Enticing the Earl

by Nicole Byrd

  Upstairs, the contessa was still dozing; she must have had little sleep after her upsetting encounter with the bat last night. Lauryn found what she needed and quietly shut the bedroom door behind her. Downstairs, she let herself out of the front door and made her way around the side of the hunting lodge.

  A path led to the stables, and there she met the earl just emerging. “Hello,” he said, looking up at her with a smile. “Would you like to say hello to the mount who gave you such grievous bruises?”

  “It wasn’t the mare’s fault,” Lauryn pointed out, pausing, finding that it was impossible not to smile back at him, “just because I am out of the habit of riding regularly.”

  He led her inside the stable, stopping to lift a carrot from a bin for her to offer her horse, whom she found in a stall halfway down the stable row. The strong smells of horses, feed, and the slight lingering odor of manure, even though the stable was obviously well tended, met her as she entered. She could see motes of dust floating in the rays of sunlight that slanted through an upper window.

  She looked into the roomy stall, and the mare moved across to see her, pushing her head against the hand that Lauryn held out to the animal as she rubbed her velvety muzzle gently.

  “Hello,” Lauryn said softly. “You remember me, do you? Good girl.” She held out the carrot with her other hand, holding it on the flat of her palm so that she would not be accidently bitten by the mare’s long front teeth. The horse took it neatly out of her hand and, crunching, made short work of the vegetable treat. Lauryn laughed and turned back to see the earl grinning at her.

  “You have a way with horses as well as men,” he noted, his voice low.

  “Oh,” Lauryn drew a deep breath. “As for that…” She hesitated, not sure what to say. The allure of pretending to be a practiced—and professional—lover was losing its charm.

  Perhaps he saw something of her conundrum in her expression. “Mrs. Smith,” the earl said, motioning to a bale of hay, “may I invite you to have a seat?”

  She raised her brows but she sat down carefully on the prickly bale and waited to see what he was about to say. None of the grooms were within sight or apparently sound, so they had a modicum of privacy.

  “We are driven out of my own house, for yet the second time,” he said, with a trace of annoyance in his voice. “You see the many privileges that come with rank and wealth, not to mention the joy of having assorted and myriad relatives.”

  She grinned, as she thought she was meant to do. But then he added in a more serious vein, “Do you not think it’s time to stop playing games?”

  She felt her heart skip a beat. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Mrs. Smith—a very common and pleasant name, but not, I think, really yours?”

  He met her eyes so steadily that she could not seem to break the contact, and she felt her cheeks burn. “Oh, I—” Her mouth felt very dry.

  “I would be honored to be favored with your real name,” he told her.

  She opened her lips, and then shut them again, knowing that her color must be high. How did he know? Had she given herself away in some fashion? She must have looked haunted because he shook his head.

  “You are not at fault; you are simply too much a lady to pretend otherwise. Oh, you have a delightful zest for lovemaking, and a body that is thoroughly responsive, to my own keen pleasure, I assure you. I take joy in every reaction you give, my dear. But to believe that you are really a woman of the street—even the most high-class courtesan—no, it stretches fantasy too far.”

  Feeling trapped, she bit her lip again. What reason could she possibly give for posing as a streetwalker then, if, as was obvious, he did not believe her masquerade? He would think her either mad or totally dissolute and without morals of any kind…

  He was watching with those intelligent dark eyes, which always seemed to know too much, and she could think of nothing to say. “My name is Lauryn,” she told him, her voice very low. “That is the truth.”

  He nodded, his tone grave. “Thank you.”

  “But I cannot tell you why…” Her voice faltered. Truly, she could not tell him. How would anyone believe such a convoluted story?

  The silence stretched, and she heard one of the horses in the stalls paw the ground, and another of the big beasts whinny softly. She could think of nothing to add, and her throat ached with tension. Would he throw her out, without the means to get back to London or return to Yorkshire? Would she be stranded in a town where she knew no one, penniless and unprotected? Oh, and she had thought that they were getting along so well…

  “Would it help,” he said, his voice quiet, “if I told you that I have already instructed my solicitor to send the deed to his estate back to Squire Harris, with ownership suitably made over to him once more?”

  Lauryn knew that her eyes were wide. “You knew! How did you know?”

  His tone was patient. “You come to me asking for a small estate in the north of England, not twenty-four hours after I win the squire’s birthright from him in a card game—a property I have not the slightest interest in, I must tell you. Yet I knew full well the man was too proud to consider taking it back from me if I had refused it, even if there was any way that I could turn down legitimate winnings…and you expect me not to connect the two events?”

  She flushed. “Of course, I should have realized.”

  Again there was a moment of silence, and something hung in the air between them that she could not interpret.

  “How,” he asked, his tone guarded, “are you related to the squire?”

  She gazed at him, but this time she could not read his expression. “He is my father-in-law.”

  “And your husband agreed to allow you to do this—come to another man’s bed?” He stared at her, his eyes very dark.

  “No, no, I am a widow, just as I told you,” she tried to explain.

  “Ah.” The earl exhaled slowly, and some of the tension in his voice faded. “So you are Mrs. Lauryn Harris, and you styled yourself Mrs. Smith simply to avoid scandal?”

  She nodded. “I hoped that not many people would know that I had done this, and my family back in Yorkshire would not learn of it.”

  “Understandable,” he agreed. His tone was somehow much easier, and his eyes now seemed more apt to twinkle. “I hope the experience has not been too painful or distasteful for you, posing as a—ah—courtesan.”

  “Since it is with you, and only you,” she told him with a toss of her head, “that I have carried out this outrageous masquerade, you should be able to judge just how I have responded to the reality of making love to a man who is not my husband!”

  If he chose to chide her for these actions, he had the right to do so—she had certainly been in the wrong. But he would not suggest that she had been licentious with any other man, Lauryn thought, becoming angry at the tone of these questions. And if he thought that she was too rash—well, so be it!

  She stood up, dusting her dress as she tried to rid herself of the bits of straw from the bales of hay on which she had been sitting. The she turned to go back to the house, but the earl moved, too, and reached to catch her hand.

  “No, no, Mrs. Harris, Lauryn, my darling girl, that is not at all what I meant to suggest.”

  His voice was low and tender, and so different from his earlier tone that it was that more than the hand that held hers that kept her from trying to pull away.

  “What?” She looked at him in surprise. To hear her Christian name on his lips sent a thrill through her just as vivid as those she received when he touched her bare skin or stroked her hair or–or other parts of her naked body….

  His other hand took hold of her chin and brought it closer to his own, so he could lean in to kiss her lips, gently at first and then more firmly. Despite the passion that always flared so easily between them, she mumbled a protest. Did he think she would forget his cavalier attitude so quickly? But her blood heated as quickly as his, and well, yes, perhaps she would….

/>   He pulled her into his embrace, and she put her arms about his neck. They melded together as closely as if they were one being. The kiss grew stronger and more demanding, and he pressed her back against a post that supported the upper level of the stable. She hardly noticed, she was too intent upon pressing against his hard torso and lean-muscled body and wondering if they could find a quiet place where the grooms would not chance upon them—

  As if her thought had conjured him up, a whistling groom approached the stable from the pasture outside.

  The earl broke away from their embrace, and Lauryn drew a deep breath, feeling as if she had been pulled out of a dream.

  “Damnation!” the earl swore. “Are we to have no peace inside or out?”

  She could have echoed his thought. Standing up straighter, she took Sutton’s arm and without speaking, they walked back to the lodge.

  “I suppose it is better, for the time, that you remain Mrs. Smith,” he asked her. “So it shall be our secret, just now?”

  “I would think so,” she said, relieved not to be embarrassed in front of the other two people in the lodge.

  When they entered the house, Carter still lounged in the sitting room, the cards in front of him. The contessa was not in evidence, so she was doubtless still upstairs in the bedchamber. Lauryn thought briefly, but with regret, of withdrawing to the other bedchamber, but they could not simply disappear into it in broad daylight. She could not be so brazen, with other people about the house.

  She saw the earl glance at her as if reading her thoughts. “A plague on all my house,” he muttered beneath his breath, mangling the Bard without compunction.

  She grinned reluctantly.

  “Since we cannot continue our—ah—chosen entertainment, if you will excuse me, I will go to my desk in the study to work on some papers for a time,” he told her quietly.

  “Of course.” She nodded in understanding. She found it hard to keep her hands off him, as well. She went across to the small shelf of books at the side of the room, selected a book of poems by the newly fashionable poet Mr. Wordsworth, and came to sit down in a chair by the window and read.

  Although she tried hard to lose herself in the sylvan glades depicted by the poet, today it was hard to immerse herself in the pages of a book. She kept hearing slaps as Carter threw down his cards, not to mention the tuneless humming he carried on under his breath.

  She glanced up at him once to see him looking at her. “Did you say something?”

  “No,” she said. “But since you ask, are you winning?”

  He grinned. “One way or the other, I suppose. Since I play alone, there is no one else to claim victory.”

  She chuckled. “As good a way as any to define it.”

  He yawned. “No aspersions on your company, Mrs. Smith, but I find the country dashed boring.”

  She grinned despite herself. “Then why did you come?”

  “Oh, the contessa wanted to follow my brother; she hasn’t quite given up on collecting him again, I think.”

  This was rather less amusing, but Lauryn simply nodded. Carter gave her a knowing look. “Don’t be heartbroken if he doesn’t make a lasting commitment. I mean, you seem like a better person than most of his inamorata, but his petticoat affairs tend to be abrupt and quickly ended, if you’ll pardon me for passing on the warning. I mean it in the best of spirits, don’t you know.” He gazed at her somewhat anxiously, as if afraid she would take offense.

  Lauryn lifted her brows but kept her expression for the most part serene. “I will not kill the messenger, sir.”

  He grinned. “That’s good. I never cared to be one of those Greek fellows who runs the whole way and then collapses at the end after delivering the message—oh, I think I’m getting the stories mixed up, don’t you know?” He gave her a quizzical look, and she laughed.

  “Are you always the jokester?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he said. “Why should I not? My brother has the title and the lion’s share of the money, since he had the great good fortune to be born first. Our father was also second born, but his elder brother died, so he had it both ways—money and the ability to enjoy himself. Marcus and I both suffer from some of our parent’s weaknesses, though I suppose I suffer from an enjoyment of parties and good times more than my brother. I will say that Marcus does have a sense of responsibility, though.”

  “A good thing,” Lauryn pointed out, interested in his brother’s assessment of the earl, though she hoped they didn’t get caught in this family dissection of his character.

  “As long as you don’t take it to extremes,” Carter complained. “Every man must have time to play, now and then.”

  “True,” Lauryn agreed, dropping her gaze to her lap as she thought of the lovemaking she and the earl had shared. That was surely play at its best!

  “Why do you feel your brother is unlikely to settle down?” she asked, bringing the conversation back to its starting point. “Surely he will marry, from his own class, of course, at some point. I mean, he will need an heir.”

  “Don’t know,” Carter said, his tone cautious. “He threatens to leave that dreadful task to me, which really ain’t in my line, either. I like the playing better than the paying, as the saying goes. But if he don’t, it goes back to his mother, don’t you know. She left, you see, when he was only five.”

  “Left?” Lauryn looked up in surprise. If they were both Suttons, but only half brothers, she had assumed different mothers, but she had thought the earl’s mother must have died, perhaps in childbirth as too many women did. “What do you mean, she left?”

  “Ran off with another man, and the old earl got a divorce, act of Parliament, the whole business. Right lot of gossip it was, at the time. So poor old Marcus doesn’t trust women a whole lot, you see.”

  “Ah, I do see,” she said, wondering that he had not thrown her out the door when the first flicker of doubt had emerged over her identify or her status. Good heavens.

  “Mind you, our father was a hard man to live with, I think even Marcus would tell you that, a right tyrannical old despot, down to the end.” Carter shook his head in memory.

  “The two of you must have had a difficult childhood,” she said. And here she had been thinking that, with wealth and a titled name behind them, they had had all that they needed. How wrong one could be!

  He shrugged. “Others had worse. We grew up with nannies and tutors, that’s all. My own mother was sweet, but so terrified of the old earl she could say little to dissuade him if he were on a tirade. But Marcus would stand up for me, if I had been really bad and our father wanted to have me whipped.”

  Lauryn shivered. “Oh, that was good of him!”

  “I should say.” Carter gave a rather mirthless laugh, but his eyes turned bleak, remembering. “He was a good brother, actually. I’d like to see him happy.” He gazed back at her suddenly, and appeared a bit embarrassed to be caught in a genuine bit of emotion. “Not that he’d thank me for interfering or telling tales out of school, don’t you know.”

  “Of course not,” she smiled at him. “My lips are sealed.”

  He put his cards away and, with a bow to her, left the sitting room. Lauryn stared at her book, but instead of the poet’s groves, she saw two young boys coping with an old and too strict father, a timid mother/stepmother, and the lonely childhood one had faced growing up with the knowledge that his own mother had gone away forever, with no thought to the son she had left behind.

  Her heart ached for him. Was there any trace of that boy left in the sophisticated, amazingly adept lover she knew and yet did not know? He could be gentle and yet could freeze up on her in an instant. Perhaps she would never get to truly know him—he would likely send her away before he ever opened up to her, and they would probably never be on a truly level plane…and there was nothing she could do to change the playing field…

  She walked over to the cabinet where Carter had put away his cards, and on a whim, took out the deck. She let the cards s
huffle through her hands and looked at their printed faces: queen and jack, trey and six, wildly different values, just as in life.

  Marcus knew for certain now what he had suspected all along: she was not truly a member of the demimonde, but she was also not an aristocrat, not on the same rung of society as he. They would never stand on the same playing field, so she could not dream of facing him as an equal. She was now as she had been at the beginning—she must not lose her heart, no matter how winning his lovemaking, how bold his kisses, or even how much she might think he needed someone to love…She had to remember that. She could not risk leaving her own heart behind.

  When it came time to change for dinner, Lauryn decided she had also better check on the contessa. She found her sitting in bed reading a book one of the maids had brought her from the shelves downstairs.

  “Are you still feeling ill?” Lauryn asked her.

  “I am not at my best,” the other lady told her. “Look at me. Yet, the circles under my eyes. My skin is pallid. Bah, I am a mess! I do not come out of the room till I am tres belle again.”

  “I see,” Lauryn said, although she didn’t really. The contessa was always a strikingly attractive woman. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Merci, thank you no, ma petite,” the contessa said, smiling at her. “You have saved my life already. The servants vill bring me up ze tray of food.”

  So with the help of one of the maids, Lauryn changed her gown for dinner, then went downstairs to eat with the two gentlemen.

  “I understand you must represent the feminine side all by yourself tonight,” the earl said. Now in evening dress, he had reappeared, and looked much too handsome to be allowed out alone.

  She blinked at him, and tried to focus her thoughts on dinner and other mundane topics. “Yes, the contessa is–is not quite up to her usual good health.”