Meet the Earl at Midnight

by Gina Conkle

  The countess had graciously made herself scarce the first week after they wed, then returned with reminders of ball-gown fittings and such. Lydia was certain the countess had come to check on their progress, and in particular, her progress at keeping Edward in England. Lady Elizabeth would be disappointed.

  Benumbed, she moved to the study’s seating area with Edward and the countess. They chattered on about something, but Lydia couldn’t say what. Her mind turned over and over again Edward’s stinging pronouncement. The arrival of Miss Lumley and Rogers with a tea tray gave her mind some reprieve. Lydia looked at Lady Elizabeth and motioned to the tray in a halfhearted fashion.

  “Would you mind doing the honors? I’m a bit peaked.” She set another pillow behind her to help prop up her flagging body.

  “My…so soon? To be enceinte?” Lady Elizabeth’s face perked up, and she glanced back and forth between Lydia and Edward. “Of course, how silly of me, but one can only hope.”

  She picked up the teapot and began to pour, in her element with them both. Lydia declined tea but listened to Edward praise her work on the illustrations and diagrams. His topaz eyes glinted at her from his great chair.

  He tipped his head toward the desk. “Because of Lydia’s excellent work, I was able to focus entirely on the research and improve my first draft. And all the work was done in less than half the time.” He raised his cup in salute to her. “We make quite a team.”

  The countess sipped from her cup with watchful eyes. “Then you will work together in the future?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  They spoke over each other, with Edward giving the surprising affirmation.

  Lydia folded her hands in her lap and explained, “That is, I need to concentrate on my painting.” Her chin tilted at a stubborn angle. “Become more disciplined and the like. And, of course, Edward still plans to leave on his expedition in June.”

  “What?” Lady Elizabeth’s cup rattled on the saucer, and she set the dish on the table. “Your wife could be breeding at this very moment. I had hoped you came to your senses and changed your mind over that.”

  Edward set his cup down and dug his elbows into the plush leather arms of his chair. His steepled fingers tapped as he appeared to consider how to respond. The way he looked at Lydia and his mother, she was sure he was trying to add up the changes between Lydia and the countess, the sudden shift a few weeks ago. Had he guessed they’d become allies? Lydia brushed an imaginary speck from her lap, finding her red-and-white-striped skirt of great interest.

  “The two of you haven’t cooked up something, have you?” he asked.

  “Cooked up something?” the countess sputtered. “You make it sound as if there’s a conspiracy behind every shadow.”

  At the same moment, Rogers knocked on the door, and when he entered, he bore a silver salver held out perfectly level. The countess had busied herself getting everyone and everything in excellent working order at Greenwich Park. Rogers bent near Edward, from the waist, and held the position until Edward removed not one, but two missives from the platter.

  “The king.” Edward proclaimed the sender of the first letter, but when he picked up the other, his eyes opened wider. “And Blevins.”

  He set them in his lap, but the countess tapped her chair’s arm. “Come, come. You must open them. Don’t keep us in suspense.”

  He broke the seal, and Lydia cringed. Today was the day of reckoning. She couldn’t take back what was already done, so she folded her hands and watched and waited. Edward’s face was a study in concentration as he read the letter, unaffected by the fact that he corresponded with his sovereign. The way his eyes flared over one part of the page, this letter was not about books, but was the expected and hoped for response…a consequence of her gamble.

  Edward let the letter drop to his lap, and he flicked a glance her way. Her cheeks grew hotter under that quick attention. What would he do in anger? Would he yell? Drop to his knees and kiss her hand with thanks? The latter was a silly hope.

  Then, he opened the second missive from Lord Blevins. The damaged plane of his face faced her, and as he perused the letter, his muscles ticked under the scars. Edward’s mouth went into a flat line, and his eyes locked on her.

  “Do tell. Don’t keep us in suspense,” said the countess, scooting to the edge of her seat. “What did the king say?”

  Edward kept his dark stare on Lydia, not facing his mother. “The king says he’s delighted to attend my lecture on the healing properties of the Agathosma betulina. A lecture that I’m apparently giving at the end of June to the Royal Society.” Edward’s voice went soft. “Which is an impossibility, since I’ll be a fortnight into my expedition by then.”

  Lydia set a calming hand to her waist and took a deep breath. “I can explain.”

  “Yes, please do, because I find it astonishing how the king and Lord Blevins have already read my pamphlet, when the finished product sits on my desk. Completed today.” His voice stayed quiet, but there was a threatening hardness growing.

  “What are you talking about?” the countess demanded.

  Lydia took a deep breath, keeping her focus on Edward. “The illustrations…I burned some and sent copies to the king and Lord Blevins with the treatise I’d already copied. I wanted to slow down your progress.” She paused and took a gulp of air. “And I sent a letter and signed your name.”

  “So we can add forgery to your list of crimes,” he snapped.

  She winced, rubbing damp palms across her lap. “I made sure to send a copy to the king and to Lord Blevins…to ensure that his lordship doesn’t steal your work. And as to the lecture, I left the date open.” She chewed her lip and flinched. “Apparently the king or Lord Blevins decided on the date.”

  “How very thoughtful of you to make plans for me,” he said, his sarcasm growing. “But Blevins stealing my latest work is not a concern of mine, since he’s never been to West Africa, nor does he possess the Agathosma tree, a detail your overworked, deceitful mind failed to consider.” He stood up, and a menacing scowl crossed his features. “But neither did you consider that I want nothing to do with Blevins.”

  “Edward…” Lady Elizabeth fretted from her seat. “Let’s all take a calming moment—”

  “No.” He went to the fireplace and paced the area like a caged animal, but the way he glared at Lydia, he wasn’t done with her.

  Something in her snapped. She flung her hands in the air and tilted forward on the settee, perilously close to falling off. “What are you afraid of? Don’t you think it’s time to forgive Blevins his error?”

  “Afraid?” His face screwed up in distaste. “This has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with you meddling in my affairs.” He clamped his arms across his chest. “Forgive Blevins?” He snorted. “I’d rather kiss a pig’s arse.”

  “Edward, please,” the countess interjected into the fray.

  Edward tipped his chin at the countess. “Are you in on this?”

  Flustered, Lady Elizabeth went saucer-eyed, but despite her ruffled feathers, she maintained composure. “No.”

  His presence was overpowering. Lydia had to get equilibrium and diminish the anger that washed out from him, at least explain her intentions. “I thought I was doing the right thing, helping you to get back into Society, your science…” she finished lamely, her words wilting under the heat of his glare.

  “You warm my bed, and now you think you know me?”

  Lydia jumped up, scalded by his words. “Do not demean our time together. And I do know you.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to add I love you, but she held back. He would likely think she was showing emotional histrionics, and this tense situation wasn’t how she wanted those beautiful words to come.

  He groaned a sound of frustration as he looked up at the ceiling. “Of all the women in England…I find the meddling, quarrelsome one.”

  His chest moved under his shirt with labored breathing. He was angry, a cont
rolled kind that frightened her, because he’d do or say something that would be utterly final. And he did. Edward stretched his arm and pointed to the door.

  “Get out.”

  Of the room? The house? England?

  His harsh face went blank, not giving her anger or hope. The biggest, blackest pit swallowed her up right then, even though she was still standing. Lydia’s body jerked from sharp pain, a tearing sensation in the pit of her stomach. She wanted to curl up on the floor like a small child and cry her eyes out.

  This time the countess, however, intervened and kindly guided her toward the door. What was done was done, a risk she’d taken and lost. At the door, Lydia turned around, as surprised that no tears flowed as at the revelation that came to her with startling clarity.

  “You asked me once why I never married.” With her hands at her sides, she stood tall, but her voice wavered and cracked. “I feared I’d turn out like my mother. Freedom to paint meant everything to me. I swore I’d never let my art run second-best to any man.” A bitter laugh bubbled up from her. “It appears that’s what I’ve done.”

  The countess tugged Lydia along with gentle hands and shut the door. From within the sanctum, a loud roar resounded as dishes smashed and crashed.

  Twenty-four

  Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be.

  Be one.

  —Marcus Aurelius

  “You don’t have to go.” Jonas’s voice pulled him out of a mental fog. “You’re not the type…the kind with a bad itch for adventure.”

  Edward balanced his empty glass on his knee, making a game of how long he could keep the glass level. The odd midnight game epitomized the kind of empty pursuits that had filled the last month. The crystal wobbled, but he saved it from a crash, letting the glass fall into his palm.

  “Adventure?” He poured more scotch into his glass and repeated the word, as if that were a profound question. “That’s not the issue.” Edward sipped from his glass and let the peat-smoked liquid pour into him before looking through bleary eyes at his friend. “No, the problem here is that I can’t be in two places at the same time, on a ship exploring exotic flora, or in England exploring my wife…my lovely, errant wife.”

  “She made a mistake.”

  “Damn right, she did.” He glared, but the effect was useless. He was as weak as a kitten, too worn out and worked over.

  “And it’s time to forgive and move on.” Jonas linked his hands together across his midsection as he had so many other nights, sitting in that chair and giving the occasional comment, but listening, yes, mostly listening.

  Tonight, however, was to be different. Jonas looked different. Could be the black hair growing from his head. That had to mean something, but Edward, neck deep in his own muddle, was too overwhelmed to ask. Jonas was not content to be a giant ear tonight. He observed Edward like one might read numbers on an instrument.

  “Going out to sea won’t bring them back,” Jonas’s deep voice rumbled.

  His father and brother.

  Edward’s fingers pinched the glass. That bitter truth bit through his haze. A bubble of emotion, of all things, wanted to gurgle up his chest and erupt. He tamped it down, kept it barely in check.

  “I know,” he said with another kind of sadness. “I miss them. Life would’ve been so different if…”

  He couldn’t finish. He was tired of emotions, exhausted of them. He’d had a month of the worst kind of feelings. Lydia had been a glimmer of the best kind, new and different when she was here. She excited him in ways no woman had ever been able to do—in mind and body. That she’d hardly read any books in her life didn’t matter. She reached inside him and touched places he had hidden away—the good and bad parts. His friend was not content to let things be either.

  “I can only think your father and brother would’ve liked her.” Jonas tipped his head at Edward. “Would want you to stay and tend her.”

  Edward scratched his whiskered jaw and frowned. “You make it sound like Lydia’s a plant I should take care of.”

  “It’s what you do,” Jonas said and one corner of his mouth quirked. “You can take care of her and do your science here.”

  Edward set down his glass and pressed the heels of both his hands to his temple, rubbing. His head ached. “I’m so tired of thinking.”

  “Never thought I’d hear you say that.”

  “It’s true.” His fingers massaged their way across his forehead. “I’d like nothing more than a quiet evening with Lydia.”

  Finished by wrapping ourselves naked in bedsheets or against the bedpost…if she’d have me.

  “Well?” Jonas prompted.

  “It’s no use. She won’t answer any of my correspondence.” He examined the dying fire, all the orange pieces of wood were disintegrating into pieces of charcoal.

  “You’ve got to do better than that.” Jonas shifted in his chair. “Remember, you sent her away.”

  “I know,” he groaned, recalling the shock followed by agony on her face when he made that grand pronouncement. “But the die is cast. The expedition leaves in less than a fortnight.”

  Jonas sighed, a long-suffering sound as he leaned to the side of his chair. “I didn’t want to do this, but…”

  Edward’s dreary stare snapped away from the fireplace to Jonas, who opened his plain leather folio. Jonas raised the flap and pulled out folded broadsheets, three of them, and tossed them on the table before Edward.

  Each paper was folded with odd geometry, such that the eye was drawn to a particular caption and piece. Edward picked them up and read the painful print out loud.

  “Stunning Countess of Greenwich Wins the Hearts of London’s Art World.”

  That, however, wasn’t so bad as what was inferred underneath. The writer fairly drooled over the new countess, describing throngs of male admirers flocking to her Grosvenor Square town house. He scowled at the paper, but the next broadsheet went right to the heart of the matter.

  “Famed Architect Sir William Garth Courts Newly Married Lady Greenwich—What?” He glared at Jonas over the broadsheet, and then read on. “Sir William has attended Lady Greenwich’s art salons and hopes she’ll lend her support to establish a Royal Academy of Art”—the paper dropped as heavy as a hammer—“a Royal Academy for art?”

  “Keep reading.”

  “One site under consideration for the Royal Academy of Art is Piccadilly, where the two have been seen of late. Of course, this writer speculates Sir William escorts her with more than art in mind—” Edward crumpled the paper and flung it in the fire. He balled up the other two papers and fed them to the flames.

  The fledgling embers took a moment before devouring the paper with shoots of yellow and orange. Edward rubbed his unscarred cheek, where longer, more troublesome whiskers needed scratching.

  “It’s only vile gossip.”

  Jonas lifted one massive shoulder in a shrug. “Maybe. Maybe not. Only one way to find out.”

  Edward’s head tipped back against his chair, and he stared at midnight shadows flickering over the plaster ceiling. Something between a groan and a roar erupted from him.

  “Time for hiding’s over,” Edward said, scrubbing both hands across his face.

  “Funny that you chose those words.” Jonas looked at him with a crooked, uncomfortable smile of his own.

  Edward’s gaze narrowed on his friend. They usually didn’t miss much about the other, needing few words, yet communicating much over these three years. Sudden recognition made Edward cock his head. Another novel piece of news was about to sink its teeth into him.

  “You’re returning to the Colonies.”

  Jonas gave the barest smile of acknowledgment at that profound decision. “The Colonies by way of Plumtree first. But, I’ll find my replacement for Sanford Shipping, and go to Plumtree in August, if all goes as planned.”

  “Some kind of friend I’ve been.” Edward braced a hand on his thigh. “When did you decide?”

  “Been
a long time coming.” Jonas’s curt nod was as good as a solid promise.

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes.” Jonas rumbled with a chuckle. “What a pair we make, Ed. You hiding from your life, me running away from mine.”

  They sat in silence, watching the last of the gossipy broadsheets burn into gray dust before Jonas stood up and stretched, likely as tired and wearied as Edward. Jonas picked up his leather folio and snapped it shut as puzzlement formed on his stoic features.

  “You said ‘time for hiding’s over.’ Does that mean you’ll stay or go?”

  Twenty-five

  Pure gold does not fear the furnace.

  —Chinese Proverb

  Perfection, a painful process, was not impossible. Strains of fragile violin music played, and the diamond brilliance of three chandeliers glowed over the heads of London’s best—all scions of Society having delayed their summer sojourns to the country simply to attend her art salon. All moved in clusters, garbed in the finest, colorful attire. This evening would be a success. She willed it to be.

  Thronged in the crowd was Mr. Cyrus Ryland, his broad-shouldered frame moving methodically from one painting to another. Well-dressed hangers-on followed behind him, vying for his attention. Tonight, the Marquis of Northampton, “Lord Perfection” many called him, had won the prized spot on Mr. Ryland’s right. Rumor named the marquis first choice for Lucinda Ryland’s hand in marriage. Rumor also claimed Northampton sought a coveted piece of the business empire. Likely both avenues provided the same end.

  Lydia had always been on the outside of this strange glittering life, wanting only to sell her art. Now she was part of the parade.

  She achieved everything she wanted, hadn’t she? Yet the cost was brittle hollowness. When she left Greenwich Park and its scarred master, she invited emptiness that not even beautiful, perfect art could fill.

  How could a woman gain so much, yet be so lacking?

  She was surrounded by elegance. The newly redecorated conservatory reflected neutral shades, an ideal foil for the vivid paintings dotting the room. Footmen liveried in champagne-colored attire dispensed trays of fine, pale gold champagne for this elegant victory. On walls and easels, a few of her paintings were secretly on display, under another name, along with those of several other prominent artists. Rumors abounded that the king would establish a Royal Academy of Arts this year. She should be happy, ridiculously happy.