Unraveling the Earl (28 page)

She tore her gaze from his, turned and fled down the hallway
to the stairs at the back of the theater. With her skirts tangling around her
legs, she took the steps at a near run, desperate to escape her past and a
future that she could never claim as her own.

Georgie had never given much thought to fate or karma or
kismet, rather believing her destiny was her own to control, to scheme and
strategize and seduce to her will.

But something or someone, be it God or Lucifer, fortune or
chance, blessing or curse, had sent her careening down the hallway at just that
precise moment. Had she started out from Beatrice’s box a minute sooner she
would have been at Henry’s side saving him from himself when Connie arrived to
pull her daughter away from the fray. A minute later and mother and daughter
would have already come and gone before she arrived at his harem of harlots.

A single minute, one way or the other, and Georgie Buchanan
would have been betrothed, honestly and truly betrothed for good or ill, to the
Earl of Hastings.

Pushing open the heavy door at the back of the theater, she
stepped into a dark alley populated by a handful of gentlemen lounging against
the wall and seated on wooden crates scattered about, all of them puffing on
cigars or cheroots away from the accusing eyes of their wives and mothers.

The air was warm and stagnant and filled with the haze of
tobacco.

“Have you a spare?” Georgie asked of a young man seated on
an overturned ale keg.

“Certainly,” he exclaimed, digging around in his breast
pocket.

“You’re Milton Smythe, aren’t you?” she asked of the stocky
fellow.

“At your service.” Milton bounded to his feet and waved to
his vacated seat.

Perching on the edge she took the slim cigarillo with a hand
that shook and waited while he lit the tip before drawing the tobacco deep into
her lungs.

“Have we met?” He balanced on the balls of his feet and
puffed out his chest.

“We might have been brother and sister,” she answered with a
smile that wobbled.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your mother looks like a cheerful sort of woman.”

“Yes, yes she is.”

“How long have your parents been married?” Silly, but she
could not help the tiny spark of hope that flared.

“Coming up on twenty-five years,” he answered after a pause.

“Too bad. I think I would have liked you for a brother.”

“Seeing as we aren’t brother and sister perhaps you might
like me for something else?”

Georgie laughed despite the pain and confusion and fury that
had settled around her like a heavy cloak.

“Can’t blame a bloke for trying,” he replied with a grin.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, George?”

Milton jumped and spun around as the Duke of Mountjoy
barreled through the door.

“You’ve a Goddamn earl wanting to marry your scrawny ass,”
Killjoy continued in his customarily snarling Scots burr. “And you’re out here
flirting with this pimply faced boy!”

“I…that is…she isn’t…we weren’t…” Milton stuttered as he
circled around to place the barrel and Georgie between him and the bellowing
behemoth.

“Leave off scaring Milton,” Georgie ordered.

“Milton, is it?” the duke asked.

“At your service.”

“Be gone, boy.”

Georgie shook her head at the speed with which the boy
obeyed the growled command. “One day you are going to come up against someone
who is not afraid of you.”

“I don’t remember your earl quaking in his boots when I
found him in your bedchamber.” Killjoy reached for her cheroot and took a quick
drag before blowing out three perfect smoke rings. “And quit changing the
topic. You’re going to chase Hastings off with your surly temper fits and
constant pouting.”

“I am not pouting,” she protested. “And Lord Hastings has
yet to see me in a temper.”

“Then I pity the poor bloke,” he replied. “He hasn’t a clue
he’s tying himself to a shrew.”

“I never asked him to marry me,” she huffed out. “In fact,
when you barged into my bedchamber uninvited I was in the process of telling
him that he’d best go looking elsewhere if he had a mind to marry.”

“Bastard’s lucky I didn’t kill him,” Killjoy groused. “Tying
you to the bed like some halfpenny whore. Now I think on it, I might still kill
him.”

“He was proposing, if you must know.”

“And he had to tie you up to do it?”

“Hastings offered for me,” she insisted. “There was no need
to engage him in fisticuffs.”

“Offered?” he bellowed. “He should have been begging for
your hand. You’re the daughter of a bloody duke!”

“The unacknowledged daughter of a duke.”

“He’d have acknowledged you if he’d lived long enough,” he
argued. “And hell, I’ve acknowledged you as my cousin.”

“Twice removed, a distant connection at best.”

“Is that what has you running scared?”

“I am not running.” Georgie tossed her hands in the air in
frustration. “I’m here aren’t I?”

“I won’t change my mind, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“If you leave that man standing at the altar, you won’t have
a home to run away to.”

“Lady Joy left her house to me,” she reminded him.

“That might have been her wish but we both know I own it and
you live there only on my sufferance. Besides, how would you pay the servants?”

“I’ve her jewels.”

“The family jewels belong to me, to be passed on to the
future duchess.”

“Where would you find a woman brave enough to marry you?”
She’d only meant to tease but some new emotions, pain or confusion flashed in
his eyes before he looked away. “Killjoy?”

“Leave it alone, George,” he muttered. “Why don’t you want
to marry Hastings? He seems a good chap and he’s got a mean left jab.”

“A glowing recommendation, to be sure,” she drawled.

“Are you worried he’ll continue to fuck anything in skirts?”

“Not in the least,” she assured him.

“Threatened his bollocks, did you?”

“Did you?”

“Damn right, I did.”

Georgie reached out to clasp his hand and gave it a quick
squeeze.

“Why aren’t you happy, George?”

“I’m happy.” Or she had been until she’d careened into a
woman who smelled of spoiled fruit.

“You’ve barely said three words to Hastings since we signed
the marriage contract,” he pointed out. “He has called upon you every day this
past week only to find you out and about, traipsing all over kingdom come doing
God knows what. You’ve allowed the man to escort you only to one dinner with
his family and that with Tatiana as chaperone.”

“I distinctly remember you ordering me to cease dallying
with the dandy until after the vows have been spoken,” she replied,
sidestepping for all she was worth.

“When have you ever paid a lick of attention to what I say?”
he barked. “I’m not talking about sneaking him up to your chamber for a quick
tumble. I’m talking about showing the man a bit of affection he doesn’t have to
beg, buy or steal from you!”

Georgie tossed her cheroot to the ground and rose to pace
away from her cousin only to spin about and glare at him.

“Tell me straight,” he ordered. “None of your lies and
half-truths, no nifty sidestepping and no turning the question around on me. I
saw you outside his box. Why didn’t you come in and send the lot of those hussies
running for cover? What the fuck is wrong with you that you don’t want to marry
the man?”

“I’ve found Connie.” The words left Georgie in a rush as her
vision blurred and she swayed, dizzy from the cheroot and too little sleep, no
doubt.

“You’ve seen her, spoken to her?” All the bluster left him
and he ran a hand through his unruly red locks, leaving them standing up every
which way.

“She denied knowing me.” Georgie pressed her hands to her
fluttering belly.

“Perhaps she did not recognize you.”

“She nearly fainted at the first sight of me.”

Killjoy approached her slowly and warily, as if she were a
wild animal likely to strike. Or a woman on the verge of her first swoon.

“I think I need to sit down.”

“Damn it, George.” Hands the size of rams’ heads grasped her
arms and Killjoy lowered her to the barrel. “You need to eat. You aren’t
sleeping either, are you?”

“Some,” she hedged as lights flickered before her eyes. “She
looks exactly like the lady in the portrait. She’s taller than I imagined,
slender and elegant. She has a daughter, a pretty little creature with her
mother’s golden locks and bright blue eyes. Do you know what her name is?”

“How would I know her name?” Killjoy brushed her hair back
from her face in a gesture oddly gentle for so burly a man.

“Baroness Ethelred Brunhilde Octavia Drummond.”

“You, of all people, should have guessed she went by a pet
name,” Killjoy muttered.

“Not just a pet name,” Georgie replied on a fractured laugh.
“A boy’s name. She was born Ethelred Brunhilde Octavia Conrad. She shortened
her father’s surname, or perhaps Lady Hastings dubbed her Connie when she
plucked her from that year’s crop of wallflowers.”

“How did you learn her name?” Killjoy asked after a pause.

“I asked Mrs. Fontaine as she left Henry’s box,” she replied.
“I’ve been looking for her for more than a year and had the combined resources
of the greatest families in England assisting in my search this past week. And
I nearly plowed her over on my way to save his lordship and it is one of the
women I thought to save him from who tells me her identity. It’s funny in a
perverse sort of way.”

“What will you do now?”

“She knew,” Georgie whispered, dancing around his question
lest he decide to step in and bungle her plans.

“She knew what?” Killjoy asked.

“Connie recognized me as my father’s daughter,” Georgie
whispered on a broken sigh. “All these years I tried to convince myself she did
not know she’d given birth to a girl. Until I read Lady Hastings’ diary I even
tried to pin the blame on her. But Connie knew, she sent off that letter to my
father to torment him with the knowledge he had a son he would never know.”

“And the bitch sent you to hell,” Killjoy snarled as he
hauled her to her feet and into his arms. “We’ll make her pay, George. We’ll
make her pay or we are not Buchanans.”

Hours later, as all but one of the inhabitants of Lady Joy’s
house slept through a summer storm, a silent figure crept down the stairs. With
only the dancing nymphs to bear witness, a letter was added to the tray of
outgoing mail neatly stacked on a gilded table. The folded parchment was
tattered and well-traveled, a frayed thread of worn blue velvet stuck to the
wax seal, the painstakingly scrawled address just barely legible.

The dark figure hesitated, one hand hovering over the missive
that would serve as payment for all of the lies that had shadowed a girl’s
life, all of the decisions that colored a young lady’s past, present and
future.

A husky sigh broke the silence as the hand fell away and the
figure retreated, quietly ascending the stairs, setting one final scheme in
motion.

Entering Lord Somerton’s Grosvenor Square mansion was akin
to stepping into the dreams Georgie had endured when she’d first arrived in
London, terrible nightmares in which she arrived at a crowded gathering of the
ton
and whipped off her pelisse only to realize she’d forgotten to don so much as a
shift, let alone a gown. There she stood naked but for her stockings and
slippers while the ladies twittered behind their fans and the gentlemen openly
ogled her goodies.

Well-to-do tradesmen and farmers mingled with wealthy
merchants and aristocrats in a spacious front foyer graced with twin marble
staircases that wound up and around to meet on the second floor, forming an
open gallery. Giggling young ladies hung over the balustrade in order to
capture the best possible view of the new arrivals.

Everywhere Georgie looked ladies and gentlemen unabashedly
looked back, some whispering to one another, others silently watching as she
handed her shawl over to a footman. From the balcony a warbling laugh rang out
and she peeked up to see three pretty young creatures dressed in white satin
and ruffles pointing at her.

Thrice while she and Killjoy waited for the couple in front
of them to move on, Georgie looked down to assure her nipples weren’t rising
above the square-cut neckline of her emerald silk gown. She lost count of the
number of times she patted her elegant chignon to be certain her unruly curls
weren’t sticking up this way and that all over her head.

“Why is everyone looking at me?” Georgie asked of Killjoy as
she handed her shawl to a waiting footman.

“Might be you’re the comeliest lass here,” he replied with a
rusty chuckle.

“Go one with you.”

“Truly, you look…” he swept his gaze over her features while
he searched for words.

“Don’t strain yourself coming up with a bit of flattery,”
she teased.

“Pretty. You look right pretty tonight.”

“You’ll turn my head,” she warned.

“Aye, and you’ll likely decide you can do better than an
earl,” Killjoy agreed. “But if I had to guess I’d say all these fine folks are
staring at you because they’ve heard whispers of an upcoming wedding.”

“Damn and blast,” Georgie muttered as her already rioting
nerves took up a jig, dancing along her limbs and reeling about in her belly.
“How could they have heard?”

Killjoy barked out a laugh. “This is London. News travels
faster than spit on a stiff wind.”

“But…I’m not…that is…there’s been no announcement,” she
stammered, pressing one hand low on her belly.

“If you’d been at home when your earl called yesterday,
you’d know he intends to shanghai his cousin’s ball to serve as a betrothal
party.”

“Henry intends to announce…tonight?” Georgie felt suddenly
lightheaded and unable to catch her breath.

“Just before the supper dance so as to make for lively
conversation at table,” Killjoy replied as he steered her toward one of grand
marble staircases. “What’s with all the dried leaves and red and orange ribbon
tacked to the walls and the wheat sticking out of every vase and urn?”

A fat yellow gourd rolled down the stairs and across the
floor and Georgie watched it, waiting, hoping it might roll right into her. If
she were knocked over like a lawn pin perhaps she could fake an injury that
would necessitate her returning to the safety of her bedchamber where she could
bar the door and lock out the world.

“Lady Piedmont might have made mention she’d chosen an
autumn harvest theme,” her cousin grumbled as the gourd narrowly missed her
silver satin slippers. “I could have worn my red coat instead of this fucking
penguin suit.”

Two ladies on the stairs turned to glare at Killjoy who only
glared back at them as if daring them to comment upon his vulgar language. With
a huff the older woman tugged the other back around and they hurried along
their way.

“Damn jacket’s too tight and my trousers are loose enough to
fall down around my ankles.” Killjoy stepped back and circled around her,
coming up on her right and offering his arm as they reached the stairs and
Georgie gave him a wobbly smile in thanks.

“That would be quite a treat for the ladies,” she offered,
valiantly attempting to rein in her quivering panic.

Once again she’d proven herself to be a rash and brash
creature, ignoring good sense in favor of her selfish desire for one last
dalliance with the too-handsome, too bloody sweet earl.

She ought to have known Henry would choose Lady Piedmont’s
annual ball to make the announcement, even without the lady’s less than subtle
hints at the theater. After all, this would be the last ball of the Season, the
last hurrah before the members of the
ton
decamped to spend the autumn
at their country homes.

Killjoy had the right of it, she would have known Henry’s
plans had she received him any one of the numerous times he’d called upon her
in Bedford Square. But she’d thought it prudent, she who’d never given a single
thought to prudence, to avoid him, spending her days tooling around in her
curricle from sun up to sun down, sneaking into weddings as far away as Surrey
and Richmond. Each night she’d crawled, exhausted, into her carriage only to
lie awake, staring up at the silk-covered ceiling as Brain slowly crisscrossed
London, returning to Bedford Square just in time to break her fast.

Not that she’d had the slightest interest in food, not with
her stomach forever tied in knots and her nerves stretched taut. No, it was the
paper waiting beside the plate piled high with fruit and toast that had drawn
her attention. Each morning, as she’d read the paper from front to back, twice
for good measure, and found only the usual gossip and calls for the king to
cease his proliferate spending, she had known a giddy relief, when she ought to
have known impatience and disappointment.

The unexpected reprieve could only go on so long, one
morning soon, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the day after, she would flip through
the paper and find what she’d been searching for, and polite society would know
the truth. When that happened Henry who would never again look at her as if she
were sweet cream atop the berry crumble of his perfect life.

But not yet. The supper dance was hours away still. She had
plenty of time to lure his lordship into an empty bedchamber, a dark corner of
the garden or a cramped linen closet, to have her way with him before sneaking
off into the night. Surely an announcement could not be delivered without the
bride.

“Seems to me I heard there’s a tower somewhere in the
house,” Killjoy said as if reading her thoughts. “Mayhap I’ll toss a buxom
widow over my shoulder and carry her away.”

“Or you could choose one of the unmarried ladies to ravish
her atop the tower,” Georgie suggested. “Catch a bride the ancient Scots way.”

“I’ve a scheme to catch myself a bride already in the
works,” he replied with a grin.

“Have you really?” she asked in surprise.

“And it’s a beauty, too.”

“I’ve no doubt your future bride is a beauty.”

Killjoy might have chosen to consort with some of the
wickedest women on earth but each and every one of them, and surely there’d
been dozens, had been a beauty to his beast.

“My scheme’s a beauty,” he corrected. “You of all people will
appreciate the sheer simplicity and absolute wonder of the thing.”

“Well, are you going to tell me?”

“I’ve a mind to make a surprise of it, a wedding gift, if
you will.”

“Seeing you happily settled would surely be the best gift
you could ever give me.” Georgie squeezed his arm, knowing that whatever scheme
he’d devised would not be given to her as a wedding gift, but rather a
consolation prize.

“Likewise,” he mumbled.

They continued up the stairs and joined the loitering melee
above in silence, Killjoy unapologetically shoving aside a dandy in a
lime-green jacket and pushing between twin debutants without a murmur of
pardon.

The ballroom doors were thrown open, the orchestra just
beginning the first bars of a country dance when Georgie spotted Lady Easton engrossed
in conversation with a wondrously handsome young man adorned in a powder blue
jacket and silver waistcoat.

Beatrice was adorned in a gown of jet silk, without benefit
of so much as a hint of lace or a single ruffle. Her blonde hair was pulled back
and wound into a demure coil at her nape. She wore no jewels beyond a cameo
affixed to a black velvet ribbon wound around her neck.

The show of mourning for the Countess of Hastings struck
Georgie as the height of hypocrisy, just before it struck her as morbidly
funny. Henry and Olivia’s mother had made Beatrice’s life a living hell,
turning her away from her home when she was barely more than a girl,
threatening her and blackmailing her in an attempt to banish her from her
children’s lives lest she corrupt their morals and their good name.

Yet there she stood, regal and lovely, pretending to mourn
the countess.

And then the truth struck Georgie. Beatrice was not
pretending, she was not putting on a show of mourning for Lady Hastings. No,
she’d put aside her own feelings for the lady and dressed in mourning as a show
of solidarity and respect for her half-siblings.

It was an act of selfless love and loyalty so utterly
foreign to Georgie that she almost hadn’t recognized it, had been fully
prepared to chalk it up to hypocrisy and find it amusing.

Georgie blinked back tears and pressed one hand to her belly
in an attempt to tamp down on the fluttering that intensified with each step
she took toward the ballroom.

What was wrong with her? She’d been on the verge of tears
for days and if her stomach didn’t settle sometime soon she was going to go
stark raving mad.

“Now, that’s a lady worth winning,” Killjoy remarked as they
passed and Beatrice looked up with a smile only to tilt her head to one side in
a manner the entire family seemed to have inherited from some illustrious
forbearer. “From her slippers to the bauble at her throat, Lady Easton is the
sort of woman a man would be lucky to call his own.”

“Yes,” Georgie agreed, turning to look back over her
shoulder to find Henry’s lovely sister frowning as her gaze followed them.

“Who’s the boy?” Killjoy asked, entirely unaware of
Beatrice’s silent scrutiny.

“The Marquis of Belmont.”

“Ridgeway’s grandson?”

“Are you acquainted with the Duke of Ridgeway?”

“We played a few hands of cards last night at Cybil’s house
after last curtain.” Killjoy stopped just inside the doors, his shaggy head
whipping around as he took in the scene.

The orchestra, twenty musicians at a minimum, was set up in
one corner of the immense room just to the left of a long wall of open french
doors. Along the opposite wall a line of ladies sat amid a multitude of pots,
vases and urns filled with all manner of stalky grains, dry grass and
willow-wisps. The dance floor was a rolling mass of brightly dressed ladies and
gentlemen interspersed with those members of Henry’s family adorned in shades
of black, gray and lavender.

“Not so different from our harvest festivals,” Killjoy
pronounced. “I’ve a mind to find a spot of whiskey. Will you be all right alone?”

“But of course,” she replied, her gaze swinging about the
ballroom in search of a tall man with broad shoulders and tawny curls.

Henry was nowhere in sight but everywhere she looked she saw
his relations.

Lady Singleton stood just beyond the refreshment table, one
gloved hand gripping the wrist of Lady Heloise while Lady Margaret ducked her
head and fidgeted with the drape of her skirts. The two lovely young ladies
were forever up to some mischief or other. Georgie quite adored them.

Lord Piedmont held court before one set of french doors,
Lord Morris hanging on his every word while Lady Morris watched the couples
sweeping across the dance floor, her gaze lingering on Lord Everett and Mrs.
Fontaine who nearly careened into Olivia and Jack Bentley.

Alice conversed with Lord Baldwin and Mrs. Statham whose
twin daughters, Lily and Rose, took advantage of their mother’s inattention to
slip away, making a beeline for the terrace.

As Georgie watched Henry’s extended family laughing and
talking, moving from one group to the next, confident of their welcome, of
their place in the world, an odd sort of fury coupled with a deep, seething
pain took hold of her, mingling with her nerves and sending her heart racing.

“The lot of them will be your family soon enough,” Killjoy
remarked in an off-hand manner entirely at odds with the glint in his eyes.

“My family,” she repeated, releasing his arm to press both
hands to her belly where it felt as if a hundred tiny spiders danced about
willy-nilly.

“Between the Buchanans and this bunch, you’ll have more
family than you can shake a stick at,” he continued, his voice low and
gravelly. “You can let go of the past.”

“I only wish I could,” she replied, knowing she’d come too
far to do as he suggested.

“Whatever scheme you’ve got brewing, don’t allow it to spoil
your future.”

“No, I won’t allow it to spoil my future.” And she wouldn’t,
by God.

When the debt had been paid in full and the dust had settled
around the debris left in the wake of her vengeance, she would carve out a new
future for herself. That future would not revolve around a man too foolish to
recognize that she was the last woman he ought to make his wife, a man who
would one day open his eyes long enough to see the ghastly mistake he’d made in
tying his fate to hers.

Georgie would be damned before she waited around to see his
blue eyes cloud over with regret, his smile dim until it was nothing but a
perpetual frown and his kind heart wither away until it matcher the useless
bitter lump beneath her breast.