The Earl Next Door: The Bachelor Lords of London

by Charis Michaels

  She resisted a moment more, but then he felt her release. She nodded against his shoulder. “Only for a moment,” she said.

  “Of course.” He stood and stepped back. Piety, God love her, raised her chin and stared at her mother through her swollen eye.

  Her friends tsked and cried out when they saw her face again; even her mother could not suppress her shock.

  “Look, madam,” Trevor said, “at the damage wrought by your stepson. The man you would have your daughter marry. Eli Limpett has done this.”

  “But that is impossible. You lie, sir. Eli prizes Piety above all! He loves her.”

  “It’s no lie,” Trevor said simply. “Either the liar is you, or you have been shamefully deceived. I came upon Miss Grey and Limpett in the Garnettgate chapel. I heard a commotion and ran inside. Limpett had her pinned against the side of the church with brute force. He struck her three times before I could reach them. The violence says nothing of the railing, the profanity, and the ungodly names he called her, issuing every manner of insult, not to mention what damage he may have done before I was within earshot.”

  Piety had ducked her head and turned away, and Trevor stepped forward and kneeled beside her chair once more, taking up her hands. Her mother had seen enough.

  “What say you now, Mrs. Limpett?” he asked. “Do you see theatrics in this? Entertainment?”

  “I say, fairness dictates that we hear Eli’s side of the tale.”

  Trevor shook his head. “He may spout defenses until the Christ returns, but he may never approach Miss Grey again.” The words were out before he fully considered them.

  “The devil you say!” Mrs. Limpett shouted. “You have no authority to rule over my daughter’s encounters!”

  No, he thought, but I will. And in that moment, he made up his mind. There was no other way.

  He jerked his head at Tiny, who, along with Miss Breedlowe, rushed to Piety’s side.

  “Perhaps not,” he said, rising to advance on her mother, “but you might as well know, everyone might as well know. Beginning this moment, it is with absolute authority that I rule over Miss Grey and everything to do with her.”

  Idelle laughed. “You may carry her—bloody and doe-eyed—around the castle grounds, sir, putting on quite a show, but you are by no means her keeper.”

  He glanced at Piety. She had pushed her friends aside. Her face was filled with questions.

  “No, madam,” he said, taking a step backward, “not her keeper. But as soon as I can get a license, I will be her husband.”

  It was, quite possibly, the most inarticulate proposal ever uttered, and it was met by stunned silence.

  He risked a glance at Piety. She’d sat up in the chair, her bloodied mouth open, one of her hands frozen, halfway to her face. He was just about to order Miss Breedlowe to settle her, when her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fainted.

  “I refuse to speak of her future until she comes to,” Trevor told Idelle Limpett fifteen minutes later in the marchioness’s salon. “Do not ask again.”

  The woman gasped, but he ignored her, standing over Piety, watching her breathe in and out, telling himself again that marrying her was the only conceivable course of action. Telling himself that, if handled correctly, marrying her would mean the least amount of bother for both of them and the most effective means of getting rid of the Limpetts forever.

  Obviously, the idea had come as quite a shock to Piety. But when she came to, she would see the practicality of it. She had to see. The alternative was no longer an option.

  “Forgive me, my lady,” Idelle Limpett asked the marchioness, “would you be so kind as to educate my colonial ignorance? Can marriage to the earl make my daughter a . . . a countess?”

  Insatiable pit of nerve, he thought, glancing over his shoulder. “Do not begin polishing your coronet yet, madam, I am an earl, but my wealth is negligible. The previous earl drove the estate into debt, and I am only now digging it out. You may view me as a gentleman scholar and nothing more. Your daughter brings far more wealth to the union than me.”

  Mrs. Limpett gasped, her eyes grew large, and she clutched the arm of a chair. “So you admit it. You pursue my daughter merely to gain her fortune?”

  “I admit to pursuing your daughter to protect her from you,” he countered. “And because I enjoy her company. Other than that, I’ve said I do not wish to discuss it.”

  “You’ll forgive me for pointing out that I find your entire, impromptu courtship to be wholly suspect. And now to hear about your financial situation?” She looked around, concerned. “I cannot believe no one has yet mentioned this.”

  “How ironic,” he said. “Piety speaks of your financial circumstance all the time.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Bear in mind, my lord, that you claimed to hardly know her in London, while now you are her devoted suitor. Now you carry her around, bloody and battered. You suffer some altercation with my stepson, who is your chief competitor for her interests.”

  “Speculate all you like,” Trevor said, “but know this: the man hit your daughter in the face—repeatedly—and then nearly disgraced her against the wall of a church. He received exactly what he deserved. I don’t care what you believe about my regard for Piety or our courtship, but please understand that I am deadly serious about what I saw and the action I chose to take—and will take again—if ever I detect the slightest provocation.”

  “My concern at the moment is for your seriousness to this engagement, my lord,” Mrs. Limpett said. “Rage and bluster all you must about your own heroics, but I hope you understand that the announcement of an engagement will do very little, indeed, to put my mind at ease about Piety’s future. Whatever you two have cooked up, a lot of ghoulish theatrics if you ask me—”

  “You, madam, are heartless,” Trevor said.

  “Call me names if you wish,” she continued, “but keep in mind that we will be disinclined to leave Piety unattended until we see a wedding in deed. Not the promise of a wedding.”

  “Why, pray, is it so hard to believe I would want your daughter?”

  “Falcondale, please.” The marchioness gestured toward Piety.

  There was a rustling from the chaise lounge, and Trevor heard a weak voice ask, “Oh, God, please tell me I didn’t swoon.”

  All heads turned to Piety. She tried to sit up, but Miss Breedlowe and her maid rushed to urge her back. Trevor held himself in check but only barely.

  Seeing her, hearing her, hurting on behalf of the damage to her beautiful face, made his promise of marriage easier to accept. There was no other way. A wedding was imminent—but heartbreak need not be. Not if he stopped allowing himself to indulge in her affection. Not if he stopped pretending to pretend to be her lover. Now they could not be lovers at all.

  He could not touch her. Ever again. Not in affection. Not to care for her wounds. Not to give or, God forbid, receive any sort of comfort. And certainly not in desire. It was the only way to navigate a marriage that they later planned to dissolve.

  And they absolutely must dissolve the marriage in the near future. His regard for her compelled him to marry her now but only for a time.

  “I’d require ten minutes of privacy to speak to Piety alone,” he said to the women gathered around the chaise.

  “Without a chaperone?” Mrs. Limpett asked incredulously, from her place beside the window.

  “Leave us.” Trevor jerked his head toward the door. “I’ve offered for her, and we will be married immediately. She’s bleeding, for God’s sake. What inappropriateness could I possibly conduct?”

  The marchioness led the way. “So be it, Falcondale, but the doctor will be here within the hour.” She shuffled to the door. “Do not dally. He cannot loiter here the entire afternoon. He’ll get an eyeful simply waiting in the hall.”

  Stillness and quiet settled in their wake, and the hollow space made him nervous. Trevor hadn’t realized how distracting the room had been until it was empty. He walked to the window, feel
ing suddenly choked. After a long moment, he ventured a look at Piety.

  “I should have bade them bring tea,” he said.

  She endeavored to sit up, and it caused her to wince. “Stop,” she said weakly.

  “What?”

  “The last thing that the two of us need is tea.” She ceased struggling and looked at him. “What are you doing, Trevor?”

  “What do you mean, what am I doing? I am thinking of your comfort. You should take something. Eat something.”

  “Not about the tea. What is this business of a proposal? What are you doing?”

  He nodded and turned back to the window. “Do not vex yourself,” he said to the pane.

  “I’m already vexed, Trevor. Can you not see how vexed I am? This proposal—a marriage—is exactly what you said you did not want,” she said. “Many times, I was told that you did not want this. And that doesn’t even begin to address what I’ve said I wanted. We cannot get married, Trevor. Why would you say such a thing?”

  “To begin, I had no choice,” he said. “Even a self-involved blighter like myself would not leave you to be harassed by this pack of mongrels. It’s one thing to hound you for money, Piety, quite another for one of them to assault your person.”

  “Yes, but now that he’s done it, perhaps I can go to the authorities.”

  “What? And drag this out for weeks? I don’t wish to expend another hour on the lot of them. My wish is for it to end—for your sake, as much as mine. If we rely on the constable or the magistrate to sort it out, God only knows how long it would take. And who would protect you in the interim? Not to mention that I’ve beaten the man nearly to death. Hopefully, justice would be served, but the only eye witnesses were the three of us. Let us not involve the law, Piety. Let us end this.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I see. Your idea is to say that we’re getting married. To pretend to be engaged.” Idly, she fingered her blood-matted hair.

  “Well, yes, in the beginning, that was my idea. However, your mother informed me in no uncertain terms that she would not leave until we are properly wed.”

  “She called our bluff.”

  “That is putting it very charitably.”

  “Well, you cannot mean for us to actually wed.”

  “Yes. I can,” he said. “And I do. We shall wed, but we’ll do it in name only.”

  “Oh, God.” Piety moaned.

  “Please,” he said, pacing in front of her, “allow me to finish. It truly is the most practical and least complicated solution.” He paused to glance at her. She stared back at him as if he were mad. He resumed pacing. “Consider it: We get shackled, and rapidly so. I’ll get a special license. We allow your family to witness the whole thing: ceremony, wedding breakfast, all of it. I theorize that, without the further promise of money, they will depart almost immediately after the nuptials. And after they go, I will, too. Just as I always planned. First, to London to provision and pack. Then I’ll sail for Syria. For all practical purposes, I will be deserting you, my countess.”

  She looked miserable, but he could not dwell on her misery or even his own. Of course it would be difficult when he went, but at least she would be safe from her family, and he would be free.

  He carried on. “After a time, depending on how long it takes you to invest your money or your family to lose interest, we will then have the marriage annulled.”

  “Annulled?” she repeated, dazed.

  “Right. I will have deserted you, and we will have lived apart for the entire marriage. To be honest, we can even tell the courts the truth: that I married you in order to scare off your lunatic family. I don’t care. We will not have consummated the union or ever lived as husband and wife, so it really should not be a problem.”

  “This is the least complicated course of action? This?”

  “I caution you from thinking about it in specific terms, Piety. It is a broad solution. Broadly, it will work.”

  “Fine. Broadly speaking, what if it is more difficult to receive an annulment than you think?”

  “The alternative is that we remain married, but live apart.” He gave her a pointed look. “That’s right,” he continued, “I live alone, in Syria. Egypt. Wherever. I have every intention of being a resident of the world. And you live however you like—in London or beyond. You have the protection of my name, but neither of us have the burden of a real union.”

  “Burden?” she asked in misery.

  He refused to hear her distress. “The problem with this, of course, is that you may never marry someone else if you are married to me. I assume you will take lovers,” he went on, looking away, “but you will have no children. Well, no legitimate children.” He ventured a glance at her face. “It is a path that I expect that you would not want.”

  “Well, you expect correctly.” She sat up. “I can think of few things worse than becoming the forgotten countess of a world wanderer. Entertaining lovers, and with no children of my own? I’d rather take my chances fending off Eli!”

  “That is out of the question,” he said, frustrated, running a hand through his hair. “We will marry. We will live apart. We will pursue an annulment and go our separate ways.”

  “We will,” she added, “become embroiled in an elaborate lie and subsequent court proceedings, all because I have been cursed with impossible relatives and you had the misfortune of living next door.”

  This was true, of course. Piety had posed one challenge after the other since the moment she arrived. Funny how, looking back, he no longer regarded these challenges as unpleasant. They did not so much subvert his life as they felt like life itself. But that was Piety, wasn’t it? She brought life to every situation—even construction. Even chess. It was the reason he’d proposed. He could not bear the thought of anyone or anything getting in the way of her sheer abundance of spirit. To protect her now did not waylay him, he thought, it only gave him purpose until he left. He dare not ruminate on this purpose, just like he dare not predict the pain of his ultimate departure. He bolstered himself only with the guarantee that he could, in fact, depart. When the time came. When he cared to. He would be free to go.

  After a time, she said, “If we do this, I insist upon paying you. For your trouble. God knows it’s a far better use of money than giving it to my mother or the Limpetts.”

  “You will not pay me,” he said and moved to sit beside her. “If I could handle the responsibility of a wife or family, Piety, you would be exactly what I would want. When I am an old man, sick and dying, the memories of this time will sustain me. That is its own reward.”

  “Oh, Falcondale, only a fool would aspire to die alone, clinging to memories of, well, of anything to do with me or my convoluted situation. But who am I to argue? The way you explain it, and assuming you are really willing to do it, I think it might actually work.”

  The last word came out like a squeak, and she looked up at him and chuckled. He harrumphed. She started laughing. He laughed, too, using the force of his laughter to push his unidentified feelings, his questions about annulment, and his worry about lying at the altar from his head; instead he filled his thoughts with the sound of her mirth.

  “So, Piety Grey,” he said, endeavoring to sound businesslike. “Will you marry me? For a time?”

  With a hand that should not have shaken and fingers that should not have fumbled, he pulled a velvet ring box from his coat and plopped it on the chaise beside her.

  She gasped, scooping up the box. “How have you produced jewelry?”

  “If I knew nothing else about this subterfuge, it was that no engagement would pass muster without proper gemstones. Your mother would otherwise never believe.” Unable to bear his own eagerness, he shoved from the seat and returned to the window. He stuffed his hands into his pockets.

  “But wherever did you get it?”

  “Even before the altercation with Eli, I suspected this moment might come. So I wrote Joseph and bade him to locate my mother’s ring. Just this morning, I met him to collect
it. This is why I was away when you . . . when Limpett . . . ” He trailed off, unable to relive Limpett’s attack on Piety. What if he had not arrived when he did?

  “You have saved me so many times over.” She sighed. “Today with Eli. All week against my mother. Helping me with the house. And now this.”

  He turned around then. He could not resist the sight of her with the ring.

  “It’s a beautiful stone,” she was saying to her hand. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

  He nodded. “One of my few luxury possessions. The center stone is known as a yellow sapphire. My mother always complained that the amber color made her appear more sallow, as if that was possible. And she claimed it irritated the skin on her hand. But it looks glorious on you. As I knew it would. It’s yours forever, now. I won’t need it, certainly, after the annulment.”

  “Oh, let us not speak of the annulment, not yet,” she said. “Let us enjoy this moment.”

  “Piety.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said lightly. “Do not ruin my counterfeit joy by lecturing me on the falseness of it all. I understand that it is only a means to an end. I will not trap you with sentimental, guilty lovesickness.” She held her hand in the air and stared at the ring. “Simply, let me enjoy the twinkle.”

  Trevor allowed himself to enjoy her delight for only a moment, but then he returned to her. “Ah, Piety?”

  She looked up from the ring.

  “You know that if this engagement was not a charade—if we tried to be married in earnest—I would make your existence a living hell with my detachment and ultimately, my absence. You comprehend that, right?”

  “Yes, Falcondale,” she said dutifully, removing the ring and trying it on other fingers. “How awful you are, vanquishing evil stepbrothers, giving me jewelry, and kissing me senseless. I can barely stand to look at you.”

  “We cannot make this a joke.” He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “And the kissing must stop. We may be affectionate only enough to convince everyone that the engagement and wedding are real. But your closeness, to put it very mildly, tests the outer limits of my self-control, and we’re not merely talking about a week in the country now, are we? Married couples do not employ vigilant chaperones to keep them out of trouble. The annulment hinges on the ‘in-name-only’ nature of our marriage. Let us be practical about it.” He sat at the end of the chaise.