Proof by Seduction (Carhart #1)(43)

She would have to find out sometime.

Jenny inched the door open. But no client of hers waited on the stoop.

“Look here,” Lord Blakely said, “I know you are about to slam this door on my nose. But please don’t.”

Jenny inhaled crisp evening air. Lord Blakely was disheveled in the most casually devastating way. He carried his cravat in his hand and had left his waistcoat unbuttoned. His hair was wind-tousled. The last light of the sun imparted a wild gleam to his eyes. Seductiveness wafted off him, and Jenny was reminded of the rough feel of his mouth against hers.

That memory burned through her. Even the air around him was charged with electric anticipation. From two feet away, she could smell his subtle, masculine musk, feel a hint of the heat from his body. An illusion, most likely, composed of lust and wistful thinking on her part.

But she also remembered the cold disrespect he’d shown her the last time she faced him.

“You have one sentence to explain why I should hear you out.”

He accepted this with far better grace than Jenny expected. “Fair enough.” Lord Blakely glanced up into the air, his lips compressing. His eyes narrowed as he no doubt searched for the argument that would change her mind.

A kiss—a real one, a gentle one, unlike that travesty he’d forced on her two nights ago—might have done the trick. But eventually he shook his head.

“I can only think of lies,” he admitted with a sigh. “Really, you should slam the door. I would, if I were you.”

Jenny fiddled with the handle. “I’m feeling magnanimous tonight, my lord.”

He took a deep breath and stepped forward.

“You can have three sentences.”

At first, she thought that frozen look in his eyes was a warning not to make inappropriate jokes. But then miraculously, he smiled. It was a small smile, a bit rusty, as if his face was still unused to such expressions. But it was genuine. And this time, he didn’t stuff the expression behind stony arrogance. He didn’t turn away. He looked a bit less like an unkempt, untouchable Greek god, and a bit more like an extremely handsome and very touchable mortal.

Jenny’s breath caught.

It was just like him. Lord Blakely hadn’t needed any sentences after all.

He used them anyway.

He looked down and fingered the edge of his coat uncomfortably. “I am,” he said in a rush of words, “desperately sorry for my behavior the other night. What I did was unacceptable. You didn’t slap me nearly hard enough.”

Whatever Jenny had expected, it wasn’t that. Her mouth dropped open. “Why would you bother to apologize to me? I should have thought my feelings beneath your notice.”

“I’m not apologizing to you to assuage your feelings.” That icy outrage was more like the Lord Blakely Jenny remembered. “I’m apologizing to you because I damn well owe you an apology.” He nodded, as if that explained everything.

“Lord Blakely,” Jenny asked, “do you have any idea what an apology is?”

He raised one haughty eyebrow at her. “I have some small acquaintance with the concept,” he said in his most freezing tone. And then, he rather ruined the proud expression by adding, “I asked White.”

Jenny’s head spun. “Who?”

“My man of business.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest, guarding against her laugh. “I’m not expecting anything in response.”

But his gaze arrested on her lips and gave the lie to his statement. “Besides, I’m supposed to meet Ned at eight sharp, and so I can’t stay. I just wanted to tell you.” He looked away. “And now I have.”

That look, Jenny thought, would be her undoing. “Do you have five minutes?” she heard herself ask. “I’ve just put on the teakettle.” Jenny nearly bit her tongue. Tea was normal. Mundane. Mortal. One didn’t ask the Marquess of Blakely in for a cup of tea.

He looked at her with guarded wariness. And then, wonder of wonders, he nodded.

A minute later, Lord Blakely was seated at the table in her back room with a clay mug in front of him. He’d looked speculatively around her stripped-down front room, her rickety wood tables freed from their heavy black shrouds. But he hadn’t asked any questions. And when she’d led him down the short hall into her living space in the back room, he hadn’t so much as wrinkled his nose at the close quarters. He’d sat in a squeaking chair at the table where Jenny ate her meals. He’d waited quietly while she readied the leaves. After she poured, he picked up the cup and turned it around in his hands. Jenny imagined him cataloging every imperfection in its surface, every chip at its edge.

“I don’t have any sugar to offer you,” she eventually essayed.

“Sugar.” Lord Blakely’s nostrils flared. “I do not take sugar,” he said in a voice of disdain.

It was the same tone of loathing Jenny imagined a bloodthirsty pirate would have employed to say, “I do not take prisoners.”

Lord Blakely did not, in fact, take prisoners. What he took instead was a cautious sip of tea.

“White,” he said rather stiffly, “says that an apology given to a woman needs to be accompanied by at a minimum, flowers. He also told me you would ask what I was sorry for. And that I would not have a good answer to the question.” He glanced up at her, swiftly, and then returned to contemplation of his cup. “White is very competent. It is disconcerting to discover that he is not correct in every particular.”