My Kind of Earl

by Vivienne Lorret

  She nodded thoughtfully and pursed her lips. “I see what you mean. That scullery maid who just passed by, carrying the market basket, is clearly about to make turnips today, and that is a dreadful crime. No one likes turnips.”

  At the sight of her disarming grin, he instantly felt more at ease. He also felt like a fool for admitting to her earlier that he was nervous, but he could tell that she had known it anyway. Jane had an uncanny ability to see right through him. And for some reason that thought helped him breathe easier. The roiling sea inside his stomach faded to a gentle lapping wave.

  Exiting the carriage, he handed her down and paid the driver, bidding the man once more to wait. But as he reflexively reached for Jane’s hand, she withdrew and shook her head, moving further away.

  He frowned and advanced to her side.

  “It wouldn’t be proper in this circumstance. Additionally,” she added, “you cannot call me Jane. When in the presence of others, you must refer to me as Miss Pickerington. Using my given name suggests an intimacy of close acquaintances, an understanding between us, or—in your vernacular—that you have claimed me.”

  “I think I would have remembered that,” he said, flashing a devilish grin.

  When he faced forward, he saw that they were already at the steps. She’d done it again, distracting him just long enough to keep him from second-guessing, or wondering what he was going to say if someone opened the door.

  Climbing the short rise of stone stairs, he felt her warm gaze on his profile and heard the tender smile on her lips when she whispered, “You’ll do splendidly.”

  Straightening his shoulders, he drew in a deep breath and rapped his knuckles on the door.

  It opened almost instantly. Unexpectedly. And by the very same woman who’d crashed into him on the street the other day.

  “Dear me! I’m supposin’ you’re real after all,” she said, though her doubtful expression and shake of her head seemed to contradict her statement. “Well then, you’d best come inside before there’s a spectacle. Rumors’ll be flyin’ across chimney tops by day’s end.”

  Confused, Raven looked over his shoulder toward the street but saw nothing amiss. Then again, this woman seemed to have a few dice missing from her cup.

  “Are you the housekeeper?” he asked as they entered.

  She bustled around them in a flurry to close the door. “Mrs. Bramly, at your service.”

  “We’d like a tour of the house,” he said, getting straight to the point. But when Jane cleared her throat beside him, he added, “If that would be acceptable, ma’am.”

  He knew this wasn’t going to work. After all, if some strangers had asked to take a look at his house, he’d be the first to show them the pavement instead. Then he’d leave his boot print on their arses.

  But this skittish woman surprised him by saying, “Right this way, sir, miss.”

  Taking Jane’s hand, he settled it over his sleeve. Before she could balk, he said to her, “There’s no telling what condition these floors and those stairs are in. I could be saving your life.”

  She pretended to be exasperated, but he saw the smile tucked into the corner of her mouth.

  They followed Mrs. Bramly out of the foyer and up a gleaming staircase. Raven absorbed every detail of wainscoting and gilded plaster molding as he moved from one archway to the next, their steps muffled on the runner. The scent of orange and clove pomanders tried to drive the mustiness away, but it hung on, clinging like damp shirtsleeves to the skin, impossible to ignore.

  He looked around at all the polished candlesticks and gold-inlaid tables and pulled at his cravat. These long, narrow rooms were choking on fine furnishings, with little clocks and porcelain figurines on all the mantels. Each time his thigh bumped a marble table and nearly sent an oil lamp or a bit of bric-a-brac crashing to the floor he felt clumsy and closed in.

  If it were up to him, he’d have opened these walls to make breathable spaces. A place where a man could think or read a book without suffocating to death.

  In the back of his mind, he already knew this would be the only time he’d ever come.

  The gents talking about Warrister’s return at Sterling’s had speculated that the earl was coming here to name Lord Herrington his heir, and to give his blessing at last. The more Raven thought about that, the more he knew he didn’t belong here.

  He wasn’t educated or reared like an aristocrat. He wasn’t proper. And he never would be either, not with a past like his.

  It was foolish to think that someone like him could just walk up to an earl and say, “Oh by the by, I think I’m your grandson.”

  So what in the hell was he doing here touring the house in the first place?

  “Jane, this was a mistake,” he said in her ear when they entered another long, narrow room. “Let’s go back to the carriage, hmm?”

  He was fine with his life just the way it was.

  Beside him, Jane stopped but didn’t respond. He squared his shoulders, preparing for her attempt to cajole him into finishing the tour.

  But when he searched her face, he didn’t find stubbornness. Instead, he found tears gathering in her eyes as she stared fixedly toward the wall ahead.

  Instinctively, he gathered her close, while a few steps away he heard Mrs. Bramly’s voice. “And this is the portrait gallery. Seven generations of the Northcott clan hang upon these walls . . .”

  Slowly, Raven turned his head.

  Then he stopped breathing. The pulse at his neck beat so fast that it caused a high-pitched ringing in his ears, like a wine-slicked finger sliding around the rim of a crystal goblet, over and over again.

  All he could do was stare at the two figures in the portrait on the wall.

  There was no need to read the engraved placard at the bottom of the frame. He knew who they were.

  Edgar Northcott had been a tall, lean man with broad shoulders and a wealth of sandy brown hair that curled over his temples and brow. He had a hawklike nose and a hard-set jaw. His eyes were a periwinkle blue that seemed to glint with some unspoken secret, and an almost indiscernible smirk lifted one corner of his mouth.

  And then there was Arabelle Northcott.

  She wore a shimmering silver gown, with her hair piled high in an elaborate coiffure. Inky black ringlets cascaded down to frame the delicate features of her face—the fine arch of her brow, the slim line of her nose, and the angles of her cheeks, jaw and chin. She was beautiful.

  But it was her eyes that arrested Raven. They were a soft, downy gray that seemed to reach out beyond the canvas and blanket him with their warmth.

  He felt it in the center of his chest—a tender, burning ache. And suddenly he knew.

  The breath fell out of him. The ringing in his ears turned into a deafening rush as his heart pounded in panicked beats inside his rib cage. Years of pain and longing and hope stormed through him all at once.

  He looked to Jane but his vision was blurred, everything gray around the edges.

  He needed to leave. Now.

  Without a word, he left the gallery. He would apologize to Jane in a few moments when he could think. When he wasn’t so overwhelmed.

  Yet in his haste to retrace the steps they had taken, he ended up in an unfamiliar corridor, facing a stained door, partially ajar. He growled in self-irritation. Stripping off his hat, he raked a hand through his hair. Why did there have to be so many bloody rooms?

  Trying to orient himself, he pushed open the door to see if this was the one that led to the upper gallery and the stairs. But then he caught a scent that halted him in his tracks.

  Before he could even blink to focus on where he stood, he knew he’d found the library—a room they hadn’t had a chance to tour.

  The air was permeated with the familiar sweet fragrance of old books that calmed his straining lungs and even quieted the roaring in his head. And he simply stood there in the partially open doorway to collect his thoughts.

  His gaze roamed from floor to ceiling, each inch f
illed with books. A light flickered over a multitude of leather-bound spines and he heard the faint crackle of a fire in an unseen hearth.

  He nudged the door wider, the hinges screeching in protest. And Raven stopped abruptly on the threshold the instant he realized he wasn’t alone in this part of the house.

  An elderly man sat in a wing-backed chair by the fire, wearing a burgundy velvet morning coat and a gray shawl draped over his lap. He seemed to be staring sightlessly into the flames, as if considering some great mystery of the ages.

  Then he turned slowly toward the figure in the doorway. Without a start or a gasp, he merely said, “I thought you would come again.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” Raven said in self-defense, feeling like a child caught shimmying into the baker’s window. “But I’ve never been here before.”

  The man eyed him shrewdly. “Not inside perhaps. But you startled my housekeeper on the pavement a sennight ago. She wrote to tell me she’d seen a ghost.”

  Numbly, Raven absorbed this. He swallowed and could have sworn that the sound was loud enough to fill a theatre. “So then you are . . .”

  “The one who owns this house.”

  His mind whispered grandfather in a hushed awe as if anything louder would disturb this hallucination and Raven would find himself out on the pavement, none of it real.

  “Come closer. The firelight is dim and my eyes are far too old to discern one apparition from another.”

  Raven obliged and moved into the room.

  “Uncanny,” the man murmured under his breath. “You even walk like him. He always had something of a swagger. ‘Proud and prowling,’ his mother used to say when he would come home from school, eager to fit the world in the palm of his hand.”

  “Where did he go to school?” Raven heard himself ask, accepting this dream as reality. And that was only one of a thousand questions crowding on his tongue. What was he like? What were his interests? Did he read all these books? Can I read them, too?

  “You don’t know?” The old man scoffed. “Surely, you’ve done your research. You’ve been to Hertfordshire, after all. Aye, the vicar wrote to me as well.”

  “I didn’t want to know too much. And yet,” he said on a breath, feeling a need for complete honesty, “I wanted to know everything. That is the reason I startled your housekeeper on the pavement last week. I meant no harm, then or now. So, if you’d like me to go, you have but to say the word.”

  “Stay,” he said without hesitation. “Sit by the fire if it’s not too warm for you. My bones are like ashes that can no longer support an ember. Tell me, what brings you here at this particular time in the winter of this old man’s life? Trickery? Deception?”

  Raven smiled at this familiar cynical frankness. He understood it well.

  Taking the invitation, he eased back into the opposite chair and answered. “It all began last month, when a debutante turned me pink and robbed me of the life I knew . . .”

  He told the story of the mark on his shoulder and how it led to a letter, which took them to Hertfordshire and the registry of parish births and deaths, and eventually to here.

  The earl stared into the firelight, his bony hands steepled contemplatively. He never asked to see the mark, or for proof of the letter. He just listened, as if he’d been waiting in his chair for someone to step into this room and start telling him a grand, and even unbelievable, tale of an orphan found on a doorstep, once upon a time.

  When Raven had finished, he was relieved to have it all out of him. It felt as though he’d overcome an illness and sweated a fever through his pores.

  Remembering that Jane was likely waiting for him at the carriage, he rose. “I should go now. Jane is likely formulating a plan to find me, and one that involves at least three of the mysterious objects she keeps in her reticule.”

  No sooner had he spoken than he heard quick steps on the runner. Then he saw a blur of violet rush past the door and caught the faint scent of lavender swirling in the air. Striding to the door, he called her name.

  She stopped at the end of the corridor, pivoted on her heel, and hastened back to him.

  “There you are,” she scolded, but her features were fraught with concern as she clasped his extended hand between both of hers. “I’d feared you’d gone, that this was all too much.”

  “Bring the worrywart in here. Let me meet her.”

  The instant Jane heard the old man’s raspy voice, she paled and her wide eyes looked to the open doorway.

  Raven grinned and tugged her into the room at his side. “This is Jane. And, Jane, this is the Earl of—”

  “You may call me Ableforth,” the old man said. “Formalities are often tiresome, especially later in life when there isn’t anyone left to use your given name.”

  She curtsied low. “It is an honor to make your acquaintance . . . my lord . . . Ableforth.”

  The earl nodded, pleased. “So, you’re the creator of pink smoking candles, hmm?”

  Standing, she cast a startled—and accusatory—glance up to Raven as her cheeks turned the color of beet powder. He could tell by the faint tapping of her foot on the rug that he was going to get an earful for revealing her part in his story once they were back inside the carriage.

  Smoothing her hands down her skirts, she cleared her throat and opened the cording of her reticule. Reaching inside, she withdrew a fat, bright green object and presented it in the palm of her hand. “As you see, they are not always pink. I’ve just made this one using dried mint leaves. I have not set a flame to it yet, but I hope the smoke will emit a pleasant aroma, rather than turning everyone and everything within its surroundings green.”

  The earl chuckled and steepled his fingers once more, keeping his thoughts hidden behind wizened periwinkle blue eyes. “Perhaps you’ll discover the answer and inform me of the results on our next visit.”

  “It would be my honor,” she said, curtsying again.

  Raven sensed the man’s requirement for solitude and peace. In fact, he needed his own to put his thoughts in order.

  Bowing, he said, “Until a later day, then.”

  “Not too late.” The earl smiled, then turned back to his study of the logs piled on the grate, as if this had all been a dream and nothing more.

  Perhaps it was.

  * * *

  Outside and standing in the cool drizzle falling on St. James’s, Raven’s head was spinning. He could hardly believe what had just happened.

  The only thing that was real and tangible was the feel of Jane’s hand in his as they entered the carriage. The lowered shades slapped against the window as the driver set off toward Westbourne Green.

  Across from him, Jane blinked as if stunned. “Well, this was certainly a startling develop—Oh!”

  He didn’t give her a chance to finish.

  Needing to settle his thoughts and find peace, he pulled her onto his lap and eased his mouth over hers.

  He tasted her soft gasp and then the warmth of her sigh as it filled his lungs like Lazarus’s first breath in the stone tomb. Without hesitation, her arms encircled his neck. A deep grunt of contentment vibrated in his throat.

  He’d never been one to think too much about kissing. His first experience was with Mrs. Devons, the Devil’s widow. She’d taught him all the ways a woman liked to be kissed, how to ready their bodies for pleasure. And how a kiss, if done well, could make a woman cry and cling and shudder.

  She’d explained that his enjoyment was an insignificant component. Having been a boy of fifteen at the time, he’d believed her.

  Yet it had always left him with a sense of detachment. Whenever he kissed a woman, every taste and press and tease were merely parts of a lesson he’d mastered years ago.

  At least . . . until now.

  Raven didn’t understand the reason, but kissing Jane was different. It felt natural and essential. And he took so much pleasure from this simple, fully-clothed act that he ought to feel guilty. But he didn’t.

  No, he was t
oo lost in the supple texture of her lips, the lush taste of her tongue, and the soft purrs of her throat. His fingertips traced the delicate framing of her jaw, the velvety texture of her earlobes, the silken wisps of her hair. He could lose himself for hours in these unending fathomless kisses.

  He wanted to know how her brain processed this unhurried exploration. If her skin was covered in tingling gooseflesh like his own. If her heartbeat was unsteady. If she felt the static charge that fused them together, wrapping around them like a coil. If she was experiencing something wondrous and unfamiliar and startling, too. Something that—she would say—required further study.

  He smiled at the thought and nipped at her bottom lip.

  Jane sagged against him, panting, her breath rushing over his jaw, her hand resting over his pounding heart. “Gentlemen do not unleash their feral appetites on young women in carriages.”

  “You should be admiring my restraint. This might have happened on the pavement. After all, I am not a gentleman.”

  “You are by birth. I think you know that now. I’m fairly certain that the earl knows, too. And, whether you like it or not, soon the ton will know it. Mrs. Bramly was right about the rumors. In fact, she’ll likely be the one to start them,” she said with a direness that filled him with amusement. “Oh, laugh all you like. However, if this were happening to me, I’d want someone particularly clever to prepare me for what was bound to happen next with a few lessons to help me blend into society.”

  He tucked his grin away and affected a pondering countenance. “Hmm . . . Then it is a pity I’m not acquainted with anyone particularly clever.”

  “Do be serious,” she said with a playful swat against his chest. “In a matter of days, the ton will descend upon you en masse. Would you rather be under their quizzing glass as a curiosity—the plebian orphan boy? Or will you demand that they see the man who unapologetically forged his own life?”

  He didn’t have to think about his answer. Part of him had resigned himself to this fate the instant he saw the portrait. And he didn’t want to be an embarrassment to the earl, either.