A Most Unusual Earl

by Felicia Greene

  ‘Lord… Lord Walcote wishes to marry me.’ The news had felt oddly inconsequential before. Now it seemed like the most important thing in the world. ‘He is going to speak to the bankers in London. I believe a proposal is imminent.’

  Adam’s silence grew deeper still. Susan, cursing what she had said, waited for his reply.

  How did she want him to reply? She had avoided considering the question until now. Avoided confronting the fact that maybe, just maybe, she wanted him to say something shocking enough to be previously unimaginable.

  She stared at Adam. There was swift, fierce moment of connection, a spark of what looked like frustration burning and dying in the depths of Adam’s gaze.

  ‘... How nice.’ His tone was stiffly formal. ‘I’m sure you’ll be very happy together.’

  She wasn’t supposed to taste bile. Her fingers weren’t meant to itch with the urge to slap him. It was the perfectly appropriate thing for a friend to say, and Susan was fairly sure that was why he said it.

  She was meant to say something in response. Not sink into a cold, unbelieving silence, sure that she had ruined something that had previously seemed indestructible.

  Susan had read books where people’s hearts broke into pieces, or froze from lack of love. She had always thought them rather silly. But as she walked back home in the dark, tramping with such furious determination that not a single bird or beast decided to cross her path, Susan knew that they hadn’t gone far enough. If she had read that it was possible for a heart to be molten with rage and at the same time frozen in a thousand icy fragments, she would have applauded its accuracy.

  She and Merry had always been able to talk. Talk simply, clearly, making sense of the world for one another as easily as breathing. But ever since the Witford Ball, and Lord Walcote, and the stupid, stupid doves, their words had vanished into a gulf that had opened up between them.

  They were separate. Seperate for the first time since birth, since early childhood. And thanks to his pride, her own anger, the chaos burning between them, the separation felt as if it would last forever.

  He had offered the carriage. After all they had done, after what they had almost spoke of—he had the nerve to offer her the carriage, as if she had been a guest for tea! As if… oh, what had she done…

  The kitchen still glowed with candlelight as she neared her home. Weary beyond reckoning, not wanting to speak to Mary, Susan prepared to tiptoe through the hall as she pushed open the side-door.

  The sound of voices disturbed her. Changing her mind, curiosity briefly winning over tiredness, Susan pushed open the door of the kitchen to find a most unusual sight.

  ‘Dear!’ Mary jumped anxiously to her feet. Beside her, sitting in a chair in what looked like complete comfort, was Diana. ‘Are you well?’

  ‘Yes.’ Susan blinked, looking at her maid and her friend in unexpected proximity. ‘Apart from slight surprise at finding the two of you here at such an hour.’

  ‘Maid trouble. Mary is quite the mother to Lavinia and Alice.’ Diana smiled at Susan, as if it were the most normal thing in the world that she was sitting in Susan’s kitchen. She had sat in the kitchen with Susan, of course, but this was unprecedented. ‘I was asking after Lavinia. Sometimes I worry that she isn’t happy at Witford House—she seems restless. She spends ever so much time at Merston.’

  ‘But we can speak about anything you like, dear, now that you’re home.’ There was a gentle air of curiosity in Mary’s voice. ‘Where have you been? Did your meeting at Merston go well?’

  These were normal questions. Susan normally enjoyed going over the particulars of her day with Mary, who invariably offered wise counsel. Now, after the immense emotional exertion of the evening, she felt like bursting into tears.

  ‘Yes. Everything went quite well.’ She knew she was being stiff, overly formal, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. All she wanted to do was sleep, and leave her friends to chatter and gossip on their own. She could barely string words together, let alone interesting sentences—and she certainly didn’t wish to cry on anyone’s shoulder, given what a fool she’d been. She would tell Diana and Mary what had occurred, but only when she could be sure that she wouldn’t dissolve into a pile of tears.

  A year, perhaps. Or a hundred years—but that didn’t seem sure, not at all.

  ‘Stay with us, dear. Talk. I was going to leave after finishing my tea, but I’m sure more tea can be made.’

  ‘Stay as long as you like, but I am exhausted.’ Susan tried to smile, but it faded before she could put any real energy into it. ‘I am going to sleep, very possibly for a week. We shall see each other when I resurface.’

  As she turned, moving over the threshold of the kitchen door, a wave of sadness overcame her. A sick, spiralling grief. The last time she had felt such overwhelming darkness in her was standing in a damp church, watching the men carry in the coffin of her mother. Her father had been old, a rich life lived well—but her mother…

  ‘Susan?’ Diana sounded concerned. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Tired, my dear. Only tired.’ Susan didn’t turn back; she could feel the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. She could cry in bed, where she could bury her face in her pillow and be heard by no-one. ‘And if you let me go to sleep, I won’t be tired anymore.’

  The two women watched Susan vanish into the darkness of the house, before turning to stare at one another with identical looks of guilty curiosity.

  ‘Well. Something happened, but we’ll never know what.’ Diana paused. ‘And whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t the proposal we were expecting.’

  ‘I should never have dangled that Lord Walcote in front of her.’ Mary sighed, shaking her head. Diana poured her another cup of tea; duchesses weren’t meant to perform such favours, but she had never quite managed to take on the mantle of the title. ‘I thought it would spur her on to finally see who’s in front of her.’

  ‘As did I.’ Diana looked bleakly at her teacup. ‘It seemed so foolproof.’

  ‘Forgive me saying so, ma’am, but I don’t think there are two people quite so foolish as Miss Withersham and the earl of Merston when it comes to their own hearts.’ Mary sipped her tea, shaking her head again with grim finality. ‘Unless one of them comes to their senses, we’ll be attending the wrong wedding.’

  ‘Oh, Lord.’ Diana sighed. ‘I don’t wish to do that.’

  ‘None of us do.’ Mary looked up at the ceiling, holding up a finger until she heard the comforting creak of Susan getting into bed. ‘We can only hope that our Susan sets her own course, and follows it. And we must promise never to meddle again.’

  ‘I promise.’ Diana paused. ‘Unless everything turns out well, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ A small smile played at the corners of Mary’s mouth. ‘I was going to say the same.’

  Crying into one’s pillow until there was no water left in one’s body wasn’t a preferred way to spend a night. It left one with an aching head, a dry throat and red-rimmed eyes, which Susan privately thought made her look like a rat. The one advantage of weeping and wailing for hours at a stretch was that when it ended, one’s mind was admirably calm.

  She knew exactly what she was going to do. She wasn’t going to tell anyone what she was going to do, because she had surrounded herself with calm, reasonable people who would stop her immediately. This was helpful most of the time, when decisions weren’t desperately important—but this time, she required no counsel. Especially because she knew the counsel would consist of Mary gripping her by the shoulders, shaking her, and telling her not to be so stupid.

  She spent the greater part of the day embroidering, making new mixtures of seeds and fats for the garden birds, and neatly avoiding every attempt Mary made to talk. Only when afternoon was lengthening into evening, ominous grey clouds on the horizon, did she throw her shawl over her shoulders and make her way outside.

  ‘Where are you going, dear?’ Mary came out of the kitchen, worry creasing her face.
‘It looks as if there’s going to be a storm.’

  ‘Only to Merston, Mary.’ Susan tried to say the word lightly, smiling. ‘If it starts to rain, Merry will let me use the gig.’

  ‘I can’t agree with this visit when the clouds are about to burst.’ Mary shook her head, folding her arms. ‘But I know that trying to coax you back in would be wasted words, no?’

  ‘Very wasted.’ Susan almost crumpled, but managed to stand tall. Mary was quite the kindest person she had ever known. ‘I shall see you later.’

  The weather grew predictably worse as she tramped her way over the fields, more mud soaking into her hem than was preferred. No matter—Susan was determined, very determined, more determined than light rain and a stiff breeze could counter. She had made the walk to Merston a hundred times, a thousand, in all degrees of weather from sunny skies to freezing rain…

  … Not a storm this large, though. Never a storm quite this big. She had always taken the carriage when the thunder began rolling over the woods. Today, however, she had been so seized with desperation that she had left without considering the practicalities.

  No. The plan was the important thing. She had started, and she would continue, however loud the thunder grew overhead.

  After twenty more minutes of walking, dress growing every more sodden in the rain, Merry’s house was visible amid the gloom. Susan took a deep breath, fighting the constant irritation that came with rain trickling down the back of one’s neck, a surge of energy moving towards her as she saw her goal.

  Old Horror. The largest bull on Merry’s estate, a hulking beast with more rage than any animal required. An animal who had always treated Susan with frigid civility—a civility that Susan hoped to capitalise on now. The bull was standing in the corner of its muddy field in a wooden shack, the structure barely large enough to house him as he glared furiously out at the world.

  ‘Right then.’ Susan spoke softly to the bull, more than aware that it couldn’t hear her over the growing sound of the thunder. ‘I hope you’re ready to fall in love.’

  Falling in love was overstating it. But Buttercup the cow was an appropriate age for Old Horror, and had the strength to withstand his amorous attentions. If she managed to get them into the same pen, managed to let desire overcome other natural instincts, and if she made Adam come and watch them with her, perhaps she could make him understand that—

  —Oh, Lord, what on earth was she doing?

  It was madness. Pure madness. But kissing in front of doves was madness, and forgetting a panther in a wave of passion was madness too. If the only way she and Adam could be with one another honestly was through madness, then she would have to convince two rebellious beasts to participate in a little madness of their own.

  She looked over to Buttercup, standing soggily in the field opposite Old Horror. The cow gave a low moo, watching Susan with a faint air of warning in her dark eyes.

  ‘Come now.’ Susan squelched over to Buttercup, scowling as mud soaked into her shoes. The rain was growing more insistent by the minute; Buttercup mooed again as Susan grew closer, offering her damp head to stroke. ‘That’s it. Gentlemen can be frightening, dear, but you have to be courageous. I’m sure he’ll say lovely things about the length of your eyelashes and the size of your hooves.’

  Buttercup’s stare contained a world of bovine disbelief. Susan shrugged as she unlatched the gate that separated the two fields, coaxing the cow into Old Horror’s field.

  A blur out of the corner of her eye made her turn her head. Adam stood at the other end of the pen, cravat untied, his coat blowing in the breeze as rain hammered down onto his head.

  ‘Susan! What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’

  Susan. Not Withers, or Withersham. Susan, for the very first time—and he’d said it with real emotion in his voice. Not anger, but something very close to it.

  Lightning cracked overhead. Susan flinched, still shooing the rebellious Buttercup over the last patch of muddy terrain. This had been a foolish, desperate plan from the very start—and now Adam was here to witness it, well, her humiliation was complete. She was soaked, muddy from hip to toe, and the cow that always obeyed her every word was now in all but open rebellion.

  ‘Susan! Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes!’ Her voice cracked. ‘Yes, I can bloody well hear you!’

  ‘What are you—’

  ‘What does it look like I’m doing?’

  ‘Like you’re doing something immensely dangerous in weather that isn’t fit for man nor beast!’

  Immensely dangerous? Susan stopped, turning to Adam’s dark silhouette. Even if her view of him was blurred by rain, he looked even more heartrendingly handsome than he had the previous night. The night she had ruined everything—or he had ruined everything. The night they had both ruined everything. ‘Congress between a bull and a cow isn’t dangerous! It’s natural!’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I had no other choice, Adam!’ Lord, she sounded insane. She felt insane. She wiped away a tear with a muddy hand, everything lost in a smear of rain and dirt. Buttercup looked at her with bovine exasperation, her horns dripping with water. ‘We can only kiss next to doves, and touch next to unexpected panthers, and—Lord knows there aren’t many animals attempting carnal knowledge of one another in this weather, at this particular time of year, but Buttercup has been lonely and Old Horror—’

  ‘Old Horror is a bull, Susan! A bull!’

  ‘Of course I know he’s a bull! That’s why I’m trying to bring Buttercup into his pen!’

  ‘Yes, Susan! You are! And what are you wearing?’

  Susan blinked. She wiped her ear, sure that water had disturbed her hearing. What on earth did what she was wearing have to do with…

  She looked down. Her dress was drenched with mud, her shoes barely distinguishable amidst the muck. Her bodice was a pale blue, her jacket a dark grey sodden with water, her bonnet crumpled and fit for nothing but the fire.

  She adjusted her shawl. Her shawl that still glowed a bright scarlet amid the gloom of the storm.

  Oh, no.

  ‘Come away! For God’s sake come away!’ Adam was coming closer; Susan squinted at the looming bulk of Old Horror as the bull walked out of his shack. Now, in the heart of the storm, the bull didn’t seem to have an ounce of civility in him. ‘I can’t fend off a bull!’

  Susan began walking backwards as Old Horror peered at her shawl, his snort of rage echoing below the thunder. ‘You’d never survive an encounter with an angry bull!’

  ‘I know!’ Adam’s voice cracked. ‘But for you, I’d try!’

  The feeling in his words made Susan turn to look at him despite herself. She stared at him, at his rain-drenched face, and a surge of love filled her from feet to throat.

  ‘Now move! Run!’ Adam moved closer still. He held out his hand; Susan took it without thinking, the warmth of his flesh moving through her. ‘He’s preparing his charge!’

  Everything began to happen very quickly and very slowly, all at the same time. As Susan began to run to Adam, slipping on the muddy grass, Old Horror gave a hoarse bellow that drowned out the sound of the storm for a brief, horrifying second. A loud moo from Buttercup came with a crack of lightning; Susan winced, unable to see, running blindly towards where she thought Adam was with a cry of pure panic.

  With a breathless, sobbing sigh, she was in his arms. In his strong, solid arms, held tighter than she had ever been held before. Held as if she were the most precious thing in the world, precious beyond price.

  ‘Hold on.’ Adam’s voice brooked no argument. Susan laced her arms around his neck as he picked her up; she huddled against him, too frightened to look at Old Horror. ‘It’s all right.’

  It was all right. As long as Adam was holding her and she was holding him, it was going to be all right. Even as he began to run, the wind and rain beating against Susan’s face, the distant sound of hooves growing closer and closer, is was all going to be all right—
>
  —And then the dry, comforting smell of hay was in her nostrils, the barn door was closing behind them, and Adam was still holding her as tightly as he was before. The confused snort of Old Horror came from the heart of the storm, before a series of low moos from Buttercup that could only be construed as amorous.

  ‘He’s a forgetful beast.’ Adam spoke almost absent-mindedly. ‘He’d forget his own head.’

  ‘He’s a nice old gentleman, really.’

  ‘Only you could find positive qualities in an animal that could very easily kill you.’

  ‘I’m sorry I put myself in danger.’

  ‘Please don’t ever be sorry for anything you do. Not after the way I behaved.’

  ‘We both behaved badly. We didn’t… we didn’t speak honestly to one another.’

  ‘I don’t know why I simply couldn’t tell you how I felt. I—I thought you were going to marry that—’

  ‘I love you.’ Susan tensed as she said it, suddenly worried that she’d gone too far. Even if she was in Adam’s arms, the heat of his body warming her, her love felt like an imposition. ‘And I’m sorry I didn’t say it before.’

  ‘Never, ever apologise.’ Adam’s kiss was warm and light against her forehead, a point of sunshine. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I loved you the night of the Witford Ball.’

  ‘The night of the—’

  ‘Yes.’ Adam’s face fell. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No.’ Susan leaned her head against his damp chest. The wet didn’t matter, the cold didn’t matter—this, and only this, mattered. ‘Do you still—’

  ‘More than anything. More than my own life.’

  ‘Oh.’ Susan nodded. ‘Good.’

  They looked at one another, words fading into insignificance. Susan felt Adam’s heartbeat against her ear, rapid and strong, as she curled into his arms again.

  There was a long, infinitely peaceful stretch of silence. When Adam spoke again, Susan looked up in mild surprise. ‘We’re drenched in mud.’