Last Night With the Earl: Includes a Bonus Novella

by Kelly Bowen

  She still had that gift and had spent many a night at the theater longing to be home with the Scottish play, rather than smiling at some randy earl.

  “What would you like for Christmas this year?” his lordship asked.

  What Henrietta wanted was impossible. A succession of titled, wealthy men and her own choices had seen to that.

  “Books are always a good choice,” she said, “though they come dear. Good tea, and I’m perilously fond of warm stockings.” The toddy on top of the fatigue had pried that bit of honesty from her.

  Or perhaps she could blame his lordship’s ability to truly listen to a conversational partner.

  “We can agree on the stockings,” he said. “I have four sisters, and I value their knitting skills almost as much as their abilities in the kitchen. I’m fond of a good Irish whiskey, particularly in a cup of strong coffee with a healthy portion of cream.”

  “Sounds like a waste of good cream.” Henrietta liked knowing his lordship had somebody to fuss over him and keep him in good stockings. Truly, she’d consumed her spirits too quickly. “You’re letting that plum tart go to waste, my lord.”

  “I’m not fond of plums, while you appear to relish them.” He passed his bowl across the table, and for Henrietta, the moment became fraught with bewilderment. Men stole a bite of her sweets, they did not offer their own, whole and untouched.

  “Take it,” his lordship said. “I cannot abide food going to waste or a smoking chimney.”

  Henrietta took a bite of his tart. “What else can’t you abide?”

  In the course of the meal, he’d become less the titled gentleman and more the hungry fellow enjoying good fare. How had he gone from bog Irish to baron? The journey had doubtless required calculation and daring, much like becoming a wealthy courtesan.

  Henrietta had decided by the end of her first year in London that the appellation “successful courtesan” was a contradiction—what female could consider lost virtue a hallmark of success?—but “wealthy courtesan” ought to be a redundant term.

  “I’m not fond of winter travel,” his lordship said. “For business reasons, I undertook many journeys on the Continent when wiser men would have remained at home, far from war or wintertime coach trips.”

  Those journeys had doubtless been lucrative, but they’d clearly taken a toll as well.

  “All of that is behind you,” Henrietta said. “You’re titled, wealthy, have all your teeth, and know some excellent insults. The holidays find you in possession of many blessings.”

  Teasing men was the natural result of having grown up with an older brother and a younger one. Tease and be teased, lest Papa’s sternness suck all the joy from the marrow of life’s bones. Henrietta wasn’t teasing her companion, though. She was offering him the same philosophical comfort she offered herself.

  It’s in the past. No use crying over spilled virtue. You’ll never know want or have to step and fetch for another man. Never.

  “You look wistful,” the baron said. “My mother used to detest the holidays. I can’t say all the folderol is much to my taste either.”

  “Is that why you’re repairing to your family seat rather than remaining in Town?”

  His smile was crooked, charming, and entirely unexpected. “It’s not my family seat, is it? It’s simply the real estate I purchased in hopes my great-grandchildren might think of it as home.”

  Lord Angelford was a bachelor. Henrietta kept track, because she had never, ever shared her favors with engaged or married men.

  “To have great-grandchildren, you’ll first have to acquire a few children, my lord. Perhaps next Season you’ll start on the prerequisites for that venture.”

  Bride-hunting, in other words. Year after year, Henrietta had watched the marriage machinations from the outer periphery of polite society, half-affronted on behalf of the young ladies, half-envious of the respectability that was the price of admission for the race to the altar.

  “If I seek a bride,” his lordship said, “the social Season won’t have much to do with it. In addition to four sisters, I have two brothers, and one has obliged me with three nephews. They are naughty, rambunctious, entirely dear boys, and any one of them would make a fine baron.”

  “I have nephews.” Another unplanned admission. “They both have my red hair, and the youngest…” Henrietta had a niece as well, though she’d never met the child.

  At some point, his lordship had shed his jacket—the room was toasty—and he’d turned back his cuffs. Each departure from strict propriety made him more attractive, which ought not to have been the case. Henrietta had learned to appreciate—and mentally appraise—masculine tailoring down to the penny.

  What lay beneath the tailoring was usually a matter of indifference to her.

  “Those small boys are why you quit London,” the baron said. “You love them madly.”

  “A courtesan doesn’t love, my lord. She adores, treasures, or is fond of.” Eventually. At first she loved, and then she learned to be more careful.

  “You love those children. My youngest nephew is a terror. The child scares the daylights out of me, and I can only guess at the prayers my sister-in-law has said to keep his guardian angels ever vigilant.”

  “You’re a Papist?”

  “Church of England, though my mother has likely harangued the Deity to correct that mistake since the moment she gained her place next to St. Patrick.”

  His tone said he’d been fond of his mother, and worse yet, he missed her. Henrietta had been missing her own mother for more than twenty years.

  “I used to dress in widow’s weeds and slip into the back of St. George’s on rainy Sundays.” Only Lucille knew this, though Henrietta was certain her secret was safe with his lordship. “I missed services, though my father would say my attendance was blaspheming.”

  His lordship patted Henrietta’s hand. “Papas are the worst. My mother often reassured me of that, and I pass the sentiment along to my nephews.”

  His touch was warm and surprising for its pure friendliness. The contact must have taken him aback as well, because when the maid bustled through the door, his fingers yet lingered on Henrietta’s knuckles.

  “Madam’s coachman is come back,” the maid said. “He be cursing something powerful in the common, and I do believe it’s starting to snow again. The smithy’s gone off to Oxford to spend the holidays with his sweetheart’s family. Murphy could have told John Coachman as much. Don’t know why he didn’t.”

  She piled dishes on a tray as she spoke, and Henrietta’s sentimental reminiscences collided, as sentiment so often did, with hard reality.

  “I’ll have to bribe Murphy into renting me a room,” Henrietta said, taking a last sip of tepid gunpowder. “You will excuse me, my—”

  She’d started to rise, but the baron stayed her with a raised hand. “My room is available to you, should you wish to tarry here for the duration, though you might be weeks waiting for the smithy to return.”

  One of the greatest pleasures of falling from grace was learning to curse. Henrietta instead fell back on the words of one of her few old friends.

  “Blasts and fogs upon this weather. I cannot take your rooms from you, my lord. I’ll probably end up buying a horse before I can journey onward, and it will be the most expensive nag this village ever sent limping onto the king’s highway.”

  “You quote King Lear,” the baron replied. “And you need not tarry here at all. I’m traveling on in the direction of Oxford, and you’re welcome to share my coach. I can see about hiring you a spare horse when we reach the next coaching inn.”

  He offered assistance, with no apparent thought of anything in return.

  Years of disappointment made Henrietta cautious. “I will pay for any horses myself, my lord.”

  “Will you at least accept my company as far as the next coaching inn?”

  She shouldn’t. She really truly should not, but he’d surrendered his plum tart and understood the desperation with whic
h she loved her nephews.

  “As far as the next coaching inn,” Henrietta said. “No farther.”

  * * *

  “Mordecai MacFergus, as I live and breathe. What are you doing so far south of a proper Scotsman’s home?”

  Despite the cold, the stingy innkeeper, and the dodgy off-leader, MacFergus’s heart lifted at the sound of his native Strathclyde accents.

  “If it isn’t wee Liam Logan,” he said, extending a hand and striding up the aisle of the stable. “How long has it been? Two years since I laid eyes on your ugly face?”

  Logan shook hands and offered his flask. “At least, and we were on the Great North Road, God rot its ruts to hell. Tell me how your family goes on.”

  In the relative warmth and privacy of the stable, they caught up, as two coachmen will, passing the time happily with news of home and news of others who plied their trade. Like most coachmen, Logan was a healthy specimen, his cheeks reddened by the elements, his face weathered, and his grip crushing.

  “So who’s the fancy gent?” MacFergus asked as the horses munched hay and winter breezes stirred bits of straw in the barn’s dirt aisle. The smell of the stable would ever be his favorite—horses, leather, fodder, and even the occasional whiff of manure.

  Nothing fertilized a garden like good old horse shit.

  Logan made a fancy bow. “You see before you the coachman to Michael, Baron Angelford, and he’s anything but fancy. I’m working for an Irishman, MacFergus, one with a proper estate not forty miles on and a proper title, though he’s an Irishman among the English.”

  The English and the Scots had an uneasy tolerance for each other, while the Irish, who’d attempted a rebellion as recently as 1798, didn’t fare as well on English soil. They had their peers and grand estates, but in the hierarchy of peerages, the Irish duke ranked below his English and Scottish counterparts and was seldom allowed to forget it.

  “Lonely business, being Irish among the English,” MacFergus said. “My lady is no stranger to loneliness. I’ve been driving for Miss Whitlow since she acquired her first coach and team, nearly eight years ago, and you never met a better employer.”

  Logan tipped his flask up and shook the last drops into his mouth, then tucked the empty flask into his pocket.

  “That’s always the way of it, isn’t it? Them as the Quality disdain can be the most decent, while the earls and dukes will leave good horses standing in the cold for hours outside the Christmas ball.”

  A gelding two stalls down lifted its tail and broke wind in staccato bursts.

  “Caspar agrees with you,” MacFergus said. “Your baron was right considerate of my lady, despite Murphy’s pernickety airs.”

  A barn tabby leaped down from the rafters, strutted along a beam, then hopped to a manger and to the floor. Logan picked up the animal and gave it a scratching about the ears.

  “So it’s like that, is it?” he said. “My Mary got by as best she could before we married. Many a village girl does when she comes to London. Many a Town girl does too, and some of the goings-on at the house parties, Morty MacFergus, would shame the devil.”

  Miss Henrietta did not attend house parties, and her household conducted itself properly, but for the comings and goings of the gentleman with whom she’d contracted a liaison. Those comings and goings were undertaken discreetly, which Lucille claimed was a written condition signed by both parties.

  “My lady was a good girl, from what I hear,” MacFergus said, “and then she went into service. Been some time since a gent treated her proper.”

  “A pity that, but the baron’s no stranger to them with poor manners. His own family can’t be bothered to join him at the holidays. He’ll be all alone in the great hall come Christmas morning, and that’s just not right. I’ve had more than a few wee drams with my lord over a hand of cards, though you mustn’t tell any I said that.”

  Coachmen were privy to an employer’s secrets. They knew who called upon whom and who was never at home even when they were clearly within the dwelling. They knew who was invited to which entertainments, who skipped Sunday services, and which gentlemen paid very-late-night calls upon the wives of friends.

  A baron sharing a flask and a frequent hand of cards with his coachman, though… Not the done thing.

  “My lady travels to see her family at the holidays,” MacFergus said, “and they barely welcome her. She stays at an inn rather than with any of them and calls on her brothers as if she were some distant cousin. Her own father won’t stay in the same room with her, though my lady never complains of him.”

  Lucille, usually as taciturn as a nun, ranted about Squire Whitlow’s treatment of his daughter. As the holidays came closer, Lucille became more grim, for nothing would dissuade Miss Henrietta from her annual pilgrimage to Oxfordshire.

  “Damned rotten English,” Logan said. “My oldest—you recall my Angus?—has three girls. He’d never treat one of his own so shabbily, much less at Yuletide, or my Mary would serve him a proper thrashing and I’d cut the birch rod for her.”

  Quiet descended, underscored by the sound of horses at their hay and the cat purring in Logan’s arms.

  “Logan, we’re a pair of decent, God-fearing men, aren’t we?”

  Logan set the cat down and dusted his hands. “You’re about to get me in trouble, Morty MacFergus, like that time you suggested we put that frog in Mrs. MacMurtry’s water glass.”

  “You’re the one who came up with that idea.” Always full of mischief, was Liam Logan. “Your baron is lonely, my Miss Henrietta is lonely, and they’re rubbing on well enough as we speak. All I’m suggesting is that we take a wee hand in making their holidays a little brighter.”

  “No coachman has wee hands.”

  “And nobody should be alone at Christmas.”

  “Can’t argue with that.”

  “We’re agreed, then,” MacFergus said, slinging an arm around his friend’s shoulders. “I have a few ideas.”

  “You have a full flask as well, or my name’s not Liam Patrick MacPherson Logan.”

  “Aye, that I do.” MacFergus passed the flask over. “Mind you attend me, because we’ll have to be subtle.”

  Caspar broke wind again as the two coachmen disappeared into the warmth and privacy of the harness room.

  * * *

  Most of Michael’s travel on the Continent had been aimed at gathering intelligence while appearing to transact business. An Irishman, assumed to be at odds with the British crown, had a margin of safety his English counterparts did not, and Michael had exploited that margin to the last limit.

  Missions went awry all the time, and this encounter with Henrietta Whitlow had just gone very awry indeed. The dratted woman had scrambled his wits, with her smile, her ferocious love for her nephews, and her wary regard for all assistance.

  “Shall we transfer your trunks to my vehicle?” Michael asked.

  Wrong question. Miss Whitlow tossed a wrinkled linen serviette onto the empty table. “I see no need to impose on you to that degree.”

  “I have sisters and know that a lady likes her personal effects about her. Even if the next coaching inn is more obliging, you might spend a few days there, depending on the availability of a blacksmith.”

  Michael could have reset a damned shoe, provided a forge was available. He’d been hoping his quarry would either spend the night at Murphy’s establishment, where she’d broken her journey before, or bide long enough to allow a thorough search of her effects.

  A loose horseshoe was a metaphor for the course of most missions—good luck mixed with bad, depending on perspective and agenda.

  “I’ll fetch a small valise of necessities,” Miss Whitlow said. “Give me fifteen minutes to rouse Lucille and assemble our immediate needs.”

  Before Michael could hold her chair, she rose and swept from the room. In her absence, the little chamber became cramped instead of cozy, the peat fire smoky rather than fragrant. In future, Michael would have more respect for Mrs. Murphy’s to
ddies, and for Henrietta Whitlow’s legendary charm.

  He paid the shot, summoned his coach, and gave instructions to his grooms to prepare for departure. By the time those arrangements had been made, Miss Whitlow and her maid stood at the bottom of the inn’s stairs, the maid looking no less dour for having stolen a nap.

  “I don’t like it,” Miss Whitlow’s coachman was saying. “The weather is turning up dirty, yon baron has no one to vouch for him, and this blighted excuse for a sheep crossing likely hasn’t a spare coach horse at any price.”

  “Then I’ll buy one at the next coaching inn and send it back to you, MacFergus,” Miss Whitlow said. “His lordship has offered to tend to the purchase if the next inn is as disobliging as Mr. Murphy tried to be.”

  Michael strode into the foyer, Miss Whitlow’s cloak over his arm. “I understand your caution,” he said to the coachman, “but as it happens, Miss Whitlow and I are both journeying to Oxfordshire, and if need be, I can deliver her to her family’s very doorstep. Your concern is misplaced.”

  He draped the velvet cloak over Miss Whitlow’s shoulders when she obligingly turned her back. The urge to smooth his hands over feminine contours was eclipsed only by the knowledge that too many other men had assumed that privilege without Miss Whitlow’s permission.

  “My concern is not misplaced,” the coachman retorted. “See that my lady’s trust and her effects aren’t either.”

  “MacFergus, the baron has no need to steal my fripperies,” Miss Whitlow said, patting her coachman’s arm. “Enjoy a respite from the elements, and don’t worry about me. Lucille is the equal of any highwayman, and his lordship has been all that is gentlemanly.”

  Lucille smirked at the coachman, who stomped off toward the door.

  “I’ll be having a look at the baron’s conveyance,” he said. “And making sure his coachman knows in what direction Oxford lies.”

  “Don’t worry,” Michael said to the ladies as the door closed on a gust of frigid air. “My coachman is Scottish as well. He tells me two Scotsmen on English soil are under a blood oath not to kill each other by any means except excessive drink. The Irish try to observe the same courtesy with each other, with limited success.”