by Willa Ramsey
Everything But the Earl
Willa Ramsey
EVERYTHING BUT THE EARL
By
Willa Ramsey
Copyright © 2018 Willa Ramsey
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Edited by Heather McCorkle.
Cover Design by Mibl Art and Tina Moss.
All stock photos licensed appropriately.
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Published in the United States by City Owl Press.
www.cityowlpress.com
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For information on subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher at [email protected]
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior consent and permission of the publisher.
For my family
Without your support, this book might never have been written.
(Although without you reading it, it might have been steamier.)
Praise for Willa Ramsey
“Miss Caroline Crispin, daughter to England’s royal architect, speaks boldly and flirts audaciously…Ramsey’s smooth prose and witty dialogue make for enjoyable reading.”
- Publisher’s Weekly
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“Willa Ramsey is a delightful new voice in historical romance. Everything but the Earl is funny, fresh, and charming. I love the genuine partnership between Adam and Caro as he helps her fight the patriarchy and expands his own definition of gender roles.”
- Victoria De La O, 2017 RITA finalist for Tell Me How This Ends
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“Everything but the Earl has everything you could want in a Regency romp: a headstrong, forward-thinking heroine; a charming, homebody of a hero; and enough witty repartee to fill readers with delight. Willa Ramsey brings a refreshing new voice to Regency Romance.”
- Elizabeth Essex, Award Winning Author of the Highland Brides Series
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Acknowledgments
About the Author
About the Publisher
Additional Titles
Chapter One
July 1819
Was there any greater satisfaction than the satisfaction of a party gone wonderfully well?
Miss Caroline Crispin didn’t think so. Or if there was, she hadn’t found it just yet.
She lifted her foot from the cool tile of the entry hall, curling her toes discreetly. She’d been on her feet nearly a whole day by then, and her soles were telling the tale. But as she recalled the sea of ruddy cheeks rolling across her parents’ grand ballroom, the echoes of wildly stomping feet, and the sweet, summertime heaviness in the air, she smiled. The sleepy, achy, sated ending to a ball was always her favorite part.
It was nearing dawn, but rest could wait.
Lords Strayeth and Chumsley were next in the queue to make their goodbyes to her, each of them puffing out their chests as if they’d just discovered a new continent in the retiring room.
“My lords,” she began in a low voice, returning their smirks. “Did everything meet with your approval this evening? Was the conversation stimulating? Were the ladies’ bodices…stimulating?”
“Indeed,” Chumsley replied, his mouth a tight line. He was short but sturdy-looking, with white-blond hair and striking blue eyes that some had compared to the waters of the West Indies. “Lovely evening, Miss Crispin.”
She shifted from one sore foot to the other. When had these gentlemen become so…straitlaced? Certainly, it was racy to talk this way. But she’d danced and flirted with them at countless social events since her seventeenth birthday, four years earlier. She had even kissed Strayeth once, at a public ball, behind what was perhaps the largest potted ficus in all of England.
“The conversation and the bodices were just to our liking,” Strayeth added, his eyes fixed elsewhere in the crowd. He was the lankier and more fashionable of the pair, with a floppy brown forelock he had to constantly shake back from his eyes.
“Both were rather deep then, I imagine?” she asked, trying to egg them on.
She no longer sought attention from men their age, really. They were beginning to look for wives, and the very thought of marrying sent a shiver all through her. She’d watched her mother toil silently beside her father her whole life; had seen her design the grand home in which they now gathered but give Papa all the credit; had heard her cry quietly in the studio when she thought everyone had gone to bed. Caro knew a husband of her own would expect her to leave her ideas unsaid, too; to give up her charitable schemes. And her ideas and schemes were like wildflowers: They were exuberant, plentiful, and deeply resistant to the forces of domestication.
But she so enjoyed a bit of good repartee! Couldn’t she jest with these gentlemen anymore? They had been friends of a sort, once.
“Thank you, Miss Crispin,” Strayeth replied, bowing and nudging Chumsley toward the door. “Your abilities as a hostess are…most remarkable.”
They hadn’t stepped more than a few feet away, however, when Chumsley leaned over and murmured something in his friend’s ear. She wasn’t certain, but it sounded a bit like, “Even my pointer has learned to shake hands.”
Now she was confused. And a little bit unsettled. But just as she was resolving to speak less of bosoms and bodices, a loud clang sounded from the ballroom followed by several whoops and whistles.
“Lud,” Caro said to herself, looking at the ceiling. “I asked Mr. McNabbins not to juggle the serving bowls anymore. His new assistant is hardly a proficient.”
Grinning now, Strayeth and Chumsley made a quick bow and trotted off toward the ballroom, in the direction of the clattering dishware (and in all likelihood, her guests from the Sadler’s Wells theater). She was confronted at once by another departing guest, a stooped older man in an unfashionable powdered wig.
“Where is your father?” Lord Tilbeth demanded, his mottled complexion growing pinker by the second. “I had but one moment’s conversation with him all evening.”
“He’s in the studio, my lord.” She rubbed her temple, glancing behind him at the long queue of guests that still extended through the spacious entry hall and into the ballroom beyond, all waiting to speak with her. “You know how it is.”
He looked at her blankly.
“You see, when a person is in trade, he often has to work. Rather hard. Sometimes even at night.”
“But your father is the Prince Regent’s favorite architect! Look at all of these…these people!” he fumed, gesturing at the assortment of aristocrats and merchants, entertainers and artists, professors and cabinet ministers, all drooping sleepily behind him. “Half of
London wants him to build their next home or some such! The least he could do is make himself available.”
“They’re like fighters, my lord.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Champions must stay in top form, Lord Tilbeth! Other architects are waiting just outside the ropes, so to speak, eager to take my parents’ place.”
He scrunched up his face—possibly upon hearing the word “parents” when most people would expect to hear “father”—but just then his wife emerged from a group of ladies standing nearby. She gave Caro a curt nod, the feathers in her turban bobbing haughtily behind her. Then she tugged her husband forward with a lurch, through the open door, and into the earliest glimmers of dawn.
Caro turned back to her guests and was delighted to find her dearest friend awaiting her next.
“It always amuses me,” Edie whispered as they shared a firm embrace, “to watch the Tilbeths pretend to have fun at your balls.”
“They fear they’ll break into hives if they accidentally rub elbows with a shopkeeper,” she replied, her laugh fluttering Edie’s straw-colored hair. “Heaven help them if they ever bump into my butcher. He never misses my parties.”
She stepped back and watched as Edie bent down to pick up an enormous basket at her feet, its contents obscured by a piece of white linen.
“Dearest! What are you doing?” Caro asked.
“It’s your apples. I thought I’d bring them to the orphanage for you. Well done, Caro. Wherever did you get the idea to ask everyone to harvest the ornamental trees in their gardens? This might be your cleverest scheme yet.”
Just one basket? From three hundred guests? This was a disappointing result, indeed. “I suspect all the credit goes to a half-dozen servants,” she replied over a sigh, “as they were the ones who did the harvesting.”
“Actually, my brother picked all our apples,” Edie replied, looking into her basket. “Although he had to steal them, I believe—”
“Edie!” Caro exclaimed, cuffing her lightly on the shoulder. “Your own brother is here, and you haven’t introduced me?”
Edie cuffed her back, bobbling her basket a little. They’d spent many a year together at Mrs. Hellkirk’s Seminary for Wayward and Willful Girls, and had taken rather well to the unusual set of manners taught there. Like fish to water.
“I’m not his keeper,” Edie replied as she adjusted her heavy load. She nodded toward the ballroom. “He’s the big one.”
Caro whipped her head around and looked.
And then she looked some more.
That was Edie’s brother?
“Thank you for a lovely time,” Edie told her.
Caro had long been curious about Edie’s mysterious older sibling. He wasn’t a recluse, she’d explained, just a determined homebody with a preference for the country. Caro strained on her tiptoes, angling for a better look.
“I’m putting on my bonnet now,” Edie added, waving a hand in front of her face. “And my cape. And sword.”
Caro knew that Edie’s brother—Adam Wexley, the Earl of Ryland—had some notoriety as a fighter. Everyone did. But in school Edie had described him as “oafish” and “insufferable.” Caro had been left to imagine a lumbering, pasty sort of man. Weak-chinned, and prone to sneering at independent-minded ladies.
“And I’m taking your apples, Caro. I’m going to throw them into the River Thames, and dance a jig along the bank.”
But Lord Ryland appeared to defy Caro’s low expectations. He was standing rather far away from her, but she could see that he was indeed exceptionally tall and broad-shouldered. His hair was very dark—was it black?—and seemed shorter than most men were wont to wear it. Caro couldn’t make out any other details, but one thing was certain: Lord Ryland was striking. Even from the next room.
And his chin seemed perfectly fine.
Caro settled back on her heels and pulled her friend close.
“Edie.”
“She speaks.”
“Edie!”
A gentleman farther back in the queue cleared his throat, and Caro knew she must hurry things along.
“Yes?”
“Nothing. Nothing of any consequence,” Caro replied as she leaned in for a one-armed embrace. “Give my regards to your mother. I do hope she feels better soon! And put down that basket, Lady Edith Wexley! It looks heavy. I can manage it.”
“Honestly, Caro,” Edie replied, smiling as three or four apples tumbled from the basket as Caro took it. “If you’re going to conduct all these schemes of yours, you’re going to have to accept a hand every now and again.”
Adam was struggling.
Struggling against the urge to let out a cracking-good laugh.
He was standing with one of the foremost Italian opera singers, and the poor soul was enduring a small torture of his own: that of having to pick apple peel from his lower front teeth.
“Does an Englishman always bring such gifts to a party?” the baritone asked, giving up on the remains of his first pilfered apple and moving on to a second, greener one.
Adam was accustomed to being the deepest-voiced person in a room, but he could swear he’d seen the candelabras tremble in the presence of the bushy-bearded performer’s low and sonorous authority.
“No,” he replied. “We’re not often asked to bring a hostess something we’ve found on the ground.”
The singer bowed and headed to the refreshments, so Adam was free to step into the loose queue of people waiting to leave the party. He wondered where his sister Edie had gotten off to, and lamented being torn away from the novel he’d begun earlier that day.
He glanced around the ballroom. Criminy! The view into Crispins’ back garden was unbelievable. The ceiling soared, and the windows were positively enormous. The room must be bathed in sunlight all day long. Now he understood why the crème of society had lined up to kiss the hand of Mr. Crispin’s only daughter and hostess: the architect’s talents were extraordinary, and his home showed it. No wonder everyone admired him.
What would Father say, if he could see the state of his own beloved townhouse?
He rubbed hard at his forehead, trying to banish the unflattering thought.
Father wouldn’t have neglected the place. And he wouldn’t have allowed Edie to run about without an escort. And Mother wouldn’t be recovering from a terrible injury.
The couple in front of him stepped forward a few paces, giving him a better view into the entrance hall. And for the first time Miss Caroline Crispin was in his view, too. He’d never seen the hostess before, but he could tell it was her by the way all of the heads in the vicinity oriented themselves toward her—watching her, hoping for a moment of her notice.
He could hardly blame them.
Edie had mentioned that her friend was confident and outspoken. Brash, even. She’d told him that she admired the architect’s daughter for the quickness of her mind and tongue, her bottomless generosity; her relentless pursuit of the things she wanted to accomplish.
What his sister wouldn’t have known, of course, was that such levels of confidence, when combined with an already-pretty countenance, tended to render a woman stunning. Unforgettable, even.
And Miss Caroline Crispin already had a pretty countenance.
Her hair was a dark brown—that was all Adam could tell of it, from a distance—and perhaps it was strange, but the next thing that struck him was her posture. She was of average height, but she carried herself more naturally than was fashionable. She gestured expressively with long, gloved arms, nodding and swaying, deep in debate with the gentleman standing before her.
The lucky devil.
Whomp—a man’s hand landed hard between his shoulder blades, sending him forward a full step.
“Ryland, old man! When did you get here? Been hiding out in the hinterlands again, pruning those pretty little flowers of yours?”
Adam swallowed a frown and made a quick bow. “Strayeth, Chumsley. I arrived in town last week, actually.” I’m just very
good at avoiding you.
They hadn’t changed a bit. Clearly. He’d met them at his club some years earlier, when they’d been drinking hard and wagering over something awful—an upcoming cock fight, perhaps? He hadn’t wanted to know the details.
Strayeth grabbed and squeezed his shoulder, then gave him a light shake. “We need to get you brawling again, Ryland. Don’t we, Chum?”
Adam’s heart began tapping a little harder at his ribs. Father had often squeezed him on the shoulder, whenever Adam asked to stop sparring; when he craved the serenity of his small garden—the roses he could never get enough of, the shaded bench he could read on for hours. Father had been firm with him as a boy, but never rough; as if by placing a big, still hand on his shoulder he could infuse in him the drive not only to fight, but to win, and the mental fortitude to train for it. It never worked, though. Adam could not find the first of those traits within himself, though he could—and did—force himself to continue doing whatever Father had asked of him.
Adam both missed and dreaded that hand on his shoulder—and the memory of it—all at once.
“I have no plans to return to the ring,” he replied as he wiped a bead of sweat from his brow.
“What, now? You wouldn’t want to break the Ryland tradition, would you? Your father was a fine man, they say.”