Espionage and the Earl

by Win Hollows

  Max hesitated but then took his hands from her and put them back on the keys. He picked up right before he’d let off, and now the song turned thunderous. Ellie could hear his frustration in the crash of the bars, her heart speeding up with it. She didn’t dare look at his face, which she could see from the corner of her gaze was concentrated in cold lines. The knowledge that every monumental and dissonant chord was for her made her shake at the passion contained in them. The notes evoked stormy seas and lightning-filled skies, his elegant fingers seeming to condemn the very keys they forced down to create the music. Eventually, his hands slowed, and the notes became drenched in sorrow until finally, he wavered on a last keening high note that ended the song like a promise never fulfilled.

  Max gave a sigh and set his hands on his thighs as silence reigned again.

  The sun had sunk lower, only a few bars of vibrant, tea-stained light shafting through the upper windows onto the dark, wood surface of the pianoforte. She had ruined this, she knew, with her insistent clinging to reality. Reality didn’t belong here in this room, and yet she had drug it in with her and waved it desperately before him to preserve herself. Although the thought of leaving gave her no pleasure, and she was fairly certain her wounds were going to protest with no small amount of pain, Elorie steeled herself to rise from the bench.

  “So let’s read,” Max said abruptly, looking over at her.

  She let her confusion show in her returning gaze.

  His smile was not an easy one, she could see, but he maintained it with staunch determination. “Stay there,” he told her, rising from the bench. He pulled her toward the middle of the bench with his hands on her hips and scooted her forward. Then he sat down again with one leg on either side, framing himself around her so her buttocks sat back against his lap. Taking one hand in each of his, he set hers on the pianoforte’s keys and arranged her fingers underneath his warm palms.

  “You know the notes. This is middle C, and it goes up from there like this,” he explained softly in her ear, pressing each of her fingers down in turn.

  The woodsy scent of him surrounded her, and every part of her was aware of every firm part of him that pressed against her from behind. His unyielding chest and biceps crowded her in the most delicious way and made her conscious of how well-built he was. The hairs on the back of her neck rose as he continued to instruct her in low, deeply resonant murmurs that chased chills along her spine.

  “Tell me what the first note is and find it with your right hand,” he commanded.

  Trying to concentrate on remembering how in blazes to read music after so long, let alone find the unfamiliar notes with her fingers, while he was so close was near impossible. Yet she had not learned to be the best agent in the dreaded Hand of Charlemagne for nothing, so she straightened her shoulders and focused on the black lines and curves on the sheet in front of her, then found the note by counting up from C until she pressed the F key with her pinky. “F.”

  “Good,” he murmured.

  Buoyed by his praise, she selected the next note and the next until she’d played the whole measure. She then went back and played the lower line with her left hand, which proved a bit more difficult. Max’s hands were still atop hers as he made small sounds of approval at each correct note.

  “Now both,” he said, pressing down four fingers with his own at once, one on her right hand and three on her left.

  Elorie swallowed, more nervous at the prospect of coordinating both hands and reading both lines at once than she had ever been on a mission for the Hand. Max’s praise had become worth far more to her than the accolades of anyone else.

  But he didn’t chastise her when she stumbled, just said gently, “Go back and try again.” He gave her hints when she hesitated, putting pressure on the fingers she should use next and whispering notes in her ear as she played them. Before long, she had stutteringly played the entire line of the piece with both hands, and it sounded like a real song for a moment.

  Until the next line, when she mangled the first chord with a jarring dissonance that made both of them wince. “Oops.”

  Rotating her head back toward Max’s face, she began to apologize, but he turned her chin further with his index finger and smoothly brought her lips to meet his.

  She sighed into the kiss, his invading tongue a welcome reward for her efforts. Max’s hands slid from the instrument down to her hips, pulling her back against himself. She felt his hardness straining against her and had never wanted anything so badly in her entire life as she wanted him. His courage, his kindness, his vulnerability. Everything he hid from the world but showed to her alone.

  When he broke contact, Elorie didn’t want to open her eyes. Max’s breath came sharply, the sweet taste of him lingering in her mouth. When he didn’t begin to kiss her again, she peeked to see him looking at her with fiery bronze eyes.

  “I think we’ll have another lesson tomorrow, don’t you?”

  Elation and disappointment suffused her. “Yes.” Her reply was more breathless than she would have liked, but her pride had ceased to accompany her into his presence anymore.

  Max smiled and squeezed her hips, then slid them both toward the end of the bench. He took her in his arms again and brought her back to her room, which smelled like savory soup as soon as they entered. As he tucked her back in and set the tray of crusty bread and soup over her legs, he placed a kiss on her forehead. He had never done that before, and it evoked a strange and wonderful sensation for something so simple.

  Max went to the door, but Elorie stopped him. “Max?”

  He turned.

  She fiddled with her spoon. “It turns out I like reading after all.”

  His brilliant grin sent waves of butterflies through her as he closed the door behind him.

  Who knew reading the right material could be so magnificent? Then again, she had a feeling everything with Max would be.

  ****

  “My Lord, this arrived for you this afternoon.” His butler, Corvard, approached Max with a letter as he sat on the sofa in his library. The sofa was an old, beat-up, out-of-fashion burgundy divan from before his parents had been born, but Max had had it moved from the attic to this room as soon as he’d seen it collecting dust up there. He liked it. It wasn’t like all these stodgy, firm pieces of furniture with spindly legs that everyone had now. This had deep, velveteen cushions that conformed to his body every time he sank into it, and he had taken many an afternoon nap in its comfortable embrace on the occasions he’d spent time here.

  Max took the missive from Corvard, and, after reading the announcement within it, sat up straighter.

  Asher was coming, with his entire family in tow. They would arrive tomorrow morning and be staying a few hours on their way to one of Asher’s northern estates. Asher said he had news regarding the “antique acquisition” they had discussed, and Ivy apparently wanted to check up on Elorie’s condition.

  “Perfect,” Max exclaimed. “Just what I need. Asher spouting information about where the Damarek is with a French spy in the house, and children walking in on—” He stopped waving the letter around in the air and looked up at Corvard’s face, which didn’t betray an ounce of emotion.

  Max cleared his throat. “What I mean to say, Corvard, is you may inform the staff that there will be additional guests at the house tomorrow, and food and children’s activities should be anticipated for.”

  Corvard bowed. “Very good, sir.”

  Max crumpled up the note and threw it at the door as it closed behind his unruffled-able butler. He swore the man had no personality at all. At least Asher’s butler sported a disapproving, dour sort of look. Although, now that he thought about it, perhaps it was because Max had never been a welcome guest on the premises.

  If nothing else, Asher’s visit would be interesting. He and his cousin working toward the same goal was a novel concept, and he wasn’t quite sure how to behave around Ash without the caustic insults and false disdain toward him. There was now no need
to act the part of the blackguard who was after his cousin’s money, but that had been their dynamic for so long that he doubted the one recent conversation in which he’d been honest with Ash was going to make a difference in old habits and past acrimonies.

  Perhaps it was best to let things lie and focus on what really mattered—the Damarek. Max could admit that he’d been distracted lately by a particularly lovely blonde who made him both lightheaded with excitement and furious to the point of punching the nearest breakable object. But tomorrow, all that mattered was the information Asher had.

  It was no good spending his time thinking about the way Elorie had looked at the Indian food house, wearing those low-slung pantaloons that revealed her stomach and round hips… Or how she’d moaned with pleasure at his touch as she lay in virginal white on the haystack of the carriage house. Even the way she sat in a frilly nightgown against the pillows as she ate soup made him hard.

  When he’d seen her bleeding on that walkway—not on the peonies, of course—an uncontrollable panic had awakened in him, and he hadn’t been able to get his mind straight since. Even now that she was safe in his own home far away from the reach of the Hand, the thought of losing her sent anxious flurries through his chest.

  Max laid his head back against the welcoming divan and tried to think of tomorrow’s events instead of the woman sleeping in the green guest chamber upstairs. The warmth of the fireplace nearby lulled him into fragmented thoughts, and soon, he was asleep.

  “Please,” Elorie begged, grasping his hand with hers. “Please don’t… Don’t let go.”

  Max grappled for purchase on the damp stones as he tried to pull Elorie up from where she hung off the tower battlements of Cairdygyn Hold. He had tried to stop her, but she had jumped anyway, and now he feared he wasn’t strong enough to snatch her back from the cold wind and dizzying distance downward as inevitable gravity fought his grasp on her hands. “I won’t let go,” he promised, even as her fingers slipped further out of his. He couldn’t lose her, not now. If she was gone, the castle wouldn’t remain standing under the weight of his despair. “You have to fight,” he commanded, unwilling to let her limply succumb to her fate.

  Elorie shook her head, blonde tendrils of hair whipping around her face against the backdrop of the frothing ocean below. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” His shout was carried away by the wind that tore at both their clothes. She was slipping away, and she wouldn’t let him help her. What was so terrible at the top of the castle with him that she would rather be hurled down to the pointed rocks and chaotic sea?

  She just smiled and let go of his hand.

  “No!” He watched as she fell away from him like an angel accepting her descent into Hell.

  Max jerked awake with a hushed shout and covered his eyes against the light that now flooded the library. Slowly, he lifted his eyelids to the painful morning light and sat up. He was still on the divan and had slept clear through the night, although it seemed he had changed his position enough to lie down all the way at some point. Max supposed it was far better than many places he’d ended up bedding down on various missions, even though his back felt tight from the odd way he’d lain.

  “Urgh!” Max exclaimed as he saw Corvard standing not ten feet away, still as a statue. Either Corvard had been watching him sleep or his entrance was what had awoken Max.

  “My Lord, the Marquess and Marchioness of Blackbourne are being shown in,” the man said, tone as bland as ever.

  It was that time already? “Erm… Yes, yes, lovely. I’ll be right there,” Max told him, rubbing the back of his stiff neck.

  A piercing shriek rent the air, and Max didn’t even have time to stand before Corvard was nearly bowled over by two miniature people who burst into the room, a little girl and even littler boy whom Max recognized as his cousin’s progeny. The girl in her blue and white pinafore giggled and lurched forward again, heading toward Max, while the boy crawled on hands and knees like an unstoppable locomotive behind her.

  Adult voices from the hall grew louder, but Max was focused on the small, chubby child with bouncing blonde curls that was hurling herself at him with maniacal force. She laughed with a smile that contained tiny white teeth surrounded by dimples arranged in an oddly contagious fashion. Without hesitating once, she came right up to him and said, “Mass. My Mass.”

  Max blinked and found he couldn’t not smile back at the little thing as she came between his legs and held out her plump arms in supplication. Lifting her under the arms, he set her negligible weight on one thigh, and she immediately leaned against his chest, wrapping her arms around his neck to stay, it seemed.

  Though she made him a bit nervous as he had no idea how to react, there was something about her trusting cling that made him instantly aware that he would do anything for this little girl, and there was now an immense, but welcome responsibility upon him as her uncle. “Lily,” he breathed, putting lips to the top of her silky-haired head. His niece Lily.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” a woman’s voice said firmly.

  Max looked up to see a petite brunette walk into the room and scoop up the boy, who had been about to climb Corvard’s leg like the butler was an indifferent beech tree grown for just that purpose. The boy squealed as his mother lifted him up and snuggled him to her, squirming as he giggled in her embrace.

  Asher came in the room then, his tall form immaculate in bespoke clothes that fit him better than Max’s travel-worn clothes ever did. His frosty blue eyes twinkled, and he winked at Corvard as he strolled toward where Max sat with Lily still hugging him tightly.

  “Erm… Sorry, she just did this. I didn’t—” Max began to explain, but Asher waved his words off.

  “She knows who her uncle Max is, cousin,” Asher stated, coming to sit in one of the chairs offset from the angle of the couch. “Not a good judge of character, clearly.”

  He looked up and saw that Asher was smiling slightly. Max attempted a smile in return but was distracted when Lady Blackbourne came to sit in the other chair with her son in her lap, and he was now flanked by both of them. Lily still seemed content to lay on his shoulder with her thumb in her mouth, wide blue eyes observing everything around her.

  “I apologize for not greeting you properly,” Max said to the both of them, shifting Lily so he could turn his head. “The night got away from me, and I’m not very presentable.”

  Lady Blackbourne laughed. “Just wait until you have children. I don’t believe I’ve been presentable since Lily was born, and certainly not fit for company since Rowan.”

  Max looked at Asher’s wife and noted that she looked exactly as she had the last time he’d seen her—perfectly lovely, with deep brown hair and blue eyes set into porcelain skin. Her figure had only grown more feminine, but was still trim and dressed in the height of fashion. The look in her eyes didn’t seem to bear animosity toward him, but he doubted he was in her good graces. The last time he’d interacted with her, he’d been both impertinent and rude in the extreme, even going so far as to make advances on her. Of course, he’d never have taken advantage of her in that way, but she didn’t know that. “You’re as exquisite as ever, Lady Blackbourne.”

  “It’s Lady Blackbourne now, is it?” she mocked him. “We’re family now. Please call me Ivy.”

  “You don’t like to be called Corrine any longer?” he inquired.

  She shrugged, setting Rowan down on the rug to play in front of her feet. “I never went by Corrine growing up. It was only once I came to London that I was introduced by that name. I prefer Ivy. It suits me better.”

  Max nodded. He of all people understood the importance of feeling one’s true self was acknowledged by those most important.

  “My Lord,” Corvard intoned from where he still stood unmoving. “Would you and your guests prefer to adjourn to the family dining room for a break of your fast?”

  “Good Lord, yes,” Asher replied. “Have you any blackberry scones?”

  “Ash, why would t
hey have blackberry scones just lying around?” Ivy interjected. “Be reasonable.”

  “It’s just a question!”

  Corvard cleared his throat. “I’ll ask the cook if there’s any to be had, My Lord. If not, I’m sure we can provide a viable substitute or have them baked fresh. I believe your canine companion—”

  “Jasper,” Ivy supplied.

  “Indeed. I believe Jasper is down in the kitchens as well, enjoying lamb shanks left over from yesterday’s meal.” Clicking his shoes together smartly, Corvard turned and marched from the room.

  “That poor cook,” Ivy murmured, reaching down to tug on Rowan’s jacket so he didn’t wander away. The dark-haired little boy was trying to pull apart the fringe on the Aubusson rug beneath him. “Where is Lady Crescenfort? Is she a late sleeper? I admire that kind of dedication.”

  Max smiled. “I am not aware of her usual sleeping habits, but she has been ordered to rest as much as possible by the doctor. She has been on bedrest ’til today.”

  “Oh, that sounds fabulous,” Ivy commented. “At least something good comes of such a thing. So much time to read!”

  Holding back a laugh, Max didn’t contradict her. Asher rose from the chair beside him and came over to Max. “Come on, Little Lily,” he said, reaching out his arms. Lily unwrapped herself from Max and went into her father’s arms without a fuss, rather like a limp doll being passed from person to person.

  When he no longer held her, he felt a curious emptiness, as if he’d suddenly lost his purpose upon entering a room. The children were given over to a nursery maid, who took them upstairs to the same nursery where Max and Ash had played together as young children. Max showed Asher and Ivy to the informal dining room, where they began to eat a hearty breakfast of coddled eggs in a savory gravy, smoked ham, and buttery biscuits topped with sweet cream and fruit.

  Interestingly, neither his cousin, nor his wife, were anything but polite during the meal, asking him about his estate’s crops, his family, Camille’s debut season, and other sorts of perfectly pleasant things.