Hart did not have peace, and never had. He’d gone from spoiled boy to rotten young man, making trouble with the help, and then with the neighbors. His mischief had gotten him all but banished to the Continent, where English coin went further toward procuring the lifestyle Hart believed was his due.
His current hostess was pleased to have a baron among her guests, but also tacitly complained about Hart’s treatment of the maids. Maids bore an unfortunate lot in life, but the smarter ones knew how to work that to their advantage. The baroness could not spare much concern for the maids.
Her concern was not even for her son, but rather, for the younger Portmaine girl, said to be governessing in Surrey. The letter cheerily informed the baroness that Hart’s next destination lay in Surrey, and that was not a good thing.
Not a good thing at all.
* * *
Ethan Grey’s company was seductive, and not just in the erotic sense. Alice was coming to think she could tell him anything—tell him everything—and he’d absorb all her terrible sorrows and secrets without thinking any less of her.
And yet, there was a carnal attraction, too, all the more appealing for the way he could receive or bestow a difficult confidence without flinching. The notion of genuine intimacy with him, intimacy of the body, mind, and heart, beckoned irresistibly.
His kiss was a surprise, though Alice recovered quickly. A soft, careful touch of his lips to hers was enough to inspire Alice to twine her arms around Ethan’s neck. She sighed against his mouth, in relief and satisfaction. She had not imagined their mutual appeal, not conjured it from loneliness and fancy.
He pressed his mouth more firmly to hers and let his hands slide down to her hips, an embrace that anchored her even as it transgressed beyond a stolen kiss. Alice wiggled a little with the pleasure of it, and brushed her thumbs over his cheeks, a slow, learning caress that both satisfied and stirred the peculiar ache in her middle.
And then she should have eased back, because a pleasant kiss was ricocheting around in her body, becoming a demanding, intensifying, stubbornly focused prelude to all manner of mischief. Instead, Alice sank more snugly into him, letting her breasts press against his chest. Lest he abandon her for her forwardness, she took his bottom lip between her teeth.
He muttered something, God in heaven maybe, and against her belly, Alice felt unmistakable evidence of male arousal.
Ethan slipped his tongue along her lips, and she went up on her toes, hungry for him. She met him, shyly at first, but he went slowly, always asking, never demanding, and she was soon exploring him as carefully as he was her. Her tongue rubbed along his; her hands traveled over his shoulders to his back, through his hair, and along his arms; and her body leaned into his embrace.
“Alice…” The dratted, enchanting man tried again to ease away. “The boys are just through the trees.”
“Boys?” She was kissing his neck, tasting the salt and cedar of his skin, wanting to rip off his shirt and kiss him everywhere.
“Joshua and Jeremiah,” he reminded her, his arms still wrapped around her. “My sons.”
“We should stop?” Whyever…? She kept one hand resting on his shoulder for balance. With the other she petted his chest through the fine tailoring of his shirt and waistcoat.
“Yes, love.” Ethan’s breathing was ragged. The chest she’d like to learn intimately was heaving. “We should stop.” He tucked her closer, so Alice could feel his heart thudding along beneath her cheek. “Just let me hold you.”
She wanted to kiss him some more, endlessly, wickedly. She could not lift her face from his shoulder though, because his hand cradled the back of her head.
He was, however gently, defending himself from her advances. “Oh, dear.”
“None of that, love. I kissed you first.”
She stood in his embrace, her hands linked around his waist, and cast around for something to say. An apology came to mind, even a tender of resignation, but then she felt Ethan’s arousal, a rigid presence against her belly. She eased her body away from his, though she didn’t take a step back.
“I am afraid to look at you,” she said, nose still buried at his throat. “I am mortified.” Men could not help their responses, not even a man as self-possessed as Ethan Grey.
“You are lovely,” Ethan corrected her. “We merely got a little carried away on the basis of confidences exchanged. I gather it’s been a while for you?”
He sounded hopeful, not embarrassed. She did pull back enough then to see his face. “A very long while. You?”
“Years.” He tucked her back against him, out of kissing range. “Long, long years.”
“You don’t seem to be out of practice,” Alice remarked on a sigh.
“Oh, shame on you.” Ethan nuzzled her crown with his chin. “I am inspired by present company and trust the same is true for you.”
This was not mere gallantry. He sounded as flustered as she felt—which was no end of reassuring, though it did not change their circumstances. She mustered a smile and slipped her arms from his waist. “I did not expect this to happen.”
His eyes shuttered, suggesting her observation was not what he wanted to hear. “You did not expect it to happen, or you wish it had not happened? I can manufacture an apology if you absolutely insist.”
“I did not expect it.” Alice managed a few steps of distance and turned her body so she would not see him and his blue eyes and his broad shoulders, much less any evidence of their kiss. “If we are honest, we will admit neither one of us wants a complication.”
“A single kiss does not a complication make.” Bless the man, he was going to see reason, though he didn’t sound happy about it.
“It doesn’t.” Alice’s smile felt bleak. “But you are my employer, and neither of us wants marriage, so we must deal with the question of intentions.”
“Must we deal with it now?”
His voice told her he’d come closer. If he touched her again…
“I was crying, and then I plastered myself all over you, and I know men are prone to… well, no, we need not parse this quite yet.”
“Good. I really would not want to cause you hurt, Alice. If you’re offended, you must tell me, and I will take myself off to Town or go sea bathing or something until we can pretend this kiss did not happen.”
That he could pretend any such thing was lowering in the extreme. Alice reached for pride but found only rueful humor. “I don’t think a single unexpected kiss merits anything so drastic as sea bathing.”
She risked a glance at him to find he was smiling crookedly.
“No sea bathing then. Will you come inspect the battle with me?”
“I think not.” Alice tugged her floppy straw hat up from her back to her head. “Today is Friday, so we will have the children to join us at dinner. I will spend the afternoon writing out next week’s lesson plans, though, and hope we can proceed with a bit more structure starting Monday.”
“A little more,” Ethan said. “I don’t think the boys have had a real break here at home for at least a year, when I hired Harold’s predecessor.”
“They had a nanny before that?”
He looked pained, which was fine. Alice was pained, to be kissing him one minute and then find he was happy to discuss his children the next. While she wanted to… to climb him, to knock him flat on his back and kiss him for the rest of the summer.
“They had nannies.” He lifted a hand and traced his finger along her hairline. “You’ll be all right?”
Maybe he wasn’t so happy to discuss his children.
“I will be fine,” Alice said, going up on her toes to brush her lips against his. “Just fine.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything more. Alice turned and made her way up to the house and left Waterloo for Ethan to deal with.
* * *
Where did a governess learn to kiss like that?
Was this raging, pounding need what had driven Nick from one bed to the next with any willing female?
What if the boys had seen them?
What had he been thinking?
And when could he get his hands on her again?
Ethan did not turn directly for the stream, but took a circuitous path that kept to the shade of the home wood and took him farther from his children’s shouts and battle cries. He came to a clearing, one graced with a little gazebo, and sat himself down on the steps to consider the developments of the past hour.
What he wanted—besides the freedom to plunder his governess’s charms without any consequences—was to talk to his brother. Nick wouldn’t laugh, and he would understand, and if there were answers to be had from greater experience of women and intimacies with them, Nick would share the answers.
But Nick was far away, and Ethan had imposed on him enough for one summer.
God in heaven, what a lovely, lovely kiss.
Ethan’s steps took him to the Tydings stable, where he busied himself saddling one of his spare mounts. Waltzer was a big, muscular dark bay, with the personality of a puppy dog.
“He’ll be fresh,” Miller said. “Mind you walk him out in this heat, guv.”
“I’ll be careful,” Ethan replied, securing the girth. “I’m not out for any great feats of athleticism, but it’s been a trying day.”
“You didn’t let Thatcher go,” Miller said as he handed Ethan the bridle.
“I should have.” Ethan took off the headstall, and had to smile as the horse obligingly dipped his big Roman nose, trying to find the bit. “I shall, if you see him so much as forgetting to scrub a bucket.”
“Ponies are tough.”
Ethan straightened and glared at his stable master. “That pony carries my son around. Thunder doesn’t need to be tough. He needs to be the safest mount I can provide for Joshua, and that means no gratuitous beatings.”
“I take your point.”
Ethan didn’t say another word, just led the big horse out to the mounting block and swung up. With his usual willingness to please, Waltzer cantered off, only kicking out behind once when he passed a paddock full of yearlings.
Having permitted the horse to express his good spirits, Ethan brought him back to the trot and turned him into the woods along a track that met up with the stream. A bridle path ran parallel to the far side of the water, so Ethan let the horse splash across then turn away from the house and grounds toward the cool of the deeper woods. The path would take him past several of his neighbors’ properties, and by agreement, was available for the enjoyment of all whose land bordered it.
“Well met, Grey,” a voice sang out on an approaching chestnut.
“Heathgate.” Ethan drew up as his neighbor approached him. The chestnut was as handsome as all of Heathgate’s mounts, but this one was also particularly elegant.
“Is that a mare?”
“You think your brother is the only one who can appreciate the fairer sex in another species?” Heathgate asked. He still had the same gimlet-hard blue eyes he’d had as a younger man, the same dark hair, and an even leaner, more unreadable face. Oh, and for the last fifteen years or so, he’d sported his grandfather’s lofty title too. Ethan might not have chosen to settle at Tydings had he known Gareth Alexander would be one of his neighbors.
He owed the man, owed him for intervening long ago in a situation most would have quietly run from, and owed him even more for never once bringing it up.
“Nicholas hasn’t the luxury of considering gender before size, sanity, and soundness in his personal mounts,” Ethan said. “She’s very pretty.”
“She is.” Heathgate’s smile was fleeting as he patted the horse’s neck. “And a lady of particulars. How fare your boys?”
Parenting was a useful source of small talk, though Ethan had never appreciated this before. “They are busy. We’ve just come back from several weeks with Nicholas and his countess at Belle Maison, and picked up a new governess in the process. I have only two children, and yet it seems they cause enough mayhem and activity to bring the entire house down on occasion.”
“It gets easier,” Heathgate said. “My last one was easier than the first one, and thank the gods she’s a girl, because my marchioness was determined Lady Joyce have a sister.”
“Two will be my limit. Your family thrives?”
“Loudly. Hence the appeal of a quiet hack. Constantina here could use a chance to catch her breath on the way home.”
The words held a careful invitation. “I’ll join you,” Ethan said, because to do otherwise would be rude. He liked Heathgate, had liked him before his acquisition of his grandfather’s title. The marquis cared not one whit for Society’s opinion, and he’d married where his heart led, despite his wife being merely a viscount’s spinster daughter. There was really nothing not to like.
Except Heathgate had seen Ethan in the worst, most vile, degrading moments of Ethan’s life. The knowledge lay between them, assiduously ignored every time they met.
So… onward to more small talk.
“My sons have recently demonstrated to me their affinity for jumping their ponies,” Ethan said. “At a dead run.”
“Of course. They’re boys.”
“And thank God,” Ethan went on, “they’re on a pair of game ponies. But Joshua and Jeremiah will soon acquire more of my height, and I was thinking something from your brother’s stable might serve as a next step.”
“Ladies’ mounts? I suppose the principles are the same. Greymoor found my son James’s first pony, as well as Pen’s. You might corner Greymoor at a gathering of the clan at his place on Wednesday. I’m sure his countess would be happy to send along an invitation.”
And just like that, another turning point loomed before Ethan. He’d owned Tydings for seven years, and yet he didn’t socialize, didn’t trade calls, didn’t expect to be invited to share a drink or a meal with his neighbors. First, he was of questionable ton, being illegitimate, but then he’d committed a far worse transgression by marrying his mistress. Even had the neighbors been amenable, the idea of turning Barbara loose on the unsuspecting gentry of Surrey had been unthinkable.
And then the boys had come along, his marriage had gone utterly to hell, and a couple of years later, Barbara was gone.
“It’s just some food and drink with the neighbors, Grey,” Heathgate said. “A picnic, with children rocketing about, pall-mall balls whacking into the dessert table, babies needing attention at inopportune moments, and papas being told to wipe cake off that one’s mouth or put it on this one’s plate. We do it mostly for the ladies, but also for the cousins.”
“How old is your oldest?” Ethan asked.
“He looks to be the same age as yours,” Heathgate replied, his expression patient.
“Joshua and Jeremiah haven’t been in company much,” Ethan said. “They did fairly well at Belle Maison.”
“So bring as many footmen and nannies and dogs as you need to keep them in line, or try to. Each of my children has a separate nanny. They spell each other, the nannies, that is, but the happiness of my entire kingdom turns on the morale of my nannies.” The marquis sounded absolutely sincere.
“One understands, sometimes, why women can be hysterical.”
“One does. So you’ll bring the boys? We gather around four, when the heat starts to fade and the babies have had their naps, and we don’t stay late, because the older ones get cranky if they’re out too long.”
That a marquis should know these things was reassuring.
“I’ll have to bring their governess, Miss Portman.” For any number of reasons. “She will enjoy getting acquainted with the neighbors, I think.”
“Your governess has some odd connections,” Heathgate observed as his horse stepped carefully over a fallen log.
This oh-so-casual comment crossed over from small talk to something more significant.
“Her last position was with some squire’s daughter down in Sussex for five years. How could her path have crossed yours?”
“Not mine. I don’t know if
she told you, but her brother is Benjamin Hazlit.”
And how did Heathgate know such a thing? “Your snoop of choice. Nick’s too.”
Heathgate did not dignify that with confirmation. “Hazlit spent the night with us last night, as he sometimes does when he and I have much to discuss. Felicity likes him, and he told her he was calling on his sister, Miss Portman, this morning. Her ladyship dug in, as she will, and extracted from him his sister’s location.”
“Impressive, your marchioness.” Was this why there was a neighborly invitation now, after seven years? The titled neighbors wanted to look over Hazlit’s sister? Had Hazlit put them up to it? “I think Alice likes her privacy, and I know I like mine.”
“We all appreciate privacy. Hazlit more than any of us.”
“He said there was scandal.” Ethan paused, not sure how much to say. “He didn’t ask for me to keep it in confidence, so I don’t suppose there’s harm in telling you.”
Heathgate waved a gloved hand in impatient circles. “Out with it, Grey. I’ve known you half your life, and you know my discretion is reliable.”
An oblique reference, but valid.
“I don’t know what the scandal involved, except that both sisters were affected, and the siblings not at the family seat all use different names to avoid the repercussions of the scandal. There is wealth of some sort, and an estate in the North, but Hazlit told me only that much.”
“He’s a closemouthed devil, but there are more scandals hanging on my family tree than Hanover has princes, Ethan. Let sleeping dogs lie, and all that.”
That Heathgate would use Ethan’s name was a slip. They hadn’t ever assumed such familiarity and probably never would, out of consideration, not for Heathgate’s great title and consequence, but for Ethan’s dignity.
Heathgate smiled. “Have I offended? You can be honest, you know. My wife always is, and it has toughened me considerably.”
“You have not offended. You do surprise me, though.”
“Probably for the first and only time. I will tell Greymoor and his countess to expect you with your entourage on Wednesday, rain or shine.”
“My thanks.” Ethan nodded by way of a mounted bow, and let his companion take the branch of the path that would lead back to Willowdale, while Ethan turned around, overdue to investigate Wellington’s progress against Bonaparte.
Ethan: Lord of Scandals ll-3 Page 11
