An Unexpected Earl

by Anna Harrington

  “Please—go. I can’t…” She shook her head between his hands, her shoulders sinking with distress. “It’s too much. I can’t…bear it.”

  Slowly, he dropped his hands away, instinctively knowing not to touch her. “What can I do to help?”

  “You can’t,” she rasped out, her voice bleak. When she opened her eyes, a single tear slipped free, sliding slowly down her cheek. “It’s too late.”

  “It’s not. I’ll keep you safe, I promise.”

  She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth like a shield, as if she were afraid he’d attempt to kiss her again. “It’s too late for that, too,” she murmured through her fingers.

  He stared down at her, helpless to understand and give her the comfort she needed. Did she think he would purposefully hurt her? That he’d changed so much since they last knew each other? No. It was more than that, he could read it on her face—

  It was betrayal.

  “I told you,” he said quietly. “I didn’t receive your letters. You can’t blame me for that.”

  “I don’t. That’s not—I don’t blame you,” she whispered, as if she knew her voice would crack with emotion if she dared speak any louder. “All those years, I thought about you…wondering how you were, where you were, if you missed me, if you were happy. I never forgot you.” Twelve years of anger and anguish overwhelmed her, and a wounded sound tore from the back of her throat. “You were my best friend. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  Her words cut him to the quick, and he could barely breathe out, “So did I.”

  “But things are different now,” she admitted, the words tearing from her. “We can’t go back into the past. Do you understand? I can’t.”

  “I’m not asking for that.”

  She whispered, her shoulders slumping, “Now who’s lying?”

  Slowly, she slipped down from the table, stepped out of his arms, and walked away.

  Knowing better than to stop her, he raked his empty hand through his hair, but the gesture did nothing to alleviate his mounting frustration…at her, at himself, at the entire situation—Christ!

  “I would appreciate it if you didn’t try to see me again. If you would just…leave me alone.” She swiped her hand at her eyes but refused to look at him, her watery gaze glued to the doorway where she wanted him to go. “There’s nothing left between us now.”

  That was a damned lie. Based on the way she’d kissed him, there was a bonfire left between them.

  And he certainly had no plans to leave her alone. Whether she liked it or not, he planned on dogging her every step, if for no other reason than to keep her safe. If Scepter knew she was attempting to stop the turnpike, they’d kill her to stop her interference.

  “Please go now.” Turning her back to him, she busied her hands with the other silk panel, as if their conversation about murder and blackmail hadn’t just happened. As if they hadn’t just kissed. But she couldn’t hide her shaking. “I think we’ve said all that needs to be said.”

  Not by a long shot. But pressing her right now wouldn’t garner any more answers. Or forgiveness. She was too upset. Knowing Amelia, she would only dig in deeper.

  “All right,” he agreed quietly. “I’ll go. But we’re not finished.”

  “Actually, we—”

  “Not with this conversation.” Heated promise laced through his voice. “And certainly not with that kiss.”

  She wheeled around, surprise lighting her face. And more—a raw yearning he recognized in the depths of her eyes. Because he was certain he wore the same longing for her in his.

  He stepped forward and dared a slap by taking one last touch of her cheek. She trembled beneath his fingertips.

  “Before we’re done, Amelia,” he warned, bringing his lips to her temple in a lingering caress, “you’ll share all your secrets with me.”

  Not giving her the chance to say something that both of them might regret—and before he could no longer resist the urge to grab her into his arms and hold her there until all her pain vanished—he turned on his heel and strode from the shop. Every step he took away from her twisted a knife into his gut, but he couldn’t stay. Years of warfare had taught him that sometimes the best method of advance was simply waiting for the enemy to retreat on its own.

  When she did, he would be waiting for her.

  He jogged across the street to his carriage. “Home,” he ordered his coachman, then yanked open the door—

  Only for a curse to explode from him.

  Marcus Braddock, former general with the Coldstream Guards and now Duke of Hampton, waited inside, along with Clayton Elliott. A perfect ambush at the completely wrong time.

  “You’re fired,” he called up to the driver, only for that empty threat to be answered by a grin from the former sergeant. Pearce settled onto the seat across from his two friends and scowled. “What do you want?”

  “Told you he wouldn’t be happy to see us.” Clayton slid a sideways glance at the general and drawled sardonically, “A man doesn’t like to be interrupted in his shopping.”

  Pearce rolled his eyes. He was in no mood for this.

  “Something tells me that it wasn’t mercantile goods he was interested in.” The general leaned across the compartment, plucked the paper poppy out of Pearce’s buttonhole, and held it out to him.

  Pearce snatched it out of his hand. “Merritt was too busy for you two to bother, so you decided to annoy me?”

  “Merritt isn’t tracking Miss Howard,” Clayton reminded him.

  “Neither am I, apparently,” Pearce grumbled. Or at least not successfully. She’d given him answers, but not nearly enough of them, leaving him with even more questions than when he’d arrived. And not all of them about Scepter. “Madame Noir was right. Amelia’s involved with her brother’s blackmail.”

  “She confirmed that?” Clayton pressed.

  He gave a short nod. “Howard’s being blackmailed into using his influence to place men into government positions. Which means he’s not willingly working with Scepter.” Which meant that the amount of information the men of the Armory would be able to gain through Howard about its leaders would be limited. At best.

  “And his sister?”

  “She’s never heard of Scepter, and I believe her.” Pearce remembered Amelia’s reaction when he’d mentioned them—she didn’t know who they were. That hadn’t been a lie. He’d always been able to tell when she was lying, even as a child, and the blank look on her face proved that she had nothing to do with them. Yet. But if she kept attempting to thwart her brother, he feared she soon would. “She’s only involved with the trust to protect Howard.”

  Marcus Braddock mumbled, “That makes sense. Who else does she have but him?”

  Me. But Pearce didn’t dare utter that aloud. “Her shop. That’s how she got caught up in this mess. As long as Howard’s being blackmailed, her charity’s under threat.” He stole a glance out the window at the storefront. They were still in front of it, the carriage not yet moving, most likely on the general’s orders. “She loves this place. She’d protect it like a mother would a child.” He grimaced at Amelia’s lack of trust in him. “But she also knows more than she’s telling.”

  “Any ideas what, exactly?”

  “None. But I’m going to find out.”

  “Then you’d better hurry,” Marcus interjected. “I just came from Westminster. Late yesterday afternoon, Howard introduced a bill to create your turnpike.”

  “It isn’t my turnpike,” he grumbled, his jaw tightening. But he wasn’t surprised that Howard had acted already, and without Pearce’s consent. If Amelia was right, her brother was desperate. “The bill’s not going anywhere. Parliament dismisses in less than a fortnight. He doesn’t have time for it to go through all the steps necessary to be enacted.”

  “Apparently, he does. The
second reading is expected in two days.”

  “Two days?” Surprise rang through Pearce, followed immediately by dread. Amelia had no idea what her brother had done, or how quickly he was moving to push it through. “A bill usually waits two weeks between readings.”

  “There’s not expected to be any debate, so no reason to hold it up. It’s only a turnpike trust, after all. We’ve passed over two dozen of the things just this last month,” Marcus muttered. “He’s made clear to the other members that he’s eager to have it approved and given royal assent before the session ends.”

  Pearce’s chest constricted with a sickening jolt as he remembered the look of betrayal he’d glimpsed on Amelia’s face earlier when she spoke about losing Bradenhill. Hearing this news would devastate her.

  “He’s announced the names of the five trustees,” Clayton informed him. “You and himself, of course, along with Sir George Pittens, Mr. James Markham, and Sir Robert Graves.”

  Pearce scanned the list. “Are we certain they have ties to Scepter?”

  “Not yet,” Clayton answered. “But we can’t take any chances and have to assume they do.”

  “Do we know anything about their connection to Scepter’s leadership?” Frustration filled his voice. Not all of it because of Scepter. “I thought the Home Office was supposed to be good at espionage.”

  So far, Clayton’s men at the Home Office and the Bow Street investigators who teamed with them had turned up next to nothing specific about Scepter and its plans, and what reports they had discovered contradicted each other. It was as if Scepter knew it was being tracked and was purposefully leading a campaign of misinformation and confusion.

  “Damnably hard to track down Scepter when we’re busy cleaning up Prinny’s latest mess,” Clayton grumbled defensively, kicking out his long legs. But the casual pose belied the aggravation seething inside him that the Home Office was increasingly playing nursemaid to the Regent these days. “And none of our usual channels have been able to provide anything concrete about who might be leading the group or their motives.” His expression turned grim. “Right now, your connection to them through Howard is the best chance we’ve got.”

  “So you’ll keep after Howard about the turnpike,” Marcus said. An order. Not a request.

  “Yes, General,” Pearce answered, as if they were still in the field with Marcus still their commanding officer. To the men who’d served with him, he always would be.

  “And Miss Howard?” Clayton interjected. “Do you think there’s any worth in pursuing her?”

  Pearce grimaced. Wasn’t that a damnably ironic question?

  “I think,” he drawled, “that I won’t let her out of my sight.”

  Eleven

  “Do you see Sandhurst anywhere?” Freddie craned his neck as he led Amelia inside Devonshire House. They handed over his coat and her wrap to the footman waiting at the door, along with their tickets.

  “No.” But then, she wasn’t exactly looking. She only wanted to leave.

  She would put in her obligatory appearance in the ballroom on Freddie’s arm, then she would feign a terrible malady of some kind or other, helped along if necessary by a vial of a noxious concoction that Maggie had slipped into her hand when she’d finished dressing her. Guaranteed to cause sickness, her maid had assured her.

  Although as nervous as she was at the prospect of seeing Pearce again after their earlier encounter, she didn’t need any help on that score. She was more than uneasy enough to cast up her accounts all by herself.

  “He’s been avoiding me,” Freddie complained as he led her through the circuit of reception rooms, not to see what entertainments were lined up for tonight but to hunt for Pearce. “I searched for him all afternoon, but he was nowhere to be found.” He smiled and nodded at an acquaintance in the crowd. “We’re running out of time.”

  She knew that more than he did.

  “You’d better help me with him, Amelia.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of doing otherwise.”

  He slanted her an assessing look, as if uncertain if she were being sincere.

  Around them, the party was already in full swing, proving itself to be the last great event of the season. In only a few days, Parliament would end, and the ton would flee for their country estates, for fresh air and hunting. But tonight they were still in the city, and the cream of society who had been well connected enough to gain tickets were all gathered here, all of them dressed in pure black as required on the invitation.

  The Black Ball. An ironic pun on White’s selection ritual in which existing members tossed a ball into a bowl in order to vote on new members—a white ball for acceptance, a black one for rejection. It took only a single black ball to deny someone membership. Amelia contemplated the men in the crush around her. How many of them had been rejected by a black ball yet paid dearly to attend tonight, as if never having received that insult?

  But not Pearce. Certainly, he had his choice of clubs. As a new earl and a war hero, he’d been welcomed into society with open arms, even if being in their embrace wasn’t at all what he’d wanted.

  He was here, she could feel it—dressed in black like everyone else, meandering through the house that had been decorated throughout in white. The rooms had been tented in white sailcloth, complete with white silk curtains and sashes draped from windows and white sheets on the floor, and giant bouquets of white roses, daisies, and baby’s breath in white porcelain vases were scattered throughout. The terrace doors in every room were opened wide to let the guests drift between the house and the gardens, where white silk sashes hanging from the trees danced on the evening breeze like ghosts. All the servants wore white uniforms as they moved through the party, right down to the men who stood in the drive and directed the long row of carriages winding up to the front door. Among all the white, the guests contrasted starkly in their solid black silks and satins, their pearls and diamonds sparkling beneath the chandeliers.

  The whole place looked as if a group of funeral mourners had stumbled into a snowstorm, then decided to linger for drinks and dancing.

  “Stay here.” Freddie maneuvered her to the side of the ballroom as several dozen pairs of dancers faced off for a quadrille and thrice as many people lined the walls to watch. “I’m going to find the master of ceremonies to learn where the devil Sandhurst is. I’ll be back. Don’t wander off.”

  “Why on earth would I do something like that?” Amelia mumbled beneath her breath as he hurried away. With a long-suffering sigh, she turned her head to look across the room—

  And straight into Pearce’s eyes.

  Her breath caught in her throat. Good heavens. The man was mesmerizing.

  Even in this crowded room, he stood apart with a dashing and dangerous look that was simply captivating. His dark-blond hair shone like gold beneath the chandeliers, his tailored finery accentuating the solidity of his broad shoulders and muscular arms. Unlike the other men at the party who’d dressed in solid black, he’d cheekily chosen a diamond-patterned satin in black-and-white for his waistcoat, daring to break the black-only rule. But of course he would. Even here, amid the gentlemen and peers where he now belonged, he wanted to prove that he was different. Yet hadn’t he always stood out from the crowd, regardless of dress?

  Little of the boy she once knew was physically visible in the man who now boldly returned her stare. Except for his smile, which curled slowly at his lips and warmed her through.

  He rakishly lifted his glass to her in a toast, accompanied by a long perusal over her, from the upswept curls crowning her head to her slippered toes just edging out from beneath her hem. A blatant and sexually predacious look, as if he could see right through her clothes to her naked flesh beneath. And very much enjoyed what he saw.

  All the tiny muscles in her belly contracted in a primal response to his presence that came so swiftly, so fiercely that it took her by sur
prise. So did the pulsating ache that followed on its heels. Under the heat of that brazen stare, she knew— She wanted him. More than she’d ever wanted a man in her life. Not just for physical pleasure, although as she shamelessly let her own gaze travel over him the way he’d done to her, she very much wanted that.

  No, she wanted even more. She wanted him. In every way. Friend, confidante, hero, lover…

  But that simply could never happen.

  With his gaze pinned to hers, he lifted a brow. His sensuous lips twisted with private amusement to acknowledge her own lingering look.

  Caught. She flushed and turned away, snagging a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing footman so she could lift it to her mouth and cover the expression of embarrassment blossoming on her face.

  “You’re Miss Howard, aren’t you?” A beautiful auburn-haired woman sidled up to her from behind, catching her by surprise.

  A second woman flanked her other side. This one younger, with a sprinkling of freckles across her pert nose. “Frederick Howard’s sister, correct?”

  “We are so pleased to make your acquaintance.” The first woman smiled warmly and linked her arm around Amelia’s.

  Amelia’s mouth fell open as she recognized the woman. The new Duchess of Hampton. “Your Grace.”

  But when Amelia attempted to curtsy, the duchess would have none of it and held firmly to her arm, keeping her straight up. “Please call me Danielle. And this is my sister-in-law, Mrs. Claudia Trousdale.”

  “A pleasure to meet both of you.” Amelia managed to squelch her surprise—and bewilderment—at the way the two ladies had descended upon her.

  “You’ll forgive us that we forewent the stuffiness of a formal introduction and simply introduced ourselves, won’t you?” Claudia pressed.

  Introduced themselves? No. They’d pounced. There was no other word for it. “Of course. But I don’t—”