with me.”

That had not come out
at all
as she had hoped. She hardly wanted to be thought of in terms of yesterday’s toast. She was almost certain that successful courtesans did not go about announcing that they must be made do with.

“Delighted,” Richborough said with a somewhat stiff smile.

He looked disappointed. Not at all the response she’d been hoping for. Caro sat down upon the silk damask sofa and arranged herself as beautifully as possible. Richborough sat as well, though not beautifully. He did not appear to care if she thought him nicely arranged or not.

It was difficult not to begin to think that Richborough might be a bit stupid. Without being vulgarly obvious, how far did he expect her to go in her invitation for his attentions? Apparently farther still.

“And how have you been entertaining yourself lately, Lord Richborough?” she asked, running a finger across her collarbone. “Have you done anything particularly amusing?”

“Not particularly, no,” he answered. “What of you, Lady Caroline? Have you seen the new play at the Theatre Royal?”

“I’m afraid not,” she said. “Have you?”

“Yes,” he said, sounding altogether bored and distracted. “It was tolerably good.”

“I suppose it was very wicked,” she said. “I so long to be exposed to something wicked.”

There. That got his attention.

Lord Richborough stopped his rather poorly concealed fidgeting and stared at her. In actual point of fact, he stared
hard
at her, as if he were unsure of what he had clearly heard her say. Since he was having so much trouble with it, it would only do that she repeat it, or perhaps some even more scandalous version of it.

“Are you wicked, Lord Richborough? I do hope so,” she said. It seemed to her exactly the sort of remark a courtesan would make.

Oddly enough, Richborough got a very distracted look again and shifted his weight on his chair. It was a most disappointing response to the clearest invitation she could imagine a woman giving a man. She couldn’t be as unappealing as all that, could she?

“I am here to call upon Lady Dalby,” he said, still squirming slightly in his seat. “You are aware of that, I presume, Lady Caroline ? ”

“Of course,” she said. “However, you may not have noticed it, but I live here as well. I only thought that we could … entertain ourselves until my mother has completed her toilette.”

“Entertain ourselves,” he said softly, staring at her rather more intimately than she was accostumed to. “In precisely what manner? ”

Oh, bother, he
was
stupid. Well, what was left but for her to spell it out for him?

“In the usual manner,” she said. She was quite certain she sounded as experienced as the most accomplished courtesan, even if she did only have the foggiest sense of what she was implying. Certainly Richborough must be counted upon to carry
some
of the weight of this exchange.

He responded by coughing into his fist. Most peculiar and not at all what she had hoped for.

Worse, she was almost completely certain that the footsteps she heard in the foyer were Anne’s, running to fetch Sophia. Now she would have to seduce Richborough all the faster so that the deed was done before her mother arrived. That was going to be a bit tricky as Richborough was most decidedly slow at reading the proper signals. No wonder her mother was so often exhausted; seducing Richborough was turning into one of those impossible tasks constantly referred to in all those boring Greek myths.

“I am not certain I understand what you mean by ‘usual,’ ” Richborough said, standing up to fuss with his waistcoat.

“I mean, Lord Richborough,” she said in some annoyance, “that some men might enjoy a few minutes alone with me, but as you are clearly not one of them, I shall leave you to your solitude.”

She stood up so abruptly that she was not altogether certain she had not ripped a seam in her hem, which seemed to suit the occasion precisely.

“Excuse me, Lady Caroline,” he said, blocking her in the most subtle manner possible from the closest doorway to the foyer. But he was blocking her, which she considered very nice of him. “I have insulted you in some fashion, which I would never do. I do not prefer solitude to your engaging company. It is only that you are young and I would not see your reputation damaged by a misspoken word, or deed, on my part.”

Deed?
Perhaps he was not so stupid as he first appeared. Certainly he must have some redeeming qualities or her mother would never tolerate him, though, to be honest, her mother did not mind stupid men as long as they were not stupid in showing her the proper appreciation, a position Caro found altogether logical.

“I am not so innocent, nor so diabolical, Lord Richborough, that I would allow my reputation to be ruined on something so whimsical as a
word
,” she said. There, she had laid it all out for him. Let him now show her just how desirable he found her. She would prefer
in deed
, but she would tolerate
in word
. She was not unreasonable, after all.

“A lady of rare virtue,” he said. It did not sound at all complimentary. “However, I would consider it a failure to my manhood if I did not endeavor to protect you from any possible harm.”

He bowed as he said it. As if that excused him from the insult he had dealt her. Caro might be innocent but she was not stupid; she knew very well that men in the throes of blazing desire did not give a fig for anything beyond satisfying that desire upon any likely female.