The Courtesan's Wager Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Epilogue

  Praise for The Courtesan’s Secret

  “Clever, smart, fresh, and passionate, this lively romp is the latest addition to Dain’s Courtesan series … Readers will find it as delightfully entertaining as the last.” —Library Journal

  “The latest entertaining Edwardian from Dain … Highly amusing repartee and some wickedly attractive open ends round things out.”—Publishers Weekly

  “[A] clever tale of love and mayhem … Her talent for writing humor remains. That, plus her suggestive dialogue and a diverse set of characters, comes together in an enjoyable story.”

  —Romantic Times

  The Courtesan’s Daughter

  “This cleverly orchestrated, unconventional romp through the glittering world of the Regency elite [is] graced with intriguing characters, laced with humor, and plotted with Machiavellian flair.”—Library Journal

  “[The author adds] a feel for the ton … Well-written.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Wonderful … Great dialogue … Sophia the seasoned courtesan [is] so feisty and fun … Don’t miss this fresh and extremely fun romp through romantic London. It is, as Sophia would say, ‘Simply too delicious to miss!’ ”—Night Owl Romance

  And more praise for Claudia Dain’s novels

  “Claudia Dain’s emotionally charged writing and riveting characters will take your breath away.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Sabrina Jeffries

  “Claudia Dain writes with intelligence, sensuality, and heart, and the results are extraordinary!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Connie Brockway

  “Claudia Dain never fails to write a challenging and complex romance.”—A Romance Review

  “Dain is a talented writer who knows her craft.”—Romantic Times

  “[Claudia Dain writes] a red-hot romance.”—Publishers Weekly

  Berkley Sensation Titles by Claudia Dain

  THE COURTESAN’S DAUGHTER

  THE COURTESAN’S SECRET

  THE COURTESAN’S WAGER

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2009 by Claudia Welch.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY® SENSATION and the “B” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition / February 2009

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dain, Claudia.

  The courtesan’s wager / Claudia Dain.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-440-68706-8

  1. Courtesans—England—Fiction. 2. Aristocracy (Social class)—England—Fiction.

  3. Marriage brokerage—Fiction. 4. Mate selection—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3604.A348C687 2009

  813’.6—dc22

  2008045435

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For my husband.

  For everything.

  Forever.

  One

  London 1802

  “IT defies all logic and every expectation,” Lady Amelia Caversham, daughter and eldest child of the Duke of Aldreth, said to her cousin Eleanor. “I should have been able to find a duke by now.”

  “You’ve found enough of them,” Lady Eleanor Kirkland said. “It’s that they don’t seem to want to marry you. Despite all logic,” Eleanor added as a sop. It wasn’t much of a sop.

  If one wanted sympathy and tact, one did not go to Eleanor. Eleanor was uncomfortably forthright. One could only hope that she would grow out of it. Given that Eleanor was sixteen and fully matured in all other areas, it didn’t seem likely. Still, for a woman who had decided to marry a duke before leaving the nursery, Amelia was not one to stare unpleasant facts in the face and wish for a prettier solution than the one which stared back at her.

  She was the daughter of a duke.

  Her brother, Aldreth’s heir, was going to be a duke.

  It had always seemed perfectly reasonable, indeed logical, for her to become the wife of a duke.

  What was it about this current crop of dukes that made her plans seem so unreasonable? Surely the fault lay with them and not with her. She was extremely and eminently both appropriate and available, which she knew to be true because she had so assiduously worked at being appropriate her entire life. Why, any duke should be delighted to make her his duchess.

  She’d made the acquaintance of nearly three dukes and not a one of them gave any appearance of being even slightly interested in her. It was beyond ridiculous, and she didn’t have any idea what to do about it. Well, actually she had an idea, but it was a scandalous one.

  Amelia wasn’t at all certain that a woman on the hunt for a duke should engage in scandalous ideas. It didn’t seem at all the thing.

  “You know what I would do,” Eleanor said, her dark blue eyes alight. “I would visit Lady Dalby and ask her for help. Just look what she managed for Louisa, and so quickly, too. Why, with Sophia’s help, you could be married by Monday.”

  As it was Wednesday, it was highly unlikely … although where Lady Dalby was concerned, it just might be possible. Lady Dalby, Sophia to her many, many intima
tes, had been a courtesan in her past and had somehow managed to drag an earl to the altar twenty years previous. Scandalous, to be sure, and yet, if a courtesan could arrange an earl for herself, could she not more easily arrange a duke for a duke’s daughter?

  No, it was impossibly scandalous. Her father would scald her ears if he found out about it. Aldreth was very careful of his reputation and his reputation extended fully down to encompass his two children.

  Although it wasn’t as if Aldreth kept regular hours at home and would therefore know where and when she went. Eleanor, who knew Aldreth nearly as well as she did, then said, “It’s not as if he’ll find out about it.”

  “Of course he’ll find out about it,” Amelia answered, lying back on the striped pale blue silk sofa and considering the shadows on the plaster ceiling. “He finds out about everything. Eventually.”

  Eleanor, whose own father was less than particular about how his daughters spent their days and could, therefore, not truly understand the force that was Aldreth, said, “Eventually. Are we supposed to care about eventually when you have a duke to catch?” There was that. “And don’t you suppose that your own duke, once you’ve acquired him, can manage Aldreth?”

  That was a bit more difficult to imagine, as Aldreth was quite the most forceful, autocratic, difficult man to manage. Was there a man who could manage him? Her thoughts drifted to the men of her acquaintance. Yes, there was one man who might be more than able to manage Aldreth. Yet more to the point, did she want to marry such a man? There were certain risks in acquiring a forceful man. Certainly her mother, what little she could remember of her, hadn’t fared well against Aldreth, though Amelia certainly didn’t fault her mother for that, because who could manage Aldreth?

  Sophia?

  Certainly Sophia did not give the appearance of being afraid of anyone, and she most definitely gave every appearance of being able to manage absolutely everything, particularly men. Most very particularly men. It was mortifying in the extreme that the same could not be said of Amelia. She seemed to have no talent whatsoever at managing men.

  “You seem very certain that I shall marry a duke,” Amelia said softly, still staring at the ceiling.

  “Well, certainly,” Eleanor said, shifting her weight on the oyster silk upholstered chair. “Aren’t you?”

  “I used to be very certain. Or perhaps I was only determined.”

  “There’s hardly any difference, Amelia. Not a practical difference, anyway,” Eleanor pronounced. For sixteen, Eleanor was very decided in all her opinions. It likely came from her reading so very many inappropriate books.

  “Isn’t there?” Amelia said extremely casually.

  Really, with Louisa about to leave for her new husband’s estate, there was only Eleanor left to talk to and Eleanor, unlike her sister Louisa, paid very much attention to everything that was said. It took rather a lot of concentration to converse with Eleanor because one had to be so very careful of what one revealed, particularly about men. In point of fact, it had occurred to Amelia that if things continued on as they had been for another year or two, she might find herself without any sort of husband at all.

  And that naturally meant that she would live out the rest of her life with Aldreth, or the only part of her life that mattered, the youthful part. It was difficult to imagine a more unpleasant future. Just look what it had done to Aunt Mary; she was practically a five bottle a day drinker and she had not started out that way at all, no, not at all. Of course, Aunt Mary had also had to manage the Marquis of Melverley, Eleanor’s father, and he was every bit as troublesome as Aldreth, although in a different fashion. But it did make the point most alarmingly that women without husbands and without a heavy purse did not fare well in the world at all.

  Not at all.

  “Now Amelia,” Eleanor said, sitting up quite straight and seeming determined to take charge of her wayward cousin, “you simply can’t sit about any longer waiting for a duke to find you. You need help or you’ll end up like … like Aunt Mary!”

  It was truly most disconcerting that Eleanor was developing the tendency to read her every thought. It was quite a disturbing talent and if it continued, Amelia was going to be required to avoid Eleanor completely.

  “What a perfectly dreadful thing to say, Eleanor,” Amelia said.

  “But the truth,” Eleanor said, not at all contrite. “You need help, and the one person who you know can do the deed is Lady Dalby. What do you have to lose, Amelia? It certainly did Louisa no harm.”

  Yes, well, that depended entirely upon how one defined harm.

  “You know as well as I do that Louisa had no intention of marrying Lord Henry. The only man she cared about was the Marquis of Dutton,” Amelia pointed out. “It was after Louisa paid a visit to Lady Dalby that things got very muddled indeed and Louisa forgot about Lord Dutton entirely. Or at least she gave every appearance of forgetting him entirely.”

  Which was, of course, the entire dreary point. What if, after having sought Sophia’s counsel and aid, Amelia forgot her goal of marrying the right man and found herself married to the wrong one? That would not do at all. If she did approach Sophia, she was going to be very firm; she was not going to find herself married to anyone other than her ideal choice, a man who she would not allow to even enter her mind at present because of Eleanor and her alarming ability to read Amelia’s every thought. No, no matter what Sophia Dalby said or did, she was going to marry the right man.

  Of course, without Sophia’s aid, she might find herself married to no one at all.

  “You have only to see Louisa and Blakes together to know that she’s revoltingly content and Dutton completely forgotten, Amelia. It’s almost impossible to be in the same room with them, to be honest. They’re always sliding themselves off to a closet or a cupboard and coming out again all mussed and grinning. It’s straight out of Fielding, I assure you.”

  “You really mustn’t read such things, Eleanor. I’m quite certain it’s not good for your character.”

  “Being in the same room with Blakes and Louisa is worse for my character. It’s perfectly plain what they’re about, after all.”

  They were rather obvious about it and it was entirely inappropriate, but it did look like such fun, in a perfectly astounding sort of way. In all her life, Amelia had never seen a married couple behave as Louisa and her Blakes did. Perhaps it would pass.

  Yet perhaps it would not.

  “They’re leaving Town soon, are they not?” Amelia asked, flopping over onto her stomach and burying her face into a pillow. She felt unaccountably morose of a sudden.

  Unaccountably? Of course it was accountable; she did not have a husband dragging her off into closets. That was the trouble with her, though the incessant rain didn’t help. It had been cold and rainy for hour upon hour. The month of April did have that reputation and it should not have affected her mood. But it did.

  “Tomorrow,” Eleanor answered, “even if the rain doesn’t stop. I think Blakes wants to get Louisa away from his many brothers.”

  And then she would be alone, left to find her duke without anyone to share the experience with her. Eleanor was too young and not fully out. Day after day spent trying to look appealing and sweet and lovely to a room full of people who all but ignored Amelia.

  Well, the dukes ignored her and that was all that mattered, wasn’t it?

  Amelia and Eleanor said nothing after that, the mood of the day infecting them. The light in the room softened to pewter, the maid lit the candles, the fire blazed orange, and the two women sighed into the upholstery, pretending to doze.

  That was when Hawksworth strolled in and of course that meant that Amelia had to put a better face on it, as one simply did not reveal any sort of weakness to one’s younger brother.

  “What are we doing?” Hawksworth asked, leaning against the doorframe of the library and studying them. Hawksworth did not stand on his own two feet if he could find anything at all to lean against.

  Amelia and E
leanor sat up, Amelia ran a hand over her hair, Eleanor tugged at her sleeve, and Amelia said, “I suppose it should be obvious even to you, Hawks, that we’re having a private conversation.”

  “I thought I heard snoring,” he said, bowing a greeting to Eleanor. Eleanor popped to her feet and curtseyed before promptly dropping back down to her chair. The four of them, Amelia and Hawks, Louisa and Eleanor, had always been far more like siblings than cousins, their family situations being what they were, which was that they were all without mothers and burdened with quite impossible fathers.

  “I’m quite certain you did not,” Amelia said.

  “I might have been snoring,” Eleanor said, again, as a sop. Again, it was not a very well-delivered one.

  “No, it wasn’t you, Eleanor,” Hawks said, “I’m certain it was Amelia. I know the sound of her snores very well, and this snore had that particular rasping quality of Amelia’s.”

  Need it be stated that Amelia and Hawksworth did not have the most cordial of relationships?

  While Amelia was an entirely appropriate sort of girl in aspect and dress and deportment, and while Amelia had from an early age decided upon her life’s course and pursued it with a singularity of purpose and passion that was truly remarkable, if she did say so herself, the Marquis of Hawksworth, her younger brother by three years, was and always had been bone lazy. He had no goals whatsoever. Getting him to get out of bed each morning was a truly Herculean task for his valet. He did not stand straight or walk straight or talk straight. Hawks simply ambled and sauntered and snoozed through his days and through his life. He was the most irritatingly aimless man she had ever known, and of course, he was the heir apparent to a dukedom.