LONDON, ENGLAND, 1804
Lord Edmund Ross, Earl of Greville
Dear Lord Greville,
It is a fine day here in the Sussex countryside. The trees have leafed out and the sky is the clearest, most startling color of blue. Unfortunately, by necessity, most of my time is spent indoors. The tutors you have arranged are very fine indeed, though they are difficult taskmasters. Still, I am determined. I study late into the evening, then rise several hours early to begin anew the following day. Reading has become my favorite pastime. In the beginning, it was difficult, but oh, what wonderful doors it has opened! There are novels and plays, incredible poems and sonnets.
I vow, such a gift is, in itself, worth the price of our bargain.
Justin Bedford Ross, Fifth Earl of Greville, read the letter he had pulled from the stack he kept locked in the bottom drawer of the desk in his study. He had read them all more than once, some with faint amusement, others with a trace of pity, an emotion he rarely felt.
After his father’s death, from the day Justin had moved into the old stone mansion in Brook Street, he had been inexplicably drawn to the innocent ramblings of the young woman his lecherous father had intended to make his whore.
Justin’s jaw tightened at the image of the earl that rose into his mind, a licentious, arrogant man who thought only of his own selfish needs. He couldn’t help feeling a shot of satisfaction at the odd turn of fate that had made him his father’s heir. For most of his twenty-eight years, his father had ignored him. As far as Edmund Ross was concerned, Justin Bedford was simply a costly mistake, a bastard spawned off one of his numerous whores.
Two years ago, gravely ill and dying, he had sent for Justin and offered him the single thing the earl could give him that he could not refuse.
The legitimacy of his name.
Even the lure of the Greville fortune and the power and prestige of an earldom would not have been enough to entice him. It was the name that he had wanted, the name he had yearned for since he was a boy. Justin had accepted his father’s offer of adoption, becoming Justin Bedford Ross, because he would no longer be the bastard son who had been laughed at and scorned for as long as he could remember.
He leafed through the stack of letters, drew out another, and scanned the page:
My studies continue. By necessity, before I left my home in Ewhurst, I had learned to work a bit with numbers, enough to help my father sell his crops and livestock at market. Here I have studied at length the Young Ladies New Guide to Arithmetic and have become quite accomplished at mathematics. History is another subject I enjoy, especially learning about the ancient Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks. I can’t believe the women actually went about half-naked!
His mouth edged up. Justin folded and replaced the letter in its proper order in the stack. As he had promised, he had kept his father’s bargain, struck with Ariel Summers more than four years ago. The girl was now beyond eighteen and ready to leave Mrs. Penworthy’s School of Feminine Deportment, the expensive finishing school he had arranged for her to attend.
A thousand times since he’d become earl, he had tried to imagine what she looked like. Beautiful, he was sure. His father had always had exquisite taste in women. He wondered if she was dark or fair, tall or short. He hadn’t the slightest notion about her appearance, and yet, through her letters, he felt he knew her better than anyone he had ever met.
He wasn’t sure what he would do about her, now that her education was complete, but the girl was an innocent, someone his father had taken unfair advantage of, and he felt responsible for her in some way. She had no family, no one to see to her needs. Whatever decision he made, he wouldn’t do as his father had done to him and abandon her.
Reaching out, he picked up the white-plumed pen on his desk, dipped it into the inkwell, and scratched out the first words he had ever written to her, instructions for her to follow when she departed the school.
He would send the Greville carriage to transport her to his house in London. He had business to attend to in Liverpool that could last as long as several weeks, but upon his return they would discuss the future. He signed it simply: “Regards, the Earl of Greville.”
It occurred to him that it was scarcely proper for a young woman to be living in the residence of an unmarried male, but he cared nothing for the rules of convention and he wasn’t about to put himself out any more than he already had. He would supply her with a lady’s maid, one who knew, along with his other servants, the wrath they would suffer if they were anything less than discreet.
Justin reread the letter he had written, used a drop of wax to close it, and imprinted it with the Greville seal, the image of a hawk swooping down on a hare. He rang for a footman, who came on the run, gave him tuppence, and instructed him to post the letter.
* * *
Ariel left the bedchamber she had been given in the Earl of Greville’s town mansion and hurried down the wide stone staircase. She had been living in the city for nearly two weeks, each day since her arrival more exciting than the next. She was in London! London! There was a time she never would have believed it.
It was still hard to accept the changes that had taken place in her life in four short years. She had a thorough education, could read both Latin and French, and speak as well as any member of the nobility. She dressed in fashionable clothes and traveled about in Lord Greville’s expensive black carriage, though in truth, she hadn’t yet ventured far. Of course, the house was nothing at all as she had imagined, nothing like the earl’s magnificent country estate, Greville Hall.
Instead it was dank and dreary, built of thick gray stone and heavy timbered wood, a massive structure at least 200 years old, with smoke-blackened rafters and not enough windows. No wonder the earl had spent so much time in the country!
Still, she was in London, on the road to fulfilling her dreams. And though, deep down, there were times she still felt like the ragged cottager’s daughter she truly was, there was no place on earth she would rather be.
Dressed in an apricot muslin day dress sprigged with white roses, a narrow frilled underskirt, showing merrily beneath the hem, she tucked a strand of pale blond hair into the ringlets swept up on her head and walked through the door of the Red Room.
She grinned when she saw her best friend, Kassandra Wentworth, seated on a burgundy velvet sofa. “You came! Oh, Kitt, I wasn’t sure you would.” Her friend stood up, and the two girls hugged.
“You really didn’t think I would come? Don’t be silly—I could hardly wait to see you. It took a bit of doing, I’ll admit. My stepmother would scarcely approve of my visiting you in the home of an unmarried man.”
“I suppose not.”
“Your note said the earl hadn’t yet returned from his business trip.”
“Not yet.”
“What will you do when he does?”
Ariel worried her bottom lip and sank down on the edge of the sofa. “Talk to him. Try to make him understand. I realize he has spent a goodly sum of money in the past four years, but surely I can find a way to repay him.”
Sitting beside her, Kitt rolled eyes a brighter shade of green than the gown she was wearing. “You can repay him, all right—in about a hundred years.” Kitt was shorter than Ariel and less slenderly built, with fiery red hair and an irreverent, saucy smile. She was the youngest daughter of the Viscount Stockton, a widower in his fifties who had married a woman just a few years older than his daughter.
Ariel fidgeted, plucked at the folds of her gown. “Perhaps the money won’t matter. Once I explain that at the time we agreed to the bargain I didn’t really understand exactly what it entailed, I don’t think he’ll be unreasonable. He’s an earl, after all, and extremely wealthy. If he wants a mistress, he can have any woman he pleases.”
“He wants you, Ariel. That’s why he agreed to your insane proposal in the first place.”
Ariel’s gaze shot to Kitt’s face. “But the man hasn’t seen me since I was a child. He doesn’t even know what I look like.”
Kitt pointedly studied Ariel’s blemish-free complexion, fine features, and silver-blond hair. “Well, he won’t be disappointed, rest assured.”
Ariel stared down at her lap, her chest feeling suddenly tight. “I gave him my word. Whatever happens, I am bound by it. I shan’t break the vow I made unless he releases me from it.”
Kitt sighed, knowing that when Ariel made up her mind there was little chance of changing it. “You said in your letter you had met someone. Maybe he can help.”
Ariel smiled brightly, her glum thoughts instantly fading. “Oh, Kitt—I can hardly believe it. It was an accident, pure and simple, a miracle—or destiny, perhaps—that we chanced upon each other the way we did. It was a lovely day and the house is not far from the park. I decided to go for a walk and there he was.”
“There who was?”
Ariel grinned. “My prince charming, of course. He is blond and fair, quite possibly the handsomest man I’ve ever seen. His name is Phillip Marlin. He’s the second son of the Earl of Wilton.”
Kassandra tried to recall Marlin’s face, whether she had met him somewhere in the past, finally gave up, and shook her head. “The name sounds familiar, but I don’t think I know him. Perhaps my father does.”
“For heaven’s sakes, you mustn’t mention him to your father—at least not until I’ve worked things out. Phillip doesn’t know anything about my past or why I am here. He thinks the earl is a distant cousin.”
Kitt scoffed, “From what you’ve told me, Greville plans to know you far better than that.”
Ariel ignored her. “Phillip and I have been meeting in the park each morning. Yesterday he took me for a ride in his carriage.”
A frown creased Kitt’s brow. “Do you think that’s a good idea? You don’t really know anything about him.”
“I know all I need to know. Oh, Kitt—I think I’m falling in love with him.”
“In little more than a week?”
“You’ve heard of love at first sight, haven’t you?”
“Yes, and I’m not convinced there is any such thing.”
“Well, I believe there is and I’m certain that Phillip does, too.”
Kitt reached over and caught her hand. “You may have learned a lot of things in Mrs. Penworthy’s school, my dear, but you don’t know tuppence about men. They’ll say anything—do anything—to get you into their bed.”
Ariel felt a slow burn creeping into her cheeks. “Phillip isn’t like that.”
“Just be careful,” Kitt warned. “I’m far more worldly than you. I know from experience how deceitful a man can be.”
There was something in her friend’s voice that said more than her words. Ariel wasn’t sure what had happened to Kitt, but it was obvious she hadn’t completely got over it. Ariel wanted to ask what it was, but she wasn’t sure her friend would tell her.
“When are you leaving for the Continent?” Ariel asked instead, opting for a change of subject.
“The end of next week. First they send me to a boarding school miles away from home. Now they’re shipping me off to a cousin in Italy.” She sighed and shook her head. “My father’s only doing it to please his wife. He knows Judith and I don’t get along.”
“I wish you didn’t have to go.” Ariel would miss her, the single friend who knew the truth of her past and never made her feel the least bit self-conscious about it.
“I’m scarcely eager to leave.” Kitt squeezed Ariel’s hand. “Just remember what I said about men. And that applies to the earl as well as Phillip Marlin.”
* * *
Justin Ross, Earl of Greville, leaned back against the tufted leather seat of his carriage and picked up the several-days-old copy of the London Chronicle he had retrieved that morning at the inn. He had concluded his business in Liverpool several days early, a financial matter that involved the building and financing of a new fleet of ships, and, of course, there was the small matter of the bankrupt textile factory he had purchased for a fraction of what it was worth.
He had resolved his business exactly in the manner he had wished and was now on his way back to London. As he thought of the houseguest who would be waiting, it surprised him to discover how much he looked forward to the meeting.
In the past few years, aside from the challenge of increasing the Greville fortune, which he had substantially managed to augment in the two years since he’d become earl, there was little out of the norm that happened in his well-ordered existence. Perhaps that was the reason he had become so intrigued by Ariel’s letters. Each week, when one of them arrived at the house, for a brief instant in time a faint ray of light crept into his dark, cynical world.
He had read every letter she had ever written and looked forward each week to the next. Now, before the day was through, he’d be arriving at his house in Brook Street and their long-anticipated meeting would finally commence.
He tried to imagine her face, but no suitable image arose. The vibrant young woman in the letters seemed nothing at all like the other women he had known: hedonistic, self-centered creatures like his mother or the featherbrained females of the ton who wanted nothing from a man but the coin in his purse and the power of his name.
Ariel was different. She was the embodiment of honesty, purity, and innocence. She was—
Justin frowned, wondering where his ridiculous notions about the girl had come from. He was no longer the lost little boy who cried in the night for the mother who had abandoned him or the naive young fool who’d been crushed by his sweetheart’s betrayal with another man. That person no longer existed, hadn’t for a good many years.
The man who returned this day to London knew from brutal experience that honesty, purity, and innocence were qualities that simply did not exist.