The Earl Most Likely

by Jane Goodger

  Something passed through her eyes, and Augustus felt his world drop. She might not live that long. But she wasn’t so sick that she did not argue. “You are still in mourning. You cannot host a ball so soon after your father’s death,” she said, narrowing her eyes, which she did when she pretended to be stern.

  “It’s been long enough, and I’ve always found it distasteful to pretend to mourn simply to keep up appearances.”

  His grandmother shook her head as if his words were terrible, but her eyes twinkled with agreement. The old earl and Augustus’s grandmother had never gotten along, which was likely the reason his visits to Bristol as a boy had been so infrequent. His grandmother had never hidden her dislike for the old earl and Augustus knew she regretted allowing her daughter to marry him. “Your father dislikes joy,” Lady Porter had said to him once.

  It was an apt description.

  “No one will travel to St. Ives for a ball so close to Christmas, Augustus, not with the weather.” She paused to catch her breath and Augustus had to fight the urge to have the butler call for a physician. “It’s unheard of. Hold it in London. Surely your townhouse is large enough to accommodate such an event. I cannot fathom why you want to hold a ball in the first place.”

  Augustus smiled, something that immediately gained his grandmother’s interest. “I am looking for a countess,” he said, and sat back to enjoy the emotions that crossed his dear grandmamma’s face. “This time, my bride will have the perfect pedigree you insist upon, Grandmamma. What better place to find her than at my own ball? I dislike the London season, as you well know, and I would like to avoid the marriage mart at all costs. Why not bring the brides to me?”

  Lady Porter chuckled, sounding so much like her old self, Augustus felt a small amount of relief. “How cunning of you. I suppose you will make no secret as to the purpose of this ball?”

  “I was hoping you might mention something to some of your friends,” he said, wiping a bit of lint from his jacket with exaggerated nonchalance.

  “You devil,” Lady Porter said, very nearly cackling with delight, though when her laughs turned to chest-wracking coughs, Augustus stood. “I’m fine,” she said, and waved him to sit. “You shall have to hire guards to keep all the young ladies from sneaking in to the affair.”

  Augustus grinned. “Do you think you are up to assisting me in creating an invitation list? It’s been so long since I’ve been in town, I hardly know who is who anymore.”

  “My boy,” she said, giving him a satisfied smile, “your ball shall be the greatest crush in years. An earl, looking for a bride at a Christmas ball. The mamas will be in a tizzy.”

  “I did think it rather a clever idea.”

  Lady Porter clapped her hands and a footman stepped forward. “John, go fetch Miss Tillie and have her bring my stationery and writing tools.” Once the footman had left, his grandmother grew quiet. “Will Costille House be ready in time? I cannot imagine it will be, given what you said it looked like.”

  “I have been assured that it will be. Either way, I am holding the ball and I will find my bride. Costille House needs a lady.”

  “Hmm.”

  No one could say more than his grandmother without saying anything, Augustus thought darkly. “Please say whatever is moving around that dusty attic of yours.”

  “Insolent boy,” Lady Porter said mildly. “Costille does not need a lady, you do. You know, Augustus, I never truly thought Lenore was a good match for you. Though she was beautiful and intelligent, she thought far too much of herself. I never believed you could be happy together and I always felt you married far beneath yourself. You must promise me that your new bride will be worthy of the Berkley title.” She began coughing, a deep, frightening, rattling sound, but she waved him away again when he stood to assist her. When she recovered, she said, “This cough of mine, it’s been quite persistent this fall. As I was saying, I may not have liked your father overmuch, but he did his duty and his estates flourished. Perhaps your new bride will have a bit more care for you than your first.”

  Augustus let out a laugh. “She loathed me.”

  Shaking her head, she said, “She loathed your father. But that is water under the bridge. I want you to pick a bride who is worthy of you, of the title, and who makes you happy, Augustus. You were always such a lonely little boy, and now I suspect you are a lonely young man. There are worse things, you know. Feeling alone when you are married to someone you should not be married to. Your grandfather and I had something rare, we shared a common background, a deep understanding of our heritage, and I want that for you.”

  Augustus shifted uncomfortably under his grandmother’s regard. Such talk of feelings made him ill at ease. He’d never thought to love his wife—such an idea was a complete abstraction—but he wanted a woman who was not disagreeable. He could easily settle for not disagreeable. To appease his grandmother, however, he said, “Of course. I promise I shall find a bride worthy of the earldom. And I shall begin my search for this perfect wife at my ball.”

  His grandmother smiled. “It is my most fervent wish to see you well married before I die.”

  Those words, more than the cough, more than his grandmother’s appearance, affected him. He would move mountains for her, and if she wanted him to marry well, he damn well would.

  * * * *

  By the sixteenth day of renovations, Harriet felt she’d become part of the army of laborers who came each day but Sunday to recreate Costille House. The men greeted her warmly, waving or calling out, and Harriet almost had the sense of being in a family—albeit a family of burly men, most of whom had a poor relationship with their razors. She’d missed only three days—two Sundays and one rainy day in which her claim of “going for a walk” would have been met with deep suspicion. Or perhaps not. Perhaps she could have announced she was going for a walk in a blizzard (not that St. Ives had seen a blizzard in a generation) and no one would have raised an eyebrow. She ought to test that theory out, she thought as she left the house one dreary morning more than two weeks after Lord Berkley had left.

  His lordship was overdue to return, and Harriet was a bit nervous about his reaction to his house. While the walls were down and some of the more intricate renovations had begun, the house itself was a mess of plaster, dust, wood, and tools. The sounds of sawing, hammering, scraping, and men bellowing to each other over the noise of construction had become ordinary to Harriet, but someone walking into the worksite might see nothing but chaos.

  “Miss Anderson, good morning to you,” one of the workers called. “His lordship returned last night.”

  Her stomach did a small somersault, and she hurried to find Mr. Billings to determine whether he’d gotten the earl’s reaction to what he had seen thus far. Harriet found Mr. Billings helping to hoist a massive beam back into its rightful place. Though not a young man, Mr. Billings was all muscle, and resembled a bull, red-faced and straining, as he pulled on a thick rope with the help of five other men. Another man was high on a ladder, ready to guide the great slab of wood into its place. Opposite him, another worker waited on a second ladder.

  None of the men saw her yet, and were letting out a stream of colorful curses, all directed at the beam. “A bit more, boys. Devil take it, this beam has got to be as heavy as your wife, Jimmy.” The comment produced rough laughter, and Jimmy’s response threatened to make the men too weak to continue their task. “I need a cock as big as this beam to make her happy. And she’s a happy woman, lads, let me tell you.”

  Harriet had thought she’d gotten used to hearing off-color language, but this made her cheeks flush scarlet. She had no idea men said such things to one another, even in jest.

  “Gentlemen, there is a lady present.” All the men turned, first to look at the man standing on the second ladder—Lord Berkley himself—and then to look at Harriet. The men instantly sobered and Harriet found herself blushing even more under the
men’s scrutiny, particularly his lordship’s. She could not bring herself to look at him, and for some reason his presence in the room made the situation even more embarrassing.

  Harriet waved a hand to let them know she had not been offended, even though she was rather mortified.

  Soon the men went back to the task at hand and Harriet watched the delicate operation of setting the beam into place. Within minutes, the men let out a collective cheer as the beam slid home. Harriet tried not to look in Berkley’s direction, but it was nearly impossible not to. Unlike the workers, Berkley wore fine clothes, minus his jacket and vest, and it seemed to Harriet somehow wicked to view him so unclothed. In moments, he was gracefully descending the ladder, skipping the last three rungs, and landing with a bound on the marble floor.

  Harriet couldn’t help thinking how very young he seemed, without the uniform of an aristocratic man.

  “Mr. Billings has given me an account of the last sixteen days, Miss Anderson, and I must say I am pleased.” He was grinning widely, hands on hips, his forehead glistening with a fine sheen of sweat, his shirt clinging to his body in a most distracting way. She’d been around sweating men for sixteen days and had never felt so very disconcerted. Now she found herself looking at the work, the other men, anywhere but Lord Berkley. The way his damp shirt showed what lay beneath, hard, well-defined muscle of the sort she’d only seen on statues, was very nearly indecent. Deliciously indecent.

  Harriet straightened as that errant thought flew through her mind, and she pressed her lips together in an effort to gather herself before dipping a quick curtsy. “Thank you, my lord. The men have been working extremely hard.”

  “And so has Miss Anderson,” Mr. Billings put in, wiping his brow with a cloth. He offered the damp cloth to Lord Berkley and Harriet was surprised when he took it without hesitation, using it to wipe his own brow. “She’s been here nearly every day and never complaining nor growing short with the men. An angel, sir.”

  Harriet felt her cheeks heat under Mr. Billing’s praise.

  “Thank you, Mr. Billings,” Berkley said, handing the cloth back to the foreman. “I am beginning to think my impossible demands might actually be met.”

  Mr. Billings nodded his head, then made his way back to the crew, shouting orders that were immediately followed, while Lord Berkley walked over to a saw horse and gathered up his vest and jacket.

  “I do apologize for my appearance,” he said with a small bow. “I have no fear of heights and the man Mr. Billings was sending up was clearly terrified.”

  “No need to apologize, my lord,” she said, still unable to look directly at him until he’d completed putting his clothes on. “I am happy you are pleased. I was concerned that when you arrived amidst such commotion, it would not be obvious how much work has actually been done. The staircase is my favorite discovery.”

  “Staircase? I had to use makeshift steps last night to get to my room.”

  Indeed, where his wife’s monstrosity of black and white tiled staircase with wrought iron railings had been was now a crude wooden staircase. Gone was the thick stone balustrade, the massive lions that had served as newel posts. The sight of the new staircase the night he returned had nearly driven him over the edge.

  “I found the original in the barn and the men are gathering up all the pieces today to begin reconstructing it. It’s positively massive and I cannot believe our good fortune that it was saved. Indeed, it appears that very nearly everything but the roof in the great hall was saved. I think whoever was hired to remove the items took far greater care with them than we originally believed.”

  His eyes widened. “The lions are still intact?”

  “All three. The largest was buried a bit, but he’s there in all his ferocious glory from what I can see of him.” The staircase was shaped like an upside-down Y and at the center had been an immense statue of a lion, its great paw on a large gold-plated globe. Harriet remembered the first time she saw it, she’d been tempted to climb aboard. It had seemed such a majestic creature, and long after she’d completed the tour, she’d thought of him and imagined he came to life at night. She’d only been twelve years old and awed by the majesty of the castle. Even during her second tour, when she’d been sixteen, she’d had an urge to ride her old friend. Finding him amidst the debris was like finding a treasure, and clearly Lord Berkley felt much the same.

  “When I was a boy, I use to climb on them, of course only when my father was not in residence.” He grinned. “He was rarely home so I climbed on them a great deal. I would imagine they were alive and we would have wonderful adventures.”

  “You did not,” Harriet exclaimed. “I did the very same thing with the fellow in the center. Of course, I didn’t get to climb on him, but I wanted to. And I used to dream he’d come alive.” They grinned at one another until Lord Berkley looked away, his expression turning almost immediately serious. “I was only twelve,” Harriet added, aware his lordship’s mood had taken a decided turn.

  “I’d like to see them, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course.” Harriet led the way. Since her arrival, a mist had begun to fall, layering all outside in a frost of tiny droplets. It was a cold, raw day, a typical mizzle, it was, and so dark it was almost as if the sun hadn’t quite made it up, but at least it was calm. As they walked through a landscape muted by the mist and gray skies, it seemed as if every sound were accentuated, from her footsteps to his soft breaths behind her. By the time they were in sight of the barn, Harriet’s skirts were damp and her hair coated with mist. Hair that had been held in a loose bun sprang free, and she could feel large pieces bouncing lightly around her head. She knew in minutes she would look a sight, and she silently cursed herself for not wearing her hooded jacket. As they reach the great, yawning opening of the barn, Harriet was mortified that her hair was a riot of corkscrew curls.

  “Wait. Stop.”

  Bracing herself to face him, knowing she had turned into some sort of blond medusa, Harriet turned, a forced smile on her face. “Yes, my lord.”

  He stared at her as if she had, indeed, sprung a headful of live snakes. Silently, he walked up to her, his dark blue eyes pinned to her head, and it took a great effort not to try to tame or cover the nightmare of curling, springing tendrils.

  When Lord Berkley reached her, he stopped, his eyes taking in the sight of her unruly curls, but the look on his face was anything but horrified. Instead, he looked fascinated. Harriet stood beneath his stare, silent, tense, waiting for him to say something. Instead, he reached out and gently tugged on one fat curl, then let it spring back into place.

  “It is miraculous,” he said as if her hair was some sort of wonder. “Let it down, Miss Anderson.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t.”

  “Then I will.” He maneuvered behind her so quickly, Harriet didn’t know what to do or say. She took a step away, then stilled when she felt his hands on her hair, working to release her hair pins. In seconds, she could feel the heavy weight of her hair on her back. “Will this curl as well?”

  “Yes.” She choked out the word, feeling her cheeks heating. Already, the bits that had gotten wet were springing about her head.

  “I should like to see that, Miss Anderson.”

  He moved back in front of her, staring at her head as if she were a creature he’d never seen.

  * * * *

  Plain Miss Anderson of the straw-like hair and pinched expression had been transformed before his eyes. With her face surrounded by curls, she was softened somehow, the almost harsh plains of her face made appealing. More than appealing. Her eyes were bluer, her lush lips pinker. He wasn’t certain if he was going completely mad, but he simply could not believe how very lovely she was without her hair dragged back severely from her face.

  “Why on earth would you wear your hair any other way, Miss Anderson?”

  She lifted a self-conscious hand
to the riot of curls now surrounding her head. “My mother says it’s unbecoming.”

  “You mother is wrong. I forbid you to wear your hair any other way.” He was jesting, but he was also curious as to how she would react.

  “Forbid me? That is hardly your place, my lord, even if I am an employee.” She seemed to be about to get all in a tizzy, when she snapped her mouth closed. “You are joking, of course.”

  He sketched a small bow. “Of course. I cannot forbid you, but I would request that you wear your hair as God created it.”

  Miss Anderson’s brow furrowed. “Why does it matter to you how I wear my hair?”

  “I like pretty things.” The line between her eyes deepened. He’d never met a woman in his life who didn’t blush and smile when called pretty.

  “May I have my hair pins back?” she asked, holding out her hand, palm up, refusing to look into his eyes. He dropped them into her hand with a regretful sigh, then watched as she expertly pulled back the two front sections, leaving the rest of her glorious locks loose. The effect was, frankly, stunning.

  With a scowl of his own, Augustus turned and began heading for the barn.

  “I can’t very well run around with my hair down entirely,” she called after him, misunderstanding the reason for his scowl. “It would be indecent.”

  “What is indecent is doing whatever it is you do to make your hair look as if it’s dry, hard straw,” he said without breaking stride, and he smiled when he heard her let out a small grunt of anger. He could hear her behind him, hurrying her steps so she could keep up with him, and for some reason the sound of her boots on the graveled path behind him made him smile even more. A true gentleman would have slowed his steps, perhaps offered his arm, but he found it more amusing to irk the lady.

  When he stopped at the barn door, she came up next to him, out of breath, her cheeks rosy and her eyes snapping with irritation. “You look thoroughly vexed, Miss Anderson.”