Proof by Seduction (Carhart #1)(14)
If that’s what you fear, then you shouldn’t marry him.
But saying that would be stupid and utterly selfish. Because Gareth couldn’t shake the fear in his own mind that once she married, she would have no further need of her inept brother. She would figure out that these afternoons were a waste, and Gareth would be utterly displaced. Her invitations would slow from monthly to bimonthly events. They would eventually turn into salutations exchanged in passing at the opera. If Laura were at all rational, she’d have stopped inviting him years ago.
A real older brother would know precisely how to reassure his sister at a moment like this. He’d be able to alleviate the agitation that had her wringing the neck of her reticule. He would tell jokes and solve all her problems. But Laura had an ungainly lump of a brother, all marquess, and Gareth hadn’t the faintest idea how to comfort anyone.
Just as she always invited him, Gareth always tried. “If you’re really worried your fiancé won’t like you, I’ll double your settlement.”
Her eyes widened, and her mouth crumpled.
“What?” he asked. “What did I say this time?”
“Is that what you think of me, Blakely?” Laura choked on the words. “You think you have to bribe Alex to care for me? That nobody will love me unless you pay him?”
No.
Gareth had hoped to buy Laura’s love for himself. How could he make her see? He’d tried to bail himself out of these situations before, but all he ever managed was to reduce her to tears. Once a conversation started sinking, there was little choice but to abandon ship. Long experience had taught him that the way not to respond in situations like this was to enumerate the ways in which she was wrong. Somehow, every time he tried to explain that he hadn’t meant what she heard, it came out sounding like “you are an irrational goose.”
Instead of allaying her fears, he sat in his chair and gripped his plate until the delicate edge of the china cut into his hands.
Then he’d been silent too long, an entire species of error in its own right.
“Very well.” Laura’s voice trembled. “Double it. I don’t care.”
Nothing had changed since she was four except the chairs. He was still ruining everything.
Madness, a physician had once told Gareth, was repeating the same events over and over while hoping for a different result. That was why Gareth had no fear he would fall in love, no matter what Madame Esmerelda predicted for him. Love was watching his sister choke back tears. Love hoped that month after month, she would continue to issue invitations. And love believed, against all evidence, that one day, he would get it right, that he would learn to talk to her as a brother instead of the cold, unfeeling man she must have believed him to be.
In short, love was madness.
CHAPTER FOUR
HE’D EMBARKED on a new species of madness, Gareth thought as he shifted on the soft squabs of the closed carriage. It was the night of the coming-out ball that he and Ned were to attend. It had been almost a week since he left Madame Esmerelda’s quarters, and the visceral pull she had on him should have waned. Tonight he would take the first step in breaking her power over Ned.
And yet…
He had thought he’d figured out Madame Esmerelda. Classified her, genus and species. One fraud, first class; motivated by greed. That ambition on her part was no doubt intensified by an early childhood where she’d not fit a predefined role. And, luckily for him, she was as susceptible as he to the powerful lust that burned between them.
Having identified the problem, the solution seemed obvious: Execute her tasks with maximum alacrity and minimum embarrassment, thus exposing her perfidy to Ned. Take her to bed, enjoy her thoroughly and dispel his unfortunate attraction to her in the most pleasurable manner possible.
He chanced a glance across the seat. She sat properly, her feet crossed and put to the side to avoid his own limbs. She had very carefully avoided his gaze all evening. Without saying a word to him, though, she’d destroyed the mental identification he’d made. She’d become an anomaly. Gareth’s ordered mind abhorred anomalies.
Correction: Gareth loved anomalies. An anomaly meant there was a scientific mystery to explore. It meant some mysterious unknown cause had come into play, and if he could just examine the problem from the right angle, he could be the first person in the world to solve the puzzle. No; the scientist in Gareth adored conundrums. It was the marquess in him, the responsible Lord Blakely, who feared the consequences.
Because under the circumstances, it was dreadfully inconvenient to adore anything about her.
The first burning question in his mind was—why that gown? Oh, he’d sunk to new lows, contemplating a woman’s wardrobe. Gareth was hardly an arbiter of fashion, but even he knew that these days the waist was fashionably pulled in by means of some corsetted contraption. Necklines skimmed the br**sts. And sleeves were supposed to balloon like enraged puffer-fish.
He’d looked forward to seeing that remarkable bosom framed by a fashionably low neckline. He’d have engaged in some chance ogling or a brush of his hands against a creamy collarbone. In the dress he had envisioned, such accidents would have been delightfully inevitable.
But instead Madame Esmerelda’s dress was brown—almost black, in the dimness of the carriage. The neck was unmodishly high, and the sleeves had only a hint of a puff to them. No lace, no ribbons and no fancy gold trim. No shaping of the figure.