Once Upon an Earl_Heirs of High Society_A Regency Romance Book

by Eleanor Meyers

  "Doctor, please, someone send for a doctor!"

  Clarine yelled, and in the chaos that ensued, all Lucas could think was that he was grateful that Clarine had not let a bite of that cake past her perfect lips.

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  11

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

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  Sarah had taken to her bed, prostrate with nerves, and Quentin was finally settled easily in his own bed, the medicine the doctor had given him letting him sleep restfully if not calmly.

  Clarine got to Mason's room just as the doctor was leaving.

  "Is he well?"

  "Hard to say, Lady Waverly. He is young and strong, and whatever was in those damned cakes, begging your pardon, only affected him a fraction of the amount that they affected his brother."

  She hesitated, and carefully, as if she were moving a dozen stacked glasses of pure crystal, she stepped closer to the doctor.

  "Doctor, please, tell me what you think might have caused this."

  The doctor shrugged, and it occurred to her that this was just a normal day to him.

  "There are many things that might have caused this matter, my lady. Food that is improperly prepared or improperly preserved for a warm day can be injurious or even deadly. I might have a talk with your cook, particularly if she is an older woman. She may be preparing food that could make you and your household sick."

  "So... you don't think it is poison?"

  He gave her a look as if she had suggested that the sun rose in the west and set in the east.

  "My lady, we are hardly living in the Renaissance. We are in the modern era and you are living on a modern estate."

  "But could it have been poison?"

  He took her hand, patting it firmly in a way that she was not sure she quite liked.

  "Lady Waverly, please, put your mind at ease. We are living in the modern era, not in some Gothic fable. Simply see to your kitchen."

  For a moment, Clarine wondered if it would have made a difference if it was Lucas who was asking about the poison possibility, or a Lord Waverly instead of a Lady Waverly.

  God, why did the thought of Lucas dressed as a lord, in Mason's green wool jacket and biscuit-colored trousers, for example, make her heart beat faster? She pushed the thought away. After what had happened under the willows, she wasn't sure she should ever be thinking of him like that again.

  She was ready to make her way to her own room when there came a querulous call from Mason's room.

  "Clarine? Is that you?"

  For a moment, Clarine simply wanted to slink away and not worry any longer about her strange and difficult cousins. Then duty got the better of her, and she sighed.

  "Yes, Mason. It's me. I was just having a word with the doctor."

  "Would you come in here, please?"

  In for a penny, in for a pound, and when she pushed the door open, she was sorry for her previous doubt. The light had been reduced to a single rack of candles on the wall next to Mason's bed, and the small table that had been hastily pulled over to serve as a tray was full of bottles of soothing medicines, glasses of water, and a plate of stale bread, as anything more had seemed to be too difficult for Mason's belly.

  Despite how pale he was, Mason sat up in bed as she entered, a warm smile on his face.

  "I assume the answer is 'awful' so I won't ask you how you are feeling right now."

  "I will admit it is no picnic, but I will say that it is better now that you are here."

  What would sound as a cheap line from almost anyone else was uttered with complete sincerity when Mason said it, and Clarine found herself smiling a little.

  "There, that's what I like to see."

  "What, Mason?"

  "Your smile. You spent so much of today terrified for my poor brother and me."

  Had she been terrified? She remembered feeling numb and shocked but still doing her best to stay centered and moving, to get Quentin and Mason back home to the doctor.

  "I'm all right. I was only worried about the two of you.”

  "It is good that we have you to worry about us. Will you come sit with me for a moment? Not long, I promise. I know you have your own bed to get back to."

  There was nowhere to sit but on his bed, and Clarine shook her head.

  "No, it's... not quite proper, is it? I'll stand."

  Mason looked a little disappointed at that, but he nodded.

  "I have not known you all that long, but I do admire your propriety, cousin. Let me come to the point. I am afraid for you right now."

  She blinked as Mason continued.

  "I feel as if... as if there are dark things lurking around this hall, and people who are acting without your best interests at heart."

  You mean like your siblings? She couldn't make herself say it though, not when he was being so earnest.

  "And I've found... that I want to protect you, Clarine. I would give my heart to do so."

  "Mason, what are you saying?"

  He gave her a lopsided grin. For some reason, it made him look more handsome than it did while he was serious.

  "I'm saying that I am not going to propose to you before I can get out of my damned sickbed. I won't do that. But until I can, I want you to know... that is, I want you to know that I would like to propose. To make you my wife, and to have what comes next with you."

  "Mason!"

  He held up a hand, shaking his head.

  "Please. I would prefer it if you did not say yes or no right now. Instead, I just want you to think about how I have come to care for you."

  Clarine wasn't quite sure how she got out of the room or what she said when she did. She guessed that she mumbled something suitably noncommittal, but judging from the look of slight disappointment on Mason's face, it wasn't terribly encouraging.

  As she walked back to her own rooms in another wing of the house, she wondered what she should make of Mason's offer. His suggested offer.

  She smiled a little. It made her think of one particularly rainy day in Lisbon, following her mother through the gray streets.

  "Never take anything for granted, my dear. A man will promise you all sorts of things, because at the end of the day, all a promise costs him is his breath."

  She had listened wide-eyed to that bit of knowledge, and it had seemed obviously true to her then. However, what would her mother have made of Mason, with his twisted smile and gentle voice?

  Her thoughts were still whirling when she closed her own door behind her, setting the candle down on the small table next to the door with a breath of relief. Suddenly, she felt exhausted, as if the stress of the day was catching up with her all at once.

  All she wanted to do was crawl into her bed. She was too tired to call a maid to help her, and for a moment, she thought she would simply sleep in her dress, her stays, her petticoat, all of it.

  "Clarine."

  She uttered a yelp, reaching for the large stick that was propped next to her bed. She had it in her hands and was ready to swing it hard, but then a large lean form stepped out of the shadows, catching her wrist before she could do any damage.

  "Clarine, what the hell? Why in the world do you have a stick next to your bed?"

  Clarine glared up at Lucas, jerking her hand out of his and putting the stick back where she had found it.

  "I told you that I've been worried about something awful and perhaps deadly happening for quite some time. I wanted to be prepared when it did."

  The look Lucas gave her was profoundly troubled. He shook his head. "You shouldn't be living like this."

  "I doubt anyone thrives under these conditions. What are you doing here?"

  "You gave me a key. That means I can come and go as I please."

  She glared at him. "I gave you that key so that you could help me, not so you could wander the manor like some kind of damned ghost."

  "Your language gets crude when
you are upset, Clarine."

  "It's hardly the thing that I am worrying about the most right now. What are you doing here?"

  The joking manner fell off Lucas like a cloak, and he shrugged, going to sit in the chair by the bed. In the dim light, there was something dangerous about him, like a fairy prince come to kidnap the babes from the cradle and seduce the maids from their beds.

  "I came inside to investigate a little. I found that I could not just sit on my hands after we returned to Hartford Hall, even if that would have been the proper thing to do. When dark fell, I sneaked into the house with the key you gave me. Your servants really need to be more on their guard."

  "I suppose. They were my father's servants, and I think as he got older and his health failed, he was less diligent than he should have been when it came to replacing them."

  "It leaves you vulnerable—"

  "To men to whom I have given a key?"

  Her tart answer made him smile a little, and he shrugged. "Perhaps. But Clarine... why in the world have you not called the constables?"

  It was a question that she had asked herself as well. Clarine came to sit on the bed cross-legged. She was still tired, but upon seeing Lucas in her bedroom, she had lost her sleepiness. Absently, she hoped that she would not find herself awake all night.

  "Sarah was the one who had those damned cakes shipped in, she was the one who arranged them so very carefully, and she was the one who protested that it was your cake when Mason took a bite. That all sounds at the least incredibly damning to me."

  "The doctor was not willing to tell me that it was poison in the cakes. He said that I should instead look to make sure that Cook is up to date on her cooking. Which, I'll admit, she is not. She is a good cook, but some of her methods were learned when she was a girl, decades ago."

  Lucas frowned. She could tell that if that doctor was in front of them right now, Lucas might cheerfully throttle him. The image made her smile just a little, and she reached out with one finger, smoothing the lines between Lucas's brow. He took a deep breath, shaking his head and nuzzling her hand a little before he spoke again.

  "All right. But that's not the only reason why you don't want to involve the constables."

  "Yes. Because whatever happened, it looked as if Quentin was poisoned, too."

  Lucas shook his head impatiently. "So, she got a little reckless, or perhaps she was going to try to get rid of all of you at once. She's the only female Lister, and the middle child besides. She might have wanted a more concrete hold on the title."

  Clarine shook her head. "Then she wouldn't have positioned everything so very carefully. And that makes me think that whatever was in those cakes, it was not meant to be poisonous at all. I think it was just a terrible accident of some kind, or at least, that Sarah is not at the bottom of all of this."

  Lucas scowled at her. "You can't be serious. After the way she wanted to make sure that one of the cakes got to you? When she was the only one who touched them?"

  "If she is a poisoner, she is a very bad one."

  Lucas's lips quirked a little in an unwilling grin. "So, you are dismissing her from blame simply because you feel she is too bad at it?"

  "I am but newly come to the title of countess, but yes. It is simply too awful all of these nouveau riche who think that having just anyone looking to kill them is enough. Why my mother always said to never trust a woman who walked away from her own assassination attempts to easily..."

  Her mimicry of the ton's most pompous set was dead on if she did say so herself, and as she had hoped, Lucas laughed, muffling the noise with his hand.

  When he looked up, there was a rueful expression on his face.

  "I suppose you know best. You may wish to take Sarah to your bosom now, but I think I will remain a little suspicious for a while yet."

  She smiled at him, and for a moment, it was as if what he had almost said under the willow tree had never happened.

  "It's your prerogative to be suspicious, I suppose. But if that's all you wanted to say, I should be getting to sleep now..."

  "Wait."

  Lucas crossed the floor toward her so quickly that she had to stifle a yelp, and then he knelt down in front of her.

  "Lucas, what in the world are you doing? Get up, there's no good reason for you to be down there like that!"

  "Forgive me."

  "What?"

  "I misspoke today. Sometimes I forget that a woman's place is never as sure as a man's is, and that you should always be on guard. I did not mean what I said. There is nothing... nothing like that about you at all, only a natural joy that I have never seen in anyone before."

  Clarine wanted to be lofty and dignified about it. She wanted him to think that she hadn't cared at all. It's what her mother would have done. However, she was not her mother, and instead, she felt tears prickling at her eyes.

  "Thank you. I'm glad you know I'm not... like that."

  "If you were, what a good time we could have."

  She gasped as he leaned up between her legs. The fabric of her skirts kept them apart, but suddenly she could feel how very warm he was through the fabric, how hard his body was through his clothes.

  "Just think, Clarine, if you were really like that, as you put it, I would have no compunctions or hesitations about laying you out on this bed, pulling your clothes aside... running my mouth all over every bit of you..."

  Oh, God, why could she imagine every bit of that? She had never had a man in her bed, never been as close to a man as she was to Lucas right now, but yes, she could imagine it, imagine his hands gliding over her body and making her close her eyes from shame or desire...

  She reached back blindly, and her hands found one of her pillows. Acting more on determination than on instinct, because her instinct was fairly well set on letting Lucas do whatever it was he wanted to do, she brought the pillow down on his face with a firm thump.

  When the pillow fell away, he gave her such a look of startled offense that she muffled her laughter with one hand.

  "Clarine!"

  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! You just looked as if no one had ever smacked you with a pillow before."

  "I don't believe that anyone has ever dared."

  "I dare."

  "Of course, you do."

  He stood up, and despite the fact that he was still devastatingly handsome, something had gone out of the moment, and he was safe again, just Lucas and not some dark god called out of fantasy to seduce her.

  "I think, Clarine, that given the right circumstances, you would dare anything."

  "That sounds like me."

  "Hm. Just be careful, please. Jokes aside, this is no laughing matter."

  Before she could utter any kind of retort, he leaned down and tucked a kiss into the corner of her mouth. It was almost as if he were sealing it away for her, letting her keep it for later. Something about that image stuck with her, making her blush.

  Lucas passed a gentle hand over her hair.

  "Just be safe. That's all I want. Remember to lock the door after me."

  Then he was stealing away on cat's feet, crossing to the door and making sure that there was no one coming or going as he made his escape.

  Somehow, Clarine found the ability to undress herself, but in a fit of strange boldness, she put away the nightgown that she had pulled out. Instead, she climbed naked between the bed sheets, and she wondered all over again what would have happened if Lucas had found her like this, instead of entirely dressed.

  I am a fool playing a foolish game, but I am not sure if I can stop.

  Despite everything that had happened, she fell into a deep and satisfying sleep, and though she did not remember, she dreamed of herself and Lucas under the willow tree again. This time, they only kissed, and no hurtful words were said. This time, they lay down on the bank, and there was nothing in the world to hurt them at all.

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  12

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

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