The Earl in My Bed: A Forgotten Princesses Valentine Novella (2 page)

He nodded brusquely but did not return the compliment. Of course not. That would require him to be polite to a person he deemed lesser then himself.

“My condolences on the passing of your brother, my lord.” She spoke the words because she must. Even though the condolences might be owed more to her. It was she who had kept Brand company these last years. While other girls in the village cavorted and made marriages for themselves, she had remained steadfast at Brand’s side, reading to him and playing the pianoforte for him, watching him as he labored for breath. He had been so pale and frail at the end that she could not imagine what kept the air pumping out of his thin chest.

Her words failed to move him. The earl stared down at her, his expression bemused. As if he did not know her at all. And she supposed he did not. She had only spent every free moment with Owen and Brand since she was seven years old.
He
, in fact, did not know her. Not then. Not now.

He looked away from her then, his sea-colored eyes gazing off toward the house. She studied his profile, the sharp blade of his nose, the press of his well-carved lips. Even tightly set she could see the bottom lip was full. Another thing she had not noticed before. Surely his lips had not changed, too.

“For the best, I suppose,” he murmured.

For the best?
Brand’s dying was for the best? He could not mean to say
that
.

With a hissing breath, she squared her shoulders. “Whatever do you mean?”

He faced her again, leveling those seawater eyes on her. “He had suffered quite long enough—”

“I can assure you that he did not think dying was for the best.”

He angled his head, his expression growing rather intense as he studied her. That much hadn’t changed. He had always looked at her with such intense eyes. Always so serious. Even as children. “Indeed?”

She continued, “As you were not here, allow me to enlighten you.” Unfair, she supposed, to fling that accusation at him. He couldn’t really be blamed for being away at war, could he? If she blamed him for that, she must blame Owen, too.

He settled back on his heels. The action seemed to make him look only more formidable. His chest vast, broader. “Pray continue.”

“Brand did not want to die. His spent every breath fighting for the next. He wanted to live.” Hot emotion burned though her, scalding her all the way to her eyes, but she could not stop. “He talked of tomorrow. Of what he wanted to do. Marriage. Children. Of seeing Owen again.” Her lip curled ever so faintly. “Of even seeing you, my lord.”

Something passed over his countenance. Anger? Hurt? Regret? It was gone too quickly for her to identify. And then she dismissed it entirely. Staring at his implacable expression, the flatness of his gaze, she knew her words had not affected him.

He inhaled. “I suppose I owe you for those long hours at my brother’s bedside, Miss Ellsworth.”

She pulled back in affront. “
Owe
me?”

“Yes. I dare not assume your time and attention to Brand was without value. You were here for him when no other relations happened to be. I’m more than happy to compensate you—”

Her hand lashed out. She could not stop herself. Could not even think before her palm connected with his cheek with a sharp
crack
.

His head whipped to the side. Instantly, a white handprint marked his swarthy cheek.

Horror washed over her. Her palm stung where she’d connected with his face.

His eyes glittered as he looked down at her, his fingers lightly fingering his afflicted cheek. “Some things, it seems, have not changed overly much.”

C
HAPTER
T
WO

S
he did not confuse his meaning. Or his smug tone. He meant
she
had not changed. In his eyes, she was the little heathen he’d always judged her to be.

Still fuming over his offer to compensate her for attending to Brand, her
friend
, she ignored the voice inside her that insisted she apologize.

“On the contrary.” She nodded, her fury still smoldering. “Things change all the time.
People
change.” She very deliberately raked him with her gaze. “They become worse.”

More arrogant. More unbearable.

He dropped his hand from his face, his seawater eyes frigid as they roamed over her.

With a hot exhale, she nodded stiffly. “Good day, my lord.”

She strode past him, her strides cutting angrily as she began to descend the hill. That had gone even worse than she imagined possible. She had actually struck him. She would need to apologize. Only not now. Now she couldn’t. She simply had to get away.

His deep voice called after her, “Do you not even care enough to inquire after Owen?”

It was the one question that could stop her in her tracks. She halted, her spine rigid. She didn’t want to rise to the bait. She didn’t want to turn and face him again. She winced.

Nor did she not want to miss out on anything he could impart about Owen. Whether, for instance, he had received any of her countless letters.

She turned slowly and walked back toward him. Her gaze scanned his face. Something twisted inside her at the red handprint on his cheek.

She moistened her lips. “How is he?”

“Alive,” he rejoined, his voice flat. “At least the last time I saw him.” So cold. So matter of fact. Did he not even care?

“Does he . . .”
Speak of me?
She wanted to say it, wanted to ask, but could not bear to utter the words and all it would reveal of her. All the doubt and uncertainty she felt toward the boy she had loved all her life. The boy she had imagined she would marry someday. For no one had ever understood and accepted her the way Owen had . . . a girl more comfortable running barefoot on the hills. It seemed only natural that they should always be together. Natural to her and everyone else.

Instead, she asked, “Does he receive my letters?”

Jamie stared at her, his gaze penetrating. “Yes.”

Hurt flashed through her.
And he never wrote
. No matter the doubts she harbored for their future—if they should actually
marry
each other—she still cared for him. He could have penned at least one letter. “All of them?”

“Well, I cannot know how many you wrote, can I?” he countered.

She felt herself flush. “No. Of course not.” He continued to stare at her, waiting, but she did not care to elaborate and admit she wrote him every week. Sometimes more. At least in the beginning.

Of late she had not mailed half the missives she penned . . . hating to think they went unread. She wrote them and locked them in her desk.

And there was something she could barely admit to herself. She was afraid that if she did mail them, they might reach Owen. He would read her words and sense that she wasn’t the same girl he’d left behind. Perhaps, in the scrawl of her script, in the words spoken and unspoken, he would hear that she wasn’t certain they were quite so perfect for each other anymore. That what they once had was nothing more than the fancy of childhood. Perhaps he would detect her hope that he had forgotten his commitment and devotion to her.

“He wrote in the beginning.” She moistened her lips. “Has something happened to make him stop?”

“Yes.” He paused, frowning at her, looking at her as though she was dim-witted. “War happened.”

She nodded, staring down at her hands, feeling wretched. “Of course. I should have realized.”

As if he possessed insight into her thoughts, the earl stepped closer, murmuring softly, “He has not forgotten you.”

She drew a quick, hissing breath. The words fell heavily upon her, a burden she did not wish to bear. Doubtlessly, the earl thought he was offering her solace. On the contrary. It felt as though a noose had just tightened about her neck.

“That is . . .” She groped for the right word. “That is good to hear.”

“I’m sure your eventual reunion will be most happy.” With a wince, he lifted a hand to his cheek. “No doubt different from our own.”

Familiar heat crept up her neck to her cheeks. Suddenly an apology was not too difficult to perform. “That was not well done of me.”

He inclined his head. “I offended.”

He
was apologizing? She angled her head to the side, studying him, quite certain the Jamie of old had never apologized for anything. Especially not to the likes of her.

They remained where they were, a respectable distance between them in the vast space of the outdoors, yet an air of intimacy cloaked the exchange. Her fingers tapped nervously at her side. The wind lifted loose tendrils of hair and whipped them across her face, reminded her how unkempt she must appear. She gathered them with one hand and tucked the pale strands behind her ear.

Her pulse stuttered anxiously in her neck. “I hope you’re acclimating well to home, Lord Winningham.”

“As well as can be expected when I’m to fill the shoes of a much grieved brother. All while I’ve left the other one to risk his neck on a battlefield a world away. I feel a villain in a very bad drama.”

She blinked. “You do not mince speech.”

He lifted one shoulder. “To what point? I can see in your eyes what so many others already think.”

She squared her shoulders. “And what is that?”

He stepped closer. She held her ground.

His gaze flicked over her, just a quick, cursory examination before settling back on her face. He peered into her eyes as if confirming for himself that the nameless sentiment to which he referred was there. “You think it should be me rotting in the earth. Or on the battlefield. Whatever the case, I don’t belong or deserve to be here.”

She sucked in a breath.

He smiled mirthlessly, those well-carved lips curving upward. “Come. Don’t look so shocked.” He pressed a finger beneath her chin and closed her mouth for her.

Heat and awareness spread from that single point of contact. She jerked back a step. “I’m certain that’s not t-true.”

“I’ve never been anyone’s favorite.” He looked into her eyes meaningfully, and she knew he was implying that he had never been
her
favorite. And how could she deny the allegation? It was true.

“Do you want to be?” she challenged, knowing the answer already. He did not.

He had never behaved as one hoping to win the favor of others.

The sudden gleam in his eyes told her he knew this, too.

“My father will be missing me. It was lovely to see you again, Lord Winningham.” Oh, how the title still stuck in her throat. Turning, she moved away, not waiting for his response.

She thought she heard his murmured farewell, and something else, other words lost on the wind. Her nape tingled and she brushed her hand there, certain that it was his gaze she felt.

She quickened her pace.

J
amie watched the vicar’s daughter hasten away. His lips twisted wryly. He suspected she would run if she could. If it wouldn’t be a complete break in decorum, she’d lift her skirts and race from him as quickly as her feet would carry her.

She was everything and more than he remembered. The defiance was still there. That stubborn angle to her chin. The sparkling light in her brown-black eyes. She was a tightly wound package, her feisty nature threatening to spill free. He studied her trim shape marching briskly away. She was still the girl who had thrown manure in his face.

He winced at the memory. He’d deserved it. He’d been such an arrogant pup, full of jealousy. It was a bitter thing to feel like an outsider among your own family. But it had always been that way. His place had always been rather hazy in his mind. Brand was the heir, and Owen the beloved son from his father’s second marriage . . . a love union. Owen even possessed a title. He was Lord McDowell, having inherited a Scottish earldom through his mother.

Jamie had always felt unnecessary. Easily overlooked. The fact that Brand and Owen preferred each other—and even the vicar’s daughter—only drove home his sense of isolation among his own family.

And then there was Paget Ellsworth. Hoyden and all-around trouble. His brothers adored her. Followed her about like puppies. Not him. Even if they had made room for him in their cozy little trio, he had refused to be another to dote upon her.

Blasted pride. He’d felt a resurgence of it today, prompting him to provoke her. He shook his head, and clasped his hands behind his back. He’d come far. Years had passed. He would not allow himself to feel the old disgruntlement. Brand was gone. And Owen . . .

A sour taste coated his mouth. He was still over there. Fighting for his life. Jamie had been forced home. He’d tried to stay, unwilling to leave Owen, but the colonel had demanded it of him once they received word of Brand’s death. He closed his eyes in a long blink and shook his head, fighting off the memory of their final encounter. The dead look in Owen’s eyes as he turned from Jamie.

“You’ll be home soon, Owen,”
he had called, the promise feeble even to his ears.

Owen did not look back, merely moved forward with hard strides, his rifle slung over his shoulder. He fell into step with four other soldiers from the regiment who had been singled out for their excellent marksmanship. They were leaving to hunt down rebel sepoys who had taken prisoner several merchants and their families. It was a kill mission. His brother had become quite skilled at those. He was used almost exclusively as an assassin.

He doubted Miss Ellsworth would even know Owen when he returned. He was not the same boy who had left her.

Jamie opened his eyes again and gazed after Miss Ellsworth’s retreating figure. At least she had not changed. He took satisfaction in that. She had grown into just the kind of woman he had imagined. Passionate. Strong. Full of life.

The kind of woman Owen deserved to come home to. The kind who could remind him of life and happiness and make him forget the dark days that demanded he kill or be killed.

The kind of female Jamie intended to keep at arm’s length. No matter how much she fascinated him.

No matter how much she always had.