Proof by Seduction (Carhart #1)

“An ode of your own composition, if you please.” She smiled at him.

No answer. He sat in baffled outrage. A streetlamp they passed sent a rectangle of light over his hands, where they quivered on his knees. The horses clacked on, a serene counterpoint to the tension building in the close quarters.

“You’re trying to humiliate me.”

Absolutely. Among other things.

“It won’t work,” he told her. “Better men than you have tried and failed.”

Jenny shook her head. This was an even better idea than the elephant. The horses drew up as they reached Jenny’s home. As the footman opened the carriage door, Jenny delivered her deathblow.

“Oh, and, Lord Blakely?”

No acknowledgment. Not even a twitch of an eyelash in her direction.

Jenny grinned and wagged a finger. “You are required to mean every word.”

CHAPTER SIX

GARETH STARED GLUMLY at the two sheets of paper laid in front of him. His desk was laden with hundreds of other papers, all demanding his attention. Both Lord Blakely’s work for the estate and his personal scientific correspondence weighed heavily on his shoulders. But his mind was blank. Depressingly blank, like the sheets in front of him.

That was what he deserved, he supposed, for playing truant from the estate work that should have taken up the bulk of his afternoon. But Madame Esmerelda’s task, assigned late the previous evening, had tied his mind in knots.

It had not taken him long to figure out how to sing without humiliation. But the subject matter…

“Good things about Ned,” he’d labeled the mostly blank page. And then he’d numbered one through fifteen down the side of the page. It was precisely the method he’d employed earlier that day, when he’d labeled a page “Possible Explanations for Swallow Migration (Taking into Account Known Patterns).” Except he hadn’t stared at that page for half an hour without the slightest inkling of how to proceed. He’d filled that sheet of paper in minutes.

Things that were good about Ned. Hmm. It would have been much easier, and more satisfying, to sing a song about things that were wrong—desperately wrong—with Madame Esmerelda.

Across from Gareth, his man of business quietly and efficiently sorted through correspondence. William White was young for his position—scarcely older than Gareth—but intelligent and well-versed in modern innovations. His dark hair had been clipped close to his head. He bent over the desk industriously. No doubt he imagined Gareth was addressing matters of similar gravity. Gareth had no desire to disillusion the man.

Two tasks left. He didn’t have to complete them; he could walk away at any time. But if he did, Ned would continue to consult the woman, and worse—if he gave up, she would win.

He couldn’t let her do that. He just had to start writing.

Ned is not so bad to see.

There. A first line. It had a nice trochaic meter to it, if he did say so himself. It wasn’t, perhaps, the greatest compliment one man had ever delivered to another, but he wasn’t about to wax rhapsodic over Ned’s curly brown locks. Gareth had a certain amount of dignity to maintain, after all.

Now all he needed was a rhyme.

Ned is not so bad to see.

That’s because he looks like me.

It wasn’t quite true, of course; Ned had a few years yet to grow into the breadth of Gareth’s shoulders. But it rhymed and had meter. And it was a compliment.

The only problem Gareth saw—well, perhaps not the only problem, but at least one major one—was that when Madame Esmerelda said to write his cousin an ode, she hadn’t intended Gareth to identify all the ways he and his cousin were similar. She demanded he turn Ned to gold. Transmuting Ned into Gareth would be unlikely to pass muster, and the thought of being forced to repeat the song horrified him.

Reluctantly, Gareth crumpled the sheet of paper in front of him.

“White.”

His man of business looked up, his pen arrested mid-dip in the inkwell. “My lord?”

Tell me all the good things about my cousin.

No. That would be cheating. He’d carved his own elephant. By God, he’d write his own ode to Ned.

“What rhymes with ‘trusting’?” he asked.

The ever-efficient White didn’t even need a moment to think. “Lusting. Disgusting.”

Gareth took another leaf of paper from his drawer and began to write.

My cousin Ned is not disgusting.

Even if he is too trusting.

Also not the most complimentary of couplets. Gareth gritted his teeth and crumpled this second piece of paper.

“My lord.” White’s tone was cautious, undoubtedly chosen to keep carefully within the bounds of his station. “Are you writing a poem?”

“No.” Gareth scowled at the desk in front of him.