The Earl I Ruined

by Scarlett Peckham

  “Well, don’t you?” he asked quietly.

  She shook her head, wiping moisture from her eyes. “I don’t know why I’m surprised to hear you say that. You’ve always thought poorly of my character, so why would you not believe me to be cruel?”

  “Not cruel,” he said. “Reckless.”

  That bloody word. How she hated that word.

  “Yes, you’ve thought me reckless ever since that day in Devon, haven’t you? Well, perhaps you’re right about me. Perhaps I am reckless. Because I wasn’t trying to get his attention that bloody day—I’d been trying to get yours. And for my reckless efforts, I have been rewarded with no end to your low opinion of me ever since.”

  She turned and left the room and slammed the door recklessly behind her. She stomped recklessly through the marble hallways and managed to avoid being caught recklessly weeping until she was halfway up the stairs, where she recklessly collided with Rosecroft on the landing.

  “Constance! Whatever is the matter!”

  At his concerned tone she threw herself onto his shoulder and recklessly wept.

  “I hate him,” she seethed. “He is so unkind.”

  “Who?”

  “Your bloody cousin bloody Apthorp.”

  Beneath her soggy cheek, Rosecroft’s shoulder rumbled gently. He patted her back, moved aside, and dug in his pocket to offer her his handkerchief.

  “Bloody Apthorp, indeed,” he said, sounding as much amused as he was sympathetic. “Had your first lovers’ quarrel? Don’t worry, my dear. You’ll be able to extract all sorts of tender moments from the lad once you’ve forgiven him for whatever he’s done to aggrieve you. It’s all part of the fun.” He gave her a wink.

  His good-natured amusement made Constance cry harder, because this was not a lovers’ quarrel. This was an enemies’ quarrel, and it had been quietly brewing ever since she returned from France at seventeen.

  In keeping with her character, she had acted impulsively. And in keeping with his, he had held it against her ever since.

  “I’m going to my room. Tell Winston not to let anyone disturb me.”

  She heard Rosecroft chuckling to himself as she marched up to her bedchamber, where she drew the curtains, climbed onto her bed, and stared miserably at the ceiling.

  She regretted every moment of that odious party in Devon. She’d been so excited to return to England. After her humiliating sojourn in her native country at fourteen, she’d gone back to France determined to remake herself into a woman who’d never again be subject to rejection. She would gain the upper hand not by fitting in, but by being so clever she would not have to.

  And so as soon as her final year in convent school was finished, she’d descended upon her aunt’s apartment in the Marais and made it her sole purpose to observe the elegant, arch French ladies who peopled her aunt’s salons. She apprenticed herself in the absorption of their secrets. How to emphasize one’s supposed flaws to exaggerate the singularity of one’s beauty. How to dress to devastate. How to draw a man’s eye without so much as looking at him. And most crucially: how to read the room.

  By carefully observing, one could sense when there was advantage to seeming mysterious and striking, or humble and attentive, or beflattering and generous—and adjust oneself accordingly. This, it turned out, was Constance’s inborn gift.

  The art of influence, she’d discerned, was not in being perfect but in being the right thing for the right person. Being admired and indispensable to everyone—floating on a sea of fizzy bons mots and favors—was far more restful than cultivating intimate relationships that pinned one down. For when one was truly known, one could be judged insufficient, and dismissed.

  Having polished herself into a gem with enough facets to sparkle in any kind of lighting, she completed her studies by learning how to flirt. She quickly discovered she’d been doing it all wrong. If a man caught your fancy, you didn’t announce it. You certainly did not lie in wait for him in a shrub, as she had attempted with Lord Apthorp. Mais non. If you wanted a man’s attention, the most critical thing was to never, ever directly let him know. Instead, you made him notice you. And once he did, you made him think you hadn’t noticed him.

  And so when her brother summoned her back to England to assume her place in the family, and Hilary announced she’d arranged a small house party in Devon to welcome Constance before her first London season, she had made it her mission to put these lessons into practice. She would leave the English stunned.

  Particularly those who had looked askance at her on her previous visit.

  Particularly her cousin’s altogether too-handsome relation, that stiff, rather mean fellow, the Earl of Apthorp.

  And she was in luck: he was among her cousin’s guests.

  She could still remember how his eyes had widened the day she’d walked into the room in a dress that was every inch the Parisian style, cut daringly low, with mismatched jewels twisted around her neck in a column that covered her throat, and her pale hair piled up so high it grazed the doorframes. She did not look English. She did not look girlish.

  She looked sensational.

  And once she was certain that he’d noticed, once she’d felt his eyes trailing her about the room, she’d made a point to speak to everyone in residence but him. To write theatricals in which she did not cast him. To yawn when he went on in conversation. To make it known she found his habits dull.

  It worked.

  She could feel him watching her. She never openly acknowledged him, but she made jokes in his range of hearing that she thought he’d find amusing, and pretended not to notice when he smiled. She hinted her desire to be escorted here and there in London, so he might overhear and invite her for a drive on their return to town. And then, she’d gone in for the kill: she’d lavished her attentions on the person at the party he seemed to like the least. Lord Harlan Stoke.

  Her flirtations began harmlessly. Whispered words at dinner. Permitting him a second dance. Allowing him to draw her portrait as they sat on a blanket in the sun. All of this timed, of course, to be observed by the real object of her fascination.

  She thought she had Lord Apthorp exactly where she wanted him when he’d asked her for a private word at a luncheon picnic. She’d been giddy thinking he would finally declare himself. Instead he’d pulled her aside to deliver a lesson in deportment: “I can see you have a tendre for Lord Harlan, which is natural. But not all men are kind. You must be careful not to put yourself in a situation where you might be harmed.”

  She’d been so embarrassed at his condescension she’d wanted to kick him. Instead, she’d said an icy thank-you for his solicitude, gone back to the picnic, and thrown herself even more thoroughly at Harlan Stoke.

  For if she could not make Lord Apthorp jealous, she could at the very least provoke him.

  In fact, the idea of finally provoking him out of his calm, polite, patronizing manners gave her a delicious little thrill. She imagined strategies she might employ to finally make him lose his temper. She imagined doing something so beyond the pale—breaking into his room and leaving her handkerchief among his starchy shirts, or her card between the pages of his diary—that he’d be so incensed he’d break his own tedious code of propriety and come storming up to her room to dress her down in private. She imagined being undressed when he arrived. She imagined him locking the door and telling her that if ladies wished to act like wicked girls, they would be treated with due wickedness. He might even take her over his knee and …

  It was just a fantasy, of course. If he were to actually try such a thing, she would no doubt scream and assail him with the nearest piece of firewood, or push him out her open window.

  But the idea of it. Him, all passionate with anger, eyes dark and trained on her, perhaps with his cravat untied or his shirt untucked, perhaps without his wig. His hands reaching for her, strong and masculine …

  It was quite the tableau to imagine as she fell asleep.

  Especially when her gambit with Lord Harl
an seemed to work.

  Lord Harlan was what the French would call une proie facile—easy prey. Each time she made a bold remark, he returned it with something more outrageous. When she touched him with her fan, he nudged her shoe beneath the table. When she wore a low-cut dress, he made no effort to hide his appreciation for her breasts.

  And Apthorp noticed. Every time she laughed at Lord Harlan’s filthy jokes or read a pert passage of poetry aloud to him or joined him in flagrantly cheating at whist, she could see it drove Apthorp mad to watch her be so brazen.

  It was delightful fun to make him stew.

  But still, he kept his composure. And soon he had to leave. As his remaining days grew numbered, and still she had not gotten what she wanted, she became more and more annoyed.

  Reckless.

  And so on his final day in Devon, a boring, endless rainy afternoon during which Lord Apthorp attended to his correspondence while the others wrote silly poems and drew comic portraits of the dogs, she decided to take her last chance to win the game once and for all. She’d stood just within his range of hearing and made a show of whispering to Lord Harlan to join her in the picture gallery across the sunken garden from the house, so she could show him the sculpture of Leda and the Swan, the gem of the collection.

  She knew Apthorp would disapprove of her being alone with Lord Harlan, and would therefore contrive to follow them. Perhaps he would mar the polish of his impeccably shined boots darting over the rain-soaked path across the garden. Perhaps he would yell at Lord Harlan for besmirching her maidenly honor.

  It was a petty gambit, but it amused her.

  Until she found herself alone with Harlan Stoke.

  For it seemed Lord Harlan also knew how to read a room. And it turned out he was not the easy mark.

  She was.

  In the empty gallery, he dropped all pretense of decorum.

  “I like your type, Lady C.,” he’d purred into her ear, drawing up far too close for comfort. “We Englishmen should send all our prettiest girls to France.”

  She’d tapped him with her silver fan and flounced away to inspect a second-rate statue of Athena. “You’re too kind,” she said over her shoulder. “But I’m afraid not every female specimen returns as finely molded as myself.”

  “Oh, you’re finely molded,” he said in a low voice, once again moving much too near her. “I’d rather look at you draped in gauze than a piece of marble.”

  She began to feel uneasy. But she did not wish to seem provincial, and anyway, he was only playing the game that she’d invented. So she merely batted her lashes and said, “Oh, Lord Harlan, you shocking man,” as she moved out of his reach and waited for him to perceive she was not interested.

  But her degree of interest had not proved relevant to his.

  “Let’s have a go at staging one of your theatricals,” he’d murmured, closing the distance she kept reasserting. “You play Leda. I’ll play the swan.”

  She backed less subtly away, and he stepped closer, until they were standing flush with a wall of drapes that protected the paintings from the light, and there was nowhere else for her to go.

  “Why don’t you show me your artistic form,” he said lecherously, running a cigar-stained finger along the neckline of her bodice. “I suspect it’s far more beautiful than the art.”

  “Dear Lord Harlan,” she said airily, though her pulse was beating like a rabbit in her throat. “Have you never been to a gallery? The art is on the walls. But this collection is insipid. Come, let’s return to the others. I want to arrange a game of vingt-et-un and relieve you of your money.”

  He edged so close that her shoulders pressed into the curtains and she could smell his breakfast on his breath. “Not just yet. There’s more beauty in this room I’d like a look at.”

  And then his hands had been everywhere at once.

  His mouth was wet and suffocating, leaving moist trails slugged upon her neck and throat. His fingers smelled like damp tobacco. She tried to edge away, to politely signal he’d misread her cues. But the more she wriggled, the more forcefully he writhed against her and the more frightened she became.

  “Stop it,” she’d whispered, but she was scared, and her voice was so faint she could scarcely hear herself, and he’d dragged his rotten lips up to her face, and tried to kiss her on the mouth, and it was so awful that she’d jabbed the filigreed edge of her silver fan to his neck and scraped it from his neckcloth to his ear, not stopping until she felt the tip meet bone.

  “Damn you!” he’d hissed, rearing back with outrage in his eyes. She’d tugged her bodice and her skirts back into order, furious, unable to look him in the eye, praying the faint stubble at his jawline had not left telling marks along her neck.

  Just then the door had opened.

  And there he was.

  Lord Apthorp.

  Looking from her, flushed and disheveled with her gown askew, to Stoke, panting.

  “We’re busy, Apthorp,” Stoke had sneered, whipping around.

  Apthorp had stood completely rigid, looking from Stoke to her.

  “Lady Constance,” he said in a voice that was not angry, but something worse: gravely concerned. “Do you need assistance?”

  Still so aghast and humiliated she did not trust her own voice, she could only shake her head.

  He jerked his chin in silent acknowledgment and shut the door without a word.

  Wait, she’d wanted to cry. It isn’t what you think. It was a game, and he broke the rules.

  Stoke had only adjusted his cravat and smirked at her, like it had all been a joke. “For a girl who acts like a tart, you kiss like a bloody goat.”

  Tears had welled up in her eyes as he’d sauntered from the room.

  Later, she’d found a curl of his skin dangling from the serrated blades of her fan.

  She’d burned it in her fire like a witch.

  Neither Lord Apthorp nor Lord Harlan Stoke had spoken a word to her for the remainder of their time in Devon. Apthorp left that very night, indicating he’d been called earlier to Cheshire.

  But Stoke had remained for a week, and had made no secret of his contempt for her.

  First he made a show of courting all the other girls, just to see if she was watching. He found his most willing audience in Lady Jessica Ashe, who was just fifteen. The poor girl looked like she might faint from pleasure when he spoke to her, and soon became his favorite, following him around like a loyal, lovesick puppy.

  I should warn her about him, Constance had thought. He’ll probably paw her too.

  But she’d felt so numb and guilty and sickened by her part in what had happened that she’d just ignored the unfolding flirtation and said nothing.

  And when, not a year later, there came to be whispers about Lady Jessica … a girl who’d gotten into trouble, and would never have a season …

  She hated that she had not sounded a warning.

  She promised herself that the next time she had an inkling a man did not play by the assigned rules, she would act.

  She would use her innate gift for observation to fashion herself a position in the world that gave her information others lacked. And she would use it as a scythe.

  Not because she was cruel. Not because she was reckless in matters such as this.

  Just the opposite: because she had learned her lesson.

  Women must protect one another.

  And if, in the same spirit, a man was being foolish and shortsighted, well, by God, she could protect him too.

  Yes. She would do exactly as she always had: use the information she possessed in the service of what her gut told her was right.

  And so she pulled herself out of bed and sat down at her desk and took out her most effective weapon: her quill. She wrote until she was ink-speckled and exhausted and the action she must take was starkly written on two letters.

  One addressed to Gillian Bastian. And the other to Apthorp Manor, Cheshire.

  She sealed them and delivered them to Rosecrof
t’s secretary to be put into the post.

  And then she summoned her maid to remove her gown and dressed in her coziest old nightdress from the nuns and curled up on her bed, too tired to even climb beneath her swans-down quilt though it was only half past eight, and slept.

  Until a knock at her door roused her at half ten.

  “Lady Constance,” Winston said. “I’m sorry to disturb you so late, but Lord Apthorp is here, and he requests a word with you.”

  The Rosecrofts’ parlor was dim, the last embers of the fire dying low. Apthorp anxiously adjusted the ribbon tied around his gift.

  “You’re nervous,” Rosecroft observed, swirling brandy in his glass.

  Apthorp glared at his cousin. “Not nervous. Just impatient.”

  Rosecroft grinned and stretched his legs lazily before the fire. “Constance has been in a state ever since you went tearing out of here. I don’t like to see the girl upset.”

  Neither did he, apparently. He’d left here determined not to speak to her again until he must, and by the time he was halfway to Westminster, the guilt of what he’d said and how he’d left things was so urgent he’d gone tramping out to procure the kind of silly, sentimental gift that had its roots in made-up stories.

  Why had he pressed an argument with her, when speaking candidly only ever seemed to make things worse? Why could he not just ignore the thing she’d done a week ago and grit his teeth around bland pleasantries until he could get on with the bloody business of forgetting her?

  But the truth was obvious enough that he could not avoid it no matter how angrily he stomped along the dirty streets.

  Because it goes back longer than one week. Far longer.

  Years.

  He’d always hoped that if he ignored it—the kernel of unhappiness between them that they’d never spoken of—it would simply fade away, like a bad dream. He’d hoped that by the time he could be honest with Constance about his feelings, a few unpleasant moments in their youth would be irrelevant.

  But it was relevant, clearly. It had become a kind of constant, seething tension that roiled beneath their every conversation. If he didn’t address it now, it might very well combust before his bill passed.