The Exception of an Earl

by Deborah Wilson

  Camilla pressed her lips together and then began to giggle. Then she laughed. She covered her mouth, but the sound slipped through.

  Anthony frowned in the shadows. “What’s so hilarious?”

  “You. You’re trying to be all stony, authoritative, but…”

  “But?” His expression was hidden from her, but she heard the indignation in the one word and imagined his feelings were hurt.

  She patted his shoulder. She was no longer in the mood to tease him. “I’m sorry, Anthony.”

  But when she imagined her hero, he was more…

  Everything.

  Anthony stepped into the light and glared at her. Only a year older than her, he still looked like a young boy. “I don’t know why I bothered following you out here. Thomas said you never let him under your skirts.”

  She gasped. Thomas had been the only other boy she’d ever kissed. And they’d kissed quite often up until he proposed to Lady Mary Wells last Season. How dare he share their secret!

  She was glad she was still in the shadows so her embarrassment wouldn’t show.

  Anthony scoffed. “It’s no wonder you’re a spinster. You’re likely as frosty as your eyes suggest.” He straightened his coat. “You should mind who you bat your eyes at, Cammie. I’m a better man for not demanding you give me what your eyes promised.” He stomped away into the house.

  She glared at his back and thought of all the things she wanted to shout at him.

  They could have played a little longer if her father weren’t present at the party. She wanted to see him before he left. Camilla was biding her time until she could approach him. She’d gotten herself up to forty-five minutes before saying hello.

  She’d stopped hoping he’d be the one to break the silence. Mostly.

  Thoughts of her hero resurfaced. She didn’t imagine he’d be a very patient man. She pressed her fingers to her throat and allowed them to trail down to her collarbone. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she imagined her fingers belonging to someone else.

  Belonging to him.

  Camilla smiled and bit her lip. She needed her journal.

  She was just about to flee when she heard a noise like a footstep in a puddle. It had rained earlier. The scent of the alley had been washed away, leaving only the fragrance of cold brick and wet earth. She glanced around in the dark as her heart raced.

  Was someone there?

  The path was silent. In the distance, she heard the rolling of carriages and, from inside the house, voices and music. But the eerie stillness around her made her skin prickle.

  She stayed away from the spill of light from the lamp so that no one could see her.

  She wanted to go back into the party, but she was hesitant, frozen in place.

  Her heart jumped at the sound of a voice. It seemed to belong to the depths of the night. It surrounded her. The octave was just as foreboding as his words. “He’s right, you know,” her stranger said. “A lesser man wouldn’t have walked away.”

  She turned her head to the back of the alley and stiffened as she heard his approaching footsteps. Camilla began to make out a form.

  He was tall with wide shoulders. His legs seemed to go on forever and she could tell by the way his breeches pulled against his flesh that they were strong.

  He stopped before her. She lifted her chin and discovered the man’s face, or at least his comely bone structure. She strained her eyes to see try and make out the details but failed.

  He spoke again. “A lesser man would have taken you against your will.”

  She jumped as he slapped his hands against the brick on either side of her and leaned in just as Anthony had. Yet not a single giggle left her lips.

  He seemed to carry the darkness with him.

  The temperature around her seemed to rise. His body was close. He didn’t touch her but his heat did. It burned her skin.

  Her lungs burned as well. She could barely breathe. She pulled in a breath and her head felt dizzy. She could smell him now. His scent was stronger than the dark alley, yet just as unsettling. A wood-like musk that seemed far too illicit for an innocent like her to breathe in.

  Run! Run! Her mind shouted for her to dash away. Yet she couldn’t.

  She was trapped, and he hadn’t even put a finger on her.

  Camilla released a whimper when his breath brushed her ear. “Stay out of the shadows, sweet Cammie. Great perils await those who dare to brave this place.” Then he pulled away. “Run.”

  She did and didn’t stop until she was at her grandmother’s side.

  Her heart was working harder than ever, and she feared it would break and she’d die.

  She took slow breaths and waited for her body to calm. Once it did, she grabbed her journal.

  People began speaking to her the moment she opened it, asking her questions about her next book.

  She smiled at them graciously and gave polite answers when all she really wanted to do was tell them all to go away. She needed to write about her hero.

  Her skin tingled as she thought about her almost-assailant from outside.

  It was the almost that drew her.

  He’d been large enough to drag her away. She might have never seen her family again. He could have done anything to her. His body had seemed capable of anything.

  Yet he’d done nothing but tell her to run to the safety of the party.

  How chivalrous of him.

  She smiled and then gasped as her father approached and sat at her side. Lord Hornstein’s smile was the epitome of charm. “Are you writing about me?”

  Her usual answer to that was always, “Yes,” but tonight, she felt different. She felt… flushed. “No, I’m writing something... different.”

  Her father lifted an intrigued brow. “How different?”

  She smiled. “You’ll see.”

  ∫ ∫ ∫

  0 5

  * * *

  Lord Hornstein was an easy man to find. All Will had to do was listen to the whispers and watch the direction of the eyes of those who kept his name on their lips.

  One woman had called him a modern Marquis de Sade, but Will thought those estimates extreme. From what Will had learned, the man had a mistress and a by-blow. By those simple estimates, most of the men here could be compared to the old French aristocrat.

  Will stood on the other side of the drawing room and watched Hornstein as he spoke to the young woman Will had just frightened outside.

  Cammie.

  He heard someone else call her Camilla.

  “She wrote that book about Mr. Reevas,” a woman a few feet away said. “I bought my husband his own copy. I spent the last of my allowance on it, but... you should see how well he plays with the children now.” She sighed with bliss and then she and her friend giggled.

  Will’s eyes widened. The woman he’d scared was Lady Camilla James.

  Will had heard about her book. He didn’t think there was a man in England who hadn’t, but he was likely one of the few who’d never read a single page and had no intention of doing so.

  The last thing he wanted to read was a book titled The Good Father.

  He was watching Lord Hornstein yet found his eyes couldn’t help but find their way back to Camilla. She was a pretty little thing, not anything like he’d have imagined her.

  He’d thought her more mature in both age and character.

  He couldn’t believe she’d dared to ask a man to join her in a dark only to turn him away when things got hot. She was a little tease indeed.

  He’d watched her and the gentleman she’d called Anthony kiss for some time. He’d planned to wait until they moved farther from the door and into the gardens so they could take things further, but then she’d pushed him away. The action had been rather cold. One minute, she’d been full of life and the next, the passion was gone.

  He’d been ready to think her just as frozen as the young man had claimed her to be.

  But then she touched herself.

  Will had great
vision at night. He hadn’t been able to see her face, but he’d watched her fingers and the catch in her breath had triggered his body to respond. He’d been astonished by his reaction, mainly because he’d had yet to see her face.

  He blamed his interest on pure curiosity. Why send this Anthony away when it was clear she wished to be touched?

  Maybe it hadn’t been Anthony’s touch she’d been thinking of.

  Maybe there was someone else.

  He looked around the party and tried to see which man was looking at her.

  Many of them were.

  She laughed and he stiffened. His head whipped back to her as his body responded once again to her. And now he’d seen her face.

  She was beautiful.

  Anthony had called her eyes cold, but Will liked the gray. He liked the way they narrowed when she smiled. He liked her smile and her small chin. He liked the color of her hair and how it warmed her skin.

  There was nothing cold about the woman in the least.

  Except for the fact that she’d pushed Anthony away.

  Suddenly, she stopped smiling and her hand went to her father’s arm. She said something. There was a flash of panic. Lord Hornstein patted her hand before he stood and walked away.

  Her eyes followed him. She dipped her head but not before Will saw the longing in her gaze.

  “Husher!” Lord Jeremy Warren approached. “What are you doing here?” The man was one of the best-looking people in the room and always wore a smile that said he knew it.

  He worked for Van Dero. He used his charm to gather secrets on the duke’s behalf. Blackmail was as useful a tool as any.

  They shook hands. “You know why I’m here,” Will said in a low voice.

  Jeremy smiled and leaned in. Just above a whisper, he said, “I know you know that I know why you’re here. We’re supposed to work together.” Jeremy thrust his brows up and smiled.

  “Then why pretend like you don’t know why I came?”

  Jeremey shrugged. “Just… improvising.” He smiled. “Making it more fun for both of us.”

  “Don’t.” Will hadn’t come to have fun. He’d come to do a job.

  And that job was walking through the door and leaving the party as they spoke.

  “There he goes.”

  Jeremy grabbed Will’s shoulder. “Stay.” He motioned to Camilla. “His daughter is here. Why not make this hunt a little more pleasurable by speaking to her? Wouldn’t it be far more exciting to get answers from a woman than a man?”

  Will stared at him. “Why are you talking to me?”

  Jeremy stiffed. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve never talked this much to me before.” Will narrowed his eyes. “This is about Annie, isn’t it?”

  Jeremy had the decency to look pained for him. “I’m sorry about how that worked out. I’m sorry about your son.”

  Will’s heart raced. ‘I don’t want to talk about this…”

  “It shouldn’t have happened the way it did.”

  Will stepped into his face. “Another word and I’ll toss you through the window.”

  Jeremy’s eyes widened. “I’ll just go follow Lord Hornstein then. You stay with the girl.”

  “Wait!” Will pressed his lips together as Jeremy slipped out the front door.

  There were many reasons he preferred to work with his own team. Jeremy’s annoyances were one of them. But Will couldn’t work with them on this because he couldn’t let Van Dero know he had a team and who that team worked for.

  He glanced in Camilla’s direction and turned away. And then turned back to find her staring at him. She sat on the edge of the couch, a strong knowing look in her eyes.

  But it was impossible. She couldn’t have recognized him from outside. He’d stayed out of the light for that very reason. But she was staring at him.

  And then she was standing and walked toward him.

  People who tried to cross in her path stopped.

  She never broke her stride.

  There was a final hope that she was looking at something behind him. Maybe the wallpaper.

  Yet when she stopped right before him, there was no point in pretending her eyes weren’t on him. She was looked right at him.

  And then she smiled.

  ∫ ∫ ∫

  0 6

  * * *

  It was him.

  Since the other gentleman had shouted his name, Husher, Camilla had found herself drawn to him. There’d been something about the way he’d stood in the corner of the room. His posture was listless and yet seemed carefully assembled at the same time.

  He was handsome and Camilla had felt a tickling below her belly as she watched him. His jaw looked unbreakable, and he had such lovely lips. It was rare to see such full lips on a man.

  She’d wanted to kiss him long before she discovered he was the man from the alley.

  It was when he’d cried out to the other man that she’d known.

  He’d shouted at her in a similar way.

  His friend, before he’d left, had caught her staring at Husher. She even believed he’d whispered something about her, but when Husher hadn’t turned to look at her, she’d dismissed the idea. Then Husher’s friend was gone and his eyes were free to sweep the room. They settled on her.

  He had green eyes.

  She was across the room before she knew what she was doing.

  His gaze was stoic and for reasons she didn’t know, that made her smile.

  And then she laughed.

  His eyes widened, and he stiffened.

  “I found you.”

  He lifted a brow. “What? I don’t know you.”

  “Yes, you do.” She laughed again.

  His eyes were an unusual shade. Pale, yet potent. They reminded her of hot tea. No milk. Just sugar. Just the way she liked it.

  “We haven’t been formally introduced,” he told her.

  “Don’t worry. No one is going to hold it against you, or me.”

  He frowned. “Your father might.”

  She shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about that. All she wanted to do was talk about him. She wanted to learn everything about him. She wanted to study him as thoroughly as one would study a schoolbook. “Is your name really Husher?”

  He crossed his arms. His stoic expression was back in place. “Yes.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I make people shut up.”

  She gasped and then she bit her lip. “Glorious,” she whispered. She hadn’t thought the word loud enough for him to hear, but he had.

  There was a twitch in his mouth and then he cleared his throat. “Shouldn’t you have left with your father?”

  “I’m here with my grandmother.” She pointed behind her to the woman asleep in a wingback chair by the empty hearth. She smiled at the peaceful look on her grandmother’s face and then turned back to Husher.

  He was glaring. “That isn’t a chaperone.”

  She laughed. “No, I think I’m more her chaperone. Grandmother enjoys parties. She simply has trouble staying up for them. She hates going alone, so I come with her. Yes, I could have chosen another chaperone for myself. I’ve married friends who are more than willing to do it, but alas…” She looked at her grandmother and then him again. “It makes her happy. She’ll wake up when she gets home and go on and on about how wonderful a time she had.”

  He blinked and cleared his throat. “No wonder you were outside on your own. Had a man been guarding you, you’d never have made it that close to the door.”

  She felt a shiver spread up her spine and took a shaky breath. “What else would a good man have stopped me from doing?”

  He leaned forward. “Approaching me.”

  Heat followed another shiver.

  His hair was dark. It was almost black, but that no longer mattered. He was her hero. He was the man in her book.

  But she needed more of him. She needed to feast her mind on everything that he was.

  “Or kiss boy
s,” he said.

  “That wasn’t a real kiss.”

  “It looked like it to me. It was to him.”

  She shrugged. “Anthony is handsome and not in love with me. He’ll move on. I kissed him for inspiration.”

  He grunted.

  “Are you angry right now?” she asked.

  “What? No, why?”

  “Because you sound angry.” She opened her journal. With her pencil already in hand, she started to write. “Do people say you seem angry all the time?”

  “Sometimes...” he said cautiously. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m writing.”

  “Yes, but what are you writing?” he asked in irritation.

  She lifted her head. “Are you sure you’re not upset?”

  He closed his mouth and his expression. “I’m not upset.”

  She suspected he was lying and wrote her suspicions down.

  He turned and leaned over to peer into her book. “Are you writing about me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  She looked up at him and smiled. “Because you’ve inspired me.”

  His eyes were curious. “Is this for a book?”

  “Yes. Will you meet me at the park tomorrow?” she asked, closing the book. “It’s getting late and I should get my grandmother home.” Dowager Hornstein lived not far from her mother. She’d told Camilla she was leaving her the house in her will.

  Camilla hoped the will would not go into effect for a very long time.

  He grunted. “You shouldn’t be the one getting anyone home. She should be taking you home. That’s what chaperones do.”

  Opinionated and feels the need to share those opinions.

  “Are you coming to the park?” She studied Husher and waited for his response.

  He drew his brows together. His expression was conflicted. “What if it rains?”

  “Are you a member of Almack’s?”

  He shook his head.

  She looked him over. “Are you a lord?”

  He lifted a brow. “You see why introductions are so important? I could be anyone. I could be dangerous.”

  She sighed and desperately hoped that was the case.

  He frowned and she righted her face to hide her inner thoughts. “We can meet at my brother’s house. I’ll be visiting my sister-in-law tomorrow.”