The Earl Is Mine

by Kieran Kramer

  Quite the opposite.

  She was unused to seeing such a splendid specimen of manhood up close. Yes, she’d counted four handsome, brawny young fishermen in the village closest to Uncle Bertie’s, and they’d each leered at her every time she walked by their boats (much to her secret satisfaction), but not one of them held a candle to Gregory.

  She tried not to notice the broad shoulders and muscular upper arms his coat couldn’t disguise—but it was no use. “Have you ever lifted a fishing net?” she asked him.

  “No, but I pulled up lobster pots in New England with no trouble.”

  She had no doubt of it.

  “Why do you ask?” He cocked his head the way he always did when she puzzled him.

  “No reason.” She felt herself flush with that odd feeling again and was glad the barman brought them a plate of cheese and sliced apples to distract them both.

  “Uncle Bertie and your mother must be extremely concerned about your absence.” Gregory made a sandwich of two apple slices with a piece of cheese in the middle and ate it in one bite.

  “I left them a note explaining that I’ll be perfectly safe and taken care of—” She nibbled on her own apple slice.

  “Do you have money?”

  She swallowed. “Not yet. But I’ve a plan—”

  “You and your plan. What is it, exactly?”

  She sighed. “I’ll tell you, but don’t you dare make fun of it.”

  “I won’t.”

  She did her best to skewer him with a warning look, but he didn’t seem at all perturbed or frightened. He was his usual self, gazing at her with a closed expression that revealed occasional flickers of emotion—whether he was amused or bemused by her, she didn’t know.

  “I’m going,” she began darkly—

  “To Paris,” he filled in impatiently. “I think you should wear a sign on your back to let the whole world know.”

  She thumped the handle end of her fork on the table. “I told you not to make fun. I’m not one of your sisters to tease or mock.”

  He leaned forward on folded arms. “You’re definitely not my sister”—his blue eyes gazed deeply into her own—“to tease. Or mock.”

  She felt a flutter near her heart when his pupils dilated and something else appeared in his expression, something that held them locked into place and made her forget everything but him and the funny way her heart was beating.

  “Start over,” he said. “This time you can be sure I won’t say a disparaging word.”

  “Right, then,” she said, and gathered her courage, because speaking her dream out loud required it. “I touched upon this last night. I’m going to serve as a companion to a friend of Uncle Bertie’s. But on my days off, I want to learn sugar sculpture at the feet of the greatest confectioner of them all, Monsieur Perot.”

  She was so relieved to see that Gregory didn’t laugh. In fact, his brow furrowed, as if he were taking her seriously. Really thinking about it. It warmed her heart. Made her want to kiss him. Out of gratitude, of course—nothing else. She’d have kissed a pig right then if it had oinked its approval of her plan.

  “Pippa—”

  “What?”

  “This Monsieur Perot won’t allow a woman in his kitchens.” He didn’t seem to mind telling her.

  “I’m not stupid,” she said, feeling her temper rise. “I’ll be disguised.”

  Gregory leaned back in his chair. “He’ll know. First squeak out of you when you bang your thumb with a rolling pin, and you’ll be gone.”

  “I don’t squeak, especially when I’m in my man costume,” she concluded firmly, and ate a slice of apple with a great deal of determination.

  “He may not take you,” Gregory said, “even if he believes you’re a man. I’m sure he acquires students from fine houses, hotels, and bakeries. In other words, via references.”

  “I’ll use you as a reference,” she said.

  “You will, won’t you? You’re that brazen.”

  She nodded, and ate a piece of cheese. If only he knew how brazen.

  He crossed his arms and looked sternly at her. “You can’t think Bertie will read your note from this morning and just let you swan off to France.”

  She took a gulp of milk and wiped her hand across her mouth. “Of course, he doesn’t know I’m going to Paris. That’s too obvious a destination. Not that he could run after me, in any case. He’s not a good traveler these days.”

  “Then what did you say in the note?”

  She stared at him, dreading this moment.

  “Pippa?” His eyes flashed with suspicion.

  She clutched her fingers in her lap and prayed. “I told him I ran off with you.”

  Chapter Seven

  Pippa’s confession shouldn’t have surprised Gregory, but it did. He was reeling from it, in fact. He pushed back his chair and stood. “You didn’t.”

  Because if she did, life as he knew it was over.

  It was bad enough that he was traveling alone with her by accident—some might even say he’d saved her life by picking her up alongside the road and would forgive him for ignoring the proprieties—but to be traveling with her alone on purpose? The two of them supposedly running away together?

  Bertie, of course, would be ecstatic. He’d even think that their talk of the night before—where Gregory had agreed to take over responsibility for Pippa’s marital prospects—had played a part.

  He’d have to marry her, for certain. His carefully guarded secret would be in jeopardy. And his plan to do his duty whatever the cost would be in tatters because one didn’t do one’s duty around Pippa. One broke the rules. Or ran across meadows or sang silly songs—or laughed.

  One lived. And loved.

  “See?” Pippa said, her face stricken. “I told you my getting in your carriage was a very bad idea. I tried to escape, but you wouldn’t let me.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t let you.” He began to pace the floor. “No person in their right mind would have let you.” He paused and remembered with whom he was dealing. “I know I deserve this.” He felt calmer. In control again. “For ignoring your letter in Savannah. For kissing you last year. This is a massive joke, isn’t it, to bring me down a notch?”

  “No, Gregory.” Pippa closed her eyes and massaged her temples. “I am not joking. I really did say I was running away with you.”

  Bloody hell. It was as if he were watching himself from afar, and he was flailing.

  And failing.

  Dammit, every time he went to Uncle Bertie’s, the world as he knew it turned upside down. But it wasn’t Bertie. Every time Gregory was around Pippa something happened—something beyond his control. And inevitably, at the end of the day, he felt as if his own life were missing a vital ingredient.

  He was still that young man sitting on the sofa while Pippa came inside with a field mouse trapped inside her closed hands, only to let it loose on the carpet.

  “I—I didn’t have much time,” she explained. “I supposed Mr. Trickle would make sure Hawthorne was able to sneak out, and they’d deny everything if I told Uncle Bertie what had happened. So I had to write something that would be a believable reason for my running away. And it couldn’t inspire worry in Uncle Bertie or Mother. You were the perfect solution.”

  He raked a hand through his hair. “I couldn’t let you out in that rain—”

  “You should have. Because the worst thing in the world is for us to be caught together. We’ll have to marry if anyone discovers us traveling alone.”

  “But you”—his temper was getting the better of him—“you already told Bertie we ran off!”

  “I asked him not to mention it to anyone yet, that as we’d decided we were desperately in love, after all, we craved privacy. I specifically requested that he not write your family—at least not until we come home from our six-month honeymoon in Italy.”

  “Italy?”

  “I insist on going to Italy on my honeymoon,” she said airily. “I will sit on a stone wall i
n the sunshine and eat pears and drink wine.”

  He sent her the drollest look in his arsenal of expressions.

  “I confessed to him that your parents believed you’d gone off on one of your usual bachelor jaunts abroad. But of course, we’re actually together.” She felt a bit dizzy with the knowledge. “So now the whole situation looks very damning.”

  “I should say so. What if Bertie reads about me in the gossip rags over the next six months—which I plan to spend in London—and puts two and two together, that this is an awful lie?”

  “He doesn’t read the papers anymore,” she said. “They give him a headache. And you never write, so…” She looked away.

  He felt a pang of guilt. “So your story had an excellent chance of ringing true.”

  “Exactly.” She sent him a sideways look with those large hazel eyes of hers, an entirely feminine pose that should have looked ridiculous on her in her cravat and coat but served somehow to make him hot with lust for her instead.

  “I’m taking you back home.” He wouldn’t think about removing that ugly hat, unpinning her curls, and kissing her senseless.

  “You can’t do that.” She spun away from him on her chair and faced the fire.

  “Yes I can.” He picked up his mug and drained his ale. “Bertie will understand when he hears what happened. There will be no repercussions, other than those to be suffered by Mr. Hawthorne and Mr. Trickle at my hands, and things will be back as they should be. I’ll go to my house party, and in two weeks, I’ll be back to take you to London.”

  She looked over her shoulder, her eyes shining with stubborn determination. “If you take me back to Plumtree, I’ll merely slip away again. You needn’t worry about my having enough money. I’m hocking my father’s ruby earrings.”

  “Pippa.”

  “I don’t care,” she said. “He was infatuated with Mother when she was on stage, but it wore off quickly when he married her and the scandal got to be too much for him. He essentially washed his hands of her. And me.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Guilt burned in his chest. All these years he’d done the same thing—washed his hands of Pippa.

  And it was inexcusable.

  He would watch over her well now. If one thing had changed in him in America, it was his willingness to admit that he’d taken the people in his life back home for granted. They might not be able to care for him if they knew the truth—but there was nothing stopping him from caring for them.

  “Luckily,” she went on stoically, “Uncle Bertie was a better man than his nephew, and when my father left, he took us both in.” She shrugged a shoulder. “So I don’t feel I owe my father anything. He was as bad a husband as Mr. Trickle. I don’t mind in the least selling his earrings to pay my way to Paris.”

  “As much satisfaction as pawning those earrings might bring you, you’re a woman alone. It’s absurd.”

  “A man,” she reminded him.

  “You’re not a man,” he said low. “And as soon as another man finds that out, you’ll be in danger. This makes no sense—”

  “Some of the best ideas don’t.” She pushed aside the plate of apples and cheese and stood.

  He came round to her and gently grasped her upper arms. “I promised Bertie,” he said in his most reasonable voice, although he felt far from reasonable around her. The scent of her—even the defiant way she threw back her shoulders and lowered her brows at him—brought out the illogic in him.

  “You’re not my keeper.” Her eyes flashed with resentment.

  “Actually, I am,” he said, “and what you’re proposing is preposterous.”

  “Easy for you to say.” She wrenched herself away and straightened her coat. “You get to do anything you want. Do you know how difficult it is to be a woman?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “But that’s your lot, and it’s just as difficult to be a man. You’ll find that out in Paris.”

  “Good.” Her tone was arch. “You’re already imagining me there.”

  “Au contraire. I’m not imagining you in the City of Love at all.” He looked out the window at all the puddles left behind by the deluge. “You’re swimming in dangerous waters, young lady, right here in England.”

  She made a face. “You can’t make me stay.”

  “I can, and I will.” He went over and bolted the door.

  She crossed her arms over her man’s coat. “So you got a private room to entrap me?”

  “The last thing I want to do is be here—in this room—with you.” The two of them alone in a room together had always spelled trouble. He folded his arms and tried to stare her down.

  “Good.” She glared right back. “Then we’re agreed. Because I feel the same way about you.”

  “We’ll stay ten more minutes,” he said in an even tone, although his temper was getting the better of him. “Ten more. Until you accept your lot with a modicum of surrender. A modicum. That’s all I ask. And then I’ll unbolt the door.”

  “I’m not going to surrender, no matter what. So what are we going to do for ten minutes?”

  Oh, he knew it was wrong. But she annoyed him mightily, the stubborn little spitfire, and he was cold and tired—and she looked outrageous in that cravat. So he yanked one end loose and pulled her toward him. “We’re going to kiss each other,” he murmured, “and you’re going to like it.”

  Chapter Eight

  Gregory leaned forward and kissed Pippa, a light yet lingering kiss that sent her thoughts swirling into all sorts of hazy, pleasurable directions, the same way they meandered when she crawled into a hot bath and the water embraced her and sent her head lolling backward against the rim.

  When he pulled back, she felt the way she did when she had to stand up from the tub—and saw the towel halfway across the room. Her mind cleared in a rush. “Thank you for the carriage ride. And thank you for agreeing to keep up the ruse that we’re running off together. If you don’t mind, I’d also appreciate—”

  He kissed her again, and this time, his tongue parted the seam of her lips with a bold assurance that should have offended her—he was a practiced lover, obviously—but captivated her instead. She liked a challenge. And Gregory was one. He always had been.

  While he held her cravat, he kissed her thoroughly, teasing her lips with his own skilled ones, and she kissed him back, not letting him get the advantage for a moment. She wasn’t sure how well she was doing, but their explorations grew more heated. He pulled her bottom closer with his right hand and deepened the kiss.

  She decided then and there that it was the greatest pleasure, kissing and getting and giving caresses so hungrily. She only wished she could do it every day, several times a day—more than several times, actually.

  The thought made her desperate—desperate for him, so she dared to put her fingers in the curls at his neck and lazily comb them. His hair was like silk.

  “You’re delicious,” he said, “even in pantaloons.”

  She giggled against his mouth, and he reached his free hand into her coat and caressed her right breast.

  “It’s perfect,” he whispered. He looked into her eyes and ran a lazy circle with his thumb over the linen shielding her nipple.

  He had her hypnotized.

  And this time when they kissed again, something happened, something raw and needy between them that each had been suppressing in the carriage and up until that moment. Except for the warm and cozy bit at the end, the encounter in Gregory’s vehicle had been mostly uncomfortable, awkward, and tense, all at the same time. This kiss was a reward for their endurance.

  She couldn’t help wanting to feel him as intimately as he was exploring her, so she ran her hand over his belly, her lips never leaving his, and pushed her hips into the firmness that bulged in such enticing fashion in his trousers.

  “I like this,” she said. “I never want to stop.”

  “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

  When he ended the kiss—slowly, reluctantly, it seemed—she could
n’t help following his lips with her own until the two of them were well and truly parted. She opened her eyes and looked into the deep blue depths of his. They dazzled her brain and made it hard to think.

  “I—I do appreciate your trying to stay out of the papers while I’m gone,” she said, her voice feeling like taffy. “I know for you, in particular, with your Don Juan ways, it will be a difficult task.”

  “It will, indeed,” said Gregory in a scratchy, low tone. “I often practice my seduction skills on women dressed as men, and I anticipate at least four or five will crop up in the next several months. It will be hell avoiding them.”

  She yanked her cravat out of his now loose fingers and watched him over her shoulder as she moved to the window.

  He said nothing. Neither did he move.

  Good.

  “I’m going now,” she said over her shoulder. “Good-bye.”

  But as she retied her cravat, part of her was disappointed he hadn’t followed her. She’d rather be kissing him than standing alone at this window, which looked cold, square, and utilitarian. Outside was a side yard filled with rows and rows of lumber immersed in several large puddles that had ripples across their tops due to the rising winds.

  She tried her best to budge the frame. Surely, all it would take was one mighty heave.

  “It’s painted shut,” Gregory said. “Don’t you remember I tried to open it when we got in here?”

  “I forgot,” she said to the panes. She’d forgotten because when they got in here, she’d been daydreaming they were married and were on a trip to Paris together and that night, they’d have to stay at the inn in a cozy bed made for two.

  She’d envisioned what would happen. She wasn’t exactly sure of all the details, but she had a very good idea. It was something she longed for at night when she thought of Gregory. It must be entirely embarrassing, but with him, it would be exciting—a grand adventure.