Unraveling the Earl (36 page)

Beyond a few curious gazes, no one paid the slightest
attention to the crested carriage on the muddy road.

Nor did anyone open the massive doors set deep into the
walls of the keep when Henry hopped down from his carriage, his boots sinking
into a good three inches of muck.

It wasn’t until his groom pounded on the doors for a good
five minutes that they swung open.

“What the bloody ‘ell do ye want?” A giant with a shiny bald
head and a gold hoop dangling from his ear glared down his bulbous nose. Behind
him men and women rushed around laughing and shouting, dogs barked, crockery
and silver clanked.

“Mind your tongue,” Thomas retorted. “You are speaking to the
Earl of Hastings.”

“I don’t care if ’e be the fuckin’ king o’ England,” the man
bellowed. “We ain’t got time for ’ospitality, what with a storm coming down the
mountain.”

“I have come for Miss Georgie Buchanan.” Henry pitched his
voice to carry over the cacophony.

“Ach, go on wit’ ye.”

“Seamus Campbell, since when do we allow travelers to
languish outside in the cold?”

Henry peered past the unlikely butler to find a tiny woman
with dark hair scraped back from a pale, pinched face striding through the throng.
Dressed in gray from her high-necked blouse tucked into a pleated skirt to her
half-boots, the woman pushed the giant aside and opened the door wide.

“Bloke says e’s the Earl o’ Hasty,” Seamus grumbled. “An’
‘e’s looking for Georgie.”

“Welcome, Lord Hastings,” the lady said, her words colored
by a stiff French accent. “I am Mrs. Alogne. I’m afraid Miss Buchanan has not
been in residence this past year. But you’d best come in and allow me to make
you comfortable.”

“We’re ta’ be snowed in.” Seamus replied with a grin that
showed off a gap between his two front teeth.

“Snowed in?” Henry repeated in alarm.

“For a wee bit.”

The Scotsman’s definition of a wee bit greatly differed from
that of the Earl of Hastings who found himself snowed in at the Duke of Mountjoy’s
castle for fifteen days.

On the sixteenth day Henry headed south again, the horses
picking their way carefully down the mountain pass and splashing through a near
flood of murky melting snow.

Three days later his carriage crossed into England.

Five days after that, as he took luncheon in the crowded
taproom half a days journey from London, he opened the last volume of his
mother’s diary. It was slow going, wading through the ramblings of a lady whose
mind jumped between past and present without rhyme or reason.

His head was aching by the time he reached the final pages,
his gaze jumping ahead, skimming over a paragraph devoted almost entirely to
her desire to see Olivia married to the Marquis of Belmont.

A single word caught his eye at the bottom of the page, a
name written in spidery script.

Connie’s child paid me a call today. Not a boy at all but
a tall red hen, a gangly girl with her father’s features and nothing of her
mother at all. Oh, my darling angel, how I remember our time together, secluded
at Bastion’s Cross, just the two of us.

“Jesus Christ.” Henry jumped to his feet and sprinted across
the room, heedless of the stares following him or the elderly man he nearly
knocked to the ground to get out the door.

James and Thomas were fiddling with one of the fresh horse’s
harnesses in the stable yard.

“James, how long have you been driving for my family?” Henry
demanded, splashing through the muddy yard.

If James was surprised by the sudden query or by his
master’s excitement he gave no indication, simply removed his hat and scratched
his head. “Right about twenty years, I suppose, my lord.”

“Did you drive Lady Hastings and a friend, a blonde lady, to
the country some twenty-one years ago?” Henry asked.

“Can’t say as I did.”

“Damn,” Henry muttered. “How about my father, did you ever
drive him to an old hunting lodge somewhere to the north? I’m not certain where
exactly. I only know it was part of Mother’s dowry and went to Olivia upon her
first marriage.”

“You wouldn’t be meaning Bastion’s Cross, would you?” James
blinked rheumy eyes. “Bastion’s Cross is clear up north, just to the other side
of the border.”

Georgie strolled into the small church in Bethnal Green on a
blistery cold October afternoon as if she had received her own gold-embossed
invitation in the morning post. She’d received no such thing but seeing as the
groom was a distant relation she felt no need to slink in at the very last
moment.

It was the ninth wedding Georgie had attended in the two
months since her own botched betrothal had fallen by the wayside. Each one of
them had brought her to tears.

Of course, it seemed as if everything brought her to tears
these days. She’d become a watering pot, worse - a fat rain barrel without
benefit of a spigot to stem the flow.

She cried if her bread was unevenly toasted, if her tea was
served tepid, if the fire in her bedchamber burned low.

The previous day when Tag had tossed her hands in the air in
defeat, unable to button her favorite lavender striped gown around her
expanding girth, Georgie had wailed like a baby. She’d howled to the ceiling of
her bedchamber when she’d discovered her fat toes could no longer be squeezed
into the pretty blue half-boots she’d bought to replace those she’d abandoned
in her mad dash to leave Town.

Thankfully, after that one unfortunate incident involving
the Countess of Piedmont’s beaded ebony gown, Georgie’s belly had settled but
for the occasional nausea upon waking. The insomnia that had plagued her for
nearly her entire life was long gone. In fact she fell asleep at the drop of a
hat and often in the most awkward of places, on a park bench, in a milliner’s
shop, at the museum and once while waiting in line for lemonade during
intermission at a matinee.

“Dearly beloved,” the minister began and Tag shoved two
fresh handkerchiefs into Georgie’s hands in preparation. “We are gathered here
today to join together Miss Louisa Anne Fitzroy and Mr. Chesterfield Chatsworth
McDougal.”

“Chesterfield Chatsworth?” Georgie let loose an inelegant
snort and the groom turned to look over his shoulder, his eyes widening when he
found her sitting in the sixth pew on the right.

She lifted her hand and wiggled her fingers at him, laughing
outright when he flushed and whipped his head back around.

Chester may have been her nemesis and a ribbon thief to
boot, not to mention a would-be peeping Tom of the worst sort, but his wedding
was positively lovely.

Georgie cried throughout the entire ceremony, quiet little
sniffles interspersed with the occasional gulping sob that turned the heads of
the invited guests and the groom more than once. When Chester led his bride
down the aisle and past the pew Georgie occupied, he shot her a pleading look,
one that begged for mercy.

Poor Chester, she really ought to have called on him to set
his mind at ease when the scandal did not appear in his paper.

But those first days had been a nightmare, a great yawning
pit into which she’d fallen.

It had taken her two full weeks to emerge from the darkness,
two weeks she’d spent cocooned in her carriage with a frightened Tag who’d sat
by helplessly while Georgie railed at fate and her own vicious heart. Brain had
driven her through the countryside, day after day, mile after mile until
finally they’d stopped at an inn on the coast in Essex.

The next morning, as the trio trekked across the inn yard,
Georgie had heard music coming from the church, a tune as familiar to her as
her own voice. Following it, she’d found a wedding just beginning in the quaint
little white-washed clapboard church across the street.

She’d also found hope, bittersweet and barely recognizable,
but hope nonetheless. And so she’d returned to London, returned to the site of
her greatest folly, only to find she’d been abandoned by everyone who mattered
to her.

Killjoy had decamped for parts unknown, leaving behind
nothing more than a hastily scrawled note telling her that he’d gone off after
a pair of pretty tits and a bit of Buchanan business.

According to Bobbin, whose two mischievous great-nieces
worked as parlor maids at Henry’s town house, the earl had packed a bag and
climbed into his carriage the day after his cousin’s ball. With only an ancient
coachman and a single footman, he’d set off for Hastings Hall, stopping long
enough to retrieve a heavy trunk, its contents a mystery that had garnered much
debate amongst the servants, before heading north.

Discreet inquiries had revealed that his relations had
evacuated the city along with the rest of the
ton
, gone off to their
various country estates to entertain themselves with hunts and house parties.
All but Alice and considering their last encounter, she rather doubted the lady
would allow her through the front door.

With nothing else to do but wait, and knowing full well
Killjoy hadn’t meant a word of his ridiculous threat to displace her from Lady
Joy’s house, Georgie had settled back into her pretty floral bedchamber and
resumed attending weddings. Only now she did not do so in hopes of gleaning
information but rather to shear up her flagging spirits. She invariably felt
better after she’d indulged herself with a wedding.

On occasion, funerals brought about the same wondrous
feeling of hope and renewal, especially if the dearly departed had been
embroiled in some sort of scandal but much loved all the same. Why, then she
might just wander away feeling almost happy.

Almost, but not quite.

When Georgie stepped from the church into a world gone
bitter cold and gray, she floundered for a moment, not certain where to go,
what to do. “What were we about before we dipped into the church?”

“We were after finding you peaches,” Tag replied, pushing
her hands deep into her muff and staring up at the gray sky. “We’d best give up
on that else we’ll get caught in the snow.”

“Snow in October?” Georgie rested her hands over the bump
beneath her buttery-yellow pelisse, the bump that would soon be too big to
hide, though by Dr. Sam’s calculations she was only four months along.

“They were snowed in at Joy on the Mount for weeks,” Tag
replied. “And aren’t the English forever coveting what we Scots have? Even an
early winter.”

“Have you received a letter from your mother, then?” Georgie
paid little attention to their conversation as she watched Chester standing
beside his bride accepting the well-wishes of his wedding guests, all the while
darting nervous looks over his shoulder.

She really ought to send around a note to assure him all was
forgiven.

Perhaps such selfless acts of kindness would become second
nature to her with a bit of practice.

“A letter?” Tag repeated. “Yes, of course. A letter arrived
from Scotland.”

“Mmm, that’s nice. I hope all is well.”

“To my way of thinking, things can’t get any worse.”

“Is something amiss at The Mount?” Georgie asked, turning to
her maid in surprise.

“What could be amiss?” Tag asked, her gaze flicking up and
down the street bustling with carriages and wagons and the occasional
pedestrian rushing to complete whatever errands forced them out of doors in the
unseasonably cold weather.

“I’ve no idea, but truly you are acting most peculiar,”
Georgie replied.

“Yes, well, I haven’t your skills, have I?” Tag demanded,
color blooming in her cheeks.

“Which skills would those be? And why are you looking about
all wild-eyed?”

“Where is the bloody carriage? I will skin him alive if he
mucks this up after asking, no begging for my help,” Tag muttered.

“Who? Brain?”

“Ah, there it is!” Tag waved like a maniac when the carriage
appeared at the corner of the street, stopping to allow a beer wagon to pass.

“Tatiana Alogne, what on earth is the matter with you?”
Georgie demanded.

In answer, Tag took hold of her hand and gave her a look
that was both pleading and fierce. “I love you.”

“Oh, dearest, you know—” Georgie began, blinking against the
tears gathering in her eyes.

“Yes, I know you love me,” Tag interrupted with a wave of
her free hand. “The thing is, I know you love Lord Hastings best of all. Don’t
try to deny it. We both know you were but the breath of a rabbit from marrying
his lordship.”

“A what?” Georgie asked with a laugh, swiping at the
moisture hovering on her lashes.

“A rabbit…no a hare’s breath.” Tag produced a fresh
handkerchief from her pocket and offered it to her mistress.

“I think you mean a hair’s breadth,” Georgie dabbed at her
eyes.

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

Georgie tugged on a curl that had fallen from her bun to
dangle along her neck. “The breadth of a single hair.”

“Oh.” Tag’s eyes widened. “I always wondered how one might
measure a hare’s breath.”

“I’ve no idea but I imagine the smell isn’t too pleasant.”
Just imagining it caused her stomach to heave a bit. “Although I may be wrong,
hares do nibble on grass and flowers so perhaps their breath is quite sweet.”

“Do hares not eat mice and other small rodents?” Tag asked,
a frown screwing up her face.

“Hush, don’t mention meat, not even small meat,” Georgie
begged.

Tag’s features smoothed out and she smiled. “Oh, no you
don’t, Georgie Buchanan. You’ll not be turning my attention.”

“You were the one who started in on rabbit’s breath,”
Georgie protested with an answering smile.

“You picked up my blunder and ran with it just to change the
topic,” the dark-haired girl accused.

“I don’t even remember what the topic was,” Georgie replied
in exasperation as her carriage rolled to a stop in the street. Brain hopped
down from the boot while Silas hunched over the reins, his hat pulled low.

“Never mind.” Tag squeezed Georgie’s hand before releasing
it and turning to the footman. “What took you so long?”

“We were after Georgie’s peaches.” Brain opened the door and
let down the steps. “Your carriage and six fat, juicy peaches await.”

“Thank you, dear heart,” Georgie put her hand in his but
instead of helping her in the carriage, Brain pulled her into a tight embrace.

“Good gracious, what’s come over you?” she asked in
surprise.

“Do you remember the advice you gave me?” Brain whispered.
“About dragging Tatiana away from that pimply faced groom? You had the right of
it, Georgie. Sometimes a man must drag a woman about, by the hair if needs be,
so she knows he desires her above all else.”

“Did it work then? Is that why you and Tag are behaving so
queer?”

“I haven’t done it yet. But I will.”

“I don’t understand.” Try as she might she could not make
sense of the past three minutes.

“You will.” Brain released her to all but shove her into the
carriage.

“Honestly, the pair of you have gone stark raving mad,” she
grumbled as settled into the forward facing seat. “To be sure, that’s what
comes from thwarted desire.”

“That explains it, then.” The gravelly snarl was Georgie’s
first clue that the world as she knew it was tilting on its axis, much like the
carriage as the Earl of Hastings lumbered through the open door, causing the
conveyance to list to the side and blocking the meager light.

He cursed when his head collided with the door frame, his
hat falling away to reveal tangled curls in want of a trim and a sorry excuse
for a beard covering his handsome face.

Wearing a black greatcoat open over a shirt that might have
once been white, dusty buff trousers and tall, mud-spattered boots, he pulled
the door closed behind him and dropped to his knees before her as the carriage
lurched into motion.

Before Georgie could form a coherent thought, let alone
words, Henry wedged her legs apart, wrapped his arms around her and yanked her
flush against him, from chest to loins. His mouth covered hers, tongue driving
deep, curling, stroking. His scent, earth and sweat and horse surrounded her.
He tasted of mint and desire and desperation, the combination delicious,
decadent and devastating.

Henry broke their kiss and pinned Georgie with a glittering
glare as he set to work on the buttons of her pelisse. “I have been wondering
why I have been running about stark raving mad these past two months. It’s a
relief to know it’s nothing more than thwarted desire.”

“Oh, I like that,” Georgie replied around a strangled laugh,
her heart beating so hard he must hear it above the clatter of the wheels on
cobblestone streets. “You think you can disappear when I need you most only to
reappear and I’ll offer up a cure for what ails you?”

“I have been to Scotland and back, twice, looking for you,
the last three days of my journey on horseback. I am exhausted and irritable
and so fucking relieved to find you I can’t think at all,” he answered,
dragging her skirts up to bunch around her waist. “We’ll talk it out, make up
and laugh about it later. Right now I need to be inside you.”

“Oh, Henry,” Georgie whispered, cradling his cheeks, his
patchy beard surprisingly soft against her palms. “You are so blasted sweet.”

“I’m not sweet, Georgie,” Henry muttered, one hand clenching
her hip, holding her balanced on the edge of the seat, the other freeing the
buttons of his breeches. “I’m a bloody animal. I’m sorry, love, I can’t wait.”

The head of his shaft delved through her curls, dragged over
her clit and Georgie sucked in a gasping breath in anticipation, her hands
dropping to his shoulders. He prodded her quim, notched the fat head within,
barely penetrating, and she sighed, clutching handfuls of his coat.

In one smooth stroke, he thrust his pulsing cock into her
body, slow and steady, his eyes open, watching her intently as he drove deep,
filling her completely.

“Yes, my love,” she gasped, undone by the beauty of their
joining.

“Don’t ever leave me again,” he ordered, his arms winding
around her back as he slowly withdrew and plowed deep once more.

Lust and love and a wondrous joy twisted within her,
entwining and overlapping and for one odd, suspended moment she imagined she
could feel her poor, battered heart healing and growing stronger.