To Wed a Wicked Earl

by Olivia Parker

  Reaching out he touched her hand, for a second cradling her fingers within his before pressing his palm to hers for a handshake.

  She flicked a nervous glance at their joined hands when he failed to pull his away.

  Lifting her hand to his mouth, he pressed a soft kiss to her knuckles.

  Strangely, seduction was not at the forefront of his mind. Right now, he was preoccupied with trying to figure her out. Did she have some sort of motive? Was she befriending him just because he happened to be good friends with Tristan?

  “I should go,” she muttered, a flash of something akin to distress apparent in her gaze. She turned to leave, then stopped, spinning back around. “Perhaps I shall see you at the Hawthorne’s annual costume ball in July?”

  He was invited every year, but never attended. Aubry Park was near the Hawthorne estate in Northumberland, but Rothbury had always found other things to do. There was nothing for him there. “It’s three months from now. Already know you are attending, Miss Greene?”

  She nodded with a wry smile. “We go every year. My cousin Lizzie insists upon it. Besides, my mother loves everything metaphysical, and there are those supposed ‘haunted’ pathways and caves nearby. She’s forever dragging me on one of her excursions.”

  He nodded, not knowing what else to say. He didn’t think he’d ever had a friendly, no hidden-motives conversation with a woman before. Odd but true. He was forever coaxing, manipulating, and seducing. Or letting those things to be done to him.

  “Good night,” he said.

  “Good night.” She smiled, turning to leave. “Do you know,” she added from over her shoulder, “I’m not supposed to be speaking with men like you?”

  “It’s going to be a little hard being friends with someone you’re not allowed to converse with,” he murmured, but she had already gone. He watched her retreating form, his sinful mind fixating on her small, pleasantly rounded bottom, which had a wiggle that was definitely unintentional, but quite engaging.

  Apparently deeming it safe to come out again, his stallion, Petruchio, came out from hiding. The beast nudged Rothbury in the back, breaking his concentration.

  “I beg your pardon,” he muttered to the horse. “I do not have the attention span of a butterfly when it comes to women.”

  Grabbing the pommel, he swooped into the saddle, the quick action making him momentarily dizzy. He bit it back, then urged his mount into a trot.

  The window above and the woman to whom it belonged long forgotten, he focused instead on Miss Greene during the short ride back, and her utterly naïve, utterly perplexing offer.

  Part of him hoped she’d forget all about this nonsense. Surely, she’d realize the folly of her association with him. And part of him thought maybe it would be better being friends with her, rather than nothing at all.

  But still another part of him felt like grinning.

  A derisive huff blew past his lips. He pushed that thought to the back of his mind. Miss Greene was an innocent. A peculiar one, but an innocent all the same. Women like her did not get involved with men like him.

  When he finally returned to his town house, a mere block away, he relaxed in his study, sipping a horrid concoction conjured up by the housekeeper, who promised the vile liquid would clear his head.

  His favorite wolfhound lay snoring at his feet, and a tumbling tray of correspondence awaited his attention near his elbow—one a letter from his grandmother, the dowager countess, he realized with a groan.

  The dear woman was slowly going senile, and the contents of her letters were always a surprise. Sometimes she remembered who he was, sometimes she did not, and sometimes she confessed to having had tea with Napoleon and a giant talking rabbit named Mrs. Nesbitt every afternoon.

  All in all, she had to be watched carefully. Not only did she have some harmless quirks, but she kept threatening to sell off parts of the earldom if he didn’t marry soon.

  Lucky for him, they were all entailed properties, except for Aubry Park and its horse-breeding facilities. But insofar as he knew, she hadn’t threatened to sell it in order to get him to conform to her wishes.

  Leaning back into the chair, he closed his eyes. He never enjoyed the quiet, the emptiness. It reminded him of other times, long-ago events he would like to forget.

  Thankfully, amid his dark memories, a tumble of pale blond ringlets and a shy smile rose unbidden in his mind as it always did when he was alone.

  Opening one eye, he spied one letter that stood out from the rest. He plucked it from the others and turned it over in his hand, revealing the Marquis of Hawthorne’s seal.

  Their annual costume ball. The Hawthornes, with a son who would be looking for a bride soon, rarely came to Town for the Season. Families with unmarried females wouldn’t dare balk and miss out on the opportunity to attend their ball, even though it meant they’d have to pack up and leave London in the middle of the Season for a week.

  It was about time he attended, he told himself. The Hawthornes had always been loyal friends of his family over the years, particularly of his mother and grandmother, he mused, giving the dog at his feet a pat on the head.

  Besides, it wasn’t as if he’d decided to come just to see a certain young lady who possessed gorgeous sapphire eyes, asked way too many questions, and now suffered under the grand illusion of being his friend.

  Chapter 4

  A Gentleman values his friends, even when one drops in unexpectedly.

  Three months later

  Lord Rothbury slept in the nude.

  Which was why, one could suppose, a jolt of annoyance ran through him when he found himself awakened by the unmistakable sound of someone climbing up the rose trellis just outside his bedchamber window.

  Damn. And he had been in the midst of such a peculiar and lusty dream too. “Peculiar” because he had never in his life thought he harbored a secret attraction to shepherdesses and “lusty” because he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off of her. Though he couldn’t see her face, she was quite luscious, with rosy-tipped breasts peeking over the edge of her bodice. He had lowered his head…

  A creaking sound followed by the snap of thin wood yanked him straight out of his sleep-drenched musings.

  Rising up to lean back on his elbows, Rothbury managed to blink open one eye just in time to watch a frilly parasol pop up and over the windowsill. It landed on his floor with a rattle.

  What the bloody hell?

  Since when did the thieves, cutthroats, and ne’er-do-wells of London do away with pistols and clubs in place of decorative umbrellas?

  He shook his head in an effort to clear it. Despite the unique weapon choice, he still needed a swift plan of action in order to quickly overpower the miscreant intent on breaking in. But he hadn’t much time and he couldn’t be all that threatening to an intruder if he were to spring from his bed brandishing nothing more than a night’s growth of beard stubble.

  Although, he thought with a sleepy grin, he’d wager a stable full of his coveted Arabian mares that he’d have the element of surprise on his side.

  Just then, a series of soft, decidedly feminine grunts came from the vicinity of the open window. His grin crumbled.

  “Ah, hell,” he muttered, letting his shoulders slump back to the mattress. “Yet another blasted woman?” Truly, a man could only take so much.

  In the past, Rothbury’s admirers tended to keep a safe distance from him, watching him from behind their silk fans, winking at him from across the ballroom…or discreetly grabbing his thigh from underneath the dinner table.

  He had grown quite skilled at selecting only those beauties who suited his tastes and then persuading them into the one position he happened to value above all else—which, naturally, happened to be underneath him in bed. And of course with his looks and money, it wasn’t that hard of an objective to accomplish.

  But that all changed this season.

  Now, they came at him in droves. And all because a circulating scandal sheet had reported th
at he intended to cast aside his wicked ways for the benefit of a wife.

  A simple statement, yes, but the columnist of that paper might as well have tied a slab of beef to his arse and let loose all the marriage-hounds.

  However, being a wicked sort himself, he was doomed to attract the wicked sort—a woman who would harbor no reservations about breaking in to his house.

  A scuffling sound followed by a thump against the side of the town house drew his attention. Whoever it was attempting to scramble up the side of his house was apparently having a difficult time of it.

  “So, who will it be this time?” he muttered, tossing his bangs from his eyes. An intrepid lover determined to find her way back into his bed one way or another?

  He cringed. More likely one of those empty-headed chits hoping to trap him into a compromising situation in order to wheedle a marriage proposal out of him, lest he be shot by her father.

  Either way he would be bound to endure the aggravation of tossing her out. After all, he would never take advantage of her desperate state. Well, at least not anymore, he reminded himself. He was supposed to be behaving.

  Blue-tinted moonlight cast tall shadows across the floor and a soft southerly breeze sent the long, sheer drapes billowing into motion. He would have considered it a rather pleasant evening, one meant for sleeping, if it wasn’t for the small pants of exertion growing closer by the second as the woman finally made it to the top.

  With an odd mix of impatience and dread, he watched as a gloved hand grasped tightly at the sill. In another minute, he’d learn the identity of this newest little intruder.

  The brim of a bonnet adorned with a frilly lace ribbon rose into view. A young woman, then, but her form blocked out the light from the moon, casting her features in shadow. With a squeak and a grunt, she struggled to hoist herself up by bracing her forearms on the casement.

  A long ripping sound followed as she swung her leg up and over the sill. Most likely a flounce on the hem of her gown had snagged on a thorn, he surmised. She mumbled a curse and a second later quite literally fell into his room.

  “Oomph!”

  He would have waited for her to stand to make his presence known, but she seemed quite content to lie there upon his floor, staring up at the ceiling.

  Naturally, his gaze homed in on her bosom, which quickly rose and fell, no doubt from the strain of her recent climb.

  Rothbury sat up and then swung his legs to the side of the bed. The thin sheet slid to his waist, but he chose to ignore it. Glancing down at himself, he considered his state of undress. After all, there was now a lady present. He shrugged, deciding to forgo yanking on a pair of breeches for modesty’s sake. After all, he didn’t have any to spare. Modesty. Not breeches.

  Before long, the chit, apparently done with her little respite, scrambled to stand, then tripped on her ripped hem, which trailed under her feet as she strode to the window. She leaned on the sill, then peered out, signaling to someone below with a small wave.

  Rothbury shifted his weight, eyeing the window and wondering if her father and a vicar were waiting in the bushes.

  Turning back around, she tilted her head as if searching the dark for someone. She was trembling, he could hear it in her breath, almost feel it shuddering against his skin.

  She took two soft, deliberate steps in his direction.

  “Looking for me?”

  “OH!” She jumped back, nearly falling out of the window.

  He lurched forward at his waist, his sheet nearly slipping to his knees.

  “I’m all right,” she said, throwing up a hand in assurance, her other hand grasping the window frame. “You just startled me is all.”

  “I gave you a start?”

  “Indeed.” She pushed away from the window, dusted a scattering of leaves and petals off her skirts, then removed a glove to examine the tip of her smallest finger. With a shrug, she soon dismissed whatever it was she saw there and tilted her head, evidently searching the dark for his location. “Where are you?”

  “Oh, over here,” he said casually, like it was an everyday occurrence to welcome intruders inside his home. “On my bed.”

  “What?” she shouted the question. “On your bed?”

  “Quite.”

  “How in the world is that possible?”

  “Well, as this is my bedchamber and most bedchambers do, strangely enough, have beds in them, I fail to see how this should come as such a shock.”

  “Surely, you’re jesting,” she said with a little laugh, quite like she hoped he was merely teasing, but doubt lingered near. “That’s enough time for jokes, don’t you agree?”

  He folded his arms over his chest. “I must ask you,” he said cautiously, “just where did you expect to be?”

  “In your study, of course.”

  “Of course,” he echoed warily, wondering if there had been a report of someone escaping Bedlam recently and he had missed it.

  “Now,” she said in the prim and proper tone of a tight-lipped nursemaid, “are you ready to begin?” She tilted her head, apparently searching the dark for his location once again. “I should like to get started straight away. Where shall I sit?”

  “There aren’t any chairs in here.”

  “Whyever not?”

  “For the simple fact,” he stressed, “that you are standing in my bedchamber. Unless, of course, you were hoping to hop up on my bed…or have a cuddle upon my lap. In that case, any other night I would love to accommodate you. Although…” he scratched the dark-gold bristles on his chin in roguish thought “…it might be fun should you fancy to sway my mind.”

  Her nearly imperceptible gasp whispered in the room. “I–I am in your bedchamber, aren’t I?” she asked softly. Her voice sounded achingly familiar.

  His next words were spoken slowly. “For the third time, yes.” Surely, his interloper couldn’t be…

  She bent to snatch up her parasol. Apparently, she thought to use it as a weapon. However, when she straightened, a glimmer of light reflected near her face, making him realize she wore spectacles.

  His eyes narrowed. He knew of only one young woman of his acquaintance who was of a similar delicate figure and wore spectacles. But Charlotte was astoundingly timid. Certainly, she was not one to lay siege to a bachelor’s town house and infiltrate his bedchamber. It couldn’t be her. His mind must be muddled from sleep.

  Reaching inside her bodice, she yanked out a sheet of wrinkled paper and held it up to the moonlight. “Dear me, this map is all wrong.” She tapped her foot in aggravation.

  “Since you brought up the point,” he replied, “do you know whose bedchamber you are in?”

  “Well, of course I do.” She looked in his direction, waving her arm in an animated fashion. “Do you think I just go around tossing myself inside windows of unsuspecting men?”

  “I can’t say that I would know the answer to that question.” What the hell was going on? Was he still dreaming? He cleared his throat. “I do know one thing, however.”

  “And that is?”

  “I never expected to find you sneaking inside my town house in the middle of the night.”

  She shrugged. “What other time is better for sneaking into someone’s town house than at night?”

  She had a point there.

  “Besides,” she said as if he possessed the intelligence of a wheel of cheese, “I couldn’t very well knock upon your front door and awaken the entire neighborhood.”

  “No, no. We couldn’t have that.”

  “Rothbury, are you well?” she asked. “Why do you sound so out of sorts? I regret entering your bedchamber—an honest mistake—but after all, you knew I was coming.”

  “I did?”

  “Well, of course you did. Your town house was the only location where we could meet in secret in such a short notice. It’s not as if you frequent the same society events as I do. Our circles of friends do not overlap, as you well know.”

  “I can assure you, my clearly mad darl
ing, that I had no idea you were due to arrive here.”

  Her mouth parted slightly at his words. “Do you mean to say you don’t know…” As her words trailed away, her spine straightened with what could have only been a burst of indignation. “Of all the nerve! You have been ignoring me, haven’t you?”

  “Could be,” he admitted with a shrug. “I ignore a great deal of women all the time. I assure you it is entirely necessary. There certainly isn’t enough time in the world to pay attention to them all.”

  She began to pace the length of windows, muttering under her breath. Rothbury couldn’t make out a single thing she said except for a few key words: “arrogant,” “stubborn,” and “buffoon.”

  “Wait,” she said, coming to a full stop directly in front of him, but still far enough away that she couldn’t possibly see him fully. “You did get my letters, didn’t you?”

  Letters…letters. His mind raced. He received letters from women all the time. Per his orders, his solicitor threw the lot of them away.

  She sighed in apparent exasperation. “The letters I’ve been sending you, telling you that we must meet in secret—tonight. It’s a matter of urgency.”

  “Again,” he said, his patience fading, “I receive such letters all the time.”

  “Think, Rothbury.”

  All he could think about was the fact that he was abed and naked and they were quite utterly alone in his room. She obviously hadn’t a care for her virtue, so that left only two reasons for sneaking into his bedchamber in the middle of the night. Either she wanted to set up an arrangement with him as her lover or trap him into marriage. Maybe both. But she hadn’t done more than be cross with him, which completely bewildered him and put him on his guard.

  He sighed, threading his fingers through his already tousled hair. “Just tell me what you want and be on your way, miss.”

  “Miss? Since when do you call me ‘miss’?”

  He could do nothing but give his head a slow, befuddled shake.

  “It’s me,” she said, in a tone tinged with a familiar vulnerability that never failed to strike a chord within him. “Charlotte.”