The Last Earl Standing

by Blackwood, Gemma

  Lord Shrewsbury was pressing his ample bulk against a serving girl in the doorway of the servant’s entrance. The grunting was a side effect of the sloppy kisses Shrewsbury was depositing all over the poor girl’s neck. George could not imagine that she was enjoying the experience, but she was by no means objecting.

  Truly, a mythical fortune was a powerful aphrodisiac.

  “May I offer you a lift anywhere, Shrewsbury?” George asked sharply. The man left off his grunting and slobbering and looked about in consternation to discover the source of the voice. The girl, quicker on the uptake, flung her hands over her face and scuttled off into the house.

  “I say, Streatham!” Shrewsbury complained, wiping spittle from his chin and stuffing something hastily into his pocket. “Bad form to spoil a man’s fun!”

  “I do apologise.” George turned smartly on his heel. “Give my regards to your mother. I look forward to seeing her on Wednesday night.”

  “Streatham! Streatham, what about that lift?”

  George swung himself up into his carriage, pretending not to hear. “Sir Julian Stuart’s house, if you please,” he instructed the driver.

  The driver glanced at the babbling Shrewsbury, who was still stuffing his shirt back into his trousers, and cracked his whip at the horses. “Hiyah!”

  George waved merrily to Shrewsbury as his carriage pulled away.

  7

  Anthea had very little experience of driving out in high-topped phaetons with charming earls. She might even go so far as to say that she was a complete novice.

  She had even less experience of being courted by a gentleman in whom she was actually interested. And George, though he had as many faults as every other gentleman who had thrown his hat into the ring, was, despite everything… interesting.

  It was this dire and unprecedented set of circumstances that had driven her to squash her misgivings and actually seek advice from her oldest sister.

  Selina circled her with a disconcertingly appraising gaze. Anthea felt the same way all their best glassware must have felt in the shop when Selina made her selections for their dining room.

  “Will I do?” she asked, hardly daring to breathe.

  Selina shook her head once, sharply, and turned to the maid. “Fetch my white straw bonnet. The one with the blue ribbon. Go to Isobel’s room and borrow the velvet spencer she likes to wear visiting.” She took up the silver-backed hairbrush from her dressing table. “I will get started on that hair.”

  Anthea smiled wryly. “I thought I hadn’t done too badly.”

  “You hadn’t.” Selina gestured for her to sit in the chair in front of the mirror. “But it seems to me that the way to catch an earl is to look like a countess, don’t you think?”

  The way Selina pulled the brush across Anthea’s scalp was wonderfully soothing. The flurry of nerves in her belly calmed a little. “You used to do this when we were children.”

  Selina held a hairpin in her mouth as she began expertly plaiting three thick golden strands together. “I practised on my dolls before you were born. I still remember how delighted I was to have a little sister at last.” She twisted the plait up into a complicated knot, smiling to herself. “And then I was lucky enough to have three!”

  “Were Mama and Papa disappointed that they didn’t have more sons?” Anthea’s memories of her parents were too dim to catch hold of properly. Of her father, there was only the sensation of strong arms and a gruff beard. Her mother had been gentle singing and lilac perfume.

  “Of course not. They were too pleased to have five healthy children to worry about what they didn’t have.”

  Anthea wondered, not for the first time, whether Selina did not regret what she was missing out on. Her oldest sister was the most natural mother Anthea could imagine, and yet she had never shown any interest in becoming anyone’s wife and starting a family of her own.

  Anthea had suspected for some time that there was some hidden reason beneath Selina’s rejection of her suitors over the years. She could only hope that it was not a sense of duty to the younger Balfour siblings. It would be terrible to think that Selina had given up on happiness for her sisters’ sake.

  Perhaps, if Anthea made a good match, Selina might see at last that she was free to forge a life for herself.

  But even that thought was not enough to make Anthea ready to accept just anyone. She was still of Aunt Ursula’s opinion: the man to match me has not yet been made.

  It remained to be seen whether the Earl of Streatham was worthy of revising that opinion.

  “Now you are ready,” said Selina with satisfaction, once Anthea’s hair had been pinned, her spencer changed for Isobel’s lovely blue one, Selina’s bonnet fastened on her head, and – at the last minute – her half boots swapped for a pair of satin slippers. “Just remember not to remove your gloves for any reason. I know your fingers are stained with ink. They always are.”

  “If George does not like women with inky fingers, he is not for me,” Anthea pointed out. Selina smiled wryly.

  “You are quite right, at that.” She glanced out of the window. “And there he is now – right on time. That is pleasing. Off you go! I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time.”

  Anthea resisted the urge to peep out of the window to see what sort of carriage George was driving. She went down the stairs two at a time, ignoring Selina’s cries to be careful.

  Edith popped her head out of the drawing room door at the last possible moment.

  “Are you going to kiss him?” she asked, clasping her hands to her chest. Anthea, to her dismay, blushed a rosy red.

  “Really, Edith! The thought hadn’t crossed my mind.”

  Edith put a hand to her forehead and pretended to swoon. “Oh, Lord Streatham! Pray, keep your lips from mine! What do I care for handsome gentlemen? Don’t you know I have books to read?”

  Anthea resisted the urge to tear off her gloves and fling them at Edith’s head. She slammed the door behind her and went to George’s carriage with her head full of thoughts of unsisterly murder.

  Not to mention the idea of a kiss.

  She was so distracted that she did not at first notice that George was not his usual cheerful self. Nor did she notice the newspaper lying on the seat beside him until she had almost sat upon it.

  “That is for you,” said George, as she picked up the paper in confusion.

  “For me?”

  He stared straight ahead at the horses. His lips were curled into a sour smile. “There is something inside that I think you will appreciate. Page two.”

  Anthea saw, with some trepidation, that it was a copy of that morning’s London Chronicle. She opened it to the second page and immediately understood George’s mood.

  “Those printers work quickly,” she murmured, scanning her eyes over the Lady X column she had written only the day before.

  “What was that?”

  “Well, Mrs Anderson’s ball was only two days ago. And here is an article about it already.”

  “That is nothing,” said George, urging the horses on a little too quickly. “You would be amazed at the amount of rubbish these gossipmongers can churn out in a short space of time.”

  Anthea let the paper fall onto her knees. “Gossipmongers?”

  “What else would you call them? Blabbering scribblers! Peddlers of –”

  “Of good sense, in my opinion,” she said frostily. George looked at her in amazement.

  “You have not even read it.”

  “I have indeed. I am a very fast reader.” She snapped the newspaper closed. “I do not see anything in there that you have any right to complain about.”

  George laid his arm on the back of the seat and turned to look at her fully, his other hand letting the reins dangle. “You cannot be serious. That was a private ball! What gave this Lady X the right to –”

  “Report your behaviour exactly as it was, for public consideration?”

  “And to follow it with all that stuff about gentlemen who
are too bull-headed to understand the plight of unmarried ladies! As if I were an ignorant fool like the rest of them!” The carriage lurched alarmingly to the left. George brought his full attention back to the horses with a muffled curse.

  Anthea had never been confronted by the subject of one of her columns before. She was not sure she was enjoying the experience. “But isn’t that precisely the matter you asked me to educate you on yesterday? It strikes me that this is just the sort of thing you should be reading.”

  “Believe me, no person who snipes at their betters in a gossip column has the wit to educate me about anything.” George’s jaw was alarmingly tight. “This Lady X – if she is even female, which I doubt – had no right to publish details about my behaviour at a private ball. I can only thank the stars that she did not include your name. That would have been too much!”

  Anthea folded her hands over the paper primly and tried to ignore the speed of the carriage. “If you set such little store by this gossipmonger, as you call her, I do not see why you are upset.”

  “Upset?” He sighed, let go of the reins with one hand, took off his hat and set it beside him to run his fingers through his unruly curls. Anthea thought of the hairbrush on Selina’s dressing table, thought of pulling it through those curls as George’s eyes fell closed with pleasure. “I am not upset. I am… put out.” He replaced his hat. “When I discover the identity of this Lady X…”

  “How do you intend to do that?”

  He shot her an amused glance. “I have resources at my disposal that you cannot imagine.”

  Anthea did not like the sound of that. He was almost certainly boasting. But if he were not…

  If he were not, that could make things extremely awkward.

  “A strange thing happened this morning,” she said, wishing to avoid further speculation about Lady X. “Perhaps, with all your extensive resources, you can help me understand it.”

  She had promised Aunt Ursula only hours earlier that she would not tell anyone the latest twist in the tale of the maharaja’s brooch, but the need to divert George’s attention was dire. Besides, what could be the harm in telling him?

  “Go on.” George settled back against the seat, one hand still lazily dangling the reins, the other stretched out along the backrest. His fingers brushed against Anthea’s arm so lightly that at first, she thought she had imagined it. But no, it was there. The gentle touch of his driving glove against the bare skin of her upper arm, the leather so soft and fine it might as well have been his bare skin. The sensation distracted her for a moment. George noticed where her gaze was drawn, and grinned.

  Each time Anthea convinced herself that she had imagined all George’s attention, he nudged her back to certainty with the subtlest of gestures. One thing was clear: he was infinitely more experienced in these matters than she was.

  She hoped she was right to trust him. A man who could be wrong about the most celebrated lady columnist in London might be hiding many further character flaws.

  “My Aunt Ursula lost a brooch. One that she kept hidden in a particular secret location.”

  “That is troubling.” His fingers curled inwards, almost but not quite cupping the curve of her arm. “Do you suspect theft? One of the maids, perhaps?”

  “It was that suspicion that led my aunt to hide it in the first place. But only she and I knew where the brooch was hidden. She had a replica made and kept in its usual place to fool the thief. I thought it was her age putting strange thoughts in her head, but now…”

  George’s thumb stroked gently along her elbow. It was so small a movement that none of the passers-by would ever have guessed he was touching her, and yet there was something so exquisitely tender about it that Anthea’s heartbeat quickened.

  “A clever lady, your aunt.”

  “She was certainly one step ahead this time.”

  “And yet she fell victim to the thief all the same.” They passed beneath a wrought-iron gateway and entered a leafy park. Anthea let herself relax against George’s strong arm as the horses slowed to a walk.

  “I have come up with a plan that I think is rather clever. Aunt Ursula is not to report the theft of the brooch. Rather, she is going to tell all the maids that someone attempted to steal an item of jewellery – but made off with a worthless replica instead.”

  George guided the horses past another carriage and gave a cheery wave to the three ladies within it. Anthea was conscious of the whispers between them the moment they thought they were out of earshot. She caught George’s eye and noticed the way he had sat up a little straighter, his shoulders squared and his smile easy and genuine. He looked happy. He looked proud.

  What a wonderful thought, that being seen taking her out for a drive was enough to inspire that distracting smile.

  “I think I can guess what comes next,” he said. “The maids will spread the news among the servants, and whoever has stolen the brooch will take the first opportunity to replace it. They will think they are swapping it for the real one, when in fact they are replacing the real one and taking the fake.”

  “Exactly!” He had not guessed the cleverest part of the plan. Anthea was rather pleased about that. “I have placed a strand of red thread on top of the false brooch inside the jewellery box. If it is moved, the thread will fall, and we shall know at once whether it is the real one or not.”

  “You have a talent for intrigue,” said George. A small smile was playing on his lips, one that seemed admiring and amused at once.

  “The only thing that remains is to work out how to catch the thief once they have replaced the real brooch.”

  “Now there, I think I can help you.” George frowned, his fingers tightening on the reins. “Though you must permit me a little intrigue of my own. I have my suspicions about the identity of your thief. Let me investigate them and tell you what I discover.”

  “Very mysterious!” Anthea laughed. “Anyone would think you were an experienced sleuth.”

  George shot her a sharp sidelong glance, as though something she had said was not to his liking. “I am nothing of the sort.”

  “Of course not. I did not mean to offend you. I’m sure you have no intrigues of any interest whatsoever.” Though if he was offended, he deserved it. He had been happy enough to disparage Lady X’s column.

  They reached the end of the park without further disagreement. Anthea sensed that George was being as careful to avoid certain subjects as she was to steer him away from a return to the topic of Lady X. The newspaper lay on the seat between them, an insubstantial barrier, but enough to warn her to keep her distance. There was nothing of the attempt at kissing that Edith had so ardently wished for.

  On the balance, she was not disappointed. George was pleasant company, true, and in other circumstances she might have been happy to let him flirt with her.

  But she would be a fool to give her heart to a man whose opinion of female penmanship was so low that he refused to take account of the words she had written expressly for his education.

  8

  George made a point of arriving early at the Shrewsbury residence for dinner the following day. This was not out of any particular eagerness to see that unsavoury fool, Lord Shrewsbury. Still less his gossiping mother, the elderly countess.

  Sadly, George could not claim that he was motivated by duty, either. Usually, at this tantalising early stage of a mission, George would have spent his every waking hour focused on the case. Wondering the best way to approach his target, running through every detail he had gathered, discussing the next move with his partner.

  But today, to his horror, he had only one thing in mind. Or rather, one person.

  It seemed Lady Anthea Balfour had a habit of getting what she wanted. Assuming, of course, that what she wanted was George’s rapt attention. She had entrapped him as easily as she had laid the bait for her aunt’s mysterious thief.

  George found that he wanted nothing more than to help her. She had been so proud of her cunning scheme! Every bi
t as pleased with herself as he and Julian had once been when they wrangled themselves out of a particularly sticky situation with the Spanish Ambassador. And that had been no small doing.

  It was with the prospect of Anthea’s gratitude in mind, then, that George confronted Shrewsbury in the drawing room before the other dinner guests had arrived. Or rather, attempted to confront him. The ever-inquisitive Lady Shrewsbury proved unexpectedly difficult to shake off. The earl, for his part, was not at all pleased to see George, and made it clear by engaging in the conversation with a series of monosyllabic mumbles.

  “Tell me, Lord Streatham, do you shoot?” Lady Shrewsbury was asking from her perch atop an ornately carved wooden chair. Her feet were plopped atop a fussy little footstool embroidered with images of pugs very similar to the one slumbering in her lap. “My darling boy is a very fine shot. Isn’t that right, Henry?”

  “Mm,” Lord Shrewsbury contributed.

  “His lands comprise some of the best shooting country in England.” Lady Shrewsbury wrinkled her nose distastefully, as though the recollection that George, too, was an earl carried a bad smell with it. “I suppose you must have some good country yourself.”

  “Tolerable, my lady, tolerable.” George cast about for an excuse to get Shrewsbury alone. “I’m more of a bookish man myself. Since I’m here early, Shrewsbury, I wonder if you would mind showing me your famous library?” He clapped a hand on Shrewsbury’s shoulder companionably and was rewarded with a start and a suspicious glare that would have been hurtful if he had not had the opposite of Shrewsbury’s best interests at heart.

  “Famous?” Shrewsbury grunted.

  “Yes, yes! My father told me all about your family collection of – of –” George floundered for a moment, before realising that it was highly unlikely that Shrewsbury himself had ever explored the library. “Ancient Greek poetry.”

  “Poetry, Lord Streatham?” Lady Shrewsbury pursed her wrinkled lips. “Is that considered a manly occupation these days? My, my.”