Page 14 of Unmasking the Earl

By Juno! Was she mad? Calling at Captain Wycherley’s home in broad daylight was very public, making it far too easy for her flimsy subterfuge to be discovered. Maybe instead she should creep out at night and be whisked away in a covered carriage to a secluded spot where Wycherley could teach her all she needed to know about the art of seduction.

She shivered. Secluded spot? With a renowned rake?

No, that would be complete folly. Too fraught with danger…of all kinds.

Day or night, this whole thing was not a good idea.

“I say, Cassandra, it has stopped raining,” her papa informed her, folding up his newspaper. “You can now go to your French lesson without trouble.”

“Oh. Um, splendid.”

Just when she’d nearly made up her mind not to go.

Confound it!

A shaft of sunlight slanted across the cobbles outside, rendering them a blinding river of silver. She blinked, teetering with indecision.

“If my experience is anything to go by,” warned her papa, “you’d best not keep Madame Dupont waiting. They can be very emotional, these foreigners, and you don’t want to give her any excuse to send a stiff letter and a bill for a lesson you didn’t have.”

Trapped! Like Eurydice in the Underworld.

To Captain Wycherley’s house she must go. She only hoped it didn’t go as badly for her as it had for poor Eurydice.

Chapter Eight

Half an hour later, Cassie was seated once more on Captain Wycherley’s chaise longue in his darkly masculine withdrawing room, striving not to be distracted by salacious prints of a young Emma Hamilton, apparently wearing nothing but a flimsy shawl. She felt all fingers and thumbs as she attempted to drink the glass of claret she’d been given.

“So, to our first lesson,” Wycherley declared. “How to drive a man to distraction.”

She swallowed nervously and assumed what she hoped was the mien of a diligent student of Aristotle.

“I won’t touch you, but I want you to make me wish to do so. You must test my resolve to the utmost,” Wycherley instructed. “Please stand up.”

Her heart shifted to beat high in her throat as she gulped a deep draught of the wine and placed the glass clumsily onto a nearby table. This could, if she wasn’t careful, turn into a complete disaster. There was no one to save her reputation, no one to rescue her should Wycherley become…over-amorous. She was entering Terra Incognita, and the risk she was taking suddenly worried her.

“Make you want to touch me? How do I do that?”

He gazed at her critically. “Start by looking alluring.”

Her mind went blank.

When he just continued to gaze at her expectantly, she took a deep breath, tilted her head, and batted her eyelashes like an actress she’d once seen playing Sheridan’s Lady Teazle.

He cringed. “No, that won’t do at all. You look as if you’ve got a cinder in your eye. No need to pull such faces. Just glance at me from beneath your lashes, then look away, as if you have no interest in me at all.”

She schooled her expression to one of studied disinterest and tried again, this time with no batting.

He looked at her critically, then nodded. “That’s better. Also—and I’m sure you must have been taught this—deploy your fan. Show just your eyes over the top of it. Look at me as if you desire me, but are too shy to do anything about it.”

The man was handsome as Apollo, but she’d have to fake the desire. Oddly, if it were Mr. Ganstridge in front of her, it would have been far easier. Even after the passage of a week, she could still recall the feel of his hands on her, and the way his mere presence charged the atmosphere around him like a bolt of lightning.

Perhaps if she imagined it was Ganstridge, not Wycherley…

“That’s exactly it. Very good. Now, I am going to turn away and inspect a picture on the wall. Look at me as if I was a plate of honey cakes, and you a starving pauper. Examine me closely without moving and see if you can make me aware of you.”

Not Wycherley. The Herculean Ganstridge, with his bulging muscles and compelling presence…

Wait, what on earth was wrong with her? She should be imagining Julian, not a manservant, however darkly handsome.