Unraveling the Earl Read online

  Without prompting, Miss Buchanan dropped into a flawless curtsy, her gloved hands holding her skirts off the ground.

  “Mind you watch yourself around his lordship,” Mrs. Cooper cautioned. “He has something of a reputation. But you likely know all about that, being from London.”

  “I thank you for the advice,” Miss Buchanan replied.

  “I’ll be off then. I’ve a mind to take tea at the inn this afternoon. Will I see you there?”

  “I am not certain, Mrs. Cooper. I’d thought to start for London shortly.”

  “Well, you come back and visit us soon, dearie. You are always welcome.”

  With no more than a glare in Henry’s direction, the woman waddled off down the street.

  “I don’t think Mrs. Cooper approves of your sort.”

  Henry hooked out his arm, not the least bit surprised when she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. “My sort?”

  “Libertines.” She peered up at him from the corner of her eye as they stepped off the walkway and into the street.

  “And you?” he asked, making for the small green in the center of town.

  “Oh, Mrs. Cooper quite likes me, my lord.”

  “Do you approve of my sort?” he clarified around a chuckle. “Libertines, I mean.”

  “I have nothing against them, per se.”

  “Ah, so you’ve made the acquaintance of one or two.”

  “More than one or two, my lord.” She was looking straight ahead, a smile tugging at her lips, and Henry took the opportunity to study her profile. Her pale skin looked incredibly soft, her nose looked as if it had been broken at some point. “My cousin Killjoy is a libertine and quite likable.”

  “You’ve a cousin named Killjoy?” he asked.

  “A pet name,” she replied. “Given to him because he is decidedly not.”

  “He’s not a killjoy?”

  “What sort of libertine would he be if he were?” she asked, turning her head to gift him with a smile that was slow in coming but radiant when it arrived. “Killjoy is a mischief maker of the worst sort, quite a bad influence on anyone unlucky enough to come into contact with him.”

  “Let me guess,” Henry replied, “it was through Cousin Killjoy that you made the acquaintance of more than one or two libertines?”

  “Like Mongol hordes, they swarm up the mountain to pillage and plunder, leaving a trail of scorched earth, fallen women and bastard children in their wake. One might think they, like their forefathers, see it as their supreme duty to repopulate Scotland with English blood.”

  “Killjoy’s comrades are Englishmen? And here I was imagining a pack of kilted warriors trampling the heather beneath their booted feet.”

  “Alas, generations of mischief and mayhem perpetrated by Clan Buchanan have given us rather a bad name. While English mothers and fathers warn their children of boogeymen if they should misbehave, Scots mothers and fathers warn their children they might be spirited away by the Buchanans.”

  “Never to be seen again,” Henry finished as they reached the green.

  “As all of the Scots lads have been cautioned against associating with him, Killjoy is forced to carouse with displaced Englishmen.”

  “Wasn’t there some sort of myth regarding a Buchanan chieftain who betrayed William Wallace over an ancient grievance?”

  “Oh, that was no myth, my lord.” Her lavender eyes glowed with laughter as she stopped beside him and tilted her head back to meet his gaze. “We Buchanans are loyal unto our own above all else and we never forget a grievance, no matter how ancient. You might even think it our family motto.”

  What an enchanting creature she was in that moment, her pale face luminous in the sunlight, her eyes as beautiful as the English sky at twilight, and her too-wide mouth lifted into a wicked grin.

  “Why do I get the feeling you are issuing a warning?” Henry asked, his blood pounding with the sudden, inexplicable urge to toss her over his shoulder and carry her away to some remote forest where he could do a bit of pillaging and plundering of his own.

  “What a fanciful imagination you have, Lord Hasty,” she replied with a throaty laugh that tightened his balls and made him acutely aware of the cockstand in his trousers. “Do you mind if we switch sides?”

  Before he could reply to her question she stepped around him and came up on his left, tucking her hand through his elbow.

  “A childhood injury,” she explained, waving her free hand toward her voluminous skirts. “I’m afraid the uneven terrain will set me off my gait. You don’t mind if I lean on you just a tad?”

  “Not a bit.” Christ, let her lean on him, let her lean over him, let her arch her long slender back beneath him.

  She threaded her arm through his elbow, her hand clasping his forearm.

  Looking down at her hand encased in white lace he was struck by her exceptionally long fingers spread over and around his jacket sleeve, gripping him tight.

  “Would you rather sit down?” He nodded toward a bench in the shade of a sprawling oak.

  “The villagers will have us betrothed the moment your bum touches down.”

  Henry tossed his head back and let loose a laugh, causing a number of said villagers to stop and stare.

  “Hush, my lord,” she admonished, tugging his arm to start them walking once more.

  “You are an uncommon woman, Miss Buchanan,” he praised when he’d gotten his mirth under some semblance of control. “How is it we’ve never met?”

  “We hardly run in the same circles, my lord.”

  “We’ve been at a number of events together…that is at the same time.”

  “Have we?” she asked with a frown that formed a tiny wrinkle between her arched brows and pushed out her lower lip. “Yes, I suppose we have.”

  “You don’t intend to play coy with me now, do you?” Henry teased. “Not when you are finally within sight of your greatest desire.”

  “My greatest desire?” she repeated, halting beside him, her fingers tightening on his arm. “I’m afraid I don’t take your meaning.”

  “Don’t you?” Of course she did. This was no shy maiden, but rather a woman who made no secret of the fact that she’d known more than one or two rakes in her lifetime. Hell, she’d followed him from London after pining for him for a twelvemonth.

  “You know, then?” she asked, all breathless anticipation.

  “You’ve not been terribly discreet,” he answered with a wink.

  Whether the words or the wink set her off, he hadn’t a clue, but she pulled her arm free and took two stumbling steps back. A rush of color suffused her cheeks and Henry wondered if he’d bungled it somehow. The lady looked shocked. Beyond shocked, she looked…amused?

  Miss Buchanan erupted into laughter, her eyes shining, her luscious lips open to show off her teeth and a bit of her gums. She pressed one hand to her heart as her shoulders shook.

  “Miss Buchanan, are you quite all right?” Henry followed her retreat, not certain whether he ought to be angry or charmed.

  “Good lord,” she spluttered. “You…and me…me?”

  “Most definitely you,” he answered, entirely charmed. “And me. Us.”

  “Wait.” She held up one hand, her fingers spread wide and none too steady. “Wait, my lord. I just need a moment.”

  “We haven’t a moment to waste.” Henry pitched his voice low. “Come away with me, my dove. And we will all the pleasures prove.”

  “Do stop. I cannot think with you quoting poetry to me. And quite poorly, I might add.”

  “Don’t think,” he ordered. “I’ve a carriage waiting. We can be at Hastings Hall in two hours. And I promise you those two hours will be well spent.”

  “Yes, yes, you are London’s greatest gift to the ladies.” Her voice shook with the last remnants of her laughter as she dragged her gaze down the length of his body and back again. She took a deep breath as her shining eyes met his once more. “Shall we away, my lord?”

  Chapter Two />
  Henry craned his head out the window, his gaze searching the road behind until he spotted the second carriage following a mile or so behind. He sat back with a satisfied smile, his hand idly stroking over the front of his trousers and his painfully hard cock beneath.

  The little minx had insisted upon making the journey in her own carriage, an antiquated, lumbering box on wheels pulled by six mismatched horses of unknown lineage. One footman, little more than a boy, decked out in black-and-gray livery, rode beside the coachman while the other had disappeared into the interior behind his mistress.

  As the roads were dry they’d made good time, reaching the gate set between twin gatehouses in less than two hours. From there they had only to follow the long, tree-shaded drive that led from the road to the house in a straight shot, bisecting hills and forests and a stream.

  As his carriage crossed the stone bridge Henry saw that the stream was a small trickle, due no doubt to the drought that had taken hold of most of the country in recent months.

  A copse of trees, fenced off from the road and recently thinned, was the final impediment to the sight of the manor house. Sitting majestically above a small rise, the yellow-stone mansion sprawled four stories high against a backdrop of rolling green hills and sprawling gardens. A wide portico held aloft by a dozen tall pillars spanned nearly a quarter of the front façade, creating a shady space where Henry and Olivia had played as children.

  When they could escape their mother’s eagle eye.

  Henry blinked against the sudden moisture filling his eyes and an unfamiliar burning deep in the sockets.

  “Damned dusty roads,” he muttered.

  Not caring to think about his mother and the havoc she had wreaked far and wide before quietly passing away in the night, Henry instead thought about the mysterious lady who followed in a dilapidated excuse for a carriage.

  Miss Buchanan. What the devil was her given name? It seemed she ought to have offered it up at some point. She had followed him from London to Somerville and two hours farther north to Hastings Hall to partake of his charms, after all. One would think they would be on friendlier terms.

  There was plenty of time for that. Hell they had all day and all night to become better acquainted.

  Henry was painfully hard just imagining her slender legs curled around his waist as he thrust into her quim. After she’d straddled him and taken her pleasure, riding him hard and fast or soft and slow, depending upon her preference, of course. The ladies did like to mount him, having heard the whispers of his stamina, proof that even the highest born were not above spreading tales of their sexual exploits.

  Perhaps later, after he’d gifted her with a handful of thrashing orgasms, she might be persuaded to wrap her long fingers around his cock and take him into her mouth.

  Who was he kidding? Even his various mistresses had only offered up their mouths in return for some bauble or other.

  Ah well, a man could dream. And if that particular dream came to naught, he fully intended to roger Miss Buchanan all afternoon and long into the night, to force velvety moans from her lips, to have her begging in her sultry voice for more.

  He imagined she was a screamer, her lyrical Scots burr heralding her crisis.

  His carriage rounded the circular drive before the portico and came to a smooth stop mere feet from the steps leading to the shady porch. Critchley, his ancient butler, stepped out of the house to greet him with rheumy eyes and trembling limbs. Bounding from the carriage to join his butler in the shade, Henry turned to watch the second carriage make its way up the lane, bouncing jauntily ahead of a trailing cloud of dust.

  “Welcome home, my lord,” Critchley greeted with all the deference due a peer of the realm, only to ruin the effect with a muttered, “You weren’t due until the morrow.”

  “I trust my early arrival will not put you out too terribly,” he answered with a grin.

  “Certainly not, my lord, but might I enquire who you’ve got traveling with you.”

  “No need to fear my good man. The second carriage contains only one lady rather than the bevy of opera singers you imagine.”

  “Very good, my lord,” Critchley replied with a sigh. “And will the lady be needing a guest room readied?”

  “Not unless I’ve lost my touch.”

  From the corner of his eye, Henry watched the old man roll his eyes.

  Miss Buchanan’s ancient carriage slowed in the turn of the drive, groaning to a stop behind his, causing the servants unloading his trunks to shake their heads and laugh amongst themselves.

  The battered old box creaked and shook as the elderly coachman and young footman jumped to the ground.

  Henry waited while the pale-haired boy whipped open the door and the other footman, as dark as the first was fare, jumped down to stare at him with a mulish expression flitting over his flushed face.

  “Is this the lord?” he asked with a nod at Henry.

  “Only lord I see hereabouts,” the other boy answered with a grin.

  “What a lot of bother.”

  “Hush, Tag.” Miss Buchanan’s voice drifted from the dark confines of her carriage. “You want to be a footman. Kindly foot.”

  “Tag?” Henry murmured, watching the boy wrestle the step into place beneath the door before offering his hand to his mistress.

  “Tagalong,” the blond boy replied with a shrug.

  “Actuellement,” Miss Buchanan purred as she alighted. “Mon ami est nomme Tag Alogne.”

  Her French was atrocious at best and damn amusing.

  “You’ve changed your gown,” he announced unnecessarily when she stood before him.

  Gone were the yards and yards of frothy blue silk, lace and ruffles. In their place the lady wore a simple gown of pale yellow muslin dotted with pink flowers and green leaves. A narrow pink ribbon trimmed the vee of the neckline, the small capped sleeves, and the hem, from beneath which poked two pointy pink slippers. Tiny buttons, a dozen or more, marched from her cinched waist to the shadow of cleavage above her bodice. Or would they have, had she not tucked a lace fichu into the space and had she not been nearly as flat-chested as her footmen.

  On her head she’d perched a straw bonnet festooned with bright yellow flowers and trailing greenery.

  “Changes her dresses like light-skirts change culls,” Tag muttered.

  “Starched petticoats make for a devilishly uncomfortable ride,” the lady explained with an arch look at the mouthy boy.

  “All the more reason,” the boy muttered.

  “Am I arguing with you?” Miss Buchanan demanded. “You’re here, are you not? And dressed in livery?”

  “I wanted to make the journey up top,” the footman grumbled.

  “Ach, you’re a tiresome creature.” Miss Buchanan threw up her hands, her Scots bur heavier with her annoyance. “Sure and you’ll have years to ride on top. Then you’ll be whining to come down at the first sign of rain or snow.”

  “Not if it means listening to your infernal snoring.”

  “I do not snore.”

  “And I don’t whine.”

  Henry listened to their byplay with a smile, never mind he hadn’t a clue what had set the boy off. It mattered little. He’d never heard a mouthier servant, nor a lady deigning to argue with one, and found it vastly entertaining.

  “You’re whining right now,” the blond boy interjected.

  “Mind your own business, Brain!”

  “Children, please,” the lady huffed as she turned away to gaze up at the manor.

  “Brain?” Henry asked with a chuckle. “Another pet name?”

  “His mum got the spelling wrong,” Tag answered, angling his head to look down his nose at the other boy.

  “My name’s Brian.”

  “He comes to heel at either name,” Tag taunted.

  “Brain comes to heel for no man,” Miss Buchanan murmured in a distracted fashion. “Or woman for that matter. A lesson you might take to heart, Tag.”

  “Thanks, Georgi
e,” Brian, Brain, the boy who came to heel for no one, said.

  The lady spun about and fixed Henry with a trembling smile, her eyes huge and unblinking. “Will you give me a tour, your lordship?”

  “A tour?”

  “To walk off the kinks,” she drawled, sweeping ahead of him, her skirts whipping around her legs as she took the steps to the portico. “I’ve been tossed about in my carriage until I feel as if I’ve been tied up in knots.”

  “Tied up in knots,” he repeated, his eyes fixed on her swaying hips. Thank God she’d dispensed with the starched petticoats. He’d have had a devil of a time getting beneath them. And while she was tall and slender almost to the point of scrawny, her hips were gently rounded and her legs incredibly long.

  “Not to say that I don’t mind being tied up in knots from time to time.” Her soft words drifted back to him as she approached Critchley who bowed as best he could, considering he was nearing ninety and ought to be putting his feet up somewhere in the bowels of the house.

  “Mr. Crotchety,” she greeted, stopping in front of him.

  “Miss Buchanan,” he answered with a smile that showed the gaps between his yellowing teeth. “Determined lady, aren’t you?”

  “You’ve no idea, sir.”

  “Nor does his lordship, I’d imagine.” With that parting shot the butler turned on his heel and disappeared down the hall.

  “How is it you know my butler?” Henry followed her into the wide foyer, momentarily startled by the black crepe looped over the knocker on the open door. Forcing his eyes away from the reminder, he watched as Miss Buchanan surveyed the marble floor and rose-colored walls, pausing only briefly on the oval mirror draped in more black fabric, before drifting on to study the soaring ceiling and immense chandelier.

  “I’d hope to tour the public rooms,” she answered without turning from her perusal of the immense space that had always struck Henry as less than welcoming. “Over tea Mr. Crotchety informed me that your mother had passed and the house would not be open to the public for some time.”

  “Critchley,” he corrected as he dragged his gaze down her neck to her back, finding her shoulder blades clearly visible beneath the thin lace of her fichu. One spiraling curl had escaped its pins to trail down her nape and along her spine, shifting as she wandered around the hall.