Unraveling the Earl

by Lynne Barron

  “Hide behind a lass’ skirts, will you?” With no more effort than he might have expended swatting a fly, the Duke of Mountjoy lifted the delicate piece and tossed it aside.

  Gowns went flying through the air as if shot from a canon, one pale green dress drifting to the floor at Henry’s feet only to be trampled beneath Killjoy’s muddy boots as he lashed out with his right fist.

  Henry took a solid punch to the midsection that sent him stumbling into her vanity. Wood splintered, bottles and jars clinked together, toppled left and right, and rolled to the carpet as the spindly legged table crashed into the wall. Lady Joy’s jewels flew about, one necklace of diamond and sapphire gems smacking Henry’s arm.

  “Stop it this instant,” Georgie screamed, pulling against her bonds until the satin bit into her wrists. “You’ll kill him.”

  “You said I could.” Killjoy followed Henry’s retreat across the room, his barrel chest rising and falling at an alarming rate and his face so red beneath his straggly beard it was a wonder he had blood left anywhere else in his body.

  “I said no such thing.”

  “I heard you plain as day.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Your Grace.” Henry spoke for the first time since the barbarian who was her beloved cousin had entered the room.

  “You can’t hurt a fly, lad,” Killjoy taunted just before he lunged.

  The lad sidestepped and his grace’s massive shoulder plowed into the wall with enough force to punch a hole through wallpaper and plaster and drop a pretty little portrait of Loch Canon in spring onto his head.

  With a muttered curse, her cousin sank to his knees.

  “Stay down and I won’t be forced to do you further bodily injury,” Henry suggested as pleasantly as if he’d recommended one particular mix of tobacco over another.

  “You can’t…do me a…lick of harm,” Killjoy wheezed, cradling his arm against his chest.

  “Seeing as how we are soon to be family,” Henry continued in the same manner as he circled around the dropped man, carefully staying beyond his reach, “it might be best if we sat down and discussed the situation like gentlemen.”

  Killjoy twisted about to lean against the wall, his long legs splayed out before him and his arm held protectively against his chest.

  For the first time since he’d stormed into her bedchamber, Georgie was able to focus upon him, to take in his presence after more than a year spent apart from him.

  Killjoy looked precisely like the barbarian he was reputed to be. His red hair, only slightly darker and tamer than her own, was a matted, tangled mess reaching nearly to his broad shoulders. An unkempt beard hid his chiseled cheeks and square chin, drifting in uneven tufts down over the thick column of his neck. His eyes were sunken and shadowed beneath his heavy brow, their color a deep purple that brought to mind a nasty bruise left untended.

  His clothing was mud spattered and wrinkled, his black jacket hanging open over a stained white shirt without benefit of a single remaining button, the collar sagging down to reveal the wings of the inked dragon flying over his heart. His gray buckskins were patched at the knees, his boot heels worn down nearly to the soles.

  In short he was his usual disreputable self, slovenly and foxed, three sheets to the wind judging by the stench of whiskey that wafted across the room.

  “Help me up, lad.” Killjoy lifted one arm, his huge hand palm up.

  “No, Henry!”

  Georgie’s warning came too late.

  The earl who was a gentleman in all ways leaned down and grasped the hand of the duke who’d never pretended to be any such thing.

  Henry received a swift left cross that caught him square in the eye as a reward for his courteous gesture.

  He lurched back and nearly fell to his rump before gathering himself and turning to face Georgie where she struggled against her bonds.

  “Are you going to marry me?” he demanded, gingerly poking at the swelling already cresting his cheekbone.

  “You’ve not yet proposed to the lass?” Killjoy roared, jumping to his feet.

  “Are you?” Henry ignored the other man, his blue eyes gleaming as he pinned Georgie in place. “Tell me now, Georgie. I have no wish to pummel my future kinsman. But, as God is my witness, if you don’t intend to marry me I will beat his grace to a bloody pulp.”

  “That’s blackmail,” she accused, her gaze darting beyond his shoulder.

  Henry whipped around in time to block Killjoy’s wicked right jab and follow up with one of his own that landed with deadly precision on the duke’s injured shoulder and had him reeling around to crash into her desk.

  Corsets and shifts tumbled to the floor and her cousin tumbled right over them, his enormous hands scrabbling through slippery silk and lace in an attempt to get up again.

  “Yes or no?” Henry scooped his discarded shirt off the floor and stormed over to her.

  “Be reasonable,” she begged as Killjoy got to his feet and shook his shaggy head.

  Henry yanked his shirt over her head and down to cover her to mid-thigh, leaving her arms trapped along her hip.

  “Reasonable?” he repeated with a rusty chuckle. “Reasonable went by the wayside six weeks ago. Yes or no?”

  Killjoy crept across the room as silent as a mouse, no easy feat for a man of his immense size, pulling back his arm in preparation to deliver a wallop to his adversary’s unprotected back.

  “At your back!”

  The earl feinted left and the duke’s hand landed with a dull thud on the bedpost at Georgie’s side, the wood creaking and shuddering at the impact.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Killjoy roared as Henry gave him a shove that sent him crashing into the drying rack beneath the open window. Three pairs of stockings went sailing out into the summer sky.

  “Serves you right,” Georgie hissed, lashing out with her foot, missing her cousin’s thick thigh by mere inches.

  “What’s it going to be, Georgie?” Henry growled. “You can become the Countess of Hastings and have everyone in London falling all over themselves to welcome you into their homes or you can become the cousin, twice removed to the late and unlamented Duke of Mountjoy.”

  “You won’t kill him,” she argued, wishing she could be certain.

  Henry had the look of a man pushed past the breaking point and Killjoy was too drunk to properly protect himself. He would likely go careening out the window the next time Henry dodged his fists.

  “Bloody fool,” Killjoy muttered as he slowly rose to his feet to stand swaying to and fro. “That’s no way to propose to the lass.”

  “Stay out of this,” Georgie ordered.

  “Yes or no?” Henry asked.

  “Get on your knees and propose proper-like,” Killjoy continued, staggering toward the couple poised at the foot of the bed. “I’ll not be giving her into your lily-white hands unless you beg.”

  “What do you think he was doing when you barged into my bedchamber?” Georgie demanded.

  “Ach, I haven’t been without a bit of muslin so long I’ve forgotten what a man is about when he’s kneeling between a woman’s legs,” Killjoy replied around raspy laughter. “And it ain’t proposing.”

  Henry clamped his jaw so tight a muscle jumped along the sharp angle. His eyes took on a merciless glint and his nostril flared as his chest rose and fell before he became perfectly still.

  “You’ll come to rue this day,” she promised.

  “Is that yes?”

  “You cannot kill my cousin,” she warned.

  “Say the words, Georgie.”

  “Fine,” she huffed. “I’ll marry you.”

  Henry pressed a quick, hard to kiss to her lips before turning to face the Duke of Mountjoy.

  “Have you any objections to the match, Your Grace?” he asked, politeness personified.

  “Ach, you don’t know George if you think you’ll get her to the altar just because she says so,” Killjoy replied with a grin that showed a row of teeth startlingly whit
e against his red beard and ruddy complexion. “She’ll leave you wilting in the heat of the church and claim she forgot what day the wedding was to be held.”

  “I will not!”

  “She’ll go off on a journey and say she only left so as to snatch forty winks,” Killjoy continued, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Don’t waste your time searching for her unless you’ve a hankering to see Timbuktu or Constantinople.”

  “He’s going to lead with his left,” Georgie warned a split second before Killjoy set his actions to her words.

  Henry planted his feet and took the punch to his gut with little more than a grunt before cuffing the duke beneath his chin and following up with a quick jab to his solar plexus.

  “Stop this nonsense, Killjoy,” Georgie cried. “I said I’d marry the man.”

  “You pack a wallop,” Killjoy grunted, ignoring her words. “For an Englishman.”

  “Feel free to pummel his grace to within an inch of his life,” Georgie invited, as she climbed onto the bed, curled her legs to the side and leaned against the tall post, settling in for what promised to be a drawn-out bout.

  The men circled the room, bobbing and weaving, and landing the occasional punch that sent one or the other careening into walls, chairs, and the settee that Killjoy tossed about twice more.

  And all the while Killjoy offered up bits of advice as to how best to handle his spoiled and stubborn cousin.

  “You’ll never get the truth out of her if a lie better suits her purposes,” he said as he ducked Henry’s fist only to take the next blow on the chin.

  “A promise she’ll keep but anything less she’ll ignore and do just as she pleases.” Killjoy offered up that little bit of nonsense while backing Henry into a corner.

  “She don’t know loyalty from vengeance, but she’ll have your back either way,” the duke said as the earl jabbed his way back into the center of the carpet.

  “I’ve already deduced as much,” Henry replied as her cousin swung his arm in a clumsy arc, missing Henry’s head by a good six inches and falling to his hands and knees in a pile of ruffles and lace.

  “Give me a hand up before I bleed out on George’s frilly whatnots.”

  Henry ignored Killjoy’s words, proving that he’d either taken her warning to heart, a first that, or learned from his past mistakes.

  “Be sure her fingers aren’t crossed behind her back,” her cousin suggested as he staggered to his feet with blood oozing from the corner of his mouth and trailing through his raggedy beard. “Else you’ve as good as given her an out.”

  Henry shot a glance her way and Killjoy’s fist connected with his jaw.

  “Don’t take your eyes off him, you dolt!” Georgie screamed.

  “Were your fingers crossed behind your back?” Henry demanded, reeling backward from the blow.

  “How pray tell would I get my fingers behind my back,” she asked, neatly dancing around the question as she uncrossed her fingers at her hip and fluttered them beneath his billowing shirt.

  “Well now, seeing as we’ve settled that.” Killjoy brushed one hand over his mouth and down his shirt, leaving a bloody smear that only added to his seedy appearance. “Will you join me for a whiskey, your lordship?”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Henry answered with a nod.

  “Not until you free me,” Georgie reminded him.

  “Best to leave the lass where she is while we iron out the hows and whens of the thing,” Killjoy suggested. “Else you’ll come back and find her gone off to Timbuktu.”

  Henry tilted his head and studied her, his good eye going all soft and tender and his lips lifting in a smile more lopsided than usual.

  “You wouldn’t,” she whispered.

  “I’ve no desire to see Timbuktu just now,” the Earl of Hastings replied with a laugh before he turned on his heel and followed the Duke of Mountjoy from her bedchamber.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Am I the only one who finds it queer that Hastings and Mountjoy are sharing a harem of harlots between them?” Alice, Lady Piedmont, asked as she gracefully lowered herself to a spindly chair in Lord and Lady Easton’s theater box.

  Georgie lifted her opera glasses to watch as Killjoy slapped Henry on the back in a show of camaraderie understood only by men. “A few ladies does not a harem make.”

  “I count an even dozen, each one more brazen than the next,” Alice replied with a wave toward the crowded box across the pit. “But I was speaking to the curious friendship that seems to have sprung up between the two gentlemen this past week.”

  “Men are odd creatures,” Beatrice, Lady Easton murmured in agreement and Georgie lowered her glasses long enough to smile at Henry’s half-sister who shared his golden good looks and effortless charm.

  “None so odd as the duke,” Alice replied, lifting her own glasses. “No offense, Miss Buchanan.”

  “None taken,” Georgie assured her.

  “Oh, look, Georgiana, there is Mrs. Smythe,” Beatrice exclaimed in a hushed whisper as if the lady might hear her over the din of the audience chattering away through intermission. “Two over from Henry’s box.”

  Georgie found the golden-haired lady in time to watch her turn to her companion, her hands fluttering as she engaged the young man in conversation. “Are you certain the lady is Mrs. Smythe?”

  “Constance Smythe, nee Barnaby,” Beatrice assured her.

  “She seems awfully young.”

  “The gentleman beside her is her son, Milton,” Alice said. “Not yet twenty years of age and already a divine lover.”

  “Honestly, Alice to hear you tell it you have lain with every single gentleman in the theater,” Beatrice replied with a laugh.

  “And one or two of the married variety,” Alice said without an ounce of shame.

  “I don’t believe she is the same Connie in the portrait,” Georgie murmured, studying the lady and her stocky son. “Her eyes are too wide set, her smile too cheerful. Her son is nineteen, you say?”

  “I know it seems unlikely Mrs. Smythe is your mother, but not impossible,” Beatrice persisted. “Perhaps she married immediately after your birth and the young Mr. Wilton came along right off.”

  “An intelligent lady conceives the heir on her wedding night,” Alice said. “And the spare on the first night she allows her husband back into her bed.”

  “That is luck, not intelligence,” Beatrice argued.

  “No, luck would be going to the marriage bed with a bun already in the oven.”

  “How on earth would that be lucky?” Beatrice asked.

  “If the bun is not of the groom’s bakery, the lady would be lucky to have nabbed a father for her babe,” Georgie offered as her opera glasses drifted back to Henry’s box as if they had a will all their own. “If the bun belongs to her groom, she would be lucky enough to have sampled his baking before tying herself to his spoon for all eternity.”

  “His spoon?” Beatrice repeated around a giggle.

  “Long handled, one would hope,” Alice drawled. “Are you going to allow one or more of those trollops to test the length of Hastings’ spoon, Miss Buchanan?”

  “His lordship is free to stir up a baker’s dozen buns,” Georgie replied as a pretty woman with dark hair piled atop her head sashayed into Henry’s box to join the fray. “It is nothing to me.”

  “No? Then we won’t be hearing a wedding announcement at my ball?”

  “Hush, Alice,” Beatrice said.

  “I am only asking the question we have all been wondering since Hastings carried Miss Buchanan from Olivia’s foyer only to pop over for breakfast the next morning sporting a swollen eye, a fat lip and a lunatic’s grin.”

  “Yes, well…one doesn’t ask the question outright.”

  “One does if one wants to know the answer.”

  Georgie ignored their exchange as best she could while she watched Henry greet the latest addition to his harem with the brush of his lips over her gloved hand.

  Honestly,
why did he not send the lot of them scurrying from his box?

  Henry looked across the theater with a rueful smile and Georgie recognized his game.

  Marry me, Georgie. Marry me and save me.

  She could send the ladies scurrying willy-nilly with no effort whatsoever. All she need do was march into his box and claim the handsome earl as her betrothed, thereby sealing both their bargain and their fate.

  “It does seem rather an odd coincidence that Henry and his grace are both injured,” Beatrice said, blatantly fishing.

  “Coincidence, my left bum cheek,” Alice replied with a laugh. “I no more believe Hastings came to be sporting that blackened eye attempting to tame a frisky mount than I believe the Duke of Mountjoy’s lip was split open during a run-in with bandits on the London Road.”

  Georgie’s neighbor, the wicked Mrs. Fontaine, appeared in Henry’s box and wrapped one hand around his forearm in a proprietary manner that had Georgie gritting her teeth in vexation.

  The voluptuous auburn-haired lady stood too close, her breast pressed to Henry’s arm, her long neck arched back as she beamed a smile his way, one that even Georgie, watching through opera glasses across the space of the theater, recognized as oozing invitation.

  “Henry would never lie to us,” Beatrice protested.

  “To my way of thinking, he has done a number of things entirely out of character in recent weeks, beginning when he ran off after Aunt Hastings funeral and threatened to pummel poor Everett when he remarked upon it.”

  “Henry threatened Everett?”

  “He was seen skulking about in Bedford Square for weeks. And according to my lady’s maid he had his servants harrying all over Town to weddings and funerals.” Alice ticked off the instances of his lordship’s lunacy on her gloved fingers.

  “Why would Henry send his servants to weddings and funerals?”

  “For the same reason he made an ass of himself in Olivia’s parlor only to follow up by carrying Miss Buchanan from the house for all the world to see.”

  Mrs. Fontaine turned to face Henry who stepped back and to the side. The lady followed his retreat, deftly maneuvering him into a corner at the back of the crowded box until they disappeared into the shadows.