Ethan: Lord of Scandals ll-3

by Grace Burrowes

  “That scamp did not offer to help with the dishes.”

  “He did not. If you and Nick are in the house, who is with the boys?”

  “They popped down to the paddocks to stuff carrots into the shoats named Lightning and Thunder.” Ethan refilled the kettle, and the reservoir in the stove for good measure. He tidied up as Alice rinsed things off and added them to the collection soaking in the big kitchen sink.

  “Ethan Grey, did you just finish my tea?”

  “There was only one cold swallow left.” Ethan brought her the empty mug. “Shall I make you another?”

  “So you can pilfer from that too? I think not. What are you… Oh, Ethan.”

  He’d come up behind her and linked his hands around her waist to pull her back against his chest. She kept her hands in the water, closed her eyes, and enjoyed the simple, warm proximity of him.

  Ethan’s voice rumbled at her ear, as she felt his lips graze her jaw. “I told myself I would not pester you, but you look so desperately pesterable, with the apron around your waist and your mouth all pinched up like that.”

  “And my hands sopping wet and not a towel within reach. I used to think you weren’t anything like Nick, you know?”

  “How could you think such a thing?” Ethan murmured, and dear Jesus, was that his tongue tracing her ear? “We are both tall, blond, blue-eyed, and of an age. We have features alike, and we both make excellent muffins, though mine are better.”

  “Turn loose of me.” Alice wiggled a little against him, but not to get away. “Somebody could come along, and this isn’t how you preserve anybody’s reputation, Ethan Grey.” He stepped back, slowly.

  “You are a woman of considerable resolve, Alice Portman. Right now, I do admire you for it, but I cannot like it.”

  “I’m crushed.” Alice fluttered her lashes dramatically. “Go find your sons and collect your brother before I’m interrupted again by some errant pair of lips. And do not think of peeking into that oven, Mr. Grey, or you’ll forfeit the contest.”

  “That wasn’t one of the rules.”

  “And neither was it good sportsmanship to try to cozen a judge.” Alice gave him her best The-Governess-Is-Not-Happy glare. “The other team is guilty of the same, so I will not assess a penalty.”

  “I will take my leave.” Ethan executed an elaborate bow. “If you see my opponent, tell him I’m at the stables, corrupting his seconds.”

  “Out!”

  Eleven

  Horses needed the occasional drink, especially in warmer weather. At least the coachy looked apologetic when he insisted Hart Collins pause on his journey between house parties.

  Boring, staid, excruciatingly proper house parties held by those whose social aspirations meant a title—any title at all—would find welcome in their midst.

  “Very well.” Hart Collins stood beside the coach and surveyed the unprepossessing village green. “But if I sicken from drinking the dog piss that passes for ale in such surrounds, be it on your head, John Coachman.”

  “Aye, milord.”

  The coachy would have a nip too, of course. The man drove better drunk than sober, something Collins did not hold against him—a drunk being less inclined to carp about timely payment of his wages.

  The inn was, like its setting, tidy, clean, and completely unremarkable. A bucolic Tudor exponent of English respectability such as Collins occasionally pretended he missed when dealing with the infernal heat and insubordinate servants in Italy.

  And sometimes, the barmaids in such establishments were not averse to earning a few extra coins. Then too, the horses would move along more smartly if they were given a chance to blow, after all. One shouldn’t neglect one’s cattle.

  “A proper squire would come in occasionally for a pint.”

  The speaker was hunched over the dark, polished wood of the bar, and his tone suggested this was not the first drink with which he fueled his discontent.

  “Hush, ye, Thatcher. We don’t all of us need to cast our business to the wind. Mr. Grey pays his tithes and minds his own.” The rebuke came from a plump matron sitting in the snug with the unsmiling specimen who must have been her yeoman spouse.

  “He can well afford to pay his tithes,” Thatcher retorted, straightening. “Man’s a bloody nabob, and watches every coin.”

  Yokels would ever complain about the gentry, the gentry would complain about the nobs, and the titles would complain about the Crown. Merry Old England was predictable, at least.

  Collins stepped up to the bar. “A pint of your best, and some decent fare.”

  “There’s ham and cheese, and bread just out of the oven,” the bartender said while pulling a pale pint. He wasn’t an old man, but he had the self-contained quality of most in his station.

  “Ethan Grey’s cheese,” Thatcher spat. “You purchase your goods from a man who’s too high and mighty to patronize the only inn in the neighborhood.”

  Ethan Grey?

  “That’s enough from you, Thatcher,” the conscience in the corner piped up. “Most would be spending their free time with family, not biting the hand that feeds them.” She sent a significant glance at Collins, a clear reminder that foreigners—those from outside the parish—were not to be parties to local grievances.

  “This Ethan Grey,” Collins said, sliding his drink down the bar and taking a position next to Thatcher. “He’s one of the landholders hereabouts?”

  “Owns one of the prettiest properties in the shire,” Thatcher replied. “Imports his sheep and cattle, keeps a prime stable, but spoils his wee brats rotten and thinks he’s too good for the rest of us—and him nothing but some lord’s bastard, or so they say.”

  Sometimes, just when it seemed those fickle bitches known as the Fates turned their backs on a man, they were in fact leaving in his hands the means to solve all his problems.

  Ethan Grey had children—small children. “Is this Ethan Grey tall, blond, and blue-eyed? Serious as a parson?”

  “More serious than Vicar Fleming,” Thatcher groused. “A hard man and hardheaded. Hard on the help what gives him an honest day’s work.”

  From the scent of Thatcher and the dirt on his boots and clothes, the man was a hostler of some sort. In pursuit of self-interest, Collins was willing to have truck with even such a one as this.

  “And you say he’s wealthy and dotes on his children? Come, Mr. Thatcher. Perhaps you’d like to share in the plebeian offerings that pass for sustenance at this establishment.”

  Thatcher looked momentarily wary, until the bartender put a plate of sliced ham, cheese, and brown bread on the bar.

  “I’m a mite peckish,” Thatcher allowed.

  Collins picked up the plate with one hand and his drink with the other—a surprisingly mellow summer ale. “Come along. I have a few questions for you.”

  As they made their way to a corner table as far as possible from the bar and the snug, Collins’s mind began to spin possibilities. Across the room, the bartender scrubbed out a mug with a dingy white rag and said nothing.

  * * *

  When Nick returned to the kitchen, he brought paper, pencils, and a gum eraser, and sat at the worktable. Alice peered over his shoulder as he sketched, startled at the whimsy of the structure on the page.

  “You could really build that?”

  “Of course.” Nick didn’t look up. “It would take some doing. On a raised structure like this, we might have to paint the boards before we build, which means being able to see how the whole fits together from the raw lumber.”

  “These are like your bird houses, but bigger.”

  “And one must plan safe entry and exits, because little boys don’t generally fly. Bring your tea over here, Alice. I’m about to interrogate you.”

  “So interrogate,” Alice challenged him as she took the bench opposite him at the table. “Be warned I’m not the tattling kind.”

  “It’s only tattling if somebody has misbehaved. Are you happy here?”

  Not the quest
ion she’d anticipated. “Happier than I thought I’d be. Overwhelmed too.”

  “Overwhelmed?” Nick frowned at his sketch. “I’m not sure I can credit that such a thing is possible. They are good boys, Alice. How can you be overwhelmed to be teaching them their sums and declensions? Priscilla was overwhelming, with her wild imagination and careless heart.”

  “Wild imagination?” Alice took a sip of her tea, aiming a pointed look at the sketch on the page. Nick had designed a two-story affair patterned to blend right into the surrounding foliage, complete with birds and a birdhouse secreted among the leaves and branches.

  “Wild.” He used the eraser the better to shade the foliage, while the scents of cinnamon and clove filled the kitchen. “The stories that child concocts should be published.” He frowned at his sketch then paused to help himself to a sip of Alice’s tea. “You put cinnamon in this, and you’re dodging my question.”

  “The boys are busy,” Alice said, “and you’re right. Academically, they are well within my abilities.”

  “But?” Nick set his sketch aside and regarded Alice closely, all hint of teasing gone from his features.

  “But I realize I am tromping around Tydings like a mountaineer, Nick. I used to go for days at Sutcliffe without leaving the walls of the manor. My hip hurt, true, but here, it seems the more I walk, the less it hurts.”

  “This overwhelms you? And why didn’t you just tell us you stayed indoors because you hurt?”

  Yes, why hadn’t she? “It doesn’t bother me much now. That’s a change, a big change. Miss Portman,” she said with some consternation, “does not enjoy the outdoors.”

  Nick cocked his head. “But you do. You were positively beaming on that horse, Alice. You were enjoying the outdoors and being on horseback.”

  “That overwhelms me too. Before this week, I’d gone twelve years without managing a horse, Nick. I’d avoided titled company, but ended up on the arm of an earl here in Ethan’s gardens, and we’re off to do the pretty with more of same on Wednesday. It makes my head swim, to tell the truth.”

  “I’m a title.” Nick swiped more of her tea.

  “You’re just you, for which I am grateful.”

  “So are you overwhelmed with joy, or worries?”

  “Both.” Alice peered at her almost-empty mug. “Then there is your brother.”

  “Ah.”

  What a man could do with one syllable. “He overwhelms me too.”

  “It’s the family charm. We’re endowed with it in proportion to our size.”

  “Abominable man.” Alice stalled by sipping the last of her tea. “Ethan is charming, and you should not mock him.”

  Nick sobered. “I don’t mock him, and I don’t understand him either. He used to have charm to burn, Alice. I was convinced, growing up, he would have made a much better earl than I, and I used to pray he’d end up with the title, though it was a legal impossibility.”

  “Why would he have made the better earl? You’re the heir.”

  “Ethan is so much more of a man than I am. He’s not just smarter, he’s wiser. He’s not quite too big, whereas I have the dimensions of an ox. He never descended to chasing skirts out of immature resentment of life’s responsibilities. He managed to dust himself off after Papa’s wrongheaded foolishness, and he comprehends finances with an intuition I lack. He’s just… better. I am glad Leah did not meet him first.”

  “Have you told him this?” Alice asked, wondering why women were considered less rational than men.

  “He would just give me that cool, kind smile of his.” Nick scrubbed a hand over his face. “He’d tell me he hadn’t any idea what I was going on about, then change the subject. It unnerves me.”

  “Why would that unnerve you?”

  “Because the old Ethan, my brother Ethan, would have argued me right out of my positions, because they are not entirely logical—I comprehend that—and he would have done so without causing me to resent his superior reasoning. He took a first in mathematics, you know.”

  “And his Latin is excellent. Where did he go to school before Cambridge?”

  “Stoneham,” Nick replied. “Some dreary place up north. Lady Warne about tore a strip off Papa when she got wind of it. I gather it is not a congenial environment, as boarding schools go.”

  Alice felt the tea in her belly abruptly curdle. “God above. Stoneham is not far from Blessings, Nick. It’s a horror.”

  Nick’s hand went still, the eraser poised above the whimsical sketch. “A horror? What constitutes a horror, Alice? And don’t spare me the details.”

  “Adequate academically, and probably not too harsh for the typical meek younger son, but for an earl’s disgraced bastard… Stoneham is one of the places boys go when they’re sent down from the better schools. There’s an assumption at such institutions that ‘boys being boys’ means many boys will be hurt, deprived of their meals, beaten, and worse.”

  Nick looked heartsick, a disquieting thing on a man so large and generally sunny. “What you describe is bad enough. Ethan did nothing to deserve such a fate.”

  “Some would call such a fate an opportunity. He got into Cambridge, and did well there.”

  “What aren’t you telling me, Alice?” Nick met her gaze squarely, but Alice could see him steeling himself for her reply.

  “My half brother Vim attended Stoneham at one point,” Alice said. “He came home with a broken arm after only a few weeks of the Michaelmas term. He got crosswise of some baron’s lordling and was attacked by a gang one night on the way to the privy. He lost the hearing in one ear for most of a year as well, and we weren’t sure he’d be able to see out of one eye.”

  Nick stood, almost knocking the bench over. “At Stoneham?”

  “At Stoneham. And from what Vim said, the proctors and deans regarded this as tolerable behavior between young men of unequal standing.”

  “Because your brother was a bastard?”

  “He wasn’t. He was my mother’s son from a prior marriage, wealthy, much loved, and very bright. His family was right at hand and outraged on his behalf.”

  “Ethan was there for two years. He didn’t leave the premises even once.” Nick scrubbed a hand over his face again, and his gaze slewed around toward the door. His expression was tortured as he backed away from Alice. “I have to… You’ll excuse me.”

  And then he was gone, leaving a sketch of such whimsy and grace on the table, Alice thought it worthy of framing and hanging on the schoolroom wall.

  * * *

  “You look a little tired,” Ethan remarked, pushing off the door jamb to Alice’s room and settling himself at her escritoire. The desk wasn’t far from the bed, but Alice was relieved he’d stopped there.

  And… disappointed.

  “I am tired. I sleep better here at Tydings than I did at Sutcliffe or Belmont Hall. I think it’s because the boys keep me moving, and not just about the house, but all over the grounds.”

  “Does it bother your hip?”

  “At first, yes. It ached, but now it seems stronger.” A good deal stronger. How had this happened in just a few weeks?

  “Maybe the riding helps. Are you ready for tomorrow?”

  “I will be relieved to have it over with, though the boys are looking forward to it and promising to be on their best behavior.”

  “I’ll bring Davey,” Ethan said. “If there are three adults to manage two little boys, we might stand a chance.”

  “You aren’t to manage them. You’re Mr. Grey, the invited guest, and Davey and I will see to the children.” To remind him of the hierarchy reassured Alice, or it ought to.

  Ethan rose and ambled the short distance to the bed, coming down beside her. “I wish you did not see yourself as subordinate.”

  With his weight on the mattress, Alice was pitched against his side. “I don’t see myself as subordinate. I see myself as employed.”

  “You don’t have to be,” Ethan went on. “Your brother said there’s a great deal of family w
ealth.”

  “There is, and when I’m too old to keep up with a child, I’ll have need of it. Benjamin invests my share, and it does quite nicely.”

  Ethan had turned his head, as if he’d study Alice’s ear. The thought was unnerving. “I’d be happy to speak with him regarding some worthy projects. I don’t bruit it about, but I am occasionally called to Carlton House to whisper in the Regent’s ear regarding his finances.”

  Whisper in the… “You’re what?”

  “That’s my reaction as well.” Ethan looked a little puzzled. “I peer at the records for that monstrosity he’s building in Brighton, assess which roads ought to be improved in which order, that sort of thing. Suggest a few investments that might turn him a profit. He’s an intelligent man, is Prinny, and in a difficult position, but he does listen and seldom forgets what he’s heard—unless he’s passed out or far gone with some other sin.”

  “Sin. Always a worthy topic in lofty circles.” And in the bedrooms of lowly governesses.

  “Are you contemplating the sin of fornication with me, Alice? Do I dare hope you are considering such a thing?”

  “Ethan.” Alice made herself pull away. “The door.”

  “It’s closed.” He nuzzled at her neck.

  Alice shut her eyes and angled her jaw. “It’s not locked.”

  “Alice?” Ethan’s gaze was curious, but in his eyes, Alice saw banked heat.

  She shook her head. “I am not suggesting we… sin right here and now. Your sons are across the hallway, probably still whispering and plotting about tomorrow, and they could interrupt at any moment.”

  “A gap in my strategy,” Ethan chided himself as he rose and went to the door. “And now the door is locked.”

  His walk as he crossed the room this time was the relaxed, feline glide Alice usually observed. The grace was there, and the power, but the purpose had changed. He was stalking her, closing in on his objective with single-minded determination.

  “This isn’t the right time, Ethan.”

  “Agreed. You are nervous of me, and I would reassure you.”