by Julia Kelly
“Why, Lord Asten,” she gasped in mock shock.
“I was young once too. I haven’t entirely forgotten what it’s like to be at the beginning of something exciting, Miss Woodward.”
Everything seemed to go golden with the memory of the moment of excitement they’d shared. If only she could have one more night with him, it might be enough. She could stop this foolish wanting and once again tame the wildness in her he seemed to have unleashed.
Except she wasn’t going to get another night with this man. She couldn’t allow it. Wasn’t the handkerchief reminder enough of how dangerously close to the edge she danced?
“I should follow them before they’re alone too long,” she said, suddenly needing to be out of the same room as him.
She was almost to the door when he called out, “You were right, you know.”
She stopped. “About what?”
“Lady Laughlin. My daughter. Everything.”
An admission that he’d been wrong. It was more than she’d expected from a member of the peerage, but somehow from him it seemed only natural. Lord Asten wasn’t like any earl, marquis, or duke she’d ever encountered. He was somehow more.
“Sometimes an outsider sees things that a family member can’t,” she said.
He shook his head with a little laugh. “An outsider is the last thing I would call you, Miss Woodward. I hope you don’t think of yourself that way. Not in this house. Not in this family.”
Mary let herself out of the room without another word, hoping the earl didn’t see the tears welling up in her eyes.
Chapter Nine
“Are you absolutely certain?” There was a strain of desperation in Asten’s voice as he held his mystery woman’s handkerchief in his hand and shook it under the nose of the fourth modiste he’d visited that day. The woman was the ninth craftswoman he’d seen since the masque, and he was beginning to fear he’d run out of seamstresses, dressmakers, and haberdashers before he got answers.
The small, acerbic Frenchwoman who stood across the glass counter from him squared her shoulders. “That handkerchief is not one of mine.”
“But you barely looked at it,” he said, unwilling to accept the woman’s denial.
“It is not one of mine, sir. The stitching is good, but it isn’t good enough. Do you see this here?” She pointed to a spot where one of the vines curved up and around on itself. “You would never see a gap in the bend on anything that came from my shop.”
“Do you know who could have made it?”
The woman gave him a distinctly Gallic shrug. “To me it looks made at home. Not professional.”
His heart sank as resignation crept in. If the handkerchief was stitched by Miss Falsum, he stood little chance of finding her unless their paths crossed again. And that in itself seemed like a long shot at best, for even his daughter couldn’t tell him anything about her friend. He’d checked his Debrett’s and every society column he could get his hands on. She wasn’t mentioned anywhere. Miss Falsum, it would seem, was false indeed. Just as he’d feared.
Asten sighed and stepped back from the counter. “Thank you for your time, madam.”
He pushed out of the shop and onto the street, the rain falling around him punctuating his black mood. If only she’d given him her real name. He knew that there were a thousand reasons for her to run, starting with the four hundred members of the ton dancing nearby as she’d been pleasured on a garden bench, but they’d shared such a connection he wanted to believe it might have been powerful enough to make her stay.
It had certainly been enough to make him throw off all of his usual nobility and wade straight into a sea of insanity.
What had he been thinking, seducing a woman in public? It was so unlike him, but then again he wasn’t entirely sure he’d been the one in control. Hadn’t she seduced him with soft touches and throaty whispers? Hadn’t she seemed to promise pleasure and thrill?
She’d come alive in his arms, her passion sparking just below her controlled surface. A touch of lips had been all it took to unlock her. She’d been fearless and hungry, shameless in wanting more from him. Demanding it.
Madness had prompted him to sweep her up in his arms and carry her off to where he could worship her with his mouth, but it was a craziness he’d gladly repeat again and again. The taste of her against his tongue—tangy and yet sweet—was all he could think about.
Each night since the ball, he’d dreamed of her. In his dreams he could feel the warmth of her naked body writhing beneath him and the brush of her silken hair against his hands. He’d slide into her, wanting the powerful clench of her muscles around him and the groan of her pleasure. But then—each and every night—he’d suddenly realize that he wasn’t making love to his mystery woman but to Miss Woodward. The governess would fix her vixen eyes on him and press her hips up and all of a sudden he’d wake in a sweat, heart pounding and cock hard as rock.
“She’s not for you,” he muttered as he climbed through the open carriage door and dropped onto the padded velvet bench. He still held the handkerchief in his hand, his thumb playing over the material again and again.
He desperately needed to find the owner of that scrap of cloth because the raw, frustrating truth of it was that his encounter with the mysterious woman in the garden hadn’t done nearly enough to distract him. If anything, it had only made his lust for Miss Woodward more powerful. Now Lord Asten, a man who prided himself on being good and moral and the exact opposite of his father, was dangerously close to gathering his governess in his arms and ruining her. He couldn’t do that to her, but his resolve slipped a little more every time he caught her stealing a glance and looking away.
Miss Falsum was the one he needed. She was the one he could have—willing and eager as she’d been. If only he could find her again, he might channel his passion. His mystery woman could be his salvation, because in his home lived the devil herself.
Mary sat in her bedroom a week after the Marquis de Lancey’s ball, cursing the rain that fell as hard as pellets on her window. Shortly after Lord Blakeney had left from his call, the heavens had opened and it hadn’t stopped raining since. The entire Asten household had kept indoors, and after this many days of confinement her nerves were an undeniable mess—a clock wound too tight because every way she turned, Lord Asten was there. She kept running into him, and every time they crossed paths the spring of tension between them tightened just a little bit more.
He must feel it too. He must. This kind of torture—drawn out and unrequited—couldn’t be one-sided. She thought she saw it in the tightness of his jaw, the dart of his tongue, and the flex of his fingers when she walked by. But Lord Asten was a gentleman and a gentleman never acts on such base desires—even if a lady wants him to. And oh, did she want him to.
She hugged her arms around her knees, trying to wish away the longing for his hands on the bare skin of her thighs. Just that morning at the breakfast table she’d silently begged for him to walk her back against a wall and pin her with the solid weight of his body. He didn’t even have to kiss her; he could just touch her. That would satiate her.
Except it wouldn’t—nothing short of all of him could do that, but she feared that if she somehow let him take her, let him love her, she’d never lose her taste for him. She’d be desperate for his kisses and his caresses, an addict clinging to the source of her pleasure.
Mary fell back against her pillows. She had it all wrong. She’d be a fool if she hadn’t noticed him take out her handkerchief and smooth it with the edge of his thumb the night before. Excitement had fluttered in her the first time, but then she remembered the woman he thought it belonged to. And so she sat there, watching him stroke the embroidery again and again as though he might make its owner appear from thin air—a genie summoned from its lamp.
She could show him that the woman he sought was right in front of him, but then what would happe
n? Revealing that she was the mysterious Miss Falsum behind the silver mask would earn her a quick dismissal without a letter of reference. His promises that she was a part of the family wouldn’t matter then. Things looked very different when scandal, embarrassment, and duplicity were involved.
And so she carried the weight of her secret all by herself.
“No,” she said, sitting up in her bed. “This will not do.”
Mary cast off her bed linens, drew on her quilted dressing gown, picked up the novel she’d been reading, and slipped down the servants’ staircase. If she was going to be up half the night again, she might as well be properly provisioned.
A light shone from the kitchen, and she said a silent thank-you to whichever scullery maid had neglected to dim it before she’d retired that night. It made finding her way down the still-unfamiliar passageway easier.
She was just rounding the corner to the kitchen when the scrape of a pen against paper made her heart stop. Sitting at the wide, well-worn wooden table was Lord Asten in his shirtsleeves.
“Oh!” she exclaimed in a rush, startled by the intimacy of the scene. “I didn’t think to find you here, sir. Good night.”
“Miss Woodward, wait,” he called out.
Stop being a ninny, she ordered herself, even though her book was clutched firmly to her chest. It was silly to feel so naked before this man even if she only wore her dressing gown and her night rail. He’d exposed a good portion of her body himself, but that had been when she’d been the bold, beautifully dressed Miss Falsum. But now she was just Mary. Now it felt different.
“I would never drive off a fellow insomniac,” he said, nodding to a pan of milk that sat on the heavy iron stove as he stood. “Will you please join me?”
She hesitated as he gestured to the chair he’d vacated, but the pull of just a little more time around the earl was too much. Being around him felt too good. He didn’t even have to touch her to make her feel special—different. There was something about the easy way he laughed with her and the way he listened to her as though her words were somehow connected to her very soul and each one was important.
So she sat in the earl’s chair even though she knew that little act itself was the epitome of recklessness.
“Can I make you up a cup of cocoa?” he asked, his hands clasped behind his back in the very picture of the attentive gentleman.
“I’ll get it,” she said, starting to rise.
He waved her back down again. “This is the one thing I know how to make, and if you’ll allow me to show off my talents I’d be most grateful.”
“I thought most gentlemen spend as little time in the kitchen as possible,” she said as she watched him move with casual grace, pulling down a stoneware mug that would be completely out of place at his table and measuring out some chocolate shavings into it.
“Your prejudice isn’t unwarranted,” he said. “I only learned because Cook was tired of Warthing waking the kitchen maids when I required late-night refreshment. Luckily tonight, there’s just enough heat left in the stove to simmer a saucer of milk.”
She watched him pour out a measure, take up a fork, and make a great show of whisking it up with the chocolate. With a flourish and a tap of the utensil against the edge of the mug, he delivered the drink to her with a little bow. “For you, madam.”
Their fingers brushed, and she tried her hardest not to shudder at the low burn that rolled from the tip of her fingers to her slit and back again.
If Lord Asten noticed, he didn’t let on. Instead he grabbed a chair from the corner of the kitchen and planted it across from her with a smile.
There was a beat of silence. They’d spent so little time alone together without some clear topic of conversation—usually Lady Eleanora—to guide them. What does one say to an earl who is in a less than proper state of dress?
Mary gestured at the table strewn with stacks of papers. “Your work?”
He grunted and began to worry his watch chain. “My folly.”
“What’s troubling you?”
“The House of Commons passed a bill to increase the tax on the grain farmers produce, but it’s riddled with holes. I’m afraid it’s about to be rejected even though at its core it’s not a bad bill.”
“You enjoy your parliamentary work?” she asked before taking a sip of chocolate. It was excellent, bitter and sweet all at once.
“I do, although sometimes I wonder whether it’s worth all the bother. I would just as soon spend my time with my daughter, or on improvements at Rose Hollow. But then I remember why I do it and I find that even the most vexing work becomes easier.”
“And what is that?” she asked.
“What is what?”
“The reason that you continue to sit every session and debate bills.”
He picked up his own mug and took a sip as though weighing her question. “A sense of duty.”
Duty. Responsibility. Honor. Those were the things that drove this man.
“I imagine that an earl’s life is filled with obligation,” she said.
His expression darkened a little bit, but it wasn’t anger. Sadness, perhaps.
“It’s led to some of the greatest and worst decisions of my life. You’ll have guessed that I married my wife out of duty,” he said.
Mary grew very still. She hadn’t meant to stir up such memories, but now that she had, she wanted nothing more than for him to continue.
He stared at a spot on the table with a frown as though trying to figure out where to begin. “Lucinda was beautiful, young, and an heiress. At the time it seemed the best possible combination a young man could hope for. My father told me that she’d make the right sort of wife, keeping my household and bearing my children. He told me I was doing my duty by the earldom, and I believed him. There was little doubt I’d have my heir in no time.
“Eleanora came first. Some of my friends thought having a girl straight off was a disappointment, but I was thrilled to have a healthy child. My wife . . .” He trailed off. “Right after the birth my father died, and suddenly I was an earl with a haphazardly maintained estate to run. I spent more and more time split between Sussex and London, in Parliament and with my man of business. I hardly saw Lucinda, and I certainly didn’t see what was happening before my eyes.”
“What was that?” Mary asked quietly.
He’d pulled out his watch and turned the engraved gold case in his hands like it could conjure up the memories. “I knew she didn’t love me. I’d hoped that we could grow into a certain comfortable companionship after some time. I didn’t count on her taking a lover.”
Mary’s breath caught. “How did you find out?”
“She told me,” he said, looking up at her with haunted eyes. “She said she wanted to live apart because I neglected her. She wanted a clean break.”
She could hear what it cost his pride to confess those words as surely as she could hear the pain his wife’s infidelity had caused him. “And what did you do?”
He sighed. “I could have been a brute and held her against her will, but I didn’t want that. If she was miserable enough to stray, I didn’t want to make her stay.”
“But she died.”
He nodded. “She’d bought a ticket on a ship bound for Spain. She was going to ride out the worst of the scandal there with her lover, but the week before she was supposed to depart, she died.”
The way he said it was all the more heartbreaking. He’d as much as told Mary that he hadn’t loved his wife, but there was no mistaking the regret and pain all tangled together.
He took a long drink and set his mug down on the table with a decisive click, letting his hand rest on it. “She died in her bed, her steamer trunks half packed. The doctor said there must have been something wrong with her heart. She was just twenty-three.”
The urge to wrap him in her arms and absolve hi
m of the guilt he carried pulsed through her. He was a good man—she had no doubt of that—but he had chosen wrong and it had cost him dearly.
“Do you know the worst part?” he asked with a half laugh that carried no mirth.
“What is that?”
“I’m glad that Eleanora doesn’t remember her mother. Lucinda was cold with her, and it would have just pained Eleanora the older she got.”
“Some women don’t warm to children,” Mary said, knowing all too well the same could be said of her own mother.
“She asked me to take Eleanora when she told me she was leaving,” he said. “She didn’t want her getting in the way of her new life.”
No longer able to stand it, Mary covered his hand with hers. “But now Lady Eleanora has the best father.”
He gave a weak smile, his thumb lightly brushing over hers before he seemed to remember himself and moved it back to the table. He didn’t, however, pull away.
“Lord Asten, the story I told in the drawing room when Lady Laughlin came to call isn’t the full account of what happened to me,” she said quietly, feeling she owed him a little bit more of herself after the things he’d told her.
“I should like to know, if you want to tell me,” he said.
Her cheeks heated—why, she didn’t know. Perhaps it was the intimacy of sharing secrets in an empty kitchen when the rest of the house was sleeping. Or maybe it was just that this man seemed to be able to open her up like a book and peer down at the pages, reading the secrets no one was supposed to know.
“It isn’t a happy story, or a respectable one,” she warned.
He merely squeezed her hand in reassurance.
She closed her eyes. She was going to tell him everything. All the shame of her mother’s past—even as she couldn’t muster a sense of shame about what she’d done at the masque. She owed it to this man who’d shown her nothing but decency and respect and, under the guise of another, thrilling passion.
“My grandfather bought a cotton mill long before I was born, and he raised my father to take it over. Except that my father didn’t just do that. He grew it into a little empire of mills and factories in Manchester.”