Teaching the Earl (12 page)

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

He stabled his horse behind the townhouse, then let himself in through the back way. The house was dim and quiet, though he could hear faint noises from the servants' area and kitchen. He tracked the sounds to their source, and found a casual gathering of housekeeper, butler, lady's maid and valet at the kitchen table, eating dinner together. When he stuck his head through the doorway they all looked up, and eyes widened before the mask of professional calm dropped into place on each face, unruffled and blank.

"My lord?" said his butler, inherited from his cousin.

But he spoke to the lady's maid. "Please tell Lady Carhampton I am here. Have her come down to the library."

"I beg your pardon, my lord, but she's not at home."

He had been about to withdraw, but at this he halted, then stepped fully into the kitchen. They shifted in faint discomfort to have their domain intruded on.

"Not at home?" he repeated.

"No, my lord."

"Do you know where she is?"

"I know which invitations she accepted, my lord," said the butler, who he suddenly recalled was named Ulrich. "Though where precisely she is at this moment I can't be certain."

"So she received more than one invitation?"

"She received more than a dozen, my lord. She accepted four. At this time in the evening, she is likely to be at the Seton's dinner, or Sir and Lady Jenning's soiree."

"Make me a list of her destinations, and bring it to me. I shall be dressing upstairs.
Hazelwood." The name of his cousin's valet was a summons. The man may as well make himself useful, if he was to remain on the payroll.

He took the stairs two at a time, and flung open the wardrobe in the ornately furnished master suite. He was conscious of
a certain tightness in his gut. So, Elizabeth was out alone and enjoying herself. It seemed she did not need his support as he had imagined. He should be pleased. Instead he felt an edge to his temper, a desire to snap at Hazelwood, who had followed him upstairs and now moved with brisk efficiency to light candles, heat water and lay out shaving paraphernalia.

Confound it, the man was right. His jaw was rough. He did not want to take the time but he could not appear unshaven. He selected an outfit and tossed it on the bed, and began to strip. Hazelwood winced and hurried to straighten his clothes, and smooth them out with meticulous care.

They had been one of two ruinously expensive suits tailored for his wife hunt, though he could hardly remember ordering them or having them fitted. Those days were a haze of pained guilt and confusion.

At least he had something decent to wear when he descended on fashionable London to find his gadabout wife.

Ulrich appeared with the list, and laid the single page solemnly before him. He frowned down at it. A slightly odd selection of entertainments, but then she had no doubt chosen without any guidance. An inexperienced young girl would not know where she should be seen, to make the best impression. Here, at least, was somewhere he could help her.

The thought relaxed him a little, and he put on his lounging robe and came to sit before Hazelwood, ready for the freshly-stropped razor.

_____

"Ravishing creature. I die for want of you." Michael Seton kissed Elizabeth's fingers, his mouth lingering far longer than was courtly.

She drew her hand away slowly, and smiled as if she thought his words only a joke. "Dashing courtier, I far prefer you live. Mind you do." She made the last words into a scold, and rapped his knuckles with her furled fan.

Next to her, Lydia grinned. "You have to do more than just flounce about. If you want to prove yourself to your lady love, you must do some great deed. Otherwise what good are you as a knight errant?"

"I wish there were still dragons alive in the world. I'd lay the head of one at your feet," he swore, and his tone was too ardent. Elizabeth shifted in her seat.

"That sounds awfully mucky," said Lydia. "Surely there's something more useful a paramour can do? You should buy her something rare and expensive. Women love that."

Elizabeth shook her head for the benefit of them both, and stared away into the swirl of guests that filled
the great ballroom. There was a short, uncomfortable silence. "Perhaps you could fetch me a glass of champagne. I'm parched," she finally offered.

"At once."
He sprang to his feet and eeled through the crowd, his boyishly slender figure swiftly swallowed up.

"I know it's the fashion to have a cicisbeo languishing at one's feet," said Lydia, "but he's rather too florid for my taste. You should rein him in a little. Or do you like all that flattering stuff?"

"It's not that I like it, though the attention is gratifying after-Well, it is better than being ignored. But even if I hated it, I'm not sure how to politely tell him to stop."

"I don't think polite will do the trick. Be brutal. He's infatuated with you. You'll have a devil of a time moderating him."

"He is very headstrong." Elizabeth sighed. Michael had morphed from a pleasantly familiar escort to intensely amorous. His attentions had been a balm to her abraded spirit. Now they became uncomfortably passionate.

"If someone had told me you'd take a lover straight after marriage, I'd have said they didn't know you. You're quite unexpected. You're aware you're supposed to wait until you give the Earl an heir, aren't you?" Lydia's smile was lazily amused. There was very little she took seriously.

"Of course he's not my lover-"

"There's no 'of course' about it. You're alone,
and your husband is still racketing about the countryside. You're young and pretty, Seton goes with you everywhere and you allow it. He talks like that to you and you laugh it off. Plenty will think - probably do think - you've already cuckolded Carhampton."

Elizabeth stared at her, wide-eyed. "No.
Surely not."

"Yes, of course. What else should they imagine? A natural enough foible when he doesn't trouble himself to take you in hand. A young wife given too much freedom and the run of the town," Lydia's voice had taken on the pompous overtones of an elderly matron, "what can he expect? If he doesn't mind his marriage bed there'll be a cuckoo in it."

"There won't!" hissed Elizabeth. "How can you say such a thing? As if I didn't know better. Besides, that would be a horrid thing to do to a man. I shan't, no matter what-I shan't. That's all. You should know me well enough-"

"Oh, I do. Don't fret. You're too sad and restless to be satisfying yourself in bed with a young buck, even an untutored sprout like that one." Elizabeth looked at her under lowered brows, shoulders hunched defensively. "You needn't frown at me like that. You know I'm the last person in the world to judge you, whatever you choose."

Since Elizabeth returned from Devon, Lydia had suddenly become much more outrageous in conversation. Elizabeth knew her friend assumed certain congress had taken place between her and Lord Carhampton, and had lowered a boundary she had never been aware stood between them. Now she was not quite sure what to make of her old chum. She had changed so much from when they were young girls meeting at church. Now she was married to a much older baron and had the running of her own household, and there was a knowing quality about her that was fascinating and vaguely unsettling.

"I don't want to be an object of gossip. I haven't done anything
risqué
with Mi-Mr Seton and I don't plan to."

Lydia shrugged. "People will always gossip. You are a countess now. Don't worry so much. With your marriage consummated
Lord Carhampton can't put you aside, even if you-"

"It isn't consummated."

"What? But-What were you doing in the countryside those three weeks, if not securing your marriage?" Lydia's dark eyes were wide and intrigued.

"Don't ask me. Chastity wasn't my idea. I did everything I could think of to encourage him. He-" she swallowed hard, "he rejected me completely."

"I never heard he was incapable. Though in fact I did not hear much of him before he inherited. Deeply involved in politics, very dutiful, very good-looking though cool with it. I saw him give one of his speeches once, you know."

"Did you?"

"Reginald dragged me to some rally. Trying to broaden my mind, I think. A futile exercise, as I could have told him. I don't even remember what your husband said, exactly, but he was certainly far more attractive and compelling with a soapbox and a point to make. Something about improving housing for the poor, I think. My confounded fuzzy memory. Anyway, I did watch him more closely after that for a while, but to no avail. He was too absorbed for mischief."

"Did you-Were there ever
rumors of a fiancée?"

Lydia tilted her head to one side, her eyebrows raised. "Not that I ever heard. What did he tell you?"

"A secret engagement, though I've no idea who. She-He said she killed herself."

"Really?
That's dreadful. Well of course that will have been hushed up, whoever it was. But that's beside the point. He's married to you now-"

"It's not beside the point if he's still in love with her."

"That's why he froze you out?"

"From what he said, it must be. He told me . . . the marriage was only for my dowry." Her voice was very soft, her head lowered, and a tear slid out of one eye and made a small, wet circle on the wrist of her glove.

"Oh, sweetheart." Lydia picked up Elizabeth's hand and pressed it between her own. "And you were so excited about your love match. How beastly. Cruel of him to tell you so. What was he thinking?"

"I don't know. I don't-It was so foolish of me, to imagine it was more than that. I wanted to believe it. And he let me think it was true-"

"Of course he did. Fortune hunters are all the same. At least you have a title out of it. And if he plans to leave you to your own devices in London, life will be pleasant enough. Though if I were you I'd go back to him, get yourself properly
enceinte
and get that out of the way. He'll need his heir and then your life is your own."

"How am I to do that if he won't even touch
me-"

"Darling, there are a hundred ways a woman can seduce a man and have what she wants of him, whatever he has decided."

Elizabeth shivered. "I don't think I could do that."

"It only takes a little courage. Likely you'll even enjoy it. He's a
well made man and I doubt he's cruel, with such high ideals. More likely he'll-"

"No, not the-I don't mean the physical act."
Though that would be challenge enough. "To manipulate him to do something he doesn't want to seems wrong. I don't-"

"I do love you, you naive thing. Let him see what he is denying himself and he'll be willing enough. He thinks he doesn't want you out of some idea he has in his head of staying faithful to a dead woman. Well pardon me, but he is alive, young and virile, and a man like that can't stay
chaste for long based only on a memory."

"He doesn't want me. He looked at me like he-As if he hated me."

Lydia sighed. "Perhaps he has some odd notion in his head. I say you think too hard. Only creep into his bed naked one night and fondle him in his sleep. The thing will be done before you can blink. There will be no turning back. He'll have to resign himself to-"

"I'm not going to do that! That's tantamount to rape."

"You can't rape a man, silly."

"Of course you can, if he's unwilling. Lydia." Her tone held reproach.

"Don't be so horrified, puss. You are so young, everything seems black and white to you. I think a man who tricks an heiress into marriage for her dowry cannot expect to get everything his own way. Let him see what it is to have his choices taken out of his hands."

"I won't. That's the end of it."

"Oh, very well then. Just as you please. Though mind you if you carry on as you have with your young Lothario," she tilted her head to indicate Michael, returning with two glasses of champagne, "you're likely to have an outraged Earl demanding his marriage rights. Nothing like competition to quell complacency."

With Michael at her elbow, Elizabeth could not respond to Lydia's shocking advice. What would she say, anyway? Their perspective was obviously vastly different. Could Lydia be right? No, surely not.

She took the champagne and thanked Michael, then surveyed the room as she sipped. It was a fashionable crowd, elevated enough that her parents had not received invitations. Not that Mama had seemed at all put out, as she had clutched the newly-arrived invitation and crowed with delight in the drawing room of Lord Carhampton's town house. A moment later she had covered her mouth and blushed over the indelicate sound.

"Pardon me.
But oh, what a coup. You must go, of course. See if Michael is going. If so he can escort you. I don't know if you'll be acquainted with many others there-"

"The
Beaumonts are going."

"Lydia and her baron."
Mama smiled and nodded. "I have always enjoyed that girl. So very vivacious, and she's done well. She's so fashionable these days. You should cultivate her friendship more than you do. I know she likes you."