Entranced by the Earl

by Eaton, Jillian

“Who is there?” she demanded. “If you’re a rat, I must warn you, I’ve a very shrill scream and…oh, it’s just you.”

  “You sounded more excited about the rat,” Weston said dryly as he entered the kitchen. Unlike Evie, who wore a green silk wrapper over her high-necked cotton nightdress, he was in his clothes from dinner, although he’d since discarded both his jacket and cravat. “Do you mind if I…?” He gestured at the stool opposite hers.

  “Go ahead. I couldn’t sleep, and hoped some warm milk might help.” Resting her elbows on the table, she picked up her cup with both hands and eyed him over the rim as he sat down. “What are you doing awake at such an hour?”

  “Catching up on ledgers, mostly.”

  “You don’t have an accountant for such things?”

  “When I’m able to, I like to go through the books myself. The harvest will be coming in soon, and it’s important to have an accurate tally of last year’s crop yield to compare.”

  She sipped her milk. “Is there nothing you don’t try to control?”

  “No,” he replied simply. The edge of his mouth curled upward. “But I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been less than successful with you in that regard.”

  “Thorncroft women have always been difficult to manage.”

  “That much is clear.” He folded his arms and leaned forward until they were only a few inches apart, their nearness made all the more intimate by the dim lighting. “Should I expect the same streak of stubbornness in Joanna?”

  As Evie’s pulse fluttered in response to Weston’s close proximity, she deliberately cast her gaze to the side. “My sister is even worse.”

  Weston snorted. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Claire is the best of us. The kindest, and the gentlest. I miss her very much.” Evie didn’t know why she was talking to him about her family. Only that it seemed natural to do so. As if this wasn’t the first time they’d met in the kitchen late at night to share anecdotes about themselves over warm milk, but the fiftieth.

  “It must be difficult, to be so far from home,” he said, his gray eyes gently probing.

  “It is,” she acknowledged. “But at the same time, it isn’t. I…I’ve come to enjoy England.” Her lips twisted in a rueful smile. “Despite all of the rain.”

  “We do receive more than our fair share.”

  “But your gardens are all the prettier because of it. And how are you to appreciate the sun if it is always shining?”

  “How indeed?” he murmured, his gaze skimming across her wrapper before it returned with almost comical abruptness to her face. “Would your sister consider coming here to visit you? Or does she have a husband who would keep her close to home?”

  “Claire is not married, but she is sweet on the butcher’s son.” Evie paused to take another sip of milk. “He gives her extra bacon slices in our meat order every week.”

  “If that isn’t true love, I don’t know what is.”

  “And yet, you don’t believe in it.”

  “Believe in what?” he said guardedly, as if he already knew the answer to his own question, but wanted to give her the opportunity to ask a different one.

  “True love. Or any love, for that matter.”

  He was silent for a moment, his shuttered stare impossible to decipher. When he did speak, it was with all the wariness of a solider trying to avoid underground explosives on the field of battle. “It isn’t that I don’t believe in love. I understand that it exists. I’ve seen it, in all its varied forms. I love my sister. I love my horses. I love this estate.”

  He’d omitted his father, Evie noted.

  And her, but then he had already said as much when she had given him her heart and he’d offered to find her a husband.

  Rather like handing a baker money for a decadent chocolate cake and receiving a plain loaf of bread instead.

  Bread wasn’t bad, per se.

  But it was a far cry from chocolate cake.

  “Do you love Lady Martha?” she dared to ask, and found herself holding her breath as she awaited his reply.

  “I do not,” he said without hesitation. “Neither does she love me. And our marriage shall be the better for it. Love, especially love between a husband and wife, is an…unnecessary complication.” He lifted his shoulder in a negligent shrug. “I’ve no love for my valet or my butler, yet they are an intricate part of my household.”

  Evie blinked. “Then you intend for your wife to be a servant.”

  “I intend for my wife to serve a role,” he corrected. “As I will serve a role for her. Love need not muddy the waters.”

  She wanted to argue with him. But how could she, when she’d recently been of the same exact opinion? For her entire adult life, with the exception of these past two weeks, she’d thought precisely as Weston did. That a marriage was not something to be romanticized, but a contract between two willing parties.

  A husband would provide his wife with protection, a generous allowance, and a good name. In turn, a wife would give her husband a male heir, manage his household affairs, and be a consummate hostess. Love was an afterthought.

  Oh, it was nice if it occurred.

  But it certainly was not a necessity.

  Or so she had believed…until she’d fallen in love herself.

  And splatted face first onto the ground.

  “I have been meaning to ask, why are the walls barren?” she asked in an obvious and deliberate attempt to steer the subject towards safer ground. “The manor’s architecture is stunning. The crystal chandeliers are divine. The furniture is of the highest quality. But why is everything so…white?”

  “Brynne says it reminds her of a mausoleum,” he said wryly.

  “I do not disagree with her.”

  “When my parents lived here, my mother took it upon herself to redecorate every room down to the wall hangings. Apparently, it had not been updated for nearly half a century and the style was somewhat…garish. Or so I’ve been told. She finished right before my sister and I were born, and…” He cleared his throat, then glanced at Evie’s half-filled cup. “Do you mind if I…?”

  “Please,” she said earnestly. “Help yourself. If you’d like me to make another–”

  “This is fine,” he said, lifting the cup to his mouth, and her thighs unconsciously pressed together as he touched the same spot where her own lips had been. “After my mother died, it’s said that my father went a tad mad in his grief. He stripped the entire household of anything that reminded her of him, and had it painted white. I’ve simply yet to get around to changing it. An adequate project for the future Countess of Hawkridge, I should think.”

  As Evie searched Weston’s gaze, she felt a tug in the middle of her chest. There was such restrained pain in his eyes. Buried beneath all of the stoicism, of course. But it was there, all the same. Especially now that she knew to look for it.

  What a terrible message it must have sent to a vulnerable young boy, yearning for approval, that the marquess had loved his wife so much that her passing had caused him to tear an entire house apart. But he hadn’t cared enough about his son to bother to show up at Weston’s convocation. The most important milestone in a gentleman’s life, with the exceptions of marriage and the births of his children.

  And the Marquess of Dorchester hadn’t been there.

  How could Evie’s mother have had an affair with such a heartless man?

  At least she finally understood why Anne Thorncroft would have chosen to give up everything England had to offer her and return to the arms of a kind doctor who had valued his wife and daughters and service to country above all else.

  “I am sorry,” she murmured, reaching across the worktable to splay her fingers on Weston’s forearm and feel the quiver and clench of his muscles through the thin fabric of his shirt.

  “You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” he said curtly. “All of this happened a long time ago. Before you were even born. It has nothing to do with you.”

  Couldn’t
he see that it had everything to do with her?

  With them?

  As much as she was a product of her upbringing, so was Weston a product of his. No doubt he thought that if his father had loved his mother a little less, then the marquess wouldn’t have fallen apart after she’d died and rebuilt himself with stone.

  It was clear, both from what he’d said and the actions he’d taken, that Weston was trying to avoid a similar destiny by eradicating love from his marriage altogether. But in doing so, he’d already condemned himself to the same fate as his father.

  He’d just used ice instead of rock.

  But if Evie could change her views on life and love and the pursuit of happiness…then maybe…just maybe…Weston could as well.

  With a little coaxing, that is.

  “You’ve not spoken of passion, or desire, or lust,” she said, dropping her voice to a throaty whisper as her hand skimmed up his arm to his bicep. She traced the muscle with the tip of her finger, marveling at its firmness. There was no question that the Earl of Hawkridge kept himself physically fit. Or that he was failing–miserably–to resist the pull of his baser instincts.

  “What of them?” he rasped, his eyelids sliding to half-mast as she continued her exploration of his body. Having made her way to his shoulder, she flattened her palm and slid it ever so slowly along the hard ridge of his collarbone before dipping to his chest. If she touched his nipple as he’d touched hers, would it have the same effect? All that pulsing heat centered in a circle of nerve endings, his considerably smaller than hers.

  But no less sensitive, she discovered, a catlike smile stealing across her lips as she rubbed her thumb across his nipple and he all but toppled off his stool.

  “Aren’t those qualities you should like to have in a marriage? You’re right. Love is a complication.” She flitted him a glance from beneath the thick fringe of her lashes. “But surely you don’t intend to deny yourself of all the pleasures that come from taking a wife. Or shall you delegate the making of an heir to the butler?”

  “You’re playing with fire, Evelyn,” he said thickly.

  “Oh,” she purred, her ribcage pressing into the edge of the table as she extended her arm as far as it would go and began to walk her fingertips down the middle of his torso, “but I so enjoy the burn.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Evie may have been the one playing with fire.

  But Weston was the one being consumed by it.

  Flames lapped at his self-restraint as her inquisitive hand trailed across his chest. He steeled himself against the heat. The temptation. The savage desire to take and be taken. But even as he resisted, he knew it was a battle he was losing. A battle he no longer wanted to fight.

  And thus he threw up his white flag…and surrendered.

  He surrendered to the attraction between them. An attraction that had begun as a spark on the ballroom floor, and had since grown into a raging inferno.

  He surrendered to his primal urges, long stifled beneath layers of propriety.

  But most importantly…he surrendered to Evie.

  Exquisite, alluring Evie. An ebony-haired siren wrapped in silk and sin, just as he’d envisioned her. Except the reality of having her in his arms was far better than any dream.

  His stool clattered to the floor as he shoved to his feet. A single step, and she was his, her hands clutching his hips as he spun her forcefully around on her seat.

  She tilted her head back and gazed up at him in wordless anticipation, her throat giving a delicate jerk as she swallowed and then wet her lips, affording him a tantalizing peek at her pink tongue. Her dusky nipples were swollen and erect, their pointed shape clearly visible through the thin fabric of her wrapper and nightdress. Bathed in the glow of firelight, her slender body was all but quivering for his touch.

  She reached for him, but he gently deflected her arm. With midnight at their backs and sunrise hours away, they’d all the time in the world. And he intended to use every second to bring her pleasure.

  He began by removing the pins from her hair. One by one, he set them beside her on the table. When the last had been freed, her curls tumbled down around her shoulders in a tumultuous curtain of black satin. Weston sucked in a sharp breath. Pinned against the table with her hair undone and her eyes heavy with lust, Evie had never looked more arousing.

  A log shifted in the hearth. As sparks danced in the air, he sank his fingers into her lush mane and lowered his mouth to hers in a kiss that was as deliberately slow as it was consuming.

  Their lips parted. Their tongues entwined. Their bodies throbbed.

  Cradling the back of her skull with his left hand, he used the right to untie the sash holding her wrapper closed. A few deft tugs and the garment slithered down her arms to pool at her waist before it slipped, already forgotten, onto the floor. Uncovered, her cotton nightdress clung to her curves. It was simple and plain, the only decoration a blue ribbon trimmed in white lace stitched across the bodice. But then, Evie’s natural beauty needed no frills or adornments.

  He kissed her again, lingering over her lips with lazy abandon as he explored every inch of the warm, damp cavern inside of her mouth. She whimpered with impatience, a tiny, mewling cry of suppressed desire that went straight to his loins. Grabbing the hem of her nightdress, he yanked it past her thighs and then up over her hips, before whisking it off the top of her head.

  Completely exposed to his gaze, she didn’t shy or blush. Not his Evie. She was a woman empowered, a woman in power. Over him, his body, his mind…his heart and soul. A beckoning tilt of her chin, a lascivious smile, her fingers sweeping in tantalizingly slow motion across her ribcage before she cupped her own breasts…and she controlled him. All of him. Every bit. Even the parts he’d sworn that he would never give to anyone.

  His mouth went to her neck, her shoulder, her collarbone…and then her nipples. Drawing one bud between his teeth to lick and nip and suckle, he permitted his hands to continue further down, across her slightly rounded belly to the curls between her thighs where she was wet and wanting.

  Her legs fell shamelessly apart as he petted her there; stroking along the pearl of her womanhood before delving deeper. To the first knuckle, the second, the third, he gradually sheathed his finger all the way within her velvet heat.

  He groaned when he felt her clench around him. Reaching for her hand, he guided it to his trousers where he was as hard and as hot as a railroad pike in the midafternoon sun. Lightly wrapping her fingers around him through his pants, she gave a small, experimental stroke along his shaft from base to tip. He jerked in her embrace, as inexperienced as it was, and would have spilled his seed then and there had he not grinded his teeth together with such force that a ligament popped in his jaw, loud but painless.

  “Bloody hell,” he gasped. With a flinch, Evie withdrew her hand.

  “Did I do something wrong?” she whispered, blue eyes luminous in the lamplight.

  His only answer was to take her wrist and direct her back to his cock as he sought her mouth.

  Time blurred after that. Or maybe it ceased it exist altogether. Weston didn’t know. Quite frankly, he didn’t care. There were a hundred different things he had to do come morning. Obligations. Duties. Ledgers. God, were the ledgers never ending. But in this kitchen, in this moment, in this sweet paradise of carnal pleasure, his only concern was Evie.

  Their breaths grew more frantic, their motions more uninhibited, their passion more desperate as they recklessly plunged towards oblivion. And when the mountain crumbled beneath their feet and they spread their wings, they took flight together.

  “We did not spill the milk,” Evie noted, somewhat impressed.

  “So we didn’t,” Weston said gruffly as he shook out her wrapper, then held it out.

  After adjusting the arms of her nightdress, she accepted it gladly. Without the warmth of the earl’s body pressed against hers, and with the fire in the hearth all but extinguished, a slight chill had overtaken the air.


  Needing to give her heart a chance to resume its normal rhythm and her scattered thoughts to organize, she took her time with the sash. When it was finally tied and she was properly dressed, she flitted a glance at Weston. He’d moved across the room to the fireplace, exposing half of his countenance to the muted light from the dying flames as he stood with an arm braced against the wooden mantel that stretched the length of the hearth.

  As if he could feel the weight of her gaze upon him, he looked at her over his shoulder, and she braced herself, both inwardly and out, for the rejection that she knew was to come. But even though she understood that their interlude had probably changed nothing, she did not regret it.

  Not a word, not a kiss, not a touch.

  Especially not a touch.

  The feelings he’d elicited from her body…it had been like a burst of sunlight.

  No, not a burst.

  Burst was far too mild a word.

  An explosion, she decided. An explosion of sunlight.

  And now came the shadows. Slithering, sneaking their way in to douse the light and dampen her spirits.

  “I suppose this is the part where you tell me what we just did was a mistake,” she told Weston quietly. “That it won’t happen again, and you’re terribly sorry–”

  “But I’m not,” he cut in. “I’m not sorry. And whatever that was,”–he gestured at the chair behind her–“it wasn’t a mistake.”

  Her lips parted. “Then…what…you…I…”

  “I don’t have all the answers.” He ran a hand across his face. “Hell, I don’t have any answers. This is a position I’ve never found myself in before.”

  “You mean you’ve never ravished a woman in the kitchen?” asked Evie. At his resulting flicker of guilt, she gave a peal of delighted laughter. “You rake, you have! Who was she? A maid? A lady? Your mistress? Do tell. I should like to know what company I keep.”

  His eyes narrowed with annoyance. “It occurred once several years ago, and she is now happily married with several children. The hour is getting late, Miss Thorncroft. We should seek our beds.”