Kathryn Caskie - [Royle Sisters 02]
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Authors: How to Engage an Earl
How To Engage An Earl
For my grandmother Ivaloo,
whose passion in researching
the branches of our family tree
helped inspire this story.
The crescent moon, perched high in the starry sky, was…
Berkeley Square, London
April 1815
U
nlike her far more vibrant sisters, Miss Anne Royle had but one talent—and it wasn’t one to recommend her.
She could become invisible.
Oh, not in the way of fairy tales, where one’s form could magically spread upon the breeze.
No, her talent was much more subtle than that.
Anne simply had the ability to move about a bustling drawing room
completely
unnoticed.
She considered herself naught but a specter in London society, and rightly so. After all, no one ever sought out her company, or tried to catch
her eye. She could stand directly in front of a grand lord or lady, or even a tray-bearing footman, and more likely than not, she wouldn’t be noticed.
Sometimes it was as if she simply did not exist.
Anne usually viewed her reputed
talent
as the darkest of damning curses.
But not always.
Only a year ago, she and her sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, had shed their black bombazine mourning frocks and left their tiny village in Cornwall for the satin elegance of London’s drawing rooms.
Their effervescent sponsor, Lady Upperton, in her zeal to see the sisters properly matched, had mandated their attendance at an endless ribbon of unnerving balls, routs, and musicales.
Anne was no fool. Immediately she realized the benefit of moving beneath the raised noses of the
ton
.
It freed her from much of the scrutiny and whispers her sisters endured due to scandalous suspicions swirling about the Royle triplets’ royal parentage.
And tonight would be no different.
As she and her sister Elizabeth primped and dressed in preparation for the grandest society rout in recent history, Anne actually prayed for invisibility.
For within five hours’ time, the course of her life, and her sisters’, would depend upon it.
MacLaren House, Cockspur Street
Three hours later
“Oh, Anne, how you exaggerate.” Elizabeth laughed and swooshed her frilly lace-edged fan through the air, waving off the claim as if it were a bite-minded winged insect.
“I tell you, I can walk through this very crowd and eavesdrop on even the most private of conversations. No one will notice me.
No one
.”
“Can you now?” Elizabeth arched a dubious eyebrow at that. “And no one will see you?”
“No one
.”
“Pish, posh. While your stealth is truly miraculous, you are hardly beneath notice.”
Anne exhaled a long breath. Why did she even bother to try to explain it to Elizabeth? The
flame-haired beauty would never really understand the truth of it. How could she?
The reality of Anne’s gift was that she was rather plain, at least in comparison to her sisters. For what else could explain her unnatural ability?
Physically, she should have stood out among the petite ladies of the
ton
. She was as tall as most men, after all. Still, she hadn’t been blessed with rich sable hair like the eldest of the triplets, Mary, or the glossy copper locks of her sister Elizabeth, who had followed Anne into this world several minutes later.
No, the hair crowning Anne’s head in a mass of tumbling ringlets was the shade of flax, so pale that it was nearly absent of color.
Even her features were delicate and unremarkable, and her skin was as white as a polished ivory tusk.
Sometimes Anne mused that if she stood against a wall wearing the very cream-hued gown she had donned this evening, no one would see her. Her coloring would make her virtually indistinguishable from the plaster.
Hmm. She might even test that theory. Why, who knew? With the feat she would attempt in
just two rounds of the minute hand, a new trick might be her saving grace in the event a quick escape was required.
In fact, it might be prudent to exercise her skills of stealth right this very moment, before…well, before she was called to action. Yes, that was exactly what she would do.
“Elizabeth, I vow, this very moment I could glide through this drawing room removing filled crystals of cordials from the fingers of unsuspecting guests, then leave them all wondering a moment later what had happened to them.”
“No, you can’t. You are merely having me on. I know you, Anne. But you must realize I am no longer your gullible, wide-eyed baby sister.” Elizabeth chuckled into her hand.
“Still you doubt me. When will you ever learn, dear sister?” Anne caught up Elizabeth’s gloved fingers and slapped her own fan into them. “I’ll need both hands free. Now watch, my doubting miss…and be utterly amazed.”
Laird Allan, the newly-belted Earl of MacLaren, opened the French windows, clapped a palm to his lady friend’s round bottom, and firmly guided her into the dark passage.
Only one flickering candlestick glowed in the back hallway, and that was for the navigational sake of the additional staff engaged especially for tonight’s rout. But the dimness just here suited Laird quite well.
“When may I see you again, Lady…er…my good lady?”
“Heavens, MacLaren, you don’t even know my name, do you?” His lady friend straightened her frothy capped sleeves upon her smooth shoulders, then cupped her blushing full breasts and unashamedly readjusted their position inside her gown before looking up at him.
He raised his eyebrows and gave her a flat smile, to which she immediately responded with an overdone pout.
Laird sighed, in an equally false manner. “Please know, dear lady, my grasp of your name has nothing to do with how memorable you are. I am merely too deep in my cups to be able to retrieve it from my foggy mind, though I have no doubt your name is as lovely as you are. You’ll forgive me. Won’t you?”
She chuckled at that. “Now, now, do not fret, my handsome playmate.” Reaching up, she pinched his cheek affectionately, then grinned.
“Truth be told, I am not offended in the least. In fact, darling, I am rather relieved. If you cannot remember my name, ’tis less likely that my husband will learn of our…intimate little tour of your garden during tonight’s rout, eh?”
“You’re married?”
Bloody hell. That makes two this night. Where are all the unattached misses? Still avoiding me like the pox? I’ve reformed. Or at least I’m trying. Married. Damn it.
He reached out his fingers and absently plucked a sprig of white-veined ivy from the woman’s tumbling coiffure.
“Oh, you did not know?” A small laugh sailed upon her exhalation. “Never you mind. His aim is quite pitiful, I assure you. And he is dreadfully old, while you…well, you, my very virile earl, are not. Besides, you have yet to show me the moon garden. It is all that the ladies have been discussing this evening.”
Doubtful, Laird raised a single eyebrow. “They are chatting about…the moon garden?”
“Oh yes. I daresay I was told, just an hour earlier, that that particular portion of the garden was most intoxicating…especially in the light of a full moon. Is that true, my lord?”
He held the sprig of ivy up to her and twirled
the leaf by its stem between his fingers. “You saw the garden, madam.”
“But not
all
of it.” She snaked a single finger seductively down his chest, stopping just above the waistband of his breeches. “And I would so enjoy seeing it all. Especially the moon garden.” Her gaze bounced low in the event, he suspected, his foggy mind did not comprehend her barely veiled meaning. “Perhaps tomorrow evening you will show it to me, hmm?”
Laird cleared his throat. “I do apologize, but you must excuse me, madam. I really must rejoin my guests.”
Her hand dropped lower, and she brazenly slid her fingers up his inner thigh as she leaned close and pressed a hard, wet kiss to his mouth. She playfully fumbled at one of the buttons closing his front fall. “Are you certain, my lord?”
Laird swiveled before her fingers could inflate matters. “I-I am afraid so, my dear. Must go.”
“Truly?” She brought her lips to his ear, and her hardening words rode a heated breath. “Or could it be that you no longer have any more time for
me
, MacLaren. Is that it? I happen to
know I was not the first to be led down your garden path tonight, and I daresay probably not the last, either.” She nipped the pad of his earlobe.
Laird winced. Raising his hands between them, he caught her shoulders and held her in place as he took a step back.
“Well, if that is the way of it.” She shot him a sharp, knowing glance, then turned on her scarlet Turkish heels and strode up the long passage toward the bright light streaming from the noisy drawing room.
Married
. Laird shook his head in disgust. He’d tried so hard to put his rakish ways behind him for the good of the family. To show himself worthy, at last, of the MacLaren name…
and of her
.
For more than a year now, he’d been entirely respectable…as would be expected of a newly belted earl. His manners had been impeccable and his behavior nothing less than gentlemanly—that is, until tonight, anyway.
One night back in society. That’s all it took. One night and he was already slipping back into his old unscrupulous ways. He shook his head.
Damn it all
.
But at least luck was with him. After all, Lady Goodsport, or whatever her name was, had made his push-off quite effortless.
Laird sighed as he lifted the candlestick and raised it to the mirror above the hall table to illuminate his face.
Just look at me—a bloody rumpled mess
.
Then something about his blinking image pinched at him, and made him draw closer. His cobalt-hued eyes were cold and black in the dim reflection, and at once thoughts of his late father sprang unnervingly into his mind. He squeezed his eyes shut and drew in a deep breath, shaking off, as best he could, the image and the memories that trailed behind.
When he opened his lids again, Laird shoved his fingers through his wavy ebony hair, smoothing it into place. Turning away from the mirror, he deposited the candlestick on the cherry tabletop and set about attempting to retie the knot of his newly wrinkled neck cloth.
“You have a whole bloody house, MacLaren,” came a low male voice from several feet up the passage.
Laird yanked his head around and squinted. Against the golden light breaking through the
drawing room doors, he saw the familiar silhouette of a lanky gentleman.
“And yet tonight you prefer the garden,” the man said.
“Apsley
.” Laird turned fully, if a bit unsteadily, to face his old friend. “Sod me. Where have you been all night? Thought you’d changed your mind about coming and decided to take a turn with that saucy opera dancer of yours instead.”
“Ah, well, no chance of that. Put that little minx on the shelf Tuesday.” Apsley stole an admiring glance at himself in the mirror, tucking a stray curl back behind his ear.
Laird shook his head. “No doubt for another bit of muslin twice as…talented.”
“Well, yes, if you must know.” Arthur Fallon, Viscount Apsley, ruffled his blond locks and cockily tugged the points of his shirt collar higher, then turned again to face Laird. “But you had to have known I would come. I have not forgotten. Had he not…well, damn it, we’d be toasting your little brother’s twenty-fifth birthday this night…instead of his memory.”
Laird gazed down at the golden signet ring, all that had been returned to him a year ago by Graham’s teary-eyed batman after the fateful
battle that had taken his brother’s life. “I miss him.”
“I know. But you have to know, no matter what your father believed, it wasn’t your fault. You have to understand that.”
“It was, though. Had I done what Father had wished of me, Graham might not be dead.” Laird leaned his head back while he blinked away the ridiculous tears of weakness stinging the backs of his eyes.
Apsley squeezed Laird’s shoulder. “No more lamenting what may or may not have been.” Then, like a hound catching a scent, he sniffed the air between them. “So brandy is your choice tonight, eh? Any good? I do hope it is, because I fear you might have a slight lead this eve. Can’t have that, now can we?”
“More than a lead. My horse is lengths ahead, good fellow.” When he looked up again, moisture pushed into his eyes. He raised the back of his hand to his face, to preserve his dignity, but the movement of his head, slight though it was, sent him staggering two steps to the left.
Apsley caught Laird’s arm and steadied him. “So I see. But you shan’t drink to Graham’s memory alone for a moment longer.” The cor
ners of Apsley’s lips turned upward. “Show me the decanter and your deepest crystal. I vow my horse will overtake yours within the hour!”
Laird smiled, knowing Apsley was quite serious, and all too capable. Before he could even think to oblige, he noticed they were no longer alone.
“Laird, son, that is you down there, is it not?” came Countess MacLaren’s booming words from the far end of the long passage. “And is that Apsley’s voice I am hearing as well? Is he with you?”
Oh good God
.
Laird winced. “Yes, Apsley is here, Mother.” Laird stepped forward and clapped his hand to the other man’s arm, and then leaned close to speak quietly into his ear. “I do apologize, but I must warn you. My mother has been asking after you for hours.”
“Has she?” Apsley held his words to a low whisper. “Oh bugger it, whatever for?”
The countess clapped her hands, and both men looked in her direction once more.
“We have guests who have just arrived. Please return at once and greet them. You are the head of the family now. They expect to see you,” the
countess hissed, before frantically dashing back into the drawing room.
Apsley’s eyebrows lifted until they nearly grazed the golden lock of hair dangling over his forehead. “In a bit of a fluster, is she? So, tell me, Mac, what does the countess require of me this time?”
“The answer is quite amusing, really.” Laird glanced toward the light and hastened his warning to Apsley, for certainly the countess would return to the passage within a moment’s time.
“So tell me. I could use a bit of folly just now.”
