The Problem with Seduction - By Emma Locke Page 0,47

imply means,” Con supplied with just a bit of an edge, not amused to hear a destitute comrade denigrated. “He’s dead broke and everyone knows it.”

She smiled as if he’d said something patently ridiculous. “Lady Violet is a duke’s daughter. Her father wouldn’t have wanted it known that she’d been compromised, especially on a wager.”

He knew that. It just made him feel lesser, and he didn’t like the feeling. “Please, go on. I shouldn’t have been rude.”

She shrugged. The light shawl around her shoulders slipped, revealing one palm-sized swath of creamy flesh. “I only know of it because Hennig thought nothing of spreading it among the demimondaines. We shared a good laugh at Kinsey’s expense, imagining him running away from Avondale in the dark, his breeches ripped from his arse to his knees from the fall through the trees.” She laughed at the image. He could swear her eyes reflected the candlelight like sapphires… except that was possibly the stupidest thought he’d ever had.

Viscount Kinsey’s predicament, on the other hand, was an amusing image, even if Con wished it had turned out better for the pup. “I would have done it,” he said. “I would have done a much better job of it, too.”

Elizabeth’s chestnut brows arched in a perfect, narrow arc. She sipped her wine and contemplated him. “I think Lady Violet would have preferred you.”

His neckcloth chafed against his neck. Either his clothes had become too tight or his head was swelling to an alarming proportion. “I would have done it for half.” Somehow it sounded like a boast. “The absolute worst I can imagine is Avondale holding a fowling piece to the back of my head as I took a trip down the aisle with his daughter. I’d have been better off than just fifty guineas, mark my word.”

Her arched eyebrows became alarmingly peaked. “I thought my lord deplored the idea of being a bauble on a woman’s arm.”

She had him there. He leaned back in his chair, amused by her quick rejoinder. “That’s not the same.”

She motioned for one of the footmen to refill her wineglass. “Because you are doing the choosing, in this case.” She swirled the liquid so that it coated the crystal vessel like her voice coated his insides. “It would have been your idea to compromise her. But what about her? I said she might have preferred you to serenade her, not that you would be her choice of husband. A lifetime with the wrong man is…” She laughed darkly. “Forever.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t have thought of her feelings,” he admitted. “Aside from my mother, I rarely sit and talk with a woman as if she were a friend.” Looking back now, the day Elizabeth had leaned over his shoulder and inquired as to whether he could use a few quid had been the most bizarre moment of his life. What had he been thinking?

He’d made Kinsey look like a measured, logical fellow.

Yet he couldn’t regret that he’d done it. In the last few days, he’d begun to feel worldlier than in all his twenty-nine years put together. If his only penance was the occasional dinner with a beautiful, charming and interesting woman, then he ought to be able to tough out his sentence.

She was looking at him placidly, as if waiting for him to continue. What had he been saying? It was hard to keep his thoughts in order when she hung on his words like that.

“You were admitting we’re friends,” she said, gently prodding him.

“I wasn’t,” he said before he realized he had been. He liked her. At least, he liked her when she wasn’t making him rock-hard and confusing things with lust.

Her wine swirled hypnotically in her glass, but she didn’t drink. She looked in no hurry to move on to dessert. “What of your investments? What have you learned about them since returning to London?”

Even in his mellowed state, he recognized the subject had been changed deftly. But they were friends, were they not? She already knew his embarrassing shortcomings. “More delays. More unrest in the factories. Maybe I wouldn’t actually have taken Hennig’s wager a month ago. Today?” He shook his head. “I have news that makes me desperate.”

“Oh? What happened?” She didn’t seem disappointed to hear he’d encountered yet another problem, merely curious. He was glad for it. She was a right sort, she was.

A footman slipped a slice of cake beside his elbow and whisked away his dinner plate, but he barely noticed. For some reason,