The Wicked Wallflower (20 page)

“We must face facts,” he went on. “Land-­based wealth is going away and our ancestral homes are damned drafty and in need of upkeep. I know; I have seven of them. You could marry one of those title-­grubbing American heiresses . . . “

Those Americans disturbed the Englishmen's gentlemanly sensibilities. He now knew he needed to appeal to them as a gentleman himself.

He knew from Emma that they wouldn't just take his word as a known rake and infamous rogue, prone to debauchery with different company each night. Just as he must seduce her, he must persuade these gentlemen to bet their futures on him.

“My cousin, Lord Winwood, married one of those Americans,” Lord Doyle said quietly. “Her father suspected him a fortune hunter and tied up her dowry so much that Winwood was forced to beg for funds to make even minor repairs to the estate, like fix a leaking roof. His wife even refused to pay his club membership.”

“Cut off from your club. Begging from Americans. Dependent upon your wife. Is this really the fate you choose for yourselves, gentlemen?”

Lady Emma's bedchamber

“Would it really be so horrid being married to Blake?” Prudence asked. “You would be a fabulously wealthy duchess dressed in the most stylish gowns.”

“No more languishing in the wallflower corner,” Olivia sighed.

Emma didn't think it would be horrid at all. Not when he kissed like the devil and held her close like his life depended upon her. Not when a wink of his eye or a hint of his wicked grin made her warm all over. Not when he showed her a pleasure she had never imagined.

What would be horrid was losing his affection. Losing him, while having to turn a blind eye to his infidelities as her heart was breaking. Being a duchess—­and all the lovely things that came with it—­would not be consolation enough.

Where her friends saw a glamorous life, Emma saw lonely nights in a large house, wondering with whom her rakish husband cavorted. She didn't believe that she, London's Least Likely, could keep such a wicked, roguish man enthralled from now until death do they part.

He was intent upon seducing her now, but what happened when she said yes?

She could win big, or lose everything. She was not a betting kind of woman. She had made her choice. Better never to lose him now, before she lost her heart. Better to marry Benedict.

White's Gentlemen's Club

“You have a choice, gentlemen. You could walk away now and hope things work out in your favor: that your rents increase, that your daughters marry men plump in the pocket, that rich American brides leave gaping holes in the wedding contracts. Or you could take a chance with me. Either way, you are wagering on your future.”

“How do we know you won't drink the lot of our money?”

“Or spend it on baubles for other men's mistresses?” Doyle inquired.

“Or compromise our daughters,” Tarleton said, his voice quiet with rage.

“Even your own aunt doesn't trust you with her fortune, else she would have invited you to the Fortune Games,” McCracken said cuttingly. Blake's breath caught from the sting. “Why should we trust you with what fortune we have left?”

“You're asking us to take a damn big risk, Ashbrooke.”

“And I'm asking you to trust me,” he said softly, the truth of it occurring to him as he spoke the words. “Every force possesses an equal and opposite reaction. My aunt didn't invite me to the games, for it was the most certain way to ensure my attendance. My previously outrageous behavior rightfully caused you to withdraw your support from my project. True to the equation, I have responded with an equal and opposite reaction: I have reformed. Where I was once a drunken wastrel, I have become sober. Where I was once an unconscionable and unfaithful rogue, I have now become hopelessly infatuated with and devoted to my fiancée.”

Who keeps pushing me away. Like Agatha. Like the investors. None of whom believe . . . until an equal and opposite force is presented.

“All these forces are part of a single reaction; one does not exist without the other.”

“What's your point, Ashbrooke?”

“Only one question remains: Are you willing to take the risk with me?”

 

Chapter 17

“Have you seen the news about the duke and Lady Emma? I say, I had been suspicious from the start . . .”

—­
E
VERYONE IN
L
ON
DON, PRACTICALLY

The Drawing Room, Avery House

O
N
A GRAY
afternoon, Emma curled up on the settee before the fire in the drawing room with the hope that the romantic dilemmas of Tessa Tidwell in the novel
The Terrifying Travails of the Temptation of Tessa Tidwell
would distract her from her own.

Benedict—­the sure thing?

Or Blake—­the rogue in every way?

She had made a decision, but tell that to her traitorous thoughts, which kept straying to the smoldering pleasure of Blake's kiss and the wonderfully wicked sensation of their bodies pressed close together, limbs intertwined.

When Blake appeared in the drawing room but a moment later, catching her woolgathering with the book open on her lap, Emma thought him a vision she conjured up.

But no, he was really here. She knew because her skin tingled in anticipation of his touch.

“Blake, what brings you here?”

“Can a man not visit with his beloved intended?” He sat beside her on the settee. She risked temptation and remained. Even worse, she took a deep inhalation to breathe in his intoxicating scent. She glanced at the drawing room doors and was vexed to see they were open.

“Of course one can. I just thought there might be a reason,” she said. Like, oh, calling off the engagement because the winner had been announced. She half expected it, half feared it.

The winner, as far as she knew, had
not
been announced. Alas.

“How about this for a reason: your sparkling conversation. Or your entrancing crooked smile. Or,” he said, dropping his voice to a murmur, “the pleasure of your kiss.”

“Of my just one kiss,” she corrected. That one kiss could be the only one. She wouldn't survive another.

“We'll see about that,” he said wickedly.

“Whatev—­”

“As it happens, I do have a reason,” Blake said. “But first, there is something I have to do.” He dipped his head toward hers. His mouth claimed her lips, already parted in surprise.

Outside, a rumble of thunder. Inside, the snap and crackle of the fire. Beside her, Blake kissing her gently in the drawing room as if . . . as if he were a real suitor desperate for a stolen moment of pleasure.

She couldn't help it, she threaded her fingers through his hair as she'd just been imagining as he rasped her name, “Emma.” He cradled her face in his palms and she felt positively cherished. “Fetch your bonnet. And your smelling salts. We are going out.”

“It's about to rain,” she pointed out. Indeed, there was another ominous rumble of thunder.

“Perfect,” Blake murmured, clasping her hand and leading her to the foyer, where she could see his carriage waiting outside.

“I need a chaperone,” Emma said, stupidly. She could just imagine Olivia and Prudence screeching at her:
Now is not the time for propriety!

“I'll pretend I didn't hear that,” Blake replied. He waited impatiently while the butler handed Emma her bonnet, a spencer, and gloves.

“You are something else,” she murmured as she dressed for an unanticipated outing. In the rain. Unchaperoned.

“It's the Ashbrooke Effect, isn't it? Are you suffering terribly?” he asked as he helped her into the carriage. “I told you to fetch the smelling salts.” She took her seat facing forward, and when he got in to sit opposite her, all the air in the carriage seemed to dissipate with his arrival. She felt light-­headed.

“Do you really believe all that nonsense?” she asked.

“Yes. I make myself swoon with an alarming frequency,” Blake replied. Then he scoffed. “Of course I don't believe it. I can tell you don't either, which is one of the things I like about you.”

“You like that I am completely unmoved by your legendary charms, your impossibly good looks, and utterly impervious to your attempts at seduction?”

Even as she spoke the words, Emma knew they were lies—­all lies—­but ones she clung to as if her future happiness depended upon them. Blake only gave her that grin—­indeed, she felt a now familiar heat unfurling in her belly.

“It makes your inevitable surrender all the more pleasurable for us both.”

The Drawing Room of Lady Olivia Archer

Prudence arrived with her cheeks flushed, sucking in huge, heaving breaths of air. She had obviously exerted herself in her haste to deliver The News.

Olivia came to the drawing room at once. “Tea?”

Wordlessly—­for she had still not caught her breath—­Prue handed over her copy of that morning's issue of
The London Weekly,
opened to “Fashionable Intelligence.”

Intrigued, Olivia began to read. Her blue eyes widened considerably as she scanned the words.

“How devastating. Absolutely devastating,” she gasped.

“Do you think she has seen it yet?”

“Who would share such inflammatory accusations?” Olivia questioned.

“More to the point,” Prue said urgently.
“Who else knows?”

Blake's carriage

“Where are you taking me, anyway?” Emma inquired. She glanced nervously out the window, seeing only familiar London streets.

“It's a surprise,” Blake said. But it was more than that.

It was a grand gesture.

It was a declaration of his
feelings
.

It was madness.

He wanted it to be perfect, right down to the looming thunderstorm. He offered a prayer of thanks for the reliability of dreary English weather. He also prayed that this mad gesture of love would convince her of the truth of his feelings before she had even more reason to doubt them.

Blake had a dwindling amount of time to prove that he wanted their faux engagement to be a real love. Any moment now Agatha's announcement of the winner would arrive, and if Emma won and he begged for her hand, she would forever doubt his intentions . . . if she even said yes.

It was imperative that she not doubt his intentions.

The carriage sped along, turning into Hyde Park and traveling briskly to a remote corner amongst the trees.

“Are you going to ravish and murder me in the woods?” Emma asked, eyes wide with either terror or intrigue. He wasn't quite sure. “Have you received word from Lady Agatha? Is this a plot to dispose of me and keep the money for yourself?”

“You should read more lurid gothic novels,” Blake told her. “Your imagination is sorely lacking.”

“So you
are
going to ravish and murder me in the woods in order to keep the fortune for yourself. I knew it.” She settled back against the velvet seats with a smirk of satisfaction.

“I promise that I will not murder you in the woods,” Blake vowed, punctuated by an ominous rumble of thunder.

“Or
anywhere,
” Emma corrected. Then, with an adorable tilt of her head, she asked, “And what about ravishment?”

“I'm not in the habit of making promises I have no intention of keeping.”

The Drawing Room of Lady Katherine Abernathy

“Of course I'm not surprised in the slightest,” Lady Katherine told Ladies Crawford, Mulberry, Falmouth, and Montague. A copy of
The London Weekly
lay open between them. Like gossipy women all over town, they had immediately convened to discuss the latest revelation in “Fashionable Intelligence” concerning the most unfathomable alliance since . . . well, ever.

“Who would do such a thing?” Miss Falmouth wondered.

“Someone who is desperate,” Lady Katherine said, fussing with her already perfect blond curls. “It all makes sense now.”

“What are you going to do?”

Lady Katherine applied a hint of red paint to her lips. “We are going to pay a call, of course,” she said with a smile.

A secluded corner of Hyde Park

Blake held Emma's hand as she stepped out of the carriage. He watched her expression as her gaze settled upon the ruins of an old gazebo nestled within a small clearing surrounded by gnarled old trees. A mist rose around it and long strands of ivy twined around the balustrade and crept up the columns.

“Blake . . .” Emma said his name cautiously, softly. “What is this?”

Proof. Love. Madness.
More specifically: the ruins of an “ancient” gazebo that he'd had illegally constructed upon public lands, in the span of just three days, all at his great expense. When Blake had visited the day before, the stone appeared too new. So coal fires had burnt at his feet, blackening the stone. Mounds of ivy and huge branches of wisteria had been dug up and replanted.

The effect was perfect: the ruins of an ancient gazebo miraculously left undiscovered in Hyde Park. A tribute to a love story.

But Emma would know the truth. She would know that this monument had never existed until she imagined it and made it the setting of their dramatic and romantic first meeting.

Like their engagement. Their love. Their story. He wanted it to be real

“Why, look at that. It's the ruins of an ancient gazebo,” he remarked lightly because, for all that he was a practiced seducer of women, words of real love were not often uttered. They didn't roll off his tongue like pretty compliments; they stuck in his throat and made it hard to breathe.

“I'm quite certain that wasn't here last week,” Emma said cautiously. “I wonder who would build a deliberately old and crumbling gazebo?”

“A man mad with love?” Blake ventured.

“Or with money to burn,” Emma murmured.

“Emma,” Blake said, clasping her hands and facing her. She lifted her blue eyes to his, searching for answers. And he had them. His heart pounded hard, but hopefully.

“Emma I did this to show my love for you,” he said. But there was a terrific crack of lightning, like the very heavens being ripped and banged open. His words were lost.

“I can't hear you!”

“Never mind,” he muttered, tugging her hand and making a mad dash for the shelter of the gazebo.

White's Gentlemen's Club

The gentlemen of White's were discussing only one thing while they wagered fortunes, puffed deeply on cigars, and consumed copious quantities of wine and brandy: the rumor about Ashbrooke that had appeared in
The London Weekly's
gossip column, “Fashionable Intelligence.”

“Shocking, isn't it?” George said noncommittally to the group when their attentions fixed upon him. Surely the heir to the scandalous man in question would have
some
intelligence on the matter. “When it comes to my cousin, the duke,” he went on, addressing the group, “one scarcely knows what to believe. His reckless romantic streak is well known.”

This was truth. Equally true: one well-­placed remark had called
everything
into question.

At the gazebo

After a mad dash through a sudden deluge, Blake and Emma arrived breathless and wet under the cover of the gazebo.

It had to be noted that Blake looked impossibly handsome when wet. Not that Emma was surprised by it. Still, she thought it tremendously unfair that his hair curled just so, and wonderfully ridiculous that raindrops delicately clung to his long lashes. She knew how she looked after being caught in the rain, and it was rather like a drowned kitten.

But she didn't dwell on that. Her heart understood what this gazebo meant.

This is a grand romantic gesture.

This is what men do when they are in love and lack the vocabulary to express their feelings.

However, her brain shut down operations entirely as it tried to process surprising facts that added up to an unfathomable conclusion:
he
wanted
her.
So much that he went to expensive and possibly illegal lengths to prove it. Emma had read the gossip columns devoted to his previous romantic exploits; none had compared to this.

“Don't you remember, Emma? This is how we first met,” Blake said softly.

“The letters,” she said softly. She felt slightly off balance.

“The letters,” he whispered. His gaze was steady upon her.

Those love letters they had stayed up all night writing. The love story they had bickered over. The disbelief that such an infamous rogue was in her bed and composing wickedly romantic letters to her.

She had never truly imagined this love might be real. Reluctantly she had accepted that he was not that kind of man, she was not that kind of girl, and they didn't live in that kind of world.

Or did they? The marble was cool and wet under her touch.
Real.
She wound a strand of ivy around her finger.
Real.
She turned to face Blake. His expression was serious for once: no devastating grin or mischievous spark in his eyes. His gaze was heavy upon her, as if seeking to ascertain how she felt from a flash in her eyes or a breath caught in her throat.