Proof by Seduction (Carhart #1)

He nodded, refusing to meet her eyes. Maybe he did understand. Maybe he’d finally comprehended the words Jenny could not bring herself to say. I am a fraud. You have been duped.

And maybe this response—this not-looking, this not-speaking—was his way of saying he’d finally seen through her, and he would not rely on her any longer.

He left silently.

For long minutes after he’d gone, Jenny stared at the room around her. She had acquired a number of occult trappings over the years. The artful cobwebs she’d allowed to build up in the corner. The depressing black, eating up the light that shone through the window. The only illumination in her room was the fitful glow of coal behind the grate of her fireplace.

All the savor had gone from her work. Playing fortune-teller had once been exciting. It had been enthralling. She’d watched, oh-so-carefully, for those tiny hints of reaction in her clients’ faces. She’d told them what they wanted to hear. They’d listened.

Secretly, she’d laughed. It had been Jenny Keeble’s revenge on her childhood.

She’d been no better than Lord Blakely, thinking herself above her clients that way. But there was no way to laugh at the way she’d betrayed Ned’s sweet loyalty.

As she looked into the dim flames, Jenny acknowledged another truth. “I cannot go on like this.”

She spoke the words aloud—to whom, she could not say. Perhaps to the fire. Perhaps to the spirits she had for so long pretended to call upon. There was no answer except a small, burning center deep in her chest. A resonance, agreeing that this portion of her life had come to an end.

And yet what was she to do with herself now? As a woman, most professions were closed to her. She could sew piecework—and ruin her eyes while eking out a living. Perhaps, after all these years, she could attempt to find work teaching. Although with no character references to speak of—she could hardly ask Lord Blakely, after all—the opportunities that presented themselves were likely to be unsavory.

The employment offered to the girl of unknown family hadn’t been savory even before she’d run away to London.

She could retire to the country, where the coins she’d saved would stretch further. She could make a pension of the money, and hope that twelve pounds per annum would keep her for the remainder of her life. It would, so long as she was hale and hearty and capable of cooking and cleaning for herself. A gamble; and a life that sounded frighteningly blank and devoid of purpose.

None of that sounded right. All those possibilities echoed emptily in the hollow of her lungs. Jenny breathed out and thought of what she wanted.

What would she do if she were to start her life over again, from the very beginning? What would she change? That old, deep aching overtook her.

She wanted a mother.

God, she wanted a child.

She wanted to make someone of herself that even the fastidious Lord Blakely would have to respect.

Three impossibilities. She shook her head.

Jenny had no idea where she would end, but she did have some idea where to start. Slowly, ceremonially, she pulled the black fustian from her tables and chairs. She gathered the heaped cotton in her arms and hauled it to the fireplace.

It landed in the hearth in a swirl of ash and coal dust. Jenny coughed the particles from her lungs and waited. For a few seconds, the dark material cut off all light and heat. Then it glowed red, and finally caught in a crackling blaze. Jenny pulled off her multicolored skirts, one by one, and tossed them atop the fire. Her kerchief flew next, and then her shawl. Finally, she stripped down to her shift. The conflagration lasted only minutes, but it scorched the front of her thighs with its heat.

When the flames died down, the last of Madame Esmerelda had burned away.

CHAPTER NINE

AS NOTES WENT, the one Gareth received from his cousin two days after his disastrous encounter with Madame Esmerelda struck him as particularly opaque.

Meet me, it said. Musicale at Arbuthnots’. Eight o’clock. In the blue dining room. Very important. Don’t bring Madame Esmerelda. You were right about her. Ned.

Gareth couldn’t bear to think of Madame Esmerelda. Every time he thought of that evening, a hot stab of shame lanced through him, like a burning poker stabbed in his side. Sitting in his study, pretending to industriously pore over a stack of bills and reports, it should have been easy to put the woman from his mind.

It wasn’t. After all, he was in his study with his man of business.