The Earl of Kent

by Lauren Smith

  When the dance ended, his heart sank and he led her back to the side of the ballroom where her mother and eldest brother, Charles, stood.

  “Lonsdale,” he said to Charles. Despite Graham and Charles’s distance between each other, Phillip had maintained a steady friendship with Charles over the years.

  “Kent, well done. Ella seemed to enjoy that.” Charles offered his younger sister a benevolent smile.

  Ella slowly pulled her arm free of Phillip’s and lowered her head to hide a fresh blush.

  “Where the devil is Graham?” Charles asked Ella. “Wasn’t he supposed to dance with you?”

  Phillip replied for her. “He needed to catch a bit of air, I believe.” The little white lie kept Ella from appearing abandoned by her own brother in favor of a busty widow.

  “Ah.” Charles frowned slightly, perhaps seeing through the deception, and then smiled at Ella. “My turn, little bit.” He offered her his arm and escorted her back onto the dance floor. Phillip remained next to the dowager countess.

  “Thank you for sparing Ella being left out of her first dance. I will have a word with Graham when he resurfaces.”

  “My pleasure. Ella is a lovely young woman,” he replied, his gaze still on her as she danced with Charles.

  Violet watched her daughter with pride. “She is, isn’t she? She was so sick as a young child, the way children are when born too early, but she turned out quite well.”

  Phillip couldn’t help but agree. Ella Humphrey was an exquisite woman, the kind who would age with timeless beauty, much like her mother. But looks weren’t the only thing that mattered, at least not to Phillip. His parents had been a love match, and he had been raised in a home that showed what love could be like. And Phillip would only love a woman who was more beautiful on the inside than the outside. His father used to say that a woman’s heart and mind would be his truest and dearest companions when the years turned him old and gray. Beauty of the body faded, but not beauty of the heart or mind.

  Ella spun around the dance floor, her bell-like laughter stirring something deep inside him, an old ache for things he had buried since his parents had died. It almost hurt to watch her natural joy.

  “Please excuse me, my lady.” He bowed to Violet and left the room. He stepped into the moonlit gardens at the back of the assembly rooms. It was September, and the leaves had turned to red and gold. The light bite of the winter chill hung upon the air, promising an early frost. He enjoyed the fall, the way he could smell the coming of winter and feel strangely alive.

  Fall brought out a melancholy feeling in him with each day that passed. Bittersweet thoughts of summers gone before seemed to deepen his understanding of the world and his fellow man.

  He moved off the marble steps and went deeper into the gardens, only to stumble as someone bumped into him from behind. He turned, catching the person as they fell into his chest.

  “Oh, excuse me!” A sweet, almost husky voice tightened his body with hunger as he recognized the voice.

  “Ella?” He spoke her given name, then nearly bit his tongue before he corrected himself. “Lady Ella?”

  “Phillip?” Ella gasped and corrected herself as well. “I mean, Lord Kent.”

  “No, please, call me Phillip.” He made sure she was steady before he released her.

  “Well, if that is what you wish, then you must call me Ella.” She smiled up at him, and her eyes reflected the nearly full moon far above them. She trembled a little. The expanse of her ivory skin exposed along her neck and shoulders no doubt let her become more chilled than him.

  “Are you cold, Ella?” He couldn’t resist speaking her name. He liked the way it rolled sweetly off his tongue.

  “A little. I was dreadfully warm inside, and yet I take one step out here and I’m suddenly cold. How silly.”

  He grinned down at her, even knowing he was playing with fire by standing this close. “Not silly at all.” He removed his coat and swung it around her shoulders, pulling it closed in front of her like a cloak. She was dwarfed by it and looked so small and delicate. Seeing her in his clothes appealed to some primal need inside him. He nearly laughed at the thought that a civilized gentleman of the modern age would feel like one of his ancient ancestors by showing he could care for his woman. He was distracted by the way the moonlight seemed to illuminate her dark-gold lashes as she gazed up at him.

  Lord, she is beautiful.

  “Thank you, Phillip.” She snuggled more deeply into his coat. “Did I disturb you just now? If so, I’m terribly sorry.”

  “No, not at all. I like to take a bit of air myself.”

  She nodded and then looked away shyly. “Thank you for dancing with me. I truly didn’t wish to join the other wallflowers, not at my first ball.”

  “Nor should you have. It was shameful for Graham to leave you like that, but I confess it was my delight to benefit from his absence.” He wanted to court her, wanted to be the man to lay claim to her heart, but he’d already suffered such great pain, such loss. He wasn’t sure he could go through it again. It was better not to love, even as irresistible as she was.

  Ella was looking at him again, and her blue-gray eyes seemed to strip him bare, rocking him clear down to his very bones.

  “You were kind to me all those years ago,” she said suddenly. “I didn’t understand then why you were, but I do now.”

  Those penetrating eyes held him prisoner. He couldn’t look away.

  He was confused. “Kind?”

  “In the billiard room. I was young, too young to understand that what I asked of you was dangerous. I was a foolish girl.” Now she looked away, breaking eye contact, and suddenly he could breathe again.

  “Oh” was all he found the strength to say.

  “I wanted to thank you, that is all. I don’t wish for any more awkwardness between us.” She laughed, the sound sweet and almost teasingly impish. “I’m sure I could find another man to kiss me now that I’m grown.” She tilted her face up at the moon, so calm and self-assured.

  Phillip was awestruck. In many ways she hadn’t changed, not in the ways that mattered. The girl who’d helped him forget his sorrows that night three years ago, however briefly, was still there, but that only made her more tempting. She was indeed grown. A woman’s mind, a woman’s heart, and now she was out in society, seeking kisses from men who might not have the self-control he had had three years ago.

  “Ella, surely you know that most men are dangerous. You cannot go about asking for kisses. You could be compromised and find yourself married to some fool who won’t…” He swallowed the rest of his words, too afraid to let her hear what was in his mind.

  “Who won’t what?”

  He raised a hand to her head, curling his fingers around the neck that he could spend hours exploring with his lips. Her slender hands twisted in her skirts, yet she held still except to lift her head up, angling her lips closer to his.

  “What?” she repeated, but he had already forgotten whatever he’d been about to say as he fixated on those lips. They reminded him of fresh rose blooms, and he imagined they would taste as soft and sweet as they looked.

  “A man who won’t appreciate you for the gift you are,” he said, his body dangerously close to taking control.

  Her dark-gold brows arched mischievously. “Then I must find a man who is not dangerous, I suppose. Would you…kiss me? Now that I am grown?”

  Not dangerous…hardly. Phillip felt like he was back in the billiard room, trying to remember that he was a good man, not some bloody rakehell who would take advantage of a sweet young woman. But damned if Ella didn’t seem to find every chink in his armor and crawl underneath. He struggled to remember that he was a gentleman as he was swept away by the magnetic compulsion of Ella’s moonlit eyes.

  “If I kiss you, then you must let no other man do this unless you intend to marry him. Others would seek to take advantage of you.”

  “You will be my tutor, then?” Images flashed through his mind of her
in his bed, exhausted and happy after hours of lovemaking.

  “Just this once,” he breathed, every muscle in him straining against his fraying control.

  “One kiss? But I couldn’t possibly learn enough from just one,” she teased, her voice gentle as a caress.

  “You’d be surprised, darling.” He couldn’t resist smiling at her.

  He took her hand and led her deeper into the gardens. They found a marble bench a few turns in, and after making sure they were alone, he pulled her down to the bench beside him. He had but one brief second to think clearly, to change his mind, but then she placed one hand over his thigh and he was lost.

  “A kiss sometimes begins soft,” he murmured as he leaned down and cupped her face in his hands. She closed her eyes as he brushed his lips back and forth over hers. They were even softer than he had imagined.

  “Can it be hard?” she asked against his mouth.

  “Yes, my darling, it can, but that comes later. Part your lips—let me explore you.”

  She opened her lips, and he playfully licked at her with his tongue before he slid it inside to touch hers. She jolted against him, and he bound an arm around her waist, holding her close.

  “This is how the French kiss,” he said. “Slow. Intimate.” She gave a shivery sigh as her tongue sought entrance to his mouth this time. Lord, he could become drunk on Ella and her kisses. Simply having her in his arms was making his senses spin.

  “I like it,” she whispered back. He smiled and bit her bottom lip, drawing it deeper into his mouth before he let go and released it. He slid his hands down her back to caress her bottom and couldn’t resist squeezing it. She whimpered and leaned into him even more. This time when he kissed her, he kissed hard, devouring her with his mouth, relishing her little gasps of shock and delight as he conquered her with kisses.

  He moved fast, lifting her up so she sat across his lap. It gave him better access to her legs and her dainty ankles. He slid one hand up her skirts, drawing his fingertips along her calf over her white stockings. Her breath hitched, and she curled her arms around his neck.

  “I feel so strange,” she said.

  “You do? Where, my love?” he asked, trying not to smile as he realized she was becoming aroused, possibly for the first time.

  “My lower belly…” She sounded surprised.

  “That’s desire, darling.” He continued to stroke her calf, noting with pride the little tremors that came from her as she started to shift restlessly on his lap.

  “You feel that way too?” She caressed the back of his neck, lightly running her nails through his hair at the base of his skull. She was a pure delight.

  “I do, especially when you do that.” He shuddered as she continued that delicious friction through his hair, and a bolt of fiery need shot straight through him.

  “What is—?” She rolled her hips on top of his lap, clearly feeling him harden beneath her.

  “Sorry, my darling. I cannot seem to control my reactions to you.”

  “Oh. This is normal?” She seemed puzzled by what she’d felt.

  “It is.”

  She lowered her head, slowly kissing him again, and her wanton sighs and feverous kisses helped convince him that perhaps he had died and was now in heaven.

  Voices in the garden drew close, too close. It was like a splash of cold water on his head, jerking him back to reality.

  “I think it’s time we stopped. You must return to the ball before someone misses you.” He gave her surprised lips one last lingering kiss before he set her off his lap. She straightened her skirts, and they both walked back to the entrance to the assembly rooms.

  “Go on,” he urged when she tried to take him back in with her.

  “You’re not coming?” she asked.

  “No, darling. I must be going home. Congratulations on your come-out.” He cupped her cheek once more and brushed the pad of his thumb over her lips.

  Then he stepped back and walked away. Leaving her behind created an ache in his chest, but he had done the right thing. If he had stayed, Ella would have been truly compromised. Graham and Charles would have demanded he marry her. Marriage in and of itself was not the problem, but losing Graham’s trust and possibly his friendship was not something he could survive. Nor could he trust his heart to another soul again only to have it shattered forever if he dared to love Ella and then lost her.

  4

  Phillip hurt everywhere. There was not one bit of muscle, sinew, or bone that didn’t ache, tighten, or scream in agony. His thoughts were broken, mere fragments as a pulse pounded inside his throbbing skull. He tried to speak, but the breath in his lungs was too shallow. His limbs were like dead weights at his sides as he fought in vain to move, even an inch in any direction.

  What happened? What…?

  He struggled to catch hold of his last memories.

  Cards…wagers…tunnels…blood.

  He’d lost a wager to a man and agreed to fight in the Lewis Street tunnels…and he’d been attacked, outnumbered and beaten near to death.

  “Rest now. You’re safe.” A soft voice drifted through his head. A sweet scent filled his nose. A familiar scent…

  “Help…” The word was barely a rasp.

  “Are you thirsty?” the voice asked.

  He tried to nod, but his head throbbed. Only a whimper escaped his lips.

  “Don’t move. The doctor said you must rest. Here, take some water.” A glass was pressed to his mouth, and he sighed as cool water trickled between his lips and down his throat. Christ, it felt good just to have this meager relief.

  “I prepared some chicken broth. Would you like to try it?” the voice asked, almost pleading with him.

  This time he managed to nod. Though the motion was almost imperceptible, it was hellishly painful. He had only vague memories of rejecting food earlier and crying silently as he wished for death in order to escape the pain. That must have been real and not a dream. He didn’t feel nauseated at that moment, so he parted his lips, and a spoon dribbled warm chicken broth into his mouth. He waited, expecting to toss his accounts, but the taste of the broth was actually good, so he opened his mouth again.

  When she had finished, he sighed, his stomach full. And though it hurt his ribs, he felt better. So much better. A cool cloth was placed on his brow, and much of the tightness in his body eased.

  “Sleep,” the voice commanded. “Don’t worry, I won’t leave you.”

  He obeyed that sweet voice and drifted away.

  After what seemed like ages, where he marked the passage of time only by being helped to eat, the puffy stinging in his face began to fade and he felt his eyelids begin to flutter. Soon he would be able to open his eyes and see.

  “How is he today?” a deeper voice asked. Another familiar voice. They were friends. He was safe among friends.

  “Much better. His face is barely swollen anymore. I was afraid they had broken his cheek or jaw, but now I think perhaps not.” That sweet feminine voice, the voice of an angel, spoke clearly but softly. It was a voice that brought a great flood of joy through him. He wanted to open his eyes, to lay eyes upon his savior, but he couldn’t. Despair would have choked him, but he knew that he would be all right so long as she was there.

  The man chuckled. “Kent’s head is as hard as a rock. There is no way they hurt him that badly.”

  “Oh, Graham, hush. This isn’t amusing,” the woman said. “We almost lost him—we almost lost you.” The woman’s tone sharpened as she chastised his best friend. He recognized Graham now, but so much was still hazy.

  “I know, I’m sorry, Ella. I’ve been sick over all of this.”

  Ella? Who’s Ella?

  “I should never have let him go to the tunnels. Charles and I could have paid off the debt for him, but he wouldn’t let us.” Graham’s tone softened a little.

  Ella huffed, and for some reason the sound made Phillip want to smile. When she continued to speak, her voice was colored with melancholy and a hint of
frustration.

  “If men could learn to forgo their matters of pride, many a woman would be spared such heartache.” There was a pause and a cough from Graham, and the woman continued. “Graham, you should still be in bed! You’re barely better than Phillip. Don’t make me send for Charles.”

  Flashes of Graham in the tunnels, fighting to get to him, screaming his name before he vanished beneath a tide of fists. Why couldn’t he remember more beyond the cards and the tunnels? It was as though his life had been reduced to that one single memory, and all the pain in his body was tied to it.

  “Fine, fine. I surrender. Lord, Ella, you’re worse than Mother. She was already lecturing me on a dozen types of tea I should be drinking to reduce my pain and swelling.” The pair of voices, Graham and the woman, were the only comfort to him. Their exasperation and teasing in turns was a light in a vast storm threatening to crash him upon a rocky shore.

  The woman suddenly laughed, and the bell-like sound sent Phillip’s heart racing. The blood now roaring into his head made him groan.

  “Go on, Graham, you woke him up,” the woman admonished.

  “I’m sorry, Ella,” Graham apologized.

  Ella… He remembered now. Ella, who’d kissed him with such wild abandon and made a man forget his pain. How could he ever have forgotten her? She was here? She was the one taking care of him? His angel, the woman who’d pulled him from the edge of death, was Graham’s little sister, the woman he’d done his best to avoid because she was such a temptation.

  Her words to Graham sank in, now colliding with his memories of Graham being beaten when he’d tried to rescue him. Phillip struggled to speak.

  “Hush, Phillip, don’t speak. You’re all right. Rest.”

  What he wanted more than anything was to be able to open his eyes and see her. But his strength soon waned, and he slipped back into sleep.

  Rain lashing on the windows and the chill of night woke him much later with shivers. Ella placed an extra blanket over him and murmured sweet words of comfort.