The Earl Is Mine

by Kieran Kramer

  “It feels good to have the top half of me warm again,” she said, but her teeth knocked against her words, like tiny hammers.

  He hid his concern with a steady gaze. “Let’s get the bottom half the same way. I’m going to remove your boots.”

  “I can do it myself.”

  “Allow me,” he said. “While I remove them, why don’t you wrap up in the blanket?”

  “All right,” she said, sounding a bit nervous.

  He lifted one slender calf—he refused to think of it as sweet—and the boot came off with a tremendous sucking sound, followed by a long trickle of water.

  “It’s like the Flood in here,” she muttered.

  When their eyes met, he was glad to see a small twinkle in hers. It sent warmth rushing to the vicinity of his heart—a very unwelcome rush.

  “The other,” he reminded her as if she were a wayward soldier, and her expression dimmed.

  Good. They didn’t need to be friendly. Not when he was in possession of her leg. If he followed its trail, it would lead him to a forbidden place he had no business thinking of at all. In fact, he was so thoroughly disgusted with himself, when he lifted her calf, he was a little too quick and her toes snagged the underside of his thigh.

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  He sent her a silent glance replete with disapproval and tried to be satisfied that no water came out of the second boot.

  “I’ll do the rest,” she offered.

  “Let me get your stockings,” he said. “Sit back”—far, far back—“and stay warm.”

  She didn’t question him this time, and her cheeks flushed when he began the task of peeling her sopping wet hose off. He had to work very hard not to attribute any suggestion of intimacy to the action. Her ankle was splendid, her flesh a healthy pale pink, but her feet when they appeared were faintly blue.

  He rubbed them hard with his hands, and she giggled outright.

  He paused. “Ticklish?”

  She put the tip of a thumbnail up to her mouth. “Yes.”

  Her toes still weren’t the color they should be, so he lifted both her feet and laid them flat against his shirt, then wrapped his coat around them.

  “You can’t do that!” she squeaked.

  He shrugged a shoulder. “Just warming them up.” He looked at the roof of the carriage. Gave a little whistle, then gazed out a window for some thirty seconds.

  “This must be uncomfortable for you,” she said, still sounding anxious.

  “Yes, it’s like having two blocks of ice against my chest, but they’re warming up, little by little, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “But really, you shouldn’t. You really, really shouldn’t.”

  With every passing second, the encounter was getting cozier and cozier, especially when she burrowed her toes deeper into the linen fabric, inadvertently massaging his nipples. The minx. She had no idea how those two blocks of ice were turning into instruments of torture of a different kind.

  “I’ll endure,” he said, his eyes on a lonely outcrop of rocks on a distant portion of the moor.

  “I should be sorry for you, I know, but this is heaven,” she exclaimed. “Much better than a warm brick.”

  He turned to see that she wore a blissful look on her face. If she thought this was heaven, she knew little of men and women and the things that happened between them.

  Low on her seat, utterly relaxed, her wet hair curling about her face, she might have spoken with all the pure sincerity of an angel, but she was beginning to look too much like a hoyden for her own good.

  “Right, then. They’re warm now.” He opened his coat for entirely selfish reasons. He had to get rid of her—the sooner, the better. Lady Pippa Harrington was far more dangerous than he was, if only she knew.

  As if to prove his point, she removed her feet from his chest only with a great deal of reluctance and a long, feminine sigh.

  “And now”—he reached beneath the seat again and took a long swig of Father’s whiskey to numb the fire building in his groin—“you’ll change out of your pantaloons.”

  Chapter Five

  “No,” Pippa told Gregory firmly. She drew the line at pantaloons.

  “You must.”

  He’d never looked quite like this before. Was he feverish? In pain? Surely he wasn’t sleepy. He looked as though someone had given him a witch’s potion that was either going to make him very sleepy or very naughty.

  “Don’t even think of it,” she warned him, even as her heart beat faster remembering their kiss in the garden.

  “Of what?” He suddenly looked perfectly sane again.

  “We’re done with changing clothes.” She enunciated clearly to remind herself that she was strong-willed and no one could stop her from going to Paris, especially not Gregory.

  He shook his head. “You need to be dry.”

  “I can’t. I—I really can’t take off these pantaloons. So please. Don’t ask.”

  He stared at her a moment, and then a knowing look passed over his face, disappearing so swiftly, she could have imagined it. “I understand,” he murmured. “If we wrap the blanket around your legs, that should help warm you.”

  And then it dawned on her. He thought—he thought she had her courses! How would he know about those? She supposed unmarried men did, but where did they find out? No one had told her anything about hers, not even Mother. She’d told Pippa she’d be visited by a special fairy each month when she got older, and it had been terribly disappointing to find out what that fairy was.

  “It’s not what you think,” she blurted out.

  “I don’t think anything.” His face was placid. The perfect gentleman’s face.

  “Yes you do! But you’re wrong. The truth is”—she was avid to confess; anything was better than the embarrassing assumption he’d made now—“I’m not wearing drawers. We don’t do that in the country. You city people might—I hear they’re quite fashionable, but why make more laundry?”

  “That’s why you won’t change your pantaloons?”

  She nodded miserably. “I thought you’d be aghast.”

  “But I don’t wear drawers, either,” he said, the edge of a smile gracing his lips—a very attractive smile—“so don’t be embarrassed.”

  “Y-you don’t?”

  “Of course not.” He gave a chuckle low in his throat. “Only the high sticklers do.”

  Oh, dear. This was a most intimate conversation. “I thought you were one.” She looked at one of his coat buttons.

  “Only when I’m at Court. You seem to be forgetting—I did much of my growing up at Ballybrook in Ireland, out in the country.” He leaned forward again. “So no excuses. Off with the pantaloons.” He reached into the bag, pulled out another pair, and placed them on the back of her seat.

  This time when he put the blanket between them, her head buzzed with outrageous images. She shouldn’t be thinking of Gregory with no drawers, but she was. She thought of him sliding into his own pantaloons that very morning at Uncle Bertie’s. Had he simply rolled out of bed naked? Or did he wear a nightshirt?

  Slowly, her knees butting the blanket, she unfastened her braces and shimmied out of her pantaloons, nudging them with her bare toes to Gregory’s side of the floor.

  Good God, she felt exposed, even with the blanket, the long shirt, and the tailcoat.

  “Your hair,” he said gamely, still holding up the blanket. “How did you manage that?”

  She couldn’t help a little smile. He was doing his best to distract her. Half sitting, half standing, she donned the new pantaloons and attached them to her braces—they did feel wonderful, and he’d been right. She’d needed dry clothes.

  She peered over the edge of her little fortress. “I’ve several wigs, thank goodness. The one I used today will have to dry out.” She gave a little laugh. “We’ve no more need of the blanket, by the way.”

  His eyes lit up. “Very good.” He tossed it aside. “It is officially retired after hav
ing spent several minutes in worthy service to an excellent cause.”

  “Will it get a pension?” She resumed her seat.

  “No. I’m afraid it’s not covered.” He arched one brow.

  “That was an awful joke. But thank you for your help and the beef pie you’re soon to purchase for me. Are we almost there?”

  “Soon.” He handed her dry stockings and the spare shoes. “A half hour. You can stay in the carriage while we change horses.”

  “I told you, I’m not going back home.” She donned the stockings and shoes then reached across the space between them and got her canvas bag from his seat. Rummaging through it, she pulled out another wig, along with a brush and a small jar of pomade. And then she began to pull the remaining loose pins out of her hair. She would repin her curls. She didn’t need a looking glass, either.

  Gregory smirked. “Surely you don’t think you’ll get away with this disguise for longer than a minute or two. Your face is too delicate to pass for a man’s. I noticed instantly that you appeared effeminate.”

  “The spectacles help a little,” she insisted. “And I’m wearing rather high collars. Plus, I’m a good actress. It’s in my blood. I can walk and talk like a man, with just the right amount of confidence that people simply feel sorry for me that I’m not more hearty, like you. I already have a story concocted about how I spent several years of my childhood in bed with a wasting disease that was miraculously cured when I began to eat carrots, I think. Or maybe I drank goat’s milk. I haven’t decided.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “If I act as if I believe it, so will everyone else. Same with my being a man.” She shivered as she laid pins on the seat beside her. Yes, she felt oodles better than she had when wet, but she was tired and hungry. She just wanted to curl up in bed with an enormous quilt over her and fall asleep.

  “Leave your damned hair alone.” Gregory patted the seat beside him. “Come here and rest against my shoulder a moment. I can’t give you any more whiskey, but we have the blanket.”

  She hesitated, a rolled-up curl between her fingers.

  “It’s your chance to get warm all the way through,” he said.

  Which was exactly what she needed. So she switched over without a word, and he tucked the blanket around them both.

  “Hold on to me,” he said.

  Dare she? At the moment, all she wanted was a warm place to burrow and think of nothing. Tentatively, she wrapped her arms around him, and he did the same for her, his chin on her head. There was instant, glorious heat between them—exactly what she required.

  “I am angry, Pippa.” His voice resonated somewhere near her temple, and her eyelids drooped. “You should have come to me when you found yourself in the position you did and not run off harum-scarum. As soon as you’ve recovered, we’ve got to return you home. I’ll take care of the mess there, I promise.”

  Oh, but this feels like home, she thought, and before she could worry about the complications that presented, she fell fast asleep.

  Chapter Six

  Pippa was wrapped in a delicious cocoon of warmth. She didn’t want to wake. She snuggled closer and sensed it was Gregory. She’d dreamed of being with him like this—safe, on their own. Together in the same place all the time rather than once a year.

  This was better than making sugar sculptures. Better than Christmas morning. This was …

  Wait—was she really with the last man on earth she needed to see?

  Panic assailed her, and her eyes flew open. She was looking straight into his coat. And if she turned her head a tad, she saw a carriage seat. His carriage seat.

  It all came back to her in a horrifying—if somewhat mesmerizing and occasionally pleasurable—rush.

  He’d rescued her from the rainstorm. She’d not been worried about the brooding clouds, but when the cold, lacerating sweeps of rain pelted her without cease, it took more out of her than she’d imagined a rainstorm could.

  And when she’d entered the coach and realized who he was—

  Well, it was the shock of it that made her faint, even more than the chill and damp and her sheer exhaustion.

  She disentangled herself by pushing against his chest, and then she sat up, blinking. It was awful being awake. She wanted to go back into that lovely dream world …

  “We’ve arrived at the inn,” he said in a no-nonsense voice. “I gave you a few more minutes to sleep while Oscar went ahead to get things ready for us.”

  “Thank you.” She didn’t want to look at him. She felt shy, knowing that they’d been wrapped like lovers in a tight embrace.

  “You’re going to put on a fresh cravat,” he said, pulling one out of her bag. “Shall I tie it?”

  “Absolutely not,” she said with a sniff. “I’m quite adept at the Waterfall. I tie Uncle Bertie’s all the time.”

  “Fine.” He handed it to her. “Then you’ll slap a dry wig on, put your unfortunately soggy hat on top of it, hold the blanket over your head to stave off the rain—at least it appears to be tapering off—and go right to a private parlor for a meal. It doesn’t appear to be crowded, so you should be fine. We’ll stay less than an hour and turn around.”

  “Gregory, I told you, I’m not going back. It will be the same old thing—Uncle Bertie wanting me to marry you. Nothing else seems to matter.” Her mouth tipped up in a teasing smile. “You could put me out of my misery at any time, you know.”

  He shook his head. “You’d hate to be married to me.”

  “I’d hate to be married to anyone,” she said.

  “Well”—Gregory couldn’t help leaning closer to her—“you’d especially hate being married to me.”

  He spoke with such great conviction, their gazes locked in mutual recognition of the solemnity of the moment. She could tell he was thinking of the same thing she was: the childish drawing she’d made of him that ill-fated day, the one with the heart. He’d no idea she’d been infatuated with him until that moment.

  “Stay away from me, my lady,” he said, leaning even closer to emphasize his point. “If you need a reminder, why, merely revisit that cartoon.”

  “Good advice,” she replied. “According to Uncle Bertie’s friends in London, no one’s quite sure what you got up to in America and are having a rum time discussing it while you cut a swath through society. Rumors abound. Were you living with natives? Consorting with the criminal element? Leaving a trail of cuckolded husbands throughout the former colonies?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “The point is, I’m not good for you. Someday I’ll marry, of course. It’s my duty to the House of Brady. But I’m not one for finer feelings. And if you think I speak lightly, you’re wrong.”

  “No,” she admitted, “I can see you’re not the same man you were before Eliza threw you over.”

  “Good of you to remind me that I had no say in the matter.”

  “But there are other changes, too,” she said excitedly, ignoring his bid for pity. “You’re a year older, for one. You must have worked hard in America. Your shoulders are broader, and your face has filled out. You look more of a man.”

  “Do I?” He got that look in his eye again, the one that reminded her that she must be careful or she could wind up kissing him again.

  “Yes.”

  “Those are rather superficial changes, aren’t they?”

  “Very well, I’ll go deeper.” She looked him straight in the eye. “The truth is, your gaze is bitter. Your mouth is hard, too—although I saw glimpses of darkness in you well before—”

  “I was thrown over by Eliza,” he finished for her.

  “Exactly.” She paused. “We haven’t talked about it in years. You won’t let me.”

  “For good reason. There’s nothing to say. Pardon the observation, but you’ve always been fanciful, my lady. You see me only once a year. Your analysis of my person and character can’t be very accurate.”

  “Seeing someone only rarely can heighten one’s powers of observation,�
�� she said. “What I’ve remarked on is true. And it’s a shame.”

  “If that’s so, then you’re only proving my point: I’m someone you should steer clear of on the marriage mart.”

  “With all due respect, my lord”—she arched a brow—“I wasn’t suggesting you marry me when I suggested you put me out of my misery.”

  “And you wonder why your uncle calls you cheeky?”

  She chuckled and began pinning her hair. “Marry someone—anyone else. I don’t care.” Her tone was matter-of-fact. “Then Uncle Bertie will be forced to stop this pitiful ritual.”

  She stuck a pin through a curl and looked at him with clear eyes while she formed another.

  “I see,” Gregory said into the silence.

  Pippa smiled softly, apologetically. “Not every woman wants to be Lady Westdale, future Marchioness of Brady, you know.”

  “You’re making that very clear.”

  “But I’m sure a good many of them do,” she encouraged him. “Perhaps you could go wed one—the sooner, the better.”

  “Right,” he said briskly. “While I appreciate your advice, I won’t be taking it. Now let’s go inside.”

  Pippa put on her spectacles and followed him out of the carriage. The sudden whoosh of a wind gust hit her as her feet touched the ground, but she quickly grabbed the brim of her hat and regained her footing. She heard a chuckle from Gregory.

  Good thing he didn’t offer to help me, she thought with a toss of her head. I’m supposed to be a man, after all.

  * * *

  Just as her surprise travel partner had promised, a beef pie was set before Pippa by a barman who also brought her a mug of hot milk—and for Gregory, a pint of ale.

  She took off her spectacles and inhaled the steam curling up from the pie. “I’m famished,” she said.

  “Eat.” Gregory had his own pie to consume.

  They both dug in with equal gusto. Oh, it was good to get some warm food into her belly! She’d hardly had a morsel last night. She never could when Gregory was there. Just looking at him made her a bit sick to her stomach. Not that he was ugly. Or disgusting.