Unraveling the Earl

by Lynne Barron

  “Good gracious,” Mrs. Bentley said, one bare hand coming up to rest over her heart. “It’s you.”

  “Me?” Oh no, had word of her dalliance with the lady’s brother reached Town already?

  “The girl who was a boy.”

  “I…what…how…” Georgie stammered, taking one step back, fully prepared to turn and flee.

  “The daughter of Mother’s friend,” Mrs. Bentley continued, stepping off the porch. “Oh, what was her name? Lottie? Bonnie?”

  “Connie,” Georgie breathed as the lady stopped before her.

  “Of course, Connie. The last of Mother’s angels.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Henry!”

  The Earl of Hastings rose to stand in the stirrups, his gaze swinging over the heads of the ladies perched in open carriages and sitting primly on the backs of docile mounts and two gentlemen slouched elegantly in their saddles.

  “My goodness, Hastings, whatever are you about?” Lady Winthrop asked with a tittering giggle, her golden curls bobbing over her forehead in accompaniment.

  “I thought I heard someone calling my name,” he replied, settling in the saddle once more.

  Summer was winding down toward autumn, the weather was fine and the park crowded with the cream of the cream of English Society.

  Sweet cream.

  Fuzzy mold.

  What the hell had that Georgie meant by her cryptic message?

  “Will we see you at Lady Casterbury’s ball this evening?” the widowed Mrs. Bishop asked, one slender hands caressing the side of her carriage, her pale green eyes traveling over his thighs.

  “I rather doubt it,” he replied.

  He’d been back in Town for little more than a week but he might have been absent for years the way the ladies behaved toward him, cooing and sighing and eyeing him up, down and sideways. He felt rather like a diamond earbob that had gone missing only to roll from beneath a chair in a crowded ballroom, prompting all the ladies to claim the trinket as their own.

  “Oh, never say you will not grace us with your presence,” Lady Winthrop cried.

  “You must come,” Mrs. Bishop demanded, shooting the younger lady a fulminating glare. “You promised you would dance with me just as soon as I’d tossed off my mourning.”

  “I did? That is, I did. And I shall. But not this evening.”

  “You shall not be attending Mrs. Granger’s ball rather than Lady Casterbury’s?” Another lady whose name escaped him, an auburn-haired beauty, joined the fray, angling her mount between Henry and Lady Winthrop’s carriage.

  “I don’t know any Mrs. Granger,” he replied, the beginnings of a megrim tapping at his temples.

  “It’s settled then,” Mrs. Bishop exclaimed. “We shall see you at Lady Casterbury’s route and you shall dance the supper dance with me.”

  “He shall do no such thing,” Lady Winthrop hissed.

  “Now see here,” the pretty auburn-haired lady snarled. “You do not own Lord Hastings. He is quite free to dance the supper dance with whomever he pleases.”

  Had they always been this competitive, this woefully brazen?

  Henry looked around him, disconcerted to find those ladies not directly involved in the escalating melee eyeing him with lascivious delight. Jasper Clive and Benedict Edwards, Lord Carlton, the only other gentlemen within the tight circle, smiled, the former likely finding his plight amusing while the latter hoped to lap up the leftovers.

  “Uncle Henry!”

  Again Henry stood in the stirrups to see over the bickering ladies.

  Fanny stood atop a small knoll madly waving her arms above her head. Beside her Charlie hopped up and down. Both children held hoops in their hands, colorful ribbons blowing behind them on the breeze.

  Henry returned his rump to the saddle, finding his first smile since entering the crowded park. “You must excuse me, ladies.”

  He waited for the pretty woman whose name he could not recall to back her mount out of his way. Instead she only met his gaze and slowly licked her lips.

  “I apologize, Miss…”

  “Mrs. Fontaine,” she purred, edging closer.

  “Yes, well, Mrs. Fontaine, it was a pleasure to see you again but I really must be on my way.”

  “Oh, but we’ve never met,” she replied, her voice pitched low. “I rather hope we might alter that lamentable state of affairs.”

  It was all Henry could do not to roll his eyes.

  “You aren’t leaving us, are you?” Mrs. Bishop asked, leaning over the side of her carriage and gifting him with an unobstructed view down her bodice.

  Her breasts were pretty enough, if a bit too large, he decided.

  “Alas, I must away,” he replied with a lackluster attempt at sounding forlorn.

  “Lord Hastings and I are going for a ride,” Mrs. Fontaine said, placing one gloved hand over his where it rested on his thigh. “A long slow ride.”

  That little bit was too much. Brazen was one thing. Shameless was another.

  Lady Winthrop sucked in a shocked breath.

  Mrs. Bishop reared back as if she’d been slapped.

  Jasper Clive laughed while Lord Carlton broke into a fit of coughing.

  “Mrs. Fontaine, I am afraid you are mistaken,” Henry said, careful to keep his voice gentle and his words polite. “My niece and nephew are in the park and as I have not seen them for some time I intend to head that way.”

  “I’ll ride with you,” she offered. “Wait while you pat their heads or whatever uncles do.”

  “Some other time, perhaps,” Clive came up behind Henry on his black gelding. “Carlton and I have some pressing business matters to discuss with the earl.”

  “Just so,” Henry replied gratefully.

  Mrs. Fontaine blinked in obvious surprise and slowly backed her horse out of his way.

  “I say, that was rather an interesting state of affairs,” Clive said when they’d made their farewells and ridden away from curious ears.

  Henry turned to glare at the auburn-haired, dark-eyed man riding beside him only to find his friend grinning around the cheroot that dangled from his lips.

  “Two minutes more and the ladies might have come to blows,” Carlton agreed, ebony locks any lady would envy swaying as he urged his horse ahead of them where the path narrowed in a turn.

  “Leave off,” Henry muttered, heat sweeping up his neck.

  “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen ladies behave with such blatant disregard for propriety,” Clive continued. “Not even when vying for your attention.”

  “A new strategy, Hastings?” Carlton tossed the question over his shoulder. “Playing hard to get?”

  “I’m not playing at anything,” Henry replied, the pounding at his temples gaining momentum.

  “Hastings has no reason to play games,” Clive agreed. “He already has quim lined up as far as the eye can see.”

  “Then what’s with you?” Carlton asked. “You’ve not bedded a single lady since you’ve returned to Town.”

  “I only returned eight days ago.”

  “And how do you know he hasn’t dipped his wick since his return?” Clive asked the other man.

  “I know because he’s been carousing with me while you’ve been doting upon your actress,” Carlton replied. “And we have neither one of us gotten under a lady’s skirts.”

  “Did you find a country miss to keep you company up north?” Clive asked. “Perhaps a rustic wench captured your attention and now you cannot get her out of your head?”

  “I don’t see how it is any of your business,” Henry replied stiffly.

  “It isn’t,” Clive agreed. “I only ask out of concern as your friend.”

  “Oh, so now you are concerned for me?”

  “Country lasses are a different breed than what you are accustomed to.” Clive pulled the cheroot from his lips and flicked it to the ground as they took the next turn in the path, leaving the fashionable folks behind.

  Green grass sprea
d out before them with the Serpentine snaking along to the left and the small hill from which Fanny had hailed Henry rising to the right.

  Fanny and Charlie were nowhere in sight.

  “A country miss will sink her claws into you,” Clive continued, his eyes focused somewhere in the distance and his voice soft. “Lord have mercy, but she will dig deep into your darkest recesses and pull your hidden desires to the surface. She will make you so bloody happy you can’t see straight, and ask for so little in return.”

  “Listen to the man,” Carlton urged, dropping back to ride beside Henry. “He knows of what he speaks.”

  “You fell in love with a country miss,” Henry said, surprised though he couldn’t have said why.

  “I did not recognize the prize I’d stumbled upon during that long winter,” Clive replied with a shake of his head. “When the thaw came, I thought only that the Season was due to begin and I’d best make my way south to amuse all the ladies with my newfound toys and talents.”

  “The silk ties and leather crops.”

  “There are no secrets among the ladies, no matter how well-bred they might be,” Clive agreed with a sly grin. “Isn’t that so, Lord Stallion?”

  Henry squirmed in the saddle, heat prickling along the back of his neck. “So you just left her and high-tailed it for Town?”

  “I am afraid I did not just leave my love, I gave her away, passed her on to this bloke like a suit of clothes I’d outgrown.” If Clive felt an ounce of shame at his confession, he hid it well, smiling as he brought one hand up to shade his eyes against the sun’s glare.

  “And she went?”

  “Quite cheerfully.” Carlton replied.

  “And that was the end of it?”

  “Would that it were.”

  “She cast a spell on the rake, caused his heart to break, and when the rogue came to his senses, she refused all attempts to mend fences,” Carlton sang softly.

  “Why is it the songsters are forever defiling lullabies?” Clive asked.

  “Lack of imagination,” Carlton replied.

  “That little tune was written about you?” Henry asked in astonishment. “I heard it making the rounds in the taverns and bawdy houses but I had no idea you were the intended victim.”

  “It might have been worse,” Clive answered with a shrug. “There are plenty of words which rhyme with spank and bind. I would hate to have the lady’s name besmirched in such a fashion should anyone ever discover it.”

  “As if they could,” Carlton replied with a chuckle. “One would have to be a very desperate fellow to go traipsing through those mountains in search of the lady. Hell, the man who did would find himself lost or eaten by wolves. Wolves in sheep’s clothes.”

  “Speaking of wolves.” Clive shot Henry a look from beneath his dark brows.

  “I take it yours are baying at the front door?”

  “The back, but it is only a matter of time before they come around to the front. Cybil would be horrified should her neighbors see the dunners pounding on her door.”

  “Will a hundred pounds see you through the end of the Season?” Henry asked.

  “Two will see me until a Christmas wedding.”

  “Lady Hortense’s father has agreed to the match?”

  “Have you never seen Lady Hortense?” Carlton asked with a snicker. “Horse face Hortense they call her. Her papa is only too happy to have Clive take her off his hands.”

  “That seems rather a sad…” At a loss for how to complete the sentence, Henry allowed his words to trail off as he spotted Fanny rolling her hoop along the riverbank while two women watched from a bench nearby.

  “State of affairs,” Clive finished for him. “Fear not my friend, my affairs will hardly alter a bit. Cybil is all for the match, and the steady income it will provide. You needn’t worry I will foist her back on you.”

  “I did not foist Cybil Fairley off on you,” Henry muttered as Fanny spotted him and tossed aside her hoop to dash toward the path. “And I wish people would stop suggesting I did.”

  “No, you merely introduced us and offered me fifty quid to see her home.”

  “Precisely.”

  “And you have continued to dip into your coffers as needs be, all for the greater good.”

  “Speaking of foisting off mistresses, isn’t that Miss Amherst sitting under that tree?” Carlton piped in, squinting against the sun’s glare. “Who is that with her?”

  “Miss Amherst was not my mistress. And the lady beside her is Mrs. Sophia Miles, the children’s nurse.” Henry slid from the saddle with barely enough time to plant his feet firmly on the ground before Fanny launched herself at him.

  “Uncle Henry!” she squealed, wrapping her arms around his neck as he lifted her against his chest. “I am so happy to have found you.”

  “As am I,” her uncle agreed before bussing her cheek and lowering her to the ground. “You remember Mr. Clive and Lord Carlton.”

  “How do you do?” She dipped into a clumsy curtsy, all smiles and flashing eyes for Carlton.

  “Lovely as ever, Lady Francis,” Clive greeted with a wink which the little lady ignored.

  “Are you quite certain you will not wait for me to grow up?” Carlton teased. “Two decades ought to do it, then we can marry and live happily ever after.”

  “I do hate to break your heart, but I am going to marry a prince.”

  “Oh, well, I suppose I can bear to lose you to a prince, but nothing less.”

  “Go on with you,” she replied with a wave of her hand. “You are a shameless flirt.”

  “That I am,” the raven-haired man agreed.

  “I shall allow you to continue to flirt with me until such time as I marry and become a princess,” Fanny replied. “But then you must desist, lest my husband take umbrage and challenge you to a duel. The prince is a crack shot.”

  “Will we see you at the theater this evening?” Clive asked, turning his attention to Henry.

  “Uncle Henry cannot come out to play with you,” Fanny replied, shifting from flirtatious to contemptuous in a heartbeat. “He is to come to dinner at my house.”

  “I am?” Henry asked.

  “Mama sent out invitations just this morning.”

  “Ah, that would explain it.” Henry had been up with the dawn and encamped in the center of Bedford Square for hours before hurrying off to Hyde Park.

  “Mama has invited a select few to join her for dinner this evening,” Fanny said, returning her attention to Clive and tilting her head way back to look down her nose at him. “It is a pity you are not invited.”

  The gentleman’s jaw clamped tight.

  Henry smiled. No lady, old or young, could put a man in his place quite like Lady Francis Marie Gibbons. And she had taken a decided dislike of the man from the moment they met.

  “A pity indeed,” Carlton agreed, shooting a gloating grin his friend’s way.

  “I wish you were invited, Lord Carlton,” she all but gushed as she swung her eyes his direction. “I am to wear my new dress and join the guests for cordials before dinner.”

  “I am quite certain you shall outshine all the other ladies.”

  “Oh, I shall.”

  “Modest creature, isn’t she?” Clive asked of no one in particular.

  “Off with you.” Fanny made a shooing motion with her hands, one guaranteed to annoy. “I must save my uncle from your dastardly clutches. Away now.”

  “Hastings, if you can slip away from your illustrious family before dawn you will find us at Cybil’s,” Clive tossed back as he turned his horse. “The lady has invited a select few to play cards after the last curtain. A pity you and your new dress were not invited, Lady Francis.”

  “Childish buffoon,” Fanny whispered beneath her breath.

  Henry lifted his niece to the saddle he’d recently vacated and led horse and girl toward the two ladies sitting beneath the shade of a tree.

  “What is the occasion of your mother’s impromptu dinner this evenin
g?” he asked.

  “Mama has made a new friend,” Fanny replied. “Wait until you meet her. She is ever so clever, though not terribly pretty.”

  “Ah,” Henry murmured, recognizing the trap.

  “It is to be a small gathering, perfectly proper for a family in mourning,” she continued. “Just the immediate family.”

  Which meant dinner for three dozen, no doubt. And all of them sizing up the latest lady to be offered up as the future Countess of Hastings. Unless they’d already had occasion to meet the lady and had been invited as reinforcements in Olivia’s seemingly never-ending battle to see him wed.

  “How angry is your mother likely to be if I pretend I did not receive the invitation?”

  “Oh, but you cannot.”

  “I rather think I can. I need only stay away from home until tomorrow morning.”

  “And what shall I tell Mama when she asks if I saw you in the park?” Fanny demanded. “Would you have me lie?”

  She had him there.

  “You may tell your mother I accept her invitation under protest,” Henry said.

  “Don’t look so glum, Uncle Henry,” Fanny replied cheerfully. “After all, you shall get to see me in my new dress. It is ever so pretty and sophisticated.”

  “There is that,” he agreed as he spotted Charlie on his knees beside Miss Amherst, his fingers sifting through the grass. “What is your brother about?”

  “He’s picking clover to make a chain.”

  “For the future princess’ crown, no doubt.”

  “No silly,” she giggled. “To make a necklace for a lady. Charlie’s in love.”

  “Poor sod,” Henry muttered, hoping his nephew had chosen more wisely than he had.

  “Oh, look! There is Penelope Greenpeace.”

  A flaxen haired girl about Fanny’s age skipped along the path before a finely dressed matron and two older girls. “Is Miss Penelope the object of Charlie’s affections?”

  “Do try to keep up,” Fanny replied with a roll of her eyes. “Penelope is a prissy little shrew who takes pleasure in riling me. She is forever naming me too intelligent and tempestuous to earn the regard of a baron, let alone a prince.”

  “That sweet child named you intelligent and tempestuous?” Henry eyed the pretty little girl in her pristine white pinafore over a dress of palest pink unadorned by so much as a single grass-stain or sagging ruffle.