The Earl Most Likely

by Jane Goodger

  “Am I frightening you?”

  “I think I’m frightening myself,” she said with a small laugh.

  Her response seemed to please him, for he bent his head and took her mouth in another long, searing kiss. Too much was happening for Harriet to process it all. Her breasts ached strangely and between her thighs was an entirely different ache, a need to be touched. A need for him to touch her. So very, very dangerous, these feelings he was evoking in her, but she couldn’t help letting out a sound of pure pleasure. The sound was still dying on her lips when he brought one hand up to cup a breast, kneading, running a strong thumb over its peak, and producing an almost unbearable sensation.

  He dragged his mouth from hers and kissed her neck. All she could do was tilt her jaw so that he could proceed as he wished, as she wished. All the while, her hands were fisted by her sides, as if she were ready to strike him. In truth, she didn’t know what to do with her hands, whether she should wrap them around his neck or his waist. Finally, he brought his hands slowly down her arms and grasped her wrists, then brought her hands around his neck. A small groan came from deep in his throat as she unfurled her hands and buried her fingers in his thick, silky hair and she thought she heard him mutter, “Yes.”

  Never in her life had she touched a man’s hair, reveled in its softness, felt a man’s arousal against her or even wondered what it might feel like. Now that she knew, she was ruined in so many ways that had nothing to do with her own abandoned morals. Had anyone asked her yesterday or even this morning if she would be allowing a man to kiss her, touch her breasts, press himself against her, she would have blushed and adamantly denied that she would do any such thing. The types of caresses he was giving her were meant for a wife.

  Not an employee.

  Not an innocent woman who had been brought up to strictly obey the mores of society. She wondered if he would have taken such liberties with the daughter of a peer. Or did he do so only because she was a nobody? Oh, God, what am I doing?

  Harriet brought her hands to his shoulders and pressed him back, feeling absolutely no give, as if she were pushing against a large, warm boulder. “My lord,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut. “Please stop.”

  Instantly, he removed his hot mouth from her neck, dropped his arms, and stepped back. And when he did, Harriet stumbled, unaware of how weak at the knees she’d become. “All right. I have stopped.” He looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance. Did he think she would have allowed him to continue his caresses? What sort of girl did he think she was? Of course, the answer was obvious to Harriet, much to her shame. He thought she was the sort of girl who behaved as she’d been acting. The sort who allowed a man to do what she’d allowed him to do.

  “I fear I enjoyed your kisses too much,” she said with a small laugh. “And it is wrong, of both of us.”

  “Wrong?”

  She gave him a look of exasperation. “Yes, wrong, as you well know. I am your employee, sir. Nothing more.”

  Lord Berkley seemed to chew on that for a bit, clenching and unclenching his jaw. “You are correct, of course.” He shook his head as if shaking his thoughts away, then stared at her with frightening intensity. “I suppose you would be insulted if I offered you a home.”

  “A home?” she asked cautiously, for one crazy moment thinking he was proposing to her.

  “A home where I might visit you. Daily.” Harriet might have been a sheltered girl, but even she knew what he was hinting at. He actually seemed to think she might consider such an arrangement, and for the tiniest space of time, she pictured herself there, in some house, waiting for him to visit her. That vision lasted perhaps the space of two breaths before she came to her senses.

  Another woman might have slapped him in anger. Harriet laughed.

  Her laughter apparently did not sit well with his lordship, and he seemed quite put out. “It’s not an unreasonable suggestion. You have no prospects and this way you would have your own home; you could have all the pretty gowns you wanted.”

  “Don’t forget, I would have you,” Harriet said, trying—and failing—not to laugh again.

  “And that amuses you?”

  Pressing her hand against her mouth to keep her mirth inside, Harriet could only nod.

  “I fail to see what is so amusing,” he said with no small amount of exasperation.

  “I am not laughing at you, sir. I am laughing at myself.” To actually have thought Lord Berkley would propose to her was worse than her mother thinking they would gain entrance to exclusive balls during the little season. “I thought…I actually thought…” She couldn’t finish, for the laughter bubbled up again.

  “That I was proposing?” he asked, with surprise.

  Harriet should have been insulted by the look on his face that told her how very absurd it was to have believed he was asking for her hand in marriage. But even though Harriet was a hopeless romantic, she was aware how ridiculous it would be to think an earl—an earl—would propose to Harriet Anderson, daughter of a tin miner. Still, she had her pride. “Is it so horrifying, my lord?”

  Lord Berkley carefully shuttered his expression, something Harriet had never seen him do before. It was a completely aristocratic look he was giving her at the moment, and that, more than anything, told Harriet where she stood.

  “You will not kiss me again, my lord. Such advances from nobility have a way of giving simple commoners lofty ambitions.”

  “There is nothing simple, nor common, about you, Miss Anderson,” he said, his tone tinged with an anger she did not understand. “I suppose you expect an apology for insulting you.”

  Harriet shook her head, suddenly feeling hot tears press against her eyes. “Not at all, sir. Shall I apologize for giving you the wrong impression of me?”

  That seemed to surprise him, and a sharp line formed between his brows. “Of course not,” he snapped. “I knew you were an innocent, at least I suspected it. Clearly you have no experience kissing—”

  “Oh!”

  “I meant no insult.” He swore beneath his breath. “You kiss damn well for a girl who had never been kissed. Damn well.” This last was said softly, as if he were recalling the kiss they’d just shared. His eyes went to her mouth, and just like that, Harriet felt herself being drawn to him as if he were some sort of siren.

  “I should go, my lord,” she said, even as too large a part of her heart wanted him to ask her to stay. What was wrong with her?

  “Yes, I suppose that is best. I fear where you are concerned, it is difficult for me to be honorable.”

  Harriet couldn’t help but smile, for it was rather a grand compliment coming from a man as handsome and loftily positioned as the Earl of Berkley. She was grateful for this exchange. If nothing else, it drove all those silly, romantic notions that Lord Berkley would fall madly in love with her out of her head. She must set all her sights on that ten thousand pounds; that’s what her dreams should be, of her independent life, of her perfect little cottage.

  “I will complete this work tomorrow. It will soon be dark.”

  She walked past him, feeling awkward and unable to look in his direction. “Miss Anderson.” Just at the door, she stopped and turned. He was still facing the wall of paintings, standing still, as if he found the wall particularly interesting. “You will still be my Princess Catalina, will you not?”

  Harriet smiled, even as her heart gave a small lurch. “Of course, my lord. Good night.”

  * * * *

  When he was certain Miss Anderson was gone, Augustus let out the foulest curse he could think of. What a royal ass he was on all counts. He never should have kissed her, and then, to make matters worse, he’d actually insulted one of the nicest women he’d ever met by suggesting she could become his mistress. What the devil was wrong with him?

  He strode out of the room and into his study, heading directly to a crystal decan
ter of fine French brandy. Pouring a fingerful, he downed the drink in one swallow, then placed the snifter down with an audible clink. The liquor burned down his throat. Shame coursed through him, and it was an uncomfortable and foreign feeling. He had not thought he was the sort of man who would take advantage of an innocent girl, never mind a girl who was in his employ. It was the strangest thing, his attraction to her, and he couldn’t explain it. Yet every time he saw her, spoke with her, all he could think of was touching her.

  Letting out a groan, he leaned against the side table, elbows locked, head down, and wondered how he could keep himself from lusting after her. Catalina. God, it was as if when he’d given her that moniker, she became the lovely, exotic creature of his imagination. In reality, she hadn’t changed a bit, other than allowed her glorious hair to curl. She was still the same skinny, shapeless, plain girl in an ugly dress who he’d met in the tea shop. Why was it, then, when he looked at her he saw something completely different? A girl who shone with a brilliance that was undefinable? A girl whose every smile and gaze made him want her?

  Even now, long minutes after she’d departed his house, he ached for her.

  “Sir, will you be eating in this evening?”

  Augustus straightened to find his butler standing at the door pretending not to be concerned to see his master in such a despondent pose. “No, Mr. Pearson, I shall go into the village, I think.”

  “Very well, sir.” His butler made to leave, then hesitated a moment before departing, perhaps sensing all was not well.

  “I need a wife,” Augustus muttered.

  “Indeed, sir,” Mr. Pearson said, before leaving the room.

  Being alone every evening was making him do and think impossible things. He would have to apologize again to Miss Anderson, claim he’d gone temporarily insane. She seemed to be a forgiving sort. She hadn’t slapped him or stormed off as most women would have done.

  She’d laughed.

  Just thinking about that laughter, loud and unchecked, made him smile. Then he sobered, remembering precisely why she’d laughed—because she hadn’t realized he’d been asking her to be his mistress. She’d thought he’d been asking her to be his wife.

  Chapter 7

  For the first time since that day in the tea shop, Harriet, Eliza, Rebecca, and Alice were visiting. They had all converged on Alice, who was now clearly showing her pregnancy and decided it would be indecent to be seen in public.

  Harriet, as she always did, asked Clara to accompany her, but her sister had smiled brightly and looked out at the gloriously sunny day.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I think you would much rather be outside in your garden than cooped up in a room with four gossipy women. You are such a strange bird, Clara.”

  Clara grinned as she donned her large straw hat that she always wore when she was gardening. “I adore being strange.”

  So when Harriet arrived at the Southwells’ pretty house high on a bluff overlooking St. Ives Bay, her only company was her own warring thoughts. Nothing she did could stop her from reliving every kiss and caress, every intense look, every word of her exchange with Lord Berkley. No matter how she tried to gather up some sort of anger that he would suggest she become his mistress, she could not. To her great shame, all she could be was flattered. Flattered! What sort of depraved, immoral woman would be flattered that a man has asked her to become his mistress?

  It was quite clear to Harriet that her self-esteem must be somewhere beneath her feet if she thought such a suggestion was flattering. The girl who rarely was asked to dance, who had never been kissed until yesterday, was flying over the moon that Lord Berkley, the handsomest man in all Cornwall, wanted her. No, he did not want to marry her, which, unfortunately, made perfect sense to Harriet. She wasn’t hurt in the least, though she had a feeling another girl might be devastated.

  Instead, she held those kisses close to her heart and felt as if she were floating through the day, giddy with the memories and the thought he might kiss her again. There it was. That was the sort of woman she was. No, she would not be a man’s mistress. But what would it hurt if she let a handsome man, an earl no less, kiss her once in a while? It was likely she would never incite passion in another man; the fact she had in Lord Berkley seemed like a bloody miracle. While this lasted—and it would not last longer than the renovations to his house—she decided she would have a bit of fun. No harm. No foul.

  Why couldn’t she be happy for once?

  Her friends had already gathered in Alice’s sitting room and looked up when she entered. Alice sat, her belly significantly more prominent now than the last time she’d seen her. Trying to school her features, because she knew Alice would detect something amiss, Harriet surveyed the other women’s projects. Their little knitting circle was actually knitting, tiny booties and miniature sweaters made of the softest Irish wool. Harriet’s project was less ambitious than the others’, for she’d had limited time to do anything but work at Costille House.

  “How darling,” Harriet said, going over to see Rebecca’s project, an intricately crocheted blanket using stitches that were far beyond Harriet’s skills. “It is lovely, Rebecca.”

  Rebecca blushed under the praise. “Thank you. My mother says I should sell them in town to the tourists. I could use the pin money.” It was well-known among the women that Rebecca’s family was in the midst of a Difficult Time, thanks to her father’s gambling and her mother’s spending.

  “You should.” This from Alice.

  “You can never.” This from Eliza.

  Rebecca laughed. Alice, the daughter of a duke who had married a bastard commoner, had left any snobbishness she had ever possessed far behind, while Eliza’s well-placed and well-heeled family were sticklers for decorum. Harriet wondered what Eliza would say if she knew she was not only working for a wage but had actually kissed her employer—an earl, no less. No doubt they all would be thoroughly shocked. She wished she could talk about the earl to her friends, but she feared her behavior would cause real concern among them. Alice might have admired her gumption, but certainly kissing the earl would stretch even Alice’s tolerance. And it had been more than a kiss, it had been a passionate event and one that no unmarried, innocent girl should ever have engaged in.

  How difficult it was not to talk of it. All these feelings never before experienced threatened to bubble out. To gauge their reaction, Harriet decided to tell a small white lie. Actually, it was not so white, but Harriet pushed down any feelings of guilt over the matter.

  “The earl came to tea the other day,” she said, gathering up her knitting—unadorned booties.

  “Oh?” asked Alice.

  “Yes. Of course, my mother neglected to tell me of the visit.” The three other women gave a collective gasp. “I had been for a walk, wearing my oldest gown, mind you, with mud and all matter of filth on it, when I walked into the room to see them all there, happy as you please and entertaining the Earl of Berkley.”

  “That is a nightmare. Poor Harriet,” gushed Eliza.

  “That’s not the worst of it. The earl stood, always the gentleman, and insisted that I stay and dine with them. He was quite gracious actually, which I think bothered Mother to no end.”

  Alice set aside her knitting and looked pointedly at Harriet. “They invited the earl to luncheon for Clara’s benefit, I take it.”

  “Yes. It was rather horrifying, truth be told. I wonder why he accepted the invitation at all.”

  “Do you,” Alice said pointedly. It was not a question. “Perhaps the earl is taken with your sister.”

  “Or with me,” Harriet said with a laugh. It was rather disconcerting how the other women joined in with her laughter, even though Harriet knew it was not done in the spirit of meanness. “At any rate,” Harriet said, now entering the territory of falsehood, “the earl took Clara for a walk in the garden. When Clara ret
urned, she was quite flushed and I do believe the earl may have kissed her.”

  Again, the collective gasp.

  “Poor Clara,” Eliza said, and Rebecca gave her a strange look.

  “Poor Clara? I think if an earl kissed me, I’d be feeling rather rich, myself.” The other ladies laughed, some guiltily. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man more handsome than the earl. Other than your dear Mr. Southwell, of course.”

  Alice laughed. “I have to admit, the earl is a handsome man. Quite foreboding, though, don’t you think, Harriet?”

  Harriet fought the blush that was threatening. “Not at all. He seemed rather pleasant.”

  “But he kissed Clara!” Eliza said.

  “I said it appeared as if he might have. Clara denied it, of course, and I did not press her on the matter. I think she feared if she admitted such a thing, my father would insist the earl do the right thing and I know Clara would be mortified.” And here was the reason for her lie.

  “But your father must know the earl would never marry Clara. Your sister is very dear, but…” Eliza let her voice trail off.

  “I am not blind to my parents’ delusions. But the entire matter made me think.”

  “Oh?” Rebecca asked.

  “As I said, Clara seemed flushed and not altogether unhappy. Even knowing she could never marry the earl, would it be such a terrible thing to steal a few kisses from such a handsome man?”

  Harriet pointedly did not look in Alice’s direction, but from the corner of her eye she could still see her friend’s mouth drop open.

  “Pretend for a moment that Clara is plain and with no prospects whatsoever,” she said in a rush.

  “But Clara is lovely and has attracted the attention of many fine men,” Rebecca said.

  “Yes, I know. But pretend,” Harriet repeated. “Or imagine Clara is unaware of her charms. What if she believed she might never be kissed by any man, never mind a handsome earl?”