Unraveling the Earl (27 page)

“Am I the only one who finds it queer that Hastings and
Mountjoy are sharing a harem of harlots between them?” Alice, Lady Piedmont,
asked as she gracefully lowered herself to a spindly chair in Lord and Lady
Easton’s theater box.

Georgie lifted her opera glasses to watch as Killjoy slapped
Henry on the back in a show of camaraderie understood only by men. “A few
ladies does not a harem make.”

“I count an even dozen, each one more brazen than the next,”
Alice replied with a wave toward the crowded box across the pit. “But I was
speaking to the curious friendship that seems to have sprung up between the two
gentlemen this past week.”

“Men are odd creatures,” Beatrice, Lady Easton murmured in
agreement and Georgie lowered her glasses long enough to smile at Henry’s
half-sister who shared his golden good looks and effortless charm.

“None so odd as the duke,” Alice replied, lifting her own
glasses. “No offense, Miss Buchanan.”

“None taken,” Georgie assured her.

“Oh, look, Georgiana, there is Mrs. Smythe,” Beatrice
exclaimed in a hushed whisper as if the lady might hear her over the din of the
audience chattering away through intermission. “Two over from Henry’s box.”

Georgie found the golden-haired lady in time to watch her
turn to her companion, her hands fluttering as she engaged the young man in
conversation. “Are you certain the lady is Mrs. Smythe?”

“Constance Smythe, nee Barnaby,” Beatrice assured her.

“She seems awfully young.”

“The gentleman beside her is her son, Milton,” Alice said.
“Not yet twenty years of age and already a divine lover.”

“Honestly, Alice to hear you tell it you have lain with
every single gentleman in the theater,” Beatrice replied with a laugh.

“And one or two of the married variety,” Alice said without
an ounce of shame.

“I don’t believe she is the same Connie in the portrait,”
Georgie murmured, studying the lady and her stocky son. “Her eyes are too wide
set, her smile too cheerful. Her son is nineteen, you say?”

“I know it seems unlikely Mrs. Smythe is your mother, but
not impossible,” Beatrice persisted. “Perhaps she married immediately after your
birth and the young Mr. Wilton came along right off.”

“An intelligent lady conceives the heir on her wedding
night,” Alice said. “And the spare on the first night she allows her husband
back into her bed.”

“That is luck, not intelligence,” Beatrice argued.

“No, luck would be going to the marriage bed with a bun
already in the oven.”

“How on earth would that be lucky?” Beatrice asked.

“If the bun is not of the groom’s bakery, the lady would be
lucky to have nabbed a father for her babe,” Georgie offered as her opera
glasses drifted back to Henry’s box as if they had a will all their own. “If
the bun belongs to her groom, she would be lucky enough to have sampled his
baking before tying herself to his spoon for all eternity.”

“His spoon?” Beatrice repeated around a giggle.

“Long handled, one would hope,” Alice drawled. “Are you
going to allow one or more of those trollops to test the length of Hastings’
spoon, Miss Buchanan?”

“His lordship is free to stir up a baker’s dozen buns,”
Georgie replied as a pretty woman with dark hair piled atop her head sashayed
into Henry’s box to join the fray. “It is nothing to me.”

“No? Then we won’t be hearing a wedding announcement at my
ball?”

“Hush, Alice,” Beatrice said.

“I am only asking the question we have all been wondering
since Hastings carried Miss Buchanan from Olivia’s foyer only to pop over for
breakfast the next morning sporting a swollen eye, a fat lip and a lunatic’s
grin.”

“Yes, well…one doesn’t ask the question outright.”

“One does if one wants to know the answer.”

Georgie ignored their exchange as best she could while she
watched Henry greet the latest addition to his harem with the brush of his lips
over her gloved hand.

Honestly, why did he not send the lot of them scurrying from
his box?

Henry looked across the theater with a rueful smile and
Georgie recognized his game.

Marry me, Georgie. Marry me and save me.

She could send the ladies scurrying willy-nilly with no
effort whatsoever. All she need do was march into his box and claim the
handsome earl as her betrothed, thereby sealing both their bargain and their
fate.

“It does seem rather an odd coincidence that Henry and his
grace are both injured,” Beatrice said, blatantly fishing.

“Coincidence, my left bum cheek,” Alice replied with a
laugh. “I no more believe Hastings came to be sporting that blackened eye
attempting to tame a frisky mount than I believe the Duke of Mountjoy’s lip was
split open during a run-in with bandits on the London Road.”

Georgie’s neighbor, the wicked Mrs. Fontaine, appeared in
Henry’s box and wrapped one hand around his forearm in a proprietary manner
that had Georgie gritting her teeth in vexation.

The voluptuous auburn-haired lady stood too close, her
breast pressed to Henry’s arm, her long neck arched back as she beamed a smile
his way, one that even Georgie, watching through opera glasses across the space
of the theater, recognized as oozing invitation.

“Henry would never lie to us,” Beatrice protested.

“To my way of thinking, he has done a number of things
entirely out of character in recent weeks, beginning when he ran off after Aunt
Hastings funeral and threatened to pummel poor Everett when he remarked upon
it.”

“Henry threatened Everett?”

“He was seen skulking about in Bedford Square for weeks. And
according to my lady’s maid he had his servants harrying all over Town to
weddings and funerals.” Alice ticked off the instances of his lordship’s lunacy
on her gloved fingers.

“Why would Henry send his servants to weddings and
funerals?”

“For the same reason he made an ass of himself in Olivia’s
parlor only to follow up by carrying Miss Buchanan from the house for all the
world to see.”

Mrs. Fontaine turned to face Henry who stepped back and to
the side. The lady followed his retreat, deftly maneuvering him into a corner
at the back of the crowded box until they disappeared into the shadows.

“Well? Are you going to tell me the reason?” Beatrice
demanded.

“He is finished planting trees all over London,” Alice
replied.

“Trees?” Beatrice repeated.

“I could make neither heads nor tails of it, but your
brother said he’d struck a bargain that would have him planting trees in only
one garden.”

“That makes no sense whatsoever,” Beatrice said. “Henry has
never planted trees in London or anywhere else for that matter.”

“Good lord, Beatrice,” Alice drawled. “It is a metaphor.”

“For what?”

“Perhaps you ought to ask Miss Buchanan.”

Georgie could no longer make out Henry’s shape in the dark
corner, saw only the glimmer of Mrs. Fontaine’s silver gown sparkling in the
candlelight.

“Damn and blast.” Georgie surged to her feet and tossed her
opera glasses to her abandoned chair.

“You’d best hurry if you intend to keep any tilling of
fertile land confined to your garden walls,” Alice taunted.

“Gracious, you…that is…surely Henry and you have not…” Beatrice
stammered.

“Honestly, Bea you are as daft as a duck when you are
carrying a babe,” Alice said. “It’s as if your brain leaks from your head in
direct proportion to the expanding of your waistline.”

“But they only just met,” her cousin retorted.

“They have clearly known one another for quite some time,”
Alice contradicted with a roll of her eyes. “Long enough to plant a few
seedlings, at any rate.”

“Hush, Alice.” Beatrice’s words were delivered by rote, her
brow furrowed as she attempted to work it all out in her head.

“Do you know, I have done the calculations and if I had a
pound for every time someone told me to hush I could pay off the debts of every
single gentleman in London,” Alice drawled.

“And one or two of the married variety,” Georgie tossed out
as she turned and fled from the box, leaving the two women laughing in her
wake.

Intermission was nearly over, the lights lowering as she
wound her way between the ladies and gentlemen lingering in the hall.

Damn it all.

She was going to marry the too beautiful and too bloody
sweet earl.

There was no choice. If she were to be utterly and
completely honest, a frightening endeavor for a woman who’d lived a lie for
most of her life, the choice had been taken from her at Idyllwild while a
tempest of biblical proportions raged. As the dry earth had soaked up the rain
after the long drought, so too had Georgie’s barren heart soaked up Henry’s
passion and adoration.

If he hadn’t found her in Olivia’s parlor and carried her
away into the night, she would have snuck into his house to have her wicked way
with him. Even if she had to tie him to the bed to see it done.

She could no more give him up than she could lop off her
arm.

“Foolish man,” she muttered, causing one dawdler to glance
back at her before shifting out of the way.

“Not you,” she called as she breezed by the man.

“He is rather foolish,” the woman at his side replied with a
smile.

The short journey from Beatrice’s box to her brother’s was a
veritable obstacle course. Georgie passed Lord Piedmont with a wave, squeezed
between Lord and Lady Casterbury who were embroiled in a heated argument having
to do with his whereabouts during the first act, and finally shoved a gangly
dandy aside as she neared her destination.

A line of ladies spilled into the corridor while still more
jockeyed for position within, one pretty blonde woman with curves too generous
for her tiny stature even elbowing a willowy redhead in the ribs in an attempt
to squeeze through the melee.

“Mercy Anne, you come away from there this instant,” a tall,
slender woman ordered as she gripped the other woman’s arm.

“I only want to peek inside, Mama.”

“Absolutely not,” the lady forcibly turned her daughter away
and nearly plowed into Georgie.

“I beg your pardon,” the older woman exclaimed, stumbling
back a step and freezing as their gazes collided.

Eyes of bright blue stared back at Georgie from a face that
was smooth and pale and lovely in a cold, contained sort of way. Her forehead
was high and noble, her cheekbones elegantly angled and her nose a long,
straight blade above thin lips and a pointy chin. Her golden hair was streaked
with gray at the temples and wound atop her head in a coronet.

“My God,” the lady whispered, what little color she
possessed in her cheeks falling away as she swayed on her feet.

“Mama, are you unwell?” The lady beside her, a girl of
perhaps eighteen or nineteen who’d inherited her mother’s blonde hair and blue
eyes but little else, looked from her mother to Georgie and back again.

“Connie.” The name fell from Georgie’s lips on a tremulous
breath.

“Are you acquainted with one another?” the girl asked.

“No.” Just the one word but it landed like an arrow of ice
in Georgie’s chest, freezing the air in her lungs.

“But she called you by—”

“No, I say.” Connie stepped back, pulling her daughter with
her. “Come away, Mercy.”

Pivoting, mother and daughter brushed by Mrs. Fontaine as
she departed Henry’s box.

“Do you know that lady?” Georgie reached out to grasp her
neighbor’s arm.

“Baroness Drummond?” Mrs. Fontaine asked turning to look at
the retreating ladies.

“But what is her given name?”

“Ethelred.”

“Ethelred? You’re certain?” How could that be? Surely
Georgie hadn’t mistaken the recognition she’d seen in the lady’s eyes.

“Ethelred Brundile Octavia Drummond, nee Conrad,” Mrs. Fontaine
assured her.

“Conrad,” Georgie breathed.

“Are you unwell, Miss Buchanan?” the auburn haired beauty
asked, her voice soft and solicitous. “You look a bit peaked.”

“I am fine.” The lie tripped off her tongue with ease.

“Then I’ll leave you.” Mrs. Fontaine turned away as the
orchestra began to play, the violins picking out the first notes of a
melancholy melody.

Georgie felt oddly connected to her surroundings, the music
seeming to come from inside her head, the narrow hall to expand and contract
with each breath she took, the soft lights to flicker as she blinked painfully
dry eyes. It was as if she’d somehow become a part of the space, existed only
because the walls and floor and roof existed. Or perhaps she had ceased to
exist at all, was simply the ghost of a woman who’d once tread these halls.

Georgie pondered the possibility as the music soared, the
violins joined by horns and a drum that pounded out a pulse that perfectly
matched the beat of her heart, eerily slow and steady. A ghost, yes, but not of
these walls. She was the ghost of the girl who’d been abandoned at River’s End,
the ghost of the lady she might have become had she not begun life as a lie,
had all of the days that followed until this night not been built upon that
lie.

She’d met her mother, stood close enough to breathe in her
scent, roses underlain with the sickly sweet stench of fruit left to rot in the
sun. She’d seen the fine lines that feathered out from eyes that had held
recognition, followed by shock and finally denial.

That denial was but one more lie on top of the mountain of
lies that made up the ghost of Georgie Buchanan.

A trilling giggle followed by a bellowing laugh rose above
the orchestra’s haunting melody and awakened Georgie from the strange numbness
that had encapsulated her.

Whipping around, she found Henry looking at her from within
a circle of five or six women still remaining in his box. Gifting her with a
slow lopsided smile, he cocked his head to the left as his eyes filled with
tenderness.