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And then she made herself do it.
“I meant,” she continued, “that your cousin is right. I can’t tell the future. I don’t speak to spirits. I don’t have any occult powers. You need to rely on yourself because you cannot trust me.”
Ned flinched with every phrase. But what she saw was not disillusionment, but disbelief. “No!” He looked around the room wildly. “This is some kind of test. To—to punish me for my failure this evening. I know I can show my loyalty.”
Jenny’s heart cracked. “Ned, it’s not a test. It’s the truth.”
“But all your predictions! Your arcane powers. How did you always know what to say?”
“I only told you what you wanted to hear, Ned.”
And still his eyes met hers in denial. His hands trembled. “They can’t be lies,” he said thickly. “What you told me. I need it to be true. I won’t let it be otherwise.”
“I have been lying to you for two years. I just—I didn’t intend this.”
Ned stared at her. “This is some kind of nightmare. Madame Esmerelda—Blakely—someone tell me I’m dreaming.” He bit his thumb and then stared at the digit, as if somehow it had betrayed him instead of Jenny.
Jenny shook her head sadly.
“But—if you have no powers, why is it that this chamber—”
He stopped, registering the austerity of the room in the dim candlelight for the first time. No black cloth. No crystals. No chimes. Nothing but cheap and rickety wood furniture. No hint of the arcane any longer.
“Your name,” he said next. “With a name like Madame Esmerelda, surely…”
Jenny didn’t have to say anything. The realization hit him. His shoulders stiffened. His nostrils flared. He spread his hands on the table in front of him as if to steady himself. Finally, he had accepted that she was a fraud.
Jenny knew his reactions well. And what she saw in the curl of his lip and the hunch of his shoulders wasn’t the disdain she’d feared. It was even worse.
Because what Ned was feeling was self-loathing.
“Ned—”
“Don’t call me that. Don’t call me by my Christian name as if you know me.” He was trying to snuffle his tears away.
Lord Blakely watched Ned in appalled horror.
“Mr. Carhart.” Jenny choked on the unwieldy name. “I owe you a great debt. One that I don’t suppose I will ever repay.” She could not even look away. There was one final sentence she needed to speak.
She owed it to Ned.
And then there was Lord Blakely. She had few illusions about him. Right now, he knew precisely what her selfishness had wrought. She wouldn’t blame him if he never spoke with her again. Whatever he might once have thought of her, surely she’d now lost his good opinion.
And with reason.
If she told him her name, she might never see him again. At best, he’d stay for that one night. He would abandon her, and she couldn’t blame him for it. It was only what she deserved.
But she’d spent all her adult life masquerading as another woman. She’d become Madame Esmerelda to run away from the options she hadn’t wanted. Until she met Lord Blakely, she’d never asked herself what she wanted to run toward. It had taken him two weeks to convince Jenny to claim herself.
On his own merits—ridiculous, excessively rational, and undeniably attractive though they were—she owed Lord Blakely, too. Giving him her name would be the ultimate surrender. In a strange way, he’d given Jenny herself. The least she could do was give herself back to him.
Her mouth was dry, the unformed words tasting like chalk. She forced herself to speak anyway.
“Should you ever need me, my name—” Her voice caught.
Lord Blakely leaned forward. There was no heat in his expression, no hint of longing. Only that blank weariness.
“My name,” she whispered, “is Jenny Keeble.”
Let them do with that as they willed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
JENNY KEEBLE.
Gareth held on to the promise of her name all through the oppressing drive back to the more fashionable Mayfair. Ned sat sullenly on the seat across from him, arms folded.
Gareth repeated her name in his mind when his cousin left the carriage with a wordless nod. And when he sent his driver home, alone, to warm stables, he whispered the syllables in staccato counterpoint to the rhythm of his stride.
Jenny. Jenny.
In these dark hours after midnight, the streets lapsed into a silvery silence. The coppery light of gas trickled through London’s dense fog. As he approached her door for the third time that evening, the swirling mist roiled down the steps that led to basement rooms. The dense vapor stifled the sound of his shoes into muffled clops as he descended the stairs.
He knocked.
The mist swallowed the sullen squeak of hinges. Flat orange illumination from the streetlamps dribbled through the crack of the door as it opened. The edges of the light gilded her features into an unforgiving mask. She appeared to be a goddess cast from bronze, a statue draped in white muslin and black shadow. Gareth sucked in a lungful of cold fog.
She swallowed and looked up into his eyes. “You’re here.”
Gareth’s tongue seemed dry in his mouth. “Well, Jenny.” His voice creaked out, thick and husky. It was the first time he’d spoken her real name aloud.
For moments neither moved. Then she curled her fingers about his elbow and drew him into the dark cavern of her room. Her fingertips rested on his arm as the door swung shut behind him. Slowly, he brought his hand up to her face. He could feel the tension in the solid set of her jawbone. He traced the line of her chin, found her mouth with his thumb.
He’d wanted once to conquer her. Now he had. He’d won everything. Her admission of fraud; Ned’s surrender. She’d even given him her respect. This should have been his moment. Rationality had triumphed over illogic.
But his fingers found the secret, sad downward curve of her lips in the darkness. No wet tracks down her cheeks. Just a stubborn, sorrowful desperation as she yielded to his touch.
Gareth hadn’t wanted vindication after all. He’d wanted her.
“Don’t stop.” Her hand covered his. She pressed his palm into the warmth of her face. Her fingers trembled.
Gareth would shake his head over this inconvenient decision the next morning, but—“You’re not under any obligation because I won our little wager.” He couldn’t resist tracing her lips again.
She stilled under his caress. “You won?” His palm swayed gently side to side as she shook her head. “No. You lost. Ned lost. You were correct, but that isn’t winning.”
Her other hand came between them to rest against his coat. But instead of pushing him away, she leaned into him.
Unbidden, his hand found the dark silk of her hair. “Why, then, if not obligation?”
“I lost, too.”
The truth seared into him. In the darkness of the night, they could pretend they had not stolen victory from each other. Her lips trembled against his touch.
“And so what is this?”
“Comfort,” she replied. Her breath heated the tips of his fingers. “That, and farewell.”
