Loving the Earl: A Loveswept Historical Romance

by Cullen, Sharon

She grimaced. “How do you do this night after night?”

  “You build a tolerance to it until your body is accustomed to the alcohol. After a time, you hardly feel anything.”

  That sounded somewhat depressing. Is that what his life had come to? Had alcohol failed to have an effect on him anymore? Thinking back on it, he hadn’t felt like Claire in a long while and he drank … well, almost constantly. Except for today. He hadn’t had one drink yet today. Strange, that.

  She struggled to her feet, clutching Nathan’s arm in support, and took a deep breath.

  “Have you eaten today?”

  She shook her head, then winced. “There wasn’t time.”

  “Then we need to feed you.”

  “No. Thank you.”

  “You need something in your stomach, else you’ll continue to cast up your accounts.”

  “If I put something in my stomach, I will cast up my accounts all over you, Lord Blythe.”

  “Sit on the ground for a bit while I fetch a piece of bread.”

  She didn’t argue, which was a blessing and a concern. He procured a piece of bread from the half loaf he’d bought off the proprietor and brought it back to her with some peppermint tea he’d also bought.

  “The bread will settle your stomach as well as the peppermint in the tea.”

  With shaking hands she fed herself, which was a bit of a disappointment for he wouldn’t have minded feeding her himself. She took a few tentative sips of tea as well. After a few moments, color returned to her cheeks and she was looking a little more hardy, if not still a bit peaked.

  She gave him a weak smile. “Thank you. That did seem to do the trick.”

  “I would have offered you a bit of whiskey but didn’t want to take the chance.”

  “Whiskey on top of wine?” She made a face that had him laughing.

  “It’s called the hair of the dog. Give yourself a smidgen of what bit you.”

  Again she made a face, twisting her lips and wrinkling her nose. “Sounds archaic.”

  “But it works.” Nathan rose and offered his hand to her. She took it, much to his surprise, and he helped her rise.

  He kept a careful eye on her once the carriage rolled onward, but the sickness seemed to have gone away for the time being, leaving her with circles under her eyes and a pinched look about her mouth.

  She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. Before long her breaths were even and the lines in her forehead smoothed. It wasn’t until then that Nathan realized how tense he really was and how much he needed to loosen the knots that had formed between his shoulder blades. Convinced that she was well for the time being, he also closed his eyes.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When he opened them again, the sun was high in the sky and Claire was watching him with her brows furrowed and a thoughtful expression in those beautiful green eyes. For a long moment his heart accelerated and a strange feeling overtook him. It seemed … right that they were together like this. Comfortable.

  Quickly he shook the thought away. He was a rogue of the worst order. She was his friend’s sister and a lady to boot.

  “What?” The word came out harsh, filled with the trepidation building inside him.

  “You puzzle me.”

  “How so?”

  “You claim to be a rogue, a reprobate, someone I shouldn’t … How did you say it? Someone I shouldn’t look at as if he hung the moon. Wasn’t that it?” She nodded when he didn’t answer. “And yet you’re extremely kind.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “A reprobate wouldn’t have thought ahead to bring peppermint tea and bread. A reprobate wouldn’t have held my hair back or knelt beside me while I was sick.”

  “Stop it, Claire. You’re reading too much into this.”

  “Am I? I don’t think so. I think—”

  “It matters not what you think. What matters is the truth, and the truth is that I’ve spent years gambling others’ fortunes so I could increase my own. I’ve plunged many a man into the dire straits I came from for personal gain and never thought twice about it. I’ve …” He paused. “I’ve bedded many a woman, both married and unmarried. Ruined many a girl’s chances at a good marriage because I took what I wanted when I wanted. I killed a man, Claire.”

  Her expression grew more thoughtful. “I’m assuming you’re trying to shock me.”

  He opened his mouth then closed it, bemused by this woman who at first shied from him but now didn’t seem scared of him at all. When had he lost his edge? When had it all fallen apart?

  “You might be surprised to know, Lord Blythe, that not much can shock me anymore. I’ve known men like you. Men with far blacker souls than you claim, and I can see that you are not of them. You’re kind.”

  “I am not.”

  She smiled, and that smile, so full of mischief and sunshine, nearly knocked him off his seat.

  “You sound like a petulant little boy who knows he isn’t going to get his way.”

  He opened his mouth to say “I am not” one more time but closed it before the words formed, nearly smiling himself. What was it about this woman that made him forget who he was?

  “Believe what you want about yourself, if you want. Your actions tell an entirely different story,” she said.

  “You’re Sebastian’s sister and Sebastian is about the only person who continued to be my friend. Of course I’m not going to treat you ill. But just because I treat you one way doesn’t mean I treat everyone the same way.”

  “You left the highwaymen tied at the side of the road instead of killing them.”

  “Only because I didn’t want to upset your delicate sensibilities.”

  “Psshh.” She waved her hand in the air. “Please. Delicate? Hardly.”

  He tilted his head and studied her much like she’d studied him earlier. “And why do you think you’re not delicate, my lady? What happened to you in your nice, safe world that makes you believe such a thing?”

  The humor drained from her face. Her eyes, always so wide and mischievous, darkened in something akin to fear.

  A sick, cold feeling crept through him. “Claire?”

  She cleared her throat and straightened her back while smoothing the pleats of her gown. “Yes. Well. My point was to thank you for taking care of me. That was most kind of you. In fact, you’ve been very kind throughout this entire misadventure.”

  Misadventure? That wasn’t exactly the word he would have used to describe their trip. But then he could see why she would think so. After all, he bullied his way into her journey, stole her money from her, locked her in a room at Marchant’s, which was more or less the bordello she claimed it to be, then proceeded to get her drunk. Yes, misadventure fit quite well in this scenario.

  I’ve known men like you. Men with far blacker souls than you claim.

  “What black souls have you encountered in your life, Claire?”

  She looked at him steadily, seriously. He waited with his breath suspended, oddly hoping that she would tell him what she was thinking and at the same time a bit apprehensive that she would tell him what she was thinking.

  “My husband was not a nice man,” she finally said.

  The words couldn’t have shocked Nathan more than if she had said that her parents lived on the moon and traveled to Earth for the season.

  From what Nathan knew, and granted he’d been out of society during his heavy gambling and drinking years, no one ever had anything bad to say about Chesterman.

  “Don’t look so shocked,” Claire said bitterly.

  “You can’t blame me.”

  She had to be wrong. Or maybe her sensibilities were more delicate than he first thought. Chesterman probably didn’t give her as much pin money as she’d wanted. Or maybe he acquired a mistress and she was miffed about that. Some women were.

  Yet that didn’t sound like the Claire he knew.

  “What made his soul black, may I ask?”

  “Let’s just say that some men wear a thin veneer
of respectability and most people refuse to look too far beneath it. You, Lord Blythe, are the opposite, much to my surprise. You wear a thin veneer of impropriety in the hopes that others won’t see your respectability.”

  “An earl owning a gaming hell is hardly a thin veneer of impropriety.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you. Instead, I’m going to ask that we stop at the next available inn. I’m hungry and I need to stretch my legs.”

  “Of course. I should have thought of your comfort earlier, my lady.”

  Her wicked smile told him that he’d just proven her point. And made himself a liar.

  He pounded on the roof and they fell into a comfortable silence, except that Nathan was decidedly uncomfortable inside. She’d neatly changed the subject while not answering his question about her late husband. Something told him there was much more to the story and he wanted to get to the bottom of it.

  “So tell me about this Italian lover you’re set on procuring.”

  Claire nearly jumped out of her skin. The question came from nowhere and was dropped into a silence that even for her was becoming deafening. “Pardon?”

  Nathan had been restless ever since they reached Martigny, Switzerland, the border town where they procured a new carriage and a guide to help get them to the other side of the mountains. So far she’d managed to avoid the inevitable questions.

  She could kick herself for revealing too much yesterday about Richard. Nathan had seemed shocked at first—a reaction she’d expected because everyone saw Richard as the polite, debonair gentleman, and not the monster he turned into when the door was closed. But then Nathan seemed thoughtful. Too thoughtful. She’d been on edge ever since, expecting questions about her late husband. Not about her future lover.

  “You heard me.” He was obviously testy. She hadn’t seen him drink out of his flask in the last three days that it’d taken them to get from Paris to Martigny. She almost wanted to tell him to have a drink, that it might improve his disposition.

  “There’s nothing to tell, my lord. I’m traveling to Italy to find a … lover.” Lovely. She could barely say the word, how in the world was she actually to go out and find one if she was so hesitant?

  “Why?”

  Her fists scrunched her skirt. “Why what?”

  “Why do you want to find a lover? Why an Italian lover? Why not an English lover, or a French lover?”

  “Well … Because.”

  His brow went up and she sighed.

  “Really, Lord Blythe. This is an entirely inappropriate conversation.”

  “Yet you’re the one who brought it up when you whispered in my ear that you were traveling to Venice to procure a lover.”

  Her cheeks were so hot that she feared her skin would burn. Talking about Richard would have been preferable to this uncomfortable conversation. “I had too much to drink. I said things I shouldn’t have.”

  “So you’re not intent on finding an Italian lover?”

  Something inside her, some internal devil, forced her to admit the truth. Or maybe it was all those years of lies. She was weary of living lies. Weary of prevaricating. “That is my goal, yes.”

  Claire wanted to laugh at the expressions that crossed his face. Horror first and foremost, then shock, quickly followed by horror again.

  This time Claire quirked her brow. “Why must men have all the fun? They are allowed mistresses, are they not?”

  “That’s entirely different.”

  She tilted her head, hiding the exasperation that clawed inside her. All her life she’d chafed at the restrictions her brothers put upon her, not understanding why women’s lives had to be so different from men’s. No one had been able to give her an adequate explanation when she asked, until finally they commanded her to stop asking. She was tired of it all. She wanted to live her life. Not the life someone told her she had to live.

  “Why is it different? Why can you have a lover but not me?”

  “Because I am a man and you are a woman.”

  “That is ridiculous.”

  “Finding a lover is highly improper.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And that’s what you want? To be improper? For days you’ve been telling me I’m behaving improperly while you’ve harbored this secret … desire.”

  The word desire fell between them like a stone suddenly dropped into a calm pond. For a long moment nothing but silence followed. Finally Blythe leaned forward, his expression earnest.

  “Consider your brothers, Claire. What will they think when they discover what you have done? You’ll bring scandal down on your family.”

  A niggle of guilt poked at her but she forced it away. “That’s why I’m traveling to Italy and procuring the help of a good friend who would die before she revealed my secret.”

  He sat back and crossed his arms to glare at her. “Don’t do this.”

  “Really, Lord Blythe, I don’t see how this concerns you at all.”

  “You’re under my protection. Of course it concerns me. If Sebastian were to find out—”

  “He won’t if you don’t tell him.”

  A pained expression crossed his face and he closed his eyes for a moment before piercing her with a glare. “I can’t let you do this.”

  “You have no control over me.”

  “I won’t give you your money.”

  Anger flared inside her. “And that is exactly why I’m doing this. A lover, a person whom I choose, will have no say over me. He can’t control me. He can’t tell me what to do. He can’t …” She swallowed, shocked at what she’d almost revealed. A lover of her choice would not hurt her.

  “Is that what this is about?”

  He made it sound as if she were a child testing her wings, when it was so much more than that. This was about finding herself, the woman she’d been before her marriage, the girl who climbed trees with her brothers, who ran around their property chasing peacocks. Who rode horses with wild abandon and played swords with Nicholas before all of that became “unladylike.”

  She shook her head and settled back in her seat. “You obviously don’t understand.”

  She chafed her arms, suddenly chilled. The higher the carriage climbed into the mountains, the colder it became, but she feared this chill didn’t have anything to do with the mountains. Blythe had touched a nerve when he told her to think of Sebastian. She loved her brother, respected him and didn’t want to do anything that would hurt him. While leaving England the way she did would worry him, it wasn’t anything that would cause harm. Finding a lover would. If he found out. Which she desperately prayed he wouldn’t.

  The coach lurched and she grabbed on to the seat to keep from falling off. Nathan frowned and looked out the window, his brows furrowed in what appeared to be anger. She watched his hands, but discovered that she wasn’t afraid of Nathan Ferguson. And what a surprising discovery that was. He was angry with her but his anger didn’t control him. He wouldn’t beat her because she dared to express her opinion, dared to tell him what she was going to do instead of asking if she could do it.

  He turned back to her, watching her carefully, thoughtfully. “Let me be your lover.”

  She blinked. “Pardon me?”

  “I don’t like this, Claire. I don’t like you going to a foreign country to find a …”

  “Lover?”

  He looked at her with the full intensity of his dark-eyed gaze and repeated, “Let me be your lover.”

  “That’s impossible.” Yet the words didn’t come out as defiant as she’d hoped, and something in her stomach quivered, then ached.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re … you.”

  “Ah. You won’t stoop so low as to make love to a gambler and a drunkard?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Then what? You want only an Italian? You don’t feel an Englishman can bring you the same satisfaction?”

  Her breath rushed out of her. Richard had spoken to her in such a way in the
hopes of disgusting and frightening her, or controlling her. She should be used to it, but coming from Nathan it was altogether different. The thought of him bringing her satisfaction made her blood turn sluggish and parts of her body tingle.

  “That’s not it either.” She wasn’t convinced that any woman could find satisfaction with a man. Although Emmaline, her sister-in-law, tried to tell her otherwise.

  Nathan settled into his corner, stretching his arm along the back of the seat to watch her with the intensity of a cat stalking its prey. The look was altogether too disconcerting, and Claire had to fight the instinct to squirm.

  “Then what is it, Claire? Tell me so I can understand.”

  “I don’t expect you or any man to understand.”

  His gaze sharpened and immediately she sensed she’d said the wrong thing, revealed something that she didn’t want to reveal.

  “I understand you want to find a lover. Your husband has been gone for nearly a year. Women have urges just like men.”

  “I don’t have urges.” But something deep inside her stomach clenched in a need so strong and so alien, she had no idea what it meant. She fought the impulse to let her knees fall apart, forcing herself to sit like a lady. But even so, her lips parted and her breaths came out in small puffs.

  Nathan’s eyes darkened and his nostrils flared. His lips turned up at the corners but he didn’t gift her with a full-blown smile. No, he withheld it as if he understood the potency of it. “Women do. Trust me, Claire, they do.”

  Her breathing was altogether too labored and suddenly the chill air turned sultry. “I believe I’d like to stop the carriage for a moment. I need a breath of fresh air.”

  “We can’t. The road is treacherous, the passage so narrow there’s only room for the wheel ruts. We have to wait until there’s a suitable place for us to stop.”

  She drew in a shaky breath. “I believe that a change of conversation is needed then.”

  “Why wouldn’t a man understand? You say we all have mistresses.”

  “I never said that. What I said was men were allowed mistresses so why aren’t women allowed lovers as well?”

  “Is that what this is about? Proving a point?”