Unraveling the Earl

by Lynne Barron

  Georgie could not take her eyes from the paper, from the smudged print and creases left by Alice’s fingers as she shifted her hold to extend the offering, from the ink startlingly dark against the white paper, from the words too small to read, from the pink ribbon holding it all together.

  It was the ribbon that snapped her back to her senses, the fat pink ribbon that, once upon a time, had held her curls back as she’d run over the hills surrounding Joy on the Mount.

  Leave it to a Buchanan to tie up revenge in a pretty package.

  Georgie dropped her hand from her mouth and swallowed the sorrow and regret and shame bubbling just beneath her breast. Her fingers shook as she reached for the weapon she’d chosen to drag Lady Drummond’s name through the mud.

  Alice’s fingers relaxed their light grip, releasing their prize. The tips of Georgie’s fingers brushed the edge before she snatched her hand back. The newspaper fell to bounce off one silver slipper before sliding to the floor and Georgie whipped her head up, the sudden motion making her dizzy.

  I love you.

  I’m truly sorry.

  I’ll endeavor to deserve you.

  I am carrying your babe.

  Any one of the simple truths would do.

  Except that Henry was staring at the paper on the floor as if it were a coiled snake, a serpent waiting to strike, to sink its fangs into flesh and bone.

  “Isn’t that sweet,” Olivia cooed, gliding down the aisle to scoop up the paper. “Henry ordered the first copy delivered to you so that you would be the first to read the betrothal notice.”

  Georgie could not hold back a strangled laugh.

  Vengeance and a betrothal notice all tied up with a pretty pink bow.

  Henry scrubbed a hand over his face, pressed his fingertips to his eyes and drew in a ragged breath.

  “How romantic,” Alice drawled, her gaze pinned on Georgie, her silver eyes both questioning and knowing. “Come along, dear, you don’t want to make Father wait lest he call you into his study. Although, now I think on it, I don’t doubt that you could talk Father right out of his temper fit, talk circles around him until he doesn’t know which way was up.”

  Henry laughed, though there was no joy, no humor in the gruff sound, only a sort of mocking cynicism she’d never heard from him. Not once in two bloody months.

  “What on earth are you all doing up here?” Beatrice, Lady Easton, strolled into the room with her hands pressed to the bump beneath her gown. “Uncle Robert is chomping at the bit to get the announcement made before the supper dance.”

  Four sets of eyes found Georgie in the prism of light splashing from the windows, four sets of eyes belonging to the greatest families in the realm, a family that would not welcome her into their midst after tonight.

  But it was Henry’s eyes she searched, ignoring his female relations altogether. They could welcome her or shun her, she’d known both, endured both, survived both.

  But Henry had ever only known welcome. He was respected and adored and loved everywhere, by everyone. He was all that was good and honorable and decent. There wasn’t a mean, vengeful, selfish bone in his tall body. His character was forged of integrity, restraint, honesty, intelligence, and chivalry..

  He believed she had stripped all of that away from him with her lies and schemes and manipulations.

  He was wrong.

  Even now, after she’d unraveled him, disheartened and disillusioned him, left him doubting all that he was, he would marry her. For honor’s sake, for the sake of all of the wonderful qualities he possessed in abundance. For the baby growing in her womb. Perhaps even for love of the mother.

  “There isn’t going to be an announcement.” It wasn’t one of the truths Georgie had considered offering up, but it was most definitely a truth.

  “Damn it, Georgie,” Henry muttered, one hand slashing through the air. “Enough—”

  “Is enough,” she interrupted, forcing a lilting laugh into the words. “Yes, my lord, you are quite right. This, what’s between us, must end. Tonight.”

  “That isn’t what I meant and you know it.”

  “I think that is our cue to depart,” Alice said, turning away from Georgie with a smile that might have held sympathy.

  “Oh, but—” Olivia began as her cousin turned her toward the door.

  “Hush, Olivia,” Alice purred. “Oh, how divine to finally say those words to you after all these years.”

  “Alice is right,” Beatrice agreed, following the pair out the door. “This is between Henry and Miss Buchanan. Don’t worry, he’ll make things right.”

  “It’s too late for second thoughts,” Henry growled as the door swung shut on rusty hinges. “We’ve a fucking house full of revelers awaiting an announcement and a bloody betrothal notice already printed.”

  “To be sure, I haven’t much education to speak of,” Georgie replied, coloring her words with mockery, wanting only to get the parting finished with so that she might curl up into a ball and howl to the moon. “But I know that one must have a first thought in order to have a second.”

  “What are you saying?” he demanded, advancing on her, stopping only when she lifted a hand to ward him off.

  “I never thought to marry you, my lord. Not for a single moment.” For the first time in her misbegotten life, a lie did not fall easily from her lips. No, offering up the words was pure and unadulterated anguish, razors slicing through her mangled heart, leaving a trail of weeping wounds.

  “Like hell.” Henry did not believe her and in some addled part of her brain she wondered if he’d finally learned to differentiate between her lies and her truths.

  “Killjoy had the right of it, my fingers were crossed.” Dropping her hand to clutch at the pew at her hip, she twisted the other in her skirts as another wave of dizziness swept over her. Through sheer stubborn, pigheaded determination, she kept her head held high and her eyes on Henry.

  “I don’t give a damn about your fingers,” he retorted. “You gave me your word.”

  “Have you not learned anything these last two months?” she asked, surprised anew by his willful blindness. “My word means nothing when I give it. And less than that when I go back on it in pursuit of what I want.”

  “You want me.” Henry’s voice was filled with arrogant conviction.

  “To be sure,” she agreed. “If you’d like to tumble me onto the pope’s thrown again, I wouldn’t fight you. Unless you’d like me to. Do you fancy a tussle? Tying me to the chair and paddling me as I deserve, naughty girl that I am?”

  Henry’s entire body jerked in reaction and he staggered back a step.

  Georgie Buchanan had never hated herself more in all her life.

  But surely selfless acts of kindness were meant to serve as penance, a flogging of one’s heart and soul. If not, everyone everywhere would be forever running about performing such terrible kindnesses.

  “No? It’s just as well. Those light taps you gave me were delicious, but invariably they lead to rougher play that I never did enjoy. Any more than I truly enjoyed inviting other women into my bed. But a lady does what she must to get what she wants.”

  “And what was it you wanted from me?”

  “Your assistance finding my mother, just as I said almost from the beginning.”

  “But now you’ve decided marriage to me is too high a price to pay?”

  “Not at all,” she replied sweeping her gaze down his muscular frame to his loins. “In fact I think I would have enjoyed marriage to such a handsome, upstanding man.”

  “Then why end things now?” His words were forced out between clenched teeth, a tic pulsing along his jaw.

  “Oh, goodness, did I not tell you?” she asked, blinking back tears, hoping he was not near enough to see the pain she was holding inside. “I no longer need your help. I have found dearest Connie, at the theater of all places.”

  “You’ve found your mother?” The smile that flashed across Henry’s face was nearly her undoing. “Good for
you, Georgie. Well done.”

  Georgie could not do this much longer. Her legs were shaking so badly beneath her skirts it was a wonder she was able to remain standing. Nausea churned in her belly, moisture beaded on her upper lip and along her hairline. A hard lump was wedged in her throat, bile or a sob or a wailing scream, perhaps a boiling brew of all three.

  “Well done, indeed,” she agreed with a hiccupping laugh. “And soon everyone will know that Baroness Ethelred Brunhilde Octavia Drummond not only bore a lowly Scotsman’s bastard, but she was too foolish to use her condition to her advantage. Which miscalculation do you suppose the ton will find most shocking? I myself would wager Lady Joy’s jewels that Connie will be ridiculed more for passing up the opportunity to become a duchess.”

  “You cannot mean to ruin your own mother now you’ve found her,” Henry replied and she witnessed the exact moment he understood the implications, saw it in the widening of his eyes, heard it in the sharp breath he drew. “Jesus, all along it was vengeance you were after.”

  “What did you think? Oh, my lord, never say you imagined I sought a reunion, some mawkish show of sentiment. Me on my knees, crying and begging my mother to accept me? Truly?”

  “Who are you?” he whispered roughly, shocked, appalled, but even now trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, valiantly attempting to rearrange them to find some good in her.

  “I am who I have always been,” she replied, fitting the last jagged piece into the gaping hole of her past, solving the puzzle so that he would be free of her. “A girl who was born damaged, only I didn’t realize it until I lay down on a hay-strewn floor and offered up my virginity to another woman’s handsome husband in return for the life of lamb with a lame hind leg. And I did not regret it, not when he rolled off me and stumbled to his feet, not when he named me the devil’s spawn and turned away from me, leaving me lying on that dirty floor. Do you hear me? I did not regret it, not until the next day when Mum…Millie told me that Archie had died in the night and I saw that she knew what I had done.”

  Henry pulled his head back as if she’d slapped him and Georgie drew in a tortured breath, ignoring the almost overwhelming need to look away from the man who had gone as still as stone before her.

  “I’ll admit it was a bad bargain, as all I received in return was a pair of fleece-lined mitts. But I like to think I have perfected my skills in the ensuing years. I reeled in London’s greatest gift to the ladies, after all. And now, as you no longer have anything to offer me, I am releasing you.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Henry spun away, marched up the aisle and slammed his fist into the door, splintering the old wood.

  She had no time to react to the sudden violence with more than a gasp of shock before he wrenched open the mangled door, barked a curse at the three ladies waiting on the other side and strode down the hall.

  Beatrice hovered at the threshold while Olivia and Alice filed into the room, the former to halt just inside the cramped space, the latter to march down the aisle, rage distorting her beautiful face into a cold mask.

  Cradling her belly, cradling the life within, Georgie instinctively protected her baby from that rage and from the truth of what she’d just done to the father.

  “What did you do to Hastings?” Alice shrieked.

  Georgie backed away on legs that felt like jelly, and kept right on backing up until her calves bumped into the edge of the dais.

  “Alice, no,” Beatrice called from the open doorway.

  “What did you do to him?” her cousin demanded, taking hold of Georgie’s arms.

  “I—I—I saved—him,” she stammered.

  The tears she’d been fighting finally fell, cascading down her cheeks, dribbling into the corners of her mouth and over her chin to run down her neck.

  “Saved him from what?” Alice asked, only marginally less hostile.

  She could not catch her breath. It was backed up in her throat, choking her, making words impossible.

  “God save me from weepy women.” Alice released her and Georgie sank to her backside on the dais and wrapped her arms around her waist. Bending over, she pressed her forehead to her knees and fought to breathe. When air rushed into her lungs, it was born on a wrenching sob, followed by another and another, until the sound of her crying filled the old chapel, bouncing off the walls to lambast her with the proof of an effective flogging of her heart and soul.

  If this was how it felt to be good and clean and whole, she was glad she was wicked and dirty and broken.

  She was never again going to attempt another selfless act of kindness.

  Alice knelt in front of her and patted her head in an awkward attempt at sympathy. “What were you attempting to save Hastings from, child?”

  Georgie looked up at her through her tangled curls. “Me.”

  “Foolish chit.” Alice brushed her fingers over Georgie’s cheeks. “There, there, dear, hush now. You’ll make yourself sick.”

  At which point, Georgie Buchanan proceeded to do just that, losing the meager contents of her stomach down the Countess of Piedmont’s beaded black silk bodice.

  Chapter Thirty

  There was nothing like waking with the sour taste of whiskey coating one’s tongue and a marching band pounding out a tune against one’s temples to remind a man, should he forget, that he was an idiot.

  And on the off chance said man was still laboring under the impression he possessed even a modicum of intelligence, an early morning visit from his female relations was certain to disabuse him of the notion quite effectively.

  The Earl of Hastings was studiously ignoring a plate piled high with coddled eggs, ham, bacon and buttered toast in favor of nursing a glass of the hair of the dog when Olivia rushed into the dining room, Alice strolling along in her wake.

  “Oh, Henry, thank God you’re here.” Olivia rounded the table and dropped into the chair at his left, eyeing his dressing gown with something like horror. “Why are you not yet dressed?

  “There’s no need to shout.” Henry winced as a straggling drummer boy tapped out an encore just over his left eye. “And I am not dressed because I have just awoken from a drunken stupor and I bloody well didn’t feel like dressing.”

  “I certainly was not shouting,” his sister replied, pitching her voice a notch lower.

  “Is Miss Buchanan perhaps hiding beneath the table linens?” Alice asked as she took the seat to his right.

  “Why would Miss Buchanan be hiding beneath the table linens?” he inquired in a bored tone entirely at odds with the emotions seething just below the surface.

  “The possibilities are endless.” Alice plucked a piece of ham from his forgotten plate and popped it into her mouth.

  “She isn’t at home in Bedford Square,” Olivia informed him as a footman placed a cup of tea liberally laced with cream before her.

  Sweet cream. Fuzzy mold.

  Another warning he’d ignored.

  “Are you aware that your mother’s butler is now employed by your betrothed?” Alice asked.

  “Miss Buchanan is no longer my betrothed,” Henry corrected. “And she likely hired Dobbins so she could wheedle information out of him. Why were you two in Bedford Square?”

  “Henry, she is still your betrothed,” Olivia chided gently. “I know an announcement was not made last night but the betrothal notice was in this morning’s paper. I don’t know what happened between you two in that chapel but—”

  “I have a fairly good idea of what happened,” Alice interrupted with a sly smile but neither of the cousins paid her any mind.

  “But whatever it was you can fix it, Henry,” Olivia continued doggedly. “You must find Miss Buchanan and make things right. Now. Today.”

  “I have spent the better part of two months chasing after Georgie Buchanan,” Henry replied. “And she only ever allowed herself to be caught when she wanted something from me. I no longer have anything she wants.”

  “Henry, what nonsense,” Olivia admonished. “I
am quite certain there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for whatever it is you think Miss Buchanan has done.”

  “I rather doubt there is even a single reasonable explanation for anything Miss Buchanan does,” Alice replied with a laugh. “Truly, I don’t know that I’ve ever met a sillier girl in my life.”

  “Don’t let her fool you,” Henry cautioned. “Georgie has a mind as sharp as a well-honed blade and she is forever using it to search out a man’s deepest secrets to use as bargaining chips.”

  “That is a ridiculous accusation,” Olivia said, giving his fingers a squeeze. “The lady you left crying in the chapel last night certainly hadn’t bargained for that sort of misery.”

  “Georgie was crying?” Henry asked before good sense returned. “She was putting on a show.”

  “She isn’t that good an actress,” Alice argued. “Cybil Fairley isn’t that good an actress.”

  “Henry, she was crying like her heart had been ripped from her breast and trampled beneath someone’s boots,” Olivia insisted. “Tears were streaming down her face and she was sobbing until she couldn’t catch her breath.”

  “Sobbing until she made herself ill,” Alice tacked on.

  “Georgie is ill?” Henry staggered to his feet.

  “We don’t know that she is ill today, as Dobbins would not allow us in the house.” Olivia rose with him, her hand still clutching his. “But she lost her dinner last night.”

  “Desert,” Alice corrected. “Raspberry crumble, if I’m not mistaken. All over the bodice of my new gown.”

  “Georgie was crying? Until she was ill?” Henry asked, the beat of his heart nearly drowning out the sound of his voice.

  “Because she’d sent you away,” Olivia whispered.

  “Poor dear just kept sobbing about revenge tied up with a pretty pink ribbon and saving your honor and integrity and a convoluted list of qualities she believes you possess that when listed together make you sound like a pompous bore.” Alice pulled Henry’s abandoned breakfast across the table, nibbled a piece of bacon. “I could barely make heads or tails of it, what with all the weeping and whatnot.”