Proof by Seduction (Carhart #1)(30)

Madame Esmerelda blushed pink, one hand on her throat. How strange.

“—wince as I finish the last line without any sense of meter or rhyme,” Blakely concluded.

There was a moment of silence. Blessed silence. The glances around Ned all said the same thing—Dear God, please tell us it’s over. Blakely eyed the gathering with his typical lofty indifference, daring them to boo.

They did not dare. Ned could see the thoughts skim through their minds. He was a marquess, after all. Perhaps things were different in Brazil. The performance was exotic. It was short. And it wasn’t much more dreadful than the Chinese opera that had been performed last year.

“Bravo!” Ned called. He applauded madly. Thankfully, everyone joined in.

Blakely bowed, rather stiffly, and picked his way through the rows toward his seat. He didn’t even make eye contact with Ned, didn’t acknowledge that Ned had just saved him.

Ha. Just because Blakely had no humility didn’t mean Ned couldn’t try to humiliate him further.

“Encore!” Ned shouted.

Blakely fixed Ned with a look that promised eventual dismemberment. Luckily for the future attachment of Ned’s limbs, nobody else took up the cry. Blakely made his way through the seats amidst very polite, and not particularly encouraging, applause.

He brushed by Ned and had reached his seat on the other side of Madame Esmerelda, when the annoying woman on Ned’s right leaned over.

“Lord Blakely,” she said. “What an unusual style. I just want to know—who is Ned?”

Ned suppressed a grin. That, perhaps, was the best part. Almost everyone thought of him as Mr. Carhart. Just Carhart, to the friends he’d made at school. Only near family—he included Madame Esmerelda in that number, of course—called him “Ned.”

Blakely arranged the tails of his coat and sat down, straight-backed, before answering. “A person.” No further encouragement passed his lips.

“Oh.” A pause. “Is the style intended to be sung like that?”

Ned felt perfectly free to twit his own cousin, but he’d be damned if he let anyone else do it. “Dissonance,” Ned said airily, “is all the rage abroad this year. It’s such a shame London is behind the times.”

Blakely’s brows drew down and he shot Ned an unreadable look.

Ned decided to feel encouraged. An unreadable response was heaps better than an unprintable one.

Two tasks completed; one more to go. Now Ned only had to sit through the remainder of tonight’s entertainment—which had suddenly become much more entertaining. Was Lady Kathleen watching Blakely? Had she been won over by that awful performance? For the fourth time that evening, he swiveled in his seat and glanced toward Lady Kathleen’s position. Four, he told himself, was a commendably low number. He might have glanced at anyone four times. Perhaps five would not be—

Except she wasn’t in her seat. Ned looked up, to see her brushing her way past the last seats in the row. Nobody looked at her; all eyes were riveted on the opera singer who had just begun an aria far more melodic than the previous song. Lady Kathleen glanced around the room and Ned quickly turned away.

When he looked back, she was ducking through a door. How odd. It was the second time Ned had seen her leave some entertainment through a servants’ entrance.

Without thinking, he stood. And he followed.

As soon as he’d closed the tiny door, muting the music behind him, he dashed after her. “Lady Kathleen!”

She turned around. “Oh. It’s Madman Carhart. And you’re alone.”

Ned halted. She’d discovered his name—good. But she doubted his sanity. Bad. Very bad.

She shook her finger at him. “We haven’t been introduced. I don’t think you should speak to me. And you definitely should not be with me unaccompanied.”

“Nonsense,” Ned said. “You know my name. I know yours.” He put out his hand. “Let’s just shake like gentlemen and be friends.”

Her gaze arrested on his outstretched fingers.

“Right.” Ned balled his hand into a fist and pulled it back slowly. “Ladies don’t shake hands. Never mind, then.”

Her gaze had followed his hand. “Do you realize there are toothmarks on your glove?”

Ned whipped his hand behind his back. His ears burned. “I bit myself,” he explained. “I was trying not to laugh at Blakely. You would have done it, too.”

“Bit you?” She raised one eyebrow. And then, as if she’d realized what she had said, she flushed. It was the first hint of unease Ned had seen her exhibit. But she didn’t turn away in embarrassment. She didn’t even glance away demurely. She met his gaze steadily. “Your entire family is mad, you know.”

“Oh, no,” Ned said. “Just Blakely. He’s been like that for ages. I, on the other hand, am completely sane. Just—just a little—nervous, you know.”

“You should be, following me like that.” She shook her head. The motion was almost severe, but the tone of her voice had softened. “You really ought to leave, I suppose, before someone spies us alone like this and assumes the worst.”

Ned was not yet willing to be dismissed. “Well, if you didn’t go charging off alone into the servants’ corridors, you wouldn’t have that problem.”