“How did such a beautiful woman end up entangled with a rascal like Spalding?” Instead of releasing her hand, he covered it with both of his.
As relief flooded over her that he didn’t know who she was, she gave him a friendly smile. “I always take in strays who come sniffing around my door.”
Ellsworth laughed as she slipped her hand away.
“She’s not kidding.” Ross wrapped her arm around his. The move was more than just a protective gesture; it was a jealous one. Before she could fully consider the significance of that, his handsome face turned serious. “Thank you, Ellsworth, for your help.”
“When I heard the charges that had been brought against you, I knew they were nonsense.” His expression was just as grim as Ross’s. “You’ve done a lot of questionable things in your life, but you’d never betray England.”
“Thank you.” He squeezed her arm, drawing her attention to the marquess’s comment. A recommendation for his character, in case any doubts still lingered in her regarding his innocence.
But she could have reassured him about that. Her unease now had nothing to do with treason.
Ellsworth handed him the key. “The place is yours. I’ve hired workers to reface the brick and make repairs to the façade, so no one else is currently using the building. I’ve halted work for the sennight while you’re here. But I won’t guarantee your safety.” The marquess paused meaningfully, leaving no room for misunderstanding. “If you’re discovered, I won’t come to your defense.”
“I wouldn’t let you.”
The two men silently held each other’s gaze for a long moment, both faces dark and unsmiling.
Then Ross pressed gravely, “And the other item I requested?”
Ellsworth retrieved a wooden case from the bookshelf and set it down on the worktable. He opened it and pulled out a short-barreled pistol. “Caplock.”
Ross let go of Grace’s arm and stepped up to the table.
“Powder, caps, balls, wad—everything you need.”
“Thank you.” Ross picked up the pistol and examined it, then expertly set about loading it.
“If you have to use it,” Ellsworth drawled, “try not to splatter blood on the canvases, will you?”
Ross smiled wryly at that. When he looked up at Grace, his smile faded. “Do you know how to use a pistol?”
She nodded, not at all liking this turn of conversation.
“We’ll keep it loaded at all times while we’re here.” He tucked it into the middle drawer of the worktable, his eyes not leaving hers. “You’ll have to use it if anyone comes after you. Can you do that?”
A chill bit at the base of her spine. “Is that really necessary?”
The two men exchanged grim looks. Then Ross said quietly, “It might very well be, if Wentworth discovers we’re here before the British do.”
“Before we go to the palace, you mean,” she corrected, her faith in him undeterred.
His eyes softened at that, and warmth filled her chest. “It’s only a precaution.” He lowered his voice, and the husky timbre tightened all the tiny muscles in her belly. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Grace. I promise you that.”
She nodded, unable to speak past the knot in her throat. It had been years since she’d had a man’s protection. For once, the night ahead didn’t feel quite so lonely or frightening.
“You’re set, then. I’ll leave you to your plans.” With a parting incline of his head toward Grace, Ellsworth sauntered toward the door. “By the way, the neighbors are used to all kinds of characters coming and going from here, although it would ease their suspicions if you’d speak in Italian.”
Then he slipped through the wicket and out into the dark alley. Ross locked it after him.
Grace blinked. “What on earth did he mean by that?”
“When it comes to Ellsworth,” he cautioned as he took the papers out of their hiding spot at the small of his back, then knelt down to feel at the floorboards beside the center post, “best not to ask too many questions.”
He found a loose board and lifted it, hiding the papers beneath. Then he took the lamp down from its nail and held out his hand to her.
She took it and followed behind as he led her up the stairs. “And the same with you? Don’t ask too many questions?”
He paused in mid-step to look down at her, his midnight blue eyes nearly black as he searched her face in the dim lamplight. “You can ask me whatever you’d like.”
Perhaps. But she also knew that there was no guarantee he’d answer.
Chapter 15
“Good God,” Ross muttered to himself. “I look terrible.”
Grace caught her breath as she emerged from her bedroom and found Ross peering at himself in the mirror above the men’s dressing stand in his room, bare from the waist up in the morning sunlight. While he might have grown comfortable enough around her to think nothing of wearing only a pair of breeches, she doubted she would ever grow used to seeing him like this. Despite all his wounds, with his broad back, muscular shoulders, and hard ridges of his abdomen so casually on display, terrible wasn’t the word she’d used to describe the view.
When he caught her staring, she quirked up her brow and prayed her face didn’t flush, revealing her true thoughts. “Ghastly.”
“And you look…” He slid an appraising gaze over her reflection, taking in the night rail she still wore. “Tempting.”
His deep voice vibrated down her spine, making her breasts feel suddenly heavy and sparking a faint throbbing between her thighs. She’d felt a wave of relief last night to discover that they had separate rooms and that she wouldn’t have to fend off any nighttime flirtations, not realizing how much more seductive this devil could be in daylight. Or how much weaker her own resolve had become.
“You are mistaken,” she countered in enough of an icy rebuke to keep him at a distance.
But not enough, apparently, to keep a wicked, knowing grin from his face. Or a blush from hers.
Yet he gave her a reprieve by looking back at his own reflection. He turned his head left and right to examine his face, especially the faded bruises and cut to his brow that had now healed almost completely. Then he scrubbed a hand over the growth of beard. “They won’t recognize me at the palace looking like this.”
She stiffened at that stark reminder of his situation. In quieter moments, when he was smiling at her or they were sharing parts of their lives, she forgot the danger hanging over them, only for it to come crashing back without warning. “When do you plan to go there?”
“Have to talk to Christopher first.” He poured a splash of water into the shaving mug and began to whip up the soap with the brush. Tossing a hand towel over his shoulder, he lathered up his cheeks until most of his face was hidden beneath the foam, then mumbled at his reflection, “Well, that’s a decided improvement.”
Grace couldn’t help but smile. Or keep from shamelessly watching him, mesmerized by the sight of a man performing his morning ablutions. It had been so very long since she’d experienced this private moment, and her chest warmed at its quiet intimacy. She knew the ache of long, lonely nights and had been surprised at how easily she’d grown used to having Ross with her in the darkness, how much she’d grown to depend upon his protection, even last night when they’d been in separate rooms. But she’d forgotten how sweet mornings with a man could be. Her chest ached with an unbidden longing to have more than only this morning’s brief glimpse into his private life.
And not just as a lover. If it were only physical intimacy she craved, that could easily be satisfied. With the way he’d looked at her this morning, like a starving man who wanted to devour her, all it would take would be a whisper of permission, and she’d be in his arms, ending a decade of longing and loneliness.
But God help her, that wouldn’t be enough. She wanted more.
Somewhere along the road from Sea Haven, she’d come to care for him, in a way she hadn’t cared for any man since before David died. She
wasn’t foolish enough to think he felt the same, but when he looked at her with such desire, she could almost dare to hope…
But once this was all over, once he was exonerated and came to realize exactly who she was, how would he look at her then?
The muscles in his back flexed as he set down the mug to reach for the razor and tested its edge on his thumb. Finding it sharp, he lifted the blade to his face, then hesitated as he tried to find the best angle against his cheek.
That brought her out of her reverie. “When was the last time you shaved yourself?”
“Years,” he mumbled, trying not to move his jaw. “Most likely when I was still in the army.” He gritted his teeth and took a tentative swipe—
“Stop!” With a sigh of exasperation, she held out her hand. “Let me do that before you cut off an ear.”
He arched a brow, his manly pride clearly offended. “I’m quite capable of shaving myself.”
She shot him a dubious look and gestured at the remnants of the wounds she’d stitched up on his shoulder and thigh. “Haven’t you shed enough blood recently?” Snatching the razor away from him, she pointed at a wooden chair by the window. “Sit.”
Conceding that she was right, he sat and leaned back, tilting his face into the air the way he surely did for his valet. She applied more lather to his jaw.
He eyed her nervously. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Well, last month I scraped all the hair off a pig’s head we’d planned on making into soup.” She raised the blade. “In my experience, there’s not much difference between a dead pig and an earl.”
He grabbed her wrist and stilled her hand, the blade an inch from his throat.
Slowly, his gaze lifted to meet hers. His face remained carefully stoical, but amusement shined in his eyes. “Try not to cut me into bacon, will you? I think my arse might already be cooked.”
A soft laugh spilled from her.
He smiled, a lazy and relaxed grin that warmed low in her belly. Then he let go of her wrist, eased back in the chair, and closed his eyes. It was a posture of complete trust.
“How did you learn to do this?” he mumbled, careful not to move as she carefully scraped the blade across his cheek, swiping away both lather and beard in slow, short strokes.
“My father taught me.” She smiled at the memory, which now seemed like a lifetime ago. “I would shave him in the mornings before he dressed or for any special event.”
His brow wrinkled with a small frown. “Didn’t he have a valet?”
She paused in her strokes of the razor, debating how much she should tell him. More than endangering her true identity, what she revealed would be a blow to her pride. “He had to dismiss his man when we ran out of money.”
He cracked open one eye to look up at her. “How?”
“How does anyone go bankrupt? Too much property to maintain, bad business investments, falling wool prices, drought…” She shrugged a shoulder as if losing the fortune of six generations was an everyday occurrence. Yet she was surprised that talking about this to Ross came so easily and, for once, without the bitterness or anguish the memories of that time had always roused before. “We sold whatever we could, let the bank foreclose on whatever we couldn’t, and scaled back our lives, which meant that most of the servants were let go. After all, there’s no good justification for keeping a valet if you cannot pay your rent.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen.” She brushed her fingertips across his cheek, to feel his skin in the wake of the blade and gauge the quality of the shave. Warm, soft, so very smooth…“Anyway, it was only for two years. Once I married, Papa came to live with us, and he was assigned a footman to serve as his valet.”
He stiffened, not enough to be visible, but she felt it beneath her hands. “You were sixteen when you married?” He couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice. “Good God, you were young.”
“I was never young.” Her voice trembled with the raw honesty of that.
He said nothing, and his silence proved more unsettling than his gentle questioning.
Avoiding his gaze, she focused her attention on the shave. “I had to marry well in order for us to survive, and I couldn’t wait until I was eighteen. I had no dowry of any kind, but I was a gentleman’s daughter and well-schooled.” She wiped her fingertip at a patch of lather clinging to his upper lip and frowned softly. “And I was pretty.”
“Beautiful.”
She shivered heatedly. That he could give that compliment in such a matter-of-fact way, as if it were an irrefutable fact—the sun rose in the east, rains came in April…she was beautiful. She gave a dismissive laugh. “But you don’t remember me!”
“How is that even possible?” he asked carefully between small strokes of the razor, although she wasn’t certain if he took care because he didn’t want to move and be cut or because he was prying so unapologetically into her personal life when she held a razor at his throat. “I was a rogue of the worst sort back then. I made certain to claim the attentions of every beautiful woman I met. How did you slip through my fingers?”
“Because my husband stole me away.” With the pad of her left thumb, she pulled at his chin to smooth out the soft indention of his cleft, then carefully stroked the razor against his skin. “It was during my first ball and so early in the season, in fact, that it snowed that evening. My first waltz, too.” She smiled faintly at the memory. “You had requested it, but he was just arrogant and audacious enough to steal it from you. Not that you cared overly much. Rumors at the time claimed that you were quite happily involved with Lady Middleton.”
“Half of the men in Mayfair were involved with Lady Middleton, but I was not one of them,” he muttered, then arched his brow indignantly before closing his eyes. “So he stole my waltz.” A trace of pique laced through his voice as he added, “And you.”
“He did.” She wiped the blade on the towel and tipped up his chin to shave his neck. “And with such charm that I couldn’t be angry at him for it.”
Ross gave a scoffing half-grunt.
“By the end of the dance, I knew that he was going to marry me. I never danced with another man after that. We were wed in June. And you—” She playfully tapped the tip of his nose, earning a scowl from him. “You were on the continent by then, fighting old Boney, seducing Spanish women, and not giving a single thought to some miss whose waltz with you was stolen away.”
A moment of silence fell between them, with only the scratch of the beard beneath the razor breaking the stillness.
He asked softly, “Did you love him?”
His unexpected question jolted through her. Hiding her unease, she traced her fingers down his throat to smear more of the lather across the stubble there and dodged, “I was very fond of him, and we had a good marriage. He was a generous and kind man who treated Papa and me well. He gave me everything I wanted.” Her voice softened when she added, “Eventually, even the child I wanted. But by then it was too late.”
When he opened his eyes to look up at her, she could read the truth in their blue depths—he knew she’d never loved David. Thankfully, instead of pressing her about it, he asked, “He didn’t know about Ethan?”
“I didn’t know,” she whispered, following along with her fingers over his soft skin in the wake of the razor. She prayed he couldn’t feel the trembling in her fingertips at revealing these secrets to him. “Not until after the funeral, when the estate was being settled. That was when I knew I had to flee London, that I had to do everything in my power to protect my baby.” Then and now.
“The courts would have waited to see if you delivered an heir before granting the inheritance to another,” he reminded her gently. “You didn’t have to flee.”
She stilled, her fingers in mid-caress against his neck. Not daring to raise her gaze to meet his, afraid of the accusation she might see there—or worse, pity—she trained her eyes on her fingers and welcomed each beat of his steady pulse beneath her fingertip
s. Alive and strong…so intoxicating as it echoed up her arm and down into her breasts, reminding her unwittingly of the life she’d forged from the ashes.
“You are assuming that I would have lived until my confinement if I hadn’t,” she answered, so softly that barely any sound passed her lips. Then, with a burst of inner strength, she lifted her gaze to meet his. “But I did flee. And we survived.”
Falling silent then, she returned to her task, carefully shaving away the last of the beard, even as her hands trembled from her memories of that horrible time. She didn’t regret the lengths she was forced to go to in order to hide her child’s existence from Vincent, but she would never be proud of them.
When the last of the lather was scraped away, she set down the razor and then gently wiped the remaining bits of soap from his neck with the towel.
“There.” She trailed her thumb along the edge of his jaw and back to his ear to gauge the closeness of the shave. “Nicely done.” She crooked a smile. “And no earls were harmed in the process.”
He quirked a half-grin at her quip and rubbed his hand over his face. “How do I look?”
As she tilted her head back and forth, pretending to study him, she couldn’t prevent the catch of her breath at how handsome he was, how piercing his blue eyes as they gazed up at her. With the beard gone, he looked so much as he had ten years ago that she ached with a deep longing for the past. Her fingertips itched to touch him, to stroke over the smooth planes of his face and feel his warmth and strength. He would let her, she knew. If she reached out and touched him, if she dared to caress him—
She would be lost.
“You’ll do.” She forced a teasing smile and drew her traitorous hands into fists, turning away before she could be tempted further. “Don’t forget to pay your barber on the way out. We put nothing on tick here, so—”
His arm went around her waist. She gave a soft cry of surprise as he tugged her to him, bringing her down onto his lap.
“Your turn.” His eyes gleamed mischievously as he daubed a drop of lather onto her chin. “Hand me the razor.”
How the Earl Entices Page 15