An Unexpected Earl

by Anna Harrington

  “I’d moved on,” she whispered, those three words encapsulating the grandest mistake of her life. One that still punished her every day. Even now—especially now—it ate at her. “And so had you. You had a new life in the army, a wonderful future ahead of you. The last person you needed to be bothered with was me.”

  Desperately needing to believe that so she wouldn’t break down in tears, she picked up a red paper poppy that one of the women had made to decorate a hat and tucked it into the first buttonhole of his waistcoat with a light pat of her trembling fingers. To dismiss the past and its mistakes. To make him believe that she’d been fine. And conveniently, so she didn’t have to look into his eyes.

  She stepped around him, circling to the other side of the table to pick up a long wooden rolling pin. She laid the silk across the table and placed the roller on one end. Work—work had always gotten her through. It would help her survive this new pain, too. So she focused on the cloth and carefully began to wrap it around the roller so that it could be stored without being folded. If the silk were folded, then the paint would flake off and—

  “That’s why you think I’m your enemy, isn’t it?”

  His deep voice came from directly behind her and sent a hot shiver of remorse curling inside her. She stilled, except for her hands, which tightened on the rolling pin so hard that her knuckles turned white.

  “Because I never returned your letters.”

  She turned to look at him over her shoulder, only to find him standing behind her. Right behind her. His nearness tingled across her skin and raised goose bumps in its heated wake.

  Her gaze dropped to his mouth, which lingered so close to hers that the warmth of his breath tickled her lips. She could kiss him simply by lifting onto her tiptoes. There would be solace there, she knew, an easing of the pain that made her long to simply lean back and bring herself into his arms. That’s all it would take, just a simple shift of her body. Not even turning around… And if she did, she would be lost.

  “Because of the turnpike,” she corrected softly. “If you join Freddie in advocating for it, I’ll lose Bradenhill.”

  She held her breath, waiting for him to assure her that he would do exactly as she’d asked of him—

  “If the trust is causing so much tension between you and your brother, then let him have the property and build your school elsewhere.”

  Her shoulders sank in equal measure disappointment and exasperation. Was he going to help her at all? Had she completely misread the man he’d become? Desperation scratched her voice. “Bradenhill is all I have.”

  “But your father was wealthy. Surely, he left you other property that—”

  “Gordon Howard was a mean and spiteful old man who caused trouble right up to the end, even from the grave.” She turned to face him and steeled herself against showing any unease at finding herself less than six inches from his chest, his hips even closer. And his mouth…sweet heavens. “Instead of leaving his fortune to Frederick and an allowance to me, he left the fortune to me and gave Frederick the allowance.”

  Surprise crossed his face. “Your father left you everything?”

  “Except for the land, which was divided between us.” Which was why she was now in this mess. “Papa believed that a man needs land in order to be a proper gentleman, so he gave part to Freddie, and that I would need it to find an aristocratic husband, so he gave Bradenhill to me.”

  “Then you have enough money to buy more land and put your charity wherever you’d like.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Not wanting to answer that, she tried to politely move him aside, so she could step away and clear her head. But the man didn’t budge. “Pearce, please—”

  “Amelia.” He took her chin and gently lifted her head, making her look directly at him. “Tell me.”

  She blew out an exasperated breath and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “I found myself in a spot of trouble,” she admitted, hoping he would accept that whopper of an understatement. Because she’d never tell him the truth. He looked at her now as if he longed to kiss her, as much as she longed for him to do just that.

  But if she told him about Aaron, how would he look at her then?

  A frown of concern wrinkled his brow. “What kind of trouble?”

  “Financial,” she answered vaguely. In the end, though, wasn’t that what it had been? The ramifications of losing her fortune had certainly lasted longer than her marriage. “It happened right before I turned twenty-one, when Freddie was still acting as my guardian and in control of my money.”

  “Being passed over in his inheritance for his younger sister, then having to manage it all for her,” he mumbled, his eyes gleaming with amusement at Frederick’s expense. “Your brother must have hated that.”

  “He resented it. Quite a bit, for a while. But then—then there was an unexpected problem.” She refused to give specifics and prayed that Pearce was too much of a gentleman to press. “I lost everything except for Bradenhill.”

  Concern darkened his face. “Did Howard do something foolish and cost you your fortune?”

  “No.” Her voice lowered to a whisper as she dared to put this small part of her trust in him. “It was all my doing. But Freddie stepped in after to take care of me. The town house is his. He lets me stay there, employs my maid, and grants me an allowance. He even helped me start my charity shop. I couldn’t have done it without him.” Guilt clawed at her belly. He had done so much to help her… “I owe him everything.”

  “So you would now do anything to help him.”

  “No.” She fixed her eyes directly on his. “I won’t give up Bradenhill.” Not to Freddie, not to a trust… She pulled in a deep breath. “Not to anyone.”

  A frown creased his brow as he stared down at her, but an inexplicable sensation sparked through her that he admired her for her resolve. Nothing he said told her that, no change in his expression…but it resonated through that connection they’d shared since they were children, like a ribbon that wound around them and joined them even now.

  “At least tell me this,” he conceded, letting her keep her privacy. “Are you all right now?”

  She warmed at his concern. “I will be, once I know that Freddie won’t build his turnpike.”

  He stood close. Far too close. Needing space and air, she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed to make him step back.

  But he didn’t move, except for a flexing of his muscles beneath her fingertips. Electric tingles raced up her arms and landed heavily in her breasts. As a young man, he’d been tall and slender with lean muscles that had made him seem so solid then—but nothing as solid and hard as this. She remembered the strength of his young arms when they’d wrapped around her. How would they feel now that he was a man in his prime?

  She dropped her hands to her sides, afraid she’d stop pushing him away and instead pull him toward her to find out.

  “That’s why you were at the masquerade,” he concluded. “Because you’ve been trying to put a stop to the turnpike?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you knew your brother planned to approach me that night?”

  “No,” she admitted, her voice exasperatingly breathless. “You were a complete surprise.” That was the God’s truth. “I thought I was seeing a ghost.”

  “Me too.” He reached up slowly and caressed her cheek. The tender touch rushed liquid heat through her, all the way down to her toes.

  “But you are real.” She forced herself to keep from leaning into his touch, into the comfort and warmth she remembered. “So is Freddie’s plan for the turnpike.”

  “So is the threat to you,” he warned gently. “The last thing I want is for any harm to come to you.”

  If only she could believe that! She wanted to trust in her memories of him, in his assurances now to protect her… But Aaron
had made assurances, too, only to destroy her life. She couldn’t open herself to wounding like that again by another man. Especially not Pearce. If he did, it would end her.

  “I’ll only be hurt if the trust goes through.” Despite the emotion stinging her eyes, she found enough strength to smile, although shaky. “But with your help, Parliament will never enact it. Freddie can find other appointments to fill, and he can stop selling his influence.” The blackmail would stop. They could go on with their lives—

  “What your brother is doing is much worse than that,” Pearce murmured grimly. He rested his hands against the table on both sides of her, surrounding her but not touching. Yet he made her heart race just as fiercely as if he were. “Howard is working with an organization called Scepter.”

  She didn’t recognize the name. “My brother’s involved with lots of organizations.”

  “Not like this. They’re a criminal group with contacts at all levels of society and in all types of crime, from smuggling to prostitution and everything in between. Including murder.” He paused to let that wash over her. “What contact have you had with them?”

  She gaped at him. “You think that because I was at the masquerade and Le Château Noir that I—” She choked off in surprise, then bit out indignantly, “I have nothing to do with any criminal group. I assure you that Freddie doesn’t either.”

  “But he does. So does every man he’s helped into an appointment during the past few months. And most likely, so will the men he presents to be trustees for the turnpike. Which is why he wants the trust. Not only because of the money a turnpike will bring in, but because it also gives him three Parliament-approved positions he can fill.” His gaze bore into hers. “Your brother is involved with dangerous men, Amelia. Men whom the Home Office believes murdered nearly a dozen government appointees just so your brother could replace them with their own.”

  “No…” Her fingers clamped hard onto the edge of the table to keep herself from slipping to the floor. Oh God! What on earth had Freddie done? “No, you’re wrong,” she breathed out. “We’ve had nothing to do with any murders.”

  “No. Just with blackmail.”

  Her stomach fell through the floor. “How—” She swallowed hard to clear the strangling knot from her throat. “How do you know that?”

  He ignored her question, countering with one of his own. “Who’s being blackmailed, Amelia? Your brother into forcing through the trust, or you into stopping it?”

  This time when she shoved at him to push him out of her way, he moved—so quickly she gasped with surprise. He slipped his arms around her waist, lifted her into the air, and set her on the edge of the table, blocking her with his broad body so that she couldn’t leave.

  “I need answers.” He slowly lifted a hand to brush his knuckles across her cheek.

  She closed her eyes against the sweet torture of his caress.

  “And I need you to trust in me, just like you used to.”

  A soft sound of frustration rose at the back of her throat. To have an ally in this mess, to have someone to confide in—how perfect if she truly could trust in Pearce—

  “Freddie’s being blackmailed,” she admitted in a rush, and with that confession came a flood of relief. “You’re right. He’s being forced to place men into government positions, into whatever appointments he can.”

  Another caress, stroking his thumb over her bottom lip. This time in reward. “By whom?”

  She opened her eyes and stared boldly at him. “Why do you care? None of this has anything to do with you.”

  “More than you realize,” he murmured enigmatically. When she opened her mouth to press for answers of her own, he interrupted, “What has your brother done to be blackmailed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does it have to do with your lost fortune?”

  “No,” she whispered, the word barely a sound on her lips.

  “Then how did you lose it?”

  She couldn’t tell him that. Would never tell him— “It’s not important.” But the quaver in her voice easily gave that away for the lie it was.

  So did the disbelieving lift of his brow. “A lost fortune, the head of the House Committee of Privileges, a brother who’s being blackmailed by a criminal organization into replacing men who have been murdered, a sister who’s doing everything she can to protect him… Seems to me that everything about this is important.”

  Breathe. She forced herself to remain calm, to keep her breath steady and the tremors that gripped her from becoming visible. To keep him from discovering more… Just breathe! “Not that.”

  “One.”

  She blinked, confused. He was making her head swim! “Pardon?”

  “That’s your first lie.”

  Her confusion dulled into quick anger. “How dare you accuse—”

  “Two.” When her mouth fell open, he drawled, “Now you’re lying about lying.”

  Her mouth snapped shut, and she pushed once more at his shoulders. This time with both hands. She had to leave. Now. “We’re done with this conversation. I want you to leave. I don’t want to see you or talk to yo—”

  “Three.”

  His mouth came down upon hers.

  Ten

  Pearce groaned at the bittersweet taste of her kiss. Sweet Lucifer, he’d forgotten how soft and warm her lips were, how yielding and supple beneath his. The memories came rushing back of the hours spent kissing her when he’d still been nothing more than a green lad, when she’d been eager to learn how to kiss and actually asked him if he minded if she practiced on him.

  If he minded… Laughable! What he’d minded was having to stop. Even back then, a dark part of his soul suspected that she would never be completely his. That teaching her that last and most important lesson of intimacy would belong to another man. But he’d selfishly taken whatever else she’d been willing to give, including kisses and caresses that had left her trembling. Just as she was trembling now.

  Yet those kisses had been nothing like this.

  True, she still tasted of vanilla and sugar, like a decadent dessert just waiting to be devoured. Still tilted back her head to mold her lips perfectly to his. Still ran her hands over his chest as if she couldn’t touch him enough to satisfy herself. But now a hesitation tempered the longing inside her, one that held her back when it never would have before.

  God help him, but he wanted her to surrender to the moment and let him give her the kind of passionate kiss he’d been longing for since he laid eyes on her at the masquerade. No—since long before that. Since that night twelve years ago when he was forced to leave her behind.

  With a growing need to deepen the kiss, his lips teased at hers to coax her to open her mouth and invite him inside.

  “Pearce,” she whispered, half an entreaty to be given more, half a plea for mercy. But then she did as they both wanted and welcomed his kiss by parting her trembling lips.

  Joy surged through him. He cupped her face between his hands and slipped his tongue between her lips in a silken glide. With sweeping plunges and little licks, he slowly explored her mouth in an attempt to rediscover her.

  When a soft sigh escaped her, he couldn’t resist the urge to take her bottom lip and worry it gently between his teeth.

  This time, it wasn’t a sigh that came from her but a whimper, one that stirred aching heat in his loins. When she slipped her arms up to encircle his neck and pull him down to her, giving herself over to the old affection and rising yearnings stirring between them, he couldn’t stop his own sound of pleasure.

  Kissing her felt like coming home.

  He moved his mouth away from hers to bury his face in her hair. He breathed in deep the delicious scent of her and drank in the softness and warmth of her body pressed against his. He could barely believe she was real. He slid his hands over her shoulders and down her back, needing
to feel her to prove that she wasn’t a dream.

  But she turned her head away when he leaned in to kiss her again. “You…have to stop.” Yet she belied her words by fisting his lapels in her hands as if she were afraid he’d do as she said and vanish like smoke.

  He nuzzled his cheek against hers with a smile. “I have to stop?” The tip of his tongue darted out to delve into the corner of her mouth and capture the sweetness waiting there, and she bit back a soft mewling of longing. “I think you’re a willing party to it.”

  “Pearce…”

  At that plaintive whisper, he relented and shifted back, but he didn’t release her. He couldn’t. Her hands were still tangled in his jacket front, still keeping him with her. Besides, letting go of her at that moment would have killed him.

  “Why stop?” He caressed his thumb entreatingly over her bottom lip. “We used to be quite fond of kissing each other.”

  “A lifetime ago.” Yet she leaned into his touch, like a rose bending toward the sun. “That was all before…”

  “Before what?”

  “Everything,” she whispered, with so much desolation that he ached for her.

  Wanting to comfort her, he leaned in to brush his lips in featherlight caresses against hers. For a moment, she capitulated, surrendering to the solace she found in him. She returned his kiss with the same need and longing, slipping her hand up his front, as if to encircle his neck and bring him down even closer—

  Suddenly, she tore her mouth away, and the hand at his shoulder pushed hard to move him away. Then her other hand did the same. This time to keep him away.

  “Amelia?” he murmured, confused. “What’s wrong?”

  She turned away from his touch, her eyes squeezing shut. As if she couldn’t bear to look at him.

  “You need to go,” she whispered, her eyelashes glistening wet with unshed tears.

  The sight of her grief tore into him like a razor. “What’s the matter?” He cupped her face between his hands. But she refused to open her eyes and look at him, her nose and lips both turning dark pink as tears threatened. “Tell me.”