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As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he realized he was not alone. Madame Esmerelda sat on the edge of a cold granite bench, her back straight and her arms, stiff as ramrods, supporting her. She looked up into the night sky. The dense mist rendered it as impenetrable as a slab of slate. There were neither stars nor moon. She hadn’t seen him yet.
He took the opportunity to look her over, in a more leisurely fashion than he’d dared earlier. She looked respectable in the cream-and-red-striped dress he’d chosen. And with her hair dressed by the maid he’d had sent over from the agency, she fit in this crowd seamlessly. The cut of the gown accentuated her bosom and waist. A shame that it hid all hint of her hips. And her ankles.
He’d dreamed of touching those delicately boned ankles last night, of sliding his hand up those limbs again. In his dream, she hadn’t pulled away.
Through the French windows behind him, light leaked out. Long shadows crisscrossed the terrace. He followed those dark lines, treading as silently as he could. But he could not muffle the sound of leather striking the paving stones. Her head turned toward him in startled surprise.
“Hiding?” he asked.
She met his gaze, then looked away. “Now we are equal.”
“Equal?” Thoughts of revolutionary Frenchmen danced through Gareth’s head. Liberté, egalité, and all that tripe. “Nonsense.”
“I tied you up,” she explained. “Now you’ve had your revenge on me by trussing me into this bloody corset. I can’t even take a proper deep breath.”
Gareth let out a covert exhalation. She was keeping track in their curious little competition. Of course. She’d not meant anything else by the comment.
“You’ll get used to it.”
“Why would I want to? I do not believe I wish to play Mrs. Margaret Barnard any longer.”
“Not even for this scintillating company?”
She smiled at his dry words. “I was asked if I wished to be invited to a meeting of the Ladies’ Beneficial Tea Society. Apparently, the attendees embroider handkerchiefs for future dissemination. The aim is to increase hygienic practices among the deserving poor.”
“You are not fond of charitable causes? Or do you disapprove of hygiene?”
“I think that those embroidered handkerchiefs are likely hawked by their recipients within minutes of their distribution. What a colossal waste of time. Do any of these ladies enjoy their roles?”
“No. Nor the men.”
Gareth spoke absently, but she tilted her head.
“Surely you like playing Lord Blakely. Ordering them around. One look at your steely countenance, and society is set a-wondering whether they, too, should learn to sing in that absurd style. Do you not feel the slightest sympathy for your fellow man?”
“No.” Gareth spoke without hesitation. Sympathy? The vicissitudes of society had condemned his mother when she remarried a commoner a bare year after the passing of her lordly husband. His grandfather had curled his lip, and she’d acquiesced to his demands, leaving Gareth with the old man. To learn how to become a marquess. What had remained of his childhood had shriveled into an unending stream of duties and requirements. Society and his grandfather had never had sympathy for him.
Gareth shook his head to dislodge the memories. “I may have fooled them with regards to the quality of Brazilian singing, but it was no more than they deserved.”
“We may be more equal than I thought. What if I said the same thing about my role as Madame Esmerelda?”
“Is that why you’ve engaged in this fraud? To condemn polite society? To laugh at us? Do you snicker up your sleeve knowing you can make Ned dance at your beck and call?”
She was silent. “Maybe when I first started. Back then, it seemed like such a lark. But Madame Esmerelda grew once I put on her skirts. And then Ned…Well, it’s impossible to condemn him. It’s a dangerous business, pretending to be a person you’re not. Before you know it, you’re locked in a role, unable to change what you do. Some days, I almost think I hate Madame Esmerelda.”
Some dim corner of Gareth’s mind noted she’d as good as admitted she was a fraud. There was no triumph in the thought, though. She’d only said what they both knew. Until she said those words to Ned, her admission did no good.
And what she said was too much an echo of his own thoughts. Some days, he hated Lord Blakely.
She turned her head and peered up at him. Her eyes were dark pools in the night. The light from the windows danced across the expanse of her chest; her bosom swelled, up and down, in time with her breath. Shorter breaths indeed than she might once have taken. Shorter breaths; faster movement. How shallow would her breaths become if he licked that creamy curve just above her nipple?
He desired her. Not just those smooth swells that would fit so perfectly in his palm. He desired the woman who tied him up.
“You must know you cannot win. I have only one more task. I shall undoubtedly complete it with alacrity. In a short space of time, I will have followed your every directive. And I have no desire to marry the Lady Kathleen. Ned will discover you for the fraud that you are. Slavish adherence to your plan gains you nothing.”
“It is not what I stand to gain, my lord. It is what you stand to lose.”
Gareth shook his head in bafflement. “My reputation? If I could stave off the gossip tonight with arrogant superiority and a freezing look, surely you must realize my good name is impervious to any task you can dream up. I have commanded society far longer than you have been attempting to embarrass me. You shan’t succeed on that score.”
“No.” She looked off into the distance. “But then, that is not what I expected to win.”
Anyone watching from the main room would see their silhouettes. At this distance, their conversation would appear to be idle words. An exchange of compliments. A discussion of mutual acquaintances. Nothing more, so long as he didn’t do anything so foolish as touch her.
He longed to breathe foolish words against the skin of her neck.
“You could win my patronage instead. Give up this quest.” His tongue felt thick in his mouth. “Become my mistress. Forget whatever idiotic goal you’d hoped to achieve.”
“If I wanted to be a mistress, I’d never have gone to all the trouble of creating Madame Esmerelda. I’m not interested.”
“You wouldn’t be just any man’s mistress. You’d be mine.”
She shook her head. “I told you long ago why I wouldn’t back down. You prod. You poke. You proposition me with a logical weighing of costs and benefits. Do you know, I believe the only emotions you allow yourself to show are pride, anger and disdain? Not a hint of amusement or enjoyment. No sadness. No despair.”
“Just because I don’t choose to show my every thought—”
“You don’t choose to show particular types of feelings,” Madame Esmerelda said. “Why not smile?”
“Why not hang my head in abject humiliation? Why not tear my hair out in sorrow? Why not slobber like an affectionate dog over everyone who takes my fancy? I have my pride, Meg.”
“Most people do. But they don’t hold on to it at the expense of their humanity. Or that of those around them.”
She thought him inhuman? “I see,” he said. He pushed all the coldness that clenched his heart into his voice. “You dislike me.”
She tipped her head back and looked Gareth in the eyes. Once again, lust struck him—a deep, piercing blow to his groin. She’d whetted his appetite over and over. Kisses. Touches. God, he wanted her, skin against skin. He wanted to feel her hair, now pinned up, spilling over his bare chest.
“No. I rather dislike Lord Blakely. I wonder why you play the marquess so often.”
“Play the marquess? I am the marquess.”
“And I am Madame Esmerelda. And Mrs. Margaret Barnard. Do you think I don’t recognize a facade when I see it?”
Gareth swallowed. “A facade? What do you suppose I am hiding?”
She put her head to one side and studied him. “You have all the marks of a man who was once an extremely awkward child. A boy who lived on the edge of his parents’ life. Quiet. Studious. Too quiet, perhaps, and a little too interested in natural science, and inexplicably bored by sport. When you met other children your age, you no doubt found them baffling. And when they massed in groups, as children are wont to do, you feared, deep down, that they were all laughing at you.”
“An interesting theory. A shame you lack evidence for it.” Gareth struggled to maintain the coldness in his voice. His hands were trembling. He had not thought of those first horrible years at Harrow in an age. He’d buried them in his mind. But her words brought them all back, right down to that nauseous feel in the pit of his stomach.
Let lust remain ascendant. Let him think of sliding inside her, of her gasp of sweet surrender. He held on to those heated thoughts to dispel the other images she conjured.
But she would not let him hide. “You were right. They were all laughing at you.”
They had been. His hands clenched in remembered helplessness.
“Then you discovered you could make them stop. They couldn’t laugh at a man made of stone. And they were all afraid of your position in society.”
“None of this is relevant to my offer. You tell Ned you are a fraud. I take you to bed.”
