Ethan: Lord of Scandals (12 page)

“But Joshua…”

“Is five years old. It has been a long, long six years.” During which, he silently added, he’d heard a constant string of tales regarding his brother Nick’s prowess in the bedrooms of London’s demimonde, each more impressive than the last.

Alice’s gaze became concerned. “Are you sure he’s your son?”

Now who was prying confidences from whom? And yet, Ethan wanted the truth between them.

“He is my son in every way that counts.” Ethan dipped his face against Alice’s hair as he spoke, needing the comfort of lemon verbena and Alice. “My wife might have known a different truth, but I have never regarded it as relevant.”

“Why are you telling me?”

Ethan raised his face and spoke slowly. “Could it be I trust you would never do anything to hurt a child?” And perhaps, his conscience added, he was damned sick of carrying this alone? Wondering if the boy might somehow find out and turn on the only parent he’d known?

Taking his brother with him…

“You love him,” Alice said staunchly. “Joshua would be devastated to think you aren’t his papa. What was wrong with your wife?”

“Marriage was wrong with her,” Ethan said tiredly, even as Alice’s immediate defense of him warmed his heart. “Marriage to me was wrong for her, anyway. And when I would not oblige her intimately, she had an affair. She was angered by my neglect of her and fought back with the only weapon she felt she had. My lack of expertise with the fairer sex was such that I could not see the corner I drove her into.”

“Oh, Ethan.” Alice did lean into him then, bringing her hand up to the back of his head and holding him as much as he was holding her. “You deserved so much better.”

“I am beginning to think perhaps I do.” He wanted better, and that was a start. “But I suspect you do not mean what you say.”

“You think I’d lie to you?” Alice drew back and resumed her frowning. He was coming to adore that starchy, prim expression on her face, because it was such a pleasure to relieve her of it.

“I think you do not divine the direction of my thoughts, Alice Portman,” Ethan replied, and in his chest, he felt his heart begin to beat with a slow, palpable throbbing. He was going to lay himself open to intimate rejection, and he knew it. He chose to do it, though, because wanting and not having was better—far, far better—than never wanting anything at all.

“So elucidate your thoughts for me,” Alice said while her fingers tightened around his.

He could prevaricate and hint and complicate what was simple and precious. His regard for Alice would allow none of that.

“I want you,” Ethan said. “I want your body under mine, overcome with desire. I want to share intimate pleasure with you, to drive you to incoherence with longing and satisfaction.” He wanted that desperately. “I want the taste and scent of you filling my senses, the texture of every inch of your skin burned into my memory. I want to hear you cry my name in the dark, Alice Portman.”

Before she could formulate a scathing set down, Ethan charged forth, determined she should hear him out.

“I know, Alice, you will not countenance marriage, and I suspect this relates to having been mistreated in your past. I do not account myself any sort of bargain as a husband, in any case, and would not offend you by presenting myself as a candidate for your hand. But I can offer you pleasure and joy and… friendship, or some version of it.”

“You are propositioning me.” She sounded astounded rather than offended.

“I am offering you a liaison,” Ethan clarified. “Though I can exercise enough restraint to assure you I would not get you with child.”

“And if I wanted a child?”

Ethan battled back joy that she’d even ask such a thing. “No bastards, sweetheart. I can’t do that to a child of mine, nor would you want it for our child either.”

He fell silent but remained beside her, giving her time to recover from what was clearly an unanticipated overture, while he tried not to contemplate their options if she did—despite his best intentions—conceive a child.

Such thoughts blundered perilously close to
hoping
, and Ethan knew better than to countenance that folly.

“I’m not without experience,” she said softly, turning to rest her head on his shoulder.

If she’d expected him to stiffen, pull away, or physically display disappointment, he was determined to confound her. He pulled her closer and kissed her temple.

“God, Alice, neither am I. For you, I wish I could be.” It was an odd, heartfelt sentiment he would never be able to explain to her. “Were you mistreated?”

“No.” Ethan heard a silent “but” following her denial. “I was engaged, when I was sixteen, and could once again walk without much of a limp. My brothers had seen to it I was well dowered, and a young man I’d known most of my life offered for me. He was of decent family, and I saw him as my means of leaving Cumbria and its memories far behind. I accepted him, on the condition we’d leave the area and settle elsewhere. America would have done for me, or the Antipodes. I just needed to get away.”

“And this young man,” Ethan conjectured, “the one you refer to as decent, he took liberties, thinking you would not cry off after that no matter what, and then announced he had no intention of taking you anywhere.”

Alice’s smile was rueful. “More or less.”

“But you,” Ethan went on, “having a spine of Toledo steel, did cry off and left the poor idiot without a wife, her dowry, or a semblance of his honor, which was exactly what he deserved. I am proud of you.”

“Proud of me?”

He had surprised her, and he was damned glad of it. “There is no explaining the courage it takes to face down the judgments and expectations of Polite Society. Did your brothers try to dissuade you?” Ethan tried to recall where his dueling pistols were stored in the event he did not approve of her answer.

“Benjamin knows the whole of it, and he understands my decision.”

Bastard. “He never told you he was proud of you, that he admired your fortitude and integrity? He never told you the scoundrel wasn’t good enough for you in any regard?”

Alice looked away. She scuffed her half boot against the dirt. “He brought me South. He keeps an eye on me.”

He had kept that eye from a distance, when the man by reputation was well able to provide a roof over her head. Ethan made a note to locate those dueling pistols.

“Mr. Durbeyfield thought he was doing me a favor.” Alice turned her head, and Ethan thought she might have sniffed at his shoulder. “I was, in the local parlance, touched with an unfortunate past, which he was willing to overlook.”

“So that he could get his lying, smug, unworthy paws on your dowry. Your brothers should be ashamed.”

Alice sat up then and cocked her head at him. “Perhaps they are. I always thought they were ashamed of me… Men are odd creatures. But dear.”

Dear was encouraging. Ethan would shoot her brothers some other day, because
he
would like to be dear to her. Dear and desired; it was a frightening, exhilarating, and ambitious combination. He hadn’t his brother’s charm or his title or his tremendous amatory experience, but Alice was on this bench, tucked obligingly against Ethan, not Nick.

It was enough to keep Ethan on the bench all night, if she’d allow it.

“We should be going,” Alice said. “They’ll be ringing the bell soon for supper, and the boys will be looking for me.”

“You’re going to make me work for it,” Ethan decided. “Good girl.”

“Work for it?” Alice let him assist her to her feet.

“You do not respond to my offer, Alice, and it’s an offer that requires a yes or no answer. If you refuse me, I will understand I do not appeal to you as a woman finds a man appealing. I will not enjoy the rejection, but neither will it destroy me.” He hoped. “If you reject me, you will continue to be the person to whom I entrust the education of my sons, a respected member of my household, and safe at Tydings from any unwanted advances, including my own.”
Damn
it.

“We simply ignore this extraordinary discussion and both kisses?”

Ethan smiled over at her. “We pretend to, as best we can.”

“And if I accept your offer?” Alice kept her eyes focused ahead, depriving Ethan of the insights they might yield.

“You decide.” Ethan dropped his voice. “You decide if I come to you or you come to me. If we join in a bed or in the hay mow or on a blanket in the woods. You decide if you remain in the position of governess—I think you like it, for one thing, but it protects your reputation and mine, for another—or we find another governess. You decide.”

He liked—he adored—the idea of them deciding
together
something as significant as who the boys’ next governess should be.

She turned her face up to the dying sun as she walked along. “I cannot abandon the appearance of propriety, and I am wicked for admitting I’d even consider such a thing. You do kiss exceedingly well, though, and you…”

She trailed off, while Ethan waited.

And waited. He what? Got her on a horse? Would die to keep her safe? Made the loneliness and doubt recede when he took her in his arms?

For she surely did that for him.

“I have much to think about,” Alice muttered. “We would have to be very discreet.”

She
was
considering
it—considering allowing him to become her lover.
“I can be discreet.” Ethan ushered her up the terrace steps at a sedate pace, when he wanted to vault them three at time. “And so can you.”

“Give me a week, Ethan. At least a week.”

A week was seven entire days and nights, an infinite procession of moments. How could a yes-or-no decision take that long?

“You may have as long as you please, Alice. It is a lady’s prerogative. I will see you at dinner?”

“I think not. Some solitude will allow me to clear my head.”

“As you wish.” He saw her guard relax a trifle before he swooped in and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to her cheek. “I will see you at breakfast and in my dreams.” He left her there in the golden evening sunlight, her fingers pressed to her cheek.

“It’s Buttercup!” Joshua spotted the big mare first, and only his father’s bellowed command stopped the boy from galloping the remaining distance to the stable yard.

“Uncle Nick!” Joshua yelled from the back of his pony. “Uncle Nick, we’re home!”

“You may trot,” Ethan allowed, because they were nearing the arena. “You too, Jeremiah.” Ethan drew his horse to a halt and waited beside Alice’s mount when the boys’ ponies started forward at the faster gait.

And here their outing had been going so well. “It appears my brother is paying a visit. Shall we greet him?”

“I suppose I have no choice?” Alice looked around as if seeking a hiding place.

“You can dismount here. Go on up to the house if you wish, but Nick will see the sidesaddle and ask questions.”

“I’m being silly.” Alice nudged Waltzer forward at the walk. “Nick will tease me, though, and I’d as soon avoid that.”

Her reaction, far from enthusiastic, held a petty kind of reassurance for a man whose overtures took a week to consider. “Nick will behave, or he won’t be welcome under my roof.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Alice murmured as they neared the barns. “He never means anything but fun.”

Ethan was torn between a guilty pleasure that on the face of the entire earth, there was at least one woman whose heart didn’t leap for joy at the prospect of spending time with Nick, and an odd disappointment. Having been assured Alice was not attracted to Nick, Ethan wanted her to like his brother.

Nick came out of the barn looking golden and splendiferous in riding attire. “Can these be my little nephews? You’ve grown just since leaving Kent.” He knelt, so the boys could try to strangle him with hugs around his neck, then rose with a nephew on each hip.

“Ethan.” Nick smiled up at him. “I’ve found some urchins to take back to Kent with me. I think this one will be a boot boy and this one a potboy. Or maybe I’ll keep them until they grow into a matched set of footmen for my lady. She’ll be the envy of Mayfair when she goes shopping.”

“Not shopping!” Joshua screeched dramatically. “Please, Uncle Nick. I want to be a stable boy.”

“Then go put up your pony,” Nick said, setting both boys on their feet. “If you’re quick about it, you can help put up Buttercup, too, while your papa introduces me to the lovely la—
Alice?
”

Nick’s expression went from that buccaneer’s charming grin, to consternation, to a beaming, genuine smile in a succession of instants.

“I see you’ve met.” Ethan swung down and came around to assist Alice from her horse lest Nick usurp that pleasure for himself. “Alice Portman, may I make known to you your friend Wee Nick. Nicholas, you’d best shut your mouth if you’re to extricate yourself from this without catching a fly.”

“Alice Portman.” Nick shook his head as Ethan lifted her from the horse and set her on her feet. “You prevaricating, deceitful, naughty girl. The air in Surrey is most certainly agreeing with you.”

Alice smiled at him. “Nice to see you again, Nicholas, but you knew I’d been taught how to ride.”

Nick’s smile tilted back toward flirtatious. “I’m not complaining about hiding your ability to ride, sweetheart, though it’s a pleasure to see you in the saddle. I’m taken aback by your ability to hide a siren in governess’s clothing.”

“From you,” Ethan muttered, loud enough for his brother to hear.

“Point taken,” Nick said, still regarding Alice thoughtfully.

“Alice was willing to make the effort to get on a horse for the boys, because she’s to accompany us to Greymoor’s picnic on Wednesday.” Ethan handed his horse off to Miller. “We can toast her with some cold cider or something stronger, now that the morning’s ride is accomplished. May I assume you’ll stay at least the night?”

“Am I welcome?” Nick asked. “I debated sending you a note, but can make other arrangements easily.”

Nick was studying the arena, the trees, the barns… perhaps thinking Ethan would turn aside his own brother. “You will always be welcome, Nicholas. Now come up to the house and let me feed you as best as I can. The staff has Sunday off, and we make do.”

“Alice? Will you be joining us, or will you tarry here with your charges?”

“I do not supervise them in the stables,” Alice replied, but her eyes shifted to Ethan, clearly seeking guidance.

“Come.” Ethan tucked her hand over his arm and did not look at Nick. “You must celebrate your success with Waltzer and supervise Nick and me as we raid the larder.” Alice slipped her arm from Ethan’s as they reached the back entrance.

“If you gentlemen will excuse me, I’ll change out of this habit.”

“If I must.” Nick said. “But not until I tell you again how fetching you look, Alice. Turn yourself out like that on the Ladies’ Mile, and you’ll leave a trail of love-struck, callow swains.”

“Callow swains of any description are of little appeal.”

Ethan let her go, noting that Nick, for all he was happily married, watched the twitch of her skirts with unabashed admiration.

“It’s the glasses,” Ethan said because he’d been guilty of the same oversight, and without Alice’s presence, some of his possess—
protectiveness
ebbed. “And that bun, and all those sack dresses, and her…” He waved a hand around. “Governess airs.”

“Yes. Governess airs are excellent camouflage. Are we really to fend for ourselves in the kitchen?”

“We are. Fear not, though. I’ve figured out where the bread and butter hide, and which key opens the larder.”

“You have a very pretty property, Ethan.” Nick followed his brother to the kitchen. “I’ve ridden by from time to time, but the walls and hedges make it hard to see much from the lanes.”

“Why didn’t you stop by?” Ethan washed his hands, then extracted a loaf of fresh, white bread from the bread box rather than watch Nick’s reaction to the question. “Did you really think I’d not be home to you?” Because until Barbara’s death, he might not have been.

“I didn’t know.”

Ethan starting cutting the loaf into exactly even slices. “You’ve always had my direction.”

“And you’ve had mine. I see now your property is in excellent repair, your stables full of handsome horseflesh, and your house larger than any of ours, except for Belle Maison itself. I’ve worried about you when I didn’t need to.”

Was that resentment in Nick’s tone, or hurt? “Because I’m well off?” Ethan fetched a half wheel of cheese from the larder and again put the knife to use. “You can slice some of the ham hanging in the hallway, if you don’t mind.”

“You’re well off enough to remarry,” Nick observed, using a basin in the sink to wash his hands before he went to work on the ham.

Ethan wrapped the cheese and took it back to the pantry, then fetched a bowl of ripe peaches, which reminded him of Alice.

Rather than comment on Nick’s observation, Ethan fished in the drawers and cupboards until he found everyday cutlery, linen napkins, and plates. Nick’s arrival on a Sunday was something of a mercy, allowing them privacy while they tried to find a rhythm with each other.

“So how did you get Alice on a horse?” Nick asked, carrying bread, meat, and cheese to the table.

“She knows how to ride.” Ethan put salt, pepper, mustard, and butter down next to Nick’s tray. “She just needed an incentive to deal with her understandable fears.”

“Reese Belmont said she’d been hurt trying to report a crime of some sort.” Nick carried the pitcher of lemonade to the table, while Ethan opened a bottle of sweet white wine and found glasses.

“I don’t know the details.” Ethan set the wine on the table to breathe. “And I don’t want to know them unless Alice wants me to. It must be bad, though. Hazlit was out here, strutting and pawing like a papa bear.”

“Hazlit?” Nick’s eyebrows rose. “My Benjamin Hazlit?”

“He’s Alice’s brother. I assumed you knew they were related.” And wasn’t it gratifying to know something Nick did not?

“I had no idea,” Nick muttered. “How odd.”

Ethan poured them each half a glass of lemonade, added a portion of wine, and took a seat across from Nick. “For what we are about to receive, we are damned grateful, amen.”

“Amen.” Nick reached for the bread. “I cannot fathom Benjamin Hazlit confiding in you, Ethan. Meaning no offense, but the man’s lips are closed as tightly as a king’s coffin.”

“His younger sister works for me,” Ethan said, waiting for Nick to finish with the butter. “He told me he’d call me out if I offended Alice, and I had to like him for it.”

Nick set the butter knife down, his expression distracted. “You like him for threatening you?”

“He’s protective. I would want our sisters to be able to count on us for the same. Mustard?”

“Please.” Nick accepted the mustard and set it down beside his plate. “I feel as if… First, you find a lovely woman where Pris’s starchy little governess was standing when last I looked. Then you turn up living not in some gothic horror but on a gracious, perfectly pleasant and prosperous estate. And now you tell me Benjamin Hazlit is revealing family secrets to you, and you like him for threatening your life. Maybe the ale was bad at the last posting inn I stopped at.”

“What did you expect, Nick?”

“I don’t know. For Alice to be holed up in her room, reading over the boys’ school work, you to be scratching away at your infernal correspondence, Tydings to be somehow grimmer. I don’t know.”

“Are you disappointed?”

Nick smiled self-deprecatingly. “Maybe. You don’t need rescuing, do you? Mustard?”

“Please.” Ethan accepted the mustard and tried not to flinch at the question. “Reserve judgment on whether I am in need of rescuing until after the picnic. Greymoor himself came by to issue his summons for this bacchanal. I found him likable enough, and might have to return his call.”

“You don’t visit?” Nick scowled at his plate. “Not even Greymoor or Heathgate or Amery?”

“I know Heathgate slightly.” Ethan sipped his drink, wishing it was something more fortifying than this bland concoction Nick favored. “I’m hardly his social equal, and why would I visit the others?”

“Because that is what one does in the country, Ethan Grey.” Nick directed a pained stare at his drink. “You visit, and you talk about the hunting and the shooting and the crops, or the lack of hunting, shooting, and crops. You bump into each other riding out. You cadge a Sunday meal after church. You stay for a pint at the local inn. You stand up with the wallflowers at the assemblies.”

Ethan remained silent, regarding his brother levelly because he honestly did not know what to say.

“I’ll shut up,” Nick said. “Pass me that tray. Growing boys need sustenance.”

Ethan passed him the tray and the butter and mustard.

“I don’t go to church,” Ethan said. “I don’t ride to hounds, I don’t go to the assemblies, and I don’t frequent the local watering hole.”

“Ethan?” Nick’s voice held consternation and concern.

“I do ride out,” Ethan allowed, “and thus I bumped into Heathgate. I’ve met Greymoor and that other fellow.”

“Amery,” Nick supplied. “Have you met Westhaven?”

“Not that I recall.”

Nick put down his glass with a soft thump. “You can’t live here in legendarily pleasant surrounds, cut off from all around you. It isn’t… It isn’t right.”

“Not right for you,” Ethan said, his tone mild. “But I accomplish a great deal, Nicholas, when I’m not dancing, visiting, gossiping, and watching a pack of dogs tear an arthritic fox to pieces.”

“Miller told me you’ve promised to take the boys cubbing this fall,” Nick said, apparently willing to reserve further sermons for later.

“They need to know the protocol if they’re to be gentlemen, and they ride well enough.”

Nick set his second sandwich down only half-eaten. “I feel like you’ve gone away, like you grew up and became somebody my brother could not have turned into. You were not like this as a boy.”

“Like what?” Ethan was truly curious, but concerned too, because he could see Nick was getting genuinely upset with him.

No, not with him,
for
him.

“You enjoyed people,” Nick said. “You joked with the stable boys, flirted with the dairymaids. The little girls wanted you to read them their stories and braid their hair and check under their beds at night. You beat Papa at cribbage and led me into one silly prank after another. And now…”

“Now?”

“You
accomplish
a
great
deal
,” Nick said in exasperation. “You may not write to your brother but once in seven years, but you accomplish a lot. You’ll take your boys cubbing so they learn their manners, but you don’t call on your neighbors, nor they on you. You’re a good-looking, wealthy widower, but you won’t stand up at the assemblies. You probably make more money year by year, but you couldn’t be bothered to tell me you were married, much less widowed, much less a father twice over. What happened, Ethan? What on earth happened to you?”

Nick’s tone was so bewildered, Ethan couldn’t have been offended if he’d wanted to be, and he did not want to be.

Nor would he tell Nick what had happened. Not ever. For his own sake, but equally for Nicholas’s sake.

“I grew up, Nick. It wasn’t my choice, entirely, but I’m doing the best I can with it.”

“Is this how you felt about me, when all the wild talk circulated about my womanizing?”

Ethan pursed his lips. “Felt how?”

“Like some strange man was using your brother’s name,” Nick said. “Doing things your brother wouldn’t, and saying things he’d never dream of uttering?”

“No.” Was that how Nick felt? “I worried, Nick. That much carrying on isn’t about having the occasional recreational tumble.”

“It wasn’t.” Nick scrubbed a hand over his face. “How did we ever get onto such gloomy topics?”

“You are disappointed in me,” Ethan suggested gently. “I am socially backward, reclusive, and much preoccupied with my commerce.”

“And all of that”—Nick waved his big hand again—“would be of no moment, Ethan, but are you
happy
?”

Ethan had stopped asking himself this question at the age of fourteen. It had no bearing on anything.

“Happiness is a luxury,” Ethan said, staring at his empty glass. “If it comes to pass, it should be appreciated, but life doesn’t owe us happiness. I am content, Nick, and much less unhappy than I was when Barbara was alive. If that makes me evil, then so be it. Before she died, we learned what it meant to hate each other, though fortunately that was not the last page of our dealings. I did not marry well, and you did. Can we leave it at that?”