Meet the Earl at Midnight

by Gina Conkle

  Lydia saw a determined woman, one who wanted her gone. At that moment, Lady E. clasped her hands behind her back, just like Edward. Did the countess know she mirrored her son right then? Lydia studied some dots of dried paint she had spilled on the fine ballroom floor. The toe of her shoe scraped the area. The floor near her workbench had become a casualty of her enthusiasm for mixing pigments and would surely cause complaints to someone. She really was an out-of-place mess in this over-fine home.

  “I see you have a tendre for him,” said Lady Elizabeth.

  Her head snapped up to face the countess. “I, we enjoy each other’s companionship. That’s all.”

  “Call it what you will, but have you considered what’s best for Edward? If you truly care for him, the best, in fact, is that you not marry him.” The countess moved closer, slow measured steps, looking more like a governess taking her charge to task on a key lesson. “If you don’t marry him, he won’t leave in June on this absurd journey of his. One that we both know could be his demise.”

  Lydia’s quick intake of air let the countess know she’d hit her mark, and the noblewoman nodded her head.

  “That’s right. Should you marry, and should you breed, he will feel he’s done his best, a version of his duty, if you will. Thus, he’ll have all the more excuse to leave.” Lady E.’s blue eyes narrowed. “But, if you leave him, he’ll have to find another to take your place. That could take months. Many, many months.”

  She set her hand low on her midsection and frowned over that simple but reasonable fact. Lydia had to admit she didn’t want Edward to leave either. There were also the difficult circumstances with her mother, but part of her was confident Edward would help her mum no matter what. The countess had the right of it. Simply put, their arrangement enabled him to leave, but if she left him, he’d have to stay.

  She nodded grudging assent. “I know what you mean, but I gave my word.”

  The countess made a sound akin to a growl and marched closer.

  “Don’t you see?” Her fists curled at her sides. “You cannot be here.”

  “No, I won’t go.” Lydia couldn’t give reasons, but she crossed her arms. Tremors of upset wracked her body. “I won’t abandon him.”

  Lady Elizabeth’s mouth pinched closed, and her nostrils flared from angry breathing. This was turning into a kind of standoff, two opponents facing each other in a ring with neither willing to give quarter, though Lydia was outflanked and outmaneuvered. She looked beyond the glass doors, hugging her arms even tighter to her chest as daylight waned.

  The countess scanned the row of burlap-wrapped paintings and broke the stalemate.

  “Then what about your art?” she asked, her voice lilting with lethal softness.

  “What about my art?” Lydia’s view of her ladyship narrowed. No one had asked her about those wrapped paintings, not even Edward, and she didn’t trust the lady’s sly shift in tone.

  “You’ve expressed a strong desire to have your art featured and sold in London, like any man.” Her ladyship’s ghastly tone and shiver of horror reinforced her opinion of that plan.

  “So I have. What of it?”

  The countess folded her hands together, resting them low on her skirt, and her blue eyes turned to calculating slits. “I’ll pay you a hundred and fifty guineas to leave. Tomorrow. When Edward’s engrossed in his work. Go live independently and sell your work under a different name. He’ll never find you.”

  Lydia’s jaw dropped with all the lack of elegance and comportment one could expect in an unrefined commoner.

  The countess nodded slowly. “That’s a lot of money for a woman like you. A hundred and fifty guineas provides very well for a London artist.” The countess smiled pure satisfaction as she went for the kill. “My dear Lydia, isn’t that what you really want?”

  Sixteen

  My soul can find no staircase to Heaven

  unless it be through Earth’s loveliness.

  —Michelangelo

  “That’s what you wanted, right, milord?” Huxtable bent near the table and pointed at another row of empty, cork-topped glass vials, all shiny and brand-new. “Just came in today, they did. And there’s more, but I suspect you’ll want to save those for yer voyage come June. I left ’em in the crate.”

  “Perfect. Thank you.”

  Edward gave the sparkling glass the slightest check before he positioned his small blade. He prepared to splice the Khaya senegalensis seed pod. The rare specimen came from the juvenile khaya tree in his greenhouse, the only tree of its kind in England. He had to get this right.

  If the tree grew to full maturity, which could take twenty years, the bark could be harvested to treat bleeding wounds, or so the natives on his first voyage had told him. With sly smiles they also told him the seeds, when ground up, could serve as an aphrodisiac, not that this secondary idea was at the forefront of his mind.

  He had so many other needs to attend, and at present his body, thrumming too often in Lydia’s presence, needed no further encouragement in that arena. He refocused his eyes, squeezing them shut and opening them wide when Huxtable shifted next to him.

  “A mite tired, are ye?”

  “No,” he snapped, trying for patience, however thin. “I need to concentrate.”

  Huxtable kept hovering and bothering, like some kind of persistent pest. Getting these particular seeds into the hands of one Dr. Finley, an Edinburgh physician and scientist of like mind, with the only other greenhouse capable of growing such a tree would accelerate the development of medicines. Edward’s need to increase the chances of success in his research and save the lives of others with bleeding wounds similar to Jonathan’s drove him to these many late-night sessions in his greenhouse. His working late was nothing new. Time was always of the essence, careful, meticulous planning and uninterrupted time.

  Everything and everyone, though, required their own slice of his time and attention.

  “O’ course, did I tell ye? Someone sent the crate to the kitchen where it sat a few days. That’s why it’s so late.” Huxtable inched closer to peer at the careful botanical surgery. “Sendin’ a scrap o’ seeds to that gent in Edinburgh, are ye?”

  Edward paused, keeping the sharp splicing tool hovering in hand over the brown seed. In his history with Huxtable, the old man hung round the table only when he had something to say. “Yes, this is for Dr. Finley,” he answered, not willing to open conversational doors to Huxtable.

  Edward had piled on the work, ambitiously laboring through two treatises at the same time. As he leaned over the workbench, the weight of self-imposed demands bore down on him. He was behind on his Agathosma betulina paper. Work on his treatise on plant placentas sat idle, since Lydia was negligent in her duties today. How quickly he’d come to count on her, but she claimed to not feel well by way of her maid last night, escaping her duties under the same guise today.

  Edward leaned over the magnification glass, inhaling and repositioning the tool.

  Huxtable wheezed and coughed, too close, and the thin blade slipped.

  “Ahh,” he griped, dropping the sharp metal. Blood welled from a thin, harmless stripe across the pad of his thumb holding the seed in place.

  “Cut yerself, did ye?” Huxtable pulled a thin strip of linen from the pile of cloth used to wrap split seeds. The old man hesitated over the small cut then began to wrap the injured thumb. “Just a tap from yer blade. Done worse to yer chin, ye have. Hardly stops ye from a day’s labor.” Huxtable knotted the ends of the bandage. “But I’d say ye should call it a day. It’s after dinner, when most of yer kind meet in drawin’ rooms and such.”

  “Hux, my working into the evening a few nights a week is nothing new.” Edward examined the bandage and the small red spot blooming on linen.

  “Aye, but ye weren’t a near-married man with a fair lass about the place, neither.” The plain ivory pipe twitched between thin, admonishing lips.

  “If you’ve something to say, say it.”

  Huxtable
scratched his head. His rheumy eyes glanced at Edward then up to a lone, faint light shining from the west corner of the grand house.

  “A light’s on in her room. Has been all day. She can’t be all that under the weather. And if she is”—Huxtable removed his pipe and jabbed it at Edward’s chest—“yer the one who should be seeing to her welfare, not the likes o’ Tilly or Edith. That’s if she’s truly in the sickroom, if ye know my meanin’.”

  He leaned his backside against the bench and looked up at the bank of windows that made the earl’s and countess’s suites. All were dark save one.

  “I have wondered,” he admitted aloud.

  Was Lydia taking a page from his mother’s book and trying her hand at manipulation? Or escape? He scratched his bewhiskered jaw. She hardly seemed the type. But did he truly know?

  “The kitchens are all abuzz over the way Lady E. was a talkin’ to the miss in the blue drawin’ room yesterday. Real harsh like. More’n usual for her ladyship’s sharp tongue, some said.” Huxtable’s bushy brows wiggled like two hairy varmints not shed of their winter coats. “What yer used to is a mite hard fer others new to the place.”

  Edward’s finger played idly with the bandage’s knot, and he looked up at the lone window dimly lit. “I advised the countess to enjoy London tomorrow, which should give us all a break. Lydia held her ground so well that first day, but you’re right. Perhaps she’s overwhelmed.”

  Escape it was.

  He looked over at her workbench, where three neat stacks stood evenly positioned. Beyond that flat surface, velvet night wrapped around the greenhouse glass.

  “And I think ye missed her a mite,” Huxtable said with a firm nod as he replaced the pipe between his thin lips.

  “I wouldn’t go that far.” But out of the corner of his eye, Edward caught the open book he’d retrieved from the king’s chest.

  Aristotle’s Poetics. He’d taken breaks that day, seeking out what little the ancient philosopher had to say about art. Perhaps the student needed to check on the welfare of his lovely tutor. Edward looked over his shoulder at the disarray across his workbench and turned to clean up, when Huxtable waved him away.

  “Shoo. Off with ye,” the old man said, pushing Edward away from the table. “I can coddle plants and seeds just as well, milord. Was doin’ it back when ye were knee high to me, think I can do it now.”

  “My thanks, Hux.” He rubbed his nape where tension formed. Edward pulled his brown wool coat tightly about as cold air blasted him upon leaving the greenhouse.

  His boots tramped their way out of the greenhouse, across the graveled path, and through the infamous blue drawing room’s wide double doors. That room was dark, save a pair of lit candelabra. Traversing the pale blue carpet, he imagined the trial Lydia had faced the day before in that formal receiving room. The countess was about appearances first and substance second. Perhaps yesterday’s meeting was the reason for Lydia’s sudden female discomfort, or whatever it was Tilly called it when she gave excuses for Lydia’s absence last night and this morning.

  Time he took matters in hand. He’d not tolerate female histrionics in whatever form they came, the way his father had. But as he trudged upstairs with lead legs toward the red carpet delineating the earl’s and countess’s suites, Edward was at a loss. Was he supposed to coddle a woman when she had a case of the contretemps? Or was a man supposed to be firm, informing said female that she was made of firmer stuff, as he’d come to believe Lydia to be?

  He bypassed her door, where not even a sliver of light shone underneath, and slipped quietly into his own room. Standing in his domain, he faced a singular dilemma. How would he approach her on this nocturnal visit? This wasn’t an appointment to converse about work or some other purpose: she was the purpose. He chuckled to himself as he glanced around his quiet room, his books and maps always a comfort and interest, when suddenly he lit on an idea. Boldly provisioned, he knocked gently on their adjoining door.

  “Lydia?” He cracked the door.

  “Who is it?”

  “The big bad wolf.” He pushed open the door, grinning. “Who else would it be from this side of the door?”

  He looked around the countess suite, dim with a few burning candles, and he spied Lydia. She jumped up from the writing table, shutting its drawer with abruptness at the same time. Her eyes blinked, and her gaze dropped to the pair of glasses in his hand.

  “I come bearing a gift.” He held out the glass containing a dram of scotch and tipped his head toward the seating area by the fire. “Shall we?” Then he hesitated. “That is if you’re at least well enough for my visit? Strong liquor may not be the best, but I thought…” He trailed off, watching her and hoping.

  She graced him with a wan smile and moved to the pink-and-yellow-striped settee. “Thank you. I’d like that.”

  Lydia curled her legs underneath her, tucking the white velvet wrapper around her legs and feet. She reached out to accept the glass when he seated himself on the other end of the furniture. She murmured her thanks again, and they sipped the amber liquid in pleasant silence.

  This was all very nice and somewhat awkward. Hadn’t they both enjoyed each other’s company? Even trading barbs with Lydia was refreshing. But this, this stilted and polite nothingness made his skin tight and uncomfortable. Edward set his glass on the table and settled against a cushion, linking his hands together. He contemplated his next move, but Lydia took the conversational helm.

  “How was your work today?”

  He gave her a half smile. “Fine.”

  She nodded at that and stared into the fire, listless and inattentive. Enough of this. He wanted to pull her out of the doldrums that swallowed her. The only way to retrieve a drowning person was to reach for them. He stretched out his arm and stroked his knuckles lightly over her knee.

  “More’s the point, how are you?”

  That feathery touch drew her out of the fog. She swiped messy strands of hair, which had come loose from the single braid that curled over her shoulder. Lydia looked like she had woken from a nap and the braid had barely survived a battle with her pillow.

  “Overtired.” Her thumb rubbed the side of her glass.

  “Have your late nights of painting worn you down? Or is it as many in the household fear? The countess’s sharp tongue has wounded you so gravely that you need to hide away to lick said wounds?”

  Her nose tipped high on this second option, alerting him to the threat of damaging female pride.

  “I didn’t sleep well last night. That’s all,” she said and took another sip of the scotch before setting the glass on the table to clamp her arms under her breasts. “But I’ll acknowledge all here gave me fair warning about the famous Lady E. And now I’ve seen, or heard, rather, her in action.”

  “Ah, then I need to do my utmost to repair the damage so she doesn’t scare off the fair damsel I’ve trapped in my lair.”

  “I don’t scare that easily, but I hope you’ve ordered her to sheath her claws.” Her thick eyebrows drew together in as firm and flat a line as her mouth.

  Her voice held that low alto quality that he’d noticed came to her by the end of the day. And he had his verdict: this was a case of clear escape.

  “Better still, I’ve banished her for a day. How’s that for helping a damsel in distress?” He grinned and stretched his arm across the back of the settee toward her. “I encouraged the countess at dinner that she visit a good friend in London tomorrow, do some shopping, and give you a reprieve for a day.”

  Her eyebrows arched high. “You mean we can carry on tomorrow minus the countess training?”

  “Yes. You don’t have to see her at all if you don’t want to.”

  Her shoulders eased a fraction, and she hugged a pillow to her midsection, flipping the gold tassel. That’s when he noticed her face looked a shade or two paler than usual, and purplish crescents darkened the fragile flesh under her eyes. Was there something else? Edward leaned closer on the settee.

  “So
this is a mix of difficulties, the countess combined with a sleepless night?” he prodded. “Nothing more serious than that?”

  She rested her chin on the pillow. “I’ve been a lot of bluster about being able to stand on my own, haven’t I?”

  “If that’s what this is, then I’m glad it’s nothing serious.” He smiled and moved closer, his hand within reach of her knees. “Actually, you’ve given me a new trial to face.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The dilemma of talking with a woman for no particular reason over no particular subject. Usually I’d find out what I needed to know, or impart necessary information and leave.” He smiled at her. “I’m learning to converse for no other purpose than conversation itself.”

  “Dreadful, isn’t it?” she gibed with a sleepy, teasing smile. “Having to converse with a woman and not necessarily having a deep topic or explicit task at hand.” A sparkle relit her eyes, and she tipped her head, exposing the part of her neck he longed to explore.

  She had no idea what that tilt of her head did to him. His pulse quickened, and warmth spread through him. Edward was lost in the graceful lines exposed to his view as she continued her banter, unknowing of the riot inside him.

  “Or perhaps in the hope of drawing closer to the other person?” Her siren’s alto stirred him, breaking through his muddle.

  He searched her eyes, languid with the evening’s ease. “You’re throwing down the gauntlet on this nocturnal visit, aren’t you?” And more of your diverting stretch of neck will be the prize.

  “I am, my lord. Are you up to the challenge?”

  Edward faced facts right then. He wanted to truly know her, which was a daunting task of emotions mixed with facts. For some reason, that white desk caught the corner of his eye at the same time that stunning revelation hit him. Papers stacked in neat piles across the surface. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask what she had shut away in the drawer when he entered, but fate turned him in another direction.

  “I may be revealing trade secrets of every male, but the trick is knowing when to listen and when to tune a woman out. All while giving the appearance of attentive listening. I’ve done that all my life. Perfected the skill to an art form.”