Tempting the Earl

by Rachael Miles

  “My father had brought Trist home while I was still recovering from whooping cough. Bringing home strays, my mother would say, but she was dead by then. We’d met, but I was grieving, with little interest in a friend, though I believe that’s what my father intended her to be. On that particular day, I was standing here wondering whether that tower there was tall enough to kill me quickly if I leapt from its top.”

  Olivia put her hand on his shoulder but said nothing, simply offered silent comfort.

  “My father had been called to the fields, so I knew I would have time to steal up to the balustrade. Then I saw her, in the courtyard there.” He pointed at a spot across the courtyard from the window. “She was so thin, with clothes bare and worn. She looked more alone than any person I’d ever seen. She was playing quoits and saw me in the window. She held out a disc, inviting me to play. I refused. I was still often racked by coughing fits when I exerted myself. But she didn’t know I had been sick, and she simply shrugged, as if she never expected to be anything but alone. She turned back to the game, throwing one disc over the spike, then another, until she had no quoits left, then retrieving them all, she’d begin again.”

  “You must have been very lonely, if an invitation to quoits diverted you from suicide.”

  “That wasn’t it. It was what happened next.” He folded his arms over his chest, reliving the scene. “A large man rode into the carriage yard, and seeing her, flung himself down from his mount, yelling. She recoiled and ran to that door there, but it was locked. Then, she ran to that one. But the household had been given the day to watch the hunt, and all those doors were bolted shut. She looked up at me and mouthed just one word—help—before the man grabbed her and lifted her from the ground by one arm.”

  He waited for Olivia’s next question, but she gave him only comforting silence. Eventually, he picked up the thread of his story. “I didn’t know what I could do. But I had to intervene.”

  “You were a child. What could you do?” Her voice was quiet, thoughtful. He didn’t look at her, not wanting to read pity for the melancholy boy he had been before he knew Trist.

  “I was six. I could shoot. I took my father’s dueling pistols from the box beside his bed, and I loaded one—two would have been too heavy. My hands shook as I poured the powder. I hurried down the stairs as fast as I could without triggering an attack, cradling the gun to my chest. I went out there.” She followed the line of his finger.

  “That was brave. You could have been hurt yourself.”

  “I was afraid, but not for myself—I’d already imagined my death fifty times that week. I was afraid of failing her.” He turned back toward the window as if he were watching the play in his mind. “Apparently, her father had won a great deal of money by cheating at cards. The brute kept hitting her, first with the front, then with the back of his hand. He spaced out his words to accompany each blow. You. Will. Tell. Me. Where. My. Money. Is. I kept my breaths shallow—sometimes that helped—but I couldn’t risk speaking. I found a handful of pebbles and threw them at his back, then I cocked and lifted the gun.”

  “The girl, Trist. What was she doing? Surely, she was fighting or screaming for help?”

  “She said not a word. She simply clenched her eyes shut and bore each blow.”

  “Poor child. How did the man respond? Did he let her go?”

  “Well, faced with a six-year-old holding a pistol at his chest, what could he do but surrender?”

  “Is that what happened?”

  “I saw his face. I think he was afraid that I would make a mistake and shoot him. He threw Trist against the wall, and she crumpled in a heap. Later, he told my father that he had no intention of harming us. But he wanted more than his money; he wanted to punish someone—anyone—for having been duped. I believe he would have beaten her to death the moment he gained the information.”

  “Did she know that? That by refusing to speak, she forced him to keep her alive?”

  “I never asked. She remained on the ground for so long, I was afraid he’d hurt her badly. I kept backing away, making him follow me, to give her room to run, if she could. I kept willing her to look up. I wanted her to know that I was there to save her. And then she did. She opened her eyes, and our gazes met. She started toward me, crawling at first, then pulling her legs under her, she stumbled the rest of the way. I could feel the breath wheezing in my chest. I had only moments before I would be as useless to her as I had been for my mother. I held out the pistol to her, and she took it. Then I fell to the ground, coughs racking my body.” He stopped, trapped in the dual losses of his mother and Trist. He crossed to the settee, not sure if his legs would hold him up through the remainder of the telling.

  “And then?”

  “She shot him. She raised her pretty chin with the bruises purpling her jaw, and pulled the trigger. The man howled in shock and pain, leaning over his leg, where a line of blood seeped through his fingers. Then she pulled me to my feet and dragged me, still coughing, back through the door I’d come through, and she braced a nearby chair below the handle.”

  “Was the shot enough to stop him?” Olivia sat on the edge of the bed across from him, listening intently.

  “We didn’t know. But I knew where to hide.” He leaned back on the settee. Telling the story alleviated some of his guilt. “This house is filled with hidden rooms and secret passages. The shot would draw my father, so we only needed to hide. We came here.”

  “Here?” She looked startled. “There’s a secret passage here?”

  “And in the music room.” He waited until she rolled her eyes, realization dawning. “These walls were painted with faux paneling and monkeys. One of the monkeys’ tails, when pressed, opened a passageway to the nursery. My mother could sneak up to see us—or we could sneak down to be with her. Many a nursemaid was terrified to find us missing. Children of the Devil, one called us.” Harrison walked to the corner the room shared with his father’s old quarters. “It should be about here.” With a click, the door opened.

  “No. There is not a secret passage into my bedroom.” She looked into the darkness with its spiderwebs hanging down, then drew back. “I hate cobwebs.” She pressed the panel, sealing the door again.

  “That was Trist’s reaction. Apparently she could fire a gun at a man three times her size, but a dark passageway was terrifying.”

  “I know how she felt. It’s the cobwebs. Dark is fine. Cobwebs mean spiders.”

  “I told her she wouldn’t be safe if I started coughing. But she refused to leave me; instead, she gave me hard candy she’d gotten from the cook.”

  “And what did you learn from it?”

  “Learn from it?”

  “Yes. Did that day change you in some way? It must, for you to still remember it so vividly after all this time.” There was a hint of some emotion in her voice, but Harrison was too caught up in the past to be able to identify it.

  “I suppose it taught me to be brave, even against incredible odds. It taught me to have the strength of my convictions. And it made me realize that in addition to adventure, I wanted my life to make a difference. To use whatever skills I had to help, as she helped me that day.”

  “That’s a lovely legacy.”

  “I suppose it is.” He had always known that Trist’s bravery that day had been the standard by which he measured himself. How could he rest, comfortable on an estate, when a six-year-old girl had been willing to risk her life to save his? The fact that being around Olivia these past few days had left him questioning that standard was just one more blow to his carefully crafted world.

  “Do you think you’ve honored that legacy? Have you been brave, Harrison—in all things?”

  He stared at her, unable to speak for the tumult of emotions clouding his mind. With a resigned look on her face, Olivia turned away.

  Harrison caught her hand, drawing her back to him. She wanted to resist, but she could not refuse. He’d been in her dreams, her thoughts, for years, and if she were to lea
ve him, at least she might enjoy a kiss. He wrapped his arms around her as if trying to decide what to do next, and she nuzzled her face against his chest.

  He raised her chin, looking into her rich brown eyes, waiting. She said nothing, only caught the bottom edge of her lip between her teeth. She saw desire flame in his eyes, then he lowered his lips slowly to hers. He kissed her gently at first, then more firmly. She matched the delicious pressure, opening her mouth to him, feeling the warmth of his tongue on the back of her teeth.

  She felt his hands drift downward, until he cupped her bottom in his hands, warm and strong. Soon, all she could think of was the warmth of his mouth and the power of his arms. His kisses grew more insistent, and she matched him at every stroke of his tongue.

  It wasn’t wise. It was weakness. She had never been able to resist him, even from their first meeting. She was close to abandon.

  “Miss Livvy.” The knock on the door was soft, then louder. Livvy felt Harrison groan in her mouth. But the moment was gone. “Miss Livvy, you are needed.”

  She stepped out of his arms, and he turned toward the window. She felt a fool.

  “Yes, Joan. One moment.” She turned back to Harrison. “I think it would be best if you returned to your father’s room.”

  Without speaking he left her, and the room grew suddenly cold.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  In the morning mail, Harrison had received a packet of papers from Mr. James, giving him the task of breaking the code that Lord Wilmot had sent home shortly before his death a year before. He had set himself to work immediately, taking a well-lit place at the long table in the middle of the library. But instead of focusing on the code, he found himself wondering—as he had for two days now—where Olivia had been hiding.

  He wanted to apologize. Though he could never regret the kiss—except that it had ended too soon—he did not wish for Olivia to believe he’d sought consolation in her arms because she had been convenient. No, he had wanted her with every sinew of his being. But how to apologize for something he could not regret, except that it might have made Olivia uneasy.

  But every time he looked for her, she was nowhere to be found, not in her study, or in the morning room, or in the library, or any of another dozen places. He had even stolen into the music room each night, hoping his music would call her to him. But she had not responded.

  At the far end of the library, a workman was replacing some of the panes in the large window. And suddenly Harrison knew where she was: the guest wing, unused because of repairs to the windows.

  He returned his work to the brown paper wrapper and left it on the long table. It would be fine, he reassured himself. None of the scholars would look at another man’s work, and if they did, they would find nothing but pages and pages of an undecipherable code.

  Once in the guest wing, he found her quickly. The sound of laughter led him to the end of the corridor, where a salon for large dinner parties could be entered from any of four doors. He intentionally chose the door farthest from the laughter so that he could slip into the room unobserved.

  Olivia, the parlor maid, and the housekeeper were giggling. In one of the pier glasses he could see Olivia’s smile: mischievous but sweet. He had never seen her look so at ease. Of course, he’d denied himself any opportunity to experience such a moment.

  Olivia sat behind a short table where she cut a heavy brocaded fabric. From the pile of cloth on the floor next to her seat, the maid was sewing what appeared to be new slipcovers for some chairs, and the housekeeper was applying what smelled suspiciously of horse glue to one of the seat bottoms.

  “He was so embarrassed. But later, he asked if he could escort me home through the orchard.” Herder’s daughter, Harriet colored at the recollection.

  “He’s a handsome lad to be sure, and with fine prospects.” Mrs. Pier nodded approvingly.

  “Just a bit clumsy when it comes to talking to pretty young women, it seems,” Olivia teased.

  Strange behavior for a countess, making her own upholstery. The women were clearly friends, not a noblewoman and her servants.

  He entered the room, and the women stopped talking. The maid grabbed her sewing and the housekeeper her pot and brush, and within moments they both were gone. Olivia, however, kept moving the material on her table and cutting to the pattern he could see stenciled upon it.

  He stood, not knowing what to say. If they were married, he might have offered a disquisition on the appropriate distance a countess would keep from her servants, but she claimed she was not a countess. And he couldn’t truly bring himself to care about such social niceties. Besides, something in the set of her shoulders made him choose another tack.

  “Have I not provided you with an adequate allowance? I would imagine there are plenty of craftsmen who would appreciate the trade.”

  “There are. But it seemed foolish to pay for a service that Harriet, Mildred, and I could do. Usually we would wait until after Christmas to do such work, but as I will be gone . . .” She let the words trail off.

  “It’s another one of the items on your list of things to do.”

  “Yes. One of the last. I should have the house in fine shape in another week or two.”

  “They seem to be more your friends than your servants.”

  The corner of her mouth lifted in a partial smile. “I have long considered them so.”

  He suddenly realized that he had never seen her visit or be visited. Certainly, she had gone to care for his tenants, but no one from the village had sent her an invitation, and as his presence was not yet known, there had been no invitations on his behalf. “But the estate is not so isolated that you would not have ample companions in the gentry. What of Squire Landry’s wife and her daughters? Or the gaggle of widows in that manor house past the village? Do you not visit?”

  She stopped cutting, and, looking into the distance, she considered her answer. “The circle of village life is a small one, and its inhabitants often narrow and unforgiving.”

  “Did you offend them in some way?” He couldn’t help the note of suspicion that colored his words, the closeness between her and the parson springing to mind.

  “I haven’t done anything to draw their disapproval. They have merely mirrored your distance.”

  That brought Harrison up short. “What do you mean?”

  She sighed and looked into his eyes with a sort of plea, as if she wished to protect him. “It doesn’t matter, you must know. I’ve had the scholars and the staff. I haven’t been lonely.”

  “What do you mean?” He pushed the emphasis on the first word. He would not let her defer. “It’s not necessary to protect me from the truth.”

  “It was widely known that your father forced the marriage, just as it was widely known that I had been employed as a governess. I was unknown, my family unknown, and I had stolen the possibility of one of their daughters marrying the earl. We still had invitations when your father was alive, but after . . .”

  “After . . .”

  “You remained away.” She rose and walked away from him to the window. “And your absence raised questions. Eventually, someone spread the tale that some fault of mine kept you away. Your absence was interpreted as a punishment. The presence of the scholars only complicated matters, but even so, by the time your father died, the stories were already well rehearsed.”

  “You’ve been shunned.”

  “By all but the parson. He thought that his presence at dinners or our Wednesday meetings would signal that I had not committed some great sin that kept you away.”

  “But it hasn’t worked.”

  She shook her head. “Sadly, no. It has only caused him to have a string of complaints that he should not countenance my sin, nor lighten my punishment by entertaining me.”

  “I had no idea.” He felt ashamed that he had been so disengaged, that he had simply done what suited his own purpose without considering what his actions signaled to others. What man leaves his wife to manage the vagaries of
community life on her own, unless she had committed some transgression? No wonder they had thought his absence a punishment.

  “It stung at first, but they were right. I wasn’t of the gentry, and I certainly am no aristocrat. Besides, my interests never intersected well with theirs. With the scholars here, I’ve spent too many years in the company of intelligent, well-educated men, men who allowed me to speak my own mind, to pursue my own interests as they did theirs. It made me ill-suited to an afternoon discussing the latest French fashions, what color best complemented some young miss’s complexion, or what soup would best go after fish.”

  “I never meant to punish you, Olivia. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “No, you wished to punish Roderick, and I was simply an unfortunate bystander.”

  “All this time I thought you had a rich circle to keep you company. I never realized you would be alone.”

  “I have only been alone if you consider the company of your class to be the only one that matters. I’ve been well entertained and well loved. I will miss my little circle.”

  “Still, I wish I had known. It would have been an easy situation to redress.”

  “But an impossible letter for me to write without sounding petulant or demanding.”

  “You could have made a demand, Livvy.” He let himself use the shortened form of her name, the syllables gentle on his tongue. “You were my countess.”

  The fact that she hadn’t called upon him when she had every right to do so made him feel chastened. But, of course, she had no reason to trust him.

  Coming home had been as difficult as he’d always imagined, but for far different reasons. Instead of feeling trapped by unwanted duties, Harrison found himself facing failure at every turn.

  Mrs. Pier knocked on the door, and Harrison returned to the library with much to consider. All these years he had believed Olivia happy on the estate, only now to realize he’d had no reason but his own peace of mind to believe her so. Then to discover he’d sentenced her to a kind of prison! She’d made the best of it, but it would make persuading her to remain almost impossible.