The Courtesan's Secret Read online

  Why he kept thinking of her, he couldn’t quite say.

  He certainly didn’t need a wife, at least not yet, and Anne was hardly wife material, being the daughter of a less than successful courtesan as she was. Though she had been taken in and was currently under the protection of the Countess of Dalby, an ex-courtesan of rather legendary status, Anne had none of the flair of a practiced ladybird. At least that he could see. But could a girl fall that far from the proverbial tree? Didn’t blood, after all, tell?

  It was just such speculation, hovering dangerously near obession, that had driven him to kiss Anne in the privacy of Sophia’s famous white salon. It had not gone as planned, not that he had worked up much of a plan. But, with most women, a heated look, a torrid kiss, and they were muddled nicely, primed for whatever he decided to do next either to them or with them. It hadn’t turned out that way with Anne. He’d spoken seductively, kissed her decidedly, and waited for her to melt in his arms.

  She hadn’t melted. In fact, she became engaged to Lord Staverton, an old, wrinkled, cross-eyed gentleman of, by all accounts, a rather nice estate, the very next day.

  It was difficult to remain pleasantly neutral about things of that sort, and in that particular order.

  He had kissed her. He had expressed a most earnest interest in her. She had chosen another man.

  Yes, very difficult to remain neutral.

  Of course, he hadn’t offered marriage, nothing of the sort, but she couldn’t have expected that. Who was she? The by-blow of an indiscreet whore and the widow of a minor naval hero of a minor battle. No, marriage was not on the menu. And neither, obviously, was Anne.

  Pity.

  “Lady Louisa’s pearls must be burning a hole in your pocket.”

  Dutton sighed and looked up from his slouch. Lord Henry Blakesley stood looking down at him, his blond good looks lit by a sardonic light that emanated entirely from the man himself. Most unwelcome.

  “Hardly,” Dutton answered in an only slightly drunken drawl.

  One half of Blakesley’s mouth tilted in a thin smile. “No? The word is that after Caro rejected your pearls in favor of Ashdon, you presented them to Mrs. Warren. And that she rejected you as well. Hard night, when a man can’t give away a fortune in jewelry.”

  “In both cases, the women were previously engaged. Literally.”

  “That’s what they’re saying,” Blakesley agreed, pulling up a chair and signaling for a drink.

  Most, most unwelcome.

  “You had your pearls rejected as well,” Dutton pointed out.

  Blakesley shrugged. “Entirely expected. Caro was all for Ashdon from the moment she set eyes on him. My pearls were merely a prod.”

  Dutton sat up straighter and pushed his hair back with both hands. “You let yourself be played as a mere pawn in a mating ritual?”

  “I hardly care as long as I am not the one being mated. Besides, it was amusing, and I am hardly a pawn if I am fully aware of the game and my place in it.”

  The next sentence remained unspoken, but only because there was no need to say it out loud. Dutton had been played, masterfully, by Caroline. Which meant, obviously, that he had been played by Sophia. He was not the first man in London to have come to that conclusion, but that didn’t make it any more palatable.

  Sophia had used him to snare a husband for her daughter. How she had done so he could not imagine. It had been his idea to help Ashdon acquire a strand of pearls, just as it had been his idea to keep them for his own purposes, the first of which was to present them to Caroline at the Hyde House assemblie. How Sophia had arranged for him to do what he himself had decided to do on his own volition he could not fathom. But the results spoke for themselves. He had the pearls. He had given them to Caro, or had tried to. He had also tried to give them to Anne Warren. She had also refused his pearls.

  Women were an odd lot, taken as a whole. The best that could be said for them was that they were fairly tolerable and occasionally amusing when taken one by one.

  “The pearls were my idea,” Dutton said stiffly.

  “Of course they were,” Blakesley said sarcastically. Blakesley had the rather annoying habit of speaking sarcastically whenever possible. “You decided to sell a horse to buy a pearl necklace off of Melverley and then you decided that you simply had to give them to Caroline Trevelyan. You came up with this plan when? Last month? Last week? Or on the very day that Caroline was in need of a pearl necklace?”

  Blakesley then had the cheek to laugh.

  Dutton was not so foxed that he couldn’t find his own reason to laugh. Blakesley was not without his own Achilles’ heel.

  “And you presented your own strand of pearls to Caro in full view of Louisa Kirkland. A happy coincidence, I suppose?”

  Blakesley lost both his laugh and his smile. Perfect. It was flagrantly obvious to anyone who cared to look that Blakesley followed Louisa Kirkland around like a very well-trained dog.

  “As I remember, the yellow drawing room was filled with people,” Blakesley said, “which was entirely the point.”

  “Oh? You arranged with Sophia to ruin her daughter in front of as many people as possible? How very odd.”

  “I don’t claim to understand how the woman’s mind works, but I can hardly argue with her success. Caro is married to Ashdon. That was the point of the whole event, wasn’t it?”

  “Was it?” Dutton said.

  “Obviously,” Blakesley said crisply, taking a full swallow of his drink. Dutton took a full swallow of his drink, matching him. Blakesley, watching Dutton over the rim of his glass, kept swallowing his whisky until the glass was empty, as did Dutton. A ridiculous competition, but satisfying nonetheless.

  For some inexplicable reason, his thoughts turned to Anne Warren again. They’d played at something and he’d lost. It was a state of affairs that was completely unacceptable.

  “What is it you want, Blakesley?” Dutton asked in irritation, Anne Warren’s rather pretty face floating through his thoughts in a sea of whisky.

  “Nothing in particular,” Blakesley said, pouring them both another glass. “I was just curious as to what you were going to do now. Now that you have sold a rather stellar horse and have a pretty string of pearls instead.”

  “I could sell the pearls, though they are rather fine and I suppose someday, when I simply must marry, I could give them to my wife. They make a pretty gift,” Dutton said. “Or, as I said, I could sell them,” he added, studying Blakesley’s sardonic face over his glass.

  Dutton took a swallow. Blakesley took a swallow. They stopped and stared at each other over their respective rims.

  “You could,” Blakesley said.

  “It would enrage Louisa, I expect, as I imagine she considered them hers and would likely do anything to get them back, don’t you think?”

  “I have no idea.”

  A ridiculous assertion, and they both knew it. Henry Blakesley had made it something of a point to know every thought in Louisa Kirkland’s pretty red head, not that it had done him any good so far as all her thoughts were aimed precisely at Dutton’s head. Of all the positive attributes that could be laid at Louisa Kirkland’s well-shod feet, an aptitude for subtlety was not one of them.

  “You could buy them from me,” Dutton suggested, leaning back in his deeply upholstered chair.

  “Dutton,” Blakesley drawled, “how can you have forgotten? I am currently in possession of a very respectable pearl necklace, a gift for my future wife at some future date. I hardly need two pearl necklaces and I most assuredly don’t need a wife who requires two pearl necklaces.”

  “Don’t you?” Dutton said before he took a very long swallow of his drink. Blakesley merely watched him, his own drink untouched. He’d won the drinking competition, though he wasn’t certain at the moment what the prize was supposed to have been. He supposed it didn’t matter; winning was quite enough of a victory, the only victory, in fact, that he cared about.

  Which brought to mind Anne Warren
again. He’d lost in his game of seduction with her and that was flatly intolerable.

  Blakesley stretching out his long legs in the chair opposite him and crossing them at the ankle in the most relaxed pose imaginable swung Dutton’s only slightly drunken thoughts back to Louisa, the pearls, and women in general. Here he’d tussled with Anne Warren, a woman who, no matter who she was currently engaged to, was obviously enamored of him, no matter that she’d not reacted to his kiss and no matter that she’d shown him nothing but cold civility since that kiss, not to mention that she’d hurriedly gotten herself engaged to a peer of the realm.

  Ridiculous. The whole thing was flatly ridiculous. He knew she wanted him and, what’s more, she knew he knew.

  Women really were, as a whole, incapable of subtlety and most assuredly not of secrecy. Why, they wore their desires and intentions all over their rather lovely faces. Not only was it endearing, it was supremely useful.

  Take Louisa Kirkland . . . well, actually, he could take Louisa Kirkland any time he wanted. Poor Blakesley could hardly say the same. Dutton snickered and closed his eyes with a smile.

  “Something amusing?” Blakesley asked blandly.

  Though slightly more foxed than was usual for him at this time of day, Dutton was not so completely in his cups that he would descend to the vulgarity of plain speaking about the very obvious Lady Louisa.

  “I was just wondering to what lengths Louisa Kirkland would travel to regain the Melverley pearls. She’s not a woman given to half measures, is she?”

  Blakesley, his face rather too carefully composed, said nothing.

  “It should make for a very interesting Season for me, not that I don’t always find something to amuse me while I’m in Town,” Dutton said.

  “Don’t you mean to say ‘someone’?” Blakesley said.

  “Actually, yes,” Dutton said with a soft smile, studying Blakesley over the rim of his now empty glass. “Someone.”

  Blakesley leaned forward and filled it with whisky. An obvious attempt to get him completely foxed, but, really, it was fine whisky. Dutton took a healthy swallow. Blakesley took a sip of his drink and watched him like a hawk watches a snake. Though he was hardly a snake and didn’t enjoy being compared to one, even if he had made the comparison himself.

  Dutton put his drink down on a side table. He might have been more deeply into his cups than he had at first thought.

  He decided in the next instant that he didn’t care.

  “Now, if you were to find yourself in possession of the Melverley pearls, then you might have an interesting Season in Town,” Dutton said.

  “I don’t need help in finding amusement,” Blakesley said softly, his icy blue eyes glittering in the candlelight.

  Dutton didn’t care what Blakesley’s eyes did in the candlelight. He picked up his glass and took another swallow of whisky, his plan forming in somewhat liquid fashion as he swallowed. Liquid plans were the best, the brightest, the most dependable. Odd how he’d never made that connection before.

  “But perhaps a bit of help with Lady Louisa wouldn’t be amiss,” Dutton said. His voice sounded sloppy to his own ears. He didn’t care about that, either.

  Blakesley smiled. Or it looked remarkably like a smile if he closed one eye.

  He closed one eye.

  “You’re foxed,” Blakesley said.

  “Not enough to matter.”

  “Open both eyes and say that,” Blakesley said pleasantly.

  Dutton opened both eyes and leaned his head back against the chair cushion.

  “I propose a bargain,” Dutton said.

  “Didn’t you propose a similar bargain with Ashdon?”

  “Which is the reason I now find myself in possession of the Melverley pearls.”

  “And not in possession of a woman to wear them,” Blakesley said.

  “Ridiculous. I can have any woman I want, with or without pearls.”

  “Can you?”

  “I can have Louisa Kirkland, certainly.”

  Blakesley leaned forward, his eyes increasingly icy. “You bandy her name about with unpleasant regularity and familiarity, Dutton. I should stop that, were I you.”

  “Which is the entire point, Blakesley,” Dutton said, ignoring icy eyes and the outraged tone. He had a plan and he was going to make it work, no matter Blakesley’s stubbornness over tedious and inconsequential details. “Take the pearls. Give her a reason to chase you about town. Do with . . . them what you will, when you will.”

  It was perfectly clear to both of them that he had been about to say “do with her what you will.” He was not as foxed as all that.

  “You sound as though you were selling her to me.”

  “Ridiculous,” Dutton said. “I am merely selling her interest in me, for a time, to you.”

  “The pearls being the price of her interest.”

  “It should do for a start. I’m certain you have the means and the ability to build on that foundation.”

  Actually, he possessed no such certainty. Louisa Kirkland had been following him about for the better part of two years, calf-eyed, and Henry Blakesley had been trailing after Louisa for almost as long, letting her lead them both where she willed. Ridiculous. One took matters in hand with a woman, and whatever other juicy bit he could put his hands to as well, as the situation and the woman dictated. How Blakesley had come to his majority without knowing this most basic of truths about women was a complete mystery.

  Though Blakesley’s lack of the most basic knowledge of women might have something to do with his mother, Molly, Duchess of Hyde, being originally from Boston, Massachusetts. The colonials of the previous generation were universally known for being more than passing peculiar. It was not entirely impossible that Lord Henry Blakesley had picked up his odd habits from her.

  Blakesley considered him in icy silence, his eyes narrowed. Dutton took the man’s need to ponder his offer as an occasion to get a few more swallows down his throat. It was damn fine whisky.

  “And what would you get out of this bargain?” Blakesley asked softly.

  “A bit of peace, for one,” Dutton drawled. “And a bit of amusement.”

  “With the elusive Mrs. Warren, perhaps?” Blakesley asked.

  “Perhaps,” Dutton said stiffly, or as stiffly as five glasses of whisky would allow.

  Blakesley smiled sarcastically. “If a pearl necklace could not rope her, I daresay nothing can.”

  “The price is not always pearls.”

  “True,” Blakesley said, tipping his chair back on its rear legs. “Perhaps you ought to try diamonds.”

  “Not every woman has a jewel price, Blakesley,” Dutton grumbled.

  “Don’t they? I would never have guessed you for a romantic, Dutton.”

  “Though I would have guessed you for a—”

  Dutton stopped abruptly. Foxed, yes, but not blind. If he continued on with his thought, that Blakesley was a fool for the rather too obvious Louisa Kirkland, he would likely end up on some dueling field at some ungodly hour. He hated ungodly hours as a general rule.

  “A cynic,” he finished.

  Blakesley merely smiled in response, cynically.

  “I can live without your pearls, Dutton.”

  “I believe the question is whether or not Louisa can live without the pearls. Or whether she will have a rousing good time in trying to win them back.”

  At that remark, rather coarse, he must admit, but also exceedingly true, Blakesley’s frigid blue eyes burned.

  Dutton didn’t care what happened with Blakesley’s eyes. At that particular moment, he only cared about causing a bit of mischief. He could not have said why. It was a particular pleasure of his that he lived his life without looking for reasons behind every action, which anyone would be forced to admit was bound to be a very tedious way to live.

  Dutton, as a rule, avoided tedium. Which, oddly, made him think once again of Anne Warren.

  Six

  IT was quite obvious to the most ca
sual observer, which Lord Henry Blakesley was most decidedly not, that the Marquis of Dutton was completely foxed. It was also equally obvious that Dutton had struck upon a plan that might, in the most generous interpretation, have merit.

  Louisa had seen the Melverley pearls, her pearls, presented to another woman in the most flagrant manner imaginable by the man she had an unhealthy and illogical fascination for, namely, Lord Dutton. Louisa would want her pearls back. That Dutton was in possession of them would be an irresistible combination for her; and it should be noted that Louisa, for all her charms, was not possessed of a nature that practiced resistance regarding much of anything.

  In all, he could not quite name what it was that he found so fascinating about her. But he was. Fascinated. Aroused. Enamored. All the stupid and ridiculous nonsense inked by poets and fools, and yet he could find no escape from the nonsense.

  He was in love with her. Stupidly. Ridiculously. Illogically.

  Stupidly, because she did not love him. She was pointlessly enamored of Dutton, and there was simply no putting her off the scent. He had tried. That was the ridiculous bit. He had seen her at his parents’ assemblie two years previous and the look she had given him from across the capacious yellow drawing room had snared him. Bold and daring, amused and superior, her ginger hair a torch of fire in that crowded room, her skin so flawlessly white it glowed . . . well, that was the long of it. The short of it was that he had made it a point to be in her company whenever possible ever since.

  And she had illogically chosen to be in the company of Dutton whenever possible ever since.

  He supposed his memory must recite that Louisa met Lord Dutton on the very same evening and that, henceforth, all her daring and amused looks had been saved for Dutton from that day to this.

  And the poets wrote of love. They deserved to starve.

  It had been no coincidence that he had given Caroline a pearl necklace worth an earl’s estate in the same yellow drawing room just days ago, and that he had done it when he was certain Louisa would have a stellar view of the event. Some ironies were just too perfect to avoid and it did have the added tang of bearing the most delicate flavor of revenge.