Entangled with the Earl (Tangled Threads Book 1)

by Lisbette Tomas

  Teresa winced.

  “I will admit to wishing I didn’t have to attend that one.” She lowered her voice to match his. “You could have asked the wallflowers for advice on which parties have the best food, you know. There’s little else for entertainment and plenty of time to evaluate the offerings.”

  Martin let out a surprised laugh. “I suppose I should have. If nothing else, it would have improved the quality of the conversations I had. Your company has been much more enjoyable than most of the pompous windbags I know from Parliament.”

  Teresa raised an eyebrow. “I suppose you mean that as a compliment. I’ll choose to take it as one.”

  “You should.” Martin ran a hand through his hair. “I go to London because that’s what the title requires. I make my bow to Society because that’s what Society requires. There’s very little about it I enjoy and I have very little in common with most of them. Few of the gentlemen care about their estates or give them the attention they need. Most of the women are focused on gossip or the marriage market. Any topic beyond that and I’m greeted with a blank look and polite titters.”

  “Well of course you are.” Teresa leaned forward, her tone making it clear that she considered his words a statement of the obvious. “For a woman, if you’re not the Season’s Original or old enough that eccentricity is allowed, any hint of an individual personality is grounds for mocking, not admiration. If you read, you’re labeled a bluestocking. If you prefer the outdoors or the country to town, you’re a naive bumpkin. If you laugh too much or too often, you’re too forward. If you never laugh, you’re a dour stick. No woman wants to be different from the crowd with incentives like those.”

  The passion behind her words was hard to ignore and Martin considered her point. “When you put it like that, I suppose it makes sense.”

  Teresa gave a short, bitter laugh. “Of course it does. It’s simply that most gentlemen never need to think about it and so never notice what demands Society places on women.”

  He opened his mouth to protest her harsh characterization of gentlemen, to say that they weren’t all like that, but then snapped it shut again. For all that he prided himself on being different from the average gentleman, he hadn’t noticed what she had just pointed out.

  Teresa smiled at him, her eyes faintly mocking. “We’re used to it as ladies, I assure you. Besides, most of them doesn’t even realize what they’re doing or wouldn’t care if they did. It’s merely part of ‘how things are supposed to be’ and that’s that.”

  “Society does that to everyone, though.” Memories of the weight of expectation placed on him both made him sympathize with her point and protest it. “Not only women.”

  “Perhaps, but women bear the brunt of it.” She raised her glass in his direction. “It can’t be that hard to pretend that your mistress doesn’t exist when sitting in polite company. No one raises an eyebrow if a young man goes out and enjoys a drink at the gaming tables with his friends or enjoys himself with a Cyprian. Given how popular some of the young men are as dinner guests, the ton outright approves of that behavior.”

  “Ah, but if a man doesn’t keep a mistress or avoids the gaming tables, they’re not sure how to react to him.” He knew that fact well. “How do you think I ended up with the reputation I have?”

  Teresa stared at him. “Forgive me, but I find it hard to believe you have never sat at a gaming table or taken a mistress.”

  Martin shrugged. “I gamed. I’ve known a few women since my youth. But I never haunted the tables the way some young men do and I’ve never taken a mistress.”

  “I thought most gentlemen kept mistresses. Or at least that’s what you said that night at the ball.”

  “I thought we established that I don’t particularly care what the ton does. Or what they think of my decisions.” Thoughts of his father were a familiar ache, an old and well-worn reminder of what fueled his decisions. “I have no intention of taking a mistress. As my wife, you can be assured of my fidelity.”

  Teresa blinked, clearly taken aback by the intensity of his tone. For a moment, the only sound came from the shifting logs in the fireplace. Finally, Teresa said quietly, “I didn’t doubt that. Anything else wouldn’t fit with your reputation.”

  “My reputation.” It was his turn to give a bitter laugh. He was a man of impeccable honor, according to Society. Something to differentiate him from his parents.

  At least, he had been, before he’d been caught kissing Teresa in the garden. The loss of the reputation didn’t matter to him; he’d cared as little for it as he had for their inexplicable decision to make him one of the arbiters of taste during the Season. If anything, it had been a source of amusement. Only the ton with their self-imposed idleness would waste their time attributing his actions to some high-minded idealist principle.

  There were principles involved, but nowhere near the high-minded ones Society envisioned, like removing the stain from the family tree or righting all the wrongs his parents had done. No, it was much simpler: he would never be like his father.

  “While the ton has been more than happy to exaggerate my reputation on several occasions, I do appreciate your trust regardless.” The words slipped out, acidic and harsh.

  Teresa looked down at the table. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.” Her tone was contrite, with none of the fake sympathy so commonly heard in town. Her sincerity smoothed some of the jagged edges of the temper the memories had stirred.

  Taking a deep breath, he wrestled the rest of his emotions back under control. The last thing he wanted to be doing with her tonight was arguing. He searched for a way to turn the conversation away from dangerous ground. “I confess, I’m surprised to hear an innocent talking about mistresses.”

  “Innocent doesn’t mean ignorant, for all that the ton seems to think it should. And wallflowers have plenty of time to sit and watch and think. People give away a lot more than they realize over the course of an evening.”

  “Seeing you tonight makes it hard to believe you were a wallflower.” There were enough gentlemen among the ton that he respected who could have seen her potential over the past three years. That all of them had been blind was surprising.

  She flushed. “Part of that was my fault.” Her eyes were shadowed when she looked up at him. “I wasn’t prepared for London Society my first Season, despite my aunt’s efforts. My parents were different and I didn’t understand how different until after my presentation. By that point, it was too late to fix the damage done to my reputation. Once on the outside, it’s terribly hard to convince them to let you back in.”

  Martin thought back to the three years of convincing the ton that he didn’t hear the whispers about his parents’ scandals, that the gossip meant nothing. Of schooling himself so that he never gave any reaction, because to give them a reaction was to feed the frenzy. He’d succeeded, through persistence and a title that wouldn’t let them shut the door in his face. He doubted she’d even heard a whisper of it, the gossip was so old these days.

  For a young woman with no title of her own and no parents to support her, it would have been a much more difficult challenge. Her aunt’s behavior made it virtually impossible. “They think their gossip and petty judgments matter.”

  “Exactly!” Her mouth set in a straight line. “Your worth as a person is irrelevant, just how you fit their expectations. It’s all about who made your clothes or whether so-and-so danced with you at the ball, not the difference you make in the lives of those around you. It’s shallow and self-centered, not that any of them consider anything beyond their own pleasures. Charlotte certainly didn’t, not that she was happy with any of them.”

  Her voice was intense and her eyes sparked with the passion of her convictions. He couldn’t disagree. “Most of them aren’t happy, ultimately.” He grimaced. “I think they’re bored, mostly, but spending time working would sully their hands and make them unfit company according to Society. So instead they try to fill their lives with idle pleasure, h
oping to amuse themselves.”

  “But you don’t do that.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “No.” He’d made that decision long ago, well before the management of the estate had become his responsibility. “I’m not afraid of work. But I’m considered an eccentric because of the amount of time I spend on my estate. The only reasons the ton still welcomes me are my title and the fact that none of my work crosses the line allowed for gentlemen, if barely. There’s no scent of the shop on me.”

  “I wouldn’t care if there were.” Teresa’s eyes flashed. “Society might judge based on such silly things, but my parents taught me to be more interested in character than class.”

  Martin raised an eyebrow at the vehemence in her tone. “I can see where you might have made some of the ton uncomfortable, if you expressed that sentiment during your first Season.”

  Teresa bit her lip and shook her head. “Charlotte spent most of my year in mourning trying to turn me into what she considered to be a ‘proper young lady.’ I don’t think she considered me a success, but I knew better than to say something like that, even without her lessons. I was naive when it came to love but I wasn’t stupid, no matter what my aunt thought.”

  No, stupid was not a word he would choose to describe her. Her observations about the nature of the ton had been spot on, at least in his experience. Given that… Yes, a change in tactics was in order. He pushed back from the table.

  “Since we’ve finished the meal here, would you be interested in joining me in the library? I’m no scholar, but you might be able to find something of interest in there.” She wouldn’t have seen the library during her tour of the house with Mrs. Watts, he knew, because he had been closeted inside with Allsworth, working through the piles of estate business. Given what she had said, he suspected she would appreciate it.

  Teresa’s eyes lit up and she rose gracefully to take his offered arm. “I’d like that very much. I would have peeked in earlier but Mrs. Watts said you didn’t like to be disturbed while working.”

  “She’s correct, but I have no intention of working now.” No, his mind was moving in a decidedly different direction, encouraged by the way her skirt offered glimpses of the figure beneath it. The library would be the perfect setting for what he had in mind.

  Chapter 19

  Although Teresa had suffered through any number of parties, musicales, and balls during her time in London, she had seen relatively few libraries. Her uncle’s anemic collection had been aimed more at show than actual use — a condition that matched several of the others she had slipped into for a quiet moment.

  Only one had reminded her of her father’s collection. It had been the ball hosted by the Marquess of Grantham during her first Season, when the whispers had gotten to be too much and she’d fled in search of a sanctuary. There, she’d been able to close her eyes and smell the leather bindings and old paper, pretending for just a moment that she was at home, listening to her mother sketching and her father writing as they discussed a passage for their book.

  Martin’s library put them all to shame.

  The ceiling rose two stories, disappearing into the shadows cast by the candlelight. Fires blazed in the two hearths, one at each end of the room, with chairs and a couch arranged in front of one and what was clearly Martin’s desk set near the other, facing out toward the windows. From her earlier explorations, Teresa knew that the windows here would face the formal gardens, but tonight the curtains were drawn against the view, a thick, heavy red velvet that would keep drafts to a minimum during the colder winters.

  Across from the windows, bookshelves lined the walls and flanked each fireplace. They too disappeared into the shadows rising toward the ceiling. There was a wooden ladder leaning against the shelves to the right of the door, to allow for retrieval of books from the higher shelves. None of the shelves she could see showed any sign of dust and there was a stack of books on his desk, clearly used for reference.

  Nothing about the room was for show. Of all the rooms she had explored today, this felt the most lived in, a realization that left her feeling unsettled. Every time she thought she was beginning to understand Martin, he showed her something else and she realized her previous picture was incomplete.

  Martin had slipped past her and was now busy pouring himself a glass of whiskey at the sideboard. At her glance, he raised his cup. “Can I offer you anything?”

  Teresa shook her head. The wine with dinner had gone to her head more than she wanted to admit. She walked over to the grouping of chairs and surveyed the options, deciding the couch looked the most comfortable. Settling into it, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, savoring the familiar scent of a cherished library.

  The couch creaked and shifted and she knew without looking that Martin had taken the seat next to her, his glass clinking onto the side table. This close, it was impossible to ignore the heat radiating from him.

  “My grandfather the Duke had strong opinions on the idiocy of those who refused to study the past and therefore repeated others’ mistakes. He considered a good library essential to the efficient care and maintenance of an estate.” A rustle of fabric on fabric, as if he were gesturing to something. “Much of this is a result of his influence, as my father sold off much of the library that had been here during his time as Earl.”

  “My father would have loved this.” Teresa opened her eyes to meet his gaze and found herself intrigued by the golden highlights the firelight had brought out in his eyes. “Both my parents spent time in the library together, rather than the parlor. They were constantly working on projects together. When I was old enough, they let me join them after supper, at least for an hour or so.”

  “Was your father a scholar?” His question was likely only polite interest, Teresa knew, but she still delighted in the opportunity to talk about her parents. It let her pretend, at least for a moment, that they weren’t as forgotten as Society pretended.

  “I think he wanted to be, but he was the only son and my grandfather wasn’t interested in letting him stay at university any longer than he needed to. That’s what my mother said, anyway. My father would always laugh when she told that story and say that it had all worked out for the best anyway.”

  There had always been laughter and smiles with her parents, a warmth that she hadn’t truly appreciated until it was gone. The cold relationship between her aunt and uncle had been a shock and she had thought that they were the unusual ones, not her parents. Not until Society had make it brutally clear.

  “Unusual in the ton, to spend so much time together.” Martin shifted beside her, apparently ill-at-ease with her description of a marriage filled with love. To be fair, he seemed uncomfortable with any suggestion that the world held space for that emotion, at least where it intersected with him, but she wasn’t going to hide what had shaped her childhood. And what’s shaped his, even if he doesn’t want to acknowledge it.

  Even with her knowledge of the ton, it was still hard for her to believe a mother would abandon her child or a father would never once acknowledge him. The callous disregard broke her heart for the small child he had been, even as she refused to accept his belief that love had no place in a marriage. She couldn’t. Their marriage might be loveless but that didn’t mean it had to be.

  “My parents were happiest together.” Teresa shrugged. “I know now how uncommon that is, but that was my world. Different than yours, I know.”

  He laughed dryly. “Given that I never saw my parents in the same room together, an accurate statement.”

  “We are not your parents,” she felt compelled to point out.

  “I know.” Heat flared in his eyes as they left her face to move down her body, caressing the curve of her breasts above the bodice of her gown. Despite her promise to herself that she wouldn’t react to him, Teresa could feel her heart begin to beat faster as her breath hitched.

  She licked her lips in an effort to combat a mouth suddenly gone dry. “What are you doing?”


  Martin’s smile was slow and sensual, igniting a warmth low in her belly. “Admiring my wife.”

  He lifted his hand from the back of the couch and ran one finger along the neckline of her gown, tracing the path it followed from her shoulder down towards her breasts. Neither of them had worn gloves down to dinner and she just now realized what that meant, as the silk of the gown did little to dull the heat of his skin as he moved closer and closer to the top of the bodice.

  Teresa felt herself tensing as his finger moved lower, torn between wanting to explore the new sensations he’d awoken and wanting him to stop, already feeling far too vulnerable to Martin and his ability to turn her bones into jelly with a look. All her intentions to remain distant were crumbling, subverted by the growing need within.

  The heat in her belly simmered low and slow, spreading outward until her limbs grew heavy. Her skin felt far too tight, every sensation amplified until she could feel the slight pressure of his finger on the neckline of her dress and the brush of her chemise rubbing against her nipples.

  Everything focused on those sensations. Her world had narrowed down to a fine point, until all she saw was his hand as it drew closer and closer to her breast. Her heart was pounding in her ears and it felt like she couldn’t get enough air. Just before his fingers reached the aching peak of her nipple, his hand lifted.

  Teresa bit back a moan, unsure whether it was disappointment or relief.

  “You would tempt a saint in this dress.” His voice sounded rougher than normal, a hint of a growl beneath the surface. “I forbid you to wear it in town.”

  Swamped in physical realm as she was, it took a minute for his words to register. A tingle ran down her spine as she realized that Martin was not as disinterested as she had thought — followed immediately by the realization that she had no idea how to deal with that. None of the gentlemen in town had ever looked at her with so much naked heat in their eyes.