Proof by Seduction

His lips whitened. His hands clenched.

Oh, he strove to hide it. But that miserable flinch showed that Lord Blakely could care about someone, much as he tried to deny it.

This tantrum, she realized, was her punishment, unjustly meted out for winning his smile. For breathing warmth into the ice of Lord Blakely. It was his rage, that he’d caused his sister pain, when he’d meant only to keep her safe. Jenny was not the object of his anger, just its recipient. It shouldn’t have made her feel better, to play the scapegoat. And yet it did.

Jenny stretched up and placed her hand against his cheek. A moment of heat; a hint of stubbled roughness.

And then he recoiled as if a beetle crawled across his skin.

Yes. She was going to make him pay for this moment in the very currency he rejected. Heat. Smiles. And, oh— perhaps just a touch of humiliation. He must have seen the promise in her eyes because he backed away.

“Think whatever you like,” he said, retreating toward the crowded, well-lit hall. “Just stay away from my sister.”

JENNY’S HEAD ACHED from exhaustion. Only the sharp chill of the evening and the throb in her feet kept her from falling asleep while standing. Her little party waited for Lord Blakely’s carriage on the stone path leading away from the ball. She’d come from a room crowded with oppressively bright fabrics, rich dyes, jewels and food that must have taken the poor servants days to prepare. But just outside those white stone walls, Mayfair shared the same night as all of England.

No amount of money could drive away the pervasive London fog that shrouded the street in dimness. In the darkness of night, lords and commoners looked much the same.

There were differences. Ned drooped next to Jenny. He yawned; his teeth reflected dim gaslight from the windows behind him. But Lord Blakely stood as straight and crisp as he had at the start of the evening. Jenny was willing to wager his feet didn’t ache in the slightest. Unsurprising; if they were cut from the same stone as his features, they likely lacked nerves with which to feel pain.

“I looked for her,” Ned mumbled through a yawn. “But I couldn’t find her again. Now how do we track her down?”

Lord Blakely looked straight ahead into the gloom. “Simple. We ask for Lady Kathleen Dunning. She’s the Duke of Ware’s daughter, and it appears she’s made her come-out this year.”

“Good.” Ned yawned again. “Your way is clear. Now where’s the carriage?”

Lord Blakely clasped his gloved fingers together. “Coming ‘round the corner. Right … now.”

At Ned’s startled glance, Lord Blakely sighed. “I heard it coming. I know the gait of my own cattle. And if you’d pay any attention to your surroundings, you’d know it, too. Just as you’d know your dear Madame Esmerelda nearly matched me with my own sister. Had you not called attention to the matter with your coughing and hacking, you’d have undeniable proof of her lack of skill at this moment.”

That, at least, Jenny told herself, was unfair. She’d been warned off the lady in question the instant Lord Blakely pretended interest.

“Even then,” Ned mused, “I was wondering—can you unmake sisters the same way you make them?”

A long exhalation from Lord Blakely. “Make sisters?”

“I read about it in a book of Norse mythology. Well, I read about brothers, really, and the making of a blood oath. You cut your palms until they bleed, and press them together so the blood mingles—”

“More claptrap. Must you believe everything you read? One cannot manufacture brotherhood. It arises out of biology and breeding. As you would surely know if you thought at all.”

Ned tried not to react, but Jenny could read his hurt in the turn of his shoulders away from the approaching conveyance. And when it rumbled to a stop, Ned’s fingers clenched hers in bitter shame as he handed her in. Lord Blakely arranged himself precisely on the opposite seat, unaware of the devastation he’d wrought.

Oh, yes. Jenny was going to make him pay.

She leaned forward. “Lord Blakely,” she said, “for all your rational bent, I notice you’re hard at work performing your own particular sort of alchemical magic.”

The marquess’s hand dropped slowly to his knee. “I beg your pardon? Did you accuse me of alchemy?”

“Yes, Master Paracelsus, I believe I did.”

“Explain yourself.” His words huffed out, colder than the clammy fog enveloping their carriage.

“The typical alchemist attempts to transmute lead into gold. But, being stubborn and perverse, you of course have insisted on reversing the process.”

“You’re talking nonsense.”

When Jenny had said the words, she hadn’t known what she intended. But there he was, attempting to distance himself from any hint of irrationality. A plan burst into her mind, brilliant as the midday sun.

“Oh, you’ll figure it out,” she said. She grinned so hard her cheeks hurt. “I’m speaking of the second task.”

For several seconds, the only sound was the clatter of their passage over cobblestones.

“You want me to convert gold into lead?” A hint of bafflement; a touch of disappointment. “I suppose, I should be delighted you have been defeated so easily. After all, if something downright impossible is a precondition for your prediction, you admit your fortune-telling will never come to pass.”

Jenny leaned forward and patted his cheek. “Oh,” she said, “you silly naturalist. Are you always so literal-minded? I’ve watched you turn gold to lead ever since I met you.”