Romancing the Countess

Two months later, Leah cursed the Earl of Wriothesly for his advice. And herself as well, for taking it. Hiding the truth from her mother would have been far easier behind the refuge of a veil, no matter how unusual it might have seemed to wear one indoors.

Trying to appear both wan and welcoming while the ribbons of the widow’s cap swayed against her cheeks, Leah poured two cups of tea—one for her mother and one for her sister, Beatrice. She’d dreaded their visit even before returning to London three days ago. Her mother doubtlessly expected to find her heartbroken and miserable, and while Leah had always tried her best to please her, her time away from society had made it increasingly difficult to continue the dutiful role of mourning widow.

The teapot rattled against the other china as she lowered it to the tray, the discordant sound impossibly loud in the silence which had descended once they’d taken their seats. Leah’s heart sped, every nerve contracting. As she’d done all her life, she waited for her mother to speak.

Adelaide Hartwell sighed, her gaze returning from its examination of the sitting room to settle on Leah’s face. “I admit it is very generous of the viscount to allow you to continue using the town house and Linley Park, but you must know we would prefer to have you home with us. I worry for you, my dear, all alone with nothing but your memories of him. At least if you returned to us, I would be able to make certain you ate properly. I know mourning takes a toll on one’s appetite, but—” She waved helplessly toward the platter of crumpets and biscuits, which Leah had yet to touch.

Ah, there it was. The first cut, so cleverly disguised as maternal concern. And an old one, too. Whereas Adelaide and Beatrice Hartwell were the perfect portraits of English beauty—rounded breasts and hips, pleasantly full oval faces—Leah was the odd one. Too skinny. Too few curves, too many angles. Too . . . lacking.

Adelaide accepted her cup and saucer with a tiny pleat between her brows. “As you should, of course. You’ve always been too frail. But I fear it isn’t enough, darling. You look like a starved crow in all that black crepe. Have a biscuit. Just one, for my sake if nothing else.”

Leah glanced at Beatrice, seeking their usual exchange of sympathy. At seventeen, she was three years younger than Leah, and except for her larger curves and blue eyes, they’d always shared similar features and a wary regard for their parents’ instruction. But Beatrice refused to meet her gaze, instead sipping at her tea. In fact, from the moment they’d entered the sitting room, she hadn’t spoken one word. Leah looked at her mother, then again at Beatrice. Of course. Beatrice had spent two months in London alone with Adelaide while Leah had sought an escape from society. She must be glad for Leah to be the target of their mother’s criticism, if only for an hour.

It was Adelaide’s warning voice, a demand, and Leah didn’t need to look to know her mother’s gaze would be narrowed, the fine lines at the corners of her mouth carved with censure.

Like a whip to her back, the voice bent Leah’s spine toward the platter of biscuits, her arm automatically outstretched. It was an obedient gesture from a dutiful daughter, and while she might now be jaded and skeptical as a result of her marriage, she’d always been dutiful, hadn’t she?

At Linley Park in Wiltshire, the George estate where she’d withdrawn after attending to Ian’s parents, she’d become accustomed to obeying no one’s wishes but her own. Maintaining a pretense of mourning was unnecessary with a small retinue of servants who made themselves invisible.

By day she did as she liked, following each and every whim as it occurred. She ate according to her own pleasure, dictating both the time and the substance; there was no need to plan menus to suit Ian’s palate, or to guess whether he would actually appear for meals. She could curl up in a window seat all afternoon with a book or go for long, aimless walks over the chalk hills. Gone were the social calls which required her to chatter and smile on cue and agree indeed, she was the most fortunate woman to be married to Ian George. If she smiled while at Linley Park, it was only because she desired to do so. She could laugh or frown, grow angry or sulk, and there was no one about to whose expectations she must bow. For a while, she was able to distance herself from the loneliness that had begun after the discovery of Ian’s affair.

And the evenings—the unmitigated joy of each night. To be free of that accursed canopy in the London town house and the rich, cloying smell of her perfume on Ian’s skin. The stars were Leah’s canopy instead, the innocent fragrance of daisies sweet upon the night air. Many nights she spent simply sitting in the garden, sometimes with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders to ward off the breeze, sometimes letting the soft spring rain cascade down her face. For the first time in her life, she finally discovered the art of indulging her own happiness.

Unfortunately, now that she was back in London and again the subject of her mother’s frivolous demands, Leah realized that once developed, such a habit of selfishness became nearly impossible to break.

Ever poised, Adelaide merely raised a brow and reached for another spoonful of sugar. “Is there a reason you decided to wear crepe for your mourning clothes? When your grandfather died, I preferred to wear bombazine the entire time.”

“As you know, Viscount Rennell offered an annual allowance and the use of both this town house and Linley Park as long as I like. He’s always had a great fondness for me.”

“Yes, but I’m sure he won’t abide by that decision indefinitely. He must expect you to marry again, or to see if . . .” Adelaide’s gaze slid to Leah’s stomach.

Leah swallowed, her hand involuntarily moving to cover the flat expanse above her waist. She glanced at Beatrice, then cleared her throat. “There’s a possibility, but nothing’s certain.” Although her monthly courses had come precisely on time, their duration had been remarkably shortened. And then there was the fact that she’d gained half a stone in two months. She’d come to London at her mother’s request, yes, but also because Lord Rennell had arranged for her to meet with his physician and be examined.

Tomorrow. She would know tomorrow if she was with child. If all those nights of waiting for Ian to come to her bed, of enduring his patient, thorough lovemaking, had been enough.

“But this is an even greater reason why you must return home with us,” her mother continued. “You cannot think to live alone. You are far too young, and vulnerable. Ian protected and took care of you when he was alive. And of course you loved him, darling, but he’s gone now. You must come with us. Without a husband, you—”

Adelaide paused, her lips still parted. Then her features drew taut, pinching until every wrinkle she worked so hard to erase ruched like lines of enemy soldiers at the corners of her eyes and mouth. “Leah, dearest—”

“No.” The syllable came out shaken, quiet, and Leah hated that she was still trying to please her mother, to be the demure and dignified little mouse. “I don’t need a husband,” she continued, stronger now. “In fact, I think I will do quite well without one. And I’m sorry, but I also don’t need my mother to tell me each step to make, to tell me if I should eat, or sleep, or what clothes I should wear!” The last word hovered in the air with a shrill defiance, the echo of her anger loud and insolent.

Adelaide glared at her; Beatrice’s eyes had gone impossibly wide. Leah felt a thrill of satisfaction even as her head throbbed, the pins from the widow’s cap stabbing into her scalp. She met Adelaide’s gaze. Her voice was calm and steady when she spoke again, her conviction replacing any need to raise her voice. “I may have only twenty years, but I am not a child. I’m not an innocent. I’m a widow, Mother, and if being married has taught me nothing else, I’ve learned that I’m fully capable of managing my own life.”

Leah waited, the quiet into which her breath rushed nearly tomblike. Adelaide’s face resumed its expression of serenity. Slowly, she placed her cup and saucer down and rose to her feet. “Come along, Beatrice. Your father will be wondering why we’ve been absent for so long.”

Leah firmed her jaw and stared across the room. Minutes elapsed as she listened to their footsteps receding to the front hall below, more as she waited for the sound of movement from the coach outside.

She’d spent nearly two years as the dutiful, obedient wife, even after learning of Ian’s unfaithfulness. It was time to cease playing the dutiful, obedient daughter as well.

Sebastian knocked and took a step back. It felt strange to visit the George residence, knowing that he would no longer find Ian inside. He also found it odd for Leah George to send a note requesting to see him, but still he’d come, desperate to leave his own house.

Three months had passed since Angela’s death, and yet Henry continued to ask after her. Sebastian had left it to his son’s nurse to deal with the news of Angela’s death as she saw fit, but Henry didn’t seem to understand. He had hoped a boy of eighteen months would have forgotten by now, but on the occasions when Sebastian entered the nursery, Henry always straightened from his toys and smiled, then looked behind him in search of his mother.

Instead of leading him to one of the more formal receiving rooms as he’d expected, the servant continued up the staircase to the second floor, toward the bedchambers. As they reached the landing, Sebastian could hear Leah’s voice, strong and clear, so different from Angela’s soft, dulcet speech.

“That one to charity. No, not the striped one—the footmen can look over it first. And the hat—yes, the one with the red band. My God, how many hats does one man need?”

There was a noticeable silence, and Sebastian wondered whether she’d forgotten about the message she’d sent. Then: “Oh, yes. Please come in, my lord. It will be only a moment.”

Pausing at the threshold, Sebastian peered inside. While the room might indeed have once been assigned the role of bedchamber, it now resembled little more than a storage closet. Waistcoats, jackets, top hats, trousers—every article of a gentleman’s wardrobe was separated into haphazard piles, with some thrown onto the bed, others embraced by the chairs in front of the hearth, and even more scattered on the floor. As he watched, a short line of footmen and maids exited the dressing room, each carrying another stack of clothing. These were dumped at the foot at the bed, which seemed to be the only space unoccupied in the room.

Mrs. George came at the end, her arms wrapped around a tower of bandboxes, her head peeking around the side as she walked. After tumbling them into the center of the new pile, she turned around, dusted her hands together, then curtsied. “My lord.”

He should never have told her to remove the veil. Her eyes were too bright—dear God, sparkling even— her cheeks flushed, her lips creased in an upward curve which appeared inclined toward permanence.

She grimaced. “Yes, of course you would say something.” Gesturing toward the servants sorting behind her, she said, “I’ve decided it’s unnecessary. My clothes declare me to be in mourning, and the widow’s cap was only making me feel like a mare with blinders on. Besides, I’m in my own home, with no one to see me except the servants. And, well, you.” She paused, her lips tilting upward again in that annoying little manner. “I hope I haven’t offended you.”

She was so damned happy, a novelty in his miseryshadowed world of the past three months. His servants, his brother, the other lords at Parliament—everyone tiptoed around him, careful not to speak too loudly or laugh in his presence. Only Henry dared to smile at him, his childish innocence leaving him oblivious to the despair which had settled over the house and all of its occupants.

But Leah George wasn’t a child who didn’t know any better. And even if she’d known of the affair months ago—even if she despised Ian for it—she should at least have the decency to be miserable, too. If not for his death, then for the knowledge that she’d been betrayed. For the sudden change in the life that she knew. For not being able to wear anything other than black, for the balls and soirees and musicales it was now inappropriate for her to attend. God, for anything, as long as she didn’t smile like that.

None of his maids had been sent into Angela’s rooms; he had yet to venture into her bedchamber himself. The temptation to sit there with her fragrance surrounding him, pretending as if she would soon walk through the door, as if none of it had ever happened, was too much. It was nearly as strong as the temptation to destroy everything and set fire to her memory.

She followed his gaze, shrugging. “Preparations for my return to Linley Park. For the servants and then for charity—much better than indulging the moths and rats, I thought. But come,” she said, moving toward a door at the side, “I know you must be impatient to learn why I asked you here.”

Silently Sebastian followed Leah through the adjoining door into another bedchamber—her bedchamber, by all appearances. Except for the large canopied bed swathed in dark blue drapes in the middle of the room, the decorations were decidedly feminine. Not the rose and cream femininity Angela had favored, but a delicate palette of light blue and yellow. Comforting instead of sensuous, the textures and furniture more practical than luxurious, and yet Sebastian couldn’t help but feel awkward as he entered. This was an intimacy he didn’t welcome, a view into her private life he didn’t care to see.

His gaze fell to Leah, who had already bent over a stack of odds and ends farther in the room. No servants traipsed back and forth here; only the voices emanating through the open door kept them from complete isolation.

Her head shot up, her hands pausing in their reach toward the pile. Her gaze narrowed, she looked him up and down—a bloody measuring of his worth, it seemed—then returned to her search. “I recall. I’ve told no one the truth.”

“No? Perhaps you believe your servants are both blind and deaf, then. That they don’t realize how unnaturally happy you are a mere three months after your husband’s death. I don’t give a damn what you wear or say or how you act when you’re alone, but at least show some degree of decorum in front of others. If not—”

“If not, people will begin to wonder why you aren’t mourning your husband, then try to discover a reason. It wouldn’t take long for anyone to suspect the truth, given the circumstances of their deaths—”

Sebastian snapped his mouth shut as she turned around, hating the fact that everything about her reminded him of Angela—not in similarities, but in contrasts. Her voice, her decorating style, and now, with only a foot between them, her scent. Rather than the warm, sultry combination of lavender and vanilla, he breathed in the artless aroma of soap: earthy, subtle, its only fragrance a slight hint of seawater.

He should have felt contrite; he’d never spoken to a woman without the greatest deference. He’d certainly never cursed at one as he’d done earlier. But no guilt seeped into his conscience. Standing before Ian’s widow, this woman who served only to remind him of his loss, there was nothing but anger and frustration and an irrational desperation to flee.

He hesitated, for her smile had grown wide at his response. Above all else, he didn’t want to do anything to make her any goddamned happier. Yet he refused to retract the words. Slowly, warily, he nodded.

“Oh, come, Lord Wriothesly,” she said as she knelt once more to the floor. “Wouldn’t you agree that ‘obstinate and reckless’ is much better than being obedient and wretched?”

“And I’ve already promised not to reveal your secret.” She chose an item from the stack of odds and ends, a small leather-bound book. “I am curious, however, what you think would constitute doing something reckless in private. Embroidering upside down? Reading the Bible in the bath?”

“I’ve read only a few pages, but it seems to be a journal from when he was younger. For a while I doubted whether I should send for you, but I thought you should be the one to decide whether you’d like to have any of his things. He mentioned you in there.”

“And here’s a pin from Eton. Several newspaper clippings about legislature you’ve supported in Parliament. A rather strange-looking rock, although I don’t suppose you’d want that, would you?”

It had been a stupid jest at the time. They’d been drunk—thoroughly soused, in fact—and meandering through the alleys of Cambridge in celebration of leaving university. They’d stopped to piss against a wall, and when they finished Ian stumbled over the rock. After weaving back and forth and swiping air with his hand the first several tries, he eventually managed to pick it up. His headstone, he’d called it, and they both thought it hilarious, in that giddy, unfocused drunken way.

Sebastian shook his head. “No, I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it.” Shoving the journal into her hands, he turned away. Bloody hell. He didn’t want these memories, memories that had been buried and fogged with time. He swung back around. “Was this meant as some sort of amusement for you? Did you honestly believe I would want—”

“My lord,” she interrupted quietly, and inclined her head toward the open door, where her servants could still be heard sorting through Ian’s clothing and other accoutrements. “You were his closest friend,” she continued, “and I thought to at least ask before—”

She stood and smoothed her skirts. A long minute passed as she stared at him, the right side of her lower lip caught between her teeth. At last, her smile had disappeared.

“No,” she said, “there’s something else.” Sweeping toward the other side of the bed, Leah went to a writing table and opened one of the top drawers. Her return to him was slower, almost reluctant. When she at last stood before him, she averted her eyes. “I also found these, hidden away in his bedchamber. I thought you might want them.”

Sebastian flinched as she held out a packet of letters wrapped in a pink satin ribbon. Lavender and vanilla permeated the air. Hanging from the packet, suspended by her finger, swayed a gold locket encrusted with diamonds.

Sebastian flung out his arm. The letters and the locket went flying from Leah’s hand. They scattered across the floor, the pink ribbon loosening until the corner of only one letter lay within its satin grasp.