Proof by Seduction (Carhart #1)

A terrible lump built in his breast.

He wondered how much of Jenny’s success as Madame Esmerelda had been built on the strength of that peculiar talent. Real hope, masked in mumbo jumbo and fraud. If he saw the worst in people, it was because he’d traded his own hope in years ago when he’d let Lord Blakely own the lion’s share of Gareth’s life.

Now he saw hope again and he didn’t want to let it go. He didn’t want to let her go.

Gareth had not believed in Ned. He hadn’t really believed in his own sister. These days he scarcely believed in himself, either. He’d not believed he could find any measure of happiness in London. Before he’d met Jenny, his days had stretched in front of him, false and hollow, a line of dire backbreaking responsibility, untempered by any true joy.

He desperately longed for her benediction, for a measure of the grace she so easily bestowed on others.

“So.” He kept his tone light. Jocular. He didn’t dare betray how important the question was to him. “You look at my sister and see a powerful woman. You look at Ned and see an honorable man. I must seem a veritable giant of a fellow. Whatever do you see when you look at me?”

She responded to his tone with a casual smile. “Oh, all manner of wicked things.”

Ah. So he was nothing but a bloody good shag. Gareth swallowed his leaden disappointment. I was serious, he protested internally. But maybe she had been, too. Maybe she uncovered by intuition what he had always known by logic: that there was no grace for him. She had told him he must be very lonely. She had been right—she’d seen through his pompous, arrogant mask, right to the bleak darkness inside of him that yearned for companionship and friendship.

Maybe that was all this meant to her. Sex and sympathy.

Gareth shut his eyes and fought for nonchalance. “Wicked things? What am I doing to you?”

She whispered in his ear. Her hand fell on his thigh. Despite the black roil in his gut, his body tensed, and he vowed to do every one of those things to her, and more. Tonight. Maybe, if he did them well enough she would see more than there was, in violation of all the laws of nature. Maybe he could fool her into believing there was more to him than a cold man with a deep-seated loneliness.

But her smile stretched too wide, her laugh pitched too high. She, too, was holding something back. It came to him. Those words she’d said—everything you own, pitted against everything I own.

She’d had no clients recently.

But she’d said—he’d been certain of it—that she had some money saved. He’d given the matter no more thought. Just as he’d thoughtlessly assumed she had a maid secreted away somewhere to assist her in putting on a gown.

“My God, Jenny,” he interrupted, “you really mean you couldn’t pay the fare.”

She looked away. “It’s none of your concern, Gareth.”

“Not my concern! You told me you had money saved. What the devil did you mean by that?”

“I did,” she said stiffly. “I had four hundred pounds. It’s been…misplaced.”

His head pounded. “First, four hundred pounds hardly signifies. I pay White more than that in a year. And second, why did you say nothing to me? What am I to you?”

“You aren’t my banker, that’s for certain.”

His hand closed around her wrist. “What else can’t you pay, Jenny?”

She sighed. “Everything. It’s not a problem. I had a plan.”

“Let’s hear it.”

She exhaled slowly. “I planned to sell everything I own and leave.”

“Leave.” His fingers convulsed on her wrist. “Leave me.”

“Leave London,” she clarified, as if that would ease the pain that spread like a net of fire, sharp pinpricks settling under his skin. Her pulse thumped through the wrist he clutched. It was steady and even. Staid. Her heart beat in a normal tempo. Of course; it was only his that constricted into a cold, dark lump.

“Ah. And leaving me would just be an unintended consequence. One you had not planned to inform me about.”

“I would have told you. Eventually. I didn’t think I meant that much—”

He kissed her, hard and fast, before she could finish that horrendous lie.

“Humbug,” he said when he let her go. “I know I never know the right thing to say. I’m a damned nuisance. But you’re not stupid. You know I adore you.”

She was silent. She should not have been silent. She should have been throwing herself at him, professing her own adoration. Jenny, the woman who saw strength and courage everywhere else, had nothing to say about Gareth.

Well. He’d wanted to know how she saw him.

Now he knew.

CHAPTER NINETEEN