Unraveling the Earl

by Lynne Barron

  “Christ, I’m an idiot.” Henry pulled his hand free of his sister’s grasp and dragged it through his hair, his mind filled with the image of Georgie as he’d last seen her. Fiery curls surrounding a pale face beneath the multi-hued moonlight, eyes bright and lips trembling.

  It had never been about vengeance at all, the pretty little liar. Georgie had traded her future for his honor and all the other malarkey that didn’t mean a damn thing without her.

  “I’m sorry I’m late.” Beatrice strolled into the dining room. “The darned morning malaise makes it impossible for me to rise from my bed before noon most days. Where is Georgiana?”

  “She’s not beneath the table linens,” Alice replied before lifting Olivia’s cup and taking a dainty sip.

  “Miss Buchanan has left Henry,” Olivia replied. “He’s after finding her.”

  “Georgie hasn’t left me,” Henry argued, circling around the table and striding for the hall. “It was a misunderstanding, a little show of pique. We’ll talk it out. I’ll apologize and she’ll laugh at me and we’ll kiss and make up.”

  “There, you see,” Beatrice exclaimed as he passed her. “I knew Georgiana would not leave you.”

  “I don’t know, Henry,” Olivia said, following on Henry’s heels. “I don’t think Dobbins was prevaricating when he said she wasn’t at home.”

  “Henry, please don’t go chasing your tail all over Town.” Beatrice turned to trail after her siblings. “Georgiana will come to her senses and you simply must be here waiting for her when she does.”

  “If you ask me, Hastings ought to let Georgiana Buchanan chase him for a change.” Alice abandoned her purloined breakfast to join the parade through the hall. “After all, she jilted him.”

  “No one asked you,” Beatrice retorted.

  “Georgie did not jilt me.” Henry took the stairs at a clip, already rehearsing the things he would say when he pushed past Dobbins and found Georgie in one of the gaudily decorated rooms in her house. Preferably the bedchamber with its pink and green floral wallpaper and ugly matching coverlet.

  “Of course she didn’t,” Beatrice agreed. “If she’s anything like me, her thoughts and emotions are all in a tangle just now, but she’ll be back when she gets them sorted out properly.”

  “Georgie is nothing like you.” Henry replied, impatient to escape their chatter and be on his way. “She is unlike any other woman I’ve ever met. She has her own brand of loyalty, warped ideas of right and wrong and skewed notions of honor. And last night she bartered all of it, sacrificed her happiness for mine. But I never agreed to any such trade and as soon as I tell her so, all will be well.”

  “Honestly, Bea, try to pull your head from beneath your skirts,” Alice drawled, ignoring Henry’s words in favor of sparring with Beatrice. “For whatever convoluted reason, the woman jilted Hastings.

  “You pull your head from beneath your skirts, Alice,” Beatrice snapped. “No woman in her right mind would jilt her fiancé when she is carrying his babe.”

  Henry missed the next step, banging his shin and grabbing for the banister as the world tilted around him. His feet slipped out from beneath him and he went down hard on his knees, turning at the last possible moment so that his shoulder took the brunt of his fall rather than his chin.

  “Georgiana’s with child? But how do you know?” Olivia whispered as Henry slid down a step, completed the rotation and landed on his ass, his gaze finding the ladies clustered like hens at the foot of the stairs.

  “Like recognizes like.” Beatrice said with a graceful shrug of one shoulder.

  “Well that certainly explains why I ended up with raspberry crumble dripping down my bodice.”

  Some twenty minutes later the earl who’d so recently been reminded he was an idiot realized that there was nothing quite like a supercilious butler who’d once changed a mad countess’s nappies to effectively raise an idiot’s temper to a boiling point.

  “Get the hell out of my way,” Henry snarled, pushing past Dobbins with enough force to send the man reeling out of his way.

  “You cannot just barge into this house.” The old man lifted his bald head to stare down his bulbous nose at the intruder in his domain.

  “Where is Georgie?” Henry bellowed, his voice echoing off the scarlet damask walls and the domed ceiling where nude nymphs cavorted.

  “Miss Buchanan is not at home,” Dobbins replied from his stance at the open door. “If you’d care to leave your calling card I’ll be certain to see that my mistress receives it.”

  “If you don’t tell me where Georgie is I’ll shove my calling card so far up your—”

  “What the hell is going on out here?”

  The Duke of Mountjoy stood in an open doorway dressed in a turquoise silk robe festooned with brightly colored embroidered dragons.

  “Can’t a man get a few minutes of peace and quiet in his own house?” Mountjoy demanded. “You, Bob and Weave, shut the fucking door and get me a pot of strong coffee and some of those lemon things Cookie bakes for me.”

  “The tarts, Your Grace?” Dobbins asked as he eased the door closed.

  “Bugger the tarts. The other, the heavy cakes. I’ll take two.”

  “Two slices of lemon pound cake and a carafe of coffee, right away.” Dobbins bowed with great dignity.

  “Not two slices, Booby, Boxer, whatever the hell your name is. Two bloody cakes.” Mountjoy ignored the servant’s silent retreat to turn his attention to the unexpected guest in the foyer. “You look like you were rode hard and put away wet.”

  Henry could hardly deny the words, seeing as he’d tossed on whatever garments came to hand before riding hell for leather through the muddy London streets. His hair was damp with sweat and sticking to his scalp, his chin whiskered and his cravat and jacket forgotten. If that weren’t enough, he suspected his waistcoat was not buttoned correctly, what with the way the gray silk pulled beneath his left armpit.

  “I realize it is unseemly, my arriving so early, Your Grace,” Henry said, striving for a measure of gentlemanly conduct regardless of the proof to the opposite. “But I must see Georgie immediately.”

  “Hell, lad, I thought she spent the night with you.”

  “You thought…after I gave you my word there would be no further…er, dallying before the wedding?” Henry felt the flush crawl up his neck as he sidestepped for all he was worth, wondering how Georgie managed it without any telltale signs.

  He would have to ask her the secret just as soon as he apologized for his behavior the night before and begged her forgiveness for not recognizing the bargain she’d offered up to save him.

  Perhaps while they traveled to Gretna Green.

  “Ach, I never expected you to hold to your word,” Mountjoy replied with a rumbling laugh. “I only made you give it so’s to watch you squirm.”

  “What is it with you Buchanans?” Henry asked, fighting the urge to tug at his waistcoat where it bit into his armpit. “Do you all of you have such queer notions about honor?”

  “I thought we were talking about words, not honor. Words are just that. Spoken, sung, written, words are cheap. Shite, words can be bought on any street corner for less than the price of a posy of wilted flowers.”

  “A gentleman’s word is his vow and his honor is at stake when he gives it.” Henry knew he ought not to argue given the dishonorable way he’d behaved the previous night. All of the dishonorable, disgraceful and disgusting ways he’d behaved.

  “I’m a fucking duke so I guess I must be a gentleman but my honor sure as hell isn’t tied up in anything so flimsy as the words I speak. My honor is in my deeds, and make no mistake.”

  Well, what do you know? The Duke of Mountjoy not only possessed the same queer notions of honor as his cousin, he was also something of a philosopher.

  “You might as well come in and take a seat,” Mountjoy nodded to the parlor at his back, a room decorated in an Oriental fashion complete with teal silk walls, black lacquered furnishings with go
ld finishes and half a dozen Chinese lanterns hanging from the ceiling. “George likely curled up in her carriage to catch forty winks after the ball last night. Seeing as that shrew of maid of hers would lop off the head of anyone who dares to wake the lass, you might be waiting for a while.”

  “Are you telling me Georgie did not come home last night?”

  “I can’t rightly say.” His Grace scratched his chin beneath his bristly beard. “I just rolled in with the sun myself.”

  “Goddamn it,” Henry bellowed as he turned for the stairs, taking them two at a time, ignoring the pounding behind his temples and the panicked beat of his heart.

  Georgie’s bedchamber was as neat as a pin, the garish floral bedspread pulled tight beneath frilly pillows, the lace curtains motionless before the closed windows.

  The vanity was free of lotions and potions, the only item sitting on the pristine surface a large jewelry box open to display the gems and baubles organized down to the last earbob.

  There were no stockings drying on the rack, or even dangling from the chandelier. Shoes did not litter the plush carpet, dresses did not hide the long settee or the chairs and tables.

  Not a single lacy undergarment was draped over the desk. Instead a small porcelain statuette sat on the smooth surface. Henry recognized the shepherd and lamb immediately, a gift from Fanny on his birthday, one he’d kept on the chest of drawers in his bedchamber at Idyllwild. When he lifted the figure, he saw that it now sported a small hairline crack, neatly severing shepherd and lamb, and another winding around the boy’s neck.

  Had Georgie accidently dropped the small statue and whisked it away to be fixed? But why hold on to it all this time? And why leave it sitting in the center of the empty desk?

  Unless she’d suspected he would come looking for her and left the figure prominently displayed so that he might find it, some sort of convoluted message for him to puzzle out.

  Henry tucked the statuette into his pocket and turned to survey the too empty, too immaculate bedchamber.

  The room had the feel of abandonment, the air hot and musty with only a lingering whisper of starch and stale tobacco and Henry imagined Georgie pacing before the windows, blowing thin streams of smoke out into the night while Tag Alogne packed her possessions into trunks.

  Pushing open the door to what he assumed to be a bathing room, he found instead the largest dressing room he’d ever seen. As big as most bedchambers, the space was lit by two windows set high on the back wall. Along one wall hung a handful of dresses and two dozen or more empty hangers. Shelves lined the opposite wall, forgotten bonnets gracing the top tiers, a few folded shawls and reticules the lowest. In the middle, overlooked shoes and boots dotted the shelves, leaving gaps between, like a mostly toothless grin, mocking him.

  Henry wandered around the dressing room, running a hand over a white dress trimmed with red ribbon, lifting a pink silk slipper, thin ribbons trailing over his wrist.

  His foot hit an object on the floor and he looked down to discover the mate to the slipper in his hand lying on its side, the heel delicately carved and improbably high, the smallest scuff mark on the toe.

  Henry bent down to retrieve the discarded shoe, lined the pair on the shelf and stepped back, idly running one finger over the pointed toes, not truly paying attention to what he was doing but rather thinking of Georgie.

  But there was something odd in the way the pair of slippers sat beside one another, something off in their height that snagged his attention.

  Lifting one slipper in each hand, he balanced them on his palms and lifted them up to the light.

  “Jesus,” he breathed, taking in the difference in the heels, the right a good half of an inch taller than the left.

  Dropping the slippers to the shelf he retrieved a pair of boots, stiff satin dyed a pale blue rather than the soft kid leather ladies preferred.

  Of course, Georgie would no more wear something that had once possessed a face than she would eat the same.

  Again, the right heel was taller than the left.

  Images danced around in his head, overlapping and playing over one another in dizzying speed.

  Georgie circling around to his left as they walked arm in arm through the green at Somerville.

  A childhood injury. I’m afraid the uneven terrain will set me off my gate. You don’t mind if I lean on you just a tad?

  Georgie standing before him that first night dressed only in stockings and the same pink slippers.

  Georgie self-consciously removing her slippers and stockings at Idyllwild, dancing disjointedly in the rain wearing Bea’s goulashes, limping down the hall to the kitchen, standing on one foot at the stove.

  Georgie curling her bare leg against her hip, away from prying eyes.

  I took a fall down a flight of stairs… Most days I hardly remember my fall or the folly that led to it.

  Henry dropped the boots to the floor and reached into his pocket, pulling out the boy and lamb, trailing his thumb along the fissures that had separated shepherd from lamb, however briefly, and the crack that had decapitated the boy.

  I was raised on a sheep farm…forever making pets of the sheep and throwing temper fits when they were slaughtered.

  My virginity went for a kind word and a pair of fleeced lined mitts…offered up my virginity to another woman’s handsome husband for the life of a lamb with a lame hind leg.

  I did not regret it, not until the next day when Mum…Millie told me that Archie had died in the night and I saw that she knew what I had done.

  You must come for George as we are no longer able to care for the child.

  I do not wish to speak of him, to give him a name is to give him life and he is dead to me.

  “Ah, Christ,” Henry whispered, his hand clenching around boy and lamb. “Damn it all, she was just a girl.”

  “A girl who needs her hind-end tanned, make no mistake.” Mountjoy spoke from the open door of the dressing room. “Never mind, the lass’ll be back in time for the wedding. She’s got nowhere to live and not a farthing to her name if she don’t marry you, and well she knows it.”

  “What are you saying?” Henry turned around, a shiver of premonition dancing down his spine. “This is Georgie’s house.”

  “Ach, this house don’t belong to George,” Mountjoy replied. “It came to me with everything else. Lady Joy thought I could manage George, curb her wild ways by dangling the place before her. Hell, maybe the grouchy old woman had the right of it. I bullied her into marrying you with it.”

  “You threatened Georgie with the loss of her home should she decide not to marry me?”

  “Don’t get your smallclothes in a wad,” Mountjoy groused. “It worked, didn’t it? I missed the big announcement last night on account of a pretty pair of tits and a bit of strategizing, but I’ll read about it in the paper and I might even loiter at the back of the church to hear the banns called.”

  “Damn,” Henry breathed, oddly disoriented as the ramifications of the Duke of Mountjoy’s manipulations took root.

  Did I mention that my grandmother left me the house?

  Don’t lose the gems. They belonged to Lady Joy and I’ve a sentimental attachment to them.

  Henry desperately wanted to believe that Georgie had only gone off on a short journey to sort out her tangled thoughts and emotions, just as Beatrice had said.

  The damaged boy and lamb in his pocket told him otherwise.

  Georgie had not only bartered away her happiness, she’d given away her grandmother’s house and doomed their unborn child to the same stigma of illegitimacy she’d lived with all her life.

  And she’d done it all, sacrificed everything in a convoluted bid to save him.

  “Pardon, Your Grace, but there is a gentleman asking to call upon Miss Buchanan.” Dobbins stopped just behind the duke wearing the same smug expression he’d worn when Henry had arrived and he knew the butler had interrupted only to be sure he was aware that a man was calling on his woman. “What should I t
ell him?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Mountjoy thundered. “Tell him whatever a servant with a stick up his arse tells an uninvited caller.”

  “Bugger off?” The cheerful, lilting Scotts burr belonged to a young man of perhaps twenty years of age who stood just beyond Dobbins in the open doorway to Georgie’s bedchamber.

  “Chester McDougal, you pretty piece of fluff, what the hell are you doing in my house?” The Duke of Mountjoy strode across the room to greet the newcomer, all smiles and back pounding. “Have you run out of gossip for that rag you work for and come looking for some at the source?”

  This was the boy Georgie had knocked to the ground when she’d rolled a barrel down a hill?

  Pretty was an apt description for the man’s delicate features, for the wavy mahogany hair falling over his forehead and for the blue eyes that bordered on lavender.

  “Your Grace,” the young man greeted, stepping to the left and mostly out of way of Mountjoy’s back slapping. “Pardon my presumption, calling on your household at barely nine of the clock and finding my way upstairs. Alas, it is most imperative that I speak with Miss Buchanan.”

  Even his manners were pretty. As was the powder-blue jacked he wore over a waistcoat in a slightly darker shade and the immaculate cravat tied beneath his gently squared, smooth chin.

  “Shut your trap,” Mountjoy thundered. “Calling hours ain’t for family.”

  Of course he was a Buchanan, he had the eyes if not the surname.

  “Hastings, this maggoty bit of thistledown is me mum’s second sister’s third daughter’s fifth, no sixth son.” Mountjoy’s introduction was convoluted, though cheerfully given. “This here is George’s affianced husband, the Earl of Hastings.”

  Purple eyes went wide and one hand whipped behind the pretty boy’s back and out of sight.

  “What’s that you’ve got there, lad?” With surprising speed for so giant a man, Mountjoy loomed over the lad and snaked one long, muscled arm behind him. “Best just to give it up, boy. I’d hate to have to explain to your mum I broke your fingers.”