A Beastly Kind of Earl

by Mia Vincy

  “Rafe. I mean, my lord. Please.”

  Worried. She sounded worried. Fearful.

  Rafe grabbed the skeleton’s bony hand in a grotesque wave. “Do you imagine I killed this one too? Or that these are instruments of my evil?”

  He bounded across to Martha’s collection of curiosities, flicked the glass jar holding the two-headed viper.

  Thea edged closer, her head tilted.

  “Yes, indeed, I practice witchcraft and this snake is my familiar,” he snarled. The monkey fetus: “This baby is the Devil’s spawn. And behold—the remains of a human sacrifice.” He slammed his hand down on the jar holding a horse’s heart bigger than a cabbage. “This is the heart of a virgin.”

  “That heart is giant,” she said, eyeing it dubiously.

  He glared at her. “The virgin was a giant.”

  She studied the heart, clearly not squeamish, and when she looked up at him, her eyes were big and round. Her lips were pressed together. Her shoulders slightly shook.

  She was trying not to laugh.

  Rafe’s irrational rage evaporated as quickly as it had come. Bloody hell. If only he could go back, start this conversation differently. Because if it started differently, it might end differently. It might end with them laughing together. With him pulling her into his arms and kissing her as he had dreamed of kissing her last night.

  Instead he… Oh, the devil take him. What a fool he was!

  Hot embarrassment slithered over his skin. In a few strides, Rafe reached the door and yanked it open.

  “My lord?”

  He ignored her and escaped into the sunlight, blinking against its brightness.

  “Luxborough?”

  He kept walking through the grass, he knew not where. From behind came the sound of the door closing, the light tread of her feet.

  “Rafe?”

  He stopped. A note of hurt threaded through her voice and he hated that. He hated himself for hating that, when she was playing her game and he was playing his, and soon—perhaps tonight—she would be gone.

  But he didn’t move, except to turn toward her as she reached his side.

  Her only head covering was a dark bandeau, and the sunlight brought out the red in her chestnut hair. He knew, now, how that hair felt against his cheek, how her face felt under his palms, how her body felt pressed against his.

  “I don’t believe you harmed your wife,” she said gently.

  “You fear me.”

  “No.”

  “Your face hides nothing.”

  “You gave me one rule and I broke it. And I…I cannot bear it when people are angry and disappointed. I’m such a coward and I’m so sorry.”

  Her expression was earnest. The breeze played with her hair and the hem of her cloak brushed his leg. He clasped his hands behind his back and said nothing, hot with lingering embarrassment.

  “I certainly don’t believe in witchcraft,” she added. Her fingers were dancing again, winding around each other as she talked. “Many people still do, I know, but not me. And I saw the books: Materia Medica. I don’t need a fancy education to figure out the meaning. Besides, I’ve visited apothecaries in London, and a cunning woman. Last night you said something about easing pain. You make medicines, don’t you?”

  “Hmm.”

  “I used to enjoy looking at medicine labels in shops. Dr James’s Fever Powder. Tincture of Peruvian Bark. Radcliffe’s Purging Elixir.” She flashed him a smile. “That last one always sounded promising for an entertaining evening at home.”

  Doubly foolish of him to have doubted her. For all her playfulness, Thea had a practical streak. Rafe cleared his throat. “I…might have…reacted in a manner that was…unnecessary. Sometimes I lose my temper but I…I do no harm.”

  She barely noted his awkward apology. “Do you make your medicines alone?”

  “I merely grow the plants. Martha has expertise in their medical properties. It is her family’s specialty. They built their knowledge over generations living alongside indigenous people in the Spanish colonies, combined with knowledge handed down since her ancestors were first enslaved in western Africa and taken to Peru.”

  “So that’s where she fits in. Why did she come to England?”

  Rafe shrugged. “Ask her. All she said was she needed a safe home and she refused to say more.”

  “What do you do with your medicines?”

  “We plan to start a business selling them. That’s what the money is for. From the marriage.”

  “You’ll go into trade?” Her eyes opened wide. “That’s even worse than witchcraft. ‘By George,’ everyone will say, ‘man’s an earl, better he consort with demons than lower himself to behaving like a merchant.’”

  Her charming humor loosened his tongue. “I have to do it. It’s the one thing that gives me…”

  The words eluded him, though the devil knew where it came from, this need to make her understand his purpose. Never before had he even tried to explain, though Christopher, Martha, and Nicholas likely knew him well enough to guess.

  He gestured at his scars. “After the attack, I recovered in a village, where the people had a medicine for calming the mind, using a plant they knew. It seemed like something I could do. So I went looking for more information, and in Peru I met Martha’s brother, and then Martha, and here we are.”

  Thea’s eyes were kind as she studied him. “So if the jaguar had not attacked you, none of this would be here. Where would you be?”

  “Still traveling, perhaps.”

  “That would be sad, never to come home.”

  Her thoughtful scrutiny discomfited him and he pivoted away. A stone caught under his boot; he picked it up and threw it into the trees. He had revealed too much. But her mere presence seemed to turn his own body into a stranger, as if it belonged to a different man, one who chatted and laughed and touched and played.

  “Were you taking a medicine last night?” she asked.

  “I was testing one for Martha, her latest variation on a concoction called bhang. The original is based on a plant that the people of Hindustan call ganja; they have extensive medical knowledge, and have long known this plant can ease pain and increase appetite, in addition to its intoxicating effect. Which you witnessed. I apologize. I fear my behavior was offensive and frightening.”

  “Not at all. It was—”

  She stopped short and her gaze veered away. He waited. She rolled her shoulders and he indulged the fancy that she was reliving his embrace. His memories of the night before were unreliable, but he did not doubt the memory of holding her in his arms. The shared memory of that hug enveloped them, as real as the birds singing in the woods. Neither mentioned it. Neither ever would.

  “The grave… It’s in a pretty spot,” she ventured. “In the woods, with the morning glory.”

  Despite her claims of being a coward, she was braver than he, but the air around them was mellow, not tense, and he found it unusually easy to reply.

  “The morning glory was Katharine’s favorite flower,” he said. “She liked it because it grew as it pleased and could never be forced into a vase. Katharine hated being confined to small spaces, so I had her buried there rather than in the family mausoleum. Sheer folly, of course, for there is no smaller space than a coffin.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Thea blurted out. “In London, I made those stupid jests about dead wives and your victims and the whole time she was buried here. I didn’t even think—”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “—And I’m always bungling things and disappointing people, I know, but I never meant to hurt you.”

  “Hush. You have never disappointed me.”

  “I haven’t?”

  Her expression lightened. He’d done that! He’d told her a simple truth and made her world a better place.

  “You impressed me,” he added. “You lasted nearly three days before succumbing to your curiosity.”

  “Last night, you called her a ghost. Why does she haunt you?
”

  No. No more talk of Katharine. Whatever nonsense he had spouted, whatever his past failings, none of it belonged here in the sunlight, with this woman who was so vibrantly alive.

  “So you don’t believe in witchcraft but you do believe in ghosts?” he parried lightly.

  “The past can haunt any of us.” She lifted a hand as though to touch him. He swayed toward her but she dropped her arm. “Your eyes are tired. I thought it was because you had seen everything, but maybe it’s because they’re haunted.”

  “Maybe it’s from the effort of trying to follow your thoughts.”

  “But they’re the color of brandy in the sunlight.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Your eyes.” She smiled, playful and warm. “Has no one ever told you? That in the sunlight, your eyes are the color of brandy.”

  He was as silly as a girl at her first ball, to let such flattery affect him. Yet his chest swelled with undeserved pride, as though the color of his eyes was the greatest achievement of his life.

  “It is a source of continual amazement that not once has anyone told me that my eyes look like brandy in the sunlight.”

  She laughed, and oh, how Rafe wanted to capture that laughter with his mouth, taste her joy upon his tongue. Now he should say something about her eyes. Tell her they were as blue as the sky, like the wings of tropical butterflies.

  But he felt enough of a fool as it was.

  “You’re smiling,” she said accusingly.

  “I am not.”

  “Ha ha! Now I know the true reason why you rarely smile. You have a dimple.”

  “I do not.”

  “Yes, you do. Right there. When you smile. Smile and then—”

  She poked at his cheek. He caught her hand and held onto it.

  “You are determined to rob me of my dignity, aren’t you?” he said.

  Her attempt to appear innocent meant fighting her smile, but that only made her look more mischievous, as she dipped her head to peer at him from under her lashes, and there, beside her mouth—

  “You have dimples,” he said.

  “No, you do.”

  “No, you do. Right here and here.”

  His thumb brushed the little indents. How delightful they were, these dimples that appeared only when she sought to hide her smile.

  It would be a small matter, in the circumstances, to cradle her face as he had done the night before, but this time press his lips to hers, caress her mouth and coax it open, that he might taste her fully, kiss her hungrily, experience the miracle of having her kiss him. He had dreamed of such kisses last night, dreams so vivid they were almost real, but he was glad they were not real, for they had passed too quickly. It would be something to savor and anticipate, the first time Rafe kissed Thea properly.

  He dropped her hand and stepped back. The devil take him, one might think a kiss was inevitable, but if he kissed Thea’s mouth, it would seem a small matter to kiss her everywhere, and if he took such liberties, honor would demand he marry her, and what would someone as lively and sociable as Thea do then, living in an isolated country house with a surly, solitary husband who cared only for his plants?

  The glasshouse, the laboratory: These were his purpose. He was not a family man. That was Christopher, with his beloved wife Mary and their seventy-six children. Rafe was not made for keeping a wife happy. He was made for this.

  And he did mean to tell her to return to the house, but her inquisitive expression melted the words on his lips.

  He had been upset, yet she had changed his mood, with her simple, undemanding friendliness. Like a ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds, lifting one’s spirit. What about her spirit? Did it become tiring for her, being cheerful all the time, finding the will to play when she had lost so much? This lively woman who hated to disappoint others, even though the world continually disappointed her?

  He called himself weak, but surely it was not a weakness to want to make another person happy.

  So instead of sending her away, he said, “Would you like me to show you around? The glasshouse, I mean.”

  Her expression brightened, and he thought, It is wrong for anyone to take that from her. Then she schooled her face: She tried to hide her delight and failed utterly. Rafe had never been so glad to see anyone fail.

  “I should like that very much,” she said.

  Chapter 15

  Inside the greenhouse, Thea looked at the plants, and Rafe looked at Thea.

  “Yes, yes.” She nodded knowledgeably, in that way she had when she didn’t know a thing. “Yes, I see.”

  “What do you see, precisely?” he asked.

  She frowned, as though he had posed a complex and important scientific problem. “I see…plants. Definitely plants. And if I might offer my expert opinion?”

  “Please do.”

  “They are…green.”

  “They are very green,” he agreed solemnly. “It seems I have nothing left to teach you.”

  She traced the leaves of a nearby palm, ran those irrepressible fingers down its stems.

  “My ignorance should thrill you, for it grants you considerable opportunities to educate me,” she said. “When I was a child, the only green patch around was the scum on the horses’ watering trough outside the Red Lion Inn.”

  “Your family never went to the countryside?”

  “I remember going to a park to see a hot air balloon. I had never seen so many trees. I imagined them full of fairies.”

  “Did you enjoy the balloon?”

  “It terrified me. When they released the ropes and the basket was no longer anchored to the earth, I cried.” A troubled look crossed her face, chased away by a smile. “Ma and Pa considered buying a country estate, but they find the countryside unnaturally quiet and they prefer London.”

  “And you?”

  “Of course,” she said absently. “London is my home.”

  Precisely. London was her home. He must not forget that.

  “Where are the orchids?” she said.

  “They have their own room.” Rafe headed for it, listening to her footsteps behind him. “They are notoriously difficult to grow, but English gardeners fail to respect the complexities of their origins. They think only that their countries of origin are hot and wet, so they create conditions that are hot and wet, and the poor plants are essentially stewed. I shan’t save all of these, but perhaps a few will survive.”

  In the small alcove, he stood back to let Thea pass. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the same flowering plant that had caught her attention the night they met.

  She caressed the air around the yellow and purple petals.

  “It still blooms,” she whispered.

  “They only bloom about once a year, but the flower lasts a month.”

  Shaking her head, she stepped back. “I had forgotten how astonishing these flowers are. No wonder people want them.”

  “Some say orchids will become as valuable as tulips were a couple of centuries ago, if we can grow them reliably.”

  “Hence Lord Ventnor’s interest, I suppose. ‘By George,’ he says, ‘here’s something rare and beautiful. Better put a price on that.’ Is that why you wanted them? Or do orchids have medical properties?”

  “Not that we know of. They’re just beautiful.”

  “Beauty is healing too.”

  Her dark lashes were lowered as she studied the plants, and locks of hair curled around her ear. Rafe studied the line of her jaw, the shape of her lips. Healing. He didn’t need healing. But nevertheless he said, “Yes.”

  She glanced up, caught him studying her. Something flashed across her face, but her eyes did not leave his. Her openness to the world made him ache and yearn. That openness was the source of her miracle, the source of her pain. He wanted to capture that life, that verve, keep it close, shield it from hurt.

  Something stirred in him, like a long-buried bulb that sensed the warmth of spring and turned itself upright, to punch through the earth to the a
ir. Something fierce and potent and wondrous that threatened to engulf him.

  He pivoted away and pushed back into the main room, where he narrowly avoided colliding with a bench.

  “What do you want to know?” he said brusquely. “Their names? Temperature? Humidity? Acidity?”

  “You. I want to understand you.”

  His heart thumped harder. “Hmm?”

  “You’re an earl. You can do whatever you please. Yet you spend your time growing beautiful plants, to make medicines to ease people’s pain. And you don’t even like people.”

  “I like them well enough. In theory.”

  Her lips parted as if to protest, but she said nothing. She merely breathed out, audibly, like an echo of a fledgling laugh. Her eyes roamed over his hair and forehead, and down over his cheeks, which burned with the imprint of her palms. Then down his throat, down, down, and he felt her anew, still, again, forever, her face pressed to his chest, her breasts soft against his front, her hands spread over his back. Her gaze flicked up, veered away. She wrapped one hand around her throat and absently shifted her fingers into a row, as if measuring her own pulse.

  “Well. I’m sure I can find something interesting here,” she said.

  Her voice was too bright and breathy. The short sleeves of her summer dress made him think it would be no task at all to slide them down her arms.

  “Rafe?”

  “Hmm?”

  She was caressing a reddish-green, three-lobed leaf. “I asked, what is this one?”

  “It’s…” He dragged his eyes off her fingers and onto the leaf. “A plant.”

  “Gosh.”

  “It does have a name,” he assured her.

  “That is brilliant.”

  “Bellyache bush. For dysentery,” he blurted out as it came to him.

  When he stepped forward, she didn’t move back. Her smile broadened. And suddenly, Rafe relaxed. He was not in this alone. Whatever this was, she felt it too.

  “This is Arum ovatum,” he said, indicating another plant, his voice lower. “Used for treating burns.”