A Game of Persuasion: Extended Prologue for the Art of Ruining a Rake (The Naughty Girls Book 3) (19 page)

 
“But how did you get in?” Celeste appeared ready to strangle whomever had shared such sensitive information with an innocent like Lucy.

Lucy feigned innocence. She wouldn’t let Celeste coerce the information out of her the way she’d regrettably revealed Celeste’s role to Roman. “I’ve made friends,” she said evasively.

Celeste grasped the doorframe, as if a new thought had occurred to her. “Did you and Lord Montborne—?”

“Make love? Yes!” Lucy seized the chance to divert Celeste’s attention. Lucy leaned forward and gripped her own skirt, her fingers recalling the silkiness of Roman’s skin over his taut muscles. “I cannot even begin to describe it. Oh, Celeste. You never said.” She smiled rapturously. “You never said.”

Celeste crumpled against the doorframe. “Dear God.”

“God had nothing to do with it,” Lucy replied, motivated to continue explaining by Celeste’s near comical collapse. At least her friend wasn’t asking difficult questions. “Lord Montborne is an amazing lover. So tender, I thought I would expire. When he—”

“Stop, stop now. Please. We must think this through. Did he know it was you?”

This was one of the more difficult questions to field. “Of course. I was naked.”

“Oh!” Celeste beat her forehead against the door’s frame. She seemed genuinely dismayed. Yet why should she be? She’d known from the beginning Lucy intended to lie with Roman.

“I can see you’re wondering ‘how could he?’” Lucy wanted to completely reveal her position before Celeste had an apoplexy. She’d explain how well it had turned out, and her friend would cease hyperventilating.

Truly, she shouldn’t be having a fit of the vapors because Lucy had spent one splendid night with the man she’d believed to be her love. Celeste was a courtesan.

“Very well, I assure you,” Lucy continued without provocation, a pleased laugh escaping her. “A rogue needs only a little coercion. He practically had me against the garden wall, though I did insist on a bed, which he obligingly provided. It was the most romantic interlude you can imagine. And you made it possible.”

The story was better for its embellishment. Certainly, Celeste didn’t want to hear about Lucy’s disappointments, or her regrets.

“Did he offer for you?” Celeste’s voice came out in a frog’s croak.

Lucy’s heart constricted at the reminder she’d turned down the only proposal she’d ever wanted to hear. She feigned ignorance, however, for she couldn’t bear for anyone to know how much she wished she
could
marry him. “Offer what?”

Celeste might as well have whispered the word. “Marriage.”

“Oh, no,” Lucy said, as breezily as she could manage through the tightness in her throat. “I told him not to bother. I believe I thoroughly flummoxed him there.”

Celeste looked ready to lose her breakfast.

Lucy shrugged as if she didn’t mind in the least that the man she loved had been ready to marry her and she’d been forced to refuse due to his absolute degeneracy and her resulting fear she’d harm him for it. “He said he’s going to tell Trestin.”

Celeste swept the back of her hand against her brow and stumbled toward the couch. She collapsed onto it. “Dear me.”

“Yes! You are a dear!” Lucy rushed to reassure the one woman she’d thought had understood her. Because of Celeste, she’d
lived.
She could never repay her mentor.

“In fact,” Lucy continued, “I love you. You are the best friend in the whole world. Oh, Celeste, I couldn’t have done it without you. Montborne was so thoroughly besotted. Spouting love and nonsense and promising the moon just like I always imagined. Then I took off my mask and—”

“You took off your mask?” Celeste gaped at her.

“Yes, well,” Lucy said, defensive of her actions, “he had to know it was me or else what was the fun in it?”

Celeste’s lips formed an O. “Lucy! You could have come away freely!”

Lucy squirmed beneath Celeste’s disapproval. “As I said, that would have defeated the entire point. I set out to make love to him and I succeeded, barely lifting a finger in the effort. Truly, I’m beyond impressed. Your training is first-rate. We ought to offer classes to our girls, don’t you think? Teach them how to deal with men.”

“No!”

Lucy blinked. “Why not?”

The couch shifted as Celeste leapt up from the couch and began to pace. “Because this is a respectable school for respectable females. Really, why must I explain it?”

“Or,” Lucy said as a new idea dawned on her, “it is a specialized education for young women who see themselves in, well, a slightly different light.” Just as she did.

Celeste stared at her in horror. “It’s a school for innocent girls who have nowhere else to go.”
 

“I imagine we all begin innocent,” Lucy said, warming to her idea. “Only the clever girl who knows what she’s doing reaches your level.”

“Exactly!”

Lucy saw the chance to press her case. “We’ll train the best of the best! Men will pay handsomely for a girl with excellent, learned conversation and a pretty smile, will they not? And we’ll have the satisfaction of making independent women of girls who would have gone on to be servants and seamstresses, if they’re even that lucky.”

The more Lucy thought about it, and the more she remembered how imperious she’d felt wielding her influence over the legion of men at Mrs. Galbraith’s ball, the surer she was about her idea. They could make women who’d otherwise suffer the indignities of inequality into royalty.

“I’m sorry, Lucy, but I cannot condone or support your idea. You’ve made love to the one man you’ve adored since girlhood. You don’t understand what it means to be a courtesan, to give yourself to the highest bidder and open your most private parts to men you don’t even know.”

The admonition hit Lucy like a slap in the face. She’d adored Roman, but even she hadn’t known what it meant to make love to him. “I suppose not,” she said softly.

“Absolutely you do not!”

Lucy knew she’d been beaten. Her idea was optimistic, tinged with practicality, but based on an assumption that women always wanted to give themselves to the men who desired them.
 

“I’ll never truly understand what your life has been like,” Lucy said, realizing how true that was. “But I am very glad you’ve shared a part of it with me, and I will always be grateful you gave me the opportunity to follow my heart. We’re friends, Celeste. Never think otherwise. And if ever I should be able to return the favor,” she looked at the woman she hoped would become her sister-by-law, “I will.”

Chapter 13

LUCY RETURNED TO her house to find her sister gone. The note laid across her pillow said simply, “Gretna.”

Lucy clasped the folded paper to her breast. Should she be happy for Delilah, or worried?

Almost as soon as the thought crossed her mind, Lucy knew she didn’t question Mr. Conley’s intentions. Lucy had no doubt that the man meant to wed her sister. What concerned her was the future. May her sister never know the heartache of a man who couldn’t keep his vows.

By now, it no longer surprised Lucy to see Trestin fail to notice Delilah’s disappearance; he was too occupied with Celeste. Nevertheless, Lucy breathed a sigh of relief every time she slipped under his nose. Lying to the staff didn’t sit well with her, but she couldn’t have lied to her brother. Not to his face.

The next morning she didn’t rise as early as she’d meant to, as if she’d contracted Delilah’s supposed malady. She dressed with the help of her maid, then paused to decide what to do next. It was too early for luncheon, but the sideboard might still be laid with the remnants of breakfast—especially given the late hours Trestin now kept.

After considering the benefits and perils of seeing her brother over breakfast so soon, Lucy went down to see if she could find a spot of tea and some toast.
 

She was just finishing up when the ominous sound of boots stomping down the hallway grew more pronounced. A warning tremor sent the hairs on her neck standing.

Trestin was coming, and he was furious.

Quickly, she nudged the two pieces of toast on her plate off to the side. Blast, but he was too near to cut away without him noticing. She was trapped.

The closer his footfalls came, the more convinced she was that he’d learned the truth. But about whom? Delilah, or herself?

He entered the room and paused across the table from her. His hair was matted on one side of his head, although he’d likely run a hand through it already. The morning light filling the room seemed to be physically painful to him, if his narrowed, groggy eyes were an indication. He squinted at her.

Even from ten paces, she could smell the stench of stale brandy.

She concentrated on keeping her hands steady as she reached for the pot of sugar. Three clumps disintegrated into her steaming tea as she drew the spoon along the edge of the cup, and she sympathized with them. Under Trestin’s feverish glare, she, too, wanted to disappear.

Resting the spoon in the saucer, she raised her gaze to his. He knew about her night with Roman, she was convinced of it. The best way to address this was head-on, though that didn’t make it any easier.

“Good morning, Trestin,” she said calmly. Let him be the first to raise his voice.

He dismissed the footman with a pointed glance that sent chills down her spine. His fist curved around the upper rung of the chair’s ladder back. “What have you to say for yourself?”

He knew about Roman. There was no doubt he’d learned of her seduction—the only question was, from who?

Lucy bit into her toast, realizing her mistake too late. Stale to start, the toast was so dry now, it turned into gravel in her mouth. She barely managed to swallow it without a sip of tea.

“I trust Lord Montborne gave you a fair accounting and you’ve no need of more detail from me…” She arched her eyebrow in a silent threat to share far too much detail if Trestin pressed her further. Though she wasn’t sure which of them would be made more uncomfortable, should he force her hand.

He grimaced and she smiled inwardly. She’d won that one.
 

But his voice was steely as he said, “I’ve heard enough to know you’ve behaved shamefully. You’ve done everything, it seems, to make marrying you off as difficult as possible.”

She almost snickered with incredulity at his moralizing. As if her brother’s desires had been in her mind at all when she’d made her many—admittedly, sometimes poor—decisions!

“Very well,” he said as she schooled her face to reflect a proper level of solemnness, “you don’t wish to marry. What I can’t comprehend is why you behaved so abominably toward my friend. What did Montborne do to be drawn into your scheme?”

Yet another unexpected insight into the workings of his mind. Lucy didn’t expect him to question her choice of lover; to her, Roman was the obvious option, as he was the only rake she knew without needing to scrounge for an introduction, and she’d loved him all her life. “Would you prefer I’d given myself to a stranger?”

“Good God, Lucy. Are you trying to kill me?” The chair creaked as his knuckles whitened around the rung. He was angry. He was hurt. And he didn’t comprehend her at all.

When would he realize she’d made her bed for herself? Not for him. She stood so quickly, her chair slid backward. “It had nothing to do with you!”

To her astonishment, his brow smoothed a fraction, enough to give her hope she might continue and that for once, he might hear her.

“I thought you’d understand,” she said, belatedly realizing she was leaning over the table, hands braced on the linen like an impassioned rector addressing his congregation. She stood and dusted her hands against her skirt. “Not in Devon. Not even when we first arrived. But after you started sneaking out to see Celeste—”

“Wh—?”

Oh, ho, no, she wouldn’t let him feign innocence! Nor would she let him make this about
him
again.

She swiped her hand through the air. “I tried, Trestin. I truly tried to want the future you envision for me: A pious husband who would dote on our children and never ask too much of me in bed. But you couldn’t abide that for yourself, could you? Once you discovered what it feels like to love passionately, you could never marry a proper miss simply to conform to what is expected of you. Why, then, would you ask it of me?”