The Problem with Seduction - By Emma Locke Page 0,6
an innocent baby. It’s not his fault he was born on the wrong side of the blanket.”
Maybe that had been too much. Con had nothing against bastards in general, Oliver in particular, or her, for that matter. Borrowing the baby for an afternoon was just an idea he’d had when his mother had looked at him with eyes filled with disappointment and a sad, brittle smile on her face.
“It was just for the afternoon,” he said suddenly, feeling terrible. He didn’t want to face his mother without his supposed baby, but he also wasn’t a giant cad like everyone seemed to think. “I shouldn’t have slighted your son. I’m sorry.”
“Just the afternoon.” Her voice dripped with disbelief.
No one trusted him anymore. His heels dragged along the carpet as the hulking butler forcibly heaved him from the room instead of setting him down. Con pulled an I suppose this is it face and attempted a shrug, but neither cracked Elizabeth’s pale, stony stare.
When he’d been dragged half the length of the hallway, he realized she thought he meant to take Oliver permanently. Nothing could have scared him to death more than the thought of being saddled with a motherless child. “Elizabeth!” he called down the hallway, “Elizabeth, I think you might have misunderstood me. Really, it was just for the afternoon. It’s about my mother, you see—”
The door slammed hard enough to rattle the portraits on the walls.
Well. That hadn’t gone quite the way he’d intended. His mother was going to be disappointed in him. Again.
At least things couldn’t get much worse.
She’d expected Nicholas. Or at least a fight from Nicholas. The Nicholas Finn she knew never walked away from a good row. In the three years on and off that she’d spent as his mistress, she’d learned precisely how far she could go without driving him to a physical response. Not that sex wasn’t a physical response, a form of punishment for riling him past reason, but he’d never laid a hand on her that she hadn’t secretly wanted.
Her mouth tasted sour now, thinking of his hands on her at all. What a fool she’d been.
She hadn’t expected Lord Constantine just now. And after he left, she knew better than to let her guard down again. She was more prepared to maintain her composure when Nicholas did arrive, shortly after Lord Constantine was tossed out on his backside. Literally tossed, for she’d enjoyed watching from the window as Rand had ejected him from her rented townhouse into the street.
Rand tapped lightly on her door to inform her of Nicholas’s arrival himself. Unlike with Lord Constantine, this time she did give Oliver to his nurse. Though Nicholas had never manhandled her, she couldn’t risk him taking her baby right from her arms.
She paused to check her reflection. The redness in her eyes couldn’t be helped, but she pinched her cheeks to restore some of her natural glow, and twirled her fingers through the curls framing her face to restore the carefully-tonged locks as best she could. Vanity was a courtesan’s primary weapon. Without it, she’d never be able to hold her head high enough to look down her nose at the men who sought to use her.
She made her way to the drawing room. The entire length of the house, she steeled herself against the man she was about to receive.
He stood in her vestibule, looking impatient. She paused at the foot of the stair. Once, her heart had seemed to stop every time she saw him. Nicholas Finn was tall, and possessed of the confidence found in a man who’d scrounged the money to buy a commission, then gone on to earn honors reserved for Britain’s finest men. His wavy brown hair appeared windblown, a careful effect he took pains to perfect. And he was handsome. Of all the men she’d taken into her bed, he’d been the one with the broadest shoulders, the most satisfying to pleasure, with the slightly-too-heavy weight of a man in good health and the strong hands of a skilled lover.
Now when she looked at him, she felt only her own revulsion.
Nicholas waved for her to precede him into her drawing room. Her spine stiffened. “This is my house,” she reminded him, angry that he would attempt to direct her in her own home.
He sighed. His fine brown eyes were weary. “Must you always think I’m out to get you? I merely came to discuss my son.”