Blakely fixed Ned with a look that promised eventual dismemberment. Luckily for the future attachment of Ned’s limbs, nobody else took up the cry. Blakely made his way through the seats amidst very polite, and not particularly encouraging, applause.
He brushed by Ned and had reached his seat on the other side of Madame Esmerelda, when the annoying woman on Ned’s right leaned over.
“Lord Blakely,” she said. “What an unusual style. I just want to know—who is Ned?”
Ned suppressed a grin. That, perhaps, was the best part. Almost everyone thought of him as Mr. Carhart. Just Carhart, to the friends he’d made at school. Only near family—he included Madame Esmerelda in that number, of course—called him “Ned.”
Blakely arranged the tails of his coat and sat down, straight-backed, before answering. “A person.” No further encouragement passed his lips.
“Oh.” A pause. “Is the style intended to be sung like that?”
Ned felt perfectly free to twit his own cousin, but he’d be damned if he let anyone else do it. “Dissonance,” Ned said airily, “is all the rage abroad this year. It’s such a shame London is behind the times.”
Blakely’s brows drew down and he shot Ned an unreadable look.
Ned decided to feel encouraged. An unreadable response was heaps better than an unprintable one.
Two tasks completed; one more to go. Now Ned only had to sit through the remainder of tonight’s entertainment—which had suddenly become much more entertaining. Was Lady Kathleen watching Blakely? Had she been won over by that awful performance? For the fourth time that evening, he swiveled in his seat and glanced toward Lady Kathleen’s position. Four, he told himself, was a commendably low number. He might have glanced at anyone four times. Perhaps five would not be—
Except she wasn’t in her seat. Ned looked up, to see her brushing her way past the last seats in the row. Nobody looked at her; all eyes were riveted on the opera singer who had just begun an aria far more melodic than the previous song. Lady Kathleen glanced around the room and Ned quickly turned away.
When he looked back, she was ducking through a door. How odd. It was the second time Ned had seen her leave some entertainment through a servants’ entrance.
Without thinking, he stood. And he followed.
As soon as he’d closed the tiny door, muting the music behind him, he dashed after her. “Lady Kathleen!”
She turned around. “Oh. It’s Madman Carhart. And you’re alone.”
Ned halted. She’d discovered his name—good. But she doubted his sanity. Bad. Very bad.
She shook her finger at him. “We haven’t been introduced. I don’t think you should speak to me. And you definitely should not be with me unaccompanied.”
“Nonsense,” Ned said. “You know my name. I know yours.” He put out his hand. “Let’s just shake like gentlemen and be friends.”
Her gaze arrested on his outstretched fingers.
“Right.” Ned balled his hand into a fist and pulled it back slowly. “Ladies don’t shake hands. Never mind, then.”
Her gaze had followed his hand. “Do you realize there are toothmarks on your glove?”
Ned whipped his hand behind his back. His ears burned. “I bit myself,” he explained. “I was trying not to laugh at Blakely. You would have done it, too.”
“Bit you?” She raised one eyebrow. And then, as if she’d realized what she had said, she flushed. It was the first hint of unease Ned had seen her exhibit. But she didn’t turn away in embarrassment. She didn’t even glance away demurely. She met his gaze steadily. “Your entire family is mad, you know.”
“Oh, no,” Ned said. “Just Blakely. He’s been like that for ages. I, on the other hand, am completely sane. Just—just a little—nervous, you know.”
“You should be, following me like that.” She shook her head. The motion was almost severe, but the tone of her voice had softened. “You really ought to leave, I suppose, before someone spies us alone like this and assumes the worst.”
Ned was not yet willing to be dismissed. “Well, if you didn’t go charging off alone into the servants’ corridors, you wouldn’t have that problem.”
Her eyes widened. Something like real surprise flashed in them. “I’m not—that is to say, I don’t—”
“Yes,” Ned corrected, “you do, too. Every time I’ve met you, you’ve been off, invading dimly lit corridors. It’s a mystery. I shall have to get to the bottom of it. I shall consult Madame Esmerelda.”
She frowned at him, as if to deny the charge. But what she said was, “Madame Esmerelda?”
“Yes,” Ned said soothingly, “She’s the one who predicted the match between you and Blakely.”
Her eyes widened even more, and she stepped back. “Match? Predicted? Blakely? What match?”
“Ah.” Ned winced. “Hmm. What match?”
“You’re trying to match me with a man you just told me is mad? That’s why you’re following me?” Her eyes had widened, and she drew herself up. She still stood inches shorter than him. “You’re following me for your cousin? I thought—”
Ned raised his palms soothingly. “I can explain. What I said just now about Blakely—the madness and all? Not true. He’s not—well, he’s not so bad. In fact, he has several good qualities.”
“Well. I suppose. There is his singing, after all.”
“Um,” Ned said. “Maybe not that particular quality, so much. But he is a marquess.”
She gave a brusque shake of her head. “Well, he can’t exactly take credit for that, can he? He was born that way.”
“He’s tall. Women like tall men, don’t they?”
“He was born that way, too.”
“No.” Ned’s confidence returned. “He wasn’t. He was born a baby, just like everyone else. He only grew taller later on.”
She blinked at him for a second, and then lifted a glove to her mouth. “Yes,” she said, “but he doesn’t make me laugh.” She looked at him, her gaze direct. “This is another one of your jokes, I assume. You don’t really mean to give me to him, do you? He’s so old, after all.”
She looked up at him, and Ned felt an uncomfortable spot of warmth in his stomach. He shouldn’t have felt encouraged, that she was rejecting his cousin. Still, in comparison with Blakely, Ned felt ungainly, all clumsy elbows.
“Blakely is very responsible,” Ned said dutifully. “Heaps more responsible than me.”
She frowned dubiously. “Which is why he’s sending his younger cousin to arrange a match for him? That won’t wash.”
“Look at him.” Ned leaned against the wall easily. “Can you imagine him falling in love without a little prodding from someone like me? He’s so scientific and cold and rational. He needs me. Why would any woman want him?”
In the silent seconds that followed, Ned realized precisely why these moments of too-bright clarity seemed so familiar. He’d reached the apogee again. Twice before, he’d experienced this crystalline sense of over-reaching. It heralded an inevitable loss of control, and a descent into darkness.
Ned knew. He’d fallen before.
But Madame Esmerelda had broken that cycle of dark following light. She’d promised he could live without fear of that downward spiral. She’d told him he was not mad, and for two perfect, brilliant years, she’d been right.
And here he was, fouling everything up again.
“Why would any woman want your cousin?” Lady Kathleen echoed Ned’s last words with a shake of her head. She glanced again down the hallway, and sighed. “Don’t match me for his sake. But if you want to talk with me…” Her voice trailed off and she looked up at him, a hint of inexplicable wistfulness washing over her features.
He shook his head in confusion, and she pointed a finger behind him, directing him back toward the music room. Faint strains of applause drifted down the hall.
“Just go,” she said.
Ned went.
GARETH ESCAPED out the open doors of the music hall onto the ver
anda. After the thirteenth polite inquiry into the singing styles of countries of South America—excessively larded with exuberant compliments that could not possibly have been sincere—he needed fresh air. He gulped it in.
Of course, the air was only London-fresh. At least it wasn’t perfumed with the bouquet of packed bodies. But the word that came to mind instead of fresh was heavy. Night brought thick fogs, barely pierced by dim blurs of gas lighting. Every lungful of air he took in was moist enough that he might well have been some kind of amphibious salamander. That extra moisture carried all the fragrances of London. Wet soil from the small back garden he’d escaped to. The scent of unfurling buds and mulching leaves. Green smells; nature smells. They didn’t mask the underlying stink of London: particles of coal suspended in vapor and—even in this fine neighborhood—the distant smell of sewage.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he realized he was not alone. Madame Esmerelda sat on the edge of a cold granite bench, her back straight and her arms, stiff as ramrods, supporting her. She looked up into the night sky. The dense mist rendered it as impenetrable as a slab of slate. There were neither stars nor moon. She hadn’t seen him yet.
He took the opportunity to look her over, in a more leisurely fashion than he’d dared earlier. She looked respectable in the cream-and-red-striped dress he’d chosen. And with her hair dressed by the maid he’d had sent over from the agency, she fit in this crowd seamlessly. The cut of the gown accentuated her bosom and waist. A shame that it hid all hint of her hips. And her ankles.
He’d dreamed of touching those delicately boned ankles last night, of sliding his hand up those limbs again. In his dream, she hadn’t pulled away.
Through the French windows behind him, light leaked out. Long shadows crisscrossed the terrace. He followed those dark lines, treading as silently as he could. But he could not muffle the sound of leather striking the paving stones. Her head turned toward him in startled surprise.
“Hiding?” he asked.
She met his gaze, then looked away. “Now we are equal.”
“Equal?” Thoughts of revolutionary Frenchmen danced through Gareth’s head. Liberté, egalité, and all that tripe. “Nonsense.”
“I tied you up,” she explained. “Now you’ve had your revenge on me by trussing me into this bloody corset. I can’t even take a proper deep breath.”
Gareth let out a covert exhalation. She was keeping track in their curious little competition. Of course. She’d not meant anything else by the comment.
“You’ll get used to it.”
“Why would I want to? I do not believe I wish to play Mrs. Margaret Barnard any longer.”
“Not even for this scintillating company?”
She smiled at his dry words. “I was asked if I wished to be invited to a meeting of the Ladies’ Beneficial Tea Society. Apparently, the attendees embroider handkerchiefs for future dissemination. The aim is to increase hygienic practices among the deserving poor.”
“You are not fond of charitable causes? Or do you disapprove of hygiene?”
“I think that those embroidered handkerchiefs are likely hawked by their recipients within minutes of their distribution. What a colossal waste of time. Do any of these ladies enjoy their roles?”
“No. Nor the men.”
Gareth spoke absently, but she tilted her head.
“Surely you like playing Lord Blakely. Ordering them around. One look at your steely countenance, and society is set a-wondering whether they, too, should learn to sing in that absurd style. Do you not feel the slightest sympathy for your fellow man?”
“No.” Gareth spoke without hesitation. Sympathy? The vicissitudes of society had condemned his mother when she remarried a commoner a bare year after the passing of her lordly husband. His grandfather had curled his lip, and she’d acquiesced to his demands, leaving Gareth with the old man. To learn how to become a marquess. What had remained of his childhood had shriveled into an unending stream of duties and requirements. Society and his grandfather had never had sympathy for him.
Gareth shook his head to dislodge the memories. “I may have fooled them with regards to the quality of Brazilian singing, but it was no more than they deserved.”
“We may be more equal than I thought. What if I said the same thing about my role as Madame Esmerelda?”
“Is that why you’ve engaged in this fraud? To condemn polite society? To laugh at us? Do you snicker up your sleeve knowing you can make Ned dance at your beck and call?”
She was silent. “Maybe when I first started. Back then, it seemed like such a lark. But Madame Esmerelda grew once I put on her skirts. And then Ned…Well, it’s impossible to condemn him. It’s a dangerous business, pretending to be a person you’re not. Before you know it, you’re locked in a role, unable to change what you do. Some days, I almost think I hate Madame Esmerelda.”
Some dim corner of Gareth’s mind noted she’d as good as admitted she was a fraud. There was no triumph in the thought, though. She’d only said what they both knew. Until she said those words to Ned, her admission did no good.
And what she said was too much an echo of his own thoughts. Some days, he hated Lord Blakely.
She turned her head and peered up at him. Her eyes were dark pools in the night. The light from the windows danced across the expanse of her chest; her bosom swelled, up and down, in time with her breath. Shorter breaths indeed than she might once have taken. Shorter breaths; faster movement. How shallow would her breaths become if he licked that creamy curve just above her nipple?
He desired her. Not just those smooth swells that would fit so perfectly in his palm. He desired the woman who tied him up.
“You must know you cannot win. I have only one more task. I shall undoubtedly complete it with alacrity. In a short space of time, I will have followed your every directive. And I have no desire to marry the Lady Kathleen. Ned will discover you for the fraud that you are. Slavish adherence to your plan gains you nothing.”
“It is not what I stand to gain, my lord. It is what you stand to lose.”
Gareth shook his head in bafflement. “My reputation? If I could stave off the gossip tonight with arrogant superiority and a freezing look, surely you must realize my good name is impervious to any task you can dream up. I have commanded society far longer than you have been attempting to embarrass me. You shan’t succeed on that score.”
“No.” She looked off into the distance. “But then, that is not what I expected to win.”
Anyone watching from the main room would see their silhouettes. At this distance, their conversation would appear to be idle words. An exchange of compliments. A discussion of mutual acquaintances. Nothing more, so long as he didn’t do anything so foolish as touch her.
He longed to breathe foolish words against the skin of her neck.
“You could win my patronage instead. Give up this quest.” His tongue felt thick in his mouth. “Become my mistress. Forget whatever idiotic goal you’d hoped to achieve.”
“If I wanted to be a mistress, I’d never have gone to all the trouble of creating Madame Esmerelda. I’m not interested.”
“You wouldn’t be just any man’s mistress. You’d be mine.”
She shook her head. “I told you long ago why I wouldn’t back down. You prod. You poke. You proposition me with a logical weighing of costs and benefits. Do you know, I believe the only emotions you allow yourself to show are pride, anger and disdain? Not a hint of amusement or enjoyment. No sadness. No despair.”
“Just because I don’t choose to show my every thought—”
“You don’t choose to show particular types of feelings,” Madame Esmerelda said. “Why not smile?”
“Why not hang my head in abject humiliation? Why not tear my hair out in sorrow? Why not slobber like an affectionate dog over everyone who takes my fancy? I have my pride, Meg.”
“Most people do. But they don’t hold on to it at the expense of their humanity. Or that of those around them.”
She thought him inhuman? “I see,” he said. He pushed all the coldness that clenched his heart into his voice. “You dislike me.”
She tipped her head back and looked Gareth in the eyes. Once again, lust struck him—a deep, piercing blow to his groin. She’d whetted his appetite over and over. Kisses. Touches. God, he wanted her, skin against skin. He wanted to feel her hair, now pinned up, spilling over his bare chest.
“No. I rather dislike Lord Blakely. I wonder why you play the marquess so often.”
“Play the marquess? I am the marquess.”
“And I am Madame Esmerelda. And Mrs. Margaret Barnard. Do you think I don’t recognize a facade when I see it?”
Gareth swallowed. “A facade? What do you suppose I am hiding?”
She put her head to one side and studied him. “You have all the marks of a man who was once an extremely awkward child. A boy who lived on the edge of his parents’ life. Quiet. Studious. Too quiet, perhaps, and a little too interested in natural science, and inexplicably bored by sport. When you met other children your age, you no doubt found them baffling. And when they massed in groups, as children are wont to do, you feared, deep down, that they were all laughing at you.”
“An interesting theory. A shame you lack evidence for it.” Gareth struggled to maintain the coldness in his voice. His hands were trembling. He had not thought of those first horrible years at Harrow in an age. He’d buried them in his mind. But her words brought them all back, right down to that nauseous feel in the pit of his stomach.
Let lust remain ascendant. Let him think of sliding inside her, of her gasp of sweet surrender. He held on to those heated thoughts to dispel the other images she conjured.
But she would not let him hide. “You were right. They were all laughing at you.”
They had been. His hands clenched in remembered helplessness.
“Then you discovered you could make them stop. They couldn’t laugh at a man made of stone. And they were all afraid of your position in society.”
“None of this is relevant to my offer. You tell Ned you are a fraud. I take you to bed.”