How Not to Marry an Earl

by Christine Merrill

  For that matter, was levirate marriage allowed in America? Though English men sometimes married their widowed sisters-in-law, it was not legal or approved of by the church.

  Charity had a momentary fantasy of charging down the aisle of some distant church and announcing that there was a just cause that such a union could not be performed. It more than likely proved just how far out of society she had fallen that she imagined making a didactic lecture on marital law. A normal young woman would stop a wedding by announcing her inability to live another moment without her beloved.

  It did not matter. All her protests would be moot against the sight of Prudence’s swelling belly. If he had got her with child it was right that he should marry her.

  If...

  Before she could finish her thought, there was a soft knock on the library door.

  ‘Enter,’ she called, turning to see the butler standing stiffly on the threshold. ‘What is it, Chilson?’

  ‘Will you be taking luncheon in the library as usual, Miss Charity?’

  She smiled up at him. ‘In the dining room. And supper, as well.’

  ‘Mr Potts has requested that a tray be sent to his room,’ the butler said with a nod of approval.

  ‘Has he, now?’ He had run away from the kiss and now he meant to hide from her at mealtimes. ‘He should not be inconveniencing the staff,’ she said, smiling to herself. ‘Take him his lunch. But when I see him next, I will inform him that all further meals will be taken in the dining room.’

  ‘He is also welcome at the staff table in the kitchen,’ Chilson replied, after a significant pause.

  ‘But he is not staff,’ she said, firmly. ‘He will eat at the table with the family.’

  ‘But when the family is not in residence—’

  ‘I am the family,’ she said, to cut off any further discussion.

  Chilson did not sigh in frustration, but she had the feeling that he sorely wished to. ‘I will see to it that there are two footmen assigned to the dining room, and another to accompany him, should he need assistance with the audit. And perhaps a maid to sit with you, in the evening.’

  For a moment, she could not believe what she was hearing. She had waited fifteen years for the moment when there was not a grandparent or a sister telling her that everything she wanted to do was wrong. Now that she was finally alone and could make her own decisions, the servants had suggestions on how she should behave.

  It was all the more annoying that they were right to be worried. But they did not understand that it was Pott’s honour that needed protecting.

  She gave the butler a firm smile. ‘Footmen and maids will not be necessary, Chilson. I do not want or need a chaperon.’

  There was another pause that could have contained a sigh, had Chilson been any less disciplined. ‘Very good, Miss Charity.’

  ‘You may go,’ she said and watched him retreat in silence.

  The servants would stop pestering, for the moment, at least. But after lunch, she would have to lure Potts out of his room. That was what the diamonds were good for. Although the kiss he had given her was worth at least one of them, he could not have any until they were found. And to find them, she must pretend to need his help.

  * * *

  It had taken Miles less than a day at Comstock Manor to completely lose sight of his plan. He had come to find something to sell so he might leave the country. Though he’d not been eager to return home empty-handed, he had found nothing in England for him but more trouble. He had most assuredly not wanted to marry some distant cousin, who was a total stranger to him, just because everyone here thought it the expedient thing to do.

  One day later, he had been tempted with the prospect of lost diamonds, even one of which might save him from debtors’ prison. And he had kissed the very same woman he had been meaning to avoid, as a way to deflect her desire for a full-blown affair.

  Worse yet, he had liked it. He was not about to seduce and abandon a virgin, even if she had asked him to do so. But then, he had not thought he was going to kiss her, either. If he meant to do right by Pru, he should not be thinking about doing it again.

  There was also the fact that Charity disliked the new Earl of Comstock, on principle. It was a point in her favour, since Miles didn’t like being him. Still, should she discover that he and Potts were one in the same, she would not be happy with either of them.

  Better to go back to his original plan, find a portable treasure and leave. The best place to find such a thing was in one of the older, closed wings where an absence might never be missed. He took the main stairs at a trot, then chose the middle hall, between the family bedchambers and those reserved for guests.

  The corridor was narrower than either of the other wings, and darker, as well, with matched pairs of doors on either side. At the end, there was a change in the plaster of the wall to indicate yet another, older wing. There, the passage widened to reveal more halls spreading out in opposite directions.

  He reached into his pocket, retrieved the silver dollar he kept there and flipped it. Heads. Left it was. He walked down the left hall, trying and failing to imagine where he might be in the building as a whole.

  The first storey of the house seemed to be in the shape of a large H. But the ground floor was a straight line that widened in the middle like a snake that had eaten an egg. If the lower portion of this wing had not been destroyed, he could not think where he might access it, except from the public rooms of the newest wings.

  There was a curved stairway at the end of this hall that might enlighten him, but it was unlit and appeared to end in a brick wall before reaching the ground level. He retraced his steps, pulled a ring from his pocket and began fitting keys into door locks.

  The majority of the rooms that he was able to open were sparsely furnished with uncurtained, mattressless bedframes, empty cupboards and rickety benches. But halfway down one side, he opened on the sort of room he was looking for.

  It was fully furnished and decorated in a garish combination of red and gold with painted Chinese silk on the walls and heavy velvet curtains on the windows and bed. There were no ornaments on the dresser and no jewellery forgotten in the drawers. The cupboard contained gowns and coats that were at least fifty years out of style and of no use to him unless he meant to waste time picking off the brass buttons and tarnished lace.

  But on the other side of the room, there was a rosewood cabinet fitted in brass and inlaid with what appeared to be jade. It was also locked. What could be so valuable that it would be locked inside a chest like this, yet left in a back room and all but forgotten?

  There was nothing on his key ring that might open this door. But what was the point of being an earl if one could not take liberties in one’s own home? He reached into another pocket, got his penknife and jabbed it into the opening, jiggling the latch.

  There was a squeak and the doors popped open. He stared in horrified fascination at the contents of the cabinet. The shelves inside were filled with row upon row of carved ivory ornaments, most no bigger than his fist. The front row was made up of well-rendered animals and fish. But the further back he searched, the more surprising they became. There were fewer animals and more people: couples and sometimes groups of three or more. And they were all as acrobatically flexible as the Indians in the book he had seen earlier.

  He closed the cupboard again, wiggling the popped latch until it caught. It was just his luck that the first pawnable items he found were the sorts of things he would be embarrassed to carry around in his pocket.

  ‘Grrr...’

  He turned to find his evil, little dog standing in the doorway as if it meant to block his exit.

  ‘Do not growl at me. I saved your life once and have seen to it that you will end it in luxury, fattened on table scraps and sleeping on a lady’s pillow.’

  The dog plopped into a sit, as if considering.

/>   Since the fight seemed to have gone out of it, Miles walked towards the door so he might leave the room.

  At the last minute, the dog jumped to its feet, bared its little fangs and charged.

  Miles leapt over it, grabbing the door handle as he passed, closing the door with a slam and trapping the dog inside. He fumbled for the key that would lock it in, then thought the better of it. It had been hard enough to explain to Charity that he would not be making love to her. He did not want to admit that he had sealed her dog in an abandoned room without food or water.

  He opened the door cautiously, preparing for another attack. When none came, he called into the room, ‘Come out, you miserable beggar. Do not think I have gone soft. I am freeing you for her sake.’

  There was no sound from inside.

  He opened the door cautiously to reveal...

  Nothing.

  There was no sign of the dog that had been there only a moment ago. For a moment, he thought of searching for it. But only a moment. It was probably lying in wait behind a curtain or under the bed, ready to bite him when he got close. ‘Suit yourself, Pepper. The door is open. You found your way this far. You can come out when you are hungry, or starve, for all I care.’

  He went back into the hall and retraced his steps to the main floor and back to the library. He opened the door slowly and paused on the threshold, as he had above for the dog. But this time he wanted to make sure that Charity Strickland was not currently in residence. After the tumultuous meeting earlier, he was not ready to see her again, certainly not during his current errand.

  Once he was sure he was alone, he shut the door and returned to the shelf where she had pulled the books she had described as ‘educational’. The word proved accurate for, despite a varied tutelage in the ways of the world, there were things here that he had not seen before.

  He had heard of the Cleland book, while in America. Who had not? But he had never actually seen a copy of it. It appeared that the library had both the first edition and several even less reputable copies. There was the Sanskrit manual of love and another book in equally unreadable French, but with a trove of illustrations that left nothing to the imagination. The next books, in Latin and German, were not illustrated. But Charity was clearly fluent in both for she had taken the trouble to bookmark the most interesting pages with neatly written translations. He could not decide which shocked him more, the subject matter, or the scholarly care she had taken in writing words that no innocent girl should know.

  It was no real surprise that the rest of the row was made up of art from the Orient, albums of paintings on silk depicting all manner of copulation. After what he had found upstairs, it seemed that one of his predecessors had an obsession with all things Asian. If he had travelled extensively to find such collectables, it likely explained where much of the family money had gone.

  But other items might have had been here even longer. The shelf beneath held heavy leather tomes with metal loops set into the bindings showing where they had once been chained to a monastery shelf. On seeing the illuminations, he understood the reason for such security. The monks who had done the work seemed possessed to draw phalluses into even the most innocent pictures.

  He closed the books again, taking care to return them to the shelves in the same order he had removed them, to give their curator no indication of his examination. The last thing he needed was for her to realise he had been looking at them again and thinking that he needed inspiration.

  But that was hardly the case. While it was certainly titillating, he preferred the actual activity to looking at pictures thereof. He doubted that anywhere in the entail documents, he would find that he was required to preserve and display the extensive Comstock pornography collection for future generations.

  But the presence of the things put ideas into his head that had nothing to do with bedding Miss Charity. The problem remained that he had no idea how to carry it out. But that did not mean he did not know a fellow to help him.

  When they had met, Gregory Drake had introduced himself as a solver of problems and seemed to specialise in getting the nobility out of just the sort of jams that he had fallen into. Drake had been willing to take on the daunting project of inventorying Comstock Manor, even after he’d seen the place and known what he was up against.

  Then he’d quit the task in the middle and run off to Scotland with Charity’s older sister. Miles had found it annoying, but only faintly so. He could not blame Drake so very much. He was beginning to see how persuasive the Strickland sisters could be, when they got bees in their bonnets. But it had been several weeks and the man had not sent any kind of resignation from employment. The honeymoon had gone on long enough. It was time for him to return to work.

  Miles quit the library, but could not help looking both ways on exiting, lest Miss Charity was lying in wait to spring on him and demand that they copulate in the hallway. This was the problem with pornography. It gave one ridiculous ideas about what was likely to happen in moments of passion and not nearly enough information about what actually did. Then he climbed the stairs to his room.

  Luncheon was waiting there, as he had requested, as was a writing desk well stocked with quills and ink, and paper. It took several pages to outline his requests, but the end effect looked quite impressive on stationery embossed with the Comstock family crest. Then he addressed it to Drake’s London address.

  He hesitated for a moment before going to the bureau drawer that held his fresh linen and fishing around under a pile of neckcloths to find the signet he had hidden there. Then he took it back to the desk along with the tinder box from the fireplace to melt the sealing wax. He’d vowed, once he’d left London, that he would never use the Comstock seal again. He’d felt like an imposter when signing documents before and was eager to be free of it.

  But in this case, it was appropriate. This project was less about what he needed and more about what was necessary to the estate. If the finances could be stabilised, perhaps he could persuade Charity to take on the running of it, even though she had been dead set on escaping the house and having her own life.

  But her desire to leave home seemed to have much to do with avoiding the Earl of Comstock. If she learned that the Earl wanted to avoid his responsibilities in just the same way, she might think differently about leaving home.

  Now that it was finished, he stared at the properly sealed letter in his hand. If he wished to remain anonymous to the staff here, he could not exactly toss it into the morning’s post with the Earl’s mark pressed on to the back of it. At last, he tucked it into a coat pocket and made an excuse to the butler about the need to exercise his horse. Then he went down to the stables, mounted and rode to the inn he had passed in the village the day before. Once there, he drank a glass of ale, posted the letter and returned to the house in time for supper.

  Chapter Ten

  Though she had known him for just over a day, Charity had changed significantly since Potts had come into her life. This evening, when Dill held out a choice of dinner gowns, she chose the more revealing of the two without another thought. Then she sat patiently as her too-straight hair was piled high on her head and secured with pearl-headed pins.

  When the maid held out the Comstock necklace to her, she shook her head. Since they both knew it was false, it seemed a pointless addition to the ensemble. Instead, she polished her spectacles and glanced in the mirror. She looked well enough, she supposed. She was still nothing like her sisters, but an effort had been made. Then she gave Pepper a good-luck pat on the head before going down to the dining room.

  Potts was already at the table and gave her a sullen expression as he rose to greet her. ‘At your service, Miss Strickland.’

  She gave him a sour smile in return. ‘You have no reason to be cross with me. Despite our financial difficulties, Comstock Manor has an excellent cook.’

  ‘I could enjoy the food just a
s well in my room,’ he said, staring deliberately down at his plate.

  ‘To avoid me,’ she concluded, trying not to sound hurt. ‘Do not be ridiculous. Though I made my position plain this morning, it is not as if I mean to spring on you like a wild beast now that you have refused me.’

  He started in surprise.

  ‘And in case you have forgotten, we have not yet found the diamonds. Since we parted, the situation has grown much more urgent.’

  ‘In half a day?’ he said doubtfully. ‘They have been lost for a century or more. What difference will a few hours make?’

  ‘Your employer has been seen in the village. It is only a matter of time before he arrives.’

  ‘Seen, by whom?’ he said, glancing around him. ‘No one here, surely.’

  ‘He was at the inn, this afternoon. He did not announce himself,’ she added. ‘But the ostler saw the Comstock stamp on the letter he posted. He told the baker, who told the greengrocer, who informed the kitchen maid who went to place the order for this week’s vegetables.’

  ‘Who returned here to tell the cook, who told the housekeeper, who informed you,’ he said.

  ‘She told my maid, actually. And then Dill told me. Do not underestimate the speed of local gossip,’ she said. ‘It is not always accurate, but it is very fast.’

  ‘Apparently,’ he agreed with a weak laugh and emptied his glass in a single swallow as if he was no more eager for the arrival of the Earl than she was. ‘But can you trust any story that has passed through so many tellers?’

  ‘Even if it is not true, I mean to take it as so and redouble my efforts. I meant to be away from here before he arrived.’ Though the prospect of that now seemed as hopeless as seducing Potts. ‘But if his appearance is imminent, I suppose I shall have to settle for departing soon after.’

  ‘You have no reason to have formed such an aversion to a man you do not know.’ He gave her a sceptical look. ‘If it is because you had problems with your grandfather, you will find that they are nothing alike. And though you seem to brood on him, when I spoke to him, Comstock did not mention you at all. He does not give two figs for your behaviour...other than to wish you well with it, of course.’