The Earl's Mistress (31 page)

Oh, she might—
might,
if he played his cards with the greatest of care—permit him the occasional tumble if it could be discreetly arranged. Clearly she desired that much from him, at the very least.

Perhaps it was all she desired.

But that question more or less mirrored the one she’d asked him a few nights past—right after she’d stripped off her nightdress to stand naked before him.

Was that all there was between them? That gnawing hunger for one another, and no more?

“Your brow is furrowed,” she said, suddenly reaching past him. “Give me that. You are merely wiping it over and over again.”

They stood now in the narrow scullery, side by side. He passed her the china plate across the sinks, and she took it and set it on the shelf above.

“I cannot believe you are drying dishes again,” she said almost to herself, plunging her hands back into the hot water.

He gave a low chuckle. “Do you imagine me emasculated by it, my dear?” he murmured. “I should be pleased to prove otherwise.”

She cut him a chiding look and handed him a bowl. “Could anything emasculate you, I wonder?” she muttered, “other than a sharp kitchen knife and a great deal of determination?”

He laughed again and leaned nearer. “Don’t do it, my love, for we would both soon regret it,” he said. “I’ll be of far more use to you as I am.”

“Didn’t you once promise,” she muttered, scrubbing hard at something under the water, “never, ever to flirt with me?”

“Did that sound flirtatious?” He shrugged. “I thought we were negotiating. In any case, dishes must be done, and since I’m the fool who invited a dozen guests to a house with no staff to speak of, it should fall to me once in a while. Besides, Anne helped.”

But Anne had slunk off at least a quarter hour ago, casting an odd glance over her shoulder as she went.

“Are you counting Nanny Seawell and Anne’s maid in that dozen?” asked Isabella lightly.

He laughed. “Perhaps I’m counting that damned dog of Bertie’s,” he said, “twice, for he’s caused at least that much trouble.”

Isabella stopped in the middle of her scrubbing. “Actually, this has been rather pleasant,” she said pensively, “to have simple food, and to make our own coffee and wash a few dishes. I can understand why you like it. The solitude and simplicity of it, I mean.”

But the truth was, he had not bought Greenwood in order to play Farmer Brown and live in bucolic isolation. He’d bought it for debauchery and bacchanalia—of which there’d been plenty—and the fact that he’d now brought his own family here instead of his usual cadre of sybarites still struck him as very strange indeed. It said something, though he’d as soon not consider what, exactly.

He could sense, though, that despite her words, Isabella was growing restless. He cut her another glance as she passed him the next plate. Her gaze was fixed on her work, her movements practiced and efficient. He liked that. He liked that she exuded competence and a willingness to work without complaint. It was not something he had appreciated in a woman until now.

They had been here almost a week, and twice she had written letters of instruction to Mrs. Barbour and three times to various wholesalers in the City. She had worked diligently at her ledgers and read through an entire stack of publisher’s samples. But a business could not be left untended any more than an estate could.

If he did not soon hear something from Jervis, he realized, he was going to have to take her back to London. Isabella would demand it, and he would be hard-pressed to think of an excuse to refuse her. He had no hard reason not to do so; just suspicions and a grave unease that set his hackles up every time he thought on it.

Nonetheless, he could not bring himself to speculate aloud to her; not when a false hope might hurt Isabella more than the hard truth of her present existence.

A heavy silence had fallen over the little room. Through the high windows, he could hear a spring rain still pattering down as it had for much of the day. The room was small, the lamplight intimate, and it felt suddenly as if the rest of the world were far away. She handed him a glass, their hands accidentally brushing, and in a flash, it was as if his every nerve came to life.

Lust shot through him out of nowhere, straight through his heart, deep into his belly, and lower still. Every muscle hardened with it, his loins pooling with heat. He set the glass in the cold rinse water and debated sticking his head in, too.

“
Isabella
,” he rasped, his hands clenching at the edge of the sink.

“What?” She turned halfway around.

He searched for the words to tell her how he felt. His lust and his hopes and his fears for her and the children seemed suddenly tumbled together in a way he couldn’t explain. Slowly, he forced his hands to unclench and his lungs to work.

“Anthony?” She crooked her head to look at him.

“I forgot,” he said awkwardly, “what I was going to say.”

“Oh,” she said.

And the silence flooded in again.

“Does Mrs. Yardley always have Sunday evenings off?” she finally asked, breaking the quiet.

He shrugged, jerked the towel from his shoulder, and took the glass she held out, careful not to touch her. “Mrs. Yardley has no set schedule,” he said, dunking it in the rinse. “I’m rarely here, and our agreement never required her to attend to the house every day.”

“And yet she has done the lion’s share of it admirably,” Isabella remarked, dredging up a spoon and scrubbing at it. “But you can cook, too, I once heard you boast?”

He grinned at her. “Eggs,” he said, “or a slab of beefsteak, perhaps. Be glad, my dear, it hasn’t come to that.”

She cut another of her odd, sidelong looks at him. They had become more and more frequent, he realized, the last couple of days. His new strategy might have thrown her, but Isabella still desired him. The thought should have been gratifying, and it was. But underneath that gratification lay something aching and uncertain.

He did not like that feeling. He was not a man who tolerated uncertainty. Worse, there was nothing he could do about it.

Damn it all. He would very much like to make Isabella suffer a little for the misery she was putting him through. Perhaps, if he asked nicely, she might permit him to do just that.

“There is a dangerous look in your eyes tonight,” she said, reaching into the hot sink to pull the chain.

He watched the water, still steaming, begin to gurgle and swirl down the copper-lined trough as he dried his hands. Isabella’s fingertips were set to the rim of the sink, her knuckles red.

“Give me your hands,” he ordered without waiting for her to comply.

He took one, holding fast to his emotions, and began to dry it, gently pulling the cloth over each finger in turn.

“Your knuckles are cracked,” he gently chided. “What was I thinking? More village girls could have been brought in.”

“Anthony,” she said, extracting her hand and taking away his cloth, “it doesn’t hurt anyone to wash a few plates and glasses after dinner. And my knuckles were cracked long before I got here. You forget that I wash dishes every day—sometimes two or three times a day—and I scrub floors, too, when I must. That is my life now. And I am fine with it.”

He lifted his gaze from his study of her hands, which were otherwise long-fingered and elegant. “I do forget,” he admitted. “But I’m not so fine with it. You are a lady, Isabella. That sort of life is not for you.”

“Then who is it for?” she asked, setting her head to one side as if studying him. “And why not me? Who decides?”

He took the cloth, tossed it over the rim of the sink, and took both her hands in his. “We’re not going to debate egalitarianism, are we?” he said, forcing a light tone. “I confess, it bores me excessively. Tell me instead about you.”

“About me?”

“About your family, perhaps. We’ve spoken little of them.” He drew her from the scullery into the glow of the kitchen and pulled a chair to the rough-hewn table. “Sit down. I’m going to make you a cup of tea.”

“But the others are—”

“Getting ready for bed,” he interjected, moving the kettle onto the hob with a harsh, scraping sound. “The twins are already asleep, I expect.”

“Well, so far as my family, there’s little you don’t know.” Isabella half turned in her chair, following him with her gaze as he moved about the kitchen to fetch the teapot and tea chest. “You know about Everett. And my aunt. There really isn’t anyone else.”

“I meant the other side of your family,” he said, lifting down the chest from a shelf.

“Mother’s side?” She pushed a damp tendril of hair from her forehead. “Well, I don’t know much, honestly. The family was originally from the Midlands; round Shropshire, Mamma always said.”

“Have you any relations there?”

“I think not. Mamma’s people left generations ago.”

“What was the family name?” he asked lightly.

“Flynt, spelled with a
y
instead of an
i
like the stone,” she answered, “though it may have been changed at some point.”

“Did they leave England for a reason?”

“Yes, criminals, most likely,” she said on a spurt of laughter. “Cattle thieves, perhaps. It might even be they were transported. Did they transport thieves to Canada?”

He shot her a muted smile and put the tea chest back. “Petty criminals were perhaps indentured,” he said, “but I expect your family was more apt to have been minor gentry.”

“Who told you that?” she asked a little sharply.

Unwilling to show his hand just yet, he merely shrugged. “You said they were in the timber trade and lived in the wilderness,” he replied. “One doesn’t ordinarily mow down a colonial wilderness for profit unless one owns it.”

Isabella seemed to accept this. “I believe the original settler was, in fact, a military officer,” she said, “who took a liking to the area and decided to remain.”

“Ah,” he said. “So you know a little of your family history.”

“As I said, a very little,” she answered. “But why should you care?”

He drew out a chair and sat down to wait for the pot to boil. “Indulge me,” he said.

“It is my opinion that you have been too often indulged,” she replied, looking at him a little darkly.

He flashed a smile. “Yes, I was indulged pretty thoroughly a few nights past, I seem to recall,” he murmured, “—and I hope, my dear, you got what you came for?”

Her face blushed prettily. “Must you remind me of that?”

“Why not?” he said, wondering if he should put his monastic days behind him and send caution straight to hell. “I think of it every night when I thrash about in my little bed, tormented by a cockstand hard enough to drive a rail spike and that vision of your full, bare breasts. Why should I suffer alone?”

“Good Lord,” she murmured, the flush running down her throat—but it was not entirely a flush of embarrassment.

He wanted suddenly to reach for her—to jerk her clean across the table and into his embrace. Somehow, he forced himself to stop and return to a more serious tone.

“Ah, but enough of my plain speaking,” he said evenly. “Now is not the time. And I truly do wish to hear more about your family. Did they never write? Was your mother completely abandoned?”

She lifted her slender shoulders. “No, I remember occasionally seeing letters posted from Montreal or Bytown,” she replied, “and before that—on one of my birthdays—Grandfather Flynt sent three thousand pounds to serve as my dowry.”

“Three thousand pounds?” It wasn’t much, he realized, by aristocratic standards, but it was something. “Is that what you and Richard lived on?”

Her breath caught a little oddly. “That’s a rather personal question,” she said. “But no, we lived on my father’s largesse—or
small-
esse one might better put it. Grandpapa Flynt’s three thousand barely paid off Richard’s old debts.”

“Ah,” Hepplewood said softly.

Her expression stiffened. “It wasn’t like that,” she said. “For all his faults, Richard wasn’t . . . coldly calculating. He never even asked what I would bring to the marriage. And I was too stupid to ask what we would live on.”

“Wasn’t that more a question your father should have asked?” said Hepplewood, his frustration telling, perhaps, in his tone. “As to cold calculation, I think it an underrated skill.”

“How Machiavellian of you,” she remarked.

But it was true, Hepplewood inwardly considered. The fact that Isabella’s father had not pressed Richard Aldridge for specifics before giving his blessing to the marriage merely spoke again to his ineptitude, however kind he might have been.

Moreover, a husband, to Hepplewood’s way of thinking, had damned well better be calculating. He had better be ruthless, were it required of him. The survival of his family might depend on it.

And all of these failings went a long way toward explaining Isabella’s need to have someone—how had she phrased it?—yes,
someone at the helm of the ship.

Neither her father nor her fleeting marriage had brought Isabella the security she so clearly needed. She had learned the hard way, it seemed, that men could not always be depended on.

He shook off his anger and told himself the past was not his concern. “Did your mother have siblings?” he asked, forcing a light tone.

“A brother named George,” she said tightly, “but he was some years older.”

“
Hmm,
” said Hepplewood, leaning back in his chair.

So far, nothing Isabella said conflicted with any of the information Jervis had milked from Hepplewood’s various sources in Liverpool.

Much of England’s timber came up the River Mersey to be offloaded at Liverpool’s Brunswick Dock. Because of this, Canada’s timber barons sometimes kept agents, solicitors, and even offices situated in that part of town. The Flynt family had not kept an office, but Jervis had found few people on and about the Brunswick Dock to whom the name was not instantly recognizable.

“That portrait of your mother, Isabella, in your parlor,” he said musingly, “was it sent to Thornhill upon your grandfather’s death?”

“Thereabouts, I think. But I was no longer living there. Why? And why are you asking me these questions?”