I Kissed an Earl: Pennyroyal Green Series

I Kissed An Earl

Julie Anne Long

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Chapter 1

“H e looks like a bored lion lounging amidst a flock of geese. Tolerating the fuss long enough to decide which one of us he intends to snap up in his jaws.”

Miss Violet Redmond peered over the top of her fan at the newly minted Earl of Ardmay and issued this verdict to three people: the lovely blonde Hart sisters, Millicent and Amy, who breathlessly hung on her every word, and to the married Lady Peregrine, who suffered torments when Violet was the center of attention. Which, as the beautiful, legendarily capricious daughter of the wealthy and powerful Mr. Isaiah Redmond, she invariably was. Which is no doubt why the married Lady Peregrine said, “Jaws, Miss Redmond? La, I’d rather snap him up between my legs.”

The Harts hid gasps and wicked giggles behind their fans.

Violet hid a yawn.

They had taken up a prime viewing position near the ratafia in Lord and Lady Throckmorton’s ballroom. It was a crush, as usual. The Harts hovered near Violet because they wanted to be her. Lady Peregrine hovered near Violet because she wanted to be seen with her. As usual, even in the crush of bodies in the ballroom, Violet was profoundly aware of presences and absences. Her parents, Isaiah and Fanchette Redmond, were here, as was her brother Jonathan. Her best friend, Cynthia, and her brother Miles, who’d lately married, had remained in Pennyroyal Green, Sussex.

Of course, the biggest absence of all was her oldest brother Lyon, the ton’s golden boy and the Redmond heir, who had disappeared a year ago, taking with him the clothes on his back and a little rosewood box he’d owned since he was a boy. A box he’d made himself. And the reason behind his absence was all too present: Olivia Eversea, eldest daughter of the Everseas of Pennyroyal Green, ancient if civil enemies of the Redmonds, stood across the room, looking slim and pale and earnest in green. Olivia had always been earnest. Fiery, even. Given over to working passionately for causes. She’d even distributed anti-slavery pamphlets in the Pig Thistle in Pennyroyal Green, to the tolerant bewilderment of the pub’s proprietor, Ned Hawthorne.

Olivia was here, and Lyon was not. Because Olivia had broken Lyon’s heart. And everyone said this fulfilled the curse: an Eversea and a Redmond were destined to fall in love once per generation, with disastrous results.

Violet decided she best stop looking at Olivia lest her gaze scorch a hole in the woman’s gown.

“We mustn’t look as though we are gossiping.” Miss Amy Hart was new enough to the ton to think it ought to be said.

“Of course we must look as though we are gossiping. How else will we keep everyone frightened and intrigued?”

Everyone agreed with vigorous nods, and everyone missed Violet’s irony.

“Why a lion?” Millicent wanted to know. “Why not a bear, or a wildebeest?”

“A wildebeest has hooves, you ninny,” her sister, Amy, corrected wearily. “It’s hardly a romantic creature. Though I’m not convinced he’s a romantic creature, either. The scowl looks as though it might be permanent. They say he’s a savage.” She gave a delighted, theatrical shiver.

“I know why! It’s his hair. It’s…tawny.” Millicent sighed the word.

“Tawny?” Lady Peregrine turned to her in feigned alarm. “Did you actually say tawny, Millicent? Well, I can’t say I didn’t warn you that poetry would make porridge of your brains, and now here you are using a word like tawny and I do believe I heard you use the word gossamer as well just the other night to describe the morning mist—is this not true?”

Millicent hung her head in shamed confirmation.

“My dear, his hair is brown, and he has too much of it. But—of course. I see the problem. You’ve lines here, Millicent”—Lady Peregrine pointed to the flawless corners of her own eyes—“from squinting, I daresay. Perhaps it’s just that you’ve begun to need a quizzing glass to see him clearly?”

They all turned speculative gazes on poor Millicent, whose fingers flew up to pet at those imaginary lines.

“Honestly, do take another look at him—squint if you need to, we shall none of us mind if you do, isn’t that so, ladies? You’ll see that he’s the veriest brute. So uncommonly large. He is American-bred they say. Surely his true parents were a bear and an Indian.”

“Oh, now who’s fanciful?” Millicent was indignant.

“The title is much wasted on him since rumor has it he doesn’t plan to spend time on English soil, but the King does have his whims. What do you think, Violet?”

Violet, who knew the goal of all of this clever talk about the earl was to impress and shock her because everyone knew she was so very difficult to impress and shock, and who was in truth so bored, so bored, so tired of endless balls and parties and everything about them she thought perhaps her internal organs might grind to a halt from lack of stimulation, and the only thing keeping her awake was a keen yet quite impersonal hatred of the women who stood near her, was thinking:

Blue, possibly.

Everything in the ballroom gleamed aggressively. Light from legions of candles and lamps ricocheted off silks and taffeta and jewels and polished brass and marble, creating an obscuring glare. But when the new Earl of Ardmay had glanced toward them his eyes had caught and flicked light like faceted jewels. They must be blue.

“They say he did something heroic to earn the title,” was all she said. The rumor abided; the specifics, however, remained elusive. The extinct title His Majesty George IV had resurrected, dangled before the Everseas and Redmonds, and then in a stunning about-face, bestowed upon a mysterious and allegedly American-reared, English-born Captain Flint. Doubtless it amused the King to seize an opportunity to keep the powerful Eversea and Redmond families humbled and in check, for it seemed so little else could. She moved her fan beneath her chin in languid, carefully neutral sweeps. Her sharp-eyed mother, presently engaged in conversation with a sturdy, be-turbaned Lady Windemere, would know instantly if she was fomenting mischief among the bloods who gazed with calf-eyed if wary admiration at her from all corners of the room, hoping for, dreading, an invitation signaled by her fan. The betting books at White’s were filled with wildly hopeful conjectures about what Violet Redmond might do next, because it had been an intolerably long time since Violet had done something epically, deliciously rash, such as threaten to cast herself down a well during an argument with a suitor and then get a leg over before she was pulled back by the elbows, or challenge a man to a duel. Between times her manners were faultless, exquisite, innate, which made the swerving from them all the more invigoratingly shocking. Only the foolhardy wagered who might finally be a match for her. Many had attempted suit. All had failed. Some had tried and failed spectacularly. To the bloods of the ton, Violet Redmond was El Dorado. And she was terrifying.

The new earl was in truth tall but not uncommonly so, she assessed. A few other men in the room would likely be able to look him evenly in the eye.

But he was large.

And whereas her brother Miles Redmond was large in the manner of, oh, a cliff—he had an indestructible quality yet somehow seemed an integral part of the landscape and could therefore occasionally be overlooked—there was nothing unobtrusive about the Earl of Ardmay. It was difficult to place a finger precisely why. His hands were folded behind his back; one knee was casually bent. Most of the other men in the room struck similar poses while they held conversations. His clothes were beautifully cut and unimaginative, fawn for the trousers, white for the cravat, black for the coat, subtle pewter stripes on the waistcoat. But his palpable physical confidence, an animal comfort in his own skin, issued a subliminal challenge to all the men present.

Not to mention profoundly disturbed the accepted notion of attractiveness of the assembled ladies.

In short, he was as unsettling as a Trojan horse wheeled into the center of the ballroom. And he most certainly did not belong to the English landscape.

“That scowl…he does look like a savage,” Violet mused. “He ought to try smiling. I wonder if he has all of his teeth. Have any of you been close enough to see?”

It was determined that no one among them had yet seen the earl’s teeth, and that perhaps one of them ought to be dispatched to take a look, or to even dance with him, if this could be arranged.

“I like the scowl. He looks as though he’s squinting into the sun while standing on the prow of a deck with the sea breezes blowing his hair back.” This was Amy Hart, dreamily.

“But bad-tempered men make terrible dancers.” Millicent said this. Violet couldn’t allow this particular inanity to pass. She turned slowly to stare at Millicent.

“For heaven’s sake,” she said, heavily pained.

Millicent looked suitably abashed.

“Oh! Do let me tell what I know about the size of men’s thighs and what it means about their prowess,” Lady Peregrine insisted, as three entire seconds had passed since she’d been the center of attention. And the Harts swiveled their heads toward her and leaned in, because Lady Peregrine, being young and married, knew things they did not. And on they buzzed, like wasps about rotting fruit, until Violet felt just as somnolent as though a picnic sun truly was beating down on her, and wished herself far away. Not too long ago she’d gone with her brother Jonathan and two friends—Cynthia and Lord Argosy—to have their fortunes told by the Gypsies who camped on the outskirts of Pennyroyal Green. She’d of course been told she would be taking a long trip across the water. And then the Gypsy girl Martha Heron had shouted something nonsensical. A French word. Likely a name. At the time, Violet had greeted all of this with rolled eyes. Martha Heron the Gypsy, it was generally agreed, was both a looby and quite a bit too flirtatious for her own good. But at the moment Violet conceded a long trip to anywhere away from this ballroom would have suited her.

“Now, for a truly attractive, very refined man, one must look to the earl’s first mate. Have you seen him? Probably a French aristocrat who lost everything in the revolution and forced to serve a savage now, for he’s titled! His name is Lord Lavay.” Lady Peregrine was eager to share superior knowledge of the ton’s newcomers.

Violet jerked her head toward Lady Peregrine and fixed her with a stare so strange and brilliant the color drained from Lady Peregrine’s cheeks.

They all watched Violet with breathless, anticipatory glee.

“S-something on your mind, my dear?” Lady Peregrine managed after a moment. Her breath seemed to be held.

“Will you please repeat his name?” Violet was all careful politeness. Lady Peregrine gathered her composure and began to quiver with delicious anticipation of scandalous behavior.

“Oh, I can do better, Miss Redmond,” she purred. “Would you care for an introduction?”

“They look like hyenas bent over a carcass,” Flint said by way of greeting when Lord Lavay returned bearing a cup of ratafia.

Lavay followed the earl’s gaze across the ballroom to the ring of young women. “Your figurative carcass, it so happens,” Lord Lavay, his first mate, confirmed cheerily. “I overheard a good deal while I was fetching this swill. In fact, she said—”

“Which ‘she’?”

“The pretty blonde.” Lavay gestured vaguely with his chin.

“They’re all pretty,” Flint said irritably. And they were. All of them uniformly pale, clean, scented, groomed, genteel. Pretty, pretty, pretty. The English version of pretty. Every country had a version of pretty, and he’d partaken of perhaps more than his share of them.

“The one with very pale blonde hair—east of the entrance, near that emasculated-looking statue of some…Roman, I think? She’s wearing blue and has a feather poking up out of her headpiece? As I was helping myself to this…this…” Words failed him as he sorrowfully examined his fussy ratafia, but he rallied. “…I heard her say, and I fear I do quote, that she’d heard that the size of a man’s thighs was directly related to the size of his—the word she used was ‘blessing,’ but the inflection made her meaning unmistakable—and if that were indeed true then the new Earl of Ardmay’s blessing surely put Courtenay’s to shame.”

They immediately spent a moment in bemused silence in honor of the perilous little paradox that was the English female. They seemed as fluttery and brittle as their fans; their conversation—outwardly—was exquisitely polite and demure. And yet they used those very same fans to signal shockingly provocative invitations across ballrooms, and their stays lifted their bosoms up out of their bodices like pearls presented on pillows for a pasha to inspect. One gaze directed lingeringly at the wrong bosom and an inebriated, over-bred lordling would begin shouting about pistols at dawn. One right word and lingeringly directed gaze and one could be invited to hike up a handsome aristocratic widow’s delicate dress in an alcove at a dinner party and partake of the pleasures that lay between her thighs. Flint had been reminded of both of these things in his first few days on English soil. He’d apologized in the first instance and demurred with polite regret in the second.