My Kind of Earl

by Vivienne Lorret

  “Hmm,” he mused, escorting his wife from the room without a backward glance. “Let’s see. It was either your great-grandmama’s mother, or your great-grandmama’s great-grandmama. Then again . . .”

  Left alone in the parlor with Raven, Jane shrugged. “And there you have Lord and Lady Hollybrook. I trust the introduction was as painless as promised.”

  Raven looked away from the vacant doorway to her, his brow knitted in perplexity. “I ought to correct their assumption. I don’t want to mislead your parents into thinking I’m someone else.”

  “I’m afraid it won’t matter. Dinner will commence in a similar fashion. By the end of the evening, you’ll have acquired at least three different names and titles and an entire history they will have pieced together from snippets of random rumors heard at parties. Why, even I have been called Janice and Jeanette—along with other forms, therein—for an entire service before one of them recalls that I was named after my father’s mother,” she said in a nervous ramble, hoping to hide her embarrassment.

  But Raven wasn’t fooled. She could tell in the way his eyes held hers as he took her hand. Then he brought her fingers to his lips and pressed a warm lingering kiss that helped to soothe her.

  “Regardless of how the night progresses, I’m glad I came,” he said, settling her hand on his sleeve. “And you look lovely in that shade of pink. It makes your skin shimmer in the candlelight.”

  Her breath caught at the unexpected compliment. “Goodness. If that is your foray into practicing polite social conversation, then you don’t require any lesson.”

  “I wasn’t being polite. Although, I was stopping myself from adding that you look like a sugar-glazed confection.”

  “I suppose that isn’t too scandalous.”

  He bent his head to whisper. “A confection that needs to be unwrapped with my teeth and savored slowly on my tongue.”

  His warm breath brushed the sensitive lobe of her ear, and the deep timbre sent her pulse rollicking beneath her skin like popping corn over a fire. It simmered in a place deep inside, where her inner anatomy tilted and thrummed.

  If she could find her voice, she might have called him a scoundrel. Then again, she imagined he already knew that he was.

  Jane entered the dining room in a glow.

  Unfortunately, the pleasure wasn’t to last because dinner proceeded as she’d expected.

  Her parents were dragonfly conversationalists, skimming the surface of topics without ever lingering long. They were so used to altering their viewpoints to embrace popular opinion that they usually ended with an entirely different argument than when they began.

  “Well, Ravenscroft,” Father said, “I suppose you’ll be attending the Marquess of Aversleigh’s ball. All the best people are, you know.”

  Raven nodded and cleared his throat. When he glanced to Jane, she knew he was going to explain who he was.

  But before he could, Mother interrupted. “It’s for Aversleigh’s oldest daughter. Her betrothal ball is sure to be the event of the year.”

  “No, Clementina, indeed.” Beauregard shook his head, a frown knitting his tawny brows. “Remember, she’s marrying a commoner.”

  Mother gasped. Her opinions typically served as an enhancement to his, like a sprinkle of salt over a bland meal. “I’d only remembered that the future son-in-law had a great fortune.”

  Father scoffed a single word, a look of utter disgust pinching his nose. “Trade.”

  “I simply don’t know what the world is coming to,” Mother answered, apparently forgetting that her own family’s wealth had begun with fur trading. “Well, one thing is for certain—no daughter of ours will ever marry below her class. I’d sooner send her off to America to live with your sister.”

  Jane looked at the far end of the table and wondered if the woman seated there realized she was in the room, or remembered having given birth to her. Though, after eleven children, perhaps it all became too confusing. Even so, she had rarely felt so invisible.

  “Then again,” Father mused, “what if he were well-endowed in the bank account? After all, if it’s good enough for Aversleigh . . .”

  “I’ve always liked Americans,” Mother said, reaching for her goblet. “Their accents and coarse phrasings are so . . . amusing.”

  Father raised his glass in salute. Setting it down again, he said, “How long will it be until Jane has her debut?”

  “Our daughter has been out for two years, dear,” her mother said. Then she blinked blankly. “Or is it three?”

  “Three?” Father stopped cutting into his lamb and addressed his wife. “I’d have thought she’d be married by now. You only had one Season, if I recall.”

  Mother dabbed her napkin to the corner of her mouth then issued a distressed sigh as if preparing to impart the worst news imaginable. “Well, she still reads a great deal.”

  With a row of peas balanced on his knife, Raven frowned toward Lady Hollybrook’s end of the table. “Many men admire a well-read woman, especially one who has a—”

  “You’re quite right, Raversleigh,” Father interjected, busily cutting away again, knife and fork screeching over the fire-glazed porcelain. “We should support them in their endeavors. Yet, you must concede that there is a limit. This reading habit, for example, all began with an innocent collection of books from Roxburghe’s library, eons ago. I never thought it would bring about a bluestocking in the family. Gratefully, it was only a temporary malady. Turned her attention to plants and flower cuttings, if I recall. Perfectly acceptable, that.”

  “Oh, but what a jolly time you had bidding for those books,” Mother added with a smile, the topic of bluestocking plagues snuffed like a candle flame. “You were so triumphant and crowed about it for months. The Duke of Tuttlesby absolutely loathed you for outbidding him.”

  “And speaking of Tuttlesby, I heard a rumor that his nephew—Woodbine, I believe—is on the market again. Had some sort of scrape-up with his prior betrothal or something of the sort. Regardless, we’ve been invited to dine with the duke later this week. Perhaps”—Father used his fork tines to gesture in Jane’s general direction—“our daughter might entice him. We could have a duchess in our family one day, if we played our cards right.”

  Jane stared down at her plate, begging the stewed turnips in a white cream sauce to bring an end to dinner. But turnips were hateful vegetables. They never did what one asked.

  Dinner plodded onward, dragging her along with it by the hair.

  Father’s next topic was his decision to hire a sportsman. He planned to use the conservatory for exercises to improve his own constitution. Then he grumbled, complaining that he’d found a great deal of nonsense and clutter that would need to be cleared out of the room first.

  Jane only hoped that his usual forgetfulness would erase that idea before she lost her sanctuary.

  Raven tried to speak on the behalf of all learned women several times, only to have the topic and his name change each instance. He looked so frustrated and perturbed each time that she wanted to reach out across the table and smooth her fingertips over his ruffled brow.

  The obligatory after-dinner conversation moved to the music room. It involved a brief spell where Jane was prodded into delighting everyone on the harp.

  Mother had insisted that she learn to play at a young age. Jane, having always been a relatively small person, loathed that bully of an instrument. It was nearly two times her size and forever left her shoulder sore and her fingertips feeling freshly plucked.

  She studied the pink surface now as she walked alone with Raven toward the main hall.

  One of her parents should have been with her to act as chaperone, but Mother had begged off the duties of hostess with a headache, and Father had followed her to their wing of the house, professing knowledge of a cure-all tonic.

  They both had left in absentminded fashion, conversing with each other and forgetting to bid their daughter good-night or their guest farewell. And, doubtless, they never im
agined their plain daughter would need a chaperone.

  After all, who would ever be tempted by her?

  “Ravenscroft to Raversleigh, and then to Rosburton might make sense, I s’pose,” Raven said, walking at a leisurely pace beside her. “The one I can’t understand is Thackeray.”

  “Well, at the time, I believe Father was speaking of quitting Holly House before Christmastide to stay in his hunting box. Then Mother interjected that she always loved that house because it rests on a hill overlooking quaint thatched cottages.” She slid him a wry glance. “Naturally, you became Lord Thackeray.”

  “Ah,” he mused. Then a tight exhale left him as they walked on. “There were several times when I tried to—”

  “I know. You never had a chance but the sentiment was felt, all the same,” she said, smiling fondly up at him as her tender-skinned fingertips stroked the cuff of his fine woolen sleeve. “It isn’t purposeful, what they do. It is simply . . . the way my parents are.”

  “That doesn’t make it right.”

  “It’s the same in many society families. The nannies and the governesses raise the children and those children, in turn, become veritable strangers to their parents and little more than figures in a family portrait. Asking them to change would be like expecting a fern to grow oranges.”

  He laid his hand over hers, stroking the fine skin that covered tissue and metacarpals. A warmth spread through her nerve endings and along her limbs, seeming to converge in the center of every heartbeat.

  “I understand why you carry your reticule now,” he said quietly. “And your need to have every item on hand to take care of yourself, and others, in any given situation.”

  Looking at her, his expression altered to something so intimate, so knowing, that it felt as if he were seeing her in the bath.

  A wash of embarrassment made her want to cross her arms over herself.

  Because if he could know her this well, then he could also see her inadequacies and deficiencies—the ones that had always made her forgettable and invisible.

  Slipping her arm free, she stepped under one of the arches lining the hall to adjust a crooked picture frame. “Well, I was an inquisitive child. I peppered my parents with so many questions that my uncle took pity on them and taught me to read early on. A new world opened for me when I learned that books could give me the answers.” She realized she was babbling and waved a hand in a nervous gesture to the dimly lit doorway at the end of the hall. “And it all started there, in the library.”

  From the corner of her eye, she saw him move a few steps in that direction. Felt his intense curiosity. Then he looked back over his shoulder. “Show me.”

  The gleam of genuine interest in his gaze eclipsed her embarrassment. Not even Ellie or Winn or Prue ever wanted to see the library. She’d dragged them there, of course, on several occasions, but they’d never asked to go.

  She couldn’t resist the impulse to take his hand, and she smiled as his fingers automatically enfolded hers.

  Only a single sconce was left burning on the wall by the door. The embers in the fireplace had all but extinguished, leaving a faint apricot glow to the room that didn’t reach the vaulted ceiling or the trompe l’oeil upper gallery.

  Nearby, Raven was already drawing volumes from the shelves and skimming through the pages. But it was his look of awed amazement, like a man viewing the phosphorescent glow of algae beneath the water’s surface, that made her smile. She always felt that way, too.

  Coming up beside him, she peered over his shoulder at the book he was studying with interest. The subject was botany. The page, plums.

  A rush of warmth pulsed from her heart to the surface of her skin and she leaned back against the shelves to gaze up at him, cementing this feeling of joy in her memory.

  He closed the book, returning it before giving her his full attention. Propping his shoulder against one of the horizontal ledges, he brushed his fingers along the exposed length of her arm, exciting nerve endings from elbow to wrist.

  “It was nearly impossible to act the gentleman tonight. There were so many times I wanted to reach across the table and take your hand,” he said, lightly threading his fingers with hers. “So many things I wanted to say to your parents.”

  It would have been easy to relax into his touch, but his statement sounded too much like pity for her ears. So she straightened, slipping her hand from his as she walked to the center of the room to organize the cluttered map table.

  “It wouldn’t have mattered,” she said, affecting an air of nonchalance. “Besides, I accepted their indifference long ago.”

  But Raven didn’t let her get too far. He stopped in front of her and crooked a finger beneath her chin to capture her gaze. “If this dinner hadn’t been part of a lesson and I hadn’t vowed to be on my best behavior for your sake, then I would’ve slammed my fist down on the table, unleashed the growl that was chained in my chest all evening, and appeared every bit the brute.”

  Jane instantly knew she’d been mistaken. It wasn’t pity she saw in his face but something else. Something forceful and earnest and tender.

  “I wanted to rail at them, Jane.” Drawing her closer, he bent his forehead to hers as his rough-padded fingertips drifted to her nape, working in massaging circles that eased her unnecessary worries. “I wanted to tell them that they were idiots for not seeing that they have an exceptional daughter. The cleverest, prettiest bluestocking I’ve ever known.”

  Stunned, her mouth went dry, lips falling slack. He slid the length of his nose against hers and she closed her eyes to savor his affectionate nuzzling, the port wine taste of his warm breath on her tongue.

  Her heart didn’t flutter beneath her breast. No, instead it lay down like a purring cat, rolling over and exposing its underbelly. “That doesn’t sound at all like you. There wasn’t a single scandalous comment in your entire declaration.”

  There was a rakish grin in his low voice when he said, “I also would have told them that you have lips sweeter than damson jam, and that I sleep with your scent on my bedlinens every night. But I don’t think they would have understood.”

  His lips grazed her cheek. Her temple. Her brow. And all the while, the artist standing on the portico of her brain was sketching Raven in bed, naked, and thinking of her.

  “I must have poured out too much lavender water that night.”

  He murmured a low, knowing growl as the tip of his nose whispered across her eyelashes, his fingertips teasing the wispy tendrils at her nape. “Perhaps there’s a primitive side to your nature and you wanted to leave your scent behind, hmm? You’d be scandalized by the dreams I’ve had ever since.”

  Her palms glided up the sleeves of his coat to curve around his thick shoulders and neck as she rose up on her toes. The spiced scent of bay rum clung to his clothes, blending incomparably well with his own fragrance. She inhaled deeply, fighting the urge to bury her nose in his shirtfront.

  “Tell me what scoundrels dream about,” she said, her inner scribe at the ready. “Scandalize me.”

  Chapter 24

  One of them moved first. Jane wasn’t certain which. All she knew was that their mouths captured each other, colliding in symbiotic need.

  A sudden, startling glut of pleasure quickened her blood. It pooled deep in her midriff where their bodies met, separated by fabric and gathering heat. But this malady inside her demanded more. She needed pressure to assuage it.

  Scarcely had the thought entered her mind when one of Raven’s hands roved along the curve of her spine, splaying possessively and pulling her flush against the hard plane of his torso. They were now so close that she could feel the buttons of his waistcoat and the tiny silken bow of her chemise ribbon between her breasts. She nearly sighed in relief. This was so much better. Almost enough, in fact. But not quite.

  She still wanted more.

  Hungrily, she opened her mouth beneath the insistent pressure of his, their tongues tangling in a delicious port-and-pudding-tinged impact. She
loved the textures of his kiss. The firmness of his lips. The damp silk inside. And the sharp edge of his teeth, paradoxically gentle as he nibbled into her flesh while the flat of his hand coasted over the generous slope of her bottom.

  Then he cinched her tighter, lifting her feet effortlessly off the carpet. A gasp escaped her as she groped for purchase, gripping his shoulders. This position aligned their bodies in a perfect placement—navel to navel, chest to chest—and it caused the last remaining breath to shudder out of her in a rush.

  He grinned at her, nipping her chin. “Surely, you’re not scandalized already. I’ve barely begun. And there’s so much of your little body I’ve yet to touch. To taste.”

  He was trying to make her blush, she knew. Well, he’d succeeded. Even so, she saw the challenge in the arch of his brow, testing her determination and willingness.

  She threaded her fingers through the short silken strands of his hair and played the mimic, nuzzling against his nose, pressing soft kisses to his cheek and brow. Then she nibbled into the corner of his mouth. “Perhaps I’ll be the one who tastes you first.”

  He growled, his lips fusing to hers in a searing kiss and, next, she found herself perched on the edge of the map table.

  Perhaps she may have been too bold just now? But when his teeth rasped deliciously over her earlobe, and the hot drift of his breath on her skin awakened a siege of new receptors, she could not compel herself to recant. Instead, her neck arched in supplication under the skillful mastery of his tongue as he laved the pulse at her throat.

  This wasn’t about research for the book, and her brain wasn’t the only part involved. Her heart, body and mind were completely enmeshed.

  No one ever saw her the way Raven did. Not even Ellie, Winn or Prue understood the pain at the core of her lifelong need to bury herself in books and facts. To them, she was intelligent and capable—the friend always prepared with a plan. To the ton, she was merely a culmination of oddities and idiosyncrasies. To Raven, she was still all those things. But she was more, too. She was a woman, someone desirable despite her peculiarities. Perhaps even because of them.