Unraveling the Earl (21 page)

“Henry!”

The Earl of Hastings rose to stand in the stirrups, his gaze
swinging over the heads of the ladies perched in open carriages and sitting
primly on the backs of docile mounts and two gentlemen slouched elegantly in
their saddles.

“My goodness, Hastings, whatever are you about?” Lady
Winthrop asked with a tittering giggle, her golden curls bobbing over her
forehead in accompaniment.

“I thought I heard someone calling my name,” he replied,
settling in the saddle once more.

Summer was winding down toward autumn, the weather was fine
and the park crowded with the cream of the cream of English Society.

Sweet cream.

Fuzzy mold.

What the hell had that Georgie meant by her cryptic message?

“Will we see you at Lady Casterbury’s ball this evening?”
the widowed Mrs. Bishop asked, one slender hands caressing the side of her
carriage, her pale green eyes traveling over his thighs.

“I rather doubt it,” he replied.

He’d been back in Town for little more than a week but he
might have been absent for years the way the ladies behaved toward him, cooing
and sighing and eyeing him up, down and sideways. He felt rather like a diamond
earbob that had gone missing only to roll from beneath a chair in a crowded
ballroom, prompting all the ladies to claim the trinket as their own.

“Oh, never say you will not grace us with your presence,”
Lady Winthrop cried.

“You must come,” Mrs. Bishop demanded, shooting the younger
lady a fulminating glare. “You promised you would dance with me just as soon as
I’d tossed off my mourning.”

“I did? That is, I did. And I shall. But not this evening.”

“You shall not be attending Mrs. Granger’s ball rather than
Lady Casterbury’s?” Another lady whose name escaped him, an auburn-haired
beauty, joined the fray, angling her mount between Henry and Lady Winthrop’s
carriage.

“I don’t know any Mrs. Granger,” he replied, the beginnings
of a megrim tapping at his temples.

“It’s settled then,” Mrs. Bishop exclaimed. “We shall see
you at Lady Casterbury’s route and you shall dance the supper dance with me.”

“He shall do no such thing,” Lady Winthrop hissed.

“Now see here,” the pretty auburn-haired lady snarled. “You
do not own Lord Hastings. He is quite free to dance the supper dance with
whomever he pleases.”

Had they always been this competitive, this woefully brazen?

Henry looked around him, disconcerted to find those ladies
not directly involved in the escalating melee eyeing him with lascivious
delight. Jasper Clive and Benedict Edwards, Lord Carlton, the only other
gentlemen within the tight circle, smiled, the former likely finding his plight
amusing while the latter hoped to lap up the leftovers.

“Uncle Henry!”

Again Henry stood in the stirrups to see over the bickering
ladies.

Fanny stood atop a small knoll madly waving her arms above
her head. Beside her Charlie hopped up and down. Both children held hoops in
their hands, colorful ribbons blowing behind them on the breeze.

Henry returned his rump to the saddle, finding his first
smile since entering the crowded park. “You must excuse me, ladies.”

He waited for the pretty woman whose name he could not
recall to back her mount out of his way. Instead she only met his gaze and
slowly licked her lips.

“I apologize, Miss…”

“Mrs. Fontaine,” she purred, edging closer.

“Yes, well, Mrs. Fontaine, it was a pleasure to see you
again but I really must be on my way.”

“Oh, but we’ve never met,” she replied, her voice pitched
low. “I rather hope we might alter that lamentable state of affairs.”

It was all Henry could do not to roll his eyes.

“You aren’t leaving us, are you?” Mrs. Bishop asked, leaning
over the side of her carriage and gifting him with an unobstructed view down
her bodice.

Her breasts were pretty enough, if a bit too large, he
decided.

“Alas, I must away,” he replied with a lackluster attempt at
sounding forlorn.

“Lord Hastings and I are going for a ride,” Mrs. Fontaine
said, placing one gloved hand over his where it rested on his thigh. “A long
slow ride.”

That little bit was too much. Brazen was one thing.
Shameless was another.

Lady Winthrop sucked in a shocked breath.

Mrs. Bishop reared back as if she’d been slapped.

Jasper Clive laughed while Lord Carlton broke into a fit of
coughing.

“Mrs. Fontaine, I am afraid you are mistaken,” Henry said,
careful to keep his voice gentle and his words polite. “My niece and nephew are
in the park and as I have not seen them for some time I intend to head that
way.”

“I’ll ride with you,” she offered. “Wait while you pat their
heads or whatever uncles do.”

“Some other time, perhaps,” Clive came up behind Henry on
his black gelding. “Carlton and I have some pressing business matters to
discuss with the earl.”

“Just so,” Henry replied gratefully.

Mrs. Fontaine blinked in obvious surprise and slowly backed
her horse out of his way.

“I say, that was rather an interesting state of affairs,”
Clive said when they’d made their farewells and ridden away from curious ears.

Henry turned to glare at the auburn-haired, dark-eyed man
riding beside him only to find his friend grinning around the cheroot that
dangled from his lips.

“Two minutes more and the ladies might have come to blows,”
Carlton agreed, ebony locks any lady would envy swaying as he urged his horse
ahead of them where the path narrowed in a turn.

“Leave off,” Henry muttered, heat sweeping up his neck.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen ladies behave with such
blatant disregard for propriety,” Clive continued. “Not even when vying for
your attention.”

“A new strategy, Hastings?” Carlton tossed the question over
his shoulder. “Playing hard to get?”

“I’m not playing at anything,” Henry replied, the pounding
at his temples gaining momentum.

“Hastings has no reason to play games,” Clive agreed. “He
already has quim lined up as far as the eye can see.”

“Then what’s with you?” Carlton asked. “You’ve not bedded a
single lady since you’ve returned to Town.”

“I only returned eight days ago.”

“And how do you know he hasn’t dipped his wick since his
return?” Clive asked the other man.

“I know because he’s been carousing with me while you’ve
been doting upon your actress,” Carlton replied. “And we have neither one of us
gotten under a lady’s skirts.”

“Did you find a country miss to keep you company up north?”
Clive asked. “Perhaps a rustic wench captured your attention and now you cannot
get her out of your head?”

“I don’t see how it is any of your business,” Henry replied
stiffly.

“It isn’t,” Clive agreed. “I only ask out of concern as your
friend.”

“Oh, so now you are concerned for me?”

“Country lasses are a different breed than what you are
accustomed to.” Clive pulled the cheroot from his lips and flicked it to the
ground as they took the next turn in the path, leaving the fashionable folks
behind.

Green grass spread out before them with the Serpentine
snaking along to the left and the small hill from which Fanny had hailed Henry
rising to the right.

Fanny and Charlie were nowhere in sight.

“A country miss will sink her claws into you,” Clive
continued, his eyes focused somewhere in the distance and his voice soft. “Lord
have mercy, but she will dig deep into your darkest recesses and pull your
hidden desires to the surface. She will make you so bloody happy you can’t see straight,
and ask for so little in return.”

“Listen to the man,” Carlton urged, dropping back to ride
beside Henry. “He knows of what he speaks.”

“You fell in love with a country miss,” Henry said,
surprised though he couldn’t have said why.

“I did not recognize the prize I’d stumbled upon during that
long winter,” Clive replied with a shake of his head. “When the thaw came, I
thought only that the Season was due to begin and I’d best make my way south to
amuse all the ladies with my newfound toys and talents.”

“The silk ties and leather crops.”

“There are no secrets among the ladies, no matter how
well-bred they might be,” Clive agreed with a sly grin. “Isn’t that so, Lord
Stallion?”

Henry squirmed in the saddle, heat prickling along the back
of his neck. “So you just left her and high-tailed it for Town?”

“I am afraid I did not just leave my love, I gave her away,
passed her on to this bloke like a suit of clothes I’d outgrown.” If Clive felt
an ounce of shame at his confession, he hid it well, smiling as he brought one
hand up to shade his eyes against the sun’s glare.

“And she went?”

“Quite cheerfully.” Carlton replied.

“And that was the end of it?”

“Would that it were.”

“She cast a spell on the rake, caused his heart to break,
and when the rogue came to his senses, she refused all attempts to mend
fences,” Carlton sang softly.

“Why is it the songsters are forever defiling lullabies?”
Clive asked.

“Lack of imagination,” Carlton replied.

“That little tune was written about you?” Henry asked in
astonishment. “I heard it making the rounds in the taverns and bawdy houses but
I had no idea you were the intended victim.”

“It might have been worse,” Clive answered with a shrug.
“There are plenty of words which rhyme with spank and bind. I would hate to
have the lady’s name besmirched in such a fashion should anyone ever discover
it.”

“As if they could,” Carlton replied with a chuckle. “One
would have to be a very desperate fellow to go traipsing through those
mountains in search of the lady. Hell, the man who did would find himself lost
or eaten by wolves. Wolves in sheep’s clothes.”

“Speaking of wolves.” Clive shot Henry a look from beneath
his dark brows.

“I take it yours are baying at the front door?”

“The back, but it is only a matter of time before they come
around to the front. Cybil would be horrified should her neighbors see the
dunners pounding on her door.”

“Will a hundred pounds see you through the end of the
Season?” Henry asked.

“Two will see me until a Christmas wedding.”

“Lady Hortense’s father has agreed to the match?”

“Have you never seen Lady Hortense?” Carlton asked with a
snicker. “Horse face Hortense they call her. Her papa is only too happy to have
Clive take her off his hands.”

“That seems rather a sad…” At a loss for how to complete the
sentence, Henry allowed his words to trail off as he spotted Fanny rolling her
hoop along the riverbank while two women watched from a bench nearby.

“State of affairs,” Clive finished for him. “Fear not my
friend, my affairs will hardly alter a bit. Cybil is all for the match, and the
steady income it will provide. You needn’t worry I will foist her back on you.”

“I did not foist Cybil Fairley off on you,” Henry muttered
as Fanny spotted him and tossed aside her hoop to dash toward the path. “And I
wish people would stop suggesting I did.”

“No, you merely introduced us and offered me fifty quid to
see her home.”

“Precisely.”

“And you have continued to dip into your coffers as needs
be, all for the greater good.”

“Speaking of foisting off mistresses, isn’t that Miss Amherst
sitting under that tree?” Carlton piped in, squinting against the sun’s glare.
“Who is that with her?”

“Miss Amherst was not my mistress. And the lady beside her
is Mrs. Sophia Miles, the children’s nurse.” Henry slid from the saddle with
barely enough time to plant his feet firmly on the ground before Fanny launched
herself at him.

“Uncle Henry!” she squealed, wrapping her arms around his
neck as he lifted her against his chest. “I am so happy to have found you.”

“As am I,” her uncle agreed before bussing her cheek and
lowering her to the ground. “You remember Mr. Clive and Lord Carlton.”

“How do you do?” She dipped into a clumsy curtsy, all smiles
and flashing eyes for Carlton.

“Lovely as ever, Lady Francis,” Clive greeted with a wink
which the little lady ignored.

“Are you quite certain you will not wait for me to grow up?”
Carlton teased. “Two decades ought to do it, then we can marry and live happily
ever after.”

“I do hate to break your heart, but I am going to marry a
prince.”

“Oh, well, I suppose I can bear to lose you to a prince, but
nothing less.”

“Go on with you,” she replied with a wave of her hand. “You
are a shameless flirt.”

“That I am,” the raven-haired man agreed.

“I shall allow you to continue to flirt with me until such
time as I marry and become a princess,” Fanny replied. “But then you must
desist, lest my husband take umbrage and challenge you to a duel. The prince is
a crack shot.”

“Will we see you at the theater this evening?” Clive asked,
turning his attention to Henry.

“Uncle Henry cannot come out to play with you,” Fanny
replied, shifting from flirtatious to contemptuous in a heartbeat. “He is to
come to dinner at my house.”

“I am?” Henry asked.

“Mama sent out invitations just this morning.”

“Ah, that would explain it.” Henry had been up with the dawn
and encamped in the center of Bedford Square for hours before hurrying off to
Hyde Park.

“Mama has invited a select few to join her for dinner this
evening,” Fanny said, returning her attention to Clive and tilting her head way
back to look down her nose at him. “It is a pity you are not invited.”

The gentleman’s jaw clamped tight.

Henry smiled. No lady, old or young, could put a man in his
place quite like Lady Francis Marie Gibbons. And she had taken a decided
dislike of the man from the moment they met.