How the Earl Entices

by Anna Harrington

  Recovering himself, he reached into his jacket pocket for the money. She’d given it to him before they left Sea Haven because he would need to pay for everything as long as they pretended to be married. Yet it wasn’t until that moment that she realized what he’d done with it, how he’d kept it separated from the French papers. If they were robbed or pickpocketed, whoever took the money from that one pocket would never think to search him further and find the papers. Clever.

  “We’ll need dinner and a private room,” Ross said as he set a coin onto the counter. “And my wife will want hot water.”

  Her chest tightened at his thoughtfulness. How heavenly a warm dinner, hot water, and a soft bed sounded! When she’d been on the run from Vincent, she’d only been able to afford a shared bed, sometimes sleeping with four other people, and there had never been hot water for washing. There had barely been day-old bread and whatever burnt stew was left at the bottom of the pot.

  “Not t’night.” The man reached for the small lockbox beneath the counter. “We’re full up. Best I can do is a room we normally keep fer the postilions an’ drivers. Nothin’ fancy, but it has a bed an’ door that locks.” He held up the last of the room keys. “Ye want it?”

  It was either that or the chickens, so Ross gave a solemn nod and reached for the quill to sign the guest registry. Grace sneaked a glance, and her chest warmed inexplicably…Mr. Christopher Thomas and Wife.

  The innkeeper slid the key and a candle stub across the counter toward Ross, then nodded at a buxomly woman carrying six tankards of ale in both hands as she weaved her way through the crowded room. “Ye can see ol’ Bess o’er there ‘bout gettin’ dinner an’ hot water.”

  From the dozens of calls and shouts that went up across the room for the woman’s attention, Grace knew it could be hours before they had their turn getting dinner, if anything was left by then. And no chance at all of hot water.

  “It’s all right.” She rested her hand on Ross’s arm. “I’m exhausted. Let’s just turn in.”

  The innkeeper jerked a thumb toward the stairs. “Second floor, all the way t’ the end.”

  “Thank you.” Ross handed the candle stub to Grace, picked up the bag, and took her arm.

  As they moved toward the stairs, drunken revelers broke into an Irish drinking song, followed by hoots and jeers. Hot water and dinner might be in short supply, but ale and whiskey were apparently still well stocked. The din of noise followed them as Grace lit the candle stub on a lantern hanging at the base of the rickety steps and led the way upstairs.

  She threw a backward glance downstairs as they rounded the first floor landing and continued upward. “They’re not going to be fit to travel in the morning.”

  “Better for us, then. We’ll have a good night’s rest and be on the road early, taking their places on the coach.” He gave her a faint smile of reassurance. “We should be in London in two days.”

  Two days. She inhaled a steadying breath. This confrontation with Vincent had been ten years in the making, yet now that it was approaching, the enormity of it made her tremble.

  He glanced down at her with concern. “Are you having second thoughts?”

  “It’s either share a room or sleep with the chickens,” she reminded him, purposefully misunderstanding his question.

  He stopped her with a gentle tug at her elbow. They were alone on the stairs, with the noise from below keeping their conversation from being overhead. “I meant about helping me.”

  “No, not at all.” Not quite all anyway. But the way he gazed at her in the flickering candlelight made her admit, “It’s just that…I don’t want to put my son into danger.”

  His face softened at the first true revelation she’d given him since they’d left Sea Haven, despite hours of attempting to wrangle information from her. “Don’t worry.” He reached to tuck a stray curl behind her ear. “I won’t let you do that.”

  She wanted to take comfort in his quiet offer of protection, yet he had no idea of the storm she was heading into.

  Trembling as that old feeling of helplessness returned, she reached a hand to his arm, to let him be her anchor as thoughts of what lay ahead stirred up fresh dread. “I need you, Ross,” she whispered, “and I haven’t needed anyone’s help in a very long time.” A lifetime ago…

  This time when he lifted his hand, it wasn’t to touch her hair but to stroke his knuckles across her cheek, in a gesture filled with such tenderness that she sucked in a pained mouthful of air.

  His gaze dropped to her mouth, and she stilled, waiting for him to lower his lips to hers—

  A mud-covered postilion bounded up the steps and squeezed past them on the landing, breaking their cocoon of privacy. The noise and business of the inn descended once more over them, and she shifted away, feeling like a fool for sharing even this much with him when he’d told her practically nothing about his own situation.

  They might have needed each other, but they also needed to keep their own secrets.

  Sensing the change in each other, they moved on up the stairs and down the hall to their room. Ross unlocked the door and shoved it open. Grace walked inside, holding the candle stub high.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” she announced. “I’d rather be with the chickens.”

  He looked over her shoulder, and from the way he tensed she knew the moment he saw the bed. Just as narrow and small as the room around it, which couldn’t have been originally planned for anything more than a closet sandwiched beneath the back stairs. So sandwiched, in fact, that the backstairs angled upward across the ceiling from the floor and turned the whole room into a tiny triangle. So tiny that Ross had to duck his head to keep from hitting it on the sloping ceiling when he stepped past her.

  “The innkeeper didn’t lie,” he drawled, placing the key onto the narrow washstand beside the bed, which was the only other piece of furniture in the room and the only other thing that could fit. “It has a lock and a bed.”

  Her eyes didn’t move from the narrow mattress where a single driver or postilion could catch a few hours of sleep. But where two would not fit. “Of a sort.”

  “I’ll sleep downstairs on one of the benches. You’ll be fine here for the night.”

  Grace eyed the rusty lock. She wasn’t so certain. “The benches will all be taken.” If not with travelers who weren’t lucky enough to snag beds, then certainly by men too drunk to stagger upstairs to their own rooms. As if fate had read her mind, a raucous cheer went up from downstairs. Besides, with his wounds still healing, he wouldn’t be fit to travel in the morning if he slept on a hard bench or the floor. “We can share this room.”

  Somehow. Good Lord, it was tiny, so very tiny. And Ross was big. She swallowed hard and didn’t dare let her gaze drift to him. So very big.

  “Are you certain?”

  When she jerked a nod, Ross pulled the door closed and flipped the lock.

  Doing her best to calm her racing heartbeat, Grace watched Ross sit on the bed and yank off his boots. As he placed the second boot under the bed, he glanced up. “Aren’t you going to undress?”

  “Of course,” she murmured, thankful that in the dim light from the candle he couldn’t see the flush that rose into her cheeks as she reached for her travel bag and realized that in order to put on her night rail she’d have to remove her clothes. All of them. With him sitting on the bed less than four feet away. That she simply would not do.

  But she couldn’t ask him to step out into the hallway, not when they were supposed to be married.

  She was being silly. She was a widow with a child, for heaven’s sake! She certainly wasn’t an innocent who needed to protect her virtue. Both of them were adults, after all, with nothing the other hadn’t seen before. In his case, most likely hundreds of times with dozens of women. And it wasn’t as if he cared what she looked like beneath her clothes.

  But she cared, even if that made her a goose to be nervous. It had been ten years since a man had seen her undress, since before she’
d given birth—

  “Would you like me to turn around?”

  Oh please God yes! She forced a casual shrug of her shoulder. “If you’d like.”

  The scoundrel arched a knowing brow but wisely said nothing. He pushed himself off the bed and turned his back.

  She let out a deep but silent sigh and grabbed up her night rail. Keeping an eye on him to make certain he didn’t turn around, she quickly kicked off her shoes and stripped off the kerchief at her neck, before reaching to remove her dress. “This must be difficult for you.”

  “It’s a pleasant change.”

  That wasn’t the answer she expected. “Oh?”

  “Usually I’m the one undressing the woman who’s sharing my bed for the night.”

  She froze, her dress half off. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know.” Amused laughter colored his deep voice. “But my interpretation is far more entertaining.”

  Blast the devil! She snatched up her travel cape and threw it at him, hitting him over the head with it. Chuckling, he hung it on a nail jutting out from the wall.

  “I meant the lodgings.” She untied her petticoat and let it fall away from around her waist. “You’re a viscount. You must be used to private suites, feather beds, brocade curtains—”

  “Earl.”

  She paused as she reached for the front lace of her stays. “Pardon?”

  “I inherited four years ago,” he said quietly. “I’m Earl of Spalding now.”

  Her stomach roiled. She’d tied an earl to her bed and then blackmailed him into helping her? Oh good Lord.

  He turned his head slightly to ask over his shoulder, “You didn’t know?”

  Heavens no! “We don’t receive a lot of society news in Sea Haven.”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  She shrugged off her stays and set them onto the growing stack of clothes on the floor at her feet, with no other place in the tiny room to put them. “Will you try any less hard to help me once we’re in London, simply because you’re an earl?”

  “Of course not.”

  She reached beneath her chemise to untie her stockings. “Then it makes no difference to me who you are.”

  A lie. She knew how powerful the Spalding title had become, how protective his family was of it. What would stop him from changing his mind and deciding that helping her posed too great a risk to his reputation? Being a notorious rake with wild ways was one thing; helping a dead woman was something completely different. Even now the thought of it made her tremble as she lifted her chemise over her head and off, leaving her momentarily naked. And less than four feet behind him.

  She said as she snatched up her night rail, “King George or a chimney sweep…as long as you keep your word.”

  “I’m a gentleman,” he reminded her, a touch of pique in his voice.

  “Like I said,” she repeated pointedly, having had first-hand experience with his sort, “as long as you keep your word.”

  He chuckled.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your father.” She pulled on her night rail and tugged it into place. “The earl was a good man.”

  He stiffened. “You knew my father?”

  His surprise caught her off-guard. She continued, careful not to let slip too much information, “I met him a few times in London, at various events. He was always kind to me.” She hesitated before adding, “And always very proud of you, Ross.”

  “Was he?”

  The tone of his drawl pricked at her. She’d meant her comment to reassure, yet he seemed anything but that. “Very much so. He was always bragging about you, about how brave you were in fighting the French.”

  “Then thank God he didn’t live to see me now,” he murmured, half to himself.

  The way he said that sparked her sympathy for him. He might be a rake and some kind of petty criminal, but his father’s opinion of him had always meant a great deal to him. She shuddered to think what low opinion he now held of himself to say such a thing.

  In order to lighten the suddenly serious conversation, she pressed teasingly, “You mean because he’d wonder why you didn’t ride off with the chickens when you had the chance? After all, in for a penny, in for a peck.”

  He gave a grim laugh at the absurdity of that. “Actually, he’d wonder why I’d turned my back while a beautiful woman was removing her clothes.”

  She twisted her mouth in aggravation at that wholly exaggerated compliment and looked down at her night rail. The formless, frumpy white thing covered her from neck to wrists to toes like a billowing tent. Perfect. There was nothing beautiful about her in this, and no worry about what he’d think of her body, because as long as she was wearing this there was no chance of him seeing any of it.

  “All right.” She drew in a deep breath. “I’m dressed now.”

  He turned around, and Grace busied herself with gathering up her clothes, pretending not to notice the way he raked his gaze over her. Yet that look made her tremble. He’d gazed at her the same way once before, that night twelve years ago at the masquerade when she’d descended the stairs into the ballroom. As if he couldn’t quite fathom that someone like her existed. Even after all these years, she remembered the intensity of him that night. It had frightened her then, yet excited her, too, in a way she would never admit.

  That same feeling now began to creep up from her toes.

  He removed his jacket and hung it over her cape on the same nail, then began to unbutton his waistcoat.

  “Stop!” She put up a hand. “What are you doing?”

  “Undressing.” He shrugged out of the waistcoat and tossed it over the end of the bed. With that, the old feeling he stirred inside her turned into a low tingle. “You don’t expect me to sleep fully clothed.”

  “Of course not.”

  Actually, she’d expected exactly that, and the thought of him removing his clothes made the tingle grow stronger. She’d seen him without them before, and he’d been breathtaking, even lying unconscious on her bed. God only knew the damage that magnificent body could do with both of them fully conscious.

  She nervously gestured at the growing pile of clothes as he unwrapped his neckcloth. “Would you like me to turn around?”

  “Absolutely not.” His eyes pinned hers as he untucked his shirt and let it hang loose around his waist, as if daring her to keep looking.

  Her belly heated at his brazen audacity. The devil deserved to have her turn her back on him. But she didn’t. Nor did she look away, continuing to watch shamelessly as he stripped off his shirt and bared himself from the waist up. From the gleam in his eyes, he was enjoying it.

  “After all,” he taunted, his hands going to the fall of his breeches, “what kind of marriage would ours be if my wife couldn’t stand to watch me undress?”

  “A typical society marriage,” she answered, a bit too breathlessly.

  He laughed, undermined in his attempt to goad her, and he dropped his hands to his sides, leaving on that last piece of clothing. Given that the borrowed breeches were a bit too small, though, not much was left to her imagination. Even now her fingers itched to touch him as they remembered what it felt like to run over the smooth, hard planes of his chest, once again bare to her eyes.

  God help her. He stood far too close. Her eyes darted to the bed, and she nearly groaned. He was about to come even closer.

  As if reading her mind, he murmured thoughtfully, “It could be worse.”

  She pointed at the bed. “It’s the size of an army cot. How could this possibly be worse?”

  “I usually sleep nude.”

  For a beat, she froze. Then she slid him a murderous glare, her hands going indignantly to her hips.

  The rascal had the nerve to chuckle at her and reached to pull back the covers. “Come to bed, Mrs. Thomas.”

  “I believe our marriage just became estranged,” she muttered.

  With a laugh, he blew out the candle.

  In near total darkness, she slipped beneath th
e covers. She lay on the edge of the mattress, but even that barely gave them enough room on the narrow bed. So narrow that Ross lay on his side with his back pressed against the wall, yet she could still feel the heat of his tall body radiating all along hers.

  His arm slipped around her waist.

  She tensed. “What are you doing?”

  “Dancing a quadrille,” he answered wryly, then shifted until his chest rested against her back, his legs nestling against the backs of hers. “I’m making more room in the bed.” His warm breath tickled against her nape, and the tingle settled low in her belly. “You don’t mind, do you? Surely, a beautiful woman like you is used to having a man’s arms around her.”

  She rolled her eyes at his blatant attempt at flattery. “Yes, because this night rail is so bewitching that they simply can’t resist.”

  A deep chuckle rumbled into her back. Oh, that did not help! “I like that nightgown.”

  “Good, then you can wear it tomorrow night.”

  Ignoring that, he languidly brushed his fingers up her arm, from her wrist to her shoulder. Goose bumps sprang up beneath her sleeve everywhere he touched. “All soft cotton, lace, ribbon…”

  Oh, how she wished he would stop touching her like that! “And yards of billowing material hanging like draperies.” But her awakening body wished he would touch her even more.

  “Which only makes it more alluring.”

  She knew she shouldn’t ask, shouldn’t rise to the bait…“How could that possibly make it more alluring?”

  “Because it makes a man wonder what’s hiding beneath.”

  The tingle in her belly shifted lower between her thighs and turned into a soft ache. Yet she found the resolve to force out a laugh. “Best to keep wondering, then, because I’d hate to disappoint you.”

  “Something tells me,” he murmured against the back of her neck, his hand trailing down her body to her hip, “that you wouldn’t disappoint.”

  That sent the aching tingle shooting through her on a wave of deep longing, followed swiftly on its heels by a cold slap of reality.

  For the past ten years, she’d focused only on keeping her son safe, sacrificing her life for his. That meant suffering through long nights alone and denying any urges she had as a woman, never allowing herself to contemplate the possibility of having a man in her life again. It had nothing to do with her husband. Oh, she’d cared for David certainly, but theirs hadn’t been a love match. Not on her part, anyway.