The Courtesan's Wager (20 page)

He had kissed her. Again. She had not wanted it, she had not sought it, and she had not run from it. But that was only because she was trapped within roses and couldn’t move. That was the sole reason she had stood stock-still and allowed him to kiss her.

She had reasoned this out while trying to disentangle herself from the roses, and she was fairly well pleased by her summation of events.

As to why she had kissed him back, she hadn’t worked that out yet to her satisfaction. But she would. All she knew at the moment was that her heart had hammered and her skin had flushed and her breasts had . . . Well, he couldn’t possibly know what her breasts had done as a result of his touch so there was little point in counting that. In this secret war they had been conducting between them for two years, only obvious defeats and victories counted. Or that’s what she had decided. She didn’t know or care what Cranleigh thought of any of it. He probably didn’t think at all, he just scowled and snarled and reacted in any fashion he thought right to him.

What he did not yet realize was that she had taken their war public.

She never should have let him kiss her that first time. It had been unwise in the extreme, and just look at how it complicated everything. Of course, he had taken the kiss rather than asked for it, and no matter how she went over it in her mind, and she went over it far more than was necessary or helpful, she couldn’t see how she could have prevented it. It was going to be a tad difficult to be married to Iveston with Cranleigh kissing her at almost every opportunity; a fact which ought to be perfectly obvious to him.

Could he stop? It hardly appeared so.

Could she stop? Most assuredly not. He had started it, after all, yet it was perfectly obvious that she would have to finish it. If that wasn’t just like a man.

Certainly Cranleigh had muddled things up nicely. It was all his fault, every bit of it. She hadn’t been the one to kiss a man at the innocent age of eighteen, especially as that man wasn’t likely to become a duke. She did have her priorities in order, and had done since the age of six, at the very latest. By ten, her resolve had only firmed up into something akin to mortar. By sixteen, seeing that her teeth were straight and white, her bosoms firm and round, her skin clear of pox, she had known it for a fact; she would wed a duke. She had everything needed to acquire one.

At the age of eighteen, the year of her come out, she had met Lord Cranleigh, and that had changed everything, instantly. Not that he seemed aware of it.

Cranleigh, older and wiser and certainly more experienced, had used his wiles and his magnetism and pure brute force to take her in his muscular arms, press her against his hot chest, and kiss her boldly. It had taken him the better part of a day to get round to it, too, which really had been most annoying of him. She had thought he was never going to make his move, then he had, and then he had done nothing about it. Nothing at all. Not a marriage proposal in two long years. Nothing but torrid kisses and a few mostly innocent caresses, and no proposal. He was clearly the most obstinate, stupid man in England.

If she didn’t know better, she might begin to think he didn’t
want
to marry her!

The only thing that had kept her at all sane during the two years from that first kiss to this moment was that no one,
no one
, knew what had happened between them. She was quite pleased about that, nearly proud. Certainly Louisa would be shocked, as Louisa believed she knew every thought in Amelia’s head. She very nearly did. Some thoughts, however, were not meant to be shared and what she thought of Cranleigh fit firmly in that category.

They did meet each other less than she would have liked as he was not the most sociable man she had ever met, not that it diminished his appeal. No, far from it. In fact, the danger inherent in their encounters added quite a nice dollop of excitement to what, it must be admitted, were rather boring social affairs of the most repetitive type. Cranleigh dragging her off into an alcove to kiss her at the odd recital made the pianoforte nearly bearable.

And when he could not drag her off, it was miserable.

There had been one near moment on the night Louisa had been ruined by Lord Henry Blakesley, Cranleigh’s brother. They had been in the same room, not alone naturally, for nearly an hour. That had been a challenge. They had ignored each other as best they may, not an easy task as Cranleigh was flatly impossible to ignore. He had scowled at her a few times and she had turned her back on him a few more, and they had got through it.

She did try to be a proper duke’s daughter, but Cranleigh made it so difficult.

Then there had been that unfortunate weekend spent at a house party at the Earl of Quinton’s estate. Quinton’s heir, the handsome Lord Raithby, had very nearly stumbled upon Cranleigh kissing her in the maze. She had not
wanted
to be in the maze, mind you, but as it was the afternoon’s entertainment, she had been obligated, as a good guest only. That Cranleigh had found her there had been purely by chance, she was nearly certain. Upon reflection, and she had reflected upon it often since then, it had seemed to her that Cranleigh had hunted her down. How else to explain his luck at finding her in a maze? In that particular instance he had come toward her at a trot, grabbed her round the waist before she had the wit to protest, bent her backward and begun kissing her on the swells of her breasts, securely and demurely tucked away beneath scads of sturdy fabric, and proceeded upward until he had her mouth firmly beneath his. As she had been bent backward, what was she to have done? She’d held onto his waist and tried to keep as quiet as possible. It was a house party, after all, and they were out in the open. Anyone could have come upon them, and nearly did in the form of Lord Raithby.

There had been other instances over the years, all of them similar in basic substance, all of them amorous assaults on her person that should have resulted in a speedy proposal. No proposal had been forthcoming, yet he could not stop kissing her. Ridiculous, really, as she was not the sort of girl to go about letting a man have his way with her without benefit of marrige. Or she hadn’t been that sort of girl until meeting Cranleigh.

She really considered it a service to the Hyde name that she hadn’t made public what an absolute barbarian Cranleigh was. He truly fit the description of a sailor on shore leave, and looked like one as well. If they only knew how it had begun, how innocent of all guile and false purpose she had been and would still be if not for falling in love with the most inconvenient, impossible man. And now she was reduced to using guile to attain him, for what else was the dukes list but a bit of guile? Just look how he had changed her! At eighteen, what had she known of guile?

Oh, very well, some little bit even at eighteen, but Cranleigh had started it. Cranleigh always started it.

She remembered that first kiss vividly, as was surely to be expected.

It was late winter, the eighteenth of March, to be exact, and Aldreth was at home on one of his rare visits to Sandworth, the ancestral estate. As he was at home and as it was winter and as he was bored, he allowed that a small and intimate party of not more than forty guests were to be invited to entertain him, and each other, if it so happened. Oh, and his children, who were rarely offered any sort of entertainment whatsoever.

Naturally, Aldreth being what he was, a duke, a widower, and a father, in that order, did not make mention of any of those particulars, but Amelia and Hawksworth, not being completely dull, understood that that is what had occurred.

The guests who arrived were the Duke and Duchess of Hyde, along with most of their sons, Lord Iveston markedly absent, the dowager Countess of Dalby and the Earl of Dalby, Lady Caroline, at fourteen, being forced to keep to her lessons, the Duke and Duchess of Edenham, his third wife who was in the very first flush of pregnancy, and various others who were too unimportant to bother about. Naturally, she had been very excited about meeting the Marquis of Iveston. It would not have been at all amiss and she certainly would not have minded in the least to have snared Iveston before even her come out. It would have saved so much bother and, indeed, been something of a coup to formally enter Society as the wife of the heir apparent to the Duke of Hyde.

But Iveston, ever reclusive, had not come to Sandworth. The Earl of Cranleigh had.

He had not, and indeed still did not, look like anyone she had ever met before. He was muscular in the extreme, nearly like a laborer and, worse, it did not put her off in the least. His manner was rigorously contained and he appeared nearly inarticulate, which naturally made her want to break into his iron self-control and entice him to pour out his silent heart to her. But it was his eyes which captured her beyond rescuing, as blue as arctic ice, as cold and sharp as snow, and as full of unspoken shadows as to lure the most innocent of girls, which is precisely who she had been until meeting him.

He had cornered her in the picture gallery when everyone else, or most everyone else, had been in the saloon playing at cards. As she didn’t care for cards, she had wandered in nearly complete innocence a full two rooms and one hall away from the saloon to the picture gallery, and Cranleigh had followed her. She was quite certain he followed her, for how else to explain how he had found his way into the picture gallery? Naturally, she had done everything she could possibly think of to lure him to follow her, and it showed such promise for a lifetime of pleasure that he had followed her unspoken instructions so well.

The room faced east, the light was quite soft in the room, lighting the portraits of her ancestors delicately. She had looked, she suspected, quite lovely in that gentle light, for Lord Cranleigh, who never had before that instant had much to say, started talking to her.

Staring at the portraits, he compared her eyes to an aunt three generations removed.

She thought the comparison thin.

He compared her hair to a great-grandmother on her father’s side.

Perhaps there was a slight similarity.

He thought that her nose was quite that of her father’s.

Completely absurd and she told him so. As Cranleigh was standing quite close and as he had been running a fingertip down the length of her nose as he spoke, turning to argue with him had been . . . well, she had been innocent until that moment. Though not quite so innocent as to not understand that turning to face a man who stood not six inches off was a very good way to get kissed.

He had, without any hesitation she could discern, kissed her lightly on the mouth.

She supposed it might have been possible that the moment he lifted his mouth from hers that he would have stepped away and apologized. As she had placed her hands on his chest and looked up at him in rapture, lifting her mouth for another kiss, he had never quite had the chance to apologize, if he had been intending to at all. It was definitely not a sure thing.

He had pulled her to him, both hands around her waist, and kissed her again. She had kissed him back. Fully. Without restraint. With a great deal of ardor, truth be told.

They had kissed until the sun set, leaving the picture gallery in purple shadow. She remembered that especially, how his eyes had looked in shadow, still so icily blue that they shone almost like a wolf’s.

The sounds from the saloon had drifted to them, a changed sound, coming closer, breaking apart. They might be discovered any instant.

He’d kissed her again, almost ruthlessly. It had been . . . scandalous and wonderful. Not that she would ever admit as much to him. But she had thought, and it was perfectly logical to think so, that their arrangement was all but secured.

It was not, and she still could not reason out the why of it. Clearly, he was deeply in love with her. Oh, of course, there were men who were not at all honorable about things of that nature, she was not a dolt, after all, but Cranleigh, for every impossible trait he possessed, and there were more than a few, was honorable. He was most assuredly honorable.

He hadn’t offered to marry her, you see; after two years and this the start of her third Season out, he had yet to offer and, worse, was about to go back to sea.

What was she to do? Force him? Take her slender fist to his icy blue eyes and beat him into doing right by her?

No, instead she had sought out Sophia Dalby as an ally, and that was bearing most interesting fruit. She would somehow force Cranleigh into offering for her, or she would entertain an offer from one of the men on her list. If it came to that. Surely Cranleigh would not allow it to get to that point. Didn’t he, after all, have some fighting blood in him? Could he not be made to claim her? To date, his prowess seemed exclusively in bullying her about, kissing her, and not offering for her. Cranleigh really ought to have learned by now that she would not be bullied by him. But he hadn’t and so he still tried.

It was exhausting, but what could she do about it? She couldn’t stop him and he clearly wouldn’t ruin her outright; he could have done that long ago and if he had, they’d be married by now. Why, just look at how quickly Blakes had ruined Louisa. A single evening’s work and he had snared the woman of his heart. Cranleigh certainly was not cut from quite the same bolt as his brother, which was most odd.

Her thoughts must have shown on her face, giving her a most distracted air, she was sure, for into the stilted silence, the Duke of Calbourne spoke.

“Would you care to dance, Lady Amelia?”

“I’d be delighted,” she answered and, taking his arm, she allowed Calbourne to lead her onto the floor for the next set.

She could feel Cranleigh glowering behind her. That delighted her almost nearly as much as dancing with Calbourne. Perhaps more.

O
F course, what else was Penelope to feel but that she’d stumbled and fallen badly in the conversation with the Duke of Calbourne? What was to have been a display of her wit and vivacity had turned somehow into a display of her education and logic. Men hated that sort of thing, positively loathed it. She’d have to do better if she wanted to be a duchess, that was all. Simply have to do better. She was quite confident that looking a bit stupid and gullible was not at all difficult. Logic simply screamed that it should be nearly effortless. All she had to do was keep her mouth closed and her opinions to herself. Time enough after she was a duchess to speak her mind.