The Earl I Ruined

by Scarlett Peckham

  And then this torture would be for nothing.

  “I did something I regret,” he said to Rosecroft, not quite knowing if he meant this afternoon, or years before, or all the other times that, looking back, were colored by that moment in the portrait gallery.

  “It happens,” his cousin sighed. “You’re smart to have a word with her before she goes to sleep. If you want my advice, never let bad feelings linger overnight—they only turn to rot.”

  Clever of him, then, to let them linger for five years.

  “Apthorp?” Constance asked in a tired voice, walking into the room. “Have you come back for another round of persecuting me?”

  He rose. She was in a voluminous white night rail of thick cotton that swallowed her from the top of her neck to her toes. He’d seen her many times in her fashionable silk dressing gowns when she’d swanned into breakfast late as he was leaving, and been indignant at her habit of traipsing through the house in such unsuitable attire. But this prim ensemble, though it covered more of her, somehow made her seem more exposed.

  He wanted to tell Rosecroft not to look at her.

  “Forgive me for disturbing you so late,” he said.

  She said nothing, but her eyes conveyed she was not pleased to see him.

  Apthorp glanced at Rosecroft. “I don’t suppose you would give us a moment of privacy?”

  Rosecroft sighed. “I’ll be on the terrace having a cigar.” He gestured at the French doors off the parlor. “With the door open. Don’t be pert. And don’t make her cry.”

  Constance waited, arms crossed over her breasts, as his cousin went off, whistling.

  “Why are you here?”

  At her contemptuous tone he felt shy and ridiculous, but nevertheless reached down and held out his offering. “I brought you something. By way of amends.”

  She gingerly took the fat armful of red roses that he’d coarsely tied into a bouquet with garden twine.

  “How perfectly hideous,” she said coldly.

  He was capable of giving a woman an elegant bouquet, but he’d thought perhaps it might be more meaningful to give her the inelegant one that she’d imagined in her story about the maze.

  Now he felt foolish. She didn’t remember.

  “Uh, yes. I’m sorry they’re a mess. It was a kind of a joke—a poor one, rather—er, a reference to your—”

  She looked up and met his eyes. “To my tragic little story about my broken heart?”

  He swallowed. “Yes.”

  “You realize it was fake.”

  He closed his eyes. “I know. Would you read the note?”

  She unfolded the card he’d attached to the bouquet. “Lady Constance,” she read aloud warily. “Please accept these flowers as an apology for my harsh words to you. Not just this afternoon, but in years past.”

  She paused and looked at him uncertainly. He bit his lip and waited for her to read the rest.

  “Please know,” she continued, her voice softer, “that despite the strained moments in our history, there has never been a time when I did not admire your spirit, intelligence, and beauty. I regret that I ever made you doubt you had my high opinion. I know these next three weeks will be a trial, but I hope that we can endure them as friends.”

  She looked up at him, and her eyes were fierce with some emotion. “Friends? Is that what we are to each other? I’m not sure we ever have been.”

  He didn’t know the answer. A week ago he would have said they were. But it seemed he’d not fully understood how she’d perceived him.

  “I’d like to be,” he said finally. “I think this would be easier if we were.”

  She sank down onto the sofa that she’d reclined on so imperiously earlier in the day. “If you wish to be my friend, perhaps I should be frank. You have never seemed terribly fond of me. As far as I can tell, you formed a low opinion of me in Devon, and have disapproved of me ever since.”

  He sat down beside her, trying to muddle through his own feelings about the torture that had been that week in Devon. How she’d arrived, looking like a vision. How he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. How, at every turn, she’d signaled he was not the kind of man she deemed worthy of her interest.

  Lord Apthorp is uncommonly pedantic about soil drainage, is he not?

  Who will be the hero in my scene? I won’t ask Lord Apthorp—he is far too busy with his letters to engage in such trifles.

  What a grim young man is your Lord Apthorp. Why does he come here, if all he does is read his books and make notations in his ledger? Were no charming gentlemen available?

  She’d made no secret of finding him a bore. Or worse: slightly absurd.

  And having just lost the remainder of his family fortune in a humiliating, public way, neither he, nor the rest of England, disagreed with her. He was proving himself to be exactly the kind of errant peer his father had always warned him not to be: irresponsible and incompetent. Unworthy of his place.

  He’d despised himself that summer.

  He’d wanted out of his own skin that summer.

  If it had not been that the Rosecrofts had insisted, he’d never have gone to that house party, for any time he set foot in public, all he heard was the whispers.

  Imagine being asked to do so little with so much, and still managing to piss it all away.

  Constance’s obvious contempt for him had only confirmed his low opinion of himself. Because he’d craved her admiration, and he’d known that as he was, he’d never warrant so much as a second glance.

  That week had changed him. He’d resolved to dig his way out of his shameful state, to reshape himself into the kind of man who merited respect.

  The kind of man who could eventually be worthy of a girl like Constance Stonewell.

  But maybe he’d also resented her, for being what he could not have. And maybe that had been unfair of him. Maybe it had made him childish, at a time when she’d needed him to be the older, wiser soul.

  “I didn’t disapprove of you, Constance,” he said, navigating around the dryness that had overtaken his throat. “In fact, I thought you disapproved of me. You seemed a bit—”

  “Dismissive?” she offered. “Taunting?” She sighed and leaned back into the cushions, looking at the fire. “For such a legendary letch, Lord Apthorp, one wonders if you understand the simplest things about young women. I did not behave that way because I didn’t like you. I behaved that way because I wanted you to notice me.”

  “I see,” he said, blowing out a breath because he instantly did see, now that she had pointed out the obvious. He dearly wished he could go back in time and kick his oversensitive, underobservant younger self in the shins.

  “Forgive me. I simply thought … well, and then it seemed you had taken a fancy to Lord Harlan Stoke, and I did not wish to—”

  He did not know how to go on, because he was not sure what exactly had happened in the picture gallery, only that she had very clearly wished for him to leave her there when he’d walked in on it.

  “Now that I know the way you conduct yourself on Wednesdays,” she said meaningfully, “I think it is unfair of you to hold me in low esteem for what happened in the gallery.”

  “Constance, I don’t.”

  Her mouth was grim. “No? Your manner has always suggested that you thought I had allowed him improper liberties. And I didn’t.”

  He turned toward her, so his face would be out of the shadows from the fireplace. He wanted her to see that he was being fully honest. “I wouldn’t care if you had taken liberties with him, or with any other gentleman. I merely took your seeming attachment to him as confirmation that you would not welcome my interest. And so I didn’t extend it. Even if I wanted to.”

  She was quiet. “You wanted to?”

  He laughed roughly. “Yes.”

  They were both silent. She fiddled with the petal of a rose.

  “Constance—I don’t wish to pry, but if you were not there because you welcomed his attentions—” He bit off the w
ords, unsure of exactly how to continue but needing, needing, to ask, because it was possible he had failed her in more ways than one, and he could not live with himself if he had.

  “Lord Harlan has a reputation for …” He swallowed. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  Her face went dark. “No. Not as such.” She met his eye. “He was … briefly overexuberant in his attentions. I made my lack of enthusiasm clear and he did not continue.”

  Overexuberant. He wanted to go find the man and pull him out of whatever club he was half-soused in and thrash him until he bled.

  “You were right to warn me about him,” Constance added. “I wish I had listened.”

  He leaned forward and took her by the shoulders.

  “Just know that if you had said the words that day, I would have happily throttled him. And if you would like, I still can.”

  “There is no need.” She glanced up at him, then smiled ever so slightly. “I stabbed him in the neck.”

  He stared at her. “You stabbed Harlan Stoke in the neck?”

  “Yes. With a very pretty silver fan.” She smirked, clearly pleased with herself. “I shall always treasure the memory.”

  He bit his thumb and closed his eyes to try to keep from laughing.

  “Sometimes, Lady Constance, you really are the woman of my dreams.”

  “Thank you for finally realizing it,” she said primly. “I do have my attractions when I am not being cruel and monstrous.”

  He sighed. “I’m so sorry that I made you feel that way. It’s beginning to be clear to me that I have been acting like an arse for far longer than I realized.”

  She smiled tightly. Not in such a way that invited further conversation, but in such a way that made him feel she did not disagree with him.

  Christ, if only he’d realized.

  Could he have simply said what he’d wanted from the start? It was almost too painful to consider, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Constance, may I ask you a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you hope would happen if you had succeeded in getting my attention? What did you want?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said lightly. “What do silly young maidens ever want when they develop brief infatuations with unsuitable young men? Fond words? A poem?”

  She looked away and spoke less archly. “Perhaps a correction to our encounter in the garden maze?”

  Of course. He’d been so stupid.

  “I wonder if it’s too late to make it up to you.” Impulsively, he reached over and tipped her head toward him, and kissed her on the lips.

  Just lightly. Chastely.

  The way he might have when she was seventeen.

  She sighed and closed her eyes.

  “I’m sorry that it took me so many years to get around to that,” he murmured, rubbing her slightly parted lower lip with his thumb. “It seems I’m not as perceptive as I ought to be. Next time, just tell me what it is you want.”

  “All right, children,” Rosecroft’s voice boomed from the terrace doors behind them. “That’s enough. Lovers’ quarrel is officially over.”

  Reluctantly, he moved away from Constance.

  She stood up. She was smiling.

  “Thank you for the unsightly flowers, Lord Apthorp,” she said, formally executing an exaggerated curtsy for the benefit of Rosecroft, who was now observing with his arms folded over his chest. “I shall cherish them.”

  She leaned in and dropped her voice so his cousin couldn’t overhear. “And what I want, Julian, my dear friend, is for you to kiss me again the way you did in the powdering closet.”

  With that, she winked, took her flowers under her arm, and flounced out of the room.

  “Seems she forgives you,” Rosecroft drawled. “Now we can all live happily ever after.”

  Apthorp winced, trying to pretend that it was that simple, and knowing that it wasn’t.

  And yet, as he walked back along the dark streets to the Strand, he could not help but wonder what might happen if he did the wild, illogical, wrongheaded thing he now suddenly could not stop imagining.

  Simply asking her for what he’d always wanted.

  Chapter 10

  “Entrez,” Valeria Parc commanded, ushering Constance inside the door of her small boutique in a swirl of scarlet silk. “And stop slouching.”

  Most mantua-makers were known for flattering their customers. Valeria Parc was not like most mantua-makers.

  Constance followed her inside, inhaling the fragrance of fresh violets that always wafted from Valeria’s pile of glossy black hair. The floral note was in striking contrast to her air of menace.

  Valeria led her to a cloth-covered platform in front of a floor-to-ceiling mirror, positioning her just so until she stood in a shaft of sunlight. “Stand here.” Her green eyes flashed in the mirror as she flicked them over every nook of Constance’s figure, taking measurements with her eyes.

  “You’ve lost at least an inch of bosom.”

  This was not a compliment. Valeria was a great proponent of bosoms.

  “Oh, what’s a bit of bosom?” Constance said, turning away from the sight of her own reflection. In truth, her figure was reduced. Her appetite tended to fluctuate with her mood. When she was happy, she celebrated with cake and cream teas from morning till night; when she was unnerved, she ate nothing.

  She had not had a proper meal in a week.

  Valeria took her chin in her hand, examining her face.

  “You lack verve. Are you ill?”

  She was not ill, only exhausted. Her custom of sleeping until luncheon had given way to restless predawn dreams that left her feeling hot and incomplete and unable to fall back to sleep. Distressed.

  Distressed about the most unlikely thing in history: kissing the Earl of Apthorp.

  She tried for a breezy smile. “I am only tired from the excitement of preparing for my wedding. I trust in your abilities to restore me to beauty. I shall convert my brother’s entire fortune into gowns if that’s what it takes.”

  Valeria gave her a grim smile, for she enjoyed discussion of material enrichment nearly as much as she enjoyed probing Constance’s spine with her hard, pointy fingers.

  “And how is your Lord Apthorp?”

  Constance winced as the dressmaker tugged at her stays. “Very well. I think.”

  In truth she’d barely seen him since he’d shown up bearing a sad expression and a deformed bouquet in a gesture so touching and romantic she could not believe she had not concocted it herself. He and Westmead had spent the week furiously crisscrossing town to secure votes for the bill; on the few occasions she had seen him, it had been in public, and they’d done little except perform fondness at each other from across dining tables and crowded rooms.

  Yet whenever she caught sight of him, her breath hitched in a way that was difficult to cover up. It felt as though she risked propriety by merely looking at him from afar, because whenever she did so, she could not stop imagining him touching her.

  Next time just tell me what you want.

  But what if I don’t know?

  Ever since that humbling disaster in the portrait gallery, she’d distanced herself from any man who’d seemed even slightly interested in seducing her. She’d told herself she’d been unpersuaded by her suitors—that they were unattractive, or indiscreet, or too flirtatious, or too dull. But perhaps the problem had been not with the gentlemen who wished to woo her, but with her own unhappy history with amorous solicitation.

  Perhaps she’d simply been afraid.

  Well. She was not afraid of Apthorp.

  And now that she’d had proper tutelage in such things that could transpire in a powdering closet, she wanted to advance her studies.

  For when Apthorp had shown up with those roses, she’d begun to feel acutely that she’d missed an opportunity.

  The next time a man studiously ignored her, and was faultlessly well-mannered and appeared blander than blancmange—she wanted to be ready.
<
br />   She now understood that men like that had hidden depths.

  “Voilà,” Valeria said, stepping away to show her her reflection in the mirror.

  The shimmering pink gown was perfect for her engagement ball—a ludicrous confection of silk and whalebone and intricate golden Arras lace that made her more spectacle than woman. It was the kind of gown that cried out to be looked at.

  It was not the kind of gown that cried to be taken off.

  “You don’t like it?” Valeria asked.

  “I love it. But I wonder. Do you have any designs that might be more appropriate for … after the wedding? To be worn in private?”

  Valeria raised one exquisitely arched black brow at Constance. “Ondine, bring my designs for the nuns.” She winked.

  Ondine returned with a portfolio of sketches. She was blushing.

  Valeria dropped her voice. “Usually I reserve these for ladies of pleasure. But you have never done the usual thing. Care to have a look?”

  Constance opened the book to the first page, and immediately realized why Ondine was the shade of a plum. The sketch was of a woman draped in a diaphanous fabric, her figure limned in cutouts lined with lace. It was not so much a gown as the absence of one.

  Constance smiled. “I think I might be ruined just from seeing this.”

  “Imagine how your Lord Apthorp will feel.”

  Yes. Imagine.

  He was used to her in elaborate court gowns that made her silhouette twice its natural size. Such gowns made her feel dramatic and powerful and safe.

  Not … like this.

  She knew he was not eager to share his secret life with her.

  She knew he valued propriety and honor.

  She knew he did not trust her.

  But perhaps if he saw her in something like this …

  Perhaps he might be inclined to take a risk.

  “Two of these,” she said decisively, pointing at the sketch. “One in crimson and one in cream.”

  “Very well,” Valeria said with a smile.

  As the seamstress helped her dress, Valeria whispered in her ear.

  “I’m meeting with the costumer at the Theatre Royal today about the matter we discussed. I’ll write to you should I learn anything pertinent. Unless you’d like to come along?”