I Kissed an Earl: Pennyroyal Green Series (18 page)

“Thank you for your consideration, but no.”

Though now she was picturing it, and it had the bizarre effect of making her itch in earnest and making her a little breathless from picturing his fingers rummaging about in her bodice, and an errant sizzle of longing radiated out from the base of her spine to decidedly more feminine places.

This was new. Dear God. She glanced at the stairs.

But he noticed.

“Forgive me for coming to that conclusion. It’s not every day I see someone with her fingers between her breasts at a dinner party.”

Oh, enough. It was time to produce an excellent lie.

“If you must know, I was attempting to retrieve a necklace I believed dropped into my bodice.”

“You weren’t wearing a necklace when I first saw you this evening,” he said easily. As if he had all the time in the world to watch her lay her own trap and then walk into it.

“It’s a fortunate thing you’re so observant,” she said smoothly. “Because this means it must have fallen during my descent of the stairs, or perhaps even in my room, and I failed to take note. I should go up and take a look before dinner is served. Or perhaps it lurks in my bodice still. Have a care when you steer me beneath the chandelier. It might strike a beam from the stone hidden in my bosom and blind you.”

He laughed, surprised. She basked hopelessly in the sound; she couldn’t help it. Why was it such a pleasure to please him? This man who was happy to use her to trap her brother?

Her brother, who might very well be somewhere near. She felt as though she were being pulled to pieces, like a wishbone, by two desires that were growing dangerously equal and entirely opposite.

“You were speaking with a child.” Casually, he said this.

Oh God. He’d seen after all.

“So were you,” she rejoined.

He smiled slowly, comprehending. “Now, is that any way to speak of your hostess?”

“I notice you haven’t disagreed with me.”

“Marie-Victoire is an old acquaintance.”

Violet snorted. “Please. Even I know she was more than an acquaintance.”

It was then she felt something in him relax infinitesimally, the way he had for a moment in his cabin a few days ago. He was enjoying himself, easing into the rhythm of conversation, and she understood what his ease meant: tentative trust.

And despite everything, that peculiar sensation reared again: she felt protective of that trust. She sensed it was rare and worth having.

“Very well,” he allowed. “Marie-Victoire was indeed an actress. Much sought after and fought over in France. She professed herself madly in love with me, promised she’d wait for me to make my fortune, and then married the viscomte, it would seem, the moment The Fortuna sailed from port.”

“A girl must have a contingency, I suppose. Were you hurt?”

It was a bold and quick question, designed to throw him off balance and divert his attention from her.

He hesitated. “The viscomtesse is an opportunist who did very well for herself in the world, often serendipitously, but then I suppose that rather describes me, too. And she certainly had more than one contingency, as it were. I do believe Mr. Hardesty was reputed to be among them.”

An answer and not an answer.

Though Violet disliked picturing Lyon consorting with that nasty, beautiful, vapid little creature.

“It isn’t necessary for you to like the viscomtesse, Miss Redmond. But do enjoy her hospitality. Insects are not on the menu tonight nor in the beds, and I cannot guarantee this will be true for the remainder of our voyage.”

“Are you trying to discourage me from continuing this voyage, Captain?”

“Have you seen anything that might encourage you to continue?”

And there they had the crux of their dance.

“So far we have both failed to draw Mr. Hardesty’s interest. Unless you have been introduced to him,” she lied.

“I have not, as it so happens. Because Mr. Hardesty has sent his regrets by way of the viscomte. Isn’t that a coincidence? And the viscomte and viscomtesse do not have small children,” he pressed. “So who was the child? He dashed off when I looked at him.”

Ah. So that was why the child had fled. Anyone unused to that blue stare would be tempted to flee. At least she hadn’t frightened the little boy.

Violet was strangely gratified and relieved.

She would need to tread lightly. She forced herself to keep her gaze level with his. She breathed in, breathed out, to steady her nerves. And when her chest rose, the corner folded sheet of foolscap scraped at her skin.

“I don’t know. He may have come from the kitchens. I believe he thought I was his mother. He called me mum. Suppose he meant madam.”

“He called you mum?”

He sounded a little too surprised. And amused.

“Why should that be amusing?”

“Well, you’re certainly old enough to be a mum.”

“Thank you for noticing,” she said tersely.

“Do you like children?”

“I don’t dislike them.”

He studied her again, puzzling out her tone. His face somber and gentle and assessing, and for some reason this gentleness made her very conscious of all the parts of his body that touched her, that warm hand pressed against her waist, the hand gripping hers, when all the dances of her life until him had been rote. And the places he touched felt suddenly new, as though they’d never before been touched. For a disorienting moment she couldn’t feel where she ended and he began and didn’t mind. So unlike her, for there had never been a moment in Violet’s adult life when she willingly surrendered control.

Suddenly she recognized this sensation: It was rather the way she’d felt when she’d first seen the sea. It was that sense of peace, of wild beauty that contained nothing of passivity in it. Just infinite possibility.

She reared back from it, as furious and frightened as a confused child.

“Do you have any children?” she asked abruptly.

A blunt and unkind question to ask a man who wasn’t married and who was a bastard. She’d meant it to be unkind. She wanted to jar the both of them back to earth. His features went utterly immobile. Very like when she’d called him a savage. She disliked herself for doing it. And this made her irritable, for she’d known contrition before, but never before had she genuinely disliked herself.

How about that? Yet another new sensation she could attribute to the earl. She was a veritable Pandora’s box of qualities, and he’d opened it up.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly after a moment.

Such a simple answer. And such an appalling one. Doubtless most men in all honesty would answer in precisely the same way.

She was sorry she’d asked. And as usual with him, she didn’t know quite what to say.

“I haven’t been reckless,” he added.

Oh God. She didn’t need him to explain himself. She very much didn’t want to think of him in circumstances with women during which he was careful.

“Of course not. You’ve simply been male. Don’t smile.”

It was too late, and the smile was slow. But it wasn’t wicked. It was almost gentle. Something in him seemed effortlessly able to anticipate and parry, with a word, a smile, a silence, her every attempt to get the better of him, and this should have maddened her. It didn’t. It panicked her, but it didn’t madden her.

She looked down for a moment, seeking escape from the array of emotions buffeting her. She encountered only his snowy cravat. When she inhaled to clear her head, Eau de Earl of Ardmay came in with the breath. Better than wine, than cognac, than sea air. Momentarily she was speechless.

“Do you want a family?” she asked his cravat.

“Yes,” he said immediately.

This made her look up at him in surprise.

“Why should this surprise you? Shouldn’t I have what so many others have?”

“Of course,” she said quickly. And too gently, because his face instantly hardened. He would not tolerate being patronized.

“With Fatima?” She was surprised to hear the word emerge faintly snide. His lips curved. He enjoyed her tone. “Perhaps. Probably. It should be a simple enough thing. I’ll need a wife, land, a fortune, and then I’ll start my own dynasty.”

Simple enough! She recalled the legend of the Redmond origins. And the feud with the Everseas that dated back to 1066, allegedly. Families were many things, but “simple” wasn’t one of them.

“But you’re an earl. Shouldn’t you make a grand match?”

“Shouldn’t the fact that I’m an earl mean I should do as I please?”

“Probably,” she allowed gloomily, after a moment.

He was smiling again, as though he couldn’t help himself. Those lines about his eyes deepened in a fascinating way when he did. “Don’t you look forward to having a family one day, Miss Redmond? A brood to call you ‘mama’?”

She thought for a moment. The answer took a moment to take shape in her mind, for a family would require a husband, and she’d never been able to imagine the man who would fill that role. The man who wouldn’t make her father disown her, that was.

“I suppose I do.” She hesitated. And suddenly she knew it was true. She simply didn’t know why it was true, or how she knew it.

“A family like your own?”

She thought of her father and mother and their complex and mysterious marriage, and Miles the explorer and Cynthia, his charming wife, and how they’d upset the Redmond family order, and Jonathan the arrogant rascal and closest in age to her, and the missing Lyon, damned Lyon, whose note scratched away at her skin inside her bodice, and she needed now to get upstairs, to try to find him.

How very much she loved them all, and how she desperately wanted things the way they were when Lyon was home.

“No,” she said, surprised but certain. “Nothing like my own.”

The earl seemed surprised, too.

He was about to say something when the music ended and as gracefully as they had begun he brought her to a halt.

Too quickly she tried to tug her fingers from him.

This, naturally, made him reflexively grip her fingers harder. Suspicion, and something that may even have been entreaty, darkened his eyes for an instant. He searched her face. Search away, Lord Flint. She stared back at him. Hiked her chin for measure. For Lyon’s sake, she would at least try to cultivate inscrutability.

“I need go avail myself of the…” She trailed delicately. She wasn’t going to say “water closet”

to the earl. She needn’t explain herself. For God’s sake, she wasn’t a prisoner. She gave another subtle, insistent tug on her fingers, brows raised to imply impropriety now. That did it. Finally, reluctantly, he released her hand, as slowly as if he thought he’d never see her again.

And she knew he watched her as she turned and tried not to headlong dash for those endless stairs.

She flung open the door to bedchamber, and with one hand rummaged in her bodice for Lyon’s note while lunging at the writing desk for quill and ink with the other. She circled the Y. Sprinkled sand over it. Then began to scrawl a note of her own. She added the word but and a frowning face with slanting eyebrows—she was angry with him—and a heart—she loved him. And then, because time was short, she wrote a W and a plus sign and drew an eye. “WHY?”

She sprinkled sand on this, too. Though she had no hope of his being able to answer that particular question by means of pictures.

And then she heard a faint scuffling sound. From somewhere in the room. She froze. The hackles rose on the back of her neck.

There it was again. A rustle, very like the sound of clothing rubbing against clothing. Could it simply be a rodent? Or…

No. Dear God. She thought she heard breathing. She held perfectly still. She held her own breath, and heard the faintest, shallowest sighing in and out of a human breathing. And realized it was coming from beneath the bed. Lyon?

Just in case, she seized the letter opener in one hand, and tiptoed over to it. The thick carpeting silencing her footsteps. Gingerly, slowly, quietly, she knelt…

…and yanked up the counterpane.

Revealing a face and two huge frightened eyes.

“AHHHHHH!” she and that dirty little child screamed into each other’s faces. She stumbled backward and the child slithered out from under the bed on his elbows and got upright and ready to bolt.

“CHRIST!” she said, and slapped her hand over her heart, which had nearly failed altogether.

“Who are you?” she demanded, stalking toward him, reaching out to seize his arm. He backed away. “Look under the bed.”

She actually made a lunge to grab him. Then scurried to attempt to head him off at the doorway.

He dodged easily. She wasn’t amused.

“Who are you? Who sent you?”

“Mr. ’ardesty, Mum. But you’re not to tell! Not to tell anyone!” He looked frantic. “He said I could trust ye.”

Violet was desperate. “Where is Mr. Hardesty now? I’ll give you one pound if you tell me. Please tell me!”

A rash promise. His eyes bulged from his little skull. “Nay, he’ll kill me, Mum, ’e will. And I’m to sail wi’ ’im,” he said proudly. “Work in the kitchens ’ere now, but he’ll gi’ me SIX shillin’s to work in the kitchens on a ship!”

Of course the child wasn’t old enough to know the value of money. To him, six was of course bigger than one. She didn’t have time to play schoolmarm.

“Look under the bed!” he said stubbornly, backing away from her. And he turned and darted out the door. She heard little footsteps in the marbled hallway. She took three running steps after him. And two toward the bed. Then three more back toward the door.

But she knew if she tarried the earl would come looking for her, and after a few seconds of feinting between the door and the bed, she dove to scrabble beneath the bed. She found another sheet of foolscap. She grasped it, dragged it out, her heart hammering sickeningly.

One eye on the half-open door, she quickly scanned it.

More coded drawings. A scrawl of a man’s head in profile, and inside the head was something that looked like a wad of wool. Not wool—a brain! Then the word like, and a winged foot, like the messenger God Mercury possessed—she knew that symbol, thanks to her father’s investment group—followed by what looked like a cudgel.

Think…like…Mercury…Club