My Kind of Earl

by Vivienne Lorret

  Her cousin nodded and sighed with relief. “That’s just what I told him you’d say.”

  Grabbing her reticule and the shawl from the chaise longue, she blew out the lamp and followed her cousin into the bitter night.

  * * *

  When she arrived at Raven’s house, Duncan took her in through the back. In the kitchen, she encountered a rheumy-eyed old woman with hunched shoulders and a cackling laugh, who chided Duncan for not listening to the randy gent.

  Knowing that Raven was opposed to people in his house, Jane was obligated to ask, “And who are you?”

  “Me name’s Bess,” she said with a proud sniff. “And I’m ’is cook, I am. Got a kettle on the boil and everythin’.”

  Not wanting to waste time arguing the fact that Raven would have told her if he’d hired a cook, Jane walked out of the kitchen toward the upstairs. She paused only long enough to call over her shoulder, “Bring the kettle when it’s ready.”

  When she found Raven in his bedchamber, her heart dropped to the floor.

  He was sitting in his chair with his feet propped up on the hearth and a wide, bloody strip of silk tied around his shoulder—a cravat. Dangling from his uninjured arm, he loosely held a bottle of whisky by two fingers.

  “Bollocks,” he cursed after a look over his bare shoulder. “I told Pickerington not to tell you.”

  “And you knew he would, regardless, which essentially says you wanted me here.” She bustled over and leaned down to press a kiss to his lips. Lingering, she felt the sting of tears at the corners of her eyes. “Tell me what happened, so I know who to murder.”

  “You wouldn’t do that. I know you too well, Jane. You’d likely teach them a more effective way to wield a knife and inform them of its metallurgical properties.” He chuckled, but hissed as she peeled back the makeshift bandage.

  The ghastly sight stole her breath. A trio of slices were gouged deep into the flesh, the wounds glistening bright red.

  She swallowed down her gasp. “They did well enough on their own, I’d say.”

  “Fear not, professor. They left all the anatomical parts you like best.”

  “This isn’t a time for jesting,” she scolded, her throat dry. Tears were stinging her eyes now and she turned away quickly.

  At the bedside table, she lit the rat de cave and every taper she could find in the drawer, then set them along the edge of the mantel. “Someone has severely cut into your arm. I’m going to have to stitch you up. It’s fortunate that I always carry a needle and thread. And I met your new cook, apparently. She’ll be bringing up the kettle with boiling water shortly.”

  “That’d be Bess,” he said, tipping back the bottle for another swig. “She saved my life tonight.”

  “Then I love her already.”

  He eyed her warmly. “You throw that word around quite a lot these days.”

  “Only when I mean it.”

  No sooner had the words left her lips than she found herself ensnared by the waist, toppled onto his lap, and pulled to his lips for a demanding kiss that stole every sip of air from her lungs.

  “None o’ that now,” came that gravelly cackle from the doorway as Bess strolled in. “He fought a good fight and gave them back plenty of their own, he did. But he’s weak as a wee lamb now. I had to finish off those two buggers with me basket o’ posies. Only most people don’t know that I keep rocks in there. Big ’uns, too. That makes it too heavy so no one will filch it, see?”

  “Bess, I don’t know how to thank you,” Jane said.

  “Aw. T’weren’t nothin’. He saved my life more times than not by giving me enough coin for a place to sleep and a hot meal. And now, he’s given me a post. I’m a respectable cook again, I am, with a cozy room belowstairs. It’s all I ever wanted.” Then she glanced at his cut shoulder and cringed, gulping audibly. “But I’m a bit squeamish when it comes to bloody hunks of meat, so I’d best be headin’ on back down the stairs. Need to check on that big lad, make sure he’s cleanin’ out the cupboards instead of the larder. Though, he deserves to eat his fill from tottering out of the mews like he did, just at the right time. Why, he even sent his light-o-love away, so that he could help the randy gent into a carriage.”

  As Bess left the room, Jane fished out the supplies she needed from her reticule. Unfortunately, some of her vinaigrette concoction had spilled and the spirit of hartshorn left a powdery substance on her needle and thread. Therefore, she decided to drop those in the basin and pour boiling water over them. Not knowing how long it had been since he laundered his linens, she tore strips from her clean petticoat to serve as bandages.

  “It’d be easier to do that if you removed your dress first,” he added helpfully, taking another swig.

  She took the bottle out of his hand. “I need to use some of this for before and after. Now brace yourself.”

  And while she had the courage, she bent down and quickly doused his wound.

  He howled a curse up to the ceiling, nearly shooting out of the chair. “Damn it all, Jane. Give a man some warning.”

  “I did,” she rasped, her nerves getting the better of her.

  “Perhaps a little more than a second, next time.”

  She nodded and took a swig herself, choking on the burn. Then she handed it back to him, while she readied the needle and thread. “It’s a shame Ellie isn’t here. She would stitch a lovely design on your flesh. And it’s a shame, too, that I didn’t get a thimble in your cake.”

  “Jane,” he said quietly, holding out his hand. “Come here.”

  She did and he pulled her onto his lap again, nuzzling her nose, breathing in deeply.

  “Just so you know, I only want your needlework on my body,” he teased, soothing her trembles with gentle sweeps along her nape and spine. “And I want you to stay right here, close to me, hmm?”

  She nodded. Even though she wasn’t entirely steady, being near him made her feel better than before.

  Expelling a deep breath, she surveyed his wounds. She chose the largest cut first. Knowing that he needed her strength and not her tears, she summoned the objectivity of her inner scientist to help her through the task.

  Then she applied the needle to his flesh.

  Raven took another swig. Leaning back against the chair, he closed his eyes. The muscle ticking along his jaw was the only indication that he felt pain.

  “It’s a gruesome and deep cut. Were they trying to sever your arm?” she said, her own attempt at humor falling flat.

  “They were after the mark,” he said, every syllable uttered in a carefully controlled monotone as if any inflection would cause him further pain. “I knew these blokes. Ne’er-do-wells from my past life. Said that the person who hired them wanted to make sure I was good and dead this time and needed proof.”

  “‘This time’? That suggests someone had tried before.”

  “Aye. That’s been puzzling me, too.” He squinted his eyes closed and hissed in a quick breath as she reached the deepest part of the cut and had to tug a little for the skin flaps to meet.

  He continued after a minute, his voice edged with strain. “The first person who ever talked about the mark, outside of the foundling home, was Mr. Devons. When he shackled me inside that cupboard that last time, he told me that he was finally going to get something worthwhile out of me. Said he’d mentioned his workhouse boys once or twice in a pub and that someone perked up at the tale of the lad with the raven on his arm. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. My thoughts were on the hole at the back of the cupboard. All I know, is that he left to meet this person and it was the last I ever saw of the Devil.”

  “Do you think the person who queried him about your mark was responsible for his death?”

  He shrugged reflexively, then stiffened, biting down a groan before he took a healthy gulp from the bottle. “Dunno. I’m sure he had enemies.”

  Jane kissed him on the shoulder after she finished the first set of stitches, tying off the thread. Only two more sets to go
.

  “Then there was the attack on the wharf,” he mused. “I found it peculiar then and even more so now that they never tried to rob me. And I’d had a few pounds tucked in my pocket from”—he stopped and appraised Jane carefully, glancing down to the needle—“well, it doesn’t matter who.”

  Jane instantly knew it was that horrible Mrs. Devons who’d paid him. But she managed to keep her stitches light and easy for his sake.

  “There were two that got me—one from behind and the other dead on. My arms were caged before I got much use out of them. The first bloke pulled down my coat as the other ripped my shirtsleeves. Seeing the mark, the second bloke said, ‘This is him.’ I didn’t know what he meant, but I didn’t want to find out either. When I saw that pistol, I knew my life depended on getting away, but I still caught the ball in my ribs.”

  This news didn’t sit well with her. She finished the second set of stitches, feeling more anxious than before.

  To her, these accounts cemented his legitimacy. But they also left her shaken. “So, in other words, there is someone who knows who you really are. And this person is willing to kill you in order to keep anyone else from finding out. Who could know about the mark and is threatened by it?”

  “There’s only one person I can think of who’d stand to gain from my death.”

  They shared a look.

  “Lord Herrington,” she said. “But that would mean he’d have known about you all along. That would mean he knew that the legitimate heir had survived the fire.”

  Thinking back to the letters, this made sense. If Herrington knew about Raven, then he likely saw him as the only obstacle to the earldom.

  “I’d thought about that, too. But, by all accounts, there wasn’t another survivor of the fire. So then who pulled me out? If it was Herrington, wouldn’t he have just let me burn with the others?”

  She shivered and burrowed nearer to Raven’s heat.

  Knowing that he’d been so close to death, and so often, it was too much to think about. And yet, it was all she could think about.

  “I d-don’t want to t-talk about this anymore,” she stammered, fear and agony clogging her throat.

  She was glad she’d finished the last set of stitches, because her eyes began to flood, her vision obscured. She blinked and the hot deluge streamed down her face in wet runnels. Blindly, she swiped at the strips of linen and began wrapping his arm, knotting the ends.

  “Shh . . .” he said, holding her face tenderly, kissing the tears from her cheeks, her eyelashes, her lips. “It was really you who saved me tonight, you know.”

  “Me?”

  “Mmmhmm.” His lips grazed hers in intensely slow sweeps. “But I knew I couldn’t die yet. Not when everything was just starting to go right. Not when I just found you.”

  His intention was likely to keep her from crying again, but tears flowed from beneath her closed lashes regardless.

  “But there was a moment—” His voice broke, the sound of it hoarse and lost in a way she’d never heard before. He locked eyes with her, the gray filled with rife panic as he fisted his hand in the back of her dress. “There was a moment when I was afraid I’d never see you again. Ever. And I thought of my body being locked in a coffin, lowered into the cold ground and never feeling your warmth. I couldn’t bear it, Jane.”

  He kissed her again, frantic and desperate, pulling her closer, as if she could never be close enough. Shifting beneath her, he rearranged her legs to straddle him. The position forced her knees higher, tucked under his arms, until she was curled flush against him, heartbeat to heartbeat. And seated on his hard, insistent heat.

  His aroused state shocked her. But what surprised her even more was the way her body instantly responded in urgent, fluid pulses, hips rocking forward. It felt so primitive—this sudden overwhelming need for intimacy. The need to prove that he was alive and safe and hers.

  She fused her mouth to his, craving to be closer still. Raven’s thoughts seemed to match her own. He reached between their bodies and jerked at the fastening of his trousers. He kissed her hard. Lifted her. Then impaled her deeply in one slick thrust.

  A primal, feral sound roared from his throat as her gasping body gripped his flesh.

  They moved together in a wild, panicked rhythm, both seeking assurance. One driving harder and harder. The other willingly impaled over and over again . . . until they both cried out, clutching and breathless, locked tightly in a torrent of thick liquid shudders.

  For long moments after, they simply breathed together, lungs rising and falling in perfect harmony, their heads bowed toward each other as if in prayer.

  Chapter 33

  Three evenings later, the Marquess of Aversleigh’s ballroom brimmed with music and gaiety and the glimmering light of a dozen chandeliers.

  Officers, tradesmen, and haute society all mingled beneath the golden glow as a crush of lively dancers reeled and twirled on the floor. There was so much laughing and clapping and foot-stomping that even Jane’s smiling parents were caught up in the merriment.

  She stood with Ellie near the archway between the ballroom and the winter garden—an octagonal room with a glass dome overhead and a reflecting pool below. Together, they furtively tossed biscuit crumbs from a small tin Jane carried in her reticule to the shimmering Amur carp.

  “Do you think he decided not to come?” Ellie asked, her voice raised to be heard over the din.

  Aside from Duncan and Bess, Ellie was the only other person who knew about Raven’s injuries from earlier in the week. But no one knew that it might have anything to do with the mark on his arm. Or his claim to the earldom.

  Jane closed the lid and dropped the tin into the reticule discreetly tied at her waist, and smoothed her gloved hands over the long placket beneath the gathers of her full pale taffeta skirts. Then she looked over her shoulder to the door for the thousandth time and sighed.

  “He sent a missive earlier that he might be late,” she said distractedly. “But he did not give a reason. He only told me that he has a surprise for me and not to worry. Which, of course, makes me worry all the more.”

  Ellie squeezed her hand. “You’re sounding a bit too much like me, Jane. Is this what happens when you fall in love?”

  She laughed, but gave no answer as a movement by the door caught her attention.

  One of the liveried footmen approached the butler, who spoke to the Marquess and Marchioness of Aversleigh before the footman bowed and departed.

  The marquess lifted his hand to the orchestra and they abruptly fell silent.

  “Rather mysterious, is it not?” Ellie whispered.

  But Jane felt tingles skitter warmly over the surface of her skin. She smiled. “Raven is here.”

  In the next instant, a dark-headed figure appeared in the doorway. His frostbitten gaze skimmed the partygoers at a glance before settling on her.

  She felt the contact keenly in the sudden flip of her stomach and fluttering beneath her breast. But what sent a gasp through the entire ballroom was the older man beside him, leaning on his arm and holding a cane.

  “The Earl of Warrister,” the butler announced, his voice ringing out to the far expanse of the terrace windows and up to the vaulted ceiling. “And Mr. Merrick Northcott.”

  A collective gasp sucked all the air out of the room. Jane felt her heart rise to her throat as Raven’s gaze locked on hers again.

  “A surprise, indeed,” Ellie said. “I thought he had no intention of claiming his birthright.”

  “He didn’t, as far as I knew.”

  “Well, perhaps his decision has something to do with you. Because, if I’m not mistaken, those are your parents he’s talking to.”

  Jane was in utter shock. With everything that had occurred in the past week, her brain couldn’t seem to process any more. So she merely stared at him like a gape-mouthed carp.

  Whatever he said to her parents, he received a nod. He bowed in return, kissed her mother’s hand, then stepped down from the dais
that overlooked the ballroom and crossed the floor, parting the expectant dancers.

  Jane was captivated by the sight of him in the tailored satin-trimmed black broadcloth and high, snowy cravat that accentuated the chiseled cut of his jaw and chin. He prowled toward her, every step purposeful, every eye watching his progress.

  Then, the music began again.

  He stopped in front of her and inclined his head. “Miss Pickerington. Miss Parrish. How fetching you both look tonight.”

  “Pretty words,” Ellie said, surreptitiously dabbing her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “Though, they might be more convincing if you’d actually looked in my direction.”

  His mouth curled in a smirk. “I saw you in your gold-colored finery, Miss Parrish. So did the officer coming this way to ask you to dance.”

  She let out a small gasp as she looked over his shoulder and saw that he was right. But Jane already knew that he was aware of every person, always on his guard. To her, he merely held out his hand in expectation. And her fingertips pulsed with longing.

  “A gentleman asks,” she whispered.

  He leaned closer, a low deep breath of amusement brushing her cheek. “I think you’re the one who needs lessons—lessons on remembering that I’m not a gentleman. However, on this particular occasion, I asked your parents for permission.”

  Reaching out, he snatched her hand and then stole around to the center of her back. Before she could recover from shock, he pulled her into his frame for a closed waltz, his steps quick and light and leaving her breathless.

  A minute or more passed before she could say, “You likely should have honored your host by dancing with his daughter first.”

  “Would you have liked to see me dancing with the marquess’s daughter?”

  “No,” she said without hesitation and he grinned. But there was something that needed to be mentioned. “Should I call you Merrick now, or do you prefer Mr. Northcott?”

  He pulled her a fraction closer than propriety permitted and gazed down at her warmly. “To you, I will always remain Raven. Northcott to all others.”