Enticing the Earl (11 page)

A coal popped on the hearth, and the room seemed darker than usual for a long moment. He blinked against the darkness.

And why was that, you fool?

He paused in his line of thought, feeling a sudden cold wash over him. Surely, he wasn't thinking of marrying a woman who had walked into his home and offered herself as a prostitute? No, of course not, that was preposterous….

Except that was not who she was, he was certain of it. Yes, she had a capacity for deep passion at her core, but she was not practiced at it, he had known that at once—she was too surprised and delighted by what she had found with him…and every night brought her new experiences to marvel over—it was easy enough to tell. He felt it with every ounce of his body, saw it and felt it in every reaction she gave him when they came together.

She was always genuine in her open-natured and generous responses to him, never holding back, never pretending. Sometimes he saw her eyes widen in surprise or pleasure, and he tried every night to find new ways to please her; it was becoming his particular joy. He did not recall ever enjoying sharing love with anyone else as much as he did with this lady.

Nor did he have any doubts that she was, indeed, well born, truly a lady.

Why would she not tell him the truth? And how could he persuade her to do so? And why in the bloody hell was she not curled up against him in his bed now, instead of spending the night alone in another bedroom?

With an inarticulate growl, he tossed a pillow against the far wall of his bedroom so hard that a handful of feathers spilled into the air.

When a maid tapped on her door, Lauryn blinked and
rubbed her eyes. It seemed very early. Yawning, she stumbled out of bed and went to unlock the door. If the maid wondered that Lauryn had turned the lock on the door, the servant didn't remark upon it.

The girl placed the breakfast tray on the table, then went back outside to bring in an ewer of warm water. “The earl has ordered your bags to be made ready, ma'am. 'E wants to go see about one of 'is ships. 'E says you should be ready to leave in an 'our.”

“What?” Still half asleep, Lauryn tried to make sense of this. “Where are we going?”

The maid repeated her comment, pouring a cup of tea as she did so. Lauryn sat down and ate some toast and marmalade and drank some tea while she tried to get her thoughts in order.

Had the earl decided he must inspect the salvaged cargo, too? What was the great mystery about this ship, Lauryn wondered, while the maid packed a carpetbag for her.

“Which gowns would you wish to take, ma'am?” the servant asked.

As she had only a couple more new gowns on hand, that was easy to decide. Perhaps by the time she returned, the rest of the dressmaker's assortment would arrive, she thought.

The maid picked up the dress she had worn last night to hang up in the clothespress and shook her head. “You've pulled out some buttons in the back, ma'am,” she said. “I'll sew these back for you.”

“Thank you, that would be appreciated,” Lauryn told her.

While the maid packed her things, she washed and dressed quickly in her new travel suit, glad that the maids had brushed it out for her and hung it neatly in the clothespress. She brushed her hair and put it up into a simple knot at the back of her head, put her bonnet on top, and was ready by the time she heard the earl's usual quiet knock at her door. Her bag had already been taken down.

She opened the door herself.

“Good morning,” he said. Looking as strikingly handsome as always, today he wore riding clothes, and his expression was stern. Was he concerned about the ship, or could he be unhappy about her conduct last night?

Lauryn curtsied and tried to give a polite smile. He hadn't exactly given her a choice about going along on this trip, but in fact, she was not unhappy about leaving the houseguests behind for a time.

“How far are we going, my lord?” She asked as they walked together down the hall and descended the great stairwell.

Lauryn wondered if the contessa knew that they were slipping away, or if his half brother Carter had been told. They encountered no one else in the hallway, and they did not stop in the dining room to chat with any early risers.

“We should be in Skegness by early evening,” he told her, holding her hand and helping her himself into the carriage, which waited outside the front entrance. This time, he did not seem to be taking his valet with him.

She settled into the comfortable seat and looked out the window of the vehicle. They had not bothered to say good-bye to anyone. Of course, Carter was rarely up early. The earl did not seem to consider anyone else's opinions overmuch when he made up his mind to a course of action.

The coachman slapped the reins and the carriage lurched into motion. The gentle swing of the vehicle was soothing, as long as the road was good, and Lauryn found her eyelids wanting to close. After watching for a time as the earl rode slightly in front of the carriage, she allowed herself to doze.

When she woke, they seemed to have made little progress. The flat countryside of the Fens had little variety to catch one's eye. Mile after mile of flat green marshland, the occasional canal, a few birds soaring in the endless blue sky—Lauryn watched it move around them, and at times wondered if they had made any progress at all, or perhaps they were caught in one of those glass balls made for children, where small figures were caught forever frozen in midstep. Then she would nod off again.

At midday, they came through a village and stopped at an inn to change horses and have food and drink themselves. The earl ordered a private parlor, and she was shown up to a room on an upper floor.

The day was warm and the air heavy, so she was glad to remove her cape and wash her face and hands. Then she returned and sat down with the earl. The meal was simple but well cooked, and just to have the privacy of sitting alone with him, with no other guests to observe them, no one to gossip or guess at their motives, was a delight.

He lifted her hand and kissed one finger, then another. “What makes your eyes sparkle so, Mrs. Smith? I refuse to believe it is merely the strawberry tart and clotted cream, excellently made though it is.”

She laughed. “No, although it is delicious. I admit I was thinking that it is refreshing to have this time with just the two of us.”

He smiled at her, and his glance also seemed very telling. “I agree, utterly and completely.” He lifted her hand to kiss it lightly, then surrendered it, but only, he told her, to allow her to eat the strawberry tart.

Laughing, she complied, offering him a bite of the dessert from her spoon, and kissing a trace of the cream off his lips. He kissed her back very warmly. It was with some regret that eventually she allowed him to escort her back to the carriage.

The afternoon was much the same as the morning: a long uneventful drive, again with little to see except miles of green, flat land, expanses of blue sky, occasionally farmers in the marshy fields bending over to harvest whatever it was that they grew there—she would have to ask the earl.

By the time the sun was dropping like a great golden ball to the west, Lauryn was conscious of considerable fatigue, simply from the jostling of the carriage, which did eventually wear upon one.

But instead of driving into a town, they turned into a side road, and the next time the carriage stopped, she found that they had come to a tall stone wall surrounding a small house set in a copse of trees on a windy heath, with a distant view of the coast. The coachman blew his horn, and a servant came out of the house and opened the gate to let them in.

Alone in the carriage, Lauryn had no one to ask, but she wondered where they were as the coachman clucked to the team and the carriage lurched into motion once more. They pulled through and up the drive.

When they stopped again, and the earl came to help her down, she looked at him in inquiry.

“This is one of my hunting lodges,” he told her. “Very private, very quiet. We are only a short distance from the coast and Skegness, where I will make inquiries about the cargo, but I thought you might like the—ah—intimacy of the setting, as opposed to a busy hotel in a port town.”

Looking around at the lovely little house, Lauryn thought that it was quite charming. A woman in a white cap and a maid and manservant had come out to make their bows to the earl and his guest.

“My housekeeper, Mrs. Piggott, who will take good care of you, Mrs. Smith.” The older lady beamed and made a deep curtsy.

Sutton added to the servant, “A simple meal when you can, and warm water for my guest and for me to wash, if you please.”

“Yes, my lord,” the housekeeper told him. “And we have the beds aired and your room turned out for you, just as you like.”

Lauryn realized that the staff had had advance notice, so this journey was not as spur-of-the-moment as it had seemed. The lodge was well maintained, with climbing roses growing up the outside wall. The inside hallway smelled of lemon wax, and the polished floor reflected their passage.

The housekeeper, a smiling woman of mature years, her hair gray beneath her white cap, led Lauryn up to her bedchamber. This room had pink flowered hangings and was just as clean smelling and airy as the downstairs.

“If you need anything at all, Mrs. Smith, just pull the bell rope for the maid.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Piggott. I'm sure I will enjoy my stay here,” Lauryn told her.

She went into her room and took off her hat, washing off some of the dust of the journey before going back down to rejoin the earl in the small dining room. The servants were already laying what seemed to be a very ample meal.

The earl was standing before a small fire in the hearth at the end of the room. She joined him there. “I have an appointment tomorrow morning with the Harbor Master,” he told her. “Tweed will likely have already seen him, but I wish to hear the report with my own ears.”

“Do you not trust the viscount?” she asked, keeping her voice low, even though the servants were unlikely to know to whom she referred.

He gave her a twisted grin. “Oh, I trust him, mostly. But it's always just as well to double-check.”

Not sure what that meant, she simply nodded. He looked past her toward the table and said, “I believe we may sit down now, if you are ready?”

She took her place at the table, and when one of the servants had seated her, the earl sat down at the head of the table, and a manservant offered them ham and roast beef and other foodstuffs.

For a few minutes they ate, without trying to keep up a conversation, and the silence was soothing after the clamor of the crowded table back at the earl's estate. Lauryn wondered what Carter and the contessa and the others would think of their absence, but found that she didn't really care.

After the dessert had been served, the earl dismissed the servants. “I will call you when we wish the table cleared,” he said.

While he ate an apple dumpling, Lauryn toyed with a plate of berries and cream, thinking about the ship and its mysterious cargo. But as one appetite was sated, she grew more conscious of the call of another, and the presence of the man sitting so close became more and more imperative.

Neither of them had changed for dinner. The earl, in his riding clothes, the navy jacket that showed off his broad shoulders, the tight-fitting buckskin breeches that emphasized his powerful thighs—nothing could have showed him to better advantage. She discovered that she was thinking most unladylike thoughts, and looking down, saw that she was licking her spoon with long slow motions even though it was quite empty.

The earl watched her with an unreadable expression.

“I have had the feeling…” he began, his tone abrupt.

“Yes?” she said, when he paused, her voice a bit breathless.

“That is,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I feel that you have been—that you have perhaps felt the need to hold back. And I thought that if we had a greater privacy, with fewer people around us who knew who we were, you might feel freer to enjoy our coming together and to express your own feelings.”

Not sure that she wanted to confess everything that had been holding her back, she simply muttered, “I see.”

He waited a moment for her to comment, but she could not think what to say, and she did not meet his eyes. She thought he might have frowned.

“Would you like anything else?” he asked politely, nodding toward the table.

Oh, yes, but not from the table, she thought, but she didn't have the nerve to say her thought aloud. How can I say that I crave your body, your attention, when I cannot be honest about my emotions? And you are entirely too perceptive about my responses! Had he always been this penetrating in his insights? For a man who was so forceful in most of his dealings, so commanding in his public persona, it was surprising to find that he could also be so sensitive to others and read her so well.

Lauryn remembered the contessa's warning that it was a risk to lie to the earl. She thought that he would surely detect a falsehood. She didn't think she would dare try—well, no more than she already had.