Proof by Seduction (Carhart #1)(91)

“You looking for Madame Esmerelda?”

Gareth whirled around and craned his neck upward. A woman stood behind another door. “Where is she?”

“She left. Took all her things, she did. Flat’s empty—and I should know, ’cause I wanted to pick through what she’d left behind, and there were none of it.”

“Well, where did she go?”

The woman shrugged. “She’s a Gypsy, ain’t she? Who knows where she went?”

A cold hand caressed Gareth’s heart. “But she left a message for me, didn’t she?”

The woman shrugged apathetically. “I can’t say as she did. If you’re wanting your fortune told, I imagine I could make shift. She told me how it were done the once.”

A second roaring sounded in his ears. He’d realized Jenny was too good for him. He hadn’t expected her to discover it, too. Foolishly, he’d hoped she would remain so deluded as to welcome his suit. But why should she sit at home? Jenny didn’t mope. She acted.

What an idiot he was. She was the irreplaceable one. She could have any man she wanted. She wouldn’t even have to lie to get a quarter of them.

“Did she leave a message for anyone?”

The woman peered down at him craftily. “Well, I suppose I could ask the spirits—”

“The spirits can go hang,” Gareth muttered, and turned savagely on his heel.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

GARETH HAD COME to his wits’ end by the time he thought to ask his cousin for Jenny’s whereabouts. He burst into the Carhart breakfast room at ten in the morning after a sleepless night.

For once, Ned was properly dressed and shaved, sitting before a well-stocked china plate. Gareth was the one out of place. He’d abandoned his cravat long before, and his hair was disheveled and dusty. Nothing so trivial as attire mattered; he had to find Jenny.

“Ned,” Gareth said. “Have you any idea where Jenny has gone?”

Ned carefully set down his fork. “Gareth. I see you’ve returned to town for my wedding. Thank you for your fine felicitations. Your manners, as always, are impeccable.”

“Hang your wedding,” Gareth said. “Hang Ware and his daughter and your mother. And hang you, for not answering my question.”

Ned shook his head. “You’re not talking sense, Gareth.”

“And since when do you call me by my Christian name? I’ve never given you leave. You’ve never done it before.”

Ned opened his right hand and looked at it. Then he smiled and clenched the hand into a fist.

“That,” Ned said, “is a present from Jenny. She told me I could. In fact, she ordered me to do so. She said somebody had to keep you in line. I’ve been trying to work on my resolve, so I figured that someone had better be me.”

Gareth scowled and scuffed his foot against the floor. Of course Jenny would do that. She’d thought of Gareth, of how he hated his title. He’d let her go; but she hadn’t abandoned him.

Ned pushed his chair back and strode closer. “That, as I said, was a present from Jenny. This is a present from me.”

He slammed his fist into Gareth’s face. Stars burst across Gareth’s vision, and he went flying. He crashed on the floor and skidded ignominiously into a wall. For a stunned moment, he lay there, too shocked to even catalog his hurts. But then his jaw started throbbing and a sharp network of needles lanced through his back where he’d struck the floor.

He opened his eyes to see Ned standing over him.

“What in blazes was that for?”

“You think just because you’re a marquess you can take advantage of any woman you choose?”

“I didn’t—”

“And leave her destitute? Alone?”

“I offered—”

Ned shook his head. “You offered her no real choice but to flee to another country.”

The pain in Gareth’s jaw was nothing to the impact of those words, slamming into his chest like a hatchet. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t breathe. He doubled over on the ground. When he could finally catch his words, he pleaded. “Where? When? And how do I get her back?”

“You don’t, you ass.”

“I know I’m an ass. I’m an idiot. But I’ll do anything to get her back.”

Ned tapped his fingers against the leg of his trousers. “What are your intentions?”

“Exceedingly dishonorable,” Gareth confessed. “If I have to trick her into marrying me, I will.”

Ned’s fingers stilled, his mouth falling open. “Marriage. You? Where’s the advantage in that for her?” He looked off to the side, his lips moving.

Perhaps he was totting up the many times that Gareth had failed him. Gareth feared that balance sheet. “Don’t you see,” he broke in, “if you do the accounting, I’ll never come out even. I can’t do this—I can’t make up for anything without her. Not with you. Not with Laura. I know you’re counting all the ways you can pay me back—”

Ned looked at Gareth in mild surprise. “Actually,” he said, “I was counting the hours until her ship sails. And trying to think of a reason I should let you have a single one. I’d like her last memories of England to be pleasant. Why should I let you ruin them?”