My Darling, My Disaster (Lords of Essex)

by Morgan, Angie

  “Brynn, for the love of all things holy, stay in the carriage, please,” he said through clenched teeth, worry again making his voice tight and commanding. “It isn’t safe.”

  This time, Brynn didn’t refuse.

  An hour later, after the lane had been cleared and the local constable summoned, Gray had driven Maynard to his estate. It wasn’t far, just south of Ferndale, but by the time Rogers turned their carriage onto the long lane leading to the manor house, Brynn was nearly asleep upright, and Gray’s head ached like the devil.

  The Masked Marauder was on the loose in the area, and he had graduated from nuisance highwayman to violent criminal. One more strike to Lord Maynard’s head and the Marauder could have cracked the old man’s skull. He seemed to be focusing on waylaying conveyances, but what about homes? Would he start attacking people in their own residences now?

  Again, Gray thought of the Coopers, and the knot of concern forming in the pit of his stomach intensified.

  “My goodness,” Brynn murmured, her voice sleepy. She peered out the window into the lane, lit only by bright moonlight. “Is that Lana?”

  Gray sat forward and stared through the window glass. Damn it all to hell. He spotted his sister’s lady’s maid, wrapped in a dark cloak, once again treading the side of Ferndale’s drive.

  “Rogers,” was all Gray had to growl for the driver to rein in the horses and bring the carriage to a halt.

  Gray threw open the door and jumped out. Lana had not yet turned to face him, though she had undoubtedly heard the carriage pull to a stop behind her. Her arms were moving, and for the shortest of moments, he wondered if she might be rearranging the bodice of her dress beneath her cloak.

  Oh hell.

  Gray glanced up and down the lane. Had she been out here meeting someone? Another servant, perhaps, for a midnight tryst? The tension simmering in the pit of his stomach from the night’s events shot to a boil.

  “What are you doing out here at this time of night?” he asked, his voice rougher than he’d intended.

  Lana finally whirled to face him, her fair skin as luminous as pearls in the moonlight. He registered her look of surprise and guilt at once, followed closely by disappointment.

  She had been meeting someone.

  “Walking again,” she said, a touch breathless. “If you recall, I was interrupted on my constitutional stroll earlier this morning, my lord.”

  His eyes quickly took in the state of her dress. Her black wool cloak covered most of her, so he could not tell if she was indeed in a state of dishabille. He was inexplicably more irritated at the thought of her secret rendezvous than the fact that she was out alone with a bandit on the loose. Which was absurd, he knew. The knowledge did little to curb his annoyance.

  “Ah, yes, forgive me. It makes infinitely more sense for you to return to your stroll in the middle of the night, along a pitch-dark lane, when there is a violent highwayman traveling these roads.” Gray stepped aside and swung an arm toward the carriage. “Inside,” he snapped. “I will not entertain an argument.”

  “Lana?” Brynn called from within. “Do come up. It isn’t safe.”

  The footman riding at the back of the carriage had already set the steps into place, and Lana, hiking her chin, accepted Gray’s hand when he proffered it. He had removed his gloves earlier while assisting Maynard, and now, as his fingers closed around Lana’s delicate ones, he realized she, too, wore no gloves.

  Her skin was warm and petal soft—unusually so for a servant. He’d seen Mrs. Braxton’s hands work over the hot stove, and hers were rough and worn. Then again, his mother had explained months before that Miss Volchek hailed from a genteel family that had fallen on hard times, so perhaps she hadn’t always had to work. Gray’s fingers tightened around her palm, holding on a fraction longer than was proper, his thumb involuntarily caressing the creamy back of her hand.

  Lust shot through him, sharp and sweet. An indescribable desire to press his lips to her smooth knuckles took hold of him as his thumb stroked her soft skin again. He felt Lana’s arm tense and heard her sudden intake of breath as she set her feet in the carriage. She jerked her hand out of his and took the seat next to Brynn.

  As Gray settled into his place and Rogers drove on for the rest of the short ride up the lane, Brynn told her maid all that had unfolded with Maynard’s carriage, her voice catching when she spoke of the masked bandit. Lana listened in rapt horror, though she seemed to have lost her ability to form opinions, and she remained oddly silent, her fingers twisting restlessly in her lap.

  She’s nervous, Gray thought, which begged the question as to exactly what she had to be nervous about. Unless she was nervous about him.

  They reached the manor, and Gray stepped down from the coach, extending his arm to his sister and then to her maid. Refusing his assistance and not meeting his eyes, Lana quickly descended after Brynn as if the coach were on fire. Her coolness irked him, but he could not fault her for it. Earlier that morning and full of whiskey, he had overstepped when he had all but admitted his attraction to her. Gray supposed some form of apology was in order.

  His gaze fell, drawn to a scrap of paper floating from her skirts to the floor of the coach. He retrieved it and turned to hand it to her, but Lana had already started toward the back of the manor. With mounting displeasure, he couldn’t help noticing the careful way she cinched the cape closer around her, and instead of returning the note to her as he should have done, he gripped the piece of paper in his closed fist and tucked it into his trouser pocket.

  “Don’t be silly, Lana, come in with us,” Brynn called out, but Lana didn’t stop.

  “Oh no, I…I must fetch a draught for you, my lady!” the maid replied as she hurried to the side of the manor and the kitchen entrance there. Brynn protested that she didn’t need one, but Lana had already disappeared around the corner.

  Inside, they were immediately attended to by their longtime butler, Braxton. Gray touched his sister’s arm as she started for the stairwell. “Are you certain your chest does not ail you?”

  Brynn covered his hand with hers. “Don’t fret, Gray. I only need rest. I assure you, my lungs are fine.”

  His brow furrowed with concern as she proceeded up the stairs with the housekeeper to meet Lana in her rooms. It had already been a long night, and after the events earlier, he was surprised Brynn was still standing. Once more, he couldn’t help but worry.

  Gray frowned as he loosened his cravat. Lana, on the other hand, inspired another emotion entirely: frustration. Or perhaps, even more so, curiosity. It would take no more than a half hour for her to prepare Brynn for bed, and if Brynn’s low mood was any indication, it could take less time than that.

  Gray bid Braxton good night and climbed the stairs as well. He knew just the place to sit and wait for Lana to be dismissed. His interest was twofold. The first would ensure that Brynn was indeed only fatigued and not concealing any other underlying symptoms of something worse. But the second was far more selfish—he had to know once and for all what Lana had been doing out on the lane at this ungodly hour of the night.

  Recalling the piece of paper he’d shoved into his pocket, he pulled it out to scan its contents. Gray knew he was intruding on Lana’s private correspondence, but he didn’t care. His sister’s maid was acting far too cagey for him to turn a blind, or uninterested, eye. A tiny voice insisted that it was more than that, but he ignored it.

  A Heart remains Well Kept,

  though it Yearns to See yours.

  Soon, my sweet, I promise.

  For it Languishes without your Smile,

  Hopeful for the day it can be Reunited.

  I am Devoted to seeing you Home.

  Gray almost laughed aloud at the ridiculous drivel, but his amusement swiftly faded. He’d been correct in his assumption that Lana had been meeting someone, possibly the man who had written this note. She had a beau. A grievously talentless one, but a lover nonetheless. Was he a man from the village? One of the serv
ants at Ferndale?

  The sudden image of her naked body tangled up in another man’s arms assaulted him, and with it, the tantalizing recollection of her soft, ungloved hand. Gray felt a hot tug in his loins at the sinful thought that the rest of her would likely be as silky and smooth. He stifled his lust with an angry grunt. He was here to suss out the extent of Brynn’s maid’s indiscretions, not to salivate like a schoolboy over her physical charms.

  Pocketing the note, he waited with grim purpose in an alcove off the second-floor hallway, three doors down from his sister’s rooms. There was a small bench there, beside a potted fern, and as he sat in the silent corridor, the fatigue of the night before, and the long day and evening, caught up with him. His lids began to droop, and the warmth of sleep began to creep up from the soles of his feet, the way it did when he was exhausted. He closed his eyes just to soothe them from the burn of weariness.

  When he felt a gentle nudge against his shin, Gray’s lids sprang open. He found his shoulder and head nearly consumed by the large fronds of the fern beside him. He’d slumped over, he realized, and fallen asleep.

  “Lord Northridge?”

  Another nudge against his shin, only this time sharper. More like a kick.

  He straightened on the bench immediately and saw Lana standing before him, a dress and some other articles of clothing draped over her arm. He rolled his shoulders, stretching the kinks out of his back. She shot him a speaking look, and he fought to compose himself. Bloody fine work. Now she had the advantage.

  “I was waiting for you,” he said in a low voice, standing slowly.

  She raised one slim eyebrow, the imperious look making her seem more inconvenienced aristocrat than maid. “For me?”

  “That is what I said.”

  She did not rise to his tart reply. “May I help you with something, my lord?”

  You can help me to my rooms.

  The thought came out of nowhere, and Gray shook his head. He must have still been half addled with sleep. Clearing his throat, he focused on the matter at hand. The note was burning a hole in his trouser pocket, though he couldn’t bring himself to admit that he had taken and read it. “What were you doing on the road? And don’t bother to answer that you were taking a stroll. We both know it isn’t true.”

  Something flared in her eyes before her lips thinned. She held the clothing in front of her like a barrier between them. “I do not believe that is any of your business, my lord.”

  “It is my business if my sister’s maid is meeting inappropriately with a man.”

  She flushed at his lewd suggestion but lifted her chin, her voice quiet. “My lord, your question is vulgar, and regardless of what you may assume, what I do on my own time is my own affair.”

  Ignoring the rise of his temper at her evasive response, Gray frowned at the underlying thread of shock in her voice. She was accusing him of vulgarity? He recalled well her numb grip on her cloak, and the poem’s verbosely worded desire for a rendezvous. What had she been hiding if not a ripped or hastily laced bodice?

  He considered the defiant woman standing before him and changed tactics. She had yet to respond well to interrogation or high-handedness, and she could be a mule when she chose to be. No wonder she got along so well with his sister. He almost sighed at the thought.

  “Miss Volchek,” he said, gentling his voice and reaching forward. She clutched her skirts as if about to bolt, and he could only react to stop her, grasping her wrist so quickly that two of the gowns slid to the floor. Gray saw a change in her eyes. A pulse of fear. What did she assume, that he planned to harm her? That he was that sort of a man? He felt a blow of disappointment and insult.

  She froze, though the band of his fingers was not tight. It was as if the mere contact of skin upon skin was the thing holding her immobile. Her wrist felt so fragile in his hand, and as his thumb skimmed the soft underside of it, her teeth sunk into her lower lip. Something hot and unfamiliar sparked between them, making Gray acutely aware of her slim body in such dangerous proximity to his. A matching awareness narrowed Lana’s pupils to pinpricks, sharpening the bright, vibrant green of her irises.

  Her pulse leaped wildly beneath his fingertips. “What were you doing on the lane?”

  “Unhand me at once, sir.”

  “Give me what I want—the truth—and I will,” he countered.

  She gave him the same answer she’d given that morning, though her voice shook slightly. “I was walking.”

  Lana’s face remained calm, but her eyes, those beautiful, vivid, transparent eyes, told a different story. Shadows slunk in them, hinting at secrets she was desperate to conceal. Gray could see it in their flickering depths. It was something she didn’t want him to know…that she didn’t want anyone to know. At the sight of her flushed cheeks, he felt an irrational flick of irritation.

  “You must take me for a fool.”

  She jerked her chin upward as he took a step closer, eliminating the gap between them, and Gray had to admire her courage for standing her ground. Her small but shapely bosom rose and fell in bursts beneath the plain serviceable frock she wore, and devil take him, all he wanted was to drag her into his arms and do whatever it was he suspected her of doing with God knows who out on the lane.

  Greedily, his eyes roved over her, lingering on the sable curls escaping that white cap atop her head. He ached to pull them loose from their confines and wind his fingers into the thick mass. He wondered if those curls were as silky as they looked, recalling the heavy cascade across her shoulders earlier that morning when she’d been bareheaded.

  Her light, floral fragrance filled his nostrils. He’d gone far too long without the company of a woman, and right now, this infuriatingly tight-lipped maid was somehow managing to sing a siren song, luring him beyond the vestiges of his own ruthless self-control. Why shouldn’t he succumb? It was not so unusual for society lords to dally with the servants belowstairs, more so the comely ones. And she was more than comely…

  Gray caught himself mid-thought and froze.

  What in hell was he thinking? Dallying with the servants? With his sister’s maid, of all people? He must be half-crazed out of his mind.

  Self-disgust flooded him, and his mouth tightened as he stepped back with a dispassionate exhale. “I will ask you one more time. Were you meeting your lover? If you lie to me, I will have your position terminated.”

  Lana’s head bowed low, and for a moment, Gray wondered whether his sharp words had frightened her. Her shoulders were shaking. Christ. Was she crying?

  “Miss Volchek?” His hand released her slender wrist and slid up her arm.

  She raised her head and looked at him with such scathing scorn that he almost took a step back. Gray realized belatedly that she was laughing. It was a hollow, haughty sound, devoid of any emotion, that left him cold.

  “A lover?” she said, contempt dripping from her words. “How like you to assume such a thing, Lord Northridge.”

  “How like me?” he echoed, stunned at the clipped setdown.

  “Not everyone cavorts as freely as you do with the opposite sex. I suppose it is a natural thought for you to assume that others may do the same, and that you would interpret an innocent stroll as a sordid meeting.”

  Gray’s mouth tightened as he took her meaning. She had struck back with a barbed insult, and by the looks of things, she wasn’t finished. His hand slid into his pocket, about to display the damning note and indisputable evidence of her tryst. Shame stopped him. He’d purposefully kept and read a woman’s private correspondence. Flushing darkly at his own indiscretion, he crushed the parchment between his fingers instead.

  “Innocent, was it?” he scoffed weakly.

  “Just because you are a known profligate does not mean that everyone else holds themselves to the same despicable standards. Even a lowly maid, my lord.”

  “I am not a profligate,” he muttered. It was all he could manage. He had just been on the receiving end of a blistering rebuke handed down by
one of his servants, one who stood before him like an enraged vixen, her color high and her eyes flashing daggers at him. Despite her insolence, Gray felt a hot wash of desire pulse through him. She would be a hellion in bed. That passion he could see simmering just beneath the surface all but guaranteed it.

  “Tell that to your mistress,” she tossed back, her nostrils flaring as he stared at her in arrested surprise. “However many of them you keep, from Essex all the way to London. You truly are an unspeakable ra—”

  Gray couldn’t help himself. His mouth swooped down upon hers and silenced her tirade. The shock of the lush, womanly contact worked a groan from deep in his throat, and he drew her closer, his arms curving around her slim back. He’d forgotten what it felt like to hold a woman, to feel soft curves fitting against his starved body in such perfect accord. The gowns she had not dropped were now crushed between them as his lips teased hers apart, his tongue tracing the soft inside of their contours. With a soft gasp, she clamped her lips shut in response. He craved far more than the brief touch she allowed, but she held herself rigid, refusing to respond to the persuasive pressure of his mouth, and as his reason returned, Gray pulled away.

  His heart was pounding in his chest, while she seemed supremely unaffected by the heated, if fleeting, embrace. In fact, she looked downright bored. Her hands were fisted at her sides, her composure stony. If she were a highborn lady, she would be well within her rights to crack her palm across his cheek. Instead, she used the bite of her eyes and whip of her tongue to set him to rights.

  “You have proven me right, my lord,” she hissed in a low, furious voice. “You cannot control your impulses. You take what you want whenever you want it, with no thought for consequence or whether your actions will endanger others. What if Lady Dinsmore or Mrs. Frommer had been nearby? My position would have been terminated in an instant because of your lewd desires.”

  Her words stung and were far too close to the truth.

  “I’ve heard the stories about you, about your indiscretions in London, and the trail of broken hearts in your wake. You are a seducer of the worst sort.”