Wicked Promise (4 page)

It was late in the morning when the carriage arrived. The jangle of harness alerted them, and Elizabeth and Mercy went over to look out the window.

"Lud, the nerve o' them hussies." Mercy shook her head, tilting the mobcap she wore over her dark hair at a precarious angle. "Comin' 'ere like they was royalty instead of some expensive London light-skirts no better than the poor gels who works the streets."

Elizabeth felt the color rise into her cheeks. "You ... you are saying those women are ... are ..."

"High-priced wagtails, to be sure. Old Lord 'Arry's mistress, Emma Cox, and the viscount's woman, an actress named Jilly Payne." ,

"How .... how do you know?"

Mercy waved her hands as if it were a stupid question. "They been 'ere a'fore. Lots of folks goes to Tunbridge Wells. They stop to see the earl 'cause they know 'e don't care who it is they bring with 'em."

Elizabeth watched them through the panes of the mullioned window, the women stepping down from the carriage in gowns of lace and silk, careful to keep their skirts up off the muddy ground. "They're very pretty," she said.

Mercy made a throaty, harrumphing sound and turned away from the window.

Elizabeth still stared at the women, who were being led inside by a tall blond man in his early thirties and an older, dandified man wearing an old-fashioned silver wig. The woman beside him, blond and fair but sporting a bit too much lip rouge, bent and whispered something in his ear and he gave up a husky laugh that faded as the front door closed behind them.

"Does... does Lord Ravenworth also have a mistress?" Elizabeth inwardly cringed to think she had come right out and asked.

Mercy's dark eyes rolled skyward. " 'Andsome man like 'is lordship, 'e's got 'imself plenty of women. That prissy little piece from Westover—she's 'is latest bit of fluff. That 'igh and mighty, Lady Dandridge. But she won't last long. None of 'em do."

Elizabeth said nothing more. For some inexplicable reason it bothered her to think of Nicholas Warring with a woman like the two who had just gone into the house. With any woman for that matter.

Even his wife.

*   *   *

"Hurry up, Aunt Sophie—the race will be starting and we're going to miss it."

Aunt Sophie waddled forward down the hall. "Coming, my dear. I'm hurrying as fast as I can."

Elizabeth hurried, too, tying the strings of her bonnet beneath her chin, then swirling her cloak around her shoulders. Holding open the door at the side of the house, she helped her plump aunt down the steps to the gray stone walk, then led her off toward the stables at the rear.

The day had turned blustery, but it wasn't really cold. A few scattered clouds drifted across the sun, but the fields were dry, and the green of spring was beginning to poke through the rich Kentish soil.

"I hope you know what you're doing," Aunt Sophie said. "His lordship doesn't like us to mingle with his guests."

"We aren't going to mingle. We are simply going to watch." And what a sight it would be! The earl and the newly arrived Viscount Harding were staging a carriage race. Mercy Brown had told her about it—all of the servants would be watching—and Elizabeth determined so would she.

With that goal in mind, she made her way to the south wall of the barn and pressed herself against it. The stones felt cold and rough behind her back, and the earth smelled damp and musty at her feet. Peering around the corner, she checked to be certain no one was near and was relieved to see the space was empty.

A number of servants stood across from the starting line, where two smart black phaetons, one a sporty, high-perch model drawn by a pair of matched blacks, the other a lighter, drop-front phaeton pulled by a pair of glossy bays, were lined up side by side on a makeshift tract. The guests formed a cluster around them, all of them, she noticed—even the women—well into their cups. Ravenworth was nowhere to be seen, off somewhere apparently making ready.

She motioned around the corner for Aunt Sophie to join her, but the old woman didn't appear. Backtracking to the side of the barn, Elizabeth found her aunt bent over, plucking bits of shiny red glass up off the ground.

 "Isn't it pretty?" Aunt Sophie held a pudgy hand up to the light so the broken glass sparkled in the sun.

Elizabeth sighed. "Very pretty, Aunt Sophie, but we're going to miss the race if you don't hurry up."

"I know, I know." But she carefully filled the pocket of her cloak with the broken bits of glass before she lumbered forward. Elizabeth gripped her hand and tugged her along in her wake, rounding the corner full tilt and slamming headlong into the tall man walking the opposite way.

He caught her easily, steadying her against him to keep her from falling. "Well—look who we have here. Miss Woolcot. Why am I not surprised?" The Earl of Ravenworth stared down at her from his considerable height. Elizabeth's palms still rested on his chest while his long dark fingers encircled her waist. They felt warm and strong and for a moment she found it hard to breathe.

"I—I... we heard about the race. We wanted to watch." She lifted her chin. "Surely there is nothing wrong with that."

He let go of her and she took a step back, trying not to think how solid his chest had felt, how the muscles had flexed when he moved. Her glance strayed down from his full- sleeved white lawn shirt to the tight buckskin riding breeches that molded the lines of his body. She noticed the way they gloved the heavy bulge of his sex, and heat raced up her neck and into her cheeks.

Something glinted in his eyes, as if he knew where she had been looking, then it was gone. "You may watch—as long as you content yourselves with staying over here out of the way." She could smell a hint of the gin he had been drinking and beneath his dark skin his cheeks looked a little bit flushed. She didn't know if it was excitement or the spirituous liquor he had consumed.

She turned toward a small wooden shed near the racecourse. "If it's all right with you, we will watch from just over there." She pointed toward the shed, and Ravenworth nodded.

He turned his formidable gaze on her aunt. "I leave it to you, Mrs. Crabbe, to see your niece stays out of harm's way."

"Of course,, my lord. You know you can always count on me."

Ravenworth's mouth curved faintly. He made a curt bow of his head, flashed a last warning glance at Elizabeth, and turned to leave. She watched him walk away, his long strides eating up the distance toward where the carriages sat, and her mouth opened up of its own accord.

"Good luck, my lord!'' she called after him.

The earl stopped and turned, smiled that devastating smile she had rarely seen. "Thank you, Miss Woolcot. Since you are watching, I shall make it a point to win."

She returned the smile in spite of herself. In spite of the fact she didn't approve of gambling, even in sports, and she certainly didn't approve of a man who was half-foxed in the middle of the day.

And yet as she watched him pause in front of his carriage and speak softly to his magnificent black horses, a little thrill shot through her. With his wavy jet-black hair and silvery blue-gray eyes, his dark olive skin and flashing white teeth, he was a sight even more stirring than his magnificent horses.

"I wish we could wager," her aunt said. "I would stake my last shilling his lordship will win."

“Then 'tis probably a good thing there is no one here with whom you might bet."

"Except for you," Aunt Sophie corrected with a rise in her wobbly double chins and an arch of her thin gray brows.

Elizabeth gave up a reluctant smile. "Yes, but I also believe the earl will win, and it would be disloyal to wager against him." She watched him climb into his fancy black phaeton, his breeches tightening over his rounded buttocks. He was broad shouldered and lean hipped, and where he had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, she could see the long, thick muscles in his forearms.

Leaning back against the seat, he clamped a thin cigar between those straight white teeth, laced the reins between his fingers, and grinned at the man who held a pistol in the air at the starting line.

He made such a rakish picture, Elizabeth found herself staring, unable to look away. The starting weapon sounded with a loud report and her heart leapt inside her. The carriages lurched off the mark, their wheels spinning, Ravenworth leaning forward, his legs braced apart on the footrest. Harding matched his aggressive drive off the mark, cracking his whip over the heads of the bays, urging them into a flat-out run. He was a big man, tall and lithe, with sandy-brown hair and hazel eyes. He was perhaps two and thirty, and according to Mercy Brown had a wicked reputation with the ladies.

He was not unpleasant to look at, Elizabeth admitted, her excitement mounting as she watched the phaetons streak down the track, but he didn't have the dark, hard-edged, masculine beauty of Nicholas Warring.

"Lord Harding just might win," Aunt Sophie pointed out. "Perhaps you should have wagered after all."

Elizabeth said nothing. Her palms were damp and she nervously chewed on a finger of her white cotton glove. The first turn loomed ahead. The horses rounded the mark, straining forward, almost neck and neck. Harding on the inside drew ahead, but Ravenworth's team caught up with him on the straightaway and pulled into the lead. The second turn put Harding back out front and Elizabeth bit down on her bottom lip. He stayed there through the, straightaway but his horses were beginning to tire, sweat and lather erupting on their neck and withers.

By the time they approached the third turn, slinging mud and dirt up beneath their wheels, Eliza-beth's heart was roaring in her ears. Harding was still out in front, but the earl was closing fast and it looked like the viscount's bays were slowing.

"Come on," she whispered beneath her breath. "You can do it."

They passed the fourth turn, Harding ahead again. The earl was half standing, his cigar long gone, his fingers handling the reins with a skill she hadn't expected. For an instant he turned in her direction and their eyes met across the distance. She wondered what he had seen in hers for he slapped the reins down sharply on the horses' rumps, shouted something she couldn't hear, and just as the animals reached the finish, Ravenworth's blacks surged across in the lead.

Shouts went up all round. Elizabeth was grinning, laughing out loud.

Aunt Sophie clapped her hands. "I told you he would win."

She started to wave, but her smile slipped a little and her hand stilled midway there as she watched the dark-haired earl being engulfed by his cloying group of admirers.

"Yes..." she said, "so you did." For a moment, she wished she could join them, wish him congratulations and share in his moment of triumph. She couldn't, of course, and the knowledge somehow made the joy she had felt only moments before begin to fade.

"We had better go back in," she told her aunt, but couldn't resist a last glance over her shoulder to where the earl held court. To her surprise, she found him watching, his gaze fixed on hers as if he sent her a silent message: I won this race for you, it said. Silly, she knew, yet she couldn't shake the notion. She glanced away and when she looked back, he was grinning at the woman in ice-blue silk, the actress Jilly Payne. Someone handed him another thin cigar and he bent his head while a servant struck flint to tender.

The viscount pressed a glass of liquor into his hands and slapped him on the back in congratulations, though she wondered at the man's sincerity. It was obvious Lord Harding had expected to win and the tightness around his mouth said his loss to the earl didn't sit well.

Ravenworth lifted the glass and quickly drained the contents, and Elizabeth turned away, her mood growing darker still.

A sigh escaped her. The Earl of Ravenworth was a rogue of the very worst sort, yet there was something about him. If her father had imagined for an instant his daughter's fate would rest in the hands of a wicked, undisciplined man like the earl, he never would have given her into his good friend, the third earl's care.

As it was, oddly enough, the days since her arrival at Ravenworth Hall, under Nicholas Warring's protection, were the first she had felt truly safe since Oliver Hampton had begun his relentless pursuit.

Her aunt chuckled softly. "Lord Ravenworth ... he is really quite something."

Elizabeth gazed at him one last time, saw him receive a victory kiss from the lovely Jilly Payne. "He is definitely that," she agreed, ignoring the odd, unwelcome tightness that rose in her chest as they started back to the house.

N
ick’s guests were still abed. They rarely arose before noon, and with the excitement of the carriage race, last night had been a particularly rousing evening.

Nick never slept in. His mental clock wouldn't allow it. Too many years of being roused before dawn to face another day of backbreaking labor. At the first whisper of sunlight, his eyes popped open and he could no longer sleep.

This morning, although a thick mist had settled over the rolling hills and his head pounded mercilessly from the gin he had consumed, he had already breakfasted and ridden out to check on one of his tenants, a man named Colin Reese whose wife was with child and due to deliver any day.

He was just now returning, walking out of the shadows of the barn into the sun beginning to break through the mist when he spotted Elizabeth Woolcot standing in the doorway of the blacksmith's shop in the low stone building across the way. Curiosity pulled him in that direction. He could see Silas McCann, the blacksmith, nodding his big shaggy head at whatever she was saying.

Nick strode up then paused beside the heavy oaken door. As yet they hadn't seen him.

"Thank you ever so much, Mr. McCann. Yesterday I spotted the perkiest little whitethroat perched on the garden wall. Perhaps with your help, we shall entice him to return."