Unraveling the Earl (32 page)

Before she could form a single word, the door at his back
cracked open with a squeak and a dark head and a pair of gray eyes appeared
around the edge.

Henry whipped around and stepped back as Alice pushed the
door wide and stepped over the threshold.

“Good Lord, Hastings,” she said, her voice dripping with
irreverent amusement. “I thought Mr. Clive was having me on when he said he’d
seen the two of you sneaking up here. How is it I never thought to make use of
this old chapel?”

“For pity sake, can’t a man have even a moment’s privacy?”
Henry asked, his voice shaking with banked emotion.

“By the looks of Miss Buchanan, you’ve had more than a
moment of privacy,” Alice replied, her gaze taking in Georgie’s tangled tresses
and wrinkled skirts.

“Alice, are you up here?” Olivia’s distinctively soft,
cultured voice called out from the dark hallway.

“Damn it, can none of you mind your own affairs?” Henry
demanded just moments before his sister pushed past Alice, stopping just inside
the room, her eyes going wide as she took in the colored moonlight and the lady
standing midway up the aisle with her hand pressed to her lips.

“Goodness, what are you doing up here in the old chapel?”
Olivia asked of her brother. “And why is Miss Buchanan…that is…Henry, surely
you have not been…er, dallying with your intended up here?”

“Leave it alone, Olivia,” Henry replied, running one hand
through his hair, giving the curls a tug that had to sting.

“Tidy your betrothed and come along. Father wants to make
the announcement after this set,” Alice said with a wave of her hand.

“Christ, the announcement,” Henry murmured, but Georgie
barely heard him through the strange rumble in her ears.

Spots danced on the edge of her vision as her gaze fastened
on Alice’s gloved hand, on the rolled up newspaper tied with a faded pink
ribbon clutched in her fist.

“Have you not given it to her, then?” Olivia asked.

“I was about to when you distracted me,” Alice replied,
turning to Georgie and starting up the aisle. “A paper boy brought this around.
He said it was the first printed copy of the morning edition and I was to give
it directly into your hands, yours and no one else’s, the cheeky little pup.
Oh, and there was a message but I’m afraid it’s gone right out of my head.”

Georgie could not take her eyes from the paper, from the
smudged print and creases left by Alice’s fingers as she shifted her hold to
extend the offering, from the ink startlingly dark against the white paper,
from the words too small to read, from the pink ribbon holding it all together.

It was the ribbon that snapped her back to her senses, the
fat pink ribbon that, once upon a time, had held her curls back as she’d run
over the hills surrounding Joy on the Mount.

Leave it to a Buchanan to tie up revenge in a pretty
package.

Georgie dropped her hand from her mouth and swallowed the
sorrow and regret and shame bubbling just beneath her breast. Her fingers shook
as she reached for the weapon she’d chosen to drag Lady Drummond’s name through
the mud.

Alice’s fingers relaxed their light grip, releasing their prize.
The tips of Georgie’s fingers brushed the edge before she snatched her hand
back. The newspaper fell to bounce off one silver slipper before sliding to the
floor and Georgie whipped her head up, the sudden motion making her dizzy.

I love you.

I’m truly sorry.

I’ll endeavor to deserve you.

I am carrying your babe.

Any one of the simple truths would do.

Except that Henry was staring at the paper on the floor as
if it were a coiled snake, a serpent waiting to strike, to sink its fangs into
flesh and bone.

“Isn’t that sweet,” Olivia cooed, gliding down the aisle to
scoop up the paper. “Henry ordered the first copy delivered to you so that you
would be the first to read the betrothal notice.”

Georgie could not hold back a strangled laugh.

Vengeance and a betrothal notice all tied up with a pretty
pink bow.

Henry scrubbed a hand over his face, pressed his fingertips
to his eyes and drew in a ragged breath.

“How romantic,” Alice drawled, her gaze pinned on Georgie,
her silver eyes both questioning and knowing. “Come along, dear, you don’t want
to make Father wait lest he call you into his study. Although, now I think on
it, I don’t doubt that you could talk Father right out of his temper fit, talk
circles around him until he doesn’t know which way was up.”

Henry laughed, though there was no joy, no humor in the
gruff sound, only a sort of mocking cynicism she’d never heard from him. Not
once in two bloody months.

“What on earth are you all doing up here?” Beatrice, Lady
Easton, strolled into the room with her hands pressed to the bump beneath her
gown. “Uncle Robert is chomping at the bit to get the announcement made before
the supper dance.”

Four sets of eyes found Georgie in the prism of light
splashing from the windows, four sets of eyes belonging to the greatest
families in the realm, a family that would not welcome her into their midst
after tonight.

But it was Henry’s eyes she searched, ignoring his female
relations altogether. They could welcome her or shun her, she’d known both,
endured both, survived both.

But Henry had ever only known welcome. He was respected and
adored and loved everywhere, by everyone. He was all that was good and
honorable and decent. There wasn’t a mean, vengeful, selfish bone in his tall
body. His character was forged of integrity, restraint, honesty, intelligence,
and chivalry..

He believed she had stripped all of that away from him with
her lies and schemes and manipulations.

He was wrong.

Even now, after she’d unraveled him, disheartened and
disillusioned him, left him doubting all that he was, he would marry her. For
honor’s sake, for the sake of all of the wonderful qualities he possessed in
abundance. For the baby growing in her womb. Perhaps even for love of the
mother.

“There isn’t going to be an announcement.” It wasn’t one of
the truths Georgie had considered offering up, but it was most definitely a
truth.

“Damn it, Georgie,” Henry muttered, one hand slashing
through the air. “Enough—”

“Is enough,” she interrupted, forcing a lilting laugh into
the words. “Yes, my lord, you are quite right. This, what’s between us, must
end. Tonight.”

“That isn’t what I meant and you know it.”

“I think that is our cue to depart,” Alice said, turning
away from Georgie with a smile that might have held sympathy.

“Oh, but—” Olivia began as her cousin turned her toward the
door.

“Hush, Olivia,” Alice purred. “Oh, how divine to finally say
those words to you after all these years.”

“Alice is right,” Beatrice agreed, following the pair out
the door. “This is between Henry and Miss Buchanan. Don’t worry, he’ll make
things right.”

“It’s too late for second thoughts,” Henry growled as the
door swung shut on rusty hinges. “We’ve a fucking house full of revelers
awaiting an announcement and a bloody betrothal notice already printed.”

“To be sure, I haven’t much education to speak of,” Georgie
replied, coloring her words with mockery, wanting only to get the parting
finished with so that she might curl up into a ball and howl to the moon. “But
I know that one must have a first thought in order to have a second.”

“What are you saying?” he demanded, advancing on her,
stopping only when she lifted a hand to ward him off.

“I never thought to marry you, my lord. Not for a single
moment.” For the first time in her misbegotten life, a lie did not fall easily
from her lips. No, offering up the words was pure and unadulterated anguish,
razors slicing through her mangled heart, leaving a trail of weeping wounds.

“Like hell.” Henry did not believe her and in some addled
part of her brain she wondered if he’d finally learned to differentiate between
her lies and her truths.

“Killjoy had the right of it, my fingers were crossed.”
Dropping her hand to clutch at the pew at her hip, she twisted the other in her
skirts as another wave of dizziness swept over her. Through sheer stubborn,
pigheaded determination, she kept her head held high and her eyes on Henry.

“I don’t give a damn about your fingers,” he retorted. “You
gave me your word.”

“Have you not learned anything these last two months?” she
asked, surprised anew by his willful blindness. “My word means nothing when I
give it. And less than that when I go back on it in pursuit of what I want.”

“You want me.” Henry’s voice was filled with arrogant
conviction.

“To be sure,” she agreed. “If you’d like to tumble me onto
the pope’s thrown again, I wouldn’t fight you. Unless you’d like me to. Do you
fancy a tussle? Tying me to the chair and paddling me as I deserve, naughty
girl that I am?”

Henry’s entire body jerked in reaction and he staggered back
a step.

Georgie Buchanan had never hated herself more in all her
life.

But surely selfless acts of kindness were meant to serve as
penance, a flogging of one’s heart and soul. If not, everyone everywhere would
be forever running about performing such terrible kindnesses.

“No? It’s just as well. Those light taps you gave me were
delicious, but invariably they lead to rougher play that I never did enjoy. Any
more than I truly enjoyed inviting other women into my bed. But a lady does
what she must to get what she wants.”

“And what was it you wanted from me?”

“Your assistance finding my mother, just as I said almost
from the beginning.”

“But now you’ve decided marriage to me is too high a price
to pay?”

“Not at all,” she replied sweeping her gaze down his
muscular frame to his loins. “In fact I think I would have enjoyed marriage to
such a handsome, upstanding man.”

“Then why end things now?” His words were forced out between
clenched teeth, a tic pulsing along his jaw.

“Oh, goodness, did I not tell you?” she asked, blinking back
tears, hoping he was not near enough to see the pain she was holding inside. “I
no longer need your help. I have found dearest Connie, at the theater of all
places.”

“You’ve found your mother?” The smile that flashed across
Henry’s face was nearly her undoing. “Good for you, Georgie. Well done.”

Georgie could not do this much longer. Her legs were shaking
so badly beneath her skirts it was a wonder she was able to remain standing.
Nausea churned in her belly, moisture beaded on her upper lip and along her
hairline. A hard lump was wedged in her throat, bile or a sob or a wailing
scream, perhaps a boiling brew of all three.

“Well done, indeed,” she agreed with a hiccupping laugh.
“And soon everyone will know that Baroness Ethelred Brunhilde Octavia Drummond
not only bore a lowly Scotsman’s bastard, but she was too foolish to use her
condition to her advantage. Which miscalculation do you suppose the
ton
will find most shocking? I myself would wager Lady Joy’s jewels that Connie
will be ridiculed more for passing up the opportunity to become a duchess.”

“You cannot mean to ruin your own mother now you’ve found
her,” Henry replied and she witnessed the exact moment he understood the
implications, saw it in the widening of his eyes, heard it in the sharp breath
he drew. “Jesus, all along it was vengeance you were after.”

“What did you think? Oh, my lord, never say you imagined I
sought a reunion, some mawkish show of sentiment. Me on my knees, crying and
begging my mother to accept me? Truly?”

“Who are you?” he whispered roughly, shocked, appalled, but
even now trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, valiantly attempting
to rearrange them to find some good in her.

“I am who I have always been,” she replied, fitting the last
jagged piece into the gaping hole of her past, solving the puzzle so that he
would be free of her. “A girl who was born damaged, only I didn’t realize it
until I lay down on a hay-strewn floor and offered up my virginity to another
woman’s handsome husband in return for the life of lamb with a lame hind leg.
And I did not regret it, not when he rolled off me and stumbled to his feet,
not when he named me the devil’s spawn and turned away from me, leaving me
lying on that dirty floor. Do you hear me? I did not regret it, not until the
next day when Mum…Millie told me that Archie had died in the night and I saw
that she knew what I had done.”

Henry pulled his head back as if she’d slapped him and
Georgie drew in a tortured breath, ignoring the almost overwhelming need to
look away from the man who had gone as still as stone before her.

“I’ll admit it was a bad bargain, as all I received in
return was a pair of fleece-lined mitts. But I like to think I have perfected
my skills in the ensuing years. I reeled in London’s greatest gift to the
ladies, after all. And now, as you no longer have anything to offer me, I am
releasing you.”

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Henry spun away, marched up the
aisle and slammed his fist into the door, splintering the old wood.

She had no time to react to the sudden violence with more
than a gasp of shock before he wrenched open the mangled door, barked a curse
at the three ladies waiting on the other side and strode down the hall.

Beatrice hovered at the threshold while Olivia and Alice
filed into the room, the former to halt just inside the cramped space, the
latter to march down the aisle, rage distorting her beautiful face into a cold
mask.

Cradling her belly, cradling the life within, Georgie
instinctively protected her baby from that rage and from the truth of what
she’d just done to the father.

“What did you do to Hastings?” Alice shrieked.

Georgie backed away on legs that felt like jelly, and kept
right on backing up until her calves bumped into the edge of the dais.