Unraveling the Earl (15 page)

Georgie pointed her long fork at his crotch. “Strip down and
get into the bath before it cools.”

Henry stepped back with his hands raised in surrender,
meeting her eyes and holding them. “I do have some experience with apologies
and I am truly sorry, sorry from the bottom of my heart. You asked for my help
only to have me lash out at you, to turn my own failings into your sins.”

“Oh, Henry,” she breathed, lowering the fork to her side.

“I am sorry I yelled at you, that I named you Lucifer.”

“I’ve been named worse.”

“I’m sorry I implied you were not a lady of quality,” he
continued, on a roll and wanting to get it all out. “You are the finest lady I
know, of the highest possible quality.”

“Henry, you needn’t apologize for any of that,” Georgie
said, her eyes shining. “Friends are like family. They argue, they rant and
rave, and in my experience rarely, if ever, apologize for any of it. It never
occurred to me we were doing anything different, not until you crowned me the
twenty-seventh woman you’d used and tossed aside.”

“I didn’t mean it, love.”

“I know. I knew it only moments after you left me.”

“I could no more toss you aside than I could saw off my
arm.”

Henry expected her to laugh. Instead she spun away to fiddle
with her forgotten bacon.

“Georgie?” he came up behind her, laid his hands on her
shoulders and bent to press a kiss to the back of her neck.

“You mustn’t fall under my spell,” she said, her voice soft
and lyrical, almost as if she sang a fragment of a ballad, one Henry recognized
in some distant part of his mind.

Henry smiled against her warm flesh, brushed another kiss
over her downy soft hair. She’d cast a spell over him, of that there was no
question. But he wasn’t so foolish as to fall in love with a woman who could
never be more than a mistress.

No, he would assist her in finding her mother and in return
she would favor him with her nubile body, her companionship, her laughter and
warmth. And when she was either reunited with Connie of the golden locks and
blue eyes, or accepting of the woman’s refusal to embrace her daughter, Georgie
would return to her native land and be reclaimed by clan Buchanan, there to
choose a husband from among the gentlemen farmers and libertines.

And Henry would go on as he had been, a wiser and better man
for having known a saucy Scots lass possessed of extraordinary eyes, an
interesting face, long elegant limbs, the prettiest nipples he’d ever seen, and
a passion that was as natural and honest as the woman herself.

“No,” he agreed. “I mustn’t fall under your spell. But
perhaps you might consider casting an enchantment over me? One that is of a
temporary duration, say a few weeks, a month or two.”

“I know just such an enchantment,” she exclaimed, spinning
around and gazing up at him.

Way up.

“Did the rain shrink you?” he asked.

“Bare feet.”

“You’re short.”

“I most certainly am not short. I am of perfectly normal
height,” she replied indignantly.

Henry would have liked to argue the point but she was
smiling at him when less than an hour previously he’d been certain he’d chased
her away, the kitchen was filled with the smells of a country breakfast, and a
warm bath and a warmer woman awaited him.

“Bath, breakfast, lovemaking,” he pronounced.

Reclining in the copper tub, submerged to his chest, Henry
watched Georgie tackle the chore of slowly pouring her fresh milk through
cheesecloth into an enamel jug.

“What do you know of your mother?” he asked as she upended
the pail to be certain she got every last drop.

“Precious little.” She glanced up at him with a wry smile.

“How can you be certain she is Connie of the golden locks
and bright eyes?”

Georgie lowered the pail to the table and fiddled with the
cheesecloth before wadding it into a ball and tossing it into the sink. “I’ve a
number of clues and they all lead to the lady in the portrait.”

“What clues have you?”

“I’ve my father’s description of her as told to me by Lady
Joy,” she answered, crossing the room to whisk up a low stool and set it beside
the tub. She lowered herself to sit and reached for the floating bar of soap,
her fingers swirling through the water, sending it gently rippling over his
abdomen and his shaft submerged below the suds. “A fair-haired beauty with
azure eyes.”

“That particular description fits half the women in
England,” he replied, watching as she rubbed the soap between her hands,
setting up a creamy lather and sending the scent of jasmine drifting through
the kitchen.

“The timing is right.” She met his gaze, smiled almost
shyly, and dropped the soap back into the water with a small splash.

He held his breath in anticipation of those long, elegant
fingers washing his chest, his belly and below.

Masking his disappointment as best he could, he let out a
small sigh when she reached for his hand resting on the rim of the tub.

“George Buchanan rode into London in May of ’10 in search of
buyers for his wool.” Taking his hand between both of hers, she worked the
lather through his fingers and over his palm, her touch slow and languid. “I
was conceived shortly thereafter.”

“So we know that your mother was also in London,” he agreed,
settling back in the water and closing his eyes.

“She was enjoying her first Season.” Her husky voice wrapped
around him, mingled with the slow caress of her fingers over his hand to lure
him into a comfortable lassitude.

“How do you know it was her first Season? It might have been
her fifth or sixth, or even her tenth,” he murmured. “She might not have been a
party to Society’s entertainments at all, but rather a servant or shopkeeper.”

“Lady Hastings would hardly have befriended a shopkeeper,”
she replied, the fingers of one hand wrapping around his wrist while the others
twisted between his, curling over his knuckles before continuing to the tips.

Henry opened one eye to find her head bent over his hand.
She lined up their palms as if to measure the fit and he was struck once more
by the delicacy of her long, slender fingers and the near translucency of her
pale skin.

“I suppose we must assume your mother was a gentleman’s
daughter else Mother would not have befriended her.” Henry laced his fingers
with hers, wrapped them over the soapy back of her hand and she lifted her head
to gift him with a slow smile. “Still, they might have been longtime friends.
Connie might have been a married lady or a widow.”

“Except your mother had her portrait painted,” she replied.

“I’m afraid I don’t comprehend the significance,” he said,
caught by the gentle curve of her lips and her eyes, more lavender than blue in
the dimly lit room.

Georgie blinked and let out a soft hiss of breath. “Good
gracious. Have you never seen the miniatures scattered about Lady Hastings’
apartments?”

“Georgie, I can count on one hand the number of times I have
entered Mother’s rooms,” he explained. “And I certainly never poked about in
her personal effects.”

“There is no poking about required,” she countered. “They
are everywhere, on the desk, on the mantel, on the walls. Twelve in all.”

“Mother moved into her Portman Square house as soon as I’d
reached my majority, taking nearly all of her possessions with her.”

“But when you were a boy? Did you never visit her
bedchamber?”

“As I said, on one hand.”

“And when she returned to Hastings Hall with you last year?”
she persisted.

“I cannot remember visiting her rooms.”

“Not once?”

“Mother did not invite anyone into her private domain.”

Dropping her gaze and placing his hand on the rim of the tub,
she scooped up the soap once more and set about creating a cloud of suds,
seemingly focused on her task to the exclusion of all else.

Seconds ticked by, seconds Henry measured by the beat of his
heart as he strove to battle an incomprehensible sadness mingled with confusion
and some other emotion he could not identify, one that had him feeling as if
he’d somehow lost his way.

Georgie tossed the soap back into the water and set to work
lathering his arm from wrist to elbow, the only sound in the room the pelting
of the rain against the window above the sink.

Disconcerted by the silence, wishing he might change the
subject but knowing there was more to the story, Henry finally said, “I suppose
you’d best tell me about the portraits.”

“Each year, at the beginning of the season Lady Hastings
took a debutant under her wing.” There was a new hesitancy to her voice, a
stilted quality to her words. “Presumably to shepherd them through the perils
of a first Season.”

“That hardly sounds like my mother,” he replied wryly. “She
wasn’t one to extend herself toward another out of the goodness of her heart.”

“Yes, well, children often do not see their parents as they
truly are,” she murmured, peeking up at him through her lashes as she leaned
forward to lather his upper arm and shoulder. “No more than parents see their
children with true clarity, or husbands and wives their spouses for that
matter.”

“Too true,” he replied, shifting about in the tub so that
she might reach his neck, smiling as she followed the unspoken command and
trailed her fingers over the column.

“Whatever Lady Hastings’ motivations may have been, she
invited Connie into her sphere and had her portrait painted to add to her
collection. The portraits and the ladies who sat for them became known in some
circles as the Angels.”

“Your mother was one of the ladies who consoled my mother in
her time of need,” he whispered with a smile, finding an oddly comforting
symmetry in the otherwise tawdry tale.

Georgie reached for the soap again and brought it up to his
chest where she swirled the bar about in a desultory fashion, seemingly lost in
her thoughts.

Not so Henry.

His thoughts were concentrated upon her movements, upon the
drag of her thumb over first one nipple then the other, the glide of her
fingertips over his collarbones, the brush of the heel of her hand over his
belly.

Cock twitching, Henry closed his eyes once more the better
to enjoy her ministrations.

“To be sure, I cannot imagine how my father, a sheep farmer
from Loch Canon with nary a shilling to his name and only a distant connection
to the aristocracy, seduced the lovely lady,” she continued, her voice low and
sultry. “But seduce her he did.”

“A libertine of the worst sort,” he teased as she released
the soap and allowed it to slither down his chest into the water.

“Or the best, depending upon one’s perspective,” Georgie
replied with a breathy laugh. “When my father returned to Scotland he left the
lady in a delicate condition.”

“He simply abandoned her?”

The sound of wood scraping over stone reverberated around
the room and Henry opened his eyes to find her scooting her stool toward the
end of the tub.

“Lift your leg, my lord,” she purred.

Henry complied, raising his leg up and over the rim as she
retrieved the floating bar and set about working up a lather once more.

“My father was unaware of Connie’s condition when he fled
from Town just ahead of his creditors,” Georgie said, lifting his foot. “It
wasn’t until after I was born that she wrote to him. By the time he received
the letter I’d already been placed with the Grahams.”

“Where do the Grahams live?” he asked, watching as she bent
his foot back, her nimble fingers stroking between his toes and over and around
his heel.

Christ, he never would have imagined his feet were so
devilishly sensitive but the feel of her hands on him had his balls tightening
and his shaft rising in the warm water.

“River’s End,” she answered without looking up.

“Right, a rather rickety estate,” he replied, smiling when
her tongue came out to press against her top lip as she concentrated upon her
chore. “But where is River’s End?”

“Somewhere nearby.”

“Nearby to Idyllwild?” he asked in surprise.

“Nearby to whichever of your mother’s properties the ladies
retreated when Connie’s condition became apparent.” Georgie looked up then, her
gaze drifting over his face.

“What makes you so certain our mothers retreated to one of
my family’s estates?”

“I had already guessed it by the fact that when Lady
Hastings brought me to the Grahams she was traveling in a carriage with your family
crest on the door,” she explained. “And her diary confirmed it. She wrote of
taking her darling angel to one of the family properties, to a small house in
the country where the neighbors were unlikely to recognize her as she’d never
before visited the area. But I’ve journeyed to each and every estate your
family owns and learned absolutely nothing.”

“That is why you were in Somerville,” he muttered as the
riddle of her appearance at his mother’s funeral was solved. “And why I found
you in Deerfield yesterday.”

“You aren’t going to lambast me yet again for luring you
into my clutches for nefarious purposes, are you?” she asked with a grin.

“Even I would not be so foolish.”

“You are hardly foolish,” she argued. “I read of Idyllwild
in your mother’s diary and came to investigate. And you are correct, I was in
Somerville in hopes I might learn something of my past by visiting hers.”

“Mother has never stepped foot on Idyllwild land, nor would
she take an unwed woman expecting a child to Somerton Hall, to her childhood
home,” Henry pointed out.

“I was desperate.” Georgie trailed her hands over his ankle
and around his calf and shin to his knee. “I’d just come from Hastings Hall
where your butler told me of your mother’s passing.”

“Over tea,” he added, surprised anew that his butler would
invite an unknown lady into the hallowed halls of the ancestral estate.

“A lovely fellow, Crotchety,” she replied, leaning forward
to reach his thigh, one long braid falling over her shoulder to trail in the
water. “As the household was in mourning, I could not tour the house and the
servants did not travel into the village where I might meet them to question
them. With nothing else to do, I journeyed to Somerville in hopes I might hear
some gossip in the village. I have found that funerals tend to loosen tongues
as people reminisce about the dearly departed.”

“Instead I found you on the village street and lured you
into my clutches.” Henry reached for her braid, lifting it from the water and
wrapping the end around his fingers.

“For your own nefarious purposes,” she teased.

“My purposes were hardly nefarious,” he argued.

“I might have been an innocent,” she pointed out. “A naïve
lady unable to resist your seduction.”

“I don’t recall seducing you.”

“What would you call that nonsense with the buttercup? And
your wandering hands and lips? All that ribald talk and the attempts to corner
me in one alcove after another?”

“I hope that if I ever set out to seduce a woman I can do
better than that,” he replied with a frown. “I do know the way of it, the
poetry and flowers and flattery.”

“Henry, you seduced me.”

He met her eyes and saw the truth of her words.

“I was seduced by your passionate kiss in the hall, by your
joy and amazement when I took you into my mouth, by your boyish wonder when I
teased you about pleasuring myself in your bathing room, by your uncontrolled
passion when you pinned me to the wall.”

“Huh, imagine that. I seduced you without even realizing
it.”

“I don’t need to imagine it. I was there and it was better
than all my fantasies rolled into one.” She tossed his word back at him with a
grin.

“Surely you’ve been seduced before,” he replied.

“Not that I recall.” Georgie rose to her feet with the stool
in one hand and circled around the tub. She sat again and, without a word, held
out her hand.

Lowering his soapy leg into the water, he gave her the
other.

“So the lovers who preceded me, you seduced them?”

“For my own nefarious purposes.” She took up the soap and
gifted the second appendage to the same treatment, beginning with his foot, her
slippery fingers gliding over his arch and between his toes.

“You seduced Jacob, the son of a physician of the Hebrew
faith? How did you know how to go about it?”

Georgie laughed softly, her eyes sparkling. “Men are simple
creatures. It takes little to lure them into mischief.”

“But you were a virgin.”

If he had blinked just then, Henry might have missed the
expression that crossed her face, surprise and perhaps chagrin, before she
ducked her head.

“Jacob was not your first lover,” he murmured as the reality
of that bit of knowledge seeped into his mind.

“I never said he was,” she replied, her lower lip inching
out into a frown as her hands circled his ankle and trailed up his leg.

“But who—”

“Land sakes, my lord, surely we aren’t going to trade tales
of all of our past lovers, are we?” Smiling, she tickled the back of his knee
as she peered up at him. “Goodness, your bath water will be cold before we get
through the first dozen of yours.”