Entranced by the Earl

by Eaton, Jillian

  Sliding his arm around her waist, he hooked his fingertips into the curve of her hipbone and tucked her against his body.

  “Easy,” he murmured in her ear. “I’ve got you.”

  Her head turned and, for a split second, she found herself completely and utterly entranced by the stormy depths of his gaze. Beneath the bodice of her dress, her heart slammed violently against her ribcage.

  Boom boom. Boom boom.

  Her lips parted.

  His eyes darkened.

  They leaned in close.

  Closer…

  “Baaaaaa.”

  From somewhere up ahead came the unmistakable bleat of a lamb, and the spell broke.

  Weston cleared his throat. “We should, ah…”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “We should.”

  Keeping a wider distance than before, they hurried to the barn where a stable hand leading a sleek chestnut mare across the front paddock greeted them in surprise.

  “My lord,” he said, bringing the horse to a halt. “I wasn’t told you would be embarking on another ride this morning. Should I have a mount readied for you, or–”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Weston interrupted. “We’re here for a sheep.”

  “A sheep,” said the stable hand, appearing confused.

  Evie could only assume it wasn’t every day the Earl of Hawkridge walked into the stables demanding a farm animal that wasn’t a horse.

  “About this tall,” she said, cupping her hands twelve inches apart. “White. Fluffy. Ears that stick out to the side.”

  “I am fairly confident he knows what a sheep looks like,” Weston said dryly.

  “A description cannot hurt anything,” she defended.

  The stable hand scratched underneath his cap. “Haven’t seen any sheep here. Maybe it went to the pond? Something has the swans spooked. They haven’t been in the water all morning that I’ve seen, which is unusual for them. Figured that old snapping turtle was back, but maybe your sheep went over to get a drink and frightened them.”

  “The pond,” Evie repeated.

  “This way,” Weston said, grabbing her hand.

  Off they went, across the lawn and around the side of the house. By the time they reached the pond, Evie was short of breath, but Weston didn’t appear the slightest bit winded. On the contrary, their mad dash around the grounds of the estate seemed to have invigorated him.

  The wind had swept his hair off his temple in a disheveled wave of obsidian silk. A button at the top of his shirt had come undone, revealing a golden swath of skin that was covered in a sheen of perspiration. There was a light in his eye that she’d never seen before. A glint of happy defiance, as if by temporarily leaving the manor and all of his responsibilities behind, he had stripped himself of the chains that bound him to duty and honor and obligation.

  Standing beside the pond, he was just a man looking for a lamb.

  And she was just a woman, looking at the man she loved.

  While also looking for Posy, of course.

  Even though Weston’s muscular chest was, admittedly, very distracting.

  A flash of movement out of the corner of her eye swung her attention to a thicket of reedy marsh plants. Hidden in the middle of them, her tiny tail swishing furiously, was Posy. Chewing on a cattail, of all things.

  Warm, welcome relief flooded through Evie.

  “Weston,” she said, tugging on his sleeve to gain his attention. “There she is.”

  Kicking off his boots and rolling up his trousers, Weston waded into the water. It appeared Posy, in her eagerness to taste the cattails, had wandered into the pond and gotten trapped on a bank of mud. With a squelching sound, Weston pulled her free and extended his arms towards Evie so that she could grab the shivering lamb while he made his way out.

  “There you are,” she whispered, pressing her face into Posy’s soft fleece. “I was terribly worried. You are not to run away like that again, do you understand? I know you’re just an animal, and you cannot understand a word that I’m saying, but you’re very special to me and I don’t want to lose you.”

  Posy gave a bleat, which Evie took as a yes. Kissing the top of her head, she set the lamb down to dry off on the grass. The mud had gone all the way up to Posy’s belly, and she was going to need another bath before she could return to the house.

  By the look of things, Weston was going to require a bath as well.

  “Are you stuck?” she called out, managing–just barely–not to chortle with laughter at the sight of the earl staggering through the muck. Given that he weighed considerably more than Posy, he’d sunk far deeper into the mud than she had. It was nearly up to his knees, and the harder he tried to get to the shore the higher it went.

  “No,” he gritted between clenched teeth, “I am not stuck.”

  “What a relief. Then if you’re fine, I’ll take Posy and–”

  “Wait,” he called out.

  “Yes?” she chirped, batting her lashes.

  He glared at her. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  “Am I enjoying the fact that the mighty Earl of Hawkridge is stuck in a pond with mud up to his waist and is now dependent on me to help him?” She tapped a finger against her chin. “Let me think…let me think…why, yes. Yes, I do believe I am. Immensely.”

  “Just find a stick, or a length of rope. Anything that I can use to pull myself out of this Godforsaken quagmire.”

  “I will,” she assured him. “But first, you and I are going to have a chat.”

  Weston grimaced. “I’d rather not.”

  “Given your current predicament, I don’t know if you have much of a choice. This may take a while. You don’t mind if I make myself comfortable, do you?” Splaying out her skirts, she sank to the ground in a graceful flutter of muslin. “There. Now where were we?”

  “I was considering letting the mud take me,” he said darkly.

  She clucked her tongue. “You needn’t act as if a having conversation is the equivalent of nursing a sore tooth.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Obstinate rogue, she thought with far greater affection than the first time she’d referred to him as such. Having reached a better understanding of her own feelings, especially those directed at the swamp monster standing in front of her, Evie wanted to clear the air between them. She wasn’t nearly ready to confess her love for Weston. Not when there existed the very strong possibility that he’d reject her outright.

  Last year, while experimenting with adding turmeric to one of her many face creams in an attempt to calm a horribly embarrassing rash of pimples across her cheeks, Evie had slathered the concoction over her entire face. All had seemed well…until she woke up the next morning and her skin was orange. That incident (which her sisters still teased her about) had taught her a valuable lesson.

  When trying something new, it was best to test a small, inconspicuous spot first.

  That’s what she was doing with the earl.

  Testing.

  And keeping her fingers crossed that she did not turn into a fruit.

  “I shall make it short and to the point, then,” she said, bending her knees and looping her arms around them. “I did not care for the way you last spoke to me, Lord Hawkridge. Our so-called encounters, the majority of which you instigated, are not lapses in judgment. I am not a lapse in judgment.”

  “Miss Thorncroft–”

  “I am not finished.” There was, she found, a certain power in knowing that the individual you were speaking to had to listen. If this was how men felt when they addressed a room, it was no wonder they talked so much. “There is something between us, Lord Hawkridge. Something tangible. Like a…like a shock of electricity, or a bolt of lightning. And I know you feel it, too. I know you do.”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I won’t deny that there is a strong physical attraction between us, Miss Thorncroft. One that I did not anticipate or expect. I will also not deny that my prior use of words to describe our encounte
rs was…poor. Be that as it may, continuing to act upon our baser instincts would be unwise.”

  “Why?” she asked, canting her head.

  “Because…because it just would,” he scowled.

  “That isn’t a reason,” she pointed out.

  “It’s my reason.”

  “Do you want me to get a stick or not?”

  “Fine.” He threw up his arms. “Our passion must be quelled because there is no future for us, and although I am hardly a paragon of virtue, I am not so evil that I would ruin an innocent.”

  “Do you see no future between us because you love Lady Martha?”

  “What?” His harsh laugh was loud enough to startle Posy, who came bounding over to Evie and hopped onto her lap, cloven hooves digging painlessly into her thighs. “No, I do not love Lady Martha. Why should I ever want to invite such chaos into my life?”

  “But you intend to marry her.” It was not a question, but a statement. One that Weston did not bother to refute.

  “I fail to see where this discussion is headed. There is an apple tree behind you. If you could find a branch–”

  “Why her?” Evie persisted. “You could have any woman you wanted. Why Lady Martha? Is there something special about her in particular?”

  “We’ve common interests and she will be a satisfactory countess. Miss Thorncroft, the water is not exactly warm. If you’d like to continue this–”

  “Have you kissed her like you kiss me?”

  Weston’s countenance went absolutely blank, like a page that the printing press had accidentally skipped over. “That is none of your concern.”

  “Then you haven’t.” That gave her some reason to hope. “Have you kissed her at all?”

  “I believe this conversation has reached its conclusion. The stick, Miss Thorncroft.” His gray eyes glittered with annoyance. “Now.”

  Evie ignored him. A benefit of being the one on the shoreline.

  “When all is said and done, don’t you want your marriage to have been more than just satisfactory?” she asked quietly. “I do. I used to think such things were trivial. Love and lust and romance. That tingling sensation you get at the top of your spine when you meet the gaze of someone you desire. The breathless anticipation of that first kiss. The contentment to be found at sitting beside them for supper and sharing the events of your day. But in fact, it is those things, those moments, that are the most important of all, I think. Even more so because you cannot place a price upon them.” A sad, poignant smile slipped across her lips. “All the titles and all the money in the world cannot purchase love, Lord Hawkridge. It is the one entity that cannot be bought or sold or traded. I wish I had understood that sooner. But I do now, and I know what I want because of it. Do you, my lord? Do you know what you want?”

  As she met his angry gaze, Evie silently implored him to take that step off the ledge she knew he was capable of, if only because she’d taken it. And if she, the most cynical of all her sisters when it came to love, had permitted herself to fall…then surely Weston could, as well.

  For a fraction of a second, there was a flicker in those steely gray eyes of his.

  A softening.

  A yearning.

  But before that flicker had the opportunity to grow into a flame, his expression shuttered and all of his emotions were abruptly concealed behind a towering wall of ice that she feared herself incapable of penetrating even with the sharpest of chisels.

  “What I want is get out of this bloody mud and to not be pestered with such ridiculous questions. This right here,” he muttered, more to himself than to her, even though her ears were perfectly capable of hearing him. “This is exactly why I am going to marry Lady Martha Smethwick.”

  Evie stared at him. She’d poured out her heart. She’d emptied her very soul. Which wasn’t exactly an easy thing to do for someone who equated being in love with breaking out in hives. And this–this–was his response?

  Her limbs felt as if they were formed from wood as she stood and gathered Posy in her arms. “If you’d like to free yourself,” she said coldly, “might I suggest calling upon your satisfactory fiancée for assistance.”

  “Where are you going?” he demanded when she began to walk away from the pond. “Miss Thorncroft? You cannot leave me here. Miss Thorncroft! God damnit. Don’t you dare–”

  Closing her ears to Weston’s shouts, Evie sailed off towards the manor without looking back.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The door squeaked on its hinges as Rosemary hesitantly opened the wooden panel a few scant inches and peeked inside. She had waited for her cousin in the solarium for nearly twenty minutes, but it appeared they’d gotten the timing wrong, or else she was terribly early, for she’d been the only person there with the exception of the servants.

  Ordinarily, she would have been content to remain in the company of the staff. She’d even brought a book with her, just in case. But all of the silver platters on the long banquet table were covered, and she was starving, and with no sign of the breakfast beginning anytime soon, she had marched off in search of food.

  The manor was so vast that she hadn’t the foggiest idea of which hallway led where, and not wanting to stray far from the solarium, she’d gone straight across the foyer to what she assumed to be a parlor. There was a low buzz of voices emanating from somewhere else but, as a general rule, Rosemary preferred not to socialize on an empty stomach. Truth be told, she preferred not to socialize at all, but the idea of trying to maintain a conversation while dreaming about blueberry cobbler was particularly abhorrent.

  “Hello?” she said hesitantly. When there was no reply, she opened the door a bit wider and her empty belly rumbled with delight when she saw the array of pastries, coffee, and tea beckoning to her from across the room.

  She’d nearly reached the table of sweets and was eyeing a plate of golden crumpets drizzled with raspberry jam when an unexpected masculine voice nearly had her leaping out of her borrowed dress.

  “Oh my Sir Reginald!” she gasped, swirling around just in time to see a head pop up from the other side of a sofa. And not just any head. Oh, no. This head, with its tousled black hair sticking in every direction and pale, bloodshot eyes, belonged to none other than the Duke of Hanover.

  Rosemary had never actually met the duke. Their social circles were such a distance apart they might as well have been on different planets. But she knew who he was. Everyone did. Because…well, because he was a duke. A handsome duke. A handsome duke who was not married, which had made him the target of every eligible miss in all of England and its surrounding countries. With Rosemary being the notable exception.

  Not that she hadn’t admired His Grace from afar. Just because she was a wallflower didn’t mean she was blind. But while her nose was often in a book and her mind in the clouds, she had enough common sense to know that she had a better chance of tossing a knotted line of bedsheets into the night sky and catching a falling star than she did of catching the attention of the infamous Duke of Hanover.

  “Could you be a love,” he croaked, his voice rough as gravel, “and bring me a cup of coffee?”

  Rosemary looked to her left, then to her right. “Are you…are you talking to me?”

  Squinting, he sat up a little straighter and cast his arm across the back of the sofa. “Is there someone else here?”

  Her eyes as wide as the crumpets she’d been on the brink of devouring, she slowly shook her head.

  “Aye, then I’m talking to you. Coffee. Please.” He blinked soulfully at her. “I’m begging you.”

  Rosemary’s arm shook ever-so-slightly as she poured rich brown coffee, still steaming, out of a silver pot and into a cup. Carrying the cup around the front of the sofa she delivered it to the duke, and as she passed it from her hand to his, their fingers brushed. When a jolt passed through her at the small, accidental contact, she gasped and nearly spilled the hot liquid down the front of his shirt.

  “You’re a sweetheart,” he groaned as
he guzzled the coffee.

  Rosemary experienced another jolt.

  The Duke of Hanover had just called her a sweetheart.

  Her, Rosemary Amelia Ursula Stanhope.

  Clearly, he did not know to whom he was speaking.

  Or maybe he did, and he was just being extraordinarily kind.

  Like a baker who threw spare breadcrumbs for the pigeons.

  Or a philanthropist who donated his old clothing to orphans.

  “I…thank you, Your Grace.”

  “Have we met?” As he finished his coffee, his eyes–gray with thin streaks of red through the white–traveled across her with unnerving intensity. You look familiar. Wait–let me guess,” he said when her lips parted. “You’re Lord Henley’s eldest daughter. Lady Victoria.”

  As shyness overtook her, Rosemary could only bite her lip and shake her head.

  “No?” The duke’s brow creased. He sat up even taller. “Lady Emma Crowley.”

  Lady Emma Crowley was blonde with green eyes.

  She shook her head again.

  “Hmm. I was sure I had it that time. Ah! Now I remember.” With a roguish grin, he snapped his fingers. “Miss Penny Snow. How could I forget? Especially after that night we drank the champagne beside the fountain and you asked for me to search for your missing hairpin.” He lifted a brow. “Such an odd place to find it, beneath your skirts. But there it was.”

  Heat exploded across Rosemary’s face. “I-I-I am not Penny Snow,” she stammered.

  The duke’s brow lowered. “Well then, who the devil are you?”

  “N-no one of consequence, Your Grace.”

  “You have to be someone. Surely I would have noticed you before, unless…will this Season be your first? That’s it,” he said confidently. “You’ve not yet made your debut.”

  “I’ve attended every ball that you have been at for the past three years, Your Grace.” Rosemary was not offended that he could not remember her name or even recall her face. Given how well she and the back corner were acquainted, she’d be more shocked if he did know who she was. A horse didn’t notice a patch of weeds in the middle of its field. And the Duke of Hanover had no reason to notice a wallflower whose head was buried in a book more often than not.