Page 31 of A Perfect Gentleman

Abigail was an expert at deception. After all, until he’d found her going out in the night to secret meetings and threatening him with divorce, she had convinced him that she knew nothing of her father’s machinations.

She was already determined to make him dance to her tune. How much would she be able to twist and turn him to her will if she was able to reach his emotions? She could turn him into nothing more than a puppet.

But surely he was not so weak a man that he would allow her to control him. Could he not maintain his reserve and wariness where she was concerned?

Yes, she was attractive and he felt a certain amount of desire for her—very well, a large amount of desire for her—but at some point passion would fade. Then they could settle into a distant relationship, maintain a formal civility. It wasn’t as if he were spineless. He knew better by now than to trust her. He would not allow her to worm her way into his affections.

He had hurt her pride when he’d rejected her. The bitterness in her tone, despite her light words, made that clear. And he was sorry for that, no matter what he thought of her character. He could understand why she thought he owed her something.

Perhaps he did. It was scarcely fair to deny a woman a child, the thing most women longed for. She was as tied to him as he was to her. He sometimes thought with regret about not having children. How much more so would a woman?

It would have been easy enough for her to saddle him with another man’s child, so it spoke well for her that she had not.

If she was able to go into an affair with such cold practicality, surely he could also. They could establish rules—a contract of sorts, as if it were a business arrangement. Which, he supposed, in a way it was. Yes, he would be giving in to her coercion, which galled him. But it would be foolish, surely, to stubbornly refuse to do something that was in his own best interest to do.

He would call on her the following evening, as she had suggested, and they could discuss the matter, agree to certain ground rules, lay out the various aspects of their agreement. It would all be very civilized, very cut-and-dried, not a repetition of what had happened between them the last two times they had broached the matter. It was the sensible thing to do.

Still, as he went to bed, he could not help but wonder if, rather than being reasonable, he had merely talked himself into jumping into quicksand.

Abby spent a good deal of time on her bath and toilette. She could not rely on Graeme calling upon her this evening. Their heated kiss the night before had given her hope, but she was coming to discover just how stubborn a man he was. Molly, aware that Abby was expecting a visit from Graeme, glowered at her in the mirror as she brushed out Abby’s hair and helped her into an elegant blue satin dressing gown. Abby ignored her.

It was more difficult to ignore her own nerves, especially after she dismissed the maid. Her stomach was too twisted to eat anything and her nerves too jumpy to sit down, so she spent her time pacing and checking and rechecking to make sure every detail was just right. The lighting was appropriately low and rendered faintly exotic by the gauzy red scarf thrown over the lampshade; the wine and two glasses sat ready on the table in front of the sofa; the door to the bedroom was invitingly ajar but not boldly open, and a mellow glow came from the lamp within.

Her appearance, of course, was the centerpiece of her plan, and she had accomplished all she could there. She could not, after all, magically become a delicate slip of a girl. But her dressing gown was perfect—as elegant as a dress, it was unencumbered by the excesses of fashion, so that there was no bustle, no corset, no yards of material, no petticoats.

Designed to resemble a kimono, the sky-blue satin was patterned with clouds and trees in a Japanese style. The long sleeves were slit at the elbow and hung almost to the hem of the robe, showing the red satin lining inside them. A very wide sash emphasized her waist and the lack of a stiff corset beneath. Lacy frills of her nightgown showed above the waist and below the cut sleeves and flashed into view between the sides of the skirts as she walked.

Modest but subtly provocative, it was the perfect attire for a lady’s boudoir. Her hair was arranged in a casual coil atop her head and anchored with two red-lacquered chopsticks. She remembered the way Graeme’s eyes kept going to her unbound hair the other night.

She had done everything she possibly could. Now she just had to wait.

A knock sounded on the door, startling her even though she had been hoping for it. Her heart began to hammer in her chest. Her future hung in the balance. What if she could not bring it off?

“Abigail.”

Graeme said her name in the way only he did: so formal and crisp and English. It broke her from her momentary paralysis. She could do this. She would do it. She refused to accept any other possibility.

Abby opened the door. “Graeme—or perhaps I am presuming. Should I call you Montclair? I confess I haven’t yet gotten the British way with names.”

“Graeme. Yes. Of course,” he said distractedly as his eyes took in her attire. “I’m sorry. Do I have the time wrong? I—” He glanced back toward the hall as if he might leave.

“No.” Abby curled her arm through his and pulled him into the room, closing the door behind them. “This is the right time.” She guided him toward the sofa. “I’m glad you decided to accept my invitation.”

“Well, I—I thought we should clarify a few things, lay some groundwork, so to speak—if that is, we are to do this thing.”

“Then you are amenable to . . . this thing?”

Graeme cleared his throat and glanced away from her, turning his hat brim around and around in his hands. “I have taken it under advisement.”

He looked so ill at ease that Abby almost smiled. “Very well.”

She reached out and slipped his hat from his grasp, hanging it on the coatrack. Graeme trailed over to the window, aimlessly touching the back of a chair, the closed draperies, a decorative vase on the table. He glanced toward the lamp, softly glowing beneath the gauzy scarf, then reached out to brush his fingertips across the material. He quickly pulled his hand back.

Graeme turned back to face her, his face carefully remote. “Little as I wish to give in to your threat of divorce, I must admit you have a point regarding my, ah, need for an heir. It is understandable that you should want a child. I—it is scarcely fair of me to deny you the, um, joys of motherhood. I fear I had not considered that aspect of the situation.”

“Then you are agreeable. I’m glad.”

“There are certain things that must be made clear, however.” His eyes ran down the front of her dressing gown. “Perhaps you should . . . Don’t you think you might prefer to change into something more—I mean, perhaps we should talk about this in a more . . . formal setting.”