Once Upon an Earl_Heirs of High Society_A Regency Romance Book

by Eleanor Meyers

  Clarine tensed. "So, you think they did it?"

  Lucas considered for a moment, and then he shook his head. "I don't know. They were talking about being in the woods, but they were talking about some kind of damned mushroom they wanted to collect. It didn't sound like a conversation two would-be murderers would have."

  "Unless they were set on fooling anyone who overheard."

  "True. But once again, who notices the groom?"

  Clarine had been sitting on the bed opposite Lucas's, and now she fell back on it with a groaning noise, covering her face with her hands.

  "Ugh, this is terrible. Are my cousins hapless people who are simply strange, or are they actual would-be murderers? Who knows?"

  From his own bed, Lucas eyed her carefully. "You sound very casual about all of this."

  "Why wouldn't I be? It has been going on too long to maintain a decent panic."

  "Come here."

  "What?"

  "Come here. You are overwrought."

  There really wasn't a question about whether she would or not. However, as she crossed the narrow aisle to Lucas's bed, she realized how very scandalous this all was. It was past midnight, and she had sneaked down to the grooms' quarters. She was dressed only in a light gray muslin gown, her cloak hanging over the hook at the door.

  That must be Mother's blood. She immediately felt guilty.

  Lucas sat up as she approached and gestured her to lie down on his bed.

  "What am I meant to be doing?"

  "Do you trust me?"

  "Yes." The answer was swift and true enough for it to worry Clarine, but then Lucas was pushing her down on the bed, on her belly. his hands gentle on her shoulders.

  "This is how girls get into trouble."

  Lucas chuckled. "Believe me, you are in enough trouble right now. I have no interest in adding to it unless I absolutely need to. Now shush."

  She started to ask what he was doing, but then his hands, strangely gentle for all that they were so large and strong, started kneading at her shoulders. She hadn't noticed how rigid the muscles were there, and when she took a deep breath, she could feel him working them loose and limber.

  "Oh..."

  "Don't say anything. Just relax. You're safe here, and nothing is going to harm you. I promise."

  It was as if those were the magic words she had been longing to hear forever. Somehow, she found the strength to let go of everything else, to lie down on this hard bed that smelled so deliciously of Lucas's skin, and let him work his magic on her.

  It felt good, so good, kindling a warmth in her that made her purr. He was only touching her upper back and her shoulders, his thumbs coming up to rub gentle circles around the back of her neck. He might have been rubbing down a horse after a hard run. She did feel safe, and slowly, slowly, her eyes drifted shut.

  She had never imagined something like this could feel so good, and before she knew it, she was drifting off into a light and sweet sleep, perhaps the best she had known since her mother had died.

  It barely felt as if she had closed her eyes, however, when Lucas was touching her shoulder.

  "What? What's—?"

  His large hand came down over her mouth, stilling her for a moment before lifting away.

  "It'll be dawn in another few hours, and I know what damned early hours the house staff keeps. I would have carried you back to your bed if I thought I could get away with it, but it seems better to send you off on your own."

  "No, you are very right."

  She rose from his bed with reluctance, but then she blinked at him.

  "Did you sleep as well?"

  "No, I thought that was too risky. I'm fairly certain that getting caught with an heiress in my bed is a hanging offense in these parts."

  She paused, looking at him long enough for him to frown.

  "What is it?"

  "Tell me, Lucas. Was that the only reason you didn't sleep?"

  She thought she was making a fool out of herself, and so what if she was? She was hardly concerned about her dignity with this man at this late stage in the game.

  Lucas sighed. "No, it was not."

  "Then why?"

  "Because... because I wanted to watch you sleep."

  She smiled, looking down as heat suffused her cheeks. "Thank you. I'll come back to speak with you as soon as I can."

  She turned before one or both of them could do something foolish, but as she crept through the still-sleeping house, she felt better than she had in a very long time.

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  10

  CHAPTER

  TEN

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  Lucas was unsurprised a day later to receive a summons from the main house. A footman appeared with the orders to have the carriage brought around at noon, as Lady Waverly and her cousins were planning to take the air at a local picnic.

  Lucas figured that he would have to worry less about any actual murder attempts at a picnic, and obediently, he got the horses hitched to the carriage. He spared a moment to thank his grandfather, who had always managed his own team no matter how declassee it became for a gentleman to do so, and who had insisted that his grandson do the same. It allowed him to play the part of a groom with a great deal of facility, even if remembering to bow and be respectful from time to time was difficult.

  Quentin and Sarah looked as out of sorts as they always did, sharing the space in the carriage with equal looks of distracted concern. Lucas gritted his teeth when Mason dismissed him to his post, handing Clarine into the carriage himself before stepping up.

  To Lucas, Clarine, despite how lovely she looked in a gown of frailest blue muslin, looked wary. If he had ever worried about whether she was falling in too comfortably with the people who might want to hurt her, his worries were assuaged by the slight tension in her as she talked with her supposedly loving family. Quentin was mostly quiet, and where Sarah talked at all, it was about the cakes she had had shipped from London and about the flowers that had once grown in Hartford Hall. Mason, the most normal of all of them, listened to his siblings with a polite look before turning to Clarine.

  The whole time they were riding to the picnic on the town commons, Lucas kept one ear turned back toward their conversation, but he could make out very little. Despite how little he cared for the man, Mason seemed to be behaving utterly properly.

  I probably ought not focus on him anyway, not when Sarah and Quentin were in the woods that day and lied about where they were going.

  It was an unseasonably warm spring day on the field, and it seemed that all the town had turned out for the opportunity to have a picnic. A small band played on a hastily hammered-together stage, and two large trestle tables groaned under the food people had brought to share.

  "Oh, good, they have the shoat I sent along on the spit already. It should be ready by tonight, when people are having dinner."

  Mason shot Clarine a look that Lucas thought was rather over-admiring.

  "It is good of you to send along so much. It will be something that the villagers remember for some time."

  Clarine colored a little. "I remember how I... that is, how everyone was so pleased with Father when he did the same. It's a tradition I hope very much to keep up."

  Lucas found himself pressed into service carrying the large hamper full of food, and the small party traveled off across the sward, looking for a place to land. As they went, people called their thanks to Clarine, who smiled and waved as she went. Her expression was as warm as the sunlight itself, and Lucas thought that if she had worried about being as beloved as her father had been, she needn't be concerned for very long. A great deal of her nerviness may have had to do with how she was seen. It seemed odd; most of the girls of the ton were flooded with confidence and the awareness that most people had no choice but to love them. Clarine seemed the opposite, and he found himself oddly touched by that fact.

  They
came to a spot slightly far away from the action, under a spreading tree and close to the rushing stream close by. Lucas spared a thought for how shocked his friends would be to see him at work, and then he shrugged it off in favor of spreading out the large blanket and laying out the food that had been packed for them. Sarah brushed him off when he reached for the cakes she had brought along, laying them carefully out on the blanket on their cardboard discs. Lucas had to admit that they looked delicious, a flat glaze of sugar syrup dolloped with a rose cream.

  Clarine looked down at the spread with satisfaction, and then she looked up at Lucas. "Would you mind fetching us a jug of water from the main tables? I see we have glasses and no water."

  Lucas nodded and headed off for the refreshment area, and he was just returning with the requested jug when a small hand wrapped around his wrist and tugged him away. The crowd around him ebbed and flowed, all too intent on the delicious free food to give a damn what was happening, and he followed the slight, veiled form that had tugged at him to the relative privacy of the willow grove nearby. The long green fronds of the willow tree draped down to create an oddly intimate private chamber for them, and once they were secluded from the others, Clarine drew back her veil with an impish smile.

  "Clarine! What in the world are you doing here?"

  "I hid a hat and veil in the carriage last night, underneath the seat. After I sent you off, I told everyone else that I wanted to see what the musicians were playing, and I managed to get out of there before Mason decided to come with me."

  Lucas frowned. "That's the how, but now I want to know why."

  "The food."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Did you see how carefully Sarah was worrying at the cakes? I might, too, if I had put some kind of poison into them."

  Lucas frowned, because he had noticed the same thing. "And you are here because?"

  "Because, Lucas, if they are going to do anything with the food, I want them to do it."

  "I beg your pardon, but why?"

  "Because then, after I specifically do not eat it, I can take it and feed it to the mice that the gardener is always catching in the yard."

  Lucas nodded slowly. "Well, that sounds risky. How are you going to get your uneaten food away?"

  "I'll hide it in my reticule. It only needs to come home to be tested. It doesn't need to look pretty."

  "All right, good plan. And why are you here, right now, with me?"

  In response, Clarine threw herself into his arms, and in a heartbeat, they were kissing as if they would never stop. Lucas had thought that he was a man of the world, skilled in a dozen different pleasures, but he swore that he had never known what real desire was until he kissed an untried girl at a damned country picnic.

  Her kisses were wild and passionate, with an untutored gracelessness to them that could drive a priest to sin. With a deep growl in his throat, he pressed her back against the trunk of a tree, sliding his tongue between her lips as he ran his hands up and down her tender flanks.

  "God, this was your plan?"

  "I wanted... I wanted to feel normal. I wanted to feel as if I had nothing else in the world to be afraid of. I am never afraid when I am with you."

  Something about her words made his heart wrench, and when he kissed her again, he was gentle. Somehow, they both ended up on their knees in that green grove. Their hands rested almost carefully on each other's shoulders, and when they kissed, Lucas felt a sense of calm descend over him, like nothing he had ever felt before. It was as if all of the troubles of the life that he had created for himself vanished like dew on a bright morning day. It left him clear, almost exalted, and all he needed in this place and this moment was this one beautiful, fey girl.

  "You know we can't do this." Lucas's voice was rough when he finally pulled away.

  Clarine caught her breath.

  "What do you think we are doing?"

  "Risking a great deal of temptation when most of the county is playing on the green just a short distance away."

  For a moment, she pushed her body closer to his, and then with a sigh, she backed away, sitting on the green grass.

  "I'm sorry. I don't know what I was doing."

  Lucas nodded and almost went to sit next to her. Then he decided that being close to her when they were so alone was probably a bad idea when even her breath could call him to her. He stood instead, brushing the loose grass and debris off his clothes. After a moment, she took his hand and he did the same for her.

  "I don't understand you."

  She gave him a curious look. "I know that my situation is hardly a normal one..."

  "No, it's not just that. One moment you're as innocent as if you walked out of the garden of Eden before Adam and Eve did, and the next..."

  His voice trailed off.

  Clarine's eyes took on a hard glint. She stepped back from him, just a space of inches, but suddenly it was as if she had put a brick wall between them.

  "And the next? Please, I would like you to finish that statement."

  Lucas, who seldom found himself at a loss for words, was still for a moment.

  In his silence, Clarine glared.

  "Are you saying that in the next moment, I act like a whore?"

  Lucas jumped as if he had been touched with a hot poker.

  "Clarine! That is not what I meant."

  "Isn’t it? You always seem delighted enough when you come close to me, happy to have my mouth on yours and to feel the things that come up between us."

  She shook her head as if cursing herself for a fool.

  "If that is what you truly believe, then I will take my leave here. There is nothing for us to say."

  Damn her, but she moved fast for a born lady. In a matter of moments, she had ducked beyond the willow branches and darted back onto the green. Lucas's first instinct was to chase after her, but he forced himself to wait. No matter what he hoped to achieve by catching Clarine, he did not want to do her harm, and a noblewoman having her damned groom chase after her and shouting her Christian name would certainly have been harm.

  With a deep sigh and a resolution that this was not over, Lucas counted to two hundred and only then left the willows, carrying the jug of water in his hands.

  No, Clarine wasn't a whore, no matter what her mama might have said about proper and improper behavior. She was a bright and spirited girl who had been put in a terrible position, and now he had to do his best to help her.

  He wondered all over again how their company would react to realizing that it was a marquis who served their drinks and disposed of the trash from their picnic. He almost told them, just to see what would happen, but instead, he gritted his teeth and poured another glass of cold water for the fretful Sarah.

  Lucas noted with some grim approval that Clarine was eating things that had been wrapped up by Cook herself, sticking with things that had been sealed tightly and only now opened. He couldn't say he liked the risk of it, but she was being as cautious as she could be.

  At the last, however, were only the cakes that Sarah had ordered, and Lucas had to admit that they looked delicious. The middle Lister sibling put them out on small plates, fussing over them carefully before passing them on. She looked as if she were worried and anticipating something, but in truth, she always looked a little fluttery and prone to nervous fits.

  "God, these look amazing, Sarah."

  Mason spoke as if he hadn't had a care in the world, and he reached for one of the cakes. Lucas was positioned poorly to see what had happened, but he caught Sarah's startled cry of, "That was for Clarine!"

  "Oh, Clarine won't mind, will she? If anything, she should thank me for keeping her from getting overly plump."

  Lucas bit his tongue on that particular statement even as Clarine laughed, holding her hands up in a calming gesture.

  "Oh, it's fine, it's fine, I only really wanted a little bite anyway. It's beautiful, Sarah, but it simply looks so very rich!"

  Sarah looked slightly put out, but th
en before she could say anything, Mason started to choke. For a moment, Lucas was frozen with shock as Mason's hand flew to his throat and his face went from a healthy tan to a deep crimson.

  "My throat... my throat!"

  "Mason!"

  Sarah crossed the space to turn her brother around and then to start whacking him hard between the shoulders, but before she could do so, Quentin took a queer and rattling breath. His complexion, already pale, became ashen, and he curled up on himself, coughing hard.