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Thanks for reading This Wicked Gift. I hope you enjoyed it!
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• This Wicked Gift is a prequel novella to the Carhart series. The books in the series are Proof by Seduction and Trial by Desire.
This book is distributed by Entangled Publishing. Entangled’s Scandalous line releases new historical romances every month. Visit http://www.entangledpublishing.com/category/scandalous/ to find out more, or click here to read an excerpt from Once Upon a Masquerade, an Entangled book by Tamara Hughes.
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Proof by Seduction is the first full-length book in the series, and it’s about Gareth Carhart, who you saw briefly in this book. If you’d like to read an excerpt from that book, please turn the page.
Excerpt: Proof by Seduction
London, April, 1838
TWELVE YEARS SPENT PLYING HER TRADE had taught Jenny Keeble to leave no part of her carefully manufactured atmosphere to chance. The sandalwood smoke wafting from the brazier added a touch of the occult: not too cloying, yet unquestionably exotic. But it was by rote that she checked the cheap black cotton draped over her rickety table; routine alone compelled her to straighten her garishly colored wall hangings.
Every detail—the cobwebs she left undisturbed in the corner of the room, the gauze that draped her basement windows and filtered the sunlight into indirect haze—whispered that here magic worked and spirits conveyed sage advice.
It was precisely the effect Jenny should have desired.
So why did she wish she could abandon this costume? True, the virulently red-and-blue-striped skirt, paired with a green blouse, did nothing to flatter her looks. Layer upon heavy layer obscured her waist and puffed her out until she resembled nothing so much as a round, multihued melon. Her skin suffocated under a heavy covering of paint and kohl. But her disquiet ran deeper than the thick lacquers of cream and powder.
A sharp rat-tat-tat sounded at the door.
She’d worked twelve years for this. Twelve years of careful lies and half truths, spent cultivating clients. But there was no room for uncertainty in Jenny’s profession. She took a deep breath, and pushed Jenny Keeble’s doubts aside. In her place, she constructed the imperturbable edifice of Madame Esmerelda. A woman who could see anything. Who predicted everything. And who stopped at nothing.
With her lies firmly in place, Jenny opened the door.
Two men stood on her stoop. Ned, her favorite client, she’d expected. He was awkward and lanky, as only a youth just out of adolescence could be. A shock of light brown hair topped his young features. His lips curled in an open, welcoming smile. She would have greeted him easily, but today, another fellow stood behind Ned. The stranger was extraordinarily tall, even taller than Ned. He stood several feet back, his arms folded in stern disapproval.
“Madame Esmerelda,” Ned said. “I’m sorry I didn’t inform you I was bringing along a guest.”
Jenny peered behind Ned. The man’s coat was carelessly unbuttoned. Some tailor had poured hours into the exquisite fit of that garment. It was cut close enough to the body to show off the form, but loose enough to allow movement. His sandy-brown hair was tousled, his cravat tied in the simplest of knots. The details of his wardrobe bespoke an impatient arrogance, as if his appearance was little more than a bother, his attention reserved for weightier matters.
That attention shifted to Jenny now, and a shiver raced down her spine. With one predatorial sweep of his eyes, he took in Jenny’s costume from head to toe. She swallowed.
“Madame Esmerelda,” Ned said, “this is my cousin.”
A cold glimmer of irritation escaped the other man, and Ned expelled a feeble sigh.
“Yes, Blakely. May I present to you Madame Esmerelda.” The monotone introduction wasn’t even a question. “Madame, this is Blakely. That would be Gareth Carhart, Marquess of Blakely. Et cetera.”
A beat of apprehension pulsed through Jenny as she curtsied. Ned had spoken of his cousin before. Based on Ned’s descriptions, she’d imagined the marquess to be old and perhaps a little decrepit, obsessed with facts and figures. Ned’s cousin was supposed to be coldly distant, frighteningly uncivil, and so focused on his own scientific interests that he was unaware of the people around him.
But this man wasn’t distant; even standing a full yard away, her skin prickled in response to his presence. He wasn’t old; he was lean without being skinny, and his cheeks were shadowed by the stubble of a man in his prime. Most of all, there was nothing unfocused about him. She’d often thought Ned had the eyes of a terrier: warm, liquid and trusting. His cousin had those of a lion: tawny, ferocious and more than a little feral.
Jenny gave silent thanks she wasn’t a gazelle.
She turned and swept her arm in regal welcome. “Come in. Be seated.” The men trooped in, settling on chairs that creaked under their weight. Jenny remained standing.
“Ned, how can I assist you today?”
Ned beamed at her. “Well. Blakely and I have been arguing. He doesn’t think you can predict the future.”
Neither did Jenny. She resented sharing that belief.
“We’ve agreed—he’s going to use science to demonstrate the accuracy of your predictions.”
“Demonstrate? Scientifically?” The words whooshed out of her, as if she’d been prodded in the stomach. Jenny grasped the table in front of her for support. “Well. That would be…” Unlikely? Unfortunate? “That would be unobjectionable. How shall he proceed?”
Ned waved his hand at his cousin. “Well, go ahead, Blakely. Ask her something.”
Lord Blakely leaned back in his chair. Up until this moment, he had not spoken a single word; his eyes had traveled about the room, though. “You want me to ask her something?” He spoke slowly, drawing out each syllable with precision. “I consult logic, not old charlatans.”
Ned and Jenny spoke atop each other. “She’s no charlatan!” protested Ned.
But Jenny’s hands had flown to her hips for another reason entirely. “Thirty,” she protested, “is not old!”
Ned turned to her, his eyebrow lifting. A devastating silence cloaked the room. It was a measure of her own agitation that she’d forsaken Madame Esmerelda’s character already. Instead, she’d spoken as a woman.
And the marquess noticed. That tawny gaze flicked from her kerchiefed head down to the garish skirts obscuring her waist. His vision bored through every one of her layers. The appraisal was thoroughly masculine. A sudden tremulous awareness tickled Jenny’s palms.
And then he looked away. A queer quirk of his lips; the smallest exhalation, and like that, he dismissed her.
Jenny was no lady, no social match for Lord Blakely. She was not the sort who would inspire him to tip his hat if he passed her on the street. She should have been accustomed to such cursory dismissals. But beneath her skirts, she felt suddenly brittle, like a pile of dried-up potato parings, ready to blow away with one strong gust of wind. Her fingernails bit crescent moons into her hands.
Madame Esmerelda wouldn’t care about this man’s interest. Madame Esmerelda never let herself get angry. And so Jenny swallowed the lump in her throat and smiled mysteriously. “I am also not a charlatan.”
Lord Blakely raised an eyebrow. “That remains to be proven. As I have no desire to seek answers for myself, I believe Ned will question you.”
“I already have!” Ned gestured widely. “About everything. About life and death.”
Lord Blakely rolled his eyes. No doubt he’d taken Ned’s dramatic protest as youthful exaggeration. But Jenny knew it for the simple truth it was. Two years earlier, Ned h
ad wandered into this room and asked the question that had changed both their lives: “Is there any reason I shouldn’t kill myself?”
At the time, Jenny had wanted to disclaim all responsibility. Her first impulse had been to distance herself from the boy, to say she wasn’t really able to see the future. But the question was not one a nineteen-year-old posed to a stranger because he was considering his options rationally. She’d known, even then, that the young man had asked because he was at his wits’ end.
So she’d lied. She told him she saw happiness in his future, that he had every reason to live. He’d believed her. And as time passed, he’d gradually moved past despair. Today, he stood in front of her almost confident.
It should have counted as a triumph of some kind, a good deed chalked up to Jenny’s account. But on that first day, she hadn’t just taken his despair. She’d taken his money, too. And since then, she and Ned had been bound together in this tangle of coin and deceit.
“Life and death?” Lord Blakely fingered the cheap fabric that loosely draped her chairs. “Then there should be no problem with my more prosaic proposal. I’m sure you are aware Ned must marry. Madame—Esmerelda, is it?—why don’t you tell me the name of the woman he should choose.”
Ned stiffened, and a chill went down Jenny’s spine. Advice hidden behind spiritual maundering was one thing. But she knew that Ned had resisted wedlock, and for good reasons. She had no intention of trapping him.
“The spirits have not chosen to reveal such details,” she responded smoothly.
The marquess pulled an end of lead pencil from his pocket and licked it. He bent over a notebook and scribbled a notation. “Can’t predict future with particularity.” He squinted at her. “This will be a damned short test of your abilities if you can do no better.”
Jenny’s fingers twitched in irritation. “I can say,” she said slowly, “in the cosmic sense of things, he will meet her soon.”
“There!” crowed Ned in triumph. “There’s your specifics.”
