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Feathers eyed Jenny with open curiosity. “The rumor that swept the ballroom is that this lady is a distant cousin. I didn’t know we had any Barnards in our family.”
Lord Blakely grimaced. “Restrain yourself, Ned. Do recall we are at a very crowded ball. And, Laura, she is not your cousin.”
The lady sighed. “Carhart side? Still, a cousin of yours is a cousin of mine.” She looked at Jenny and smiled almost shyly. “Isn’t that just like my brother, to ignore me when I’m so obviously angling for an introduction? What is Ned jabbering on about?”
Ned put his hands on his hips. “Well, don’t ask the great Marquess of Blakely for explanations. Or introductions. He can’t even be bothered to deliver his own elephants. He doesn’t believe anything unless it’s right in front of his nose.”
The blue feathers in the lady’s coiffure bobbed earnestly. “Oh, don’t I know.” She glanced at Jenny again, and then imparted in confiding tones. “He doesn’t even trust my fiancé to handle my funds in the future. He doesn’t trust anything he can’t see and smell and taste.”
Lord Blakely didn’t act either to scold or to assuage his sister’s obvious worries as to how her teasing would be received.
“Actually,” Jenny interjected earnestly, “he’s even more discriminating than that.”
Lord Blakely’s shoulders stiffened. His lips pressed together and a furious warning lit his eyes. Jenny met his angry gaze and dropped one lid in a lazy half-wink.
“Believe me,” she said. “He really doesn’t believe everything he tastes.”
Lord Blakely’s mouth dropped open a fraction. His eyes dropped to her lips; he was undoubtedly remembering the hot openmouthed kiss they’d shared. He froze, almost as if he’d experienced a great stabbing pain. And then a miracle occurred.
He smiled.
The expression changed his whole face from serious and frozen to warm and tinged with the pink of embarrassment. The effect was immediate and electric. He looked almost ten years younger. Jenny’s toes curled in her uncomfortable heeled slippers and she caught her breath.
No wonder the man never grinned. He would have posed a serious danger to womankind if he did so more than once a decade.
He blinked, horrified, as he suddenly realized what he was doing. The corners of his lips turned down sharply. He blew out his breath and turned abruptly to his sister.
“If I failed to greet you earlier, Laura, it was precisely to avoid this moment. I have no intention of introducing you to this woman.”
Jenny felt as if she’d been smacked with an icicle. It was almost as if she’d been back at school. As if the girls were talking about that Jenny Keeble again, pretending Jenny was not standing right in front of them.
The feathers drooped as Laura bowed her head. “Surely, in the family—”
Lord Blakely interposed his body between Jenny and his sister. He dropped his voice, but pitched his words loud enough for Jenny to hear. She had no doubt he intended her to absorb every last hateful sentence. “She’s not a Carhart cousin, either. She’s not any sort of relation. She’s a fraudulent fortune-teller who has sunk her claws into Ned, and she’s not fit for you to know.”
Not fit. Every word he said was undoubtedly true. It still hurt, scraping a wound that was raw even after a dozen years. Jenny had run away from school to escape the snide remarks about her family and her likely fate. Even after all these years, it stung to hear them repeated.
“Oh, dear.” Laura peered around the marquess’s lean form. “Do you really tell fortunes? Can you tell mine? Do you pay house calls, or shall I visit you?”
Jenny could imagine Lord Blakely’s teeth grinding.
“She’s fabulous at it,” Ned answered. “Two years and she’s never been wrong. And now she’s predicted Blakely’s marriage.”
The marquess winced. “Hush,” he remonstrated. “There’s no need to shout—”
But his sister’s eyes lit up like two candles. “You want Blakely to marry? Capital! I knew I liked you.” She sidestepped her brother and linked her arm in Jenny’s.
Jenny looked at the arm in hers. She was too shocked to do anything other than goggle. She hadn’t expected a friendly face smiling into hers after the marquess’s cold dismissal. A lump formed in her throat.
Naturally, Lord Blakely interrupted.
“Mrs. Barnard,” he emphasized coldly, offering her his arm, “I do believe we have terms to discuss. Laura, I’ll see you—I’ll see you next month.”
The smile slowly slipped off his sister’s face as she realized she’d been dismissed. She unlocked her arm from Jenny’s, pausing only to give Jenny’s hand a squeeze. Her brother’s visage darkened at the gesture.
He opened the servants’ door they had just come through and led Jenny a few steps down the dim hall before brushing her hand off his arm and turning to tower over her. He stood inches away, his features implacable.
“Ned is one matter,” Lord Blakely said. “He is my responsibility. Do not doubt that no matter what else may occur between you and me, I will eradicate your influence over him. But my sister…”
“Your sister seems a pleasant enough young woman.”
His lip curled. “Miss Edmonton,” he emphasized icily, “is no consideration of yours. She is my junior by sixteen years, and I don’t mean to see her hurt. I tell you this as a warning, not an invitation. Interfere with my sister, and I will destroy you.”
Jenny put her hands on her hips. “Is that what you think I see when I look at her? A potential dupe?”
“I saw the way you looked at her when she took your arm. As if she’d handed you a gift.”
Jenny looked down to hide the sharp pain in her eyes. She felt like the twisting fibers in the carpet at her feet—threadbare and a bit frayed. In Lord Blakely’s scintillating world, both it and she would have been traded to the ragman. “I bow to your perceptive talent, Lord Blakely. It takes a special sort of intellect to make out only the worst in those around you.”
“Is that what you think I’m about?” He took her chin, turning Jenny’s face toward his. She couldn’t escape that searching gaze. “I can’t risk your lies on this point.”
Lies. Jenny swallowed shame. He dismissed her so easily. In a way, she shouldn’t have been surprised. She knew how the upper classes saw her all too well.
She’d given up on being good because her behavior made no difference. No matter how kind or good or sincere she may have been, they would all condemn her just the same. No matter what she did, she would remain baseborn, her parents unknown to her. What had she to lose by becoming a fraud?
If a gentleman saw her as anything other than an extra panel on the wainscoting, he saw what Lord Blakely did—a potential vessel for his seed, worthy of his notice only for the space of time it took to use her for sexual release. She’d escaped their world, but the only thing that had changed was the face of the man making the offer.
A week ago, Lord Blakely had seen clear through to the truth of her lonely childhood. Now he deemed her unworthy. Looking up into his eyes, she felt the most awful desire to kiss him. It was like the urge to pick off a scab—painful, idiotic and sure to start the bleeding all over again. Had she really been stupid enough to think this man different?
Aside from the sheer physical heat that dwelt between them, he was exactly like everyone she’d ever known.
“Tell me,” he growled at her. “Tell me truthfully you’ll not interfere with her.”
No. Not exactly alike.
There was one way he differed. He deemed her unworthy, but she was not alone in receiving his condemnation. Ned, his sister—he’d spoken harshly of them both. To him, everyone was wainscoting. He might as well have been alone in that crowded room out there.
His fingers dug into her chin. “Say the words,” he ordered.
She wondered, suddenly, how he saw himself. Cold, undoubtedly. Different, and superior to everyone else. He saw himself as the kind of man who could make a woman scream while he e
xperienced little more than inconvenient lust. Maybe Lord Blakely despised lesser mortals who let their control lapse into such gauche and unforgivable errors as the giving of trust, the acceptance of affection.
The poor man.
“I don’t see your sister as a potential mark, my lord. My only surprise is that you do.”
He searched her eyes in the dim light. He must have found the truth in them, because he released her chin.
Jenny rubbed the spots where his fingers had pressed. Five points were emblazoned into her jaw. It hadn’t been painful, but she felt humiliated. After all these years, she should have been used to the feeling. At least, she thought bitterly, Lord Blakely had some real reason besides her birth to believe her dishonest.
He shook his head disdainfully. “I try to see the truth even in those I care for. I have no desire to fool myself. What else should I see?”
There were a million answers. Jenny hesitated, searching for the perfect response. Finally, she picked the cruelest possibility. She picked the truth.
“I thought you would see a younger sister who, despite everything you said to her, still adores you.”
His lips whitened. His hands clenched.
Oh, he strove to hide it. But that miserable flinch showed that Lord Blakely could care about someone, much as he tried to deny it.
This tantrum, she realized, was her punishment, unjustly meted out for winning his smile. For breathing warmth into the ice of Lord Blakely. It was his rage, that he’d caused his sister pain, when he’d meant only to keep her safe. Jenny was not the object of his anger, just its recipient. It shouldn’t have made her feel better, to play the scapegoat. And yet it did.
