Unraveling the Earl (14 page)

“And the theater, when I saw you with your opera glasses
raised and pointed at my box?”

“You saw me?” she asked, surprised he’d paid her the
slightest notice with all the women perpetually crowed into his box.

“Loitering outside my club, sitting in the park in front of
Hastings House, flying past me in your curricle,” he muttered and Georgie knew
he was speaking more to himself than to her, counting off the ways in which
she’d tricked him, however unwittingly.

Even so, she chose to answer him. “Lord Piedmont is a member
of White’s and I wanted to make his acquaintance as he is something of a
chronicler of the times. Your mother was residing in your home with you so I
would imagine my presence in the park speaks for itself. As for my curricle, in
all probability I was following one or another of your mother’s friends or
family members. I would likely still be pointlessly hacking along after every
single person she’d ever known if you hadn’t approached me after her funeral.”

“You knew I’d misunderstood,” he accused, advancing on her
with an unholy gleam in his eyes.

“I knew no such thing,” she countered, rounding the table to
meet him toe to toe. “I thought you were bored and randy. An arrogant libertine
who’d spotted me at his mother’s funeral and decided I might entertain him,
seeing as how there weren’t many ladies of quality loitering about the
village.”

“
Ladies of quality
do not seduce a gentleman solely
to gain entrance to his mother’s private apartments,” he replied, his words
lashing her with deadly accuracy.

“I never claimed to be a lady of quality,” she drawled,
pulling forth her weightiest, frostiest glare, one she’d learned from her
grandmother. “And what sort of gentleman follows a woman from a funeral in
hopes of taking a tumble? A cad led by his cock, that’s who.”

“My God, you are the devil.”

“Oh, first you name me Janet,” she replied, rifling her
fingers through her hair, leaving it standing up every which way, knowing full
well the orange coils were as tangled as any witch’s matted tresses.

Henry took two stumbling steps back, his eyes fixed on her
flyaway hair.

“Now I’m Lucifer himself,” she continued, sticking two
fingers through her curls and pointing them at him like horns. “My, my, I am
moving up the ladder of true evil lickety split.”

“Damn it, Georgie,” he spluttered. “You sucked my cock and
taunted me and teased me and fucked me into oblivion so that you could ransack
my mother’s apartments!”

“Mayhap I did,” she acknowledged, dropping her hands to her
hips.

“There is no mayhap about it. You used me and tossed me
aside when you’d gotten what you wanted.”

“Do you hear yourself?” Georgie asked, fighting to hold back
a grin, or heaven forbid the laughter that was building in her belly and
tickling her throat. Then she opened up her mouth and an unmistakable peep
escaped, followed by a snort. “You sound like a woman who has awoken to find
the bloody stump of an arm on the pillow beside her.”

“A bloody stump?” he growled, twin spots of color appearing
on his chiseled cheeks.

“You used me and tossed me aside,” she mimicked, giving up
the battle and laughing outright. “If I am not much mistaken, you’ve used
twenty-six women only to toss them aside.”

“Make that twenty-seven.”

He spoke the words so quietly, Georgie barely heard them
over the drumming of the rain and the echo of her laughter.

“Don’t be silly,” she cried in surprise. “We are only
talking, having a little spat. Then we’ll kiss and make up and laugh about it.”

“Oh, no, Miss Buchanan, you have laughed at me for the last
time. Consider yourself tossed by the wayside,” he said with a harsh laugh.

Before Georgie could form an argument, the Earl of Hastings,
the kindest, sweetest man she had ever met, hurled his mother’s journal across
the room to bounce against the chest of drawers and slide over the smooth
surface, toppling a small porcelain statue and sending it careening toward the
edge.

The door slammed behind the angry lord with enough force to
shake the rafters and the windows. Following which, two things happened
simultaneously, two things that knocked the air from Georgie’s lungs and some
sense into her head.

Sprinting toward the door, intent upon calling Henry back to
finish what they’d started, she tripped over her hem and fell to her knees,
taking most of her weight on her bad leg. She let loose a howl of pain as she
twisted onto her backside and pulled the injured limb to her chest.

Just as the delicate statuette of the boy and his lamb fell
from the chest of drawers, the lamb breaking away to slide across the floor
while the boy’s head snapped off and rolled under the dresser.

It struck her as odd, the Earl of Hastings having such a
dainty piece in his sparsely furnished, masculine chamber. Odder still that
he’d decapitated the boy when he’d dismissed her from his life with no more
consideration than he’d shown when he’d tossed his mother’s words, her hopes
and wishes, across the room. And oddest of all, that it was a boy and a lamb.
It might have been a boy and a dog, or a girl and a cat, or even a girl and a
lamb.

It was absurd, and more than a bit morbid, she knew it and
still she laughed. “A boy and a lamb,” she spluttered. “The arrogant
lord…separated them…lopped off…that…that boy’s head …and doesn’t even know it.”

She laughed until tears streamed down her face, until her
belly ached and each breath she drew was a battle. Then she rose and limped to
his lordship’s dresser, the guillotine by which he’d severed boy from lamb,
head from shoulders. She searched through his drawers until she found a pair of
faded work pants, a belt with which to hold them above her bony hips, a pair of
woolen socks, and a knotty knit guernsey in a wonderfully garish shade of green
that would clash terribly with her hair.

While Lord Hastings was somewhere in the house stewing over
his injured pride, Georgie Buchanan crept down the stairs, carefully avoiding
the seventh step that creaked, and snuck out the front door, quietly closing it
behind her. In her left trouser pocket was a headless boy, in her right a lamb
watched over his head.

Henry came awake with a jolt, bolting upright in the worn
leather chair behind the immense desk that had once belonged to his father.
With his elbow, he knocked a nearly empty decanter to the floor, crystal
shattering and flying off in every direction.

“Georgie!” he bellowed as he came to his feet, his eyes
scanning the study where his sister Beatrice had learned her sums and later
Greek and Latin. The curtains were open, weak gray light barely penetrating the
glass and rain battering the windows.

“Shit, no. No, no, no.” Even as he crossed the room,
avoiding shards of crystal and spilled brandy, a sense of déjà vu swamping him,
he knew she was gone.

He almost expected to find Critchley standing in the hall
with her dress in his arms, Davenport waiting behind him with a steaming cup of
coffee in hand. But the hall was empty and dark, the house silent beyond the
relentless rain hammering away above him and all around him as he ran for the
stairs.

A tray of neatly stacked dishes and glassware sat on the
floor just outside his chamber door and Henry knew a moment’s hope. Surely she
hadn’t taken the time to clear away the fragments of their meal only to
disappear into the night.

Empty.

His chamber was empty, the bed neatly made, his mother’s
diary sitting on the table next to the miniature of Georgie’s mother, the woman
who’d named her for her father before giving her to a sheep farmer and his
wife.

“Mum, that is Millie Graham,” he murmured as he lifted the
portrait and turned it over.

Connie, the sixth day of June, 1810.

Georgie was barely twenty years of age. The knowledge shook
him, saddened and enraged him. She was little more than a girl. A lost girl
searching for her mother. And he’d barely listened to her the night before, had
ceased hearing her beyond the point at which she’d explained the part his
mother had played in the sordid tale and he’d been forced to recognize the true
reason she’d shared her body with him, and the reason he’d woken alone the next
morning.

He’d been an ass, an arrogant lout puffed up on his own
importance, humiliated to realize he’d come to believe the dribble the papers
printed, the gossip spread about in parlors, the praise the ladies heaped on
him. Wounded vanity and dented pride had caused him to lash out, when all
Georgie had wanted from him, all she’d likely ever wanted from anyone, was
assistance in locating a mother who, in all probability, had no desire to be
found.

A rolling lash of thunder followed by a crackling boom
tossed Henry from his morose musings and he spun on his heel, racing back the
way he’d come.

Georgie was out there somewhere, alone and afraid, fighting
wind and rain and who knew what manner of danger. Overflowing streams and
rivers, landslides, bogs hidden beneath flattened grass, trees downed by
lightning, the list of possible perils was endless.

Spotting his boots carefully lined up beneath his coat which
hung from a peg in the hall, he shoved his bare feet into them, hopping across
the floor, nearly falling on his backside in his haste to be gone, to saddle
Devil’s Wind and ride off to save his woman.

“I named her the devil,” he muttered as he yanked open the
door.

A blast of rain slammed into him, drenching him from head to
toe, whipping past him on the wind, dousing the floor and everything within a
ten foot radius. Battling the wind, he wrestled the door closed behind him and
turned to face the storm.

A flash of bright green caught his eye.

Georgie stood on the lawn midway between the house and the
stables, her face lifted to the rain, her hands held up as if she might catch
individual drops with her fingertips.

As he watched, dumbstruck and disbelieving, she twirled in a
circle, long strands of wet hair whipping in the wind, her feet pounding the
earth, sending waves of muddy water splashing around her.

Dressed in one of his guernseys, the one Fanny had been
forced to knit as punishment for some transgression or other, a pair of his old
trousers, worn and faded and hanging from her narrow hips, and a pair of
galoshes likely belonging to Beatrice, she spun around and around, in a
shambling, disjointed, childish parody of the graceful dance she’d gifted him
with only the night before and the one on that first day, previous to baring
herself to him. Tit for tat.

“Georgie!”

Bending into the howling wind and driving rain, Henry
trudged across the lawn, his boots sinking into the swirling water up to his
ankles, the heavy mud beneath sucking at his heels, his eyes never leaving her
lest she disappear as suddenly as she’d appeared.

“Georgie, love,” he hollered, his words lost in the roar of
the rain and the squalls that raced over the land, one after another, buffeting
him, nearly sending him to his knees.

Georgie continued spinning, her eyes finding him with the
next rotation, a wide smile flashing with the one that followed, husky laughter
carrying to him with the final spin. She came to a stop, her arms windmilling
as she lost her balance.

Henry took the final steps that separated them at a run and
scooped her up, wrapping his arms around her slender back and hauling her hard
against his chest. He found her mouth, warm and welcoming, both temptation and
solace.

His lips pressed to hers, he turned and started for the
house.

“Why are you dancing about in the rain?” he asked between
one wet kiss and the next.

“Because I can,” she replied, curling her arms around his
neck and winding her legs around his hips. “Oh, no, I’ve lost a boot.”

“I’ve lost my mind,” he countered, dropping his hands to her
bottom and pulling her tight against him.

“Truly.” She brushed her lips over his, trailed her tongue
along the seam, dipped inside to tease him before lifting her head and blinking
against the rain.

“Truly,” he agreed as they reached the relative shelter of the
small portico above the front steps.

“Henry, my boot is gone.”

“Shh, we’ll find you another.”

He bent from the waist and Georgie wiggled around, obeying
the silent request and turning the knob so he could shoulder the door open.

The wind caught it and sent it crashing against the wall.

“My milk!” Georgie squirmed from his hold and turned back
the way they’d come.

“Whoa.” Wrapping his arms around her, he hauled her back.

“I left my milk,” she wailed. “And poor Adelaide worked so
hard for me. It isn’t easy for a cow to give milk when she’s afraid.”

“I’ve a cow named Adelaide? And you milked her?”

“Henry, please.”

“Where did you leave it?” he asked, smiling against the
crown of her head.

“Just there.” She pointed into the storm as if he could see
beyond ten feet.

“Go inside and get dry,” Henry ordered, spinning her about
and releasing her with a gentle push. “I’ll find Adelaide’s milk.”

“It’s my milk. She gave it to me,” she tossed back as she
started down the hall.

“So says the woman who pilfered my mother’s diary.”

The moment the words left him, he groaned, wishing them
unsaid. But if Georgie heard, she chose to ignore him, limping down the dark
hall, one boot slapping against the wood floor, her stockinged foot silent.

Henry ran back out into the rain, stopping in the stables to
discover Georgie had not only milked the cow, but mucked out her stall and
those belonging to Devil’s Wind, Romeo the draft horse, and Mirabel the elegant
mare. All of the animals had been brushed, fed and watered, leaving him only with
the task of wandering from stall to stall to pet and coddle and soothe the
beasts as best he could.

When he returned to the cottage some twenty minutes later,
he was greeted with the smell of cooking bacon. A towel was draped over one of
the empty pegs that ran the length of the hall, and a lone boot sat on a square
of linen. Dropping the mate beside it, he trudged down the hall, lured by the
promise of breakfast.

Henry pushed open the kitchen door and stopped in his
tracks. Georgie stood at the stove wearing a white apron over a faded gray
muslin dress too short to cover her ankles. One bare foot resting atop the
other, her leg cocked out and swinging back and forth, she hummed a familiar
lullaby, one he’d heard Olivia singing to Charlie and Fanny.

He deposited her milk just inside the room, leaned against
the doorframe and watched the gentle sway of her hips as she systematically
flipped thick slices of bacon in a heavy skillet. With her hair braided into
two long plaits that hung nearly to her waist, she might have been a kitchen
maid diligently cooking her master’s breakfast.

Or a young girl cooking breakfast for her family.

Georgie was barely twenty years of age and for the first
time Henry saw the girl she was beneath the trappings of womanhood. He looked
at her, truly looked at her and saw beyond her sultry voice and knowing eyes,
beyond her irreverent wit and bawdy humor, beyond the temptation she presented,
the pleasure she offered.

“Would you rather bathe or break your fast first?” she asked
without looking up from her task.

Dragging his eyes away from the complicated woman who was
his new mistress, if he hadn’t made too great a muck of things, Henry
discovered that the small worktable was set with plates, silver, two glasses
waiting for milk, a covered platter and a stack of toasted bread dripping in
butter.

And beyond the table, in front of the hearth where a low
fire burned, sat an old copper tub filled with steaming water.

“I can keep either one warm for you,” she offered.

“I’d rather make love to you first,” Henry answered.

“I can’t keep both warm,” she chided, shooting him a smile
over her shoulder.

“I’ll take a cold bath and eat a cold breakfast.”

Georgie shifted the skillet off the flame and slowly turned
around. Henry’s gaze dropped to her breasts, her nipples clearly visible
beneath the worn gray muslin, two perfect buds that hardened even as he
watched.

“Bath and breakfast,” she said, sweeping a long-handled fork
along the curve of her hip. “You needn’t worry, my lord Henry, I’ll keep myself
nice and warm for you. Hot even.”

“You are a terrible tease,” he groused playfully, his hands
falling to the placket of his wet trousers.

“I am,” she agreed. “Perhaps we ought to negotiate when I
might tease and when I ought to restrain myself. So that we both know what is
expected of us and there will be no unwelcome surprises along the way.”

Henry’s fingers stilled and he drew in a shaky breath.

“I can’t say that I’ve had much experience with apologies,”
she continued, her voice low and soft, curling around him. “But I know enough
to know one oughtn’t to apologize if one isn’t truly sorry. I wish I could say
that I was truly sorry I snuck into your mother’s chamber and made off with her
journal and the portrait of Connie. I’m not sorry, Henry. I would do it again
if the need arose. I would, and have, done worse.”

Henry listened to her words, amazed by her eloquence, and
oddly humbled by her honesty.

“I know I should be angry you stole—” he began, intending to
give her the same honesty.

“Borrowed,” she interrupted. “I always intended to return
both the journal and the portrait after I had them copied.”

“You copied Mother’s journal?”

“Henry, Lady Hastings’ words are the only real link I have
to my mother. I cannot afford to forget a single name, a single place, a single
encounter or conversation she wrote of in her journal. I realize it is a
terrible, perhaps unforgivable, intrusion upon her private thoughts. I promise
you I will not share them with anyone.”

Henry nodded in acceptance of her promise and her
non-apology.

“Having said that, I am truly sorry I laughed at you when
you were so obviously upset. I shall try to refrain from laughing at you in
future.”

“No, Georgie,” Henry replied, appalled. “I was behaving like
a madman. It’s no wonder you laughed at me.”

“That was your impression of a madman?” she asked
incredulously. “Goodness, Henry you really ought to venture from polite society
from time to time and see how the rest of us live. Why, that little show of
pique was no more than I witnessed each and every day at the supper table. We
called it conversation. Talking it out, as Himself would say.”

“Himself?”

Georgie paused a beat, her gaze skittering away. “Huh, I
haven’t thought about that in so long. All those suppers with everyone talking
at once. Funny what a person forgets, how some memories are overshadowed by
those that come later.”

“Yes,” Henry agreed, unsettled by the simple truth of her
words.

“Well now, this apologizing business isn’t so terribly
difficult. To be sure, it helps that I rehearsed my words ahead of time.”

“That was your prepared speech from last night?”

“You don’t think I could come up with such pretty words
offhand, do you?”

Henry shook his head with a chuckle.

“No, I’d have taken off on one tangent or other and wound up
teasing you about stalking the handsome earl around Town to have my wicked way
with him,” Georgie continued, waving her fork in the air. “Goodness, you must
have thought I was the cheapest tart, following you to your mother’s funeral.”

“Never.”

“Had I known I would have gone along with the ruse,
accidental though it was.”

“You would have lied to me?”

“I would have danced around the truth to spare your
feelings, and likely amused myself to no end in doing so,” she replied, lips
twitching.

“I am a vain, arrogant ass,” Henry offered.

“I like you just the same,” she said.

“That was the point at which you should have assured me I am
no such thing,” he answered, advancing on her.