The Earl's Mistress (15 page)

“Jemima is not your cousin,” said Isabella, “for you share not one drop of her blood—”

“Nor do you,” Everett interjected, “but your father wished—”

“—Moreover,” she said, speaking over him, “they are not left to anyone’s devices. They are left—
when
they are left—with Mrs. Barbour. And they are watched every minute of every day.”

“Yes, yes, no doubt,” said Everett, craning this way and that. “Where is the old dear, anyway?”

“She is at”— Isabella caught herself — “church. I expect her back any moment.”

He looked her up and down again, his gaze warming. “Not going to invite me in?” he murmured. “I’m thinking whilst I’m here, perhaps you and I should have a little chat.”

“An excellent notion.” Isabella stepped out onto the narrow stoop, slamming the door behind her and forcing Everett back down a step. “Let’s chat.”

“Inside, Bella,” he said gruffly. “Christ, it’s freezing—and you haven’t a shawl.”

“I am warmed, Everett, by the fires of righteous indignation,” she said. “Say your piece and then I shall say
mine
.”

“Oh, Bella, so cruel!” he said. “Look, don’t be bitter. I know life hasn’t been kind to you, my dear, but I can and will take you away from this misery. I adore you, and my offer still stands. That’s all I want to say.”

“Your offer?” she said incredulously.

At this, he snatched up her hand and kissed it, his lips unpleasantly moist. “What do you say, Bella? ” he asked softly. “Will you give it a go? I’m tired of being alone. Aren’t you?”

Isabella drew an unsteady breath. “Everett, are you mad?”

“Yes, mad for you,” he said. “And don’t get your hackles up. Look at yourself. Look how you’re living. Marry me and bring those girls down to Thornhill. We’ll be a regular family.”

“Everett, you frighten me,” she said quietly. “I am not going to marry you. I am not going to marry you—
not
ever
—and you know why.”

The breath went out of him in a harsh, impatient exhalation. “Good God, not that old rag again!” His gaze darkened. “Do you mean to hold that against me until hell freezes over?”

“Your mother may call your act mere mischief if it comforts her, Everett,” Isabella whispered, “but that girl was just
a child.
A little girl taken from her mother—taken far too soon—and put into service twenty miles from home, terrified.”

“Someone has to break them in,” said Everett, shrugging, “and you’d no business barging in, then turning snitch.”

“She was
screaming
.”

Everett winked. “Women do, sometimes,” he said, “if a chap knows what he’s about. I swear, Bella, you are such a goose. Girls like that—they know it’s going to happen. Why do you think they call it being
in service
? She was pleased, I daresay, the master would deign to look at her.”

“And was she pleased your chum Sir Harry looked at her, too?” Isabella snapped. “What about the other man—good God, I don’t even remember his name—and I don’t want to. Everett, you are cruel. She was twelve years old, and the three of you—”

“What can I say, Bella?” he interjected. “Fine, then, we oughtn’t have done it! Is that what you need to hear? But the girl’s long gone, so what does it matter? Besides, Mamma and I are agreed—if I had a wife, I would give up my diversions.”

“She doesn’t know your diversions still involve mere children, I’d wager,” said Isabella. “Everett, why start this again? Why now? Just leave Georgina and Jemima alone.”

“Why
now
?” he echoed sarcastically. “Look at yourself, Bella. You’re just the downhill side of thirty, and so damned scrawny you’d be lucky to carry a child. You’re starving yourself to feed those two brats, when you could have one of your own.”

“Have . . . a child?” The thought of Everett fathering a child was beyond horrific.

Everett shifted his weight uneasily. “Well, I need an heir, don’t I?” he muttered. “Mamma keeps saying as much, and she’s right.”

“Get out,” said Isabella, jabbing a finger at the rusting garden gate. “Get away from this house, Everett! You are a cad and a despoiler of innocence and I have no idea what your mother’s fascination is with me, but I have
never
been willing to marry you.”

Something dark twisted his face. “Never? Quite sure, are you?”

“There is not enough depravation or starvation or any other sort of misery on this earth that would make me marry you. Good God, Everett, do you think people can’t find out about your proclivities?”

“I’ve done nothing against the law,” he said.

“Rape is not?” she challenged.

He laughed. “Find someone who will say I raped her,” he retorted. “Go on, Bella, try it. And perhaps I shall try my luck, too.”

Suddenly her blood ran cold. “What are you saying?”

“That those girls belong in their childhood home,” he said, seizing her wrist. “You were never meant to take them away from Thornhill.”

“What?” She gaped. “You never showed the slightest interest in having them—nor did your mother.”

“And we are both ashamed of that,” he said, “having seen what your life has come to. Do you think any reasonable judge would keep them in this hovel when they could go back to Thornhill? To live in their old home with Mamma and me?”

“A judge just might,” she snapped, “when I tell him what I saw.”

“And what better place for that conversation than the Court of Chancery?” he replied, backing her up against her own door. “Heavens, Bella, I wonder if your father-in-law would attend?”

“You
bastard,
” she hissed.

Something like alarm sketched over his face then, and he relented a little. “Come now, Bella, threats are foolish on both our parts,” he said. “We are cousins, and I have never done you the first harm. I adore you, and want only to marry you. My desperation makes me rash.”

“Your desperation makes you an ass,” she said. “And one more word from you or your mother about marriage and I swear, Everett, I shall take her up to that vile little house in Soho where you and your friends spend your evenings and make her look in the window for herself.”

At that, Everett went white, his upper lip quivering. “You ungrateful bitch,” he said, lunging.

Isabella jerked back so hard that she struck her head on the door.

Suddenly Everett was seized by a hand that clapped his shoulder and hauled him ruthlessly down the steps. Arms windmilling wildly, he tripped, collapsing backward onto the Earl of Hepplewood.

The earl stepped smoothly to the side and let Everett go sprawling across the moss-slick flagstone. “That third step looks a bit of a trick,” he said in his quiet, rumbling voice. “Baron Tafford, I presume?”

CHAPTER
8

E
verett jerked himself fully upright, yanking his coat back to order. “And who the devil are you to interfere in family business?”

Hepplewood flashed his dark half smile. “The devil who’s about to haul you into that lane”—he pointed across the gate with his brass-knobbed walking stick—“and thrash you within an inch of your life for putting your hands on a lady.”

“Don’t I know you?” said Everett, narrowing one eye.

“No, but you are about to make my acquaintance,” said Hepplewood quietly. “Isabella, you will go inside.
Now
.”

Isabella knew that tone. Scrabbling at the wood behind her, she found the latch, lifted it, and stepped backward into the house, slamming the door behind. If it came to an outright brawl, her money was on Hepplewood.

On the other hand, Everett was just the sort of man who might keep a blade to hand.

Her heart in her throat, Isabella flew into the parlor and looked out to see the earl, true to his word, dragging Everett through the garden gate—well, propelling him might be a better description.

On the other side, he threw Everett off, disgust plain on his face. Words were exchanged—hot and swift—but Isabella couldn’t make them out. Then Everett turned and foolishly came at the earl. He got nothing but five hard fingers to the chest for his trouble, a shove that sent him hitching up against the door of his curricle.

Unfortunately for Everett, rather than regaining himself, he tripped one foot over the other and fell sideways into the mud.

Hepplewood extracted a silver case, flicked one of his thick ivory cards into Everett’s lap, then turned and came back through the gate, his hat still in place, his stick tucked neatly under his arm.

Isabella opened the door, deeply grateful and yet uneasy all the same.

“Precisely what was that about?” said Hepplewood, coming briskly back up the steps.

“Nothing,” Isabella said, shutting the door after him. “I’m very sorry, my lord. Are you all right?”

“Perfectly.” He looked at her askance. “But you are not; you’re white as a sheet, Isabella, and you are shaking.”

She held out her hands to see that it was true. “My temper, nothing more.”

“Nothing more?” His expression darkened. “Then what was all that shouting about marriage and your aunt? And a house in Soho?”

“Merely an old family quarrel,” she said more firmly. “I beg you to let the matter go. My cousin is an ass.”

For an instant, he hesitated. “Well, now the ass knows where to find me,” he finally said, “should he wish to seek satisfaction.”

“My cousin preys only upon those weaker than himself,” she said, taking his stick and his hat, “so I think you’re quite safe. Thank you for ridding me of him.”

Though he still looked suspicious, the earl apparently decided to let his questions go. With neat, swift jerks, he tugged off his leather driving gloves, his gaze sliding down Isabella’s length in a way that made her breath catch.

“You don’t seem surprised to see me,” he murmured, draping the gloves over his hat brim.

Isabella flashed a smile. “I’m not, actually,” she admitted, setting the hat on the hall table. “Lady Petershaw told me you might call.”

“Did she say why?” His voice was unerringly polite, perfectly calm.

“She did.” Isabella felt her face flood with heat. “I assure you, sir, that you’ve no need for concern.”

“No need?” he pressed, dipping his head to better see her. “None whatever? You are certain?”

“As certain as nature can make me,” she assured him. “Yes, quite certain. May we leave it at that?”

Stiffly, he nodded. “May I sit down, Isabella?”

Her embarrassment deepened. “Yes, certainly.” She motioned at the open parlor door. “Do go in.”

He did so, his gaze sweeping the small and desperately ordinary room. But it was clean, and furnished with a few lovely things she’d been able to take before handing over Thornhill to Everett forever; things that had been her mother’s, and thus not entailed to the estate. Her mother’s will had been very specific in that regard; her every possession was left to Isabella.

The trouble was, there had been so very few of them. And most had been sold already, to keep the girls in shoes and schoolbooks, though Isabella could not have borne to confess it.

Not to a man like Lord Hepplewood, who could have no idea what poverty was.

“Those are lovely portraits by the window,” he murmured, taking the chair she offered. “Small, but superbly done. Your parents?”

“Yes, Mother’s was commissioned in Liverpool just days before she met Papa,” said Isabella wistfully. “It was a frightful luxury for my grandfather, but he lived in the Ottawa Valley—in Canada—where such things weren’t easily had.”

“And it found its way back to you?”

She shrugged. “It was shipped to Thornhill,” she said, “two or three years ago. No one else wanted it, so Everett brought me the pair at Christmas. It was a kindness of sorts, I suppose.”

And he had brought with it yet another marriage proposal—an especially obsequious one—though Isabella did not say as much.

“Your father, if you’ll pardon my saying, looks a bit older than she.”

Isabella smiled. “A dozen years.”

“Ah. An arranged marriage?”

“Far from it,” Isabella replied. “Her family never really forgave her for staying behind, and they were more or less estranged ever after. But Canada was lonely for her, Mamma said, for they lived much of the year in the wilderness.”

“The
wilderness
?”

“Well, perhaps that’s an overstatement,” said Isabella, “but her father and brother were in the timber trade—simple people, really. Papa said he’d meant to remain a bachelor all his days—that he was too entrenched in his books and his gardens to take a wife—until he saw Mamma standing in the lobby of the Adelphi Hotel in a pair of shabby brown boots.”

“Love at first sight, hmm?”

“That’s what Papa called it.”

“She looks beautiful,” said the earl, still gazing at the painting, “and so much like you it steals one’s breath.”

And in an instant, the awkwardness between them returned. “I beg your pardon,” she said a little stiffly. “I am out of the habit of entertaining. May I offer you a glass of sherry?”

His gaze flicked toward her, sharp and knowing. “May I not speak of your beauty, Isabella?”

“I wish you would not,” she said honestly.

He studied her for a long moment. “You once said to me that beauty could be a curse,” he finally replied, “and that surely I, of all people, must know it.”

“I remember,” she said.

“What did you mean by it?”

She lifted her gaze from her lap. “I spoke wrongly, I suppose,” she said. “It’s true of women. Beauty for a woman is often a curse. But for men like yourself, who are both wealthy and beautiful—no, I suppose it does not matter. It’s just icing on the cake of life.”

He shrugged and looked away. “I’ve wondered lately if that’s entirely true,” he mused. “I wonder if it doesn’t worsen a man’s sense of entitlement and make him more quick to assume what he wants will be his. That he will, in the end, have his way.” He stopped for a heartbeat. “But in the end, Isabella, I will not have you, will I? I knew it the minute I laid eyes on you. And I knew, too, that it would be better for both of us if I did not. I should never have allowed Louisa to tempt me with that damned letter.”