How to Seduce a Bride

surrounded them, until he’d shocked her. Again he seemed to have woven a net around her, becoming the only person in her immediate world. She had to respond in some way.

“I don’t have to answer that,” she said.

He shrugged. “No, you don’t. But you don’t deny it, so that’s an answer in itself. So I’ll ask another. Are your intentions honorable?”

Now she did laugh. “Yes, of course,” she said. “Look, my lord, I come from prison, but I committed no crime. I lived among criminals for years, so I, of all people, know the penalties for mischief. But why would I want to make any? Have you thought of that? I just want to live in peace and tranquillity. That’s my goal; those are my intentions.”

He leaned back and looked at her with lazy amusement.

“And now I’ve a question for you,” she said. “If Geoff’s your good friend, then why are you making such a dead set at me yourself?”

He laughed. “If I knew Geoff was serious about you, my dear,” he said softly, “I wouldn’t go near you. But I don’t know that. Do you?”

She shook her head. “No. But if he was, I’d like it, very much.”

“I see. And why don’t you think I’m your friend?”

“Because friends don’t try to seduce friends.”

He laughed again “I can’t argue that,” he said. “But what better way to make friends?”

Now she knew he was joking. She studied him. Again he dominated the scene and made her forget all others. But why? He was tall, fair, and not very handsome. For reasons she still didn’t completely understand, he was also undeniably and utterly desirable. There! She’d thought it and wouldn’t deny it. It was amazing that he made her feel such stirrings that she’d even think about such a thing.

But he was more than seductive. She believed he was, even with his less than honorable intentions toward her, an honorable man. She hadn’t met many, but she knew one when she found one. He deserved an answer.

“Geoff was a gentleman to me when no one treated me like a person, much less a lady,” she told him. “When I was sixteen I married a man I hated, because it was my father’s wish. And, I admit, I was afraid of what would happen to me if I didn’t. It was hell. Now I’m free, but I find I’m not. I can’t be, without a husband. I don’t want affaires, or amusements, or a life in the heights of Society. I just want to be left in peace. I want to be loved by a good, decent man and not plagued by others. That’s it, that’s all, but that’s what I want. Now, can you see anything wrong with that?”

It was his turn to study her. Then he looked over her shoulder. “There,” he said. “Look there, to your left. That woman in the yellow gown?”

She turned her head to see a brown-haired woman of middle years, with a thick body that showed too plainly in her thin, expensive silken gown. If she hadn’t had such a disagreeable expression, she might have been somewhat attractive. But the expression seemed part of her general slumped, disconsolate pose.

“Lady Blodgett married at seventeen,” he said softly. “It was a match made by her family, which is not uncommon. She’s had four children in the seven years since. I know, as the world does, that she despises her husband, Lord Blodgett.”

As Daisy tried to register the fact that the woman was near her own age, Leland went on, “And there, behind her. The lady in scarlet with the improbably red hair? Nothing like the glorious natural sunrise of your own. But do you see the redhead with so many plumes in her hair she looks like a demented macaw? She’s the life of every soiree and a dashing and desperate flirt. She was married, at eighteen, by her family’s decree, to a man more than twice her age. He’s not her love, or anyone else’s; he’s a thoroughly nasty piece of work. But Lady Blodgett is the one that has affairs, not the chattering macaw. She only drinks her way through every social occasion.”

He looked at her again. “I’m sorry, Daisy, but however terrible your circumstances, they weren’t unique; you’re not the only female ever forced into marriage with a lout. You were in prison, true. But theirs was the prison of convention. Yes, you faced privation. But theirs wasn’t an easy path, either. Do you think it matters? Do you think if they’d a second chance, if their husbands keeled over tonight and set them free, that they’d be content with mere peace in the future? I doubt it. They’d look for joy. Life is to be lived while it can be, Daisy. Peace comes to all of us sooner or later, the eternal kind. Turmoil isn’t all bad, and life can never be lived in peace until you find it for yourself, within yourself.”

He stopped, and then surprised her by laughing out loud. “Oh Lord,” he said, running a hand over his eyes. “Did you hear that? What claptrap. What right have I to recommend something I’ve never found?” His eyes were dark as the sky above them as he stared down at her. “But that’s what I believe, Daisy. That’s what I want to believe.”

He shook his head. “And I never even mentioned the best reason for marrying a man of an appropriate age. What an oversight, especially from me! Pleasure in the marriage bed, my dear,” he said, bending his head and whispering. “If it’s good, it’s worth twenty years of peace, any day or night.”

She shivered at the feeling of his warm, whispered breath on her ear. “Do you mean to discourage Geoff about me?”

He cocked his head to the side. “You disappoint me, Daisy; you cut me to the quick. No, I don’t. I just wonder if you’ve thought it through. Because if you decide a decade from now, when Geoff may need you most, that you’d rather play in another bed than sleep in his, you might very well break his heart. I’ve seen that happen. I’ve no wish for Geoff to feel what my father did, though I’ll allow that I like him much more than I did that sorry old man. My father doubtless deserved what he got, but sometimes I wonder if that didn’t make him what he became.

“Mama cuckolded him with a Gypsy, to start, which is how I got my half brother, Daffyd. It didn’t stop there. She became more discreet, as well as less fertile, but no more constant. Don’t do that to Geoff, whatever you do, Daisy. Because that, I couldn’t stand, or stand for.”

“And all this is for Geoff?” she asked.

“Why no,” he said, with a huge smile. “Of course not. It may have been at first, but now? I want you; of course you know that.”

She stood a moment, staring at him, and then she sighed. “Well, keep wanting, if it makes you happy.”

“The point is, I’d like to make you happy.”

“Ha!” she said without humor. “Much luck with that. The best way to do that is to forget your desires. I don’t share them, I don’t like them, so you might as well cut line, and that’s the truth.”

“Them?” he asked.

“Don’t play the fool, you know exactly what I mean!” she said angrily. “What you were talking about.”

He looked puzzled.

“The marital act,” she whispered.

He frowned in incomprehension.

“Coupling, having it off, swiving, f-you know what I’m saying,” she hissed.

“Oh,” he said so blandly, she knew he’d understood right away and had been toying with her. “I see. So why do you want to marry Geoff? He’s a vigorous man, and though he plays the doting papa with you, I assure you he is not a monk. There’s a certain widow in Claridges Street who’d swear, happily, to that, too. She’s not the only one. He prefers relationships to encounters, but that’s not always possible.”

Daisy stared.

“Poor Daisy,” he said softly, his eyes caressing her. “You didn’t know? If you think he’d be a safe harbor from demands of the flesh, I promise you that isn’t so. If you love the man, you’ll have to love him body and soul. Come, you’re no fool. Your late husband was doubtless a beast; that doesn’t mean all men are. So many women wouldn’t be mad about lovemaking if that were true. I’d love to show you why.”

“I’m sure you would!” she said, and scowled, knowing that was a feeble retort. But she had to think about what he’d said as much as about how he made her feel just by being close, before she could come up with something clever. “I’d like to go in now,” she said stiffly. “Geoff must be wondering where I am.”

“Doubtless,” he said calmly, and offered her his arm.

“Excuse me, my lord, but have you seen Mrs. Tanner?” Helena asked the earl breathlessly. “I’ve been looking everywhere for her.”