The Earl's Mistress

by Liz Carlyle

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t need your words. I just needed that. What you gave me. Thank you.”

  She climbed off the bed then, turned around to snatch up her nightgown from the floor, and, in a trice, drew it back on, shimmying the fine white lawn over the perfect, pale globes of her hips with an expert twitch.

  Then she turned around, flashed a faintly tremulous smile, and leaned over to kiss him softly. When she drew away, he held out his hand, eager to draw her back into his embrace, but it was as if she did not see it.

  Or simply did not want it.

  “Thank you,” she said again. “You truly have a gift for pleasuring women.”

  And then she was gone, shutting the door softly behind her.

  Hand outstretched into emptiness, he still sat on the bed, his breeches hanging off his hips and his boots still on. He stared at the door, her scent still strong in the air. He had the most sickening sensation of having been . . . used.

  Yes, that was the right word. She hadn’t whispered words of love or longing. She hadn’t lost herself. Not as he had done. In fact, it was slowly dawning on his ale-addled mind that Isabella had come in with a purpose—and a very specific one.

  One that involved him and his stiff cock—and damned little else.

  It was a man’s fantasy, that; a beautiful woman who just wanted a good, hard ride and nothing more. He twisted sideways on the little cot, fell into the pillow, and wondered why he wasn’t savoring it.

  The truth was, it felt unnervingly like the first time they’d made love and she had wanted him to leave her bed afterward. And the second time in her cottage—that awful morning he’d woke with her in his arms, strangely certain that everything in his life was on the cusp of some sort of inexorable change. Then, too, she had simply wanted to say good-bye.

  With Isabella, was he forever destined to be left . . . so bloody unsettled? To be left aching for more? But more of what, he was never sure.

  Intimacy was the thing he’d been forever hell-bent on avoiding. He stared for a long time at the ceiling, studying the eerie patterns the lamplight cast up. He was not a man much given to self-deception. Yes, he was beginning to fear that it was something like intimacy he wanted from her.

  But intimacy meant an ultimate giving and sharing—of oneself, of one’s innermost feelings. And failings.

  Hadn’t he realized from the very first that to touch Isabella might bring him to his knees? Even that day at Loughford—yes, even then, he’d known. He had insulted her and angered her and sent her on her way—far, far away, he’d hoped—because somehow he’d just known.

  Now all he could think to do was stride across the hall, tie her to the damn bed, and fuck her until she swore she loved him. He was already up and hitching shut his trousers before he knew what he was about. He sat back down, his hands shaking.

  Jesus Christ, man, he told himself, get a grip on yourself.

  But his usual cold resolve had left him, and he was left with the dreadful sense that this time he just might get precisely what he deserved. There was a dangerously hot pressure welling against the backs of his eyes now and a weight hardening in his chest that he knew was nothing but a knot of shame and regret.

  All this weighed upon Hepplewood as he drifted off to sleep. And when he woke somewhere near dawn, it was to find that his bed was still cold and his boots were still on.

  That he embraced not Isabella but merely his valet’s pillow, the linen damp—with his sweat, he hoped.

  CHAPTER 15

  Hepplewood spent the next several days determined to get the whip hand on his irrational notions and focus on making the visit enjoyable for his guests. It required no great effort; hospitality came naturally to him. So when Yardley had no need of him—which, given the size of the farm, was most of the time—Hepplewood immersed himself in entertaining the children and dancing attendance on Anne and Isabella, but only in the lightest, most flirtatious of manners.

  The party rambled about on wilderness walks with Fluffles, the dog running, snout to the ground, in search of something vile to roll in—and often finding it. This would ultimately result in another wade in the brook, risking Anne’s wrath if anyone returned too wet. They also picnicked in the Chilterns and drove out to clamber about the medieval ruins at Totternhoe Knolls.

  On fair afternoons, he took Bertie and Harry out for a spot of target shooting—a habit of his when in the country—and, after a little wrangle with Anne, began to let Harry fire his pocket revolver so long as he stuffed the lad’s ears with cotton and helped him hold it. And when it rained, he would go up to Lissie’s room and read while the girls played dolls.

  In fact, within hours of the children’s arrival, Georgina’s love of Lissie’s dollhouse was so profound that Hepplewood had found himself commissioning another. It was that errand, in fact, that he’d used as an excuse to himself—cravenly, to be sure—for abandoning Isabella by the brook.

  Fortunately, a second dollhouse was sitting nearly finished in Yardley’s shop, meant for a raffle at the village’s harvest fair. Hepplewood made a donation well in excess of what any raffle would have brought, and thus the deal was struck.

  He also spent a great deal of time simply watching Isabella. It was not easy. Lust stirred in the pit of his belly with every sidelong glance they exchanged. He was still determined to somehow lay claim to the woman. But he found himself oddly intent on viewing her through less heated eyes and getting to know her—getting to know her, that was to say, in the way that ordinary people became acquainted.

  Their beginning had not been ordinary; it had exploded in heat the moment they’d met. And he now forced this almost monastic existence on himself because, as much as he cared for her—and burned for her—he was increasingly aware that he still did not know her. Not in the way a man should know a woman when he contemplated . . . what?

  Befriending her?

  He had done that; he had even allowed his daughter to befriend her—which was not something a man did lightly.

  Bedding her? He had already done that, too—and in the past, fucking a woman had had, in his eyes, nothing to do with any knowledge of her finer nature. In fact, the darker and more enigmatic a lover was, all the better for his purposes.

  Perhaps he contemplated another attempt at making her his mistress? The notion made him almost laugh out loud. Oh, he would try—of that he’d little doubt. But Isabella would not submit to him. Not in the long run.

  Oh, she might—might, if he played his cards with the greatest of care—permit him the occasional tumble if it could be discreetly arranged. Clearly she desired that much from him, at the very least.

  Perhaps it was all she desired.

  But that question more or less mirrored the one she’d asked him a few nights past—right after she’d stripped off her nightdress to stand naked before him.

  Was that all there was between them? That gnawing hunger for one another, and no more?

  “Your brow is furrowed,” she said, suddenly reaching past him. “Give me that. You are merely wiping it over and over again.”

  They stood now in the narrow scullery, side by side. He passed her the china plate across the sinks, and she took it and set it on the shelf above.

  “I cannot believe you are drying dishes again,” she said almost to herself, plunging her hands back into the hot water.

  He gave a low chuckle. “Do you imagine me emasculated by it, my dear?” he murmured. “I should be pleased to prove otherwise.”

  She cut him a chiding look and handed him a bowl. “Could anything emasculate you, I wonder?” she muttered, “other than a sharp kitchen knife and a great deal of determination?”

  He laughed again and leaned nearer. “Don’t do it, my love, for we would both soon regret it,” he said. “I’ll be of far more use to you as I am.”

  “Didn’t you once promise,” she muttered, scrubbing hard at something under the water, “never, ever to flirt with me?”

  “Did t
hat sound flirtatious?” He shrugged. “I thought we were negotiating. In any case, dishes must be done, and since I’m the fool who invited a dozen guests to a house with no staff to speak of, it should fall to me once in a while. Besides, Anne helped.”

  But Anne had slunk off at least a quarter hour ago, casting an odd glance over her shoulder as she went.

  “Are you counting Nanny Seawell and Anne’s maid in that dozen?” asked Isabella lightly.

  He laughed. “Perhaps I’m counting that damned dog of Bertie’s,” he said, “twice, for he’s caused at least that much trouble.”

  Isabella stopped in the middle of her scrubbing. “Actually, this has been rather pleasant,” she said pensively, “to have simple food, and to make our own coffee and wash a few dishes. I can understand why you like it. The solitude and simplicity of it, I mean.”

  But the truth was, he had not bought Greenwood in order to play Farmer Brown and live in bucolic isolation. He’d bought it for debauchery and bacchanalia—of which there’d been plenty—and the fact that he’d now brought his own family here instead of his usual cadre of sybarites still struck him as very strange indeed. It said something, though he’d as soon not consider what, exactly.

  He could sense, though, that despite her words, Isabella was growing restless. He cut her another glance as she passed him the next plate. Her gaze was fixed on her work, her movements practiced and efficient. He liked that. He liked that she exuded competence and a willingness to work without complaint. It was not something he had appreciated in a woman until now.

  They had been here almost a week, and twice she had written letters of instruction to Mrs. Barbour and three times to various wholesalers in the City. She had worked diligently at her ledgers and read through an entire stack of publisher’s samples. But a business could not be left untended any more than an estate could.

  If he did not soon hear something from Jervis, he realized, he was going to have to take her back to London. Isabella would demand it, and he would be hard-pressed to think of an excuse to refuse her. He had no hard reason not to do so; just suspicions and a grave unease that set his hackles up every time he thought on it.

  Nonetheless, he could not bring himself to speculate aloud to her; not when a false hope might hurt Isabella more than the hard truth of her present existence.

  A heavy silence had fallen over the little room. Through the high windows, he could hear a spring rain still pattering down as it had for much of the day. The room was small, the lamplight intimate, and it felt suddenly as if the rest of the world were far away. She handed him a glass, their hands accidentally brushing, and in a flash, it was as if his every nerve came to life.

  Lust shot through him out of nowhere, straight through his heart, deep into his belly, and lower still. Every muscle hardened with it, his loins pooling with heat. He set the glass in the cold rinse water and debated sticking his head in, too.

  “Isabella,” he rasped, his hands clenching at the edge of the sink.

  “What?” She turned halfway around.

  He searched for the words to tell her how he felt. His lust and his hopes and his fears for her and the children seemed suddenly tumbled together in a way he couldn’t explain. Slowly, he forced his hands to unclench and his lungs to work.

  “Anthony?” She crooked her head to look at him.

  “I forgot,” he said awkwardly, “what I was going to say.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  And the silence flooded in again.

  “Does Mrs. Yardley always have Sunday evenings off?” she finally asked, breaking the quiet.

  He shrugged, jerked the towel from his shoulder, and took the glass she held out, careful not to touch her. “Mrs. Yardley has no set schedule,” he said, dunking it in the rinse. “I’m rarely here, and our agreement never required her to attend to the house every day.”

  “And yet she has done the lion’s share of it admirably,” Isabella remarked, dredging up a spoon and scrubbing at it. “But you can cook, too, I once heard you boast?”

  He grinned at her. “Eggs,” he said, “or a slab of beefsteak, perhaps. Be glad, my dear, it hasn’t come to that.”

  She cut another of her odd, sidelong looks at him. They had become more and more frequent, he realized, the last couple of days. His new strategy might have thrown her, but Isabella still desired him. The thought should have been gratifying, and it was. But underneath that gratification lay something aching and uncertain.

  He did not like that feeling. He was not a man who tolerated uncertainty. Worse, there was nothing he could do about it.

  Damn it all. He would very much like to make Isabella suffer a little for the misery she was putting him through. Perhaps, if he asked nicely, she might permit him to do just that.

  “There is a dangerous look in your eyes tonight,” she said, reaching into the hot sink to pull the chain.

  He watched the water, still steaming, begin to gurgle and swirl down the copper-lined trough as he dried his hands. Isabella’s fingertips were set to the rim of the sink, her knuckles red.

  “Give me your hands,” he ordered without waiting for her to comply.

  He took one, holding fast to his emotions, and began to dry it, gently pulling the cloth over each finger in turn.

  “Your knuckles are cracked,” he gently chided. “What was I thinking? More village girls could have been brought in.”

  “Anthony,” she said, extracting her hand and taking away his cloth, “it doesn’t hurt anyone to wash a few plates and glasses after dinner. And my knuckles were cracked long before I got here. You forget that I wash dishes every day—sometimes two or three times a day—and I scrub floors, too, when I must. That is my life now. And I am fine with it.”

  He lifted his gaze from his study of her hands, which were otherwise long-fingered and elegant. “I do forget,” he admitted. “But I’m not so fine with it. You are a lady, Isabella. That sort of life is not for you.”

  “Then who is it for?” she asked, setting her head to one side as if studying him. “And why not me? Who decides?”

  He took the cloth, tossed it over the rim of the sink, and took both her hands in his. “We’re not going to debate egalitarianism, are we?” he said, forcing a light tone. “I confess, it bores me excessively. Tell me instead about you.”

  “About me?”

  “About your family, perhaps. We’ve spoken little of them.” He drew her from the scullery into the glow of the kitchen and pulled a chair to the rough-hewn table. “Sit down. I’m going to make you a cup of tea.”

  “But the others are—”

  “Getting ready for bed,” he interjected, moving the kettle onto the hob with a harsh, scraping sound. “The twins are already asleep, I expect.”

  “Well, so far as my family, there’s little you don’t know.” Isabella half turned in her chair, following him with her gaze as he moved about the kitchen to fetch the teapot and tea chest. “You know about Everett. And my aunt. There really isn’t anyone else.”

  “I meant the other side of your family,” he said, lifting down the chest from a shelf.

  “Mother’s side?” She pushed a damp tendril of hair from her forehead. “Well, I don’t know much, honestly. The family was originally from the Midlands; round Shropshire, Mamma always said.”

  “Have you any relations there?”

  “I think not. Mamma’s people left generations ago.”

  “What was the family name?” he asked lightly.

  “Flynt, spelled with a y instead of an i like the stone,” she answered, “though it may have been changed at some point.”

  “Did they leave England for a reason?”

  “Yes, criminals, most likely,” she said on a spurt of laughter. “Cattle thieves, perhaps. It might even be they were transported. Did they transport thieves to Canada?”

  He shot her a muted smile and put the tea chest back. “Petty criminals were perhaps indentured,” he said, “but I expect your family was more apt t
o have been minor gentry.”

  “Who told you that?” she asked a little sharply.

  Unwilling to show his hand just yet, he merely shrugged. “You said they were in the timber trade and lived in the wilderness,” he replied. “One doesn’t ordinarily mow down a colonial wilderness for profit unless one owns it.”

  Isabella seemed to accept this. “I believe the original settler was, in fact, a military officer,” she said, “who took a liking to the area and decided to remain.”

  “Ah,” he said. “So you know a little of your family history.”

  “As I said, a very little,” she answered. “But why should you care?”

  He drew out a chair and sat down to wait for the pot to boil. “Indulge me,” he said.

  “It is my opinion that you have been too often indulged,” she replied, looking at him a little darkly.

  He flashed a smile. “Yes, I was indulged pretty thoroughly a few nights past, I seem to recall,” he murmured, “—and I hope, my dear, you got what you came for?”

  Her face blushed prettily. “Must you remind me of that?”

  “Why not?” he said, wondering if he should put his monastic days behind him and send caution straight to hell. “I think of it every night when I thrash about in my little bed, tormented by a cockstand hard enough to drive a rail spike and that vision of your full, bare breasts. Why should I suffer alone?”

  “Good Lord,” she murmured, the flush running down her throat—but it was not entirely a flush of embarrassment.

  He wanted suddenly to reach for her—to jerk her clean across the table and into his embrace. Somehow, he forced himself to stop and return to a more serious tone.

  “Ah, but enough of my plain speaking,” he said evenly. “Now is not the time. And I truly do wish to hear more about your family. Did they never write? Was your mother completely abandoned?”

  She lifted her slender shoulders. “No, I remember occasionally seeing letters posted from Montreal or Bytown,” she replied, “and before that—on one of my birthdays—Grandfather Flynt sent three thousand pounds to serve as my dowry.”