My Kind of Earl

by Vivienne Lorret

  He looked down at her and shook his head. “Jane, don’t push this any further, hmm? Not right now.”

  “You just found out who your parents were. Surely, you aren’t going to stop there.”

  “I might have just found my parents,” he clarified tightly, feeling the egg whisk spinning inside him again, faster and faster. “I might have learned that they didn’t abandon me after all. From what the vicar says, they were good people. So they likely didn’t deserve all the hatred I unleashed on them in my thoughts over the years. And I’m learning all this now, only to lose them all over again. I dunno how you’d manage all this but, for me, it’s a great deal to take in all at once.”

  “Oh, Raven, I . . .”

  Her words trailed off as her blue eyes started to brim with an ocean of tears, her trembling fingertips covering her mouth.

  Bloody hell. This was why he kept his thoughts private.

  Pulling her close, he wrapped his arms around her and tucked her cheek against his chest. “Don’t cry, little professor. If you do, then I’ll have to kiss you and we both know where that will lead.” Pressing his lips against the top of her head, he inhaled the soft fragrance of her hair on a deep comforting breath. “In a fit of passion, I’d carry you to that tree line over there for a bit of privacy in order to ravish you thoroughly on a bed of pine needles. You’d get sap in your hair. I’d stain my trousers . . .”

  He affected a sigh of inconvenience and gained the quiet laugh he was hoping for. But as he held her, his body began to warm to the idea. He even glanced to the edge of the surrounding forest, where sunlight speared through evergreen boughs and gilded the tips of the stubborn oak and maple leaves that had yet to fall. A bed of pine needles wouldn’t be all that bad . . .

  “Then I shall not cry,” she said, surreptitiously swiping a hand against her cheek on a sniff. Then she smiled wanly up at him and pressed her hands against his chest to ease out of his embrace. “Besides, a gentleman would not unleash his feral appetite in public. And we should not stand thusly either. One always has to presume there are unseen eyes watching.”

  She took her empty glove from him and proceeded to slip her fingers into it, but Raven confiscated it again, enfolding her delicate hand once more. Then he set off down the hill, along the winding, overgrown lane.

  “You cannot do this either,” she chided with a gentle squeeze before she withdrew.

  He frowned. “Why not?”

  “Pressing hands is something men and women only do when they have an understanding.”

  “I understand you well enough,” he said with a shrug and snatched her hand again, tugging her closer to lift it to his lips. And it was clear that she understood him, too.

  “No,” she said with a small laugh. “I meant that they have pledged themselves to each other. That they will marry.”

  He eyed her dubiously then curled her arm over his sleeve, because he knew she couldn’t argue against propriety.

  “Surely, you don’t have an understanding with all the men you dance with, or those who assist you out of a carriage?” He gave her a look of mock gravity. “There are laws against marrying so many men, Jane.”

  “Tease if you like, but you will have to adhere to these rules if you wish to go further in society.”

  “I don’t care about claiming some clodpole title. What would I do with an earldom?”

  “I shudder to think,” she quipped, grinning up at him. Then, her expression sobered. “I don’t believe you’re the scheming sort, but rather a man who wants to claim the family he never had.”

  “Little good it does me now . . . if any of this is even true.” He made an absent gesture over his shoulder and they both turned their heads to glance up the hill toward the emptiness where a grand house once stood.

  To believe that a child had survived such complete devastation seemed too unrealistic. A mere fable.

  “But if it is true, there is a brighter side. Your grandfather is alive. You could meet him, perhaps.”

  “I’d like that,” he said, surprising himself with the reflexive and unguarded reply. Uncomfortable, he cleared his throat and added, “Just to have a look at him, that’s all. To a bloke like me, seeing an earl would be like touring the curiosity shop.”

  She gave him a knowing sideways glance. “You don’t have to be nervous. Remember what the vicar said—the Earl of Warrister is still holding onto hope. I’m sure he would be glad to meet you as well.”

  “Apparently, you forgot about the charlatans. He’s probably grown leery over the years. I know I would have done.”

  “Hmm . . . true. And there’s Lord Herrington to consider. He would be your biggest adversary. Not to mention, you would have the entire ton to win over.” She speculated over this in the silent movement of her lips and he knew she was thinking of a plan. “If you are to meet your grandfather, you should be fully prepared with the ways of society before entering a hostile environment.”

  “What do you have in mind, then? Going to tutor me, Jane? Teach me your ways?” His voice dipped lower and he winked. “I’ll teach you some of mine, if you like.”

  She laughed. “I think I’ve already gained an understanding of your ways.”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that it wasn’t all about kissing for him. He liked her. In fact, he’d never been with a woman in this way before, conversing and sharing ideas and such. And it wasn’t half bad.

  Yet, in the end, Raven didn’t say it.

  “I’m not going to change the man I am,” he said firmly. “I don’t need any lessons on how to behave in society because I don’t live in your world. If I ever decide to meet the earl, it will be on my own terms.”

  “Very well,” she said with a resigned sigh. “Then I suppose, the only thing left to find out is where his lordship currently resides. Though, I have a faint recollection of someone mentioning that he kept a town house in St. James’s Square, once upon a time. But it would have been closed up for years now. I could ask Ellie’s aunts, of course. They are the only ones I could trust to keep this quiet and, better yet, they know the names and whereabouts of absolutely every unmarried or widowed gentleman in society.”

  “Quite an interesting skill to have.”

  “Oh, they’re not alone by any means. The ton is filled with aunts, mothers and debutantes with that very same preoccupation. You’d be surprised by how aggressive and intimidating an aristocratic female can be when given the right incentive. Which, I’m certain, you’ll discover for yourself when you change your mind and decide to pursue your birthright.”

  “That isn’t going to happen,” he said, but with a trace of wry amusement at her doggedness. “And your sheer determination will not make it so. My own will is as solid as granite.”

  He kicked a stone on the path with the toe of his weathered boot to punctuate his statement. It skittered to a stop a dozen paces in front of her.

  Taking her turn at it, Jane gripped his forearm to keep her balance and sent the rock sailing up ahead, off the path and down the slope of the ditch. Smirking up at him, she added, “Then, perhaps, it is equally as moveable.”

  Unable to help himself, he laughed. He’d never met anyone like Jane Pickerington.

  Together, they walked the rest of the way in companionable conversation, with her speaking about the hazards of having tea with the dragons of society who were sticklers on propriety. The tales of napkin and fan debacles kept him in a state of curious amusement. She truly lived in a world apart from him.

  Too soon, they rounded the bend where Jane’s carriage waited. The driver offered a friendly wave and lifted a paper-wrapped parcel.

  Jane waved her bare fingers in a cascade, her flesh tinged pink from cold, and Raven recalled that he was still holding her glove. Distractedly, he returned it to her.

  “And what’s all that about?” he asked with a nod toward the driver.

  “Nothing really,” she said, nonchalantly slipping into the kid leather that had been dyed to
match her pelisse. “When I hired his carriage this morning, he was somewhat reluctant to drive out of London with only a single occupant’s fare. I explained that I was writing a book and that my errand was vital. This gained his interest. He then shared his own desire to write a book but that he’d never taken the time to begin. This was when I informed him that Hertfordshire made the finest paper, and perhaps, all he needed to inspire him were the proper supplies. Fortunately for me, Ellie and I had stopped by the little shop when we were here yesterday so I knew they had a lovely selection of stationery.”

  “And what would you have said if you’d met a driver who hadn’t wanted to write a book?”

  “The odds of that were quite slim. I haven’t encountered a driver yet who didn’t have a few stories to tell.”

  Raven felt the flesh of his brow furrow, his mouth drawing taut, his mood darkening. “Crafty one, aren’t you?”

  “Merely informative.”

  “But you got what you wanted anyway.”

  “It’s lovely when the two coincide,” she said, her lips curling in a pleased as punch grin.

  But Raven wasn’t smiling as they reached the carriage. For someone as brilliant as Jane, she seemed wholly unaware of the things that could have gone wrong.

  He growled down at her. “You need to stop putting yourself in danger. No more of this flitting off on your own for research nonsense.”

  “But I wasn’t alone, was I?” she challenged smugly. “You were riding behind my carriage the entire way.”

  Firm in his resolve, he held her gaze as his hand lifted to cup the delicate line of her jaw. He was surprised by the gentleness of his touch when he felt such a powerful, unexplainable vehemence coursing through him. “No more acting on whatever impulse comes to mind. I know you think you’re always prepared. But if you truly care for your siblings, as you say you do, then stay out of any situation that requires whatever it is you carry in your reticule.”

  She stared back at him in perplexed silence, her lips unmoving. A crimson blush stole to her cheeks.

  He anticipated her diatribe. She would come up with at least seven retorts on why she could do as she pleased and how it shouldn’t matter to him, regardless.

  Raven tensed, welcoming the argument. She could say whatever she wished. He had a counterargument and deflection for all of it at the ready.

  But what he didn’t expect was her quiet, acquiescent, “Very well.”

  Her eyes turned petal soft as she gazed up at him as if suspecting some tender emotion was behind his command. But she kept the accusation to herself.

  This exchange left him unsettled. The muscles along his shoulders and neck were as tight as a yoke. He would have felt better arguing with her.

  Handing her into the carriage, he eyed her shrewdly, thinking that this was another easy victory. Too easy.

  He studied her every gesture for a sign of deception. But he found nothing amiss in the graceful way she lowered her hood then carefully arranged her skirts, or in the subtle shift of her feet that brought the small toes of her leather half boots peeking out from beneath her hem.

  What he did find was a scattering of burs gripping the red wool. He began to pluck them away, and his tension gradually receded with each pointy barb he tossed to the ground.

  In turn, she sat forward to groom him, brushing a lace-bitten leaf from his sleeve as if these intimacies were perfectly natural. They may well be for her, given her caring nature. But they weren’t for him.

  He’d never taken hold of a woman’s hem without intending to lift it.

  The temptation to explore the inner pleats and ruffles to trace the slender, stockinged ankle and trim calf was there, of course, but he didn’t give in to it. When the burs were gone, he slipped away and put his hand on the door instead.

  Strangely, he felt better now, more himself. Whoever that was.

  “Oh, I nearly forgot,” she said, reaching into her reticule. Withdrawing a small object wrapped in brown paper and a string, she handed it to him. “This is for you.”

  He took it, weighing it in his grasp, eyeing it carefully. “And what is it?”

  “Damson jam,” she said with a smile on her lips and in the new-bellflower blue of her eyes.

  Reflexively, his fingers tightened over the parcel and he wordlessly nodded his thanks.

  “By tomorrow,” she continued, “I should have more information from Ellie’s aunts about the Earl of Warrister, including where he resides. Will you come to the house for tea?”

  The question took Raven off guard on a rise of reluctant amusement. First a gift of damson jam and then an invitation to tea? When had his life turned into this?

  It was all because of her, he thought ruefully.

  A smirk tugged at his mouth. “Yes, Jane. I’ll come to tea.”

  * * *

  But Raven didn’t wait for Jane to tell him where the Earl of Warrister had once resided. He’d found out on his own.

  The following morning, dressed in a working man’s suit and reeking of patron-sloshed whisky, he walked steadily on the pavement through St. James’s. These early hours were lit only by lamplight shimmering through a silver-gray veil of fog.

  His measured footfalls echoed off the towering white stone facades. There was no hurry in his pace. This was only a stroll. A mere stretch of the legs, he told himself.

  After a long night of calling out cheats and breaking up drunken brawls, he needed to walk. Needed to quiet the restlessness that had been accumulating in his limbs since the chapel vestry in Hertfordshire.

  And while he didn’t want to admit that he’d left Sterling’s gaming hell with a destination in mind, his stride slowed and gradually halted altogether not too far from a pair of ivory columns flanking a broad black door. Which happened to lead inside the grand town house of the Earl of Warrister.

  He didn’t plan to linger overlong, or to speculate what rooms lay behind the windowpanes and tightly closed curtains. He tried not to wonder about the portraits hanging above mantels, in halls, or climbing the staircases that might contain a face distantly similar to his own.

  He failed in his attempts, so much so that he didn’t hear the quick step clipping along the pavement until a willowy form collided with him. The startled face of an older woman looked up from beneath the brim of the black bonnet she was clutching to the top of her head.

  “Dear me!” she said, her eyes growing wider and wider the more she looked at him. And once again, she called out in a fretful tremble, “Dear me!”

  Enswathed in guilt for having lingered in this place for too long, Raven lifted his hands slowly so as not to startle her more. “I mean you no harm, ma’am. Merely on my way home after a long night of work. Beg your pardon.”

  And with that, he left abruptly in a swirl of fog, hearing faintly in the distance behind him another “Dear me!”

  Chapter 16

  November

  Jane was determined to convince Raven to pursue his birthright.

  He could deny his interest all he wanted to, but she knew better. As he’d gazed at the scorched remainders of the Northcott manor, his desire to have answers for his life and to know his own family had been written all over his face. And the pain of his loss had been just as apparent in the fervent clasp of his hand.

  For such a hard-edged scoundrel, however, he was terribly skittish about moving forward.

  Therefore, she planned to make Raven’s transition into society as smooth and gradual as a fish reanimating after a winter thaw. Then, before he even realized it, he would be swimming effortlessly into the life that had always been meant for him.

  He’d come much closer to believing yesterday. She only hoped he didn’t return to second-guessing as he tended to do.

  To keep progress moving in the right direction, she decided that tea should be without any fuss or ostentation. She’d serve it in the morning room—or the Gull Parlor, as she called it, given the seaside mural outside the door. The cerulean blue walls and the butte
r-colored damask upholstered chairs, surrounding a simple table, provided an easy and relaxed environment. Aside from the conservatory, it was the most modestly decorated of all the rooms in Holly House. And it was imperative that this tea was particularly unassuming.

  So, with that thought in mind, she went to the kitchens.

  “A brown Betty pot and the plain porcelain teacups and saucers that the children use will do nicely,” she said to the dimpled Mrs. Dunkley who’d been with the family since before Jane was born.

  The cook wiped the back of a flour-dredged hand against the frown corrugating her forehead to brush aside a hank of short, silver-blond curls beneath a ruffled cap. “Surely, Miss Parrish would take offense to using such meager wares. You two girls having a spat?”

  “No, indeed. Ellie and I are still the best of friends,” Jane said absently, busy examining the hole-punch perforations on a tin box grater. Angling away from the trestle work table, she held it up to the window in speculation. She then picked up a nutmeg grater and gave it the same attention.

  “Well, if that’s true, I’m not sure I understand the point of it.”

  Still distracted, Jane only listened with half an ear as she then studied a round, low-walled sieve. She ran her fingertip over the fine screen that was used for making caster sugar, after it had been cut from the large conical loaf and thoroughly pounded to separate the granules.

  “The truth of the matter is,” she said after realizing her response was required, “I’ve also invited a gentleman and this tea is more for him than anyone else. I want it to be perfect and plain.”

  Holding the sieve aloft, a dusting of residual downy sugar fell on her face. She summarily fell into sputtering and sneezing and missed the instant when Mrs. Dunkley’s eyes brightened with sudden clarity.

  “Splendid. Then it’ll be just as you asked for, miss. Perfect for your gentleman.”

  The sound of a peculiar lilt drew Jane’s attention to the—now beaming—cook. She knew at once there’d been a misunderstanding.