A Lord's Kiss

by Mary Lancaster et al.

  “Wish me luck,” he told the statue and kissed Diana’s cold marble cheek. He dropped down to the grass and marched in the direction of the terrace. Still clutching her silly little bonnet, he plowed through the first wall of yews with a few branches clawing his hair and something drawing blood in a long scratch across his hand. Some well-chosen curses accompanied by more scratches propelled him through the next. By the time he fell through the last hedge between himself and the Duke and Duchess of Mitford’s London home, Ethan was cursing like a sailor, bloodied like a prize fighter, and had leaves, thorns and branches sticking him in places he did not want to contemplate. He glanced up and spotted the swish of azure and ivory striped skirts disappearing around the corner of the house in the direction of the Venetian breakfast.

  “Lady Georgiana,” he shouted. He took the stairs two at a time and raced across the terrace. He rounded the house, eliciting startled shrieks from a clutch of young ladies strolling in the direction of the maze. Ethan dodged them with a half bow and lengthened his stride as he saw Georgiana, his sister-in-law, and the other ladies approach the carriages waiting in the curve of the drive. Eleanor turned, saw him, and tapped Georgiana on the shoulder. He watched the words form on her lips.

  “Oh, dear,” she said and then covered her mouth with her hand to hide her smile. The other ladies did their best to subvert their amusement and failed utterly. Eleanor, at least, managed a bit of sympathy in her perusal of his disheveled appearance.

  “You forgot your bonnet, my lady,” Ethan said as he handed her the ribbons still clutched in his hand.

  “I am trying to decide, Captain Dorrill,” Lady Arthur said as she took the battered straw creation from Georgiana’s limp grip. “Which of you has fared worse—this, uhm bonnet, you say? Or you?”

  “What on earth did you do, sir?” Mrs. McCormick, who, he’d been informed, insisted on using her married name rather than Lady Abigail, asked. She took the liberty of plucking a small branch from his shoulder. “Climb under the maze?”

  “Through it, actually. Your sister abandoned me, and I panicked at the thought of spending eternity in the company of marble statues and whatever woodland creatures unfortunate enough to wander into the duchess’s maze.”

  “Panicked?” Georgiana snorted and began to brush bits and pieces of yew from his hair and shoulders. “You are a sailor, sir. I daresay you could find the Cape of Africa with naught save a compass and the stars. Panicked, indeed.”

  “Unfortunately, I was too afraid to wait for night to fall.”

  “Are you afraid of the dark, Captain?” Georgiana asked as she circled him in search of more foliage to remove.

  “Very much so. Almost as afraid as you are of—owww! Was that truly necessary?” Ethan rubbed his scalp where she had tugged a stick and what felt like a small lock of hair from his head.

  “Perhaps you two should continue this discussion in the carriage,” Mrs. McCormick suggested.

  “I am going home with you, Abby,” Georgiana’s voice rose slightly, half in plea and half in anger. Or so it sounded to Ethan.

  “No, dear,” Eleanor said as she took the lady’s arm and steered her toward Ethan’s brother’s carriage. “You and my brother-in-law are taking my carriage and I am taking his phaeton. You don’t mind do you, Ethan? Good. I do love a phaeton. Lady Arthur, might I take you up with me?”

  “But, Eleanor,” Ethan started. Was his brother’s wife really going to drive—

  “Yes, please. Let me send my carriage home.” Captain Farnsworth’s wife waved her coachman over.

  In moments, Georgiana’s trio of friends had bundled her and Ethan into the closed carriage that had conveyed Eleanor to the Venetian breakfast. His arse had barely touched the rear-facing seat before the vehicle jerked into motion. He nearly fell off the seat, and when he caught himself, something jabbed him in the thigh.

  “What the devil?” Ethan shoved his hand into the side of his fawn breeches and drew out a stick. “I’ll be shedding thorns, leaves, and God knows what else for weeks.”

  Georgiana clutched the remains of her bonnet and glanced anywhere and everywhere save at him. “Might you please wait until you arrive home to…” She waved in his direction.

  “To what, my lady?” Ethan slumped into the squabs and spread his arms across the back of the seat, one booted foot propped on his knee.

  “This is completely improper, and you know it.”

  “Do I?” He allowed a slow smile to curve his lips. “I’m a simple sailor, my lady. I fear my manners are somewhat lacking. Perhaps you might be persuaded to rid me of my improper behavior.”

  “I doubt I shall live long enough to rid you of all of your improper behavior.”

  “Perhaps you simply don’t want to. I think you like a bit of impropriety.” He dropped his foot to the floor and leaned across to tug the bonnet from her hands. Hands he engulfed in his own. “I think you need a bit of impropriety in your life.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She tried to pull her hands free. He held fast. “My father has ordered me to allow you to court me, Captain Dorrill.”

  “Ethan.”

  “But you must know we would never suit. You have merely to tell my father so and we can end—”

  “Why?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Why won’t we suit? We were suiting quite well when you were kissing me. Before you ran away like a frightened hare. Was my kissing truly that bad?” Ethan hadn’t believed her little speech for a minute. Too practiced. Too dispirited. Too much like the speeches he rattled off when people asked why he continued to captain for Dorrill Shipping when it was the last thing he wanted to do.

  “I wasn’t kissing you. You were kissing me, and I didn’t run away.” She finally freed her hands and folded them primly in her lap. “I found your kissing adequate, but tiresome, and I walked away.”

  “I’ve seen Seven Dials pickpockets walk away with the Watch on their heels more slowly than you fled Her Grace’s maze. A woman does not flee adequate kissing, she slaps a man’s face for it.”

  “The voice of experience, Captain?”

  “Ethan.” He leaned back against the squabs once more. “And I will confess, you are not the first lady I have kissed. Much to my regret.”

  She rolled her eyes, but a faint splash of pink lit the crest of her cheeks. He wanted to kiss her there, to press his lips against the glowing color until it spread over her entire body. Her naked body. He opened and closed the fingers of one hand to disabuse himself of the notion. Didn’t work, but it helped. An odd crawling sensation slithered down his back.

  “I am certain you have kissed a great many ladies. I daresay you have no regrets to speak of, as men like you do as you please.”

  “Men like me? You might be surprised.” He turned his head to stare out the window of the carriage, watching the crowded streets of London pass by. Ethan was tired. Tired of being manipulated. Tired of doing the right thing to keep his family safe, at any price. Tired of his place in life because suddenly he wanted to be…worthy. A gentle brush to his hair drew his attention back to his lovely companion.

  “It is a wonder the duchess has a maze left, at all,” Georgiana murmured as her delicate fingers sifted through his hair. “You have half a yew tree in your hair. You don’t want to wander about London looking like a Yorkshire hedgeman.”

  Ethan exerted every bit of his control not to close his eyes and lean into her touch. Her eyes, soft and liquid, with the slightest hint of amusement shining in them, roved over his face.

  “What do you want, Georgiana?” That odd sensation crept from his spine around his chest and toward his belly. “If you could have your heart’s desire with no thought to the consequences, nor thought to what your family wants or expects or needs. What would you want?”

  Her hand stilled. He suppressed a shiver at the intimacy of her touch, her fingers yet tangled in his hair. She sought the view out the carriage window. He’d resigned himself to receiving no answ
er when she finally spoke.

  “To be someone else.”

  She laughed—a mirthless, haunted scrape of sound from a throat tight with unshed tears. He sensed it as surely as if those tears were trapped in his own body, raw and unconcerned about appearances. Ethan had no memory of tears past those Thomas had beaten out of him the day his parents died. When had Georgiana last allowed herself to weep?

  “Who else would you be?”

  She snatched her hand back and faced him once more. “A poor jest, sir. I would not expect you to understand.” The austere composure of years of lessons and breeding came over her like a shroud. Ethan’s body went cold at the sight, save for an insistent tickling in the vicinity of his groin.

  “You want to be someone free of the responsibilities of duty to family. Free of the yoke of being the eldest, the buffer between your sibling and whatever fate your elders have in store for her. Free of the choices forced on you by relatives and circumstances woven into your life before you were born.” He collapsed back onto his seat. “Something a low-born pirate like myself would never understand.” His body coiled and tightened with all the things he wanted to say. She’d hurt him, he who never allowed anyone close enough to bruise the few tender places he had left. The duke’s gently raised daughter had deftly slipped a blade between the hard-won bravado with which he faced the world and the fear he wrestled every day.

  She stared at him, her blue eyes wide and confused. “I…did not. It is of no matter.”

  Dammit all.

  Ethan leaned forward and— “Holy hell!” He shot off the seat and banged his head on the top of the carriage. Something was biting him. Over and over again, and moving about his trousers as it did. Georgiana gasped and flattened herself against her seat.

  “What on earth? Captain, stop! Ethan!”

  He dropped back into the seat and ran his hand beneath the waistband of the tight-fitting breeches. “Something is biting me. Owww!” He withdrew his hand and shook it, flinging dots of blood onto the fawn fabric of his buckskins. “Blighter bit my finger.” He twisted and turned in the seat trying to dislodge his hidden tormenter.

  “Where is it?” She tossed her shawl and reticule aside and knelt in the floor to run her hands over his thighs. “How did it get into your drawers?”

  “I’m not wearing drawers,” he snapped. “How can a man wear drawers in trousers so tight he has to lie down to don them?” If she kept handling him like a housewife inspecting a haunch of lamb, he’d not be responsible for his actions. Or, with luck, hers.

  She helped him tug his shirttails free, laughing so hard her shoulders shook. Her fingers slid inside his waistband just enough to pull it away from his stomach. Ethan ran his hand inside whilst she turned her head, still laughing.

  “Ow! Ow, ow, ow! Come here, damn you! This isn’t funny.”

  “Yes, it is,” Georgiana nearly howled. “Shall I try?”

  “Only if you want me to bite you.”

  She snatched her hand free and covered her mouth with the fingers of her other hand.

  “Caught you!” He withdrew his hand, a small lizard trapped between his forefinger and thumb.

  “Oh,” she cried. “Don’t hurt him.” She sat up on her knees and flattened her palms on his knees to better see Ethan’s captive.

  “Don’t hurt him? He nearly unmanned me.” He glanced from the wiggling reptile to the siren at his feet.

  “I daresay it will take more than a garden lizard to unman you, Captain Dorrill.” Her face flushed as she backed herself onto her seat. The tip of her tongue darted out just enough to lick the seam of her lips.

  “It is your fault, you know.”

  “Mine? I hardly think—”

  “Had you not run away I would not have plowed through Her Grace’s maze like a flushed stag and acquired my vicious passenger.” Ethan examined the creature, its mouth open in an attempt to bite its way free. When he returned his gaze to Georgiana, he saw her attention similarly fixed. Their eyes met over the defiant garden denizen. An unspoken understanding passed between them. Neither gave it voice. There was no need. It simply…was.

  “What shall we do with him?” she asked quietly.

  Ethan tapped on the small window behind his seat. A panel slid open. “Stop at Spencer House,” he ordered.

  “Yes, sir,” the coachman replied.

  They rode in silence for the few moments it took to reach the front garden gates of the London home of Earl Spencer. Once the carriage halted, Ethan opened the door and leapt down to the pavement. Whilst Georgiana leaned out the door and looked on, he strolled to the gates and surreptitiously peered into the expansive front gardens. He knelt down and thrust his hand through the bars.

  “I realize an earl’s gardens are a step down for you, but perhaps you can bear it.” He opened his fingers and watched the lizard scurry into the manicured grass.

  Ethan stood, glanced up and down the pavement in the hope no one saw him, hurried back into the carriage, and settled into his seat as the coachman set the carriage in motion.

  “Do you often speak to reptiles…Ethan?” Georgiana took a handkerchief she’d magically acquired and blotted blood from his wounded finger. The cut inflicted by the lizard’s teeth continued to well. She set about creating a makeshift bandage with the scrap of linen and lace.

  “Only those who attack my…person.”

  “Of course. There.” She patted his bandaged finger and gathered her reticule, shawl, and battered bonnet.

  “Georgiana, I intend—”

  “Thank you for a most entertaining afternoon, Captain Dorrill.” The carriage had barely come to a halt before her family’s London townhouse. Ash’s footman, Dickie, opened the door and let down the steps and the lady allowed him to hand her out before Ethan had the chance to move.

  Ethan leaned out the door, her name dying on his lips as the Addington butler opened the door. Georgiana turned and came halfway down the walk.

  “You asked me what I want,” she said.

  “Yes.” For some odd reason, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

  “I want you to join me on my morning ride tomorrow. Rotten Row in Hyde Park at eight?” Eyes bright, she smiled at him inquiringly.

  Oh hell.

  “As my lady commands,” Ethan replied with a sweeping bow. When he straightened, she had disappeared into the house.

  “Beggin’ your pardon for asking, Captain,” Dickie said, “but have you ever ridden a horse?”

  “Get in the carriage, Dickie, I need yours and Matthias’s help.”

  Chapter Six

  Thud!

  Georgiana winced and peered through the shrubs at the far end of Hyde Park. A small cloud of dust swirled around the horse’s hooves and covered his fallen rider in dirt. That particular fall, louder than the previous dozen or so, had to have hurt.

  “Is there a reason we are lurking about in the foliage at the break of day like a couple of footpads in search of an easy mark?” Abigail asked. Georgiana’s sister held the reins of both of their horses, and as today’s venture necessitated stealth, she stood a few steps back from Georgiana’s excellent vantage point.

  “I don’t want him to know that I know he has never ridden a horse in his life,” Georgiana whispered over her shoulder.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Georgie. He’s an Englishman. Of course, Captain Dorrill has ridden a—”

  Thud!

  The morning air was lit blue with some of the most colorful and descriptive language either of them had ever heard. Dispersions were cast on the horse’s antecedents, the necessity of wearing “breeches tight enough to make me a eunuch before the day is out” and the footman, Dickie’s, qualifications as riding instructor. Georgiana and Abigail scooted a little closer, pulling the branches of the hedge aside slightly to obtain a clearer view. Difficult to do when each of them had a hand clasped over their mouths to prevent laughter from escaping.

  “Dickie taught me to ride, Uncle Ethan. I know he can teach
you,” young Matthias, perched on a stout Welsh pony, chided. “Try again. You’re making Pumpkin nervous, is all. A good horseman calms his horse. Right, Dickie?”

  Ethan dusted off his clothing and rubbed his hip as he approached the rather plump red mare he’d been attempting to ride for the better part of half an hour. He grabbed up the reins and turned to the remarkably solemn footman. “Precisely where did you gain these superior equitation instructional skills, Dickie? It’s easy enough to teach a child to ride. Any farmer’s son can do that.”

  “I daresay you’re right, Captain. ︐Specially when the child manages to mount the horse and stay on it for more than two seconds together. Sir.”

  Georgiana and her sister turned away, doubled over in silent laughter.

  “Dickie?” Ethan said.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Sod off.”

  Abigail gasped softly, her eyes wide. She and Georgiana peeked around the hedge.

  “Mrs. Dorrill will have both our hides if she hears you talking that way in front of t’young master,” Dickie warned.

  “Matthias doesn’t know what that means,” Ethan assured him. Somehow, this time, the handsome devil had managed to land in the saddle and stay there. Georgiana was far too pleased about it, too. He was supposed to find this too difficult and give up his unwanted courtship of her.

  “Yes, I do,” Matthias said cheerfully as he walked his pony in front of his uncle’s mare. Pumpkin followed placidly behind him.

  Ethan, eyebrow raised, glanced at the footman, who now wore a sheepish grin.

  “He’s your brother’s son,” Dickie offered.

  “God help us both,” Ethan muttered. He adjusted his seat, flinched a bit, and tightened his hold on the reins. “Matthias, slow down, if you please.”