An Indecent Proposition (26 page)

“A resounding yes, if ever there was one. Excellent.”

It was a bewildering comment. Caroline felt more lost than ever over the purpose of his visit. Did she misunderstand or had he just intimated he thought it was a good thing she had a hopeless penchant for a man well-known for his emotional detachment when it came to love affairs?

He went on. “Don’t apologize for the loss of our time together, Lady Wynn. It wasn’t going to happen anyway, with or without whatever is between you and Nick. I am through with meaningless liaisons with women who value only transient pleasure. Let me be brutally honest with you. The wager was the direct result of a frustrated moment due to the announcement the woman I love with my heart and soul is going to marry another man.”

Had the clock in the corner always ticked so loudly? She handled her accounts in this room and never noticed it before. It was the only sound to intrude on the dead silence as she stared at her visitor in undisguised surprise.

Had Lord Manderville actually just said he was in love? Unbidden, Caroline’s laughter spilled forth, her uncontained mirth breaking the moment. It was part genuine amusement, part the release of a stockpile of nervous tension that had built over the past few days.

His dark blond brows winged upward. “That’s amusing? I’m glad you think so, but for my part, I’m the most miserable man in London.”

She managed to shake her head and catch her breath, her hand going to press against her stomach. “No, my lord, I am not laughing at that unfortunate part of your speech. But you must admit this is all so comical in a way. Nicholas essentially told me while we were in Essex he only wants to marry for love. Here
you
are, telling me your supposedly inviolate heart is being broken. No one in fashionable society would believe it.”

The earl looked disconcerted but had the grace to smile. “I suppose you’re right.”

Caroline had to admit, she was curious. “Who is she?”

“Annabel Reid, my uncle’s ward.”

She registered the information with disbelief. Miss Reid was very young and the quintessential fresh-faced ingenue.
That
was who had captured the heart of the wicked Angel? A young chit out of the schoolroom and his uncle’s ward, no less? Not that the young woman wasn’t very pretty, but he didn’t dally with marriageable young ladies. It was common knowledge.

“You’re surprised,” he said, correctly interpreting her expression. “Well, so am I, but it’s the truth. I’m surprised over Nicholas’s reaction to you too. However, maybe this is all meant to be. I’m rather hoping we can join forces. That is, if you are as taken with Nicholas as he seems to be with you.”

She was more than taken—that was the problem—but she tried to equivocate. “I don’t think the duke and I have known each other long enough to be able to gauge the depth of our feelings.”

Lord Manderville gave a small snort. “He was jealous this afternoon when he talked to me. I recognize the emotion only too well. Concerned about you, unsettled, unhappy, irritated with himself, confused . . .”

“You make it sound like an awful disease, my lord.” Caroline stifled another unwilling laugh at his pained expression and battled an unreasonable flare of optimism.

“It is, take my word.” His mouth twisted and he hesitated for a moment. “Look, my lady, I’ve known Nick a long time. From that first moment in the parlor at the inn, there was a spark between you two. I noticed then, but thought it might just be the unusual circumstances that intrigued him. Now I wonder if it isn’t a good deal more.”

Could he be right? It was irrational to hope so. Still, she gave him a helpless, confused look. “How can we help each other?”

“Maybe if we work together, it will help us both. My uncle is convinced Annabel feels the same for me as I do her, and I think—I pray—he is right. Yet she is engaged to Lord Hyatt and my last attempt to explain myself to her was a disaster. I wondered if you, from the slant of your own experience, could persuade her to see that a loveless marriage is the road to misery.”

Did she actually feel sorry for one of the most handsome, wealthy, charming men in England?

Well, yes. He looked desperately sincere and after all, he had donned a ridiculous disguise and come to see her in the middle of the night. Not to mention he’d declared he had no intention of going through with the wager, even if she had still been willing.

Caroline said, “I can only speak from my own experience. I have met Lord Hyatt and doubt he would be a cruel husband. But you are right, my lord. I do believe a marriage without love wastes a precious part of a person’s life, and it is doubly unfair if one of the parties involved is in love with someone else. I suppose I am willing to try.”

“Excellent.” His smile was genuine for the first time, a mesmerizing curve of his mouth that no doubt had turned many a woman’s knees to water. He arched a brow and the smile slid into a devilish grin. “I, in turn, will take great pleasure in making Nick acknowledge to himself—and you—that his heart might be engaged at long last. I don’t want him to make the same mistake I did. If I thought a simple lecture would work, I’d try it, but men are more obtuse than women.”

“If you think for a moment I am going to argue with
that
, Lord Manderville, you are mistaken.”

“I doubted you would,” he said drily. “My point is that something that bludgeons him over the head will work better than subtlety. I have a plan.”

Caroline was beginning to realize why Nicholas was such good friends with his notorious cohort. “I imagine it is very inventive, but there is one very big problem. If you hadn’t been so honest just now, I wouldn’t ever discuss it, but . . .”

Even having said that, her voice trailed off and she swallowed against the tightening of her throat. She glanced down at her intertwined fingers in her lap for a moment, and then squared her shoulders. “Despite my offer to judge the wager and the past days I spent with the duke, I am not interested in a casual love affair. Since there is every chance I am barren, nothing else is possible between us. Besides, he and I have known each other such a short amount of time. Less than a week in each other’s company is surely not enough to judge true emotion.”

Manderville leaned one broad shoulder against the wall and folded his arms. “I think you are entirely wrong, Lady Wynn. I’ve known Annabel for more than a decade and even I couldn’t see what was happening between us. There is no time standard against which to measure falling in love. I think it happens to some people the instant they meet, and I think it takes others years to gradually grow into it, and there is every possible scenario in between. As for the possibility of your never conceiving a child, I acknowledge having an heir is an important consideration for anyone who has a title to pass on, but even if Nicholas were to marry some virginal miss, he would still be taking that chance.”

That was true. Before she married, she had certainly never considered she might not conceive. “With me, he has the evidence of my previous failure.”

“So your argument is that he’d be better off marrying some insipid untried young chit? I thought you just told me he wants to marry for love.”

Was she really having a deep discussion with a known rakehell on the subject of romance and marriage?

Neither Nicholas nor Derek Drake were the men they were perceived to be. Caroline pointed out, “We do not know he has any feelings for me at all beyond physical attraction.”

“On the contrary, you did not see him this afternoon.” Derek straightened. “Tell me this, my lady. If you had only one word to describe your time with him in Essex, what would it be?”

One word? It would be impossible to sum up sunlit glades, indescribable pleasure, breathtaking smiles, and silent waltzes with one word.

But she could try.

She said finally in an almost inaudible voice, “Magical.”

He nodded, the look in his eyes telling her how poorly a job she’d done of hiding her feelings. “So then, would you like to hear what I have in mind?”

T
wo days. The refrain played in his head even when he was in the simple act of heaping marmalade on a piece of toast. Unlike the simple sunny breakfast room at the estate in Essex where he’d dined with Caroline, the lofty ceilings, huge gleaming table, and bevy of servants moving discreetly in the background in his London home as they replenished rashers of meat and eggs reminded him that nothing was done on a small scale. Nicholas was used to it—had rarely even thought about it—but the ducal pomp came sharply into focus because of his preoccupation with one very lovely, unattainable widow.

Caroline had preferred her toast plain. She drank milk in her tea, but took no sugar. When the sun hit her hair, the shimmering color was unique, like . . .

“You certainly are in another world, darling. What has you so distracted this morning?”

Nicholas looked up with a start, his cup halfway to his mouth. Good God, he’d been daydreaming like some besotted idiot.

What should he do? Tell his
mother
he was absorbed with the notion Lady Wynn owed him two more days of carnal delights to settle their bet? He had no illusions; his mother must have heard about the wager, but so far she hadn’t said anything. Not that he wasn’t grateful she didn’t bring up such an indelicate masculine challenge, for he was sure she disapproved. She probably
should
disapprove, for that matter. However, what had happened couldn’t be changed. Not the bet duly listed in the books for London to whisper over, and not those five telling days with Caroline.

Those he
wouldn’t
change, but seven was the bargain.

Yes, she owed him two more. She’d refused, but maybe he could change her mind. He was becoming obsessed with the thought.

“It’s been a busy week.” He set his cup down with exaggerated care next to his plate and touched his napkin to his mouth. “I’m sorry if I am ignoring you. Please forgive me.”

“I forgive you, darling, but I’d prefer to know what put that expression on your face.” From across the table, she frowned at him, idly stirring her chocolate.

“What expression?” He gave an inner resigned sigh. After all, it was his fault for sitting there and thinking about Caroline in the first place. If an interrogation was on its way, he had only himself to blame.

But he couldn’t seem to put her out of his mind.

His mother gracefully picked up the beautiful porcelain pot in front of her and added rich liquid to her cup, but her attention was all on him. “You looked as if you were recalling something quite pleasant. It made you smile.”

The Dowager Duchess of Rothay had always been perceptive. But Nicholas wasn’t in the mood to answer questions and even if he were, he doubted she’d like the answers. Maybe she wouldn’t even believe it. He was never preoccupied over women.

Until now.

She went on thoughtfully, her fine dark eyes reflecting curiosity. “You seem as if your mind is elsewhere. And you’ve been quiet all week and declined to accompany us anywhere.”

She was right. He’d passed on attending the usual round of soirees and various entertainments, mostly because he wanted to avoid Caroline.

And at the same time, he had this perverse, discomforting urge to see her too. Usually he knew his own mind. His current state of unrest reminded him in an unsettling way of how he’d felt about Helena a decade before. Only then the interest had been prompted by boyish infatuation and he was no longer a boy.

“I’m extremely busy right now,” he said with as little inflection in his voice as possible.

His mother wasn’t fooled. An arched brow went upward and her patrician features were a caricature of skepticism. “You are always terribly busy, Nicholas. That can’t be it. Althea has noticed as well. You seem a bit . . . I don’t know . . . distant.”

That was what a man needed, he thought in resigned sardonic amusement, every female in his household analyzing him. “If I’ve been distracted, blame it on the current state of political conflict. We’re debating everything from Wellington’s request for more soldiers to agricultural sanctions.”

“That makes you go to bed at a reasonable hour and rise at dawn?” His mother gazed at him with intent scrutiny that made him feel as if he were five years old again and caught in a blatant lie. “You usually have quite an opposite schedule. The debates in Parliament are always there. It is what it exists for, actually. I think you are being evasive and I wonder why.”

Since his return from Essex, he
wasn’t
sleeping all that well. He had quickly adapted to his new affection for the break of day, but it wasn’t nearly as satisfying as when he had Caroline warm and willing next to him and he could celebrate the arrival of the sun in the most pleasurable way possible.

“You are planning on attending Harrison’s ball this evening, aren’t you? I believe Charles and Althea are going to the opera instead and I wouldn’t mind the escort.”

Thus asked, how could he refuse?

“I would be honored to oblige. And please, stop worrying over me.” He rose from the breakfast table, kissed her cheek with affection that was not at all feigned even though he was uninterested in staying for further interrogation, and left the room.

He hadn’t lied. Not precisely. It wasn’t that anything was wrong; it was that something wasn’t right. The ridiculous preoccupation wasn’t limited to wandering thoughts during breakfast either. The night before, he’d dreamed of creamy, satin skin next to his, lustrous auburn hair spilling over his chest, and heated pleasure mixed with the elusive scent of lily of the valley. To his mortification, he’d woken perspiring, twisted in the sheets, not to mention rock hard and erect, something that hadn’t happened to him from a dream since adolescence.

The vision had a face, delicate, beautiful, and intimately familiar, framed by that silken mass of hair and dominated by large, incredible silver eyes.