My Darling, My Disaster (Lords of Essex)

by Morgan, Angie

  A horse and rider trotted into the stable yard, stealing her attention. Gray turned his horse into the mews and dismounted, dismissing Percival with a shake of his head. He wore no hat, and his hair was a tousled blond mass, his cheeks flushed as he strode into the mews to care for his own mount. Lana’s feet moved of their own accord, taking her across the stable yard and into the mews before she knew exactly what she was going to say to him. This was what he did to her. Gray stole all intellect and rationality from her mind and replaced it with the single need to be near him.

  “Lady Lana,” Percival said, popping out of a stall and startling her. “Are you and James going for a ride again?”

  She shook her head and glanced down the row of stalls. Pharaoh’s door was open, and she could hear Gray tending to him.

  “No, that’s better done at Ferndale, I imagine. I have a message for Lord Northridge,” she lied. “From Lady Briannon.”

  The stable boy only nodded and returned to his work.

  She entered Pharaoh’s stall, stopping within the entrance and watching as Gray removed the saddle and hung it on its hook. He kept his back to her.

  “I owe you an apology,” he said, hanging on to the leather saddle a moment longer than necessary. He then returned to his mount’s side, his eyes on his task and not Lana. His face was pale, his eyes dark-rimmed. He certainly looked as if he still felt ill from the night before.

  “You’ve already given me one,” Lana said.

  “I have?” he asked, starting to glance over at her. He changed his mind at the last moment and jerked his eyes back toward relieving Pharaoh of his traces.

  “In the carriage,” she explained.

  “I don’t remember much of the ride.”

  Did that mean he didn’t recall saying he couldn’t live with himself if anything happened to her? That by now, she should know why?

  “You owe Lady Briannon an apology also, I believe.”

  He nodded, kneading his eyes after he hung the bit and traces next.

  “She knows you were only trying to protect her,” Lana added, taking a few steps farther into the stall. From the spotless look of things, she gathered that Pharaoh lived well. “But, my lord, you cannot protect people from their own decisions.”

  He dropped his hand and faced her, with a brooding and salty arch of his brow. “We are no longer discussing Brynn, are we?”

  Lana shook her head and bit the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning. He looked so chagrined. So boyish, standing there, the ankles of his riding breeches splattered with mud from what she imagined had been a vigorous ride through Hyde Park.

  He let out a long sigh and started to rub Pharaoh down. He worked thoroughly, his attention and care evident in the gentle caresses of his left hand as his right brushed the horse’s fine coat.

  “I told my man, Hurstley, to send word the moment he arrived in Cumbria and had presented himself to the countess,” he said, his voice strained from his work. “Meanwhile, I put another man on Zakorov.”

  Lana straightened her shoulders, her lips parting in shock. “You did?”

  He hadn’t told her this before.

  Gray nodded, switching to Pharaoh’s other flank and meeting her gaze briefly. “You thought I would not keep eyes on him?”

  She should have thought of it herself.

  “What has he been doing?” she asked, fearful she was about to hear that he had been loitering around Bishop House or getting close to Lord Dinsmore.

  Gray lowered the brush. “I met with my man this morning. Zakorov has disappeared. He quit his rooms yesterday and hired a carriage to take him from London.”

  Her pulse hammered out a warning. “Where did the carriage go?”

  Gray shook his head. “The last my man saw he was headed southeast.”

  Lana braced a hand against the wall, her heart’s pounding rhythm high in her throat. At least he had not been going north. But she should have asked Langlevit for specifics on where he was planning to meet the man who might cipher the letters. As it stood, all she knew was that they were meeting outside of London.

  “What if he’s left to find Lord Langlevit?” she asked, the edge of panic making her breathless. “Zakorov must know he’s involved. He could be in danger.”

  “Langlevit is no stranger to that. He can take care of himself,” Gray replied, setting down the brush upon a shelf and walking toward Lana. “And let’s not forget that Count Volkonsky has not been seen in public at all. There are no rumors supporting his presence here, just your account from when you saw him in Zakorov’s rooms. Which means he’s slinking around town like a snake.”

  Lana pushed off the wall. “Or he is gone as well.”

  Though it had not sounded as if her uncle had intended to go up to Langlevit’s estate with the Frenchman. Where else would he have possibly gone?

  “I’m not inclined to let our guard down,” Gray said.

  She rubbed at her temple, which had started to throb. “Then what do we do? I’m going mad with worry over Ir—” Lana bit her tongue before she let Irina’s name slip. That was the princess’s name, and Gray knew it, just as he knew Svetlanka was the other princess. She was surprised he had not yet made the connection between Svetlanka and Lana, and lived on the edge of knowing he could, at any moment, unravel her web of lies.

  “Over irrational things,” she finished, unable to look him in the eye.

  Gray swept his feet through a pile of straw and came closer, lowering his voice. “What do we do? I take it then you are finally accepting my help?”

  She parted her lips and lifted her chin, prepared to bite back with a retort that she could take care of herself well enough, thank you. But the way he’d pinned his lower lip with his teeth in an amused grin stopped her. He was only needling her. Only wanting to make her smile.

  Gray took her elbow. The simple touch softened her shoulders and the muscles along her back, aching from sitting up all night in bed, sleepless.

  “There is little we can do until Langlevit returns,” he answered. “Or until we hear from Hurstley.”

  Waiting. Always waiting. Sometimes it felt to Lana that she would never retrieve her old life. That she would forever be stuck hiding, kept apart from Irina and her home in St. Petersburg. That Viktor and her uncle would emerge triumphant.

  “So tell me,” Gray went on, his fingertips traveling from her elbow up the back of her arm. “What do you like to do for fun?”

  Lana startled, thrown by the change of subject. “What?”

  “What do you like to do for fun?” he repeated slowly.

  “I…” She paused. For fun. How long had it been since she’d thought about having fun? “I don’t know. I’m…not used to thinking about diversions.”

  That, at least, was a truthful statement, both for Lana the lady’s maid and Lana the princess in hiding. This was not, as it turned out, an acceptable answer.

  “Say you were used to it,” Gray replied. “Say you had all the time between sunrise and sunset to do as you pleased. What would you most like to do?” He grinned. “Besides lock picking and horse jumping.”

  Her cheeks turned the fiery tones of the sunset. “James told you?”

  “Don’t worry, your secrets are always safe with me. So what else do you enjoy? What would you choose to do if given the chance?”

  She huffed and shook her head, immediately thinking about chores and duties and tasks she performed for Brynn. Airing out and selecting fashionable clothes, working out stains, running errands on her mistress’s behalf, mending hems and cuffs, learning new hairstyles for Brynn to wear so she could be au courant because Lord knew she did not give a whit for it. Her hours were filled from sunup to sundown and—

  Lana stilled her head.

  And she was exhausted. She’d known exhaustion as a princess, but that had been different. That had been due to late homecomings after a soiree or hours of shopping. How she longed for that sort of exhaustion again.

  She shrugged a shoulder
, suddenly feeling timid. “I suppose I would like to dance.”

  Gray dragged his fingers back down her arm, raising the small hairs on her nape. “I think I can arrange that—if you’re not put off by the lack of musical accompaniment or having me as a partner.”

  “You don’t mean here? Now?” She turned, half expecting Percival to be standing there, listening.

  Gray slid his fingers along her wrist and pressed his hand into hers. “Yes, here. Yes, now. Though…” He went to the stall door, pulling her alongside him. He listened for what Lana imagined to be a sign that Percival was close by. All she could hear was the thrum of her pulse in her neck. She hadn’t danced in ages. And there was no music. How could one dance without music?

  “Come,” he said, and before she could protest, they were darting across the center of the mews, toward an open stall door directly across. Gray winged her inside, and she came to a halt, the urge to giggle stuck in her throat. The floor was clean, the trough empty. No straw or grooming implements. There was nothing but open space.

  Gray closed the stall door, the hinges well-oiled and silent, and he turned to her. And bowed.

  He swept his arm out to his side, as if he was greeting a queen. Or a princess, she thought. Innumerable men had bowed to her in the past. It had been required of them. Demanded. But this man…he bowed now because he wished to. He wanted to make her smile. When he straightened his back, her grin was already in place. She covered her cheeks with her palms and laughed quietly.

  Gray extended his hand to her. “Do you care to dance, Lady Lana?”

  Lady Lana. It was what James and Percy called her, though she couldn’t fathom why. Perhaps it was her accent. Perhaps they thought she sounded regal because of it. When they called her Lady Lana, it felt like an adorable pet name she chose to endure. But Gray did not sound teasing when he said it. He was as somber and polite as the dance floor at any London ball required.

  Lana’s legs trembled as she curtsied in answer and then slipped her fingers into his waiting hand. He’d removed his riding gloves before rubbing down Pharaoh. His skin was warm and firm, calloused by the reins and what she knew now was a tendency to care for his own mount.

  “What music are we pretending is playing?” she whispered.

  He pulled her to him, settling his hand on the small of her back, their joined hands straight out at their sides. The front of her dress brushed against his riding kit. Her breath caught.

  “The waltz?”

  She exhaled. Of course he would choose the waltz. It was the only dance that would bring their bodies into such close contact.

  He peered down at her, not yet having moved his feet. “You know it?”

  “Yes, of course,” she answered, hasty to add, “Doesn’t everyone here?”

  Gray began to move, taking the lead and sliding his feet to the side and back. Lana’s feet stumbled, but as they started to twirl through the open barn stall, they remembered what to do and how to move.

  It was awkward at first, what with no music to keep in time to, and being alone in the stall without a dance floor filled with other couples. Lana closed her eyes and let Gray lead her, feeling her light steps upon the barn floor, springing and gliding. She fell into the pattern of their steps, the ever-shifting box their feet were tracing out. Lana felt the rhythmic sway of her hips as she moved backward and forward and side to side, and it wasn’t long before the euphoria of the dance, the predictability of it, started to consume her.

  There was no music, but she could still hear the distant strings in her memories. There were no other dancers, but she could hear their chatter, the roar of conversation and laughter, the tinkling of glass and silver. Lana leaned her head back and turned her face upward, toward memories of lit chandeliers, swirling round and round until she was dizzy with laughter.

  Her feet ground to a stop, but Lana’s body still tried to move. She stumbled, and Gray broke their waltz positioning and caught her by the shoulders. He stared down at her, a strange slant to his eyebrows.

  “Where did you learn to dance like that?” he whispered.

  Lana couldn’t think of an excuse right then. Her body was still humming from the movement, her cheeks still aching from the grin she must have been wearing.

  Gray shook his head, as if to clear it. “You amaze me, Lana.”

  He kissed her smile, his teeth raking along her lower lip and tugging it. The heady sensation of falling endlessly, like a leaf spiraling down from the highest branches of a tree, had cleared her mind and drowned her worry. All she wanted to do was kiss Gray back.

  So she mimicked him and took his lower lip between her teeth. After a gentle nip and a flick of her tongue, Gray moaned something incomprehensible. He liked that, Lana determined, and so she licked his lips again, her tongue running along each one before delving past and inside. He captured her mouth, and his tongue teased hers. Like in the waltz, he took the lead, driving her feet back until her heels struck something. A wall? Her eyes were partly open, but all she could see, all she wanted to see, was Gray.

  His hands cupped her backside and lifted, taking her feet from the floor and settling her atop something solid and wooden. A bench of some kind. She only knew, only cared, that Gray then positioned himself squarely between her legs. Her skirts only allowed so much range of motion, and so Gray batted the front of her skirt up until her stockinged knees brushed against his outer thighs. The soft wool of his riding breeches gave her a jolt of unexpected pleasure, and she couldn’t dream of protesting. Her lashes fluttered, and she took a quick glance at the stall door. Still shut. Lana wished there was a bolt to throw as well.

  “You’re tensing,” Gray whispered against her lips, hitching her chin higher. “I’m being careful, Lana. Trust me.”

  She did trust him. And she didn’t want this moment to end, precarious as their hiding spot was. Lana nodded, and Gray kissed her again. He kept his thumb hooked under her chin, and the new angle allowed him to stroke his tongue deeper into her mouth.

  Every plunge and retreat of his tongue started to feel less and less like a kiss and more like…a promise. Like an allusion to what Gray wanted to happen between them. The hardened bulge of his arousal pressing into the center of her cotton drawers didn’t shock or frighten her as it had when she had been sitting upon it on the carriage ride to Essex. With the jounce of the carriage and her position on his lap, her backside had been pressing and grinding against it. She’d felt it swelling beneath her then, and now as well. Though this time, it felt—different. As she met every thrust of Gray’s tongue she felt it jut and withdraw as well.

  Lana whimpered, his assault on her mouth as exquisite as it was overwhelming. She didn’t want him to stop, and yet she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think. There was only his lips and tongue, his powerful hold on her neck to maintain the angle needed to make love to her mouth—and then the hardness between her legs, every thrust more frantic than the last. More overt. One of her palms slipped off the wooden bench.

  She didn’t think.

  She only reached.

  Lana touched his erection through his trousers, sucking in a shocked breath at her own boldness.

  Gray moaned into her mouth before breaking the kiss. His expression was dark and tight, a pinch of what looked like pain between his brows. Heat flooded her cheeks, and she started to release him, certain she’d done something wrong. But he stilled her hand.

  “Don’t,” he whispered, that tormented expression still ruling his face. “Don’t stop. God, Lana.”

  And with his hand still clamped over hers, he guided her hand down, along his stiffened length. His riding breeches were a snug fit, and while they were looser near the fall, movement was still restricted. He hissed and swore an oath under his breath as she stroked him again, her blush riding high on her cheeks, especially when he would not look away from her. He held her stare without shame, as if relishing the intimacy between them.

  “Lana,” he breathed. And then his clamped hand t
urned to steel, arresting the next stroke. “Enough.”

  She jerked back her hand, releasing him, and watched in confusion as he hunched forward, as if he’d just taken a fist to the gut. Gray turned himself slightly away and stepped out from between Lana’s tossed up skirts.

  She gasped at the sight of her bared drawers and shoved her skirts down. And then, taking stock of her surroundings once more, she saw that she sat upon a wooden saddle horse.

  Lana leaped down, her heart racing, her body hot and pulsing.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice tremulous. “I shouldn’t have—”

  Gray spun toward her so fast she nearly toppled back onto the saddle horse. He pulled her to him, but he didn’t kiss her. He shook his head, his breathing coming fast. “You did nothing—nothing—to apologize for. My God, Lana, you have no idea how incredible you are. How incredible that felt.”

  She shook her head. “It seemed like I…like I hurt you.”

  He laughed, his chest rumbling as he tried to keep it soft. “You did the absolute opposite. I think you brought me back to life.”

  She went quiet at those words. They were beautiful. They were also terrifying. What had she really done to him? If she hadn’t hurt him, then she must have given him pleasure. The same soul-splintering pleasure he’d given her in the carriage? Her breath caught at the realization, something responsive tingling deep within her. She still felt hot and full in the space between her hips.

  Her eyes skipped down to where he’d been swollen just a minute before. A darker spot on the fall of his charcoal gray trousers caught her attention before he nudged her chin up with his thumb.

  “That’s rather embarrassing,” he said, and he did look slightly shamefaced. Though he couldn’t stop his grin. Understanding hit Lana, and she widened her eyes. Oh. Oh.