Ashton: Lord of Truth (Lonely Lords Book 13) (18 page)

Harpster was arrogant, self-interested, greedy, lazy, and untrustworthy. A solicitor could be all those things and still be competent, as could an earl.
Ashton had sacked Harpster because such a man couldn’t be allowed to have anything to do with fashioning marriage settlements.

Not when Ashton himself could barely fathom such an undertaking.

He set that thought aside and made his way to the Earl of Hazelton’s abode, though the hour was still early for a social call. Hazelton was in his
library, correspondence in piles around him, a tortoiseshell cat who rivaled Solomon for size and self-possession lounging amid the chaos.

“I don’t have your list of scandals yet,” Hazelton said, coming around the desk. “And if you’re here to beg off regarding
Tuesday’s levee, spare me your pleading.”

Ashton wandered the shelves of books, wondering how many had actually been read. Most, he’d guess. His lordship had a mind that did not tolerate
boredom.

“For your information, Hazelton, I’ve met the sovereign twice. On both occasions, he harangued me about the presumptuousness of a certain
Northumbrian coal nabob whose importuning for a spot on the honors list annoys the royal person. Though I’ve not been to Newcastle since I was
fifteen, George expects me to know this worthy—I’m from ‘the north,’ after all—and to inspire him to leave off lusting for a
barony.”

“You’ve been introduced to the king
twice
?” Hazelton was surprised, which was some satisfaction in itself.

“The Duke of Atholl and I get on well, and Ewan dragged me to meet George nearly three years ago. Your neighbor, Viscount Landover, sent a letter of
introduction, and some of his friends were good enough to speak on my behalf.”

Hazelton used his quill pen to tease the cat’s nose. “So my patronage isn’t required?”

Ashton liked Hazelton, but the time had come to make a few things clear.

“Your good intentions are appreciated, but if you ever again commit my time without my permission, I will show you how a bastard Scotsman expresses
his displeasure with another’s rudeness.”

Hazelton sat back, his dark features shuttering. “Rudeness? I arrange for you to spend time in the presence of your king, and you thank me with that
insult?”

Ashton leaned over the desk. “Do I commit your time without consulting you? Does your countess even take that liberty? Does your
father-in-law-the-bloody-duke speak for your time or constrain your freedom with stupid social obligations?”

The cat played with the quill, mangling one end, then batting the whole feather over the side of the desk. Ashton maintained a glower that had convinced
three-quarter-ton draft stallions to turn up as biddable as lambs.

“I apologize, Fenwick. It won’t happen again.”

“When you’re trying to be humble—and failing badly—you might consider using the title,” Ashton said, picking up the white
feather. “How is your countess?”

Hazelton rose with the cat in his arms. “She also reminds me to use your title, but I thought you were avoiding it.”

“I am, for now, but my days as just another breathtakingly handsome face are numbered, thanks in part to you. I need the name of a trustworthy
solicitor.”

The cat took up a perch on Hazelton’s shoulder, which gave the earl the air of a sorcerer—or an eccentric.

“I thought you used Harpster. He’s reputed to be competent.”

“I let him go. Got airs above his station and wasted my time. Harpster took to corresponding directly with my English tenants, and they with him. I
never gave him leave to speak for me in that fashion. The correspondence grew unnecessarily heated and costly. That sort of assistance would soon land me
in the poorhouse.”

“I see.”

The cat tried to lick Hazelton’s ear, which moved the picture they made squarely into the eccentric camp.

“Harpster could not contain his enthusiasm for negotiating marriage settlements,” Ashton said. “I gather a canny solicitor can ensure
those negotiations are more time-consuming than the courtship itself. I don’t care for that approach to marriage, and I don’t care for being
told my situation is so delicate that even a lazy London solicitor knows more about how I should go on than I do.”

Ashton plucked the cat from the earl’s shoulder. The beast must have weighed nearly twenty pounds.

“Fenwick, you can’t—”

“Kilkenney. I need the practice.”

“Kilkenney, you can’t toss aside everybody who tries to help you step into the earldom’s shoes.”

Ashton’s patience hit the end of its tether. “How long ago did I assume the title?”

“Several years.”

“How long ago were you married?”

“About the same.”

“Do you expect other men to tell you how to manage with your countess?”

“One doesn’t manage with Maggie. One worships from a respectful distance, or an even more respectful proximity.”

“I’ve been the earl for as long as you’ve been her husband. Bugger off, Hazelton, and don’t defend those trying to take advantage
of my generous nature. I don’t want the most expensive, respected, well-established firm of solicitors. I want somebody hungrier and less impressed
with their grandfathers’ portraits.”

What Ashton longed for were the days when he’d had no use for solicitors of any kind.

“I know of a firm that might suit you. The youngest member is a bastard, in every sense of the word. He uses the family name and was raised in his
father’s household, but the talk never seems to entirely die down. He’s surly, does not suffer fools, and has too good an opinion of
himself.”

“Sounds eminently qualified.”

Hazelton used the mangled pen to scratch a direction on a slip of foolscap. “Will you come to the levee?”

Ashton set the cat on the desk, careful not to disturb his lordship’s piles of letters. “Wouldn’t miss it. We’ll take my carriage,
and then you’ll join me for lunch at my club.”

Hazelton held up both hands. “I’ve apologized. You needn’t belabor the point. I’ll be happy to join you for lunch, though I’d
rather be invited than commanded to appear.”

Ashton scratched the cat’s ears in parting. “Your sister always claimed you were a smart lad. What’s this solicitor’s name?”

“Damon Basingstoke. You’ll get on with him famously.”

Helen was off to groom Marmaduke, or so she’d claimed, and Pippa had gone across the alley to visit with other domestics during the late-afternoon
lull before supper preparations. Solomon had left the house at midday and probably wouldn’t be seen again until morning.

Everybody had somewhere to be and somebody to be with, except Matilda. She considered doing some baking, because the last apple tarts had met their fate at
breakfast, but baking created a mess and meant she’d have to remain in the kitchen for the next two hours.

She could read, though she’d read her six-book library many times. Other than skimming the morning paper to watch for news of Drexel and Stephen, she
avoided the inflammatory drivel that passed for London journalism.

Ashton had brought a few books with him. He’d probably not mind lending her one or two, provided she returned them prior to his remove to the Albany.
Matilda started for the stairs, then paused at the sitting-room door.

Was any pretext more transparent than borrowing a book?

A door opened above, and Ashton stepped out of his rooms. “Matilda. I was wondering if I might borrow needle and thread?”

He wore a subdued version of morning attire, though his ensemble was a bit rumpled, as if he had caught a nap on the sofa in the past hour.

“I’m happy to do a spot of mending for you,” Matilda said.

He pulled the door closed and came down the steps, his deliberate tread an echo of Matilda’s heartbeat.

How did one embark on a liaison so temporary, it needed another name? She’d seen Ashton Fenwick’s exquisite finery, heard Helen describe his
matched team and his grand rooms at the Albany. Biding at that august address, he’d rub shoulders with the sons and cousins of all the best families.

Which meant that when he left Matilda’s household, he’d be well and truly lost to her.

He stopped on the step above. Close enough that Matilda caught the scent of heather and had to link her hands behind her back lest she grab his cravat and
haul him close for a kiss.

“I lied,” he said. “I have my own sewing kit, and I’m as handy with a needle as the next bachelor. I wanted an excuse to seek you
out.”

Matilda moved up a step, and then one more, so she was eye to eye with him. “I was about to ask you for the loan of a book.”

“I have several. Do you read French?”

“Yes, but that’s not the point.”

He cocked a hip against the bannister. “I see.”

“I’m glad somebody does. I have no idea what I’m about. You make me feel things in the dark that sunder my reason. Then at breakfast,
it’s ‘pass the salt’ and ‘lovely weather we’re having.’ Do I sit in my parlor and hope you’ll come by with
mending, take you fresh biscuits, or slip into your bed in the dark of night?”

“Matilda?”

“I’m babbling. This is a novel experience. Even when I was a debutante, anticipating my first waltz, even on my rubbishing wedding
night—”

Soft lips pressed against her mouth. “A gentleman doesn’t presume, my dear. The next move belongs to the lady.”

She rested her forehead on Ashton’s shoulder and kept her hands and her kisses to herself.

“You are in error, Mr. Fenwick. Ladies do not make
moves
. They smile, they favor a fellow with a dance, they tat lace, and go barmy, but
they do not march into a gentleman’s quarters and announce a desire to have their way with him.”

Though Matilda would, before that gentleman left for the most commodious quarters in the metropolis and forgot she existed.

“Let’s do an experiment,” Ashton said, taking Matilda by the hand and leading her up the stairs. “I assume the house is empty but
for the two of us?”

“It is.”

Ashton opened his door and escorted Matilda straight into his bedroom. “If you would please state a desire for my person now, the experiment will be
complete.”

“One hears the Scots are prone to eccentricity.”

“We’re prone to genius, also modesty. Ask me, Matilda.”

The bed sat two yards away, a venerable monstrosity that seemed to be everywhere Matilda looked.

“I’ll feel pathetic,” she said. “Begging you for... for that.”

“Never beg. Simply tell me you want me to be your lover.”

The words made her shiver. “In broad daylight?”

“I want you to be my lover.”

At first, Matilda thought Ashton was instructing her, but as he unknotted his cravat and shrugged out of his coat, she realized he was stating a fact.
He wanted her to be his lover
.

The shiver took on an edge of pleasurable anticipation. She’d dared elude the law, dared to seek safety in her enemy’s backyard. Surely she
could dare to indulge in an hour of passion?

“I know nothing of being a lover, and I was no kind of wife, to hear my late husband tell it.”

“Then he was a blundering disgrace.” Ashton draped his coat over the back of a chair and started unbuttoning his waistcoat.

“What are you about?”

“I’m showing you what’s on offer,” he replied, hanging the waistcoat over the jacket, “in broad daylight. I revel in a
daylight loving, myself. A lady at her pleasures is a beautiful creature.”

Matilda had never been a beautiful creature. “Don’t you dare throw that shirt to the floor.”

He pulled his shirttails from his waistband. “I was about to toss it over the chair.” The shirt came off over his head, and Matilda forgot all
about daylight and Scottish modesty. Ashton was naked above the waist, and all at once, regret stole over her.

“I never saw my husband unclothed, but he wouldn’t have looked as you do.” The difference would have started with Ashton’s defined
musculature and a sprinkling of dark chest hair. Althorpe had been tall, but pale and running to fat. The more significant difference would have been that
Ashton Fenwick was entirely at ease without clothing.

Althorpe’s expression when anticipating marital privileges had been impatient, imperious, and disdainful. Matilda was to accommodate him, ask no
questions, and make no demands.

If she offered Ashton Fenwick mere accommodation, he’d toss it straight out the window.

“Your expression is more disgruntled than eager,” he said, standing directly before her. “Am I taking too long?”

Matilda had no conscious thought to put her hand on his chest. Her hand simply ended up there, over warm flesh, smooth muscle, and odd, crinkly hair. The
rhythm of Ashton’s heart beat beneath her palm in a steady tattoo.

“My marriage was miserable.”

She’d thought those words a time or two, but compared to the upheaval following Althorpe’s death, the prison her marriage had become was a
detail.

Except, it wasn’t. Saying the words aloud reminded Matilda of months spent immured in the countryside, where she was to read improving tracts, await
her husband’s brief visits, and pray to conceive a son. The time spent in Town was worse, ignoring pitying looks on the few occasions Althorpe
bothered to escort her.

“I’m sorry,” Ashton said, enfolding Matilda against his naked chest. “Shall I be your revenge on the old boy’s sainted
memory?”

“It’s not that simple,” she replied, letting him have some of her weight. “Althorpe was a miserly martinet twenty years my senior.
His only son could do no wrong. I was to provide a spare, which I failed to do. The boy took a fancy to me. I wouldn’t know how to entice Solomon
over the back stoop with a fresh haddock, but according to my husband, I was Lilith, the temptress.”

Ashton stroked a hand over her hair. “It’s no’ supposed to be like that. Shame on them both, father and son. They’re a discredit to
the male gender.”

He spoke softly, but his words were also a sentiment Matilda hadn’t heard from another soul. For Ashton to pronounce sentence so easily, so
confidently, relieved a niggle of self-doubt Matilda had carried for years.