The Problem with Seduction - By Emma Locke Page 0,74
lot and offer the ladies a chance to stretch their legs. They’d sip cool lemonades while he changed horses—egad, horses.
He’d have to accept her help, at least for now. He was no provider. He was a failure, or worse yet, an impostor. A shoddy one, at that. All of London knew the truth. He was her cicisbeo, of a sort. The realization didn’t improve his mood.
He rapped Elizabeth’s knocker and shifted impatiently from foot to foot. By the time the door opened, Con was perspiring as if he’d already walked down the aisle. “Lord Constantine for Lady Elizabeth,” he said. Only when the footman’s eyes widened did Con realize what he’d said.
When had he started calling her Lady Elizabeth?
He was shown into the drawing room he’d vacated not an hour before. The combination of feeling tethered down, his brother’s suspicion that he was ignorant of the tangle he’d got himself into, and the possibility that his canal, too, would fail, was enough to have him at sixes and sevens by the time Elizabeth entered the room.
“My lord?” She’d changed into a simple gown. The turban was once again wrapped about her hair. Far from the woman who ate berries while reclining on a chaise longue, she’d likely been on her feet since he’d left her last.
A glance in the mirror at his own reflection showed a man who appeared a little unhinged. “My brother has informed me that there is a situation at the canal. I want to leave tonight.”
“Tonight? But that’s impossible.” She pressed her hands together. Bit her lip. Her gaze flicked to her left, then rose to meet his eyes. The discomfited surprise he saw in those orbs caused him to lose the last vestiges of his tenuous control.
“You know about the lock.” Each word was an accusation.
“I… Yes.” She dropped her hands. Her chin notched up. He would have believed a pretense of innocence, but this. She’d known and not told him and she wasn’t the least bit sorry to have done it, just sorry to have been caught.
But he couldn’t believe even that. Because…
He couldn’t forget the way she’d kissed him. Like she needed him. It had been an act. Was this an act?
Were they not in this together?
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her lips quirked. “You were trying to get under my skirts. I was distracted.”
“When did you hear of it? Was it in the papers?” He prayed not. Because if it had been right there in The Times for him to read, and he hadn’t bothered to look, he’d feel like even more of an idiot.
Even Montborne knew about the troubles at the site.
She continued to regard him with her chin lifted and her shoulders set. “Contrition” didn’t seem to be a line in her playbook. “My solicitor told me.”
That caused him to feel a bit better about himself, though it didn’t help his opinion of her. “When?”
She shrugged. “Today.”
Today? She’d known today? Hadn’t she gone to Bond? Even he knew there were no solicitors on Bond. Or had that been part of her misleading him, too?
His sense of betrayal doubled. When he’d been kissing her, showing her how much he desired her, she’d been harboring information he desperately needed. Why hadn’t she told him? And no, he didn’t accept that tale about her being distracted. She’d been aware of herself the entire time.
He was the one who’d been distracted. “Did you mean to tell me, at least?”
Listen to him. How many second chances was he willing to give her?
Her lips softened. Her eyes closed halfway, relaxing into a heady invitation. Even her voice took on a seductive note. “As I said, my lord, I did mean to tell you, but it slipped my mind.”
He went cold.
Her eyes went bright and bold again. Her shoulders twitched, as if she’d shaken herself from a trance. Because his revulsion at her game was so obvious?
She turned away. So that he couldn’t witness her regroup?
The feeling that he was being played multiplied. “In the future, so there is no mistake, I want to know when you learn of information that pertains to me.”
As the words passed his lips, he realized her motive. It came instantly, as obvious as the nose on his face. So long as he remained destitute, he was at her beck. She had no incentive to help him out of the poorhouse permanently. None at all.
When she spun to face him, her lips were parted. Her eyes looked stricken. But he didn’t buy her