Proof by Seduction (Carhart #1)(46)
“Nobody’s called me Gareth in twenty-four. I’ll not go another day without hearing it.”
Church bells struck the hour. It was the first event outside the two of them Jenny noticed. The heavy vibration from those deep tones echoed through her, a reverberation of the pleasure he sent through her with his touch. She counted the strokes. One, two…
His thumb stroked across her bare nipple again. “God almighty,” he whispered against her neck. “Please tell me your name.”
Three, four, five. Jenny rang like that bell. She tried to remember all the reasons why she couldn’t tell him her name. Six. Why she couldn’t allow him, naked and virile, into bed with her. Seven. Why he couldn’t sink into her right now, stretching her wide. Eight, and the bells stopped.
Eight o’clock.
Another echo, this one in her own mind. His words, at the beginning, before he’d even entered her rooms.
It was now eight o’clock in the evening.
Jenny straightened, her hands flying to her cheeks in horror. “Ned!”
“Ned?” She felt his thighs contract. He drew back, a scowl on his face. His tone was formal, with just a hint of offended sanctimony. “My name is Gareth.”
Jenny shook her head in exasperation. “Your cousin Ned.”
He sat, still and wary as a crouching leopard. He didn’t even blink. But she felt understanding come to him in the gradual contraction of his muscles. First the thighs that supported her. The tension traveled up his shoulders, through his hands. Finally, she saw fine, dark lines spread like a net across his face.
He let out a breath. “Ned. Ah, yes. Ned. I had completely forgotten. Do I have to go to him?”
The last question made him sound like a plaintive child. But he made the decision without Jenny saying a word. She could see his choice in the squaring of his shoulders. As if he were hefting a great weight in donning the mantle of Lord Blakely. He’d said he would meet his cousin at eight, and so meet the boy he would. His implacable honor and responsibility allowed no other option.
She stumbled to her feet, freeing him of her weight. He adjusted his clothing—fastening buttons, brushing his coat into some semblance of order. He didn’t look at her.
“I will return.” He fastened his cravat around his neck with the air of one tying a hangman’s noose. “As soon as is practicable. It’s only fifteen minutes there and back. This shouldn’t take long.”
He paused, his hand resting on her naked shoulder. And then he walked away.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A BLAST OF HEAT from the massed, milling bodies struck Gareth in the face as he entered the crowded room at the Arbuthnots’. He was already overheated from hurrying, and tense with thwarted desire.
Under the best of circumstances, he despised crowds. They made any room feel a bit too small. They stank, scents of human sweat layering atop rosewater and jasmine in nauseating fashion. And even though he knew rationally it was not so, he always felt as if everyone were looking at him.
This crowd was no more appealing than usual. He scanned male faces, attached to somber black suits, looking for his cousin. Next to him, a majordomo announced him in a carrying tone.
So intent was he in his search for Ned that at first Gareth didn’t notice the preternatural hush that fell. But it was unmistakable. For several moments, there was neither a clink of glass nor one single out-of-place whisper. At first, he attributed the odd sensation to temporary mental disorder brought on by unfulfilled lusts. Then he thought it a simple lull in conversation. A statistical anomaly, to be sure, but the anomalous occurred all the time.
But the sea of surrounding wide-eyed faces aligned toward Gareth like iron filings in a magnetic field. In a single gut-clenching moment, he realized the silence was not happenstance. Everyone really was looking at him. And—a quick check—he’d buttoned his jacket properly and his cravat was not askew.
Three seconds after the hush fell, conversation swelled about him in renewed fervor. He snatched pieces of conversation. “Carhart” he heard from an elderly lady. He strained his ears listening for others. But they were indistinct in the hubbub. “Embrace,” he heard quite clearly. And “compromise.”
Not three words he wanted to hear in close connection. Perhaps there was a perfectly reasonable explanation. There was no need to panic just yet. For instance, what the matron had whispered could very well have been something like, “It’s a good thing Mr. Edward Carhart has finally decided to embrace reality and come to a reasoned compromise with his cousin.”
It could have been.
And the hostess could have suspended the law of gravity for this fête.
Slowly, Gareth made his way through the densely packed crowds. They opened around him. Nobody spoke to him. Nobody even looked at him.
As he walked, those he neared shut their mouths and kept quiet. It was incredibly annoying. The first time he actually wanted to overhear a conversation, and nobody dared oblige him. Gareth did manage to grasp a few pieces here and there. Every phrase he heard was like picking up a sharp shard of glass, painted in a distinct color. Individually, the pieces meant nothing; a blur of color, a few lines. But by the time he reached the other end of the hall, he’d obtained enough bits to construct a damning—and damnable—mosaic.
Ned had been caught sharing an indiscreet embrace with Lady Kathleen, who was now considered thoroughly compromised. In the intervening minutes since this had happened, Ned had been punched in the nose, and he’d bled through somewhere between two and five handkerchiefs. Whether the punch had been thrown by the lady herself or by her father, the Duke of Ware, was unknown.