With This Ring

by Celeste Bradley

  The only thing more boring than being stuck in this dingy sitting room would be to languish in her own tiny closet of a private room. Even her best smile and a demurely cleavage-focusing curtsy hadn’t been able to upgrade her accommodations above what she and Zander could afford. At least they had separate rooms. She loved her brother with a deep and terrible pity, but she couldn’t tolerate his wakeful restlessness for long.

  If only her blasted cousin would hurry along!

  Elektra snarled slightly as she recalled her parents’ request three days before.

  Papa had acted as if he were offering her a treat. “It will be lovely, dearest! She’s a darling girl, just wonderful—at least, she was when we saw her last—”

  “She rode on your shoulders, Archie, while you played the gallant steed!” Iris, as all the Worthington siblings called their mother, had fluttered her trailing handkerchief flirtatiously at her husband. “And she called you ‘Uncle Artsy’! It was adorable. Just wonderful.”

  Elektra had stared at her parents. “Let me understand fully. You wish for me to miss Lord Orwell’s revel, for which I have been preparing for weeks, in order to tromp across the countryside to pick up a cousin I have never even heard of, so that I can bring her back to London to share in my Season?” Her Season, her first and probably only Season? The Season she had lied and scraped and sold her soul to have?

  Thinking of the endless work, the decade of preparing for this year, the dance lessons paid for with egg money from the garden hens, the begging of gowns from a family friend, the endless work trimming and retrimming said gowns so that she never looked the same yet always looked stunning, the forged correspondence from her “mother” begging invitations from everyone who was everyone, the outright theft of invitations from the overflowing side-tables of her own wealthier friends—

  Her belly had gone cold at the loss. “I won’t do it! I won’t! If this Bliss creature thinks she can horn in on my Season, she can bloody well—”

  She hadn’t been able to continue when her dear, foolish parents had turned to her with hurt incomprehension in their eyes. Iris and Archie loved her, she knew that. They might be utterly useless in every other respect, but their love was unconditional and warm and true. Beneath her sarcasm, hidden under her pragmatism, down deep in her cynical heart Elektra violently adored them both. She couldn’t bear to disappoint them.

  Helpless to do anything but agree, she’d scowled darkly. “She’ll not borrow any of my things. Ever.” Only her Season. Only her one chance to fix everything that was broken in her family with a single brilliant match. Only her family’s best and only hope for the future.

  Damn you, Bliss.

  Just Wonderful Miss Bliss Worthington. Ellie despised her already.

  Ridiculous name, Bliss. Really, the things some people named their children! With a motion of her fingertips, she figuratively brushed aside her own family’s tendency toward grandiose classical names: Daedalus, Calliope, Orion, Lysander, Castor, Pollux, Atalanta—and of course, Elektra. They had all at least managed to boil those extravagant monikers down to Dade, Callie, Rion, Zander, Cas, Poll, Attie, and Ellie.

  Bliss? What was she supposed to do with a name like that? What in heaven’s name was she supposed to call her cousin? Bly? Lissy? “Bliss, fix your bonnet,” Ellie caroled facetiously to the silent room. “Bliss, your petticoat is showing!”

  Bliss, give me back my bloody Season!

  Idly, Elektra wondered if her cousin was pretty. Worthingtons generally were. Iris, though gone a bit plump and prone to wearing her long silver hair in outlandish, off-center knots, often shot through with paintbrushes, was still radiantly lovely. Elektra’s married elder sister, Callie, was very attractive. Little Attie, while still a bit unbaked at thirteen, threatened to outshine them all—if anyone could ever get her to wear a bonnet or put a bit of lemon juice on her freckles.

  Born with symmetry of facial features and a pleasing figure, Elektra worked a keen fashion sense and a bold confident flair for all she was worth, giving the impression that she was more beautiful than she truly was—but not, as most people thought, out of vanity. She viewed her looks the way some people viewed their bank accounts. Ruthlessly, with frank calculation. It was the only true currency she had, and she meant to make the most of it. A title, absolutely, and not an impoverished one, either! She meant to spend her single advantage wisely, and her final purchase would mean the restoration of the Worthington family to their former glory.

  And with the widespread and quirky reputation of her peculiar, madcap clan, for that she’d need an insanely wealthy earl—a spotless earl, truly above reproach!—at the very least.

  Of course, her virtue she guarded with zealous care, for it was value added, but she wasn’t some ignorant schoolroom miss. She had seen clearly the mechanisms of the world since a tender age, and she meant to utilize those gears to save her family, by God!

  She was, in her own opinion, the only Worthington who inhabited the tangible world. Her family cared nothing for the swirl of petty gossip and stabbing of backs in Society. Worthingtons walked blithely through it all, secure in their important friends and their ancient name. “Older than Stonehenge” was Archie’s stout assertion.

  Unfortunately, that mighty ring of stones remained stubbornly silent on the topic of who would pay the butcher’s bill, or repair the ancestral manor, or provide a decent dowry for Attie. Those tiny little concerns were apparently left to Elektra.

  Zander entered the room, interrupting her wandering thoughts. “Lord Aaron Arbogast,” he told her shortly. “Fever. Not dying, not yet.” Then he turned and left again without ceremony.

  Elektra sat up straight, her quick mind flipping back through the gossip sheets stored in her memory. Lord Aaron Arbogast … wealth-building sojourn … assuming the title … and, saving the best for last, savoring the words on her tongue, she spoke aloud.

  “… to find himself a proper English countess!”

  Elektra’s fingers twitched as if eager to get her hands on such a fellow. This was it. The intimate setting of the inn … the ill lord … Zander hadn’t mentioned if he were old or young, not that it mattered, really …

  And the best of it all was that he had just arrived from out of the country! Had she actually found a man who had never heard of the Worthingtons? A singular, elusive creature indeed—a veritable unicorn!

  And she was just the virgin to snare him.

  By her presence, in this place and in this moment, she had finally been handed an advantage in a game unjustly weighted to the wealthy and powerful.

  Bless you, Bliss!

  Chapter Two

  Later that evening, as Aaron gazed down at his bed of hay in the stable loft with dismay, he decided that his sacrifice almost—almost, mind you—repaid his debt to Hastings. The man might have saved his life, but at this moment he was ensconced in a heavenly soft bed, being doted on by angels … well, voluptuous chambermaids, anyway.

  But not her.

  That moment in the inn-yard, standing in the rain gazing up at the princess in the tower …

  Restless at the memory, impatient with himself for dwelling upon it, Aaron threw himself down upon his straw pile in an uneasy sprawl. It was always thus, was it not? A fellow thought he was on the right road, doing the proper thing, minding his own matters—only to encounter one of them.

  Her presence had struck him like an arrow. He’d known instantly by the arch of her long neck, by the insubstantial touch of her fingers against the glass, by the haughty tilt of her head, that she was no chambermaid.

  Ah, the English lady, the most refined and delicate creature in the world—and the most dangerous.

  She had marked him as well, he reckoned, though he knew not as what. He’d stood there, like an idiot, practically daring her to look at him, to find him out, to tell the world that the most evil of blackguards, Lord Aaron Arbogast, was back in England—everyone, bring out your stones!

  It only proved his point. Wom
en like that one made a fellow lose his mind, lose his soul, lose his honor. If Miss Amelia Masterson had only had a little honor of her own—

  No. He could not blame Amy. She had been a silly, overwrought sort of girl, prone to melodrama and fantasy, but she had been an innocent in need of safeguarding. Whatever Amy had done, whatever anyone involved had done, Aaron himself had most certainly failed to perform his gentlemanly duty in protecting her.

  Who carried the most blame for the tragic end of Miss Amy Masterson was not at issue any longer. The fates had chosen him for that role. Nonetheless, he would someday become the Earl of Arbodean and inherit the estate. He needed to convince the old earl that he, Aaron, had changed. He was no longer the careless spoiled boy who had been driven from his home by scandal and public outrage. He had become a responsible, dutiful man—one well accomplished in land management, one who would be a good master to Arbodean.

  If he inherited the wealth needed to keep his home from falling into ruin. He needed to remain on course, to stick to the straight and narrow, as he had for the past ten years. If only he could, his grandfather might just come to believe, if not in Aaron’s honor, at least in his stability as an able lord.

  The twist of guilt and loss in his belly made Aaron writhe on his lumpy bed of straw. Sometimes he thought he only cared about securing the accounts, which were not entailed to him as the estate was. Other times, the memory of his grandfather’s shocked and revolted gaze burned through him like lava.

  Then, as always, he would hear Hugh’s pleading voice. “You’re the heir to the Earl of Arbodean. He’ll never turn against you. But I have no one, no one but you.”

  “You! Driver!”

  Aaron lifted his head just in time to catch a face full of rough wool. He yanked it down to see the groom’s boy grinning at him from across the loft. A sharp word nearly made it to his lips before he realized that the young man was sharing one of his own blankets with him. Gravely, he nodded deeply in gratitude. “My thanks, lad.”

  “Too right, your thanks.” The freckled young man snorted. “Airs and graces. Driving gents about is makin’ you into a right lady.”

  Aaron found himself snorting a small laugh, his spirit warmed by the boy’s easy generosity. Brooding would get him nowhere. In the end, he still walked the earth and he knew himself to now be a good man, though he was resigned to the fact that the world might never agree.

  So he rolled himself up in the horsy-smelling blanket and let himself sink deep into the golden, summery hay. He had never slept better in his life.

  * * *

  In the morning, just after cock’s crow, Aaron freshened himself at the horse trough alongside the stable-boys, scrubbing his face with the cold, green-tinged water pumped from deep underground.

  Yet another activity he could not imagine his young, arrogant self performing.

  The hour was too early for the guests at the inn, so he joined the boisterous lads as they breakfasted on bread and cheese, washed down by watered beer. He enjoyed their cheerfully rough company. When they sent him off, laughing, to tend to his “toff,” he left them with a smile on his face and headed indoors to visit his servant.

  Hastings was ensconced in lordly comfort in the best room in the inn, the one, Aaron had been informed, with the freshly stuffed mattress and the window overlooking the meadow instead of the muddy cobbles of the inn-yard. “Ye can’t even smell the stable from that’un!” the innkeeper had stated proudly.

  Aaron took this information without grinding his jaw at the time he had spent picking straw from his hair that morning. He felt quite proud of himself. Hastings’s room was toasty warm and filled with solid furnishings and draped in protective maidservants. It took some time for Aaron to free his man from all the feminine pulchritude hovering tenderly over “his lordship.”

  Finally, they were alone. Aaron pulled a chair up to Hastings’s bedside. The man lay very still, clad in Aaron’s last decent nightshirt and worn but still-fine velvet dressing gown, his covers tucked about him as neatly as a crust surrounding a meat pie. A lordship pie. His face was pale as parchment but for the twin spots of fever glowing on his cheeks.

  Aaron poked him in the chest with one fingertip. “You can open your eyes now.”

  Hastings let out a gust of held breath and cracked open two reddened eyes. “Blimey, them girls is meddlesome!”

  Aaron found himself unsympathetic. “Have you figured out the game yet?”

  “Aye.” Hastings snorted damply. “Though I’m ashamed to say it weren’t till the tenth time one of ’em ‘lordshipped’ me. Me head’s a sodden cork!”

  Aaron smiled. He knew his stalwart companion wouldn’t slip, even in the flights of feverishness. “You’re going to be fine. All you need is a bit of rest. But…” Aaron tilted his head. “You know I have to go on without you.”

  “But you haven’t—” Hastings began to raise himself onto his elbows, then dissolved into a fit of coughing. Aaron handed him a mug of water to sip and then eased him back down onto the pillows. “Ye—ye can’t go yet,” Hastings managed to croak. “I’ll be on me feet in no ti—” The cough commenced once more.

  Aaron shook his head. “You can’t finish this journey right now. You can scarcely finish a sentence! It’s not even another day’s drive to Arbodean, unless the roads give out entirely under all this mud. I’ll be there and back before you know it.”

  Hastings glared at him, obviously dying to say a great more on the subject. However, although Aaron allowed the man many liberties, Hastings knew who was master and who was servant. Hastings might have saved Aaron from certain death, but Aaron had saved Hastings from a life behind bars. Just ask Hastings which end was worse.

  Frowning down at the top button of his nightshirt, Hastings shrugged. “Figured you’d scrape me off one day,” he mumbled. “Heartless toff.”

  Aaron gave him a mild blow on the shoulder and a rueful smile. “Worthless piker.” He stood. “Enjoy your stay, ‘Lord Aaron.’ I’ll be back soon to pay the landlord—I hope. Keep the dodge going as long as you can, at any rate. Get well.”

  “Go on then.” Hastings nodded. “I’ll be right glad to stay out of that cursed damp weather!”

  “I shall think of you when the cold rain runs down my neck.” Aaron absently reached for the folded news-sheet on the breakfast tray.

  Hastings’s eyes widened in alarm. “Oy, I be readin’ that!”

  Startled, Aaron blinked and let the paper drop to the bedcovers. “You can read?”

  Hastings snarled and obviously would have liked to deliver some blistering retort, but his customary insubordination deteriorated into coughing before he could respond further. The relapse brought his nurses bustling back into the room. Aaron stood back and let them tend his friend. Seeing that Hastings was in good hands, Aaron turned to leave, but stopped at Hastings’s hoarse call.

  “You there!” Hastings commanded in passably posh tones. “You must go ahead of me and tell the Earl of Arbodean not to fret! I be—I shall be along soon enough!”

  Aaron turned and bowed exaggeratedly, tugging at his forelock. “Aye, me lord. Ye will be done.” He even managed to make it fully out the door before he snickered.

  As he left “his lordship’s” room, Aaron felt the pull of urgency drawing him north once more. Hastings might very well take a fortnight or more to recover—a stay that Aaron most certainly could not afford. He couldn’t even pay for the simple bread and cheese he had been fed as his lordship’s servant! His only recourse was to leave Hastings behind and allow him to run up the account while Aaron continued on to Derbyshire. There, he was in hopes that his bright new relationship with the old earl would extend to covering the bill.

  Now Aaron must set out under cover of bad weather in his lordship’s empty carriage, hoping to make it to Arbodean before he ran out of stolen grain for his horses.

  Lost in thought, Aaron was only vaguely aware of another person in the hall. A womanly figure wafted toward him. The English lady w
hom he’d allowed himself to be distracted by. He suppressed a sudden urge to see her face clearly, forcing his eyes down. Recalling his “place,” he ducked aside as she passed, so that his dirty boots would not brush her hem in the narrow hall, and in that motion brought the brim of his hat down over his face as well.

  Her politely distant “good morning” wafted pleasantly on his ear. Although females, particularly the dreaded subspecies of “ladies,” were on his list of dangerous creatures best avoided, he had to admit that he’d missed the cool crisp accents of an educated Englishwoman. He was home again.

  Almost.

  The last ten years of his life had been spent in a different place, a balmy palm-studded chain of islands redolent with sensual and carnal delights—and he’d not sampled a single one in his quest to improve his character and gain back everything he’d so carelessly thrown away.

  His sense of smell, however, he’d secretly indulged to the fullest. Now, oddly, he found himself recalling those exotic aromas. He realized that the lady’s scent lingered in the hall, bringing to mind nights of dark warmth and sweet, juicy fruits that left sugar on his lips.

  Jasmine.

  How … unexpected. Not rose or lavender or even tart lemon verbena, but jasmine—a wickedly sweet and tempting bloom, as white as snow, as tender and moist to the touch as the petals of a woman’s center.

  Despite himself, he turned his head, but the lady had gone into one of the other rooms and had shut the door on a mud-spattered servant without another thought—as well she should.

  He ought to be going himself. It wasn’t going to be easy travel for the carriage down these sodden country roads. He’d originally bought the conveyance to make a good impression. The alternative was to ride a second-rate horse up to the gates of Arbodean. Aaron flinched at the thought. It was bad enough that he had to wear his third-best suit, since his gold-trimmed finery still lay soaking in the inn’s laundry and his second-best he’d carefully set aside to greet his grandfather on the morrow, hopefully not covered in the region’s ubiquitous clay mud.