Once Upon an Earl_Heirs of High Society_A Regency Romance Book

by Eleanor Meyers

  The third thing he knew was that he was not so wicked a man that he would try to turn desire into action.

  Clarine had a wild streak, but it ran through a kind of innocence he was quite unused to. Most of the mothers of the ton kept their daughters well away from Lucas, no matter how attractive they found his lands and his title. He spent most of his time with the more worldly married women of his set, or with women in the gilt and sequined brothels along the Strand.

  Clarine, who looked around her into the dark and quiet countryside with a kind of wondrous expectation, was something quite outside of his experience.

  It would be best if I dropped her off at the rear gate of her residence and then returned to Marcus's cottage at once. Surely, there are women to be had even in this region of the world.

  As Clarine excitedly pointed out the fireflies that were starting to light their beacons in the fringe of woods along the road, however, Lucas couldn't see a pressing need to be anywhere except right here with her, if only to keep her on the road.

  Finally, after stopping her from wandering into the dark woods to follow fireflies or the particularly entrancing song of a night bird, Lucas looked at her with tolerant exasperation.

  "Dear God, has no one told you what happened to Little Red Riding Hood when she went wandering off the path?"

  Unrepentant, Clarine grinned. "Well, at least she picked some beautiful flowers before she was eaten by the wolf."

  Lucas couldn't stop himself from grinning in return. "You should be more scared of the wolf than you are, young lady. As I understand it, the wolf likes nothing more than to eat girls like you."

  She gave him a frank and appraising look. Lucas was caught off guard by how very shrewd it was. It looked as if she was taking his measure more deeply than he had ever had it taken, as if those uncanny eyes of hers were seeing all the way down to his spirit and his soul.

  "What are you looking at?"

  "You. Tell me, do you consider yourself the ravenous wolf or the woodsman who needs to rescue Little Red Riding Hood?"

  "Is it that hard for you to decide which I am? If that is the case, you must truly be more careful as you walk through the world."

  "No, I am not confused at all, but I think you may be. One moment, you are inviting girls whose names you don't know to have a drink, and in the next moment, you are rescuing them."

  Lucas shrugged, more than a little startled by the admiration he could see in her eye. No one in the ton would have said he deserved to have an innocent country girl looking at him like that, and he felt a little strange to see it himself.

  "You are altogether too trusting by far. Maybe at some point, you should stop yourself from going out wandering with random men at night."

  She gave him a smile that was at once tender and brilliant.

  "But you are not at all random anymore, are you? We are friends now, aren't we?"

  "I suppose we are." Lucas wondered if he had ever been friends with a woman. It seemed unlikely.

  They walked in silence for a while, and Lucas thought that his friends in London would laugh themselves sick to see him walking an innocent slip of a maid safely back to her residence. No, it was high time he found some companionship in the northern countryside. Surely, it couldn't all be solidly stern housewives and flighty, fanciful young maids.

  Clarine broke his train of thought, looking up at him with a surprisingly thoughtful and considering look on her face.

  "Lucas, what is it you do?"

  Lucas had never been one of those men who tried to hide their rank, looking for a truth they couldn't quite discern in others. Still, he found himself oddly reluctant to talk about his life in London with this chit. He wondered if it was shame and a conscience catching up to him at last, and then he dismissed it. Surely not.

  No matter the reason, however, he found himself reluctant to tell her the whole story. Instead, he shrugged.

  "Well, I suppose I attend country fairs, and I rescue young girls who have gone out without companionship. I walk them home, and I try not to let it bother me when they refuse to take ownership of a kiss that we both quite enjoyed—"

  Clarine squawked with outrage, and then grinned reluctantly when she realized she was being baited.

  "Well, all of that is true without answering my question at all. More specifically, it seems to me as if you know how to fight. I heard you having quite the tussle with the men who wanted to kidnap me, and that was two against one."

  "Two cowardly men against one, mind you. They were only expecting to cart off innocent young girls, not to deal with their angry male protectors."

  She smiled a little, sending an unexpected shiver of warmth down Lucas's spine. This fey little serving maid drew an unaccustomed sweetness out of him, something he was not used to at all.

  "I wonder. Are you looking for employment? That is to say, are you looking to make some money?"

  Lucas gave her a wary look.

  "What are you getting at?"

  "Well, you see, there is an opening for a groom where I live. We have had no head groom for a while, and the two boys who are left are not capable of doing much more than letting the horses into the paddock and mucking out the stalls."

  "And you think that I would do any better? You have no idea what expertise I have with horses, and I think your master or mistress would agree."

  She was silent for a moment. They'd made the turn in the road that led up to an elegant manor on the hill. Hartford Hall, he thought she had called it. It was a grand place, and he decided that Clarine was lucky; most places would probably not be so tolerant of their maids slipping out to have a day at the fair, as Lucas now thought she had done.

  "Well, you really wouldn't be there to be a groom, you see."

  He just started to ask her what in the world she was talking about when two riders came thundering down the lane.

  Lucas stiffened, drawing her off the road, but they dragged their horses to a halt abreast of him and Clarine. For a moment, he thought they were going to be robbed, or at least that the men intended to try to rob them. For some reason, Clarine looked very calm, if resigned.

  "My lady! We have been scouring the grounds for you for hours now!"

  "Miss Lister and Sir Mason are very concerned, Lady Waverly."

  Lucas stared up at the two men, wondering if this was some sort of con or if it was just a genuine case of mistaken identity, but Clarine stepped forward with a still and calm look on her face. In the space of a heartbeat, she had gone from a lively little thing to being as cold as a Norman church statue. Lucas had to quell in the immediate rage at anything that would have made her so.

  "I am sorry to have worried them. I am on my way back now."

  "And this man, my lady?"

  The two riders were liveried and prideful. They looked at Lucas in his rough clothes, and he knew they saw some man who probably should not even look at a lady like Clarine—for surely she was a lady, he knew now—let alone stand so close to her.

  Clarine turned toward him, and in the darkness, he could not read her look, though he would very much have liked to.

  "He helped me out of a bad situation in town. I am bringing him home to give him a reward."

  As Lucas and the mysterious girl he had rescued were escorted up to Hartford Hall, he wondered what in the world he was getting in to.

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  5

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

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  Clarine had known that she would have to pay the piper when she returned to the hall. She had not expected her cousin, Sarah Lister, to be pacing a hole in the marble floor of the foyer, arms lashed tightly around her body.

  "There you are! Where in the world have you been? I didn't miss you until lunch, and then the maids told me you'd been gone before that!"

  Sarah Lister was tall where Clarine was short, and she was willowy-slender. Her p
ale skin and jet-black hair gave her a rather funereal look, one that wasn't helped by her wardrobe, which seemed to be all of serviceable grays and blues. She was only two years older than Clarine, but she often gave the impression of being far older, more an aunt than a cousin.

  "I'm sorry, Sarah, I was just—"

  Clarine halted when Sarah looked behind her to stare at Lucas. She wondered briefly what Lucas would make of all of this, but then Mason and Quentin showed up.

  Her male cousins were as different as night and day. Quentin was nearly a twin to his sister, tall and slender with her dramatic coloring and dressed entirely in stark black. He looked like an old-fashioned fire and brimstone curate, and the eye he cast over everything was distant and disapproving.

  Mason was as unlike the other two as chalk was to cheese. His hair was brown rather than black, and he moved with a kind of athletic grace that could put a panther to shame. Far from being as concerned as the escort had made out, he looked simply curious and amused over the entire endeavor.

  Now all of her cousins were here, and their eyes were heavy upon her. Clarine felt a deep urge to simply walk right back out of Hartford Hall, back down the winding lane to the village, and from there, take the royal mail coach to London or perhaps to the coast, where she could board a ship and never come back...

  Instead, she braced herself and lifted her chin, reminding herself that she was a lady now, and that they all stood in her hall, nominally speaking.

  "I am sorry to have worried all of you. I was merely out enjoying myself."

  Sarah scowled. "Without an escort, and why in the world are you dressed like that?"

  Before Clarine could come up with a reasonable excuse, Quentin interjected with a dark look.

  "It is quite improper for you to be running around at all hours of the night, cousin. You have put the house into quite an uproar. Very unfitting."

  "I'm very sorry about all of this. I only meant—"

  "Only meant to put us all in our graves with worry, you mean." Sarah's voice was indignant. "I do not think that I have had a moment of rest since you went missing."

  "Or I a moment of quiet," Quentin supplied.

  Clarine felt as if she might have been able to deal with one of them at a time, or perhaps she might have done a little better if they weren't speaking over her. No matter how much she tried, however, there was always a layer of questions she could not answer, and the conversation was getting away from her.

  It was Mason who spoke up to stem his siblings’ incessant questions, stepping forward with his hands out placatingly.

  "I am sure Clarine has a reason for worrying all of us, and we should give her a chance to—"

  "She was hiring me."

  Lucas's voice cut through this mayhem like Alexander's sword parting the Gordian knot. He cut through the chatter of dissent so very clearly that all three of the Lister siblings stared at him. It would have been funny to see how their eyes had tracked Lucas from his rough shoes to his shabby wool jacket all in unison if tension hadn't hung so rough in the air.

  Mason spoke first, his voice was sharp.

  "I beg your pardon, but what was Clarine hiring you for, exactly?"

  Clarine managed to keep a calm expression on her face by dint of pure will. Her mother's voice echoed in her head.

  Sometimes a woman's only weapon in this strange world is how very unsurprised and calm she can look. If you look like you are in control, you will be surprised how many people believe it.

  She had honestly thought Lucas was going to walk her to Hartford Hall and be done with it. Given the way he carried himself, no matter how poor he might have been, she rather thought that he might have turned down any reward she cared to give him. A rather wicked part of her mind wondered whether he would demand a kiss as his only reward, and what would she do then? As a lady, she had to reward him with something...

  She pulled her mind back to the matter at hand, where her three cousins were staring at Lucas as if he were some particularly large variety of field vermin that had made it into Hartford Hall, and Lucas stared back as if he were unimpressed with all of them.

  "Lady Waverly told me that she was in sore need of a groom, since there were only boys to take the job here. I'm a dab hand with horses, and I have references."

  Sarah found her voice first, and when she spoke, there was a slightly strangled sound to it.

  "She... found you? And who has given you a character?"

  Clarine was rather wondering that herself, but Lucas seemed unperturbed.

  "The Marquis of Darby and the Marquis of Campion would be willing to attest to my skills with horses. I've been working with them since I was a lad."

  "High praise indeed." Mason looked thoughtful, even if he did not particularly seem to care for the situation.

  When her cousins were stunned, Clarine took the opportunity to speak. When she wasn't being interrupted at every turn, she could summon up a rather dignified tone, if she did say so herself.

  "Hartford Hall is my own to care for, and the stables have been in rather poor shape for a while. Just last year, one of our prize mares escaped and foaled on her own in a distant paddock before we could find her. We almost lost my mother's favorite mare, and I wanted to make sure that did not happen again."

  She turned to Lucas and met his curious gaze with a placidly commanding expression. They had gone from being rescuer and housemaid to lady and groom in a moment, but he seemed game to see what came next.

  "You may talk to Mr. Hilsford, the butler, about where you will be resting and when you may go about your duties. I trust you will find the terms to your satisfaction."

  "Yes, and thank you, Lady Waverly."

  "Very good. Then I will be retiring to my rooms, and I will see you all in the morning."

  As she swept up the stairs to her chambers and a footman showed Lucas where he was to meet with the butler, Clarine was aware of three pairs of eyes boring into her back. The confidence she had summoned deserted her then, replaced with a certainty that at least one of her cousins, and perhaps all three, wanted her dead.

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  6

  CHAPTER

  SIX

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  Both of the boys who currently looked after Hartford Hall's horses lived in the small village a short distance away, not in the dusty groom's quarters that Mr. Hilford showed Lucas to.

  "I trust this will be to your satisfaction, Mr. Tolland."

  "Just fine, I'm sure."

  Lucas wanted to ask the butler about what in the hell he had seen in the foyer, who the two storm crows were and the young lord with them, and more than that, what in the world was the lady of the house doing dressed as a maid on her day off?

  The butler's icy look precluded anything even approaching familiarity, however, and after a warning that livery would be provided to him in the morning and that breakfast in the servants' kitchen waited for no man, Lucas was left in the narrow wooden room that served to house Hartford Hall's grooms.

  Well, I suppose I was looking for a change from the city. This is about as far from being a London lord as I can get.

  He stripped down to sleep and thought idly about having some more clothes sent from the cottage where he had been staying. He had no idea how long he was going to be sitting with this charade. He figured he would leave when it ceased to amuse, but right now, his curiosity was too strong for him to abandon it just yet.

  Lucas slept surprisingly well that evening, given everything that had happened. He dreamed of a fine house where everything upon closer inspection was made out of paste and tin, and just when he had pulled out a pair of dueling pistols, only to have them crumble to bits in his hands, something woke him up.

  The air just beyond his nose was cool, the last bits of winter still hiding in spring, but he was warm under his blankets. The sky outside the narrow window was still mostly dark, with
just an edging of light that promised the dawn. He wondered what had awakened him, and then he heard it again, a light step in the yard beyond, and then a soft creak as the door to the groom's area was unlocked from without.