An Unwilling Earl

by Sharon Cullen

  “Whoa there. Is something wrong?”

  “No. Thank you,” she said, breathless with fear. She shrugged out of his grasp and ran across the street, forgetting to look for traffic, dodging a horse that suddenly appeared. It made her think of Jacob and how she just wanted to be back at his home.

  She should have never left the safety of his townhouse.

  She wanted Jacob.

  She glanced over her shoulder. There were many strange looks, but no tall, peculiar-looking man running after her. She slowed her pace, out of breath, heart hammering more from fear than from running. A few more checks over her shoulder and she was convinced that Edmund had not recognized her. It had been a coincidence that he’d even looked her way.

  By the time she made it back to Jacob’s street her heart was beating at a more normal pace and her hands had stopped shaking, but the fear remained, not as sharp but there nonetheless.

  Jacob was sitting on his front step, reading the newspaper. He looked up and smiled at her, and she smiled back, relieved that he was there. Relieved that she had trusted her instincts about him. The sight of him washed away the residual fear like a spring rain, and suddenly her world righted itself. In the back of her mind, she knew that wasn’t a good thing, but right now she didn’t care. She just wanted to be near Jacob.

  He folded the newspaper and stood. “Mrs. Smith said you had gone for a walk but that you had left a while ago. I searched the park but couldn’t find you.” His worried eyes combed her face. Could he see that she’d had a fright?

  “I walked farther than I planned and ended up at the market.” She was relieved that her voice didn’t tremble.

  “You didn’t go see Cotton?”

  “Not today.” Yet, seeing Edmund convinced her that she should have gone to Cotton. She needed to get out of London.

  She followed Jacob into the house and up the steps to his study where she settled into the window seat and watched him pour himself a drink. She thought it strange that they already had their little rituals like this. Had he had these rituals with his wife? She was strangely jealous of a dead woman who had experienced Jacob’s love.

  He set the newspaper he’d been reading on a small table, close enough that she could read part of the headline. Frowning, she leaned over to snatch the paper and unfold it. The bold headline read that another headless body had been pulled from the Thames.

  Number five.

  Five women pulled from the river.

  Five women without heads.

  Five women who had probably died horrific deaths. Who had suffered needlessly.

  “They found another one,” Charlotte said.

  “The city is in an uproar. Politicians are blaming the police for not finding this monster. The police are running around with very few clues and nowhere to turn. The female servants are refusing to leave their employers’ houses. Some are quitting and going back to the countryside.”

  She skimmed the article, but it provided very little new information.

  “How do you know all of this?” she asked.

  He appeared flustered, a rose tinge covering his cheeks as he shrugged. “I have friends who know things.”

  Charlotte folded the paper and stared out the window. She wanted to go to America to escape. To be free. But would she be free? Or would she be haunted by the images of these five women?

  Glassy eyes.

  Twisted body.

  Severed head.

  Charlotte walked among the debris of body parts, her lungs heaving in despair as her heart pounded in fear and anger.

  No.

  NOOOOOOOOOOO!

  “Charlotte! Charlotte, wake up. You’re dreaming.”

  She sat up with a gasp to find Jacob leaning over her. Still lost in her dream, she made a noise of part fear, part surprise. Quickly he straightened and took a step back, his arms out to his sides.

  “You were screaming,” he said.

  His hair was sticking up in the back. There were creases on his cheek where his head had pressed against the pillow and his robe was haphazardly tied, and he looked so warm and safe and alive. With a strangled cry she catapulted toward him. He caught her with an oomph.

  “You’re trembling,” he said.

  She put her head against his chest, not caring if this was improper. It felt so good to be held.

  “It was just a dream.” He smoothed her hair down.

  She pressed her nose into his dressing gown and inhaled his spicy, clean scent.

  His hand moved up and down her back, like what a mother would do to soothe her baby, but it made Charlotte shiver and tremble more.

  “Charlotte, you’re worrying me. Please tell me this was just a dream.”

  She pulled away but not far enough to leave his embrace, just enough to sniff.

  Jacob tightened his hold on her, as if he didn’t want to let her go. And she was perfectly fine with that.

  “It was just a dream. An old dream that I used to have when I was younger. It’s nothing.”

  “I think it’s far more than nothing.” He looked worried.

  “Truly, Jacob. I’m fine. You can go back to bed.” But she didn’t step out of his embrace, didn’t make an attempt to move away. And he didn’t loosen his hold on her.

  He looked down at her with that same look he’d had when he’d kissed her. And she wanted him to kiss her. God help her, she wanted to be kissed again. She wanted him to kiss the fear out of her, to make her tremble in something other than terror.

  So she stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips against his. She wasn’t good at kissing, having only done it once before, but she hoped he understood her intentions.

  And he did. For a moment he seemed frozen, and then he kissed her back, moving his hands up her spine until they cupped her face as he devoured her lips and she drank him in, learning how to kiss properly.

  And that trembling did change to something else, something she couldn’t name. Something her aunt would have called sinful but Charlotte called delightful.

  With great reluctance Jacob pulled away from her, and she made a sound of disappointment and regret. Jacob kept his hands on her shoulders to steady her.

  “We can’t do this,” he said a bit breathlessly. “This isn’t right. You are my guest. I promised…” He licked his lips. “I promised Suzette that nothing untoward would happen.”

  “Suzette?” Her mind was foggy like the banks of the Thames on an autumn morning. What did Suzette have to do with him kissing her? Suzette could care less what Charlotte did with Jacob.

  Jacob let his hands fall from her shoulders, and suddenly Charlotte was cold again.

  “I’m sorry, Charlotte.”

  “Sorry for what?” Please, oh please don’t say you’re sorry you kissed me. She thought her heart would shatter if he regretted kissing her.

  He ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up in all different directions. His eyes were bright, his lips red from kissing her, and she suspected that the bulge in his robe was a pleasant side effect.

  For once she didn’t care about propriety or sin. Damn her aunt and her damned righteousness.

  “Don’t leave me,” she whispered. What she really meant was keep kissing me until I forget everything.

  “Let’s go into the study. I’ll pour some brandy and we can talk.”

  Without waiting for a response he turned to leave her room, forcing her to follow.

  From a corner of the couch where she had curled up, she watched him stoke the fire and pour them both a healthy glass of brandy. Alcohol was not allowed at her aunt’s house, and she was surprised that it both burned and warmed her tongue and stomach.

  Not like Jacob’s kisses did, but it would have to do. Now that they were out of her bedroom and on separate ends of the couch, her blood had cooled and she was not as feverish to keep kissing him, to possibly do things that could get her in trouble.

  What if they had intercourse and she became pregnant? Going to America was going to be diffic
ult enough. It would be ten times more difficult with a baby.

  “Do you want to tell me about the dream?” he asked from his end of the couch.

  She hesitated, because she didn’t want to tell him, and yet part of her did. “I don’t think it’s a surprise that life with my aunt was not pleasant.”

  “I gathered that.”

  “She’s a cruel woman who overly relies on religion to excuse her actions. She believed that if she didn’t correct my sins, then I would go to hell. It was her personal mission to make sure I made it to heaven.”

  “I think you were already in hell.”

  “I’ve never thought about it that way, but you might be right. She certainly made my life hell.”

  “Did she beat you?” he asked softly.

  “Sometimes.”

  “I’m so sorry, Charlotte.”

  “When she would force me on my knees to pray, I would pray to my father to deliver me out of her grasp. When that didn’t work, I eventually stopped praying. It was my silent revenge against her. She could make me kneel there for hours, but she couldn’t force me to pray.”

  “I’m impressed with your fortitude.”

  “It was the little things that kept me sane. The not-praying. The secret letters to Sarah. And I started plotting my escape.”

  “And that’s why you ran to the rookery.”

  She didn’t correct him. She didn’t tell him that it wasn’t her aunt who’d made her run to the rookery—that the rookery had not been in her plans at all. But things had changed quickly, and she’d needed to escape, and it had been the only thing that she’d hoped would work. Aunt Martha would have known to look for her at Sarah’s.

  “I stole a set of silver candlesticks,” Charlotte said. Another sin to add to her long list. “And I pawned them. I know I didn’t get what they were worth, but I didn’t care. I paid our rent out of it and hoarded the rest for my escape to America.”

  “And then I came along.”

  “And then you came along.” She tried to smile, but it fell short. The sticky residue of her dream was still present, mixed with the intoxicating kiss they’d shared. It was an odd, confusing combination.

  America. Jacob.

  She wanted both, but she couldn’t have both.

  An earl couldn’t move to America, and she couldn’t stay here.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Tell me about Edmund,” Jacob said.

  Charlotte stiffened. The fire crackled in the hearth and the brandy warmed her insides, but the question jarred her. Her senses tingled, warning her that he was getting too close. “What about him?”

  She sounded defensive, and she warned herself to calm down. The question had come too close to her encounter—if one could call it that—with Edmund in the market. Coupled with her dream, she was on edge.

  “Was your aunt as cruel to him as she was to you?” Jacob asked.

  She concentrated on Jacob, not Edmund. The firelight made Jacob’s hair a deep red, his eyes a whiskey color. He was holding his empty brandy glass, and it reflected the oranges and yellows of the fire. She felt as vulnerable here as she had in her bedchamber with him, but in a different way. Not a good way. She had felt far less exposed in the rookery than in Jacob’s home.

  “If you don’t want to talk about him we don’t have to,” Jacob said.

  “I’ve never talked about it to anyone,” she admitted. Even Sarah didn’t know the whole story, just the mild bits and pieces. “That life… People would be hard pressed to believe it.”

  “Tell me more about your life with your aunt.”

  She took a sip of brandy for fortification. She would tell him some. Not all. But some. She felt this pressure from inside of her to tell part of her story so someone else would know and understand.

  “Aunt Martha hates men. I’m uncertain why or how it started.”

  “She hates her own son?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about her husband?”

  “I didn’t know my uncle. He died a few years before I lived with them.”

  “What did he die of?”

  Did his questions seem more pointed than usual? She took another sip of brandy. The room was taking on a warm glow, and her tongue seemed thicker than normal. The anxiety of the afternoon and her dream seemed far off and not so important.

  “I don’t know what he died of. I’ve heard it was sudden.” A thought slithered through her brain, slipping through her fingers before she could grasp it. Was there something strange about her uncle’s death?

  She mentally shrugged. What did it matter now?

  “My father was one of the kindest, most loving men I knew,” Charlotte said. “When Aunt Martha ranted about the evils of the opposite sex I purposely thought of him. She was wrong. About men. They’re not all bad. My father was a good man. You are a good man.” She looked down into her nearly empty glass. Where had all the brandy gone? Surely she hadn’t drunk it all, had she?

  No. The glass hadn’t been that full when he’d handed it to her.

  “Do you think…” Jacob paused. “I find it odd that your aunt hated men so much and your uncle died so suddenly.”

  The thought that had slithered away came racing back, and she desperately tried to let it go.

  “Do you think she did something to him?” She suddenly found it hard to breathe.

  “I don’t know. I just think it’s odd.”

  Their gazes locked. Firelight flickered across his dark eyes. His gaze dropped to her lips.

  She wanted to kiss him again but he’d said they couldn’t do that. He said he wouldn’t do that to her. But what if she wanted him to? Did she not have a say in any of this?

  Then she thought of America and the bright future that lay before her if only she could get there.

  He stood abruptly and took the almost empty glass of brandy from her. She wanted to cry out at the loss—of a kiss that did not happen, of the intimate atmosphere of their conversation and, yes, at the loss of the brandy. It made all of her problems seem not so problematic anymore. She wanted the release that the brandy provided and that a good, long kiss afforded.

  “I think we should return to our respective bedchambers,” he said.

  Was there reluctance in his tone? Regret in his eyes?

  She stood and faced him, and with a what-the-hell attitude that was more brandy than courage, she kissed him. And then like the untried, naive girl that she was, she fled from the room and down the hall to her bedchamber where she crawled into a cold bed and curled into a tight ball.

  …

  Armbruster’s butler let Jacob in the next morning, but Jacob’s mind wasn’t really on the task ahead, which was meeting with Armbruster’s man-of-business to discuss the earldom’s finances.

  After his kiss with Charlotte last night he’d gone back to bed only to toss and turn and think endlessly about her. She’d been vulnerable, he told himself. She didn’t know what she was doing because her aunt had kept her from any suitors, since all men were evil.

  He couldn’t take advantage of her in the frightened state she was in.

  Marry Miss Morris.

  Damn Armbruster for even mentioning such a preposterous thing.

  And when he had not been thinking of Charlotte he’d been thinking of her uncle. Dead rather quickly, she’d told him. It matched what he’d learned of the Morrises. But what had he died of?

  He didn’t know why he couldn’t shake the thought that Lord Morris had met a foul end. But why? Because Lady Morris despised men so much?

  “He sent word that he was going to be a few minutes late,” Armbruster said of his man-of-business as he walked into the room. “Which will give us time to catch up on things.”

  Jacob pulled his mind from his morbid thoughts to the task at hand. Numbers never interested him. He’d never done well in mathematics and had determined that today would be a rather dull day, but it had to be done.

  “Catch up?” Jacob seated himself in the chair that Armb
ruster had offered.

  “What is happening with Miss Morris?” Armbruster asked.

  I kissed her, and it was magnificent.

  “She’s going to America.”

  Oliver rolled his eyes. “Still? So you haven’t given any thought to my suggestion?”

  Oh, he’d given it a lot of thought. Mainly thinking that the idea was completely ludicrous.

  Liar. In the deep of the night I think about it seriously. But in the light of the day it seems ludicrous again.

  Jacob told Armbruster about visiting with Chadley, and Armbruster seemed intrigued.

  “And she became angry?”

  “Quite.”

  “It would seem that she would want to mend the breach with them. Chadley could easily protect her from her aunt and give her a much better life than any she would have in service in America.”

  Jacob shifted in his chair. “She seems most desperate to leave England.”

  “Do you think there is another reason that she fled her aunt’s home? A jilted lover, maybe?”

  The words angered him. Different from the anger of Cora’s passing. This was sharper. Desperate. He quickly stomped down on it, appalled at such an uncharacteristic reaction.

  “Lady Morris has a strong hatred of men. She never let Charlotte near them, so I doubt there is a jilted lover waiting in the wings.”

  “That doesn’t mean that Miss Morris didn’t find a man on her own.”

  Jacob wanted to tell his friend that theory was preposterous. He’d kissed Charlotte—twice—and while he was no womanizer, he could tell that she’d been inexperienced and even a bit embarrassed. No, there was no other man in Charlotte’s life.

  Which made him feel…relieved.

  Armbruster observed Jacob for a long moment, making Jacob uneasy. He refused to meet his friend’s eyes for fear that Oliver would see the truth in them. And what was the truth? What was he hiding from Armbruster and himself?

  “You have feelings for her,” Armbruster said, with an almost gleeful tone.

  “Of course not.” But Jacob knew his defense was weak and lacked conviction, and he cursed himself for it.

  “Good Lord, man, just marry the girl.”