Meet the Earl at Midnight (Midnight Meetings) (39 page)

Her breath hitched. “You’re looking well.” Her gaze dropped to his waistcoat. “A red waistcoat, a bold choice in fashion, but it suits you. You may win a few ardent female admirers this evening.”

“I seek to win only one.” He flashed his brigand’s smile, and something eased in his stance. “You like it then? It’s claret, not red, or so my valet informed me.” He leaned closer and his warm breath teased her skin, “I’d expect an artist to discern the difference.”

Just having him step closer to her made her body rejoice at the powerful draw he had on her. She worked to maintain composure, but Edward was more practiced in high decorum.

He saved her by nodding at the room. “We must take a turn around the room and welcome our guests.” He slanted a glance at her hair. “Thank you for not powdering your hair.”

She dipped her head, certain she was blushing like a schoolgirl, but glad he’d noticed. Tilly followed her strict instructions to pile the glossy dark curls high and never powder them.

Lydia linked her arm through his. “Of course, and when you have a moment, you’ll have to tell me about this valet you hired, my lord.”

Did
that
mean
he
was
staying?

His right hand covered hers as they began their stroll. “The valet? A gift for my ambitious art-salon wife.”

An elderly gentleman and his wife approached. She’d greeted them in the receiving line but had forgotten their names. Edward recognized them.

“Lord Ellerby, Lady Ellerby,” he called, stopping to chat.

“Good to see you’re out and about, man,” Lord Ellerby said, giving Edward the gimlet eye. “Your father would never have approved of your hermitry. Not even for the sake of science. Turn over in his grave he would.”

Lady Ellerby, a stout matron with a prim smile, tapped her fan on her husband’s shoulder, admonishing him. “Now, Hugh, that’s hardly the ideal greeting for a peer and fellow scientist.” She turned her smile on Lydia. “We should instead congratulate Lord Greenwich on finding so lovely a wife, and one so ready to enliven Society’s artistic circles.” The lady’s turquoise ostrich feather bobbled atop her hair as she spoke to Edward. “Your mother must be so proud.”

“My mother was beside herself when she found out I was to wed Lydia. It was all very quick, and done at our estate. I was quite smitten,” Edward said, smooth as silk.

“How lovely,” Lady Ellerby gushed, her chubby cheeks making her eyes small spots of color. “And romantic.”

They made their excuses and continued through the room.

“Quite the charmer, my lord,” Lydia said under her breath.

“I learned from the best, remember?” He scanned the room. “Speaking of that grand dame of social instruction, where is my mother?”

“She said Jane needed her…something about ‘if my children insist on marrying beneath their station, they will need my help for a leg up in this world’ or something of that nature.”

Intimate words ebbed in the sea of banal conversation. More people approached, among them Mr. Ryland and the Marquis of Northampton, with a throng of well-wishers. The Marquis of Northampton smiled and tipped his head.

“Edward, it’s been a long, long time.”

“Gabriel, good to see you.” Edward tipped his head at Mr. Ryland. “And you, Ryland.”

“Greenwich.” His gaze traveled from Edward to Lydia. Tonight he sported a yellowing bruise on his right cheek, but no one dared ask how he got it.

Mr. Ryland’s fathomless pewter stare missed nothing. At every social event, he gave the minimum niceties required, but nothing passed his notice. The man was like solid stone with the thinnest veneer of Society painted over him. Lydia guessed he was aware that much more hummed under the surface of this husband-and-wife meeting. But he stayed silent.

The well-dressed Lord Gabriel, however, took in Edward’s attire. “I don’t recall your wardrobe veering from anything other than brown or black. This suits you.” He flashed a brilliant, practiced smile at Lydia. “Something tells me you’re the cause of this transformation.”

She touched Edward’s sleeve, as much for needful contact as the desire to shield him from anything unpleasant. But that was silly. Edward didn’t need her to take care of him.

“I’m glad to see him, whatever color the wardrobe.” Her tone bristled with irritation.

Lord Gabriel’s brows shot up, but Edward jumped in quickly.

“Gabriel has a long history of summer days at Greenwich Park with Jonathan.” He gave Lydia’s hand a gentle squeeze. “He’s well acquainted with my past antics.”

They made polite excuses and moved on, finishing their agonizing rotation around the room. So many questions swirled in her head. Was he planning to leave? Surely not if he hired a valet. Or did he do that to help her, a small token before he left? Edward didn’t wear a wig this evening, but his queue was as impeccable as his clothes, and he went out of his way to engage in social chatter.

What made him come tonight? Was it her? Or because he was leaving tomorrow? She agonized over the crowds of people still in the house and wanted a private moment. The chamber music was cloying, the guests too loud, and even the elegant chandeliers burned excessively bright. When sending out the invitations, she had wanted so many to come. Now she wanted them all to leave.

Lydia spied a potted palm and tugged Edward’s arm to follow. On the way, another footman passed with a tray of champagne, and she grabbed another glass, but this one she would finish.

Behind the safety of the palm, Lydia gulped down champagne.

“Easy, Countess,” he chided.

Lydia stopped gulping, but the glass rim touched her lower lip, and she blurted, “Did you do this for me?”

“Of course,” he said, his smile full of mischief. “Unless I have another ambitious wife waiting in the wings.”

She lowered the glass, clutching it with both hands in something resembling a prayer. “Edward, please…I need to know.”

Under normal circumstances, his humor would make things perfect, but in this strained, fragile state, she needed certainty. The past month had been a series of steps, one and two and three, with very specific goals in mind, yet she was empty. Oh, her art took front and center, but everything was out of balance. She needed him, but when his dark stare dropped to her slender waist, Edward turned into the earl.

“Are you pregnant?” There was a small light of hope in his eyes. “I was sure you’d write to me if that were so.”

The abrupt shift in conversation startled her. Their arrangement was fundamentally the same from that first night at the Blue Cockerel. When they’d exchanged wedding vows, she’d had her hopes, and he’d had his. Something died right then, growing small and hard within her. Lydia poured her remaining champagne into the planter and set the glass in the dirt. A scale of armor surrounded her, the same as the day she’d walked out of the public house when her first lover had callously mistreated her. Lydia smoothed both hands over her peacock-blue bodice.

“No, I’m not. As a man of science, you know the chances increase with more
activity
between husband and wife.” Her shoulders squared as she took a step away from him. “Not that there will be any of that in the future.”

He grabbed her wrist. “What’s this? Am I being dismissed?” He scowled. “I came with good intentions to help you.”

She faltered for a second, the part of her that turned to jelly at his closeness, his clean smell. Edward’s sculpted lips that she loved to kiss hovered close, though they curled now in anger. She guessed as well what steps he’d taken to be here tonight, and that was in no way easy. She loved him, but he didn’t love her back. Lydia took a deep breath.

“Thank you for coming tonight.”

“I’m not a guest to be brushed off. This is my home.”

“And mine,” she said staunchly and pulled away. He let her wrist drop from his grip. “I really must get back to our guests.”

Lydia took a few steps back toward the conservatory, where the crowd had thinned but still thrived. He would leave
. Tomorrow.
She stood in the doorway, a voice near shouting in her head to dismantle her safe harbor of pride and tell him how she felt, but when she turned around, Edward was gone.

***

Lydia’s sleep-grained eyes opened, and she was out of sorts.
What
time
is
it?
She was in her nightclothes, but…Edward. She’d never had the chance to finish talking with him last night, or tell him…

She sprang off the settee where she must have dozed, waiting for him, and ran to the windows, yanking back the curtains.

The sky was predawn gray.
His
ship.

“What time is it?” she yelled, scrambling out of her nightclothes, so fast and hard that fabric tore.

Running to the bellpull in only her chemise, she yanked hard and yanked again. Lydia flung open her bedroom door and bellowed like a fishwife.

“Carriage! I need a carriage!”

She ducked back in, leaving the door wide open. She’d barely pulled a simple gray dress over her head before Tilly and a footman appeared, both blinking from sleep-lined faces. Her dress gaped in the back, and her hair was in wild disarray.

“His lordship? Have you seen Lord Greenwich?”

The footman, an older man she didn’t know, adjusted his wig. “He, he left this morning for the docks—”

“No!” She bellowed her agony, both hands gripping her head. “I must see him before he leaves. Get a carriage. Quick!”

The footman disappeared, but Tilly stood saucer-eyed at Lydia. “Don’t gawk, Tilly. Button me up.”

Lydia planted herself on the ground and slipped on her stockings, while Tilly kneeled behind her, hastily buttoning up the back of the dress.

“There’s no time for this,” she snapped and scrambled off the floor. Cool air slipped into her back where the fabric gapped from what must be missed buttons. She started for the door.

“Wait, my lady. Your cloak.” Tilly flung a brown cloak at Lydia, who tore down the hall to the mews in her stocking feet.

She had to tell him she loved him.

Even if he never loved her, she had to say those words to him. The carriage awaited her in the back, and the footman must’ve conveyed her upset, for they moved with great speed. Lydia pulled the curtains back, clenching the fabric in her hands.

How
could
she
have
been
so
foolish? Did it matter if someone loved you back?

To love someone like this was a gift, not something to be hidden away. Share that love, give it, say it, and hold nothing back. Sitting in the rocking carriage was pure agony. They moved through near-empty streets. Palatial homes turned into practical midtown businesses, a blur of buildings which gave way to older, crowded structures of taverns and warehouses.

Had
The
Fiona
left?

Then, the carriage lurched to a halt. Voices yelled outside. She pressed her hand on the carriage window.

Why weren’t they moving?

She cracked open the door. A sleepy-eyed footman poked his head inside the carriage.

“There’s an overturned dray, my lady.”

Lydia looked past the footman, half out of the carriage. Barrels scattered in the road, and two flustered men argued over them.

She smelled briny air. Gulls swooped low onto bits of scraps in the road. People milled about, gawking at the mess despite the early hour. She gripped the carriage door and leaned far. They sat in the middle of St. Catherine’s road. Ahead was Sanford Shipping.

“No, I can’t wait.” She sprang from the carriage with agile feet and picked her skirts up to knee level. Lydia broke into a full run with the green and black Sanford Shipping sign her target.

She had to find him. Find Edward.

Behind her, one of the livery men called out, “My lady, wait. You can’t go there alone.”

She sped past a crossing carter, almost upending him and his goods. The man swore vilely at her back. Her stocking feet beat the ground. Lydia threaded through half-drunk men emerging from a tavern. Air, cool and damp, swished her calves, so rucked up were her skirts. The ground squished under her feet.

Her side knitted with a horrid pinch. But she kept going. A trio of schooners listed in the quiet water. On the dockside, men hoisting heavy sacks stopped to watch her. Lydia’s lungs burst, but she kept her eyes on the green and black. A clerk stood at the base of Sanford Shipping’s warped wood stairs, writing notes on a tally sheet. She slammed into a barrel when she tried to stop short.

Lydia grabbed the barrel with both hands for support. “
The
Fiona?
Where is it?” She panted, her body rocking from the extended sprint. “Lord Greenwich, I must speak to Lord Greenwich.”

The clerk pushed his spectacles higher up his nose and pointed at a mast far out on the Thames. “There be
The
Fiona
, ma’am—”

“No,” she cried, turning to see where he was pointing. She clutched her roiling midsection.

“Left just under an hour ago…”

All of her went numb. Hot tears spilled from her eyes. Lydia walked across the narrow street, the stink of fish offal everywhere. She stood on the planked walk, staring at the ship floating down the Thames. Hope ebbed from her, leaving with that vessel.

A pair of frizzy-haired harbor doxies sidestepped her, whispering behind their grimy, fingerless gloves. Sobs gushed freely from Lydia. Her body doubled over from the ache pummeling her.

“I’m such a fool.”

“Female histrionics. I never understood the need for all that drama and blather,” an amused male voice said behind her.

She spun around.

“Edward?” He was a watery blur. She swiped her eyes with the heels of her hand, and another gulping wail shook her body.

There he stood, blond-brown queue a mess, the same scuffed boots he wore in his greenhouse every day, and his black tricorn hat pulled low.

“I myself make it a rule to avoid such women.” His lips twitched, then broke into a broad smile. “But with you, I could make an exception.”