Unraveling the Earl

by Lynne Barron

  “Why did you leave me?”

  “Oh, you mustn’t take it personally, my lord,” she replied, tugging at her hand.

  Henry refused to release her, bending over to pluck at the third and final jeweled button at her wrist.

  “We made a bad bargain.”

  Critchley had said as much when he’d relayed their tea-time conversation.

  “What is your fascination with raspberry crumble?” he asked as the button came lose.

  “Have you never noticed that most people dive right into a dish of crumble?” she asked.

  “I can’t say that I have.” Henry removed the loosened glove, allowing his fingertips to trace the lines on her palm. Her hands were beautiful, long-fingered and delicate, her skin pale and soft.

  “That tickles,” Georgie pulled her hand away with a giggle that reminded him with startling clarity that she was but a girl. Twenty years old and oddly innocent for all that she was a siren, forever luring him into lunacy.

  “I myself like to know what I am eating.” Georgie picked up the thread of their conversation as she presented her left hand.

  “And be assured it was never possessed of a face.”

  “What do you suppose your sister served for dinner?”

  “You might have found out had you not set about deceiving your hostess.” Henry pulled free the first button, carefully placing it on the seat beside him with the others.

  “Do you think I’ll ever be invited back?”

  “Most definitely.”

  Olivia would hardly host a dinner without inviting his wife.

  Henry was going to marry the saucy wench. He could see no other option, leastwise one that would allow him to hold to his honor, not to mention his head, if he continued to bed her.

  And he fully intended to bed Georgie as often and as well as he could manage.

  “You dip your spoon right in, never expecting anything less than sweet cream.”

  “When I eat raspberry crumble?” Henry looked up from his task as the second button came away with no effort whatsoever.

  “Each day when you arise from your bed, or some lucky lady’s,” Georgie replied with a mischievous grin. “You open your eyes and expect nothing but sugar and spice and everything nice.”

  “Whereas you expect fuzzy mold?”

  “I don’t expect it, but I sniff about on the off chance I might find it.”

  “You are an uncommon woman.” Henry bent over her hand again, deciding she’d given him more insight into her mind in the past five minutes than in all the time they’d spent together previously. Now if he could only discover what was in her heart.

  “And you are an uncommon gentleman.”

  “Yet you left me. Twice.”

  “You could not hold to your end of our bargain.”

  “I did not understand… I did not see…” he stammered, both shamed and saddened by her whispered words.

  “You were willfully blind.”

  Freeing the final button, Henry looked up to find her looking straight back at him with a smile so tender, so soft and sweet, he felt his heart stutter in his chest.

  “No, Georgie,” he replied quietly. “Foolishly, but never willfully.”

  “You thought to make me your mistress and thereby slam shut every door I need to enter in order to find my mother,” she said, not in condemnation but in acceptance of that one simple truth. “You would have relocated me, and my neighbors would have known who and what I was before I’d unpacked so much as one trunk. You wanted to drape me in diamonds and parade me through the theater on the third Thursday following opening night and sequester me in a closed carriage and a private box at Vauxhall, thereby heightening curiosity as to my identity. How long do you suppose it would have been before my name was mentioned in the papers?”

  “Georgie, love,” Henry began, only to realize he’d hadn’t words to express his remorse.

  “Your terms did not suit me.” She shrugged one shoulder. “So I left.”

  “We can renegotiate the terms.” The words fell from his lips without premeditation and Georgie reared back, surprise and something else, something cold and brittle shining in her eyes.

  “I’ve no desire for jewels or fancy carriages or cramped little houses on lesser streets, my lord.” When she’d every reason to heap a dunghill of disdain over his head, she’d given him only honesty and acceptance. Now she showered him with mocking contempt. “I have no need of an allowance or pin money. And I’ve hatched a new scheme for locating my mother, one that does not necessitate spreading my legs.”

  “There is more between us than a bloody bargain,” Henry replied as his temper sparked.

  “My entire life has been a series of bargains,” she said, catching his gaze and holding it. “Tit for tat, my lord.”

  “Leave off my lording me,” he growled. “And quit trying to convince me I was nothing more than a means to an end.”

  “Honestly Lord Hastings, have you not figured it out?” she taunted, her voice rising to echo around the carriage. “I have traded by body for one thing or another since I was ten and six. My virginity went for a kind word and a pair of fleece-lined mittens, what little remained of my virtue I traded to Jacob for his father’s skill with a scalpel—”

  “Jacob’s father was a physician of the Hebrew faith,” he interrupted as comprehension dawned and one more piece of the puzzle that was Georgie Buchanan fell into place. “You sent Dr. Goldman to mend Charlie’s foot.”

  “Do not attempt to make a saint of me,” she drawled. “I have schemed and seduced and lied through my teeth to get to where I am today. You were but the latest in a line of men who offered up something I wanted.”

  Henry was shocked silent as her words registered and he realized that she’d given him the truth, or a warped version of it, for perhaps the first time since he’d found her strolling through Somerville.

  “You have nothing to offer me.” Her voice cut through the silence like the final lash of a whip unerringly finding its mark on flesh made tender from the strokes that fell before.

  “I have my heart to offer.” The words were out before the thought fully formed.

  “Your heart?” Georgie repeated with a husky laugh that grated over his nerves like sandpaper. “Whatever would I do with your heart? I’ve one of my own and as far as I am concerned it is a useless, jagged weight beneath my breast.”

  “Then take mine.”

  “I do not want your heart,” Georgie retorted, clearly striving to hold on to amused condescension and missing the mark when her voice wobbled. “I never sought it. I warned you not to give it, not to fall under my spell. But you would not listen. You just had to run about lapping up fuzzy mold believing it to be sweet cream. You are a stupid man, stupid and foolish and blind.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  For a blind man, the Earl of Hastings had keen eyesight.

  “What the bloody hell is Dobbins doing here?”

  “Good evening, Bobbin,” Georgie greeted her new butler as she started up the dozen steps that lead to the immense double doors guarding her home away from home. “There appears to be a bit of riffraff loitering about on the walkway.”

  “Shall I chase him off?” the tall man asked, his pale eyes lighting with glee.

  “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.” She needed his lordship gone before she lost what little remained of her wits and did something she would regret. In her entire misbegotten life Georgie had garnered but one true regret and her mangled heart hadn’t room to harbor another.

  “Damn it Georgie,” Henry snarled as he caught up with her. “Why is Mother’s butler’s answering your door?”

  “Mr. Bobbin is now my butler,” she said, handing her buttonless gloves to the butler in question. “Lord Hastings was just leaving.”

  “I am not going anywhere,” the earl argued.

  “You’ll leave if Miss Buchanan says you’re to leave.”

  “Who’s going to make me?”

&n
bsp; “I am.”

  “You and who else?”

  “I need no assistance tossing you out the door.”

  “You might consider what happened to you the last time you attempted to toss someone out the door.”

  “You sound like two spoiled boys,” Georgie said, spinning around in the spacious foyer. “Next you’ll be dancing around one another, neither of you daring to throw the first punch.”

  Henry and Bobbin eyed one another, the former clearly itching to prove her wrong while the latter stood balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to bob and weave.

  “Oh, for mercy’s sake,” Georgie muttered. “Stand down, Bobbin, and send Tag up to help me undress.”

  “Miss Alogne is off playing with that so and so from next door,” her butler replied, stepping back from imminent danger.

  “She’s gone off with that bloke, what’s his name?” Brain asked as he stepped into the hall.

  “Ralph,” Georgie supplied, watching Henry from the corner of her eye.

  His lordship seemed inordinately curious about her home, if she were to judge from the way he was spinning around with his mouth agape. Had he never seen a great hall done up in plush scarlet damask with gold finishes?

  “What’s she doing with him?” Brain asked, proving himself to be as woefully blind and stupid as the other blond man in her house.

  “If you must ask you wouldn’t understand,” Georgie replied as Henry angled his head back to take in the mural of naked nymphs dancing across the domed ceiling.

  “She won’t allow him to kiss her, will she?” Poor Brain sounded forlorn at the possibility.

  “Might be she’ll allow more than a kiss,” Georgie replied, losing her patience with the male population as a whole.

  “She wouldn’t.”

  “Let me give you a bit of advice, Brian Reginald Buchanan,” Georgie began, advancing on the boy who ought to have been old enough to behave like a man.

  “Buchanan?” Henry repeated. “You’re related?”

  “Cousins, four times removed,” she replied.

  “Then why is he acting as your footman?”

  “Georgie’s a hoot,” Brain said. “And she pays top wages.”

  “Listen well, my over-paid cousin.” Georgie clasped his cheeks in her hands, his downy whiskers soft against her palms.

  “I’m listening.”

  “A woman likes to know she is desired.” Georgie felt Henry’s eyes on her as she offered up one of the few truly astute pieces of knowledge she’d collected in her lifetime.

  “Ah, Georgie, I know all about that sort of thing,” Brain replied, blushing beet red. “How could I not, working for you?”

  “And if the man she wants does not demonstrate his desire, if he does not make it abundantly clear, she will go searching elsewhere,” she continued. “And like as not, she will never forgive you for sending her into another man’s arms.”

  “You think Tag is searching elsewhere?”

  “Have you made your desire as crystal clear as Loch Canon on an autumn morning?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Then march out back to the mews and pry Mrs. Fontaine’s pimply faced groom’s hands from your woman,” Georgie ordered. “And when you’ve dragged Tag away, by her hair if you must, you be sure to leave her with no further doubts.”

  “What if I am too late?”

  “You’ll learn to live with the loss,” she said, patting his cheek and stepping back. “Likely in the arms of another woman, or a string of other women. You might begin with Mrs. Fontaine as she seems the sort to welcome any man to her bed, even one with no idea what to do when he gets there.”

  Henry let loose a guffaw that turned into the sorriest excuse for a cough she’d ever heard as Brain hurried down the hall as if chased by the hounds of hell, or Mrs. Fontaine attempting to goose his bottom.

  “Now then, I’m stitched into this god-awful gown.” Georgie turned about to find Henry looking back at her with the remnants of his aborted laughter shining in his eyes and pulling at his lips while Bobbin stared up at the ceiling. “As Tag is otherwise occupied, one way or another, you’ll need to cut me loose, Bobbin.”

  “I’ll slice off your hand if you so much as reach for a pair of scissors,” Henry told the older man with quiet precision.

  “Call for one of the maids, will you?” Georgie requested.

  “Cindy’s assisting Cookie in the kitchen,” Bobbin replied, already turning away.

  “Cindy has fingers like sausages,” Georgie replied with a frown. “Is Maryellen already abed?”

  “I believe the maids all went off to their quarters some time ago.”

  “I suppose I must trust that you won’t slice up my back, Lord Hastings.” Georgie breezed past Henry and started up the curving staircase, suspecting that instead of finding her scattered wits she would likely find herself flat on her back.

  Ah, well, what did her wits matter when compared to spending just one more night with the too beautiful and too damn sweet earl.

  Henry was beside her before she’d reached the third step. “I won’t slice up your back.”

  “You’ve likely more experience cutting away a woman’s gown than the average lady’s maid,” she agreed, peaking at him from the corner of her eye. “Have you been in Mrs. Fontaine’s bed?”

  “I only just made her acquaintance this afternoon.”

  As sidesteps went, Henry’s was a tad on the weak side but Georgie let it slide. She was no longer his mistress, after all. What right did she have to demand fidelity from the randy earl who would swive anything in skirts?

  And if the thought of him in another woman’s arms filled her with fury and a hollow sort of pain, it would pass. If not today or tomorrow, then in a week or two, a month at the most.

  When she found her mother she would disappear from his life, and he from hers.

  Until such time, she need only avoid him as best she could, no easy feat considering her success depended upon the kindness of his relations.

  She should have thought of another way to coax Lord Somerton from his blustery temper fit. Alas, all thoughts of strategy, of manipulation and tactics, had flown right out the window the moment Henry had scooped her into his arms, pulling her tight against his chest and crooning in her ear.

  “I desire you, Georgie.” Henry’s voice was low and oddly fierce. “You will never have cause to doubt it, to search elsewhere and fall into another man’s arms by default.”

  Georgie blinked against an unaccountable moisture gathering in her eyes.

  “I haven’t your gift for words,” he continued. “I’ll likely say the wrong thing, or say nothing at all when words are required. But I will demonstrate my desire as often as you will allow.”

  “I don’t…I haven’t…a gift…” she stammered, staring straight ahead lest he guess he’d chosen just the right words to soften her heart.

  “I imagine I will muck things up on a daily basis, become unhinged no less than twice weekly and possibly lose my mind altogether at some point in the not too distant future.”

  Laughter tripped from Georgie’s lips, broken and weak.

  “You will be forced to forgive me time and again.”

  “And will you forgive me?” she whispered, knowing full well her sins, past, present and future, were beyond forgiveness.

  “I cannot imagine you ever needing my forgiveness.”

  “There you go again,” she cried, pulling her hand free of his arm and sprinting ahead of him on the stairs. “You cannot continue to wander through life seeing only the good.”

  “I don’t,” he protested, hurrying to catch up with her.

  “Everyone is not so good as you, so bloody principled and blasted sweet.” Georgie reached the landing a step ahead of the earl and turned about to face him.

  Henry came to a halt, one hand gripping the railing, the other reaching for her.

  She batted his hand away. “I will not be the cause of your disillusionment.”
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  “Of course you won’t,” he replied, his head angling to the side and his eyes going all soft and mushy.

  “And quit looking at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I am a puzzle you might solve if you only apply yourself.” She poked him in the chest. “You cannot solve me. I am missing far too many pieces.”

  “Georgie.” Just that, just her name on a sigh had her vision blurring.

  “Stop it,” she shrieked, turning on her heel and marching down the wide hallway, past a life-sized gilded statue of Atlas holding the world aloft.

  No good could ever come of the passion that sparked between them, that even now had her heart racing and moisture pooling between her legs.

  He’d offered up his heart, the foolish man, offered it right up like a sacrifice to some vengeful goddess. Oh, what was her name? The remorseless Greek goddess who turned herself into a goose egg only to have Zeus turn her into a swan and have his way with her.

  Pushing open two doors with giant roses carved into the heavy wood, she strode into her bedchamber and turned to close the doors behind her.

  Henry was quick of foot if not of mind, she’d give him that.

  “Rhamnusia,” she blurted, accountably relieved to have pulled that one single bit of knowledge from the tumult of thoughts zigzagging around in her mind. “I am Rhamnusia.”

  “Who does that make me?” he asked with a crooked smile.

  “A man made ridiculous by his stubborn desire to see a swan in a goose-egg.” Determined not to be swayed by his amusement, by his charm and by his too beautiful face and form, she stepped back until her bottom bumped against the tall post of her bed.

  “Rhamnusia was the goddess of what? Justice?” Henry turned away, took two steps and halted, his gaze swinging from left to right and finally to the ceiling above. “Holy mother of God!”

  Georgie looked about the bedchamber she’d painstakingly decorated over the course of the year she’d been in and out of London, choosing each and every item, from the white lace drapes billowing at the open windows to the wallpaper, a beautiful pattern of fat pink and yellow roses and trailing greenery. A plush carpet in the same pastel shades covered the floor while a fluffy down comforter and a dozen pillows picked up the pattern of the wallpaper. The canopy above the bed was more white lace, pink and green ribbons tying back the draped fabric.