Then Comes Seduction

It had been three years. And yet every one of those years had just fallen away. It could have happened yesterday…

The shame of it.

The terrible humiliation.

The hatred-not all of it directed against him.

He had not changed one whit. He was as handsome and as elegant-and as mocking-as ever.

And just as dangerously attractive.

Thank heaven Meg had gone to bed already.

* * *

Not only had young Merton failed to inform Con that he was supposed to call on his female cousins during the evening, but he had also neglected even to tell him that they were in town. If he had done so, Jasper would have heard it too, and he would not have gone within a mile of Berkeley Square tonight or any other night.

But he had gone, so when Katherine Huxtable had come hurrying into Merton’s library, all warm smiles and dazzling beauty and flushed animation, Jasper had been taken completely by surprise.

And he had been caught like a rat in a trap.

Waiting for her to see him. To react. To swoon quite away. To have a fit of the vapors. Or of hysterics. To point accusingly at him and appeal to her male relatives for protection and revenge.

None of which had happened.

What shook him more than anything else, though, was that he instantly remembered every detail of that evening as if it had all been yesterday, when in reality it had been… how long ago? Two years? Three? Four?

A long time ago, anyway.

He was supposed to have forgotten all about it, was he not?

That was the only wager he had ever lost, before or since. Not that he had really lost it. He might have won it with ease with a week and a half to spare. He thought he had long forgotten the whole sorry episode, but if he had forgotten, then why had he been so thunderstruck when she walked into the library?

He noticed that Con hurried her out of the room as fast as he decently could. He had always wondered if Con had ever heard of that wager. Nothing had ever been said between them. He suspected that plenty would have been said, though-and done-if he had ever claimed victory.

Not that Con was anybody’s angel. Far from it. But for some unfathomable reason he seemed fond of his second cousins even though they-or Merton, at least-had taken the title and properties and fortune that would have been his if his father had only married his mother two days sooner than he had. Before Con’s birth, that was, instead of just after it, stranding him forever in the land of the illegitimate and unable-to-inherit. It was impossible to know how Con felt about not being Earl of Merton himself. He never spoke of it.

Perhaps secretly he hated Merton.

Jasper wondered after the evening was over if he should perhaps avoid the main entertainments for the rest of the Season, even the ones to which he had already sent acceptances, and confine his activities to the gentlemen’s clubs and Tattersall’s and Jackson’s boxing saloon and other safe places where he could be certain to meet only gentlemen.

But that would be a craven thing to do. Good Lord, when had he ever hidden from anyone? Was he now going to hide away from a woman whom he had once kissed and fondled and not possessed? He could scarcely believe the idea had even occurred to him.

And what the devil was she doing still unmarried? She must be well into her twenties by now. And no one would ever convince him that she had not had legions of offers over the years. Con had been right about one thing even though he had been teasing her and deliberately flattering her. She was more beautiful now than she had been two years ago-or three or four or however the devil many years it had been. And she had been lovely enough even then, by Jove. She had lost that coltish look in the meanwhile, though she was still slender enough to cause a man to imagine spanning her waist with his two hands and drawing her…

Well. Dash it all.

He decided to honor the invitations he had already accepted, the next one being a grand ball given by the new Lady Parmeter, whose father was a wealthy cit and not a gentleman at all, and who had therefore been willing to invite anyone who was likely to attend.

Even him.

Not that anyone but the very highest sticklers ever pointedly excluded him, it was true, and those were fusty events that he would not have wanted to attend anyway.

Perhaps the Huxtable sisters would be too high in the instep to put in an appearance at the Parmeter ball. Or perhaps they had arrived in town too recently to have been invited at all.

The event was well attended as it turned out, a fact that was no doubt gratifying to Lady Parmeter. There was a crowd in the ballroom when he arrived somewhat late and looked about him after passing along the receiving line.

Almost the first persons he saw were the Misses Huxtable.

Of course.

There was somehow an inevitability to it all.

They ought to have been attracting no attention at all. Miss Huxtable herself was several years older than Katherine Huxtable-the Duchess of Moreland was their sister and between them in age, was she not?-and therefore ought to be dangerously close to being long in the tooth. Yet in reality she was as lovely as her sister, though she was much darker and more voluptuous of figure-more to his usual tastes, in fact.

They were both attracting a great deal of attention, and plenty of prospective dancing partners, a fact that must be somewhat disconcerting to the veritable army of very young ladies making their debuts and attempting to take the ton by storm and lead the most eligible bachelor off in leg shackles.

Jasper spent much of the evening in the card room, where he-and his money-were always welcome. He had little inclination to dance. Which was probably just as well. He still found that there were mothers who looked at him askance as if they thought he was about to lead their daughters to the middle of the dance floor and proceed to ravish them there.

Very often when he attended balls he spent the whole evening in the card room. He did not particularly enjoy dancing. Even less did he enjoy watching ladies and gentlemen of normal good sense mincing or cavorting about a floor trying to look elegant and graceful while at the same time attracting as much admiring attention as possible.

Tonight more than ever he had good reason to keep his nose well clear of the ballroom. But young Merton came looking for him just when he was finishing a hand and gathering in his winnings.

“Ah, there you are, Monty,” he said. “You ought to be dancing. There are so many beauties out there that my eyes are dazzled.”

He grinned cheerfully.

“And I suppose they all want to dance with you,” Jasper said, getting to his feet and setting a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Well,” Merton said sheepishly, “I am Merton, you know.”

“Which fact will endear you to every female heart until you finally marry the owner of one of them,” Jasper said. “But those blond curls and that smile probably have something to do with it too.”

The boy looked like an angel, in fact. Fortunately, he possessed enough spirit and firmness of character to save him from appearing either weak or insipid. Jasper genuinely liked him. And the boy was new in town. It was no wonder if he was attracting far more than his share of female attention.

“Come and meet Meg,” Merton said. “My eldest sister. She did not come down to the library the other evening when Kate did.”

Ah. Now what? Hide himself in another game? Accept the inevitable? He accepted the inevitable, largely because he did not like that word hide.

“My pleasure,” he said with cheerful untruth, squeezing the boy’s shoulder.