The Earl Next Door: The Bachelor Lords of London

by Charis Michaels

  She began plotting her move to London that very night.

  And now, here he was. And, Piety had only her resolve for freedom to sustain her. She reminded herself to stand up straight, to raise her chin. She forced a smile. “Hello, Mother,” she said, bowing slightly.

  “Daughter,” said Idelle coolly.

  Eli bowed, too. “We should like,” he paused for effect, “to begin again.”

  He smiled at everyone: the marchioness, Jocelyn, even Tiny. He stopped short of smiling at Piety, likely because she recoiled visibly when he did.

  “We failed miserably with introductions before,” he went on. “An unconscionable breech. And we are hoping, Piety”—he shot her a look—“that you would do the honors?”

  No, thought Piety, even as she nodded to the floor. What choice did she have?

  “Your ladyship,” she said wearily, “may I present my mother, Mrs. Idelle Grey-Limpett of New York City.” Idelle dipped into a slow and deep bow. “And you’ll remember meeting her stepson, Mr. Edward Limpett.”

  Edward stepped forward and bowed.

  “And Mr. Ennis Limpett, another stepson.” He spits when he talks.

  Fat Ennis marched forward with his new cane and affected a deep bow.

  “And still another brother, Mr. Everett Limpett.” Whose hands are always sweaty and whose hair is speckled with tiny white flecks.

  Reed-thin and perennially stooped, Everett spidered forth.

  “Also, Mr. Emmett Limpett.” Who smells funny and will assault one of the maids before we eat.

  Shiny headed, with pants nearly to his armpits, Emmett stepped forward and bowed.

  “And finally, Mr. Eli Limpett.” Who scares me to death.

  The memory of their last encounter came flashing back—hands and mouth and sour breath. She shivered but did not allow herself to step back.

  The marchioness watched the procession with detached interest, nodding slightly.

  “How do you do, my lady?” They all mumbled pleasantries compliantly, shuffling to various areas of the small space.

  “Your home is lovely, marchioness,” said Ennis, gesturing broadly at the walls of what was easily the smallest and least-grand room of the estate.

  “Thank you, Mr. Limpett. I trust you found your rooms adequate?”

  There was a resounding affirmative response, and Eli added, “It is obvious why my fiancée enjoys your hospitality.”

  “I have asked you not to imply that we are betrothed, Eli,” said Piety.

  “Miss Grey wishes to be properly wooed,” interjected Emmett, chuckling. “Women do have their ways.”

  “I do not wish to be wooed. I wish to be left alone.”

  “But, sweetling, it is you who has insisted that we stay.” Eli’s words oozed with forced charm.

  “You may stay if it pleases you, but do so knowing that your presence here has no bearing on me.”

  “No bearing?” said Idelle. “We’ve just chased you halfway across the globe. We are here because of you, darling. To see you. We miss you, dearest.”

  Piety nodded. “I am well aware of what you miss.”

  “Ah, but here is Godfrey.” The marchioness eased from her stool. “I hope our American guests convene with an appetite. Garnettgate boasts a talented and generous cook, and English cuisine is not for those with paltry constitutions.” She glanced at Piety’s wispy mother.

  They entered the dining room on a chorus of professed starvation, followed by exaggerated praise about the appointments of the dining room: the china, the chandelier, the linens, the soup already in bowls at everyone’s seat. Only the place cards distracted them. Seating had been prearranged by Piety and the marchioness, but the Limpetts embarked on a nearly instantaneous petition to rearrange them. Lady Frinfrock ignored them.

  Piety was seated to the right of the marchioness, with Jocelyn beside her. Tiny sat on the other side of the marchioness. Tiny was seated next to Edward, who was obviously affronted by the arrangement, but he was powerless to do anything about it. Idelle sat beside Jocelyn. The other brothers fell into line down the table, with Eli, thankfully, the farthest away.

  When the marchioness picked up her spoon to test the soup, everyone gingerly followed, murmuring their delight at the taste, texture, color; someone even praised the temperature of the dish. Piety rolled her eyes. It was if they hadn’t been fed in weeks.

  After two bites, Idelle, cleared her throat and said pleasantly, “I hope you’ll allow me to continue to explain our rudeness—mine especially, your ladyship—when we arrived.”

  “No explanation is necessary, Mrs. Limpett,” said the marchioness. “Please enjoy the soup.”

  “Oh, but I insist,” Idelle said.

  Piety jabbed at a fleck of thyme floating in her bowl. She had seen her mother embody artifice in so many forms; she assumed that no new subterfuge could surprise her. But sweet, imploring amends? This was as unexpected as it was suspect.

  Adding a note of pout to her voice, Idelle continued, “I think I speak for all of us when I say we arrived here under the assumption that Piety would be cross with us.”

  “Cross?” Piety asked.

  “But of course, dear,” continued Idelle, bereaved. “What else were we to think? You left New York with no warning. Under the cover of darkness. Without as much as a good-bye. When we finally, thankfully discovered that you had sailed abroad, what else were we to assume? We asked ourselves again and again: What on earth could drive you to behave so irresponsibly?” She patted her neck and chest, reaching for composure. “The most obvious conclusion was that you left in an angry rage. Too furious with us to even say good-bye.”

  Idelle turned to the marchioness. “Do you have a daughter, Lady Frinfrock?”

  Piety shut her eyes. So it begins.

  “My husband and I were not blessed with children,” said Lady Frinfrock, enjoying a hank of bread.

  “Oh, my lady!” Idelle attempted to sound sympathetic. “What a cruel trick of nature. How sorry I am.”

  “Your sorrow is misplaced, Mrs. Limpett. It did not trouble us. Our lives were very full with our own happy companionship and other interests. I am an avid naturalist, as you’ll see if you have the opportunity to tour my gardens, and the late marquis was a noted historian of some merit.”

  “Yes, but now he is gone. And you are here alone, with no devoted children to look after you. As you advance in years, my lady, who will see to your health and care?”

  “If you must know, Mrs. Limpett,” the marchioness said, resting her spoon and motioning a footman to remove her bowl. “I am entirely self-sufficient and in near perfect health. And, should I need anything, Miss Breedlowe here has also served as my paid companion.”

  Oh, no, thought Piety, pushing her uneaten soup away. No, no, no.

  “Miss Breedlowe?” Eli repeated the name, confusion in his voice. “Forgive me, marchioness, but I was under the impression that Miss Breedlowe served as Piety’s chaperone.”

  “She does,” the marchioness said simply.

  The footmen descended on everyone’s soup, replacing it with quail and vegetables. Eli sneered at the imposition of the servant in his way. “So which is she? Her ladyship’s companion or Piety’s chaperone? Surely she cannot do both. Not with any real effectiveness.”

  The marchioness eyed him shrewdly but said nothing. Piety looked at the fowl on her plate and felt ill.

  Beside her, Jocelyn cleared her throat slightly and said, “I was hired—originally—to serve the marchioness. But when it quickly became obvious that her ladyship is wholly independent and requires no outside care—”

  “I beg your pardon,” Eli cut in. “Who was it that ‘originally hired’ you, Miss Breedlowe?”

  Piety tossed her napkin over her plate. “What difference does it make, Eli? Do you require the services of a paid companion?”

  “Don’t be absurd.” He smiled. “Her ladyship mentioned that she has no children to look after her, so it begs the question, who hired M
iss Breedlowe to serve as her ladyship’s companion?”

  “My solicitors,” said the marchioness, taking up her knife. “Miss Breedlowe was hired by my solicitors. But it quickly became obvious that we were a poor fit. Primarily due to lack of need.”

  “And so you exchanged her for Tiny.” This deduction from fat Ennis, his mouth full.

  “Now there’s a worthy question,” Idelle said. “I am beside myself with curiosity with regard to our Tiny Baker.” She ticked a finger back and forth between Tiny and Lady Frinfrock. “How did Piety’s lifelong maid wind up in the service of an English aristocrat? This surprises me, Tiny.” Idelle inclined her head. “I thought your devotion to Piety was absolute.”

  The marchioness frowned. “I will not discuss Miss Baker’s relationship to me, except to say that she is a guest in this house and at this table and is, in no way, in service. I also will not discuss my solicitors, my health, or my decision to forego the companionship of Miss Breedlowe. Miss Breedlowe transferred her employ to Miss Grey’s household. Really, there’s nothing more to be said on the topic.”

  Idelle scoffed. “Household? What household?” The new tone—her real tone—triggered a fresh knot of dread in Piety’s throat, and she stared at her mother. It was early in the proceedings for her to lose her composure, but Piety knew that tone.

  Idelle voraciously attacked the fowl on her plate with fork and knife. Never had she seen her mother eat more than three bites at any given meal, yet now she verily sawed her quail in two.

  “You cannot mean that house?” Idelle continued, feigning surprise. “In London? Please, your ladyship. I would expect a woman of your wisdom and experience to embody a right-minded influence on my misguided daughter.” She stabbed a piece of fowl and studied it. “Let us not encourage her to keep up the charade of playing house in that rattletrap calamity, which awaits only a strong gust of wind to topple into the street. I cannot hear it referred to as a household again, truly, I cannot.” She gobbled the quail with a strangled expression.

  Idelle swallowed and continued the rant. “Really, it’s one thing for you to cause such trouble, but to involve an innocent old woman? Whose lawyers are obviously already concerned about the soundness of her faculties?”

  Piety stared at her plate, fighting the irrational urge to crawl beneath the table. She forced herself to speak up. “Your assumptions are not only rude, they are incorrect.”

  “Oh, was that rude? Forgive me.” She laughed gamely. “I wish to abide by the rules!”

  Down the table, Eli cleared his throat. Idelle waved him off. “I am merely saying that Piety suffers from poor judgment and willful disobedience. It is restraint she should seek from her elders, not encouragement!”

  “I do not suffer, Mother,” said Piety. “In no way, do I suffer.”

  “Do not suffer? My girl! You’ve spent God knows how much money on a house that isn’t fit to stable cattle. Not only did you buy it, but you moved yourself and a fortune in dresses and jewelry inside. Alone! Without so much as a mature advisor to look after you. I pray you: Do I sound like the maddened woman here?” Idelle looked frantically right and left.

  Up and down the table, the Limpett brothers stabbed hunks of quail with their forks and shook their heads.

  The marchioness finished eating and signaled for her place to be cleared.

  Jocelyn stared into her lap.

  Piety felt the color drain from her face, and she squeezed her hands together to contain the tremble. This had been a mistake. Her mother’s insults typically ranged from unpleasant to disconcerting—but to endure this in the presence of her friends? To have her friends be insulted as well? The result was excruciating.

  Idelle’s voice rose. “Surely I am not the only one who thinks Piety’s behavior is entirely unacceptable, bordering on scandalous? Surely I am not the only one who finds her entirely out of hand? Who feels she’s put herself and her reputation at risk?”

  Piety dropped both hands on the table with a thump. “My house is not that bad.”

  “ ’Tis that bad, and worse. If one brick were knocked loose, the entire structure would crumble. And it’s crawling with workmen!”

  “The men are there to make repairs. And I am not alone with them. I am appropriately chaperoned all of the time.”

  “By the nursemaid of your elderly neighbor? I hope you won’t take this as an insult Miss . . . ?” Idelle cocked her head toward Jocelyn beside her. “Forgive me, remind me of your name?”

  “Jocelyn Breedlowe.”

  “Right, Miss Breedlowe. Can we presume, considering your dual professions of caregiver and chaperone, that you have no husband or children? That you, too, are an unmarried woman? If so, you hardly qualify as a suitable chaperone.”

  “Must you offend everyone at the table, Mother?”

  “What offense? I am telling her that she is still free to marry. It is a good thing.”

  “Is Miss Breedlowe not married?” This from Emmett, ever in search of his next conquest.

  “Well,” said Idelle, pushing away her plate of triple-cut food. “All I can say is that Eli has been mortified at the indecency of it.”

  “I do not care what Eli thinks,” said Piety.

  Idelle gasped. “What’s this? What way is this to regard the fair opinion of your, if I do say so myself, indulgent fiancé?”

  “He is not my fiancé,” Piety said.

  “Well, he will be in short order!” said Idelle. “After this stunt, I hope you realize that you’ll no longer be allowed the freedom of unattached idleness. I won’t stand for you putting off this wedding for one season longer! You must be made to listen to reason. If not by me, then by a husband with your best interest at heart!

  “Your ladyship, please.” Idelle appealed to the marchioness. “Clearly my daughter respects you. You must help her to see that a twenty-five-year-old young lady cannot flee her home and country and carry on abroad without some consequence. A safe, respectable marriage is the natural course for an unattached girl of her age and means, especially one so given to the scandalous combination of peculiarity and strong will.”

  “Mining my experience and wisdom, are you?” said the marchioness. “I’d say Miss Grey is of an appropriate age to marry. But whether she is forced to marry her own stepbrother seems a separate issue from whether she should marry at all.”

  “But he is the only one to have her!” Idelle laughed bitterly. “Do you think respectable men from decent families would even consider her after she’s fled our shores without a backward glance and purchased ill-advised property in another country? Entirely on her own? Decent men find her alarming! And difficult. They always have. But now? After this? There isn’t a man in New York who would consider her troth. Yet Eli . . . ” She paused to point down the table.

  Unable to resist, Piety stole a look at him. He sat back in his chair, humbly blotting his mouth with his napkin.

  “Eli shall!” Idelle practically sang the words, as if his mere willingness were a precious gift. “So besotted is he, that he is willing to overlook her recklessness, her impetuousness, her departure from decency. And yet, she has the cheek to sit here and insult him? Forgive me this outburst, my lady, but it’s unconscionable. Simply unconscionable!”

  “As I explained to you before I left New York, Mother, Eli and I do not suit,” Piety said so quietly that she was barely heard over her mother’s muffled sniffing.

  “Piety,” Eli said, “do not say that.”

  “I will say it,” she replied, her voice loud for the first time. “I do not like you, Eli. Furthermore, you do not like me! Is it not reckless for two people who do not enjoy each other’s company—and that is putting it very mildly—to marry each other?”

  “Your affection will grow, darling,” said Idelle, nearly instantly recovered. “Marriage is not all roses and butterflies. A good match has so very little to do with romantic love, whatever that may be. Even you know this. The real happy ending is security.”

  “I h
ave my own security.”

  “Oh, you mean the money? Good God, Piety, do not be crass. How dare you speak of such things at the table and in the presence of strangers.”

  The marchioness laughed—a loud cackling that drew everyone’s attention. “Forgive me. I have heard that irony is lost on Americans, but we English do enjoy it so.”

  “I will raise it,” said Piety, her voice growing louder still. Every head swiveled back to Piety. “You have stopped at no embarrassment in your discussion of me. Why should I not simply voice the real reason that you’ve come?”

  “Fine,” Idelle said, folding her napkin and tossing it over her plate. “You wish to discuss this? Here and now? Fine. You believe, simply because you are in possession of this fortune, that it alone will keep you safe from gossip? From slander? From exile? You think your nursemaid-chaperone will keep you respectable, even though you live alone in a giant, unfit house, with no man to look after you?

  “A whore!” she said, the real venom of her voice filling the room. “That’s what you’ll be. Received nowhere. Tradesmen, shopkeepers, dressmakers—they will only do business with you for so long, considering the reputation you’ll earn. You may have allies now, an old woman who befriends Negro maids and her former nurse, but it won’t be long until the stigma of your impropriety will taint their reputation as well. Is that what you want?”

  “I don’t believe you,” said Piety. This wasn’t entirely true; she did worry about her reputation, her ability to survive as an unattached young woman, but she was determined to call her mother’s bluff.

  “Piety,” Eli said, as if speaking to a child.

  “Well I don’t!” It was a lie. “My experience in England has been nothing like you describe. I am received everywhere. People are lovely! The house needs a few repairs, but by no means is it unlivable. On the contrary, it will be a very fine house. Very fine, indeed!” She scooted back in her chair, and a footman leaped forward to remove it. She stood.

  “Look,” said Eli, “if it’s so important to you, then you and I shall live here for a time. In London. In this house of yours.”