Proof by Seduction (Carhart #1)

“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.