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Blakely shrugged. “As you wish.” He swiveled from her.
The effrontery of the man! He wasn’t even trying to give Madame Esmerelda’s prediction a fair chance.
Ned clamped his hand about his cousin’s wrist and turned him back around. “Oh, I think so. Where else could it have come from?”
Aside from Blakely’s pocket. Or any of the fifteen other sources that sprang to mind.
“I assure you,” she said with some asperity, “if that object had belonged to me, I shouldn’t have waited until I attended a ball to dispose of it. Even if I had dropped it, I would never admit prior ownership when questioned.”
“Well.” Ned drew out the syllable and squared his shoulders. “If you didn’t drop it, you must accept it.”
Her lips thinned. “Why?”
Why? Damnation.
“I can’t think of any reason,” Blakely interjected. His gaze seemed subtly mocking. Ned’s stomach sank. His cousin would continue to perform all his tasks in this halfhearted fashion. He had no intention of taking Madame Esmerelda’s strictures seriously. He intended to do the bare minimum, and no more.
But Madame Esmerelda was right. She saw the future. She had to do so. Because if she were wrong about Blakely, then her prediction about Ned was suspect, too. And that he could not bear.
Ned plucked the ebony from his cousin’s hand and held it out. There was only one thing for it. He was going to have to do all the work.
“Unfortunately—” Ned sighed “—there’s no good reason. You’re just going to have to take it anyway.”
She peered at the unfortunate lump of wood. “What is that thing, anyway?”
“What do you think it is?”
The lady reached out one slim finger and tapped the dark surface. She pulled back the digit immediately, as if she’d tapped a hot stove. “It appears to be some sort of round, pockmarked, misbegotten, battle-blackened … citrus?”
“You see?” Triumph boiled up in Ned and he poked Blakely in the lapels. “She knew! She knew it was an elephant! You can’t possibly deny Madame Esmerelda’s power now!”
That, at least, finally got a response from Blakely. The man shut his eyes and covered his face with a hand.
The lady frowned. “An orange is an elephant?”
She was intimidating and elegant. Ned imagined the figure he must cut in her eyes. Boyishly skinny. Overshadowed by his taller cousin. Awkward, ungainly, and just a little too loud at all the wrong times. Most especially at this moment. He flushed from head to toe.
“Yes,” Ned said. His voice still rang too loudly.
At precisely the same moment, Blakely said, “No.”
She stared at the two men. “You,” she said stabbing a finger at Ned, “are mad. You—” pointing at Blakely this time “—are tainted by association. And you—” here, she pointed at Madame Esmerelda standing behind them “—are very quiet. As for me, I am leaving.”
If she left now, fate and all the angels in heaven couldn’t bring her together with Blakely.
“Wait,” Ned called. “We haven’t been introduced! And you didn’t take your elephant.”
She turned around again. “No, we haven’t been introduced. And I certainly couldn’t accept a gift from a stranger.”
Ned bit his cheeks and wondered if he could possibly—please?—disappear on the spot. “Oh, that stupid rule doesn’t matter here. It’s only applicable to nice things. Clothing or jewelry or the like. This is a piece of rubbish.”
She stared at Ned and shook her head. “You really are mad.”
“Yes,” he agreed through gritted teeth. “Now humor the madman, and take the dam—I mean, take the dratted elephant.”
She contemplated him for a long moment. Then, surprisingly, dimples formed on her cheeks. She did not smile, but her eyes sparkled. And she placed her gloved hand, palm out, in front of her.
He dropped the wood into her hand. “There,” Ned said. “Now it’s your misbegotten lump of citrus.”
She looked up. Her eyes were gray, and Ned had the sudden impression that she saw right into his heart. That organ thumped heavily under her observation. Ned swallowed, and the world slowed.
Then she dropped a curtsy. “Thank you,” she said prettily. She turned. Ned watched her leave. She strode as confidently as a queen. Ned felt humiliated and exposed. It was only when she turned the corner that he realized that they’d still not been introduced. Of course not. He’d just painted himself as the biggest fool in London. Who would want to make an acquaintance of him?
Not that it mattered. It was Blakely who was fated to have her. He could have her; he’d match her, his intimidating glares bouncing off her cold elegance. No doubt Blakely would fall in love with her.
He turned to his cousin. “Someday,” Ned said bitterly, “you are going to thank me for what I just did for you.”
Blakely gestured sardonically. “I wouldn’t wager on that, were I you. For now, I’ll thank you to head back to the ball.”
CHAPTER FIVE
BEFORE JENNY SET FOOT back in the ballroom, bringing up the rear of their party, they were accosted. Lord Blakely swung the door open into the bright hall, and a voice called out.
“Blakely,” said the woman, “why are you hiding in the servants’ quarters? And why didn’t you tell me you were attending tonight?”
Lord Blakely stopped so abruptly that Jenny nearly ran into him from behind. As she stumbled forward into the open hall, the lights dazzled her eyes. It took a moment to adjust from the dim illumination of the corridor, and when she was finally able to see who had confronted them—or, rather, who had confronted the marquess, she coughed.
It was Feathers. The woman in blue, the one she’d pointed to before Ned’s choking reaction and Lord Blakely’s own smooth acceptance convinced her to change her mind.
Feathers was not pretty. Despite her fresh-faced youth, her features were too angular to qualify for that label. But she gleamed with a sleek, polished air that would have made even the plainest lady pleasant to look at. She looked almost as imposing as Lord Blakely, dressed as she was in a fine light blue gown embroidered at the edges with flowers, and littered with silk rosettes. Luminescent pearls shone about her neck. Sandy brown hair was bound up in a tight mess of curls, from which her namesake—three waving peacock feathers—bobbed.
She was definitely not pretty, but she was striking in a way that struck Jenny as oddly familiar.
And yet Feathers showed not one iota of the confidence her dress and ramrod-straight posture should have imparted. Even younger than Ned, she ducked her shoulders and smiled, a universal signal that she was eager to please.
Here was a puzzle. For all her fine demeanor, Lord Blakely’s earlier behavior suggested the lady was somehow unsuitable for marriage. But the lady had called him by the familiar “Blakely.” And he hadn’t corrected the importunity with typical frosty disdain.
Light dawned. No wonder she seemed so familiar. And no wonder the marquess had wanted Jenny to pick this woman.
“Lord Blakely,” Jenny said. “You never told me you had a sister.”
“See?” Ned flung his hands in the air. “How can you disbelieve her? I never said a word of it!”
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 confidi ng 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 experienced 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.”
