Ethan: Lord of Scandals

Eleven

Horses needed the occasional drink, especially in warmer weather. At least the coachy looked apologetic when he insisted Hart Collins pause on his journey between house parties.

Boring, staid, excruciatingly proper house parties held by those whose social aspirations meant a title—any title at all—would find welcome in their midst.

“Very well.” Hart Collins stood beside the coach and surveyed the unprepossessing village green. “But if I sicken from drinking the dog piss that passes for ale in such surrounds, be it on your head, John Coachman.”

“Aye, milord.”

The coachy would have a nip too, of course. The man drove better drunk than sober, something Collins did not hold against him—a drunk being less inclined to carp about timely payment of his wages.

The inn was, like its setting, tidy, clean, and completely unremarkable. A bucolic Tudor exponent of English respectability such as Collins occasionally pretended he missed when dealing with the infernal heat and insubordinate servants in Italy.

And sometimes, the barmaids in such establishments were not averse to earning a few extra coins. Then too, the horses would move along more smartly if they were given a chance to blow, after all. One shouldn’t neglect one’s cattle.

“A proper squire would come in occasionally for a pint.”

The speaker was hunched over the dark, polished wood of the bar, and his tone suggested this was not the first drink with which he fueled his discontent.

“Hush, ye, Thatcher. We don’t all of us need to cast our business to the wind. Mr. Grey pays his tithes and minds his own.” The rebuke came from a plump matron sitting in the snug with the unsmiling specimen who must have been her yeoman spouse.

“He can well afford to pay his tithes,” Thatcher retorted, straightening. “Man’s a bloody nabob, and watches every coin.”

Yokels would ever complain about the gentry, the gentry would complain about the nobs, and the titles would complain about the Crown. Merry Old England was predictable, at least.

Collins stepped up to the bar. “A pint of your best, and some decent fare.”

“There’s ham and cheese, and bread just out of the oven,” the bartender said while pulling a pale pint. He wasn’t an old man, but he had the self-contained quality of most in his station.

“Ethan Grey’s cheese,” Thatcher spat. “You purchase your goods from a man who’s too high and mighty to patronize the only inn in the neighborhood.”

Ethan Grey?

“That’s enough from you, Thatcher,” the conscience in the corner piped up. “Most would be spending their free time with family, not biting the hand that feeds them.” She sent a significant glance at Collins, a clear reminder that foreigners—those from outside the parish—were not to be parties to local grievances.

“This Ethan Grey,” Collins said, sliding his drink down the bar and taking a position next to Thatcher. “He’s one of the landholders hereabouts?”

“Owns one of the prettiest properties in the shire,” Thatcher replied. “Imports his sheep and cattle, keeps a prime stable, but spoils his wee brats rotten and thinks he’s too good for the rest of us—and him nothing but some lord’s bastard, or so they say.”

Sometimes, just when it seemed those fickle bitches known as the Fates turned their backs on a man, they were in fact leaving in his hands the means to solve all his problems.

Ethan Grey had children—small children. “Is this Ethan Grey tall, blond, and blue-eyed? Serious as a parson?”

“More serious than Vicar Fleming,” Thatcher groused. “A hard man and hardheaded. Hard on the help what gives him an honest day’s work.”

From the scent of Thatcher and the dirt on his boots and clothes, the man was a hostler of some sort. In pursuit of self-interest, Collins was willing to have truck with even such a one as this.

“And you say he’s wealthy and dotes on his children? Come, Mr. Thatcher. Perhaps you’d like to share in the plebeian offerings that pass for sustenance at this establishment.”

Thatcher looked momentarily wary, until the bartender put a plate of sliced ham, cheese, and brown bread on the bar.

“I’m a mite peckish,” Thatcher allowed.

Collins picked up the plate with one hand and his drink with the other—a surprisingly mellow summer ale. “Come along. I have a few questions for you.”

As they made their way to a corner table as far as possible from the bar and the snug, Collins’s mind began to spin possibilities. Across the room, the bartender scrubbed out a mug with a dingy white rag and said nothing.

When Nick returned to the kitchen, he brought paper, pencils, and a gum eraser, and sat at the worktable. Alice peered over his shoulder as he sketched, startled at the whimsy of the structure on the page.

“You could really build that?”

“Of course.” Nick didn’t look up. “It would take some doing. On a raised structure like this, we might have to paint the boards before we build, which means being able to see how the whole fits together from the raw lumber.”

“These are like your bird houses, but bigger.”

“And one must plan safe entry and exits, because little boys don’t generally fly. Bring your tea over here, Alice. I’m about to interrogate you.”

“So interrogate,” Alice challenged him as she took the bench opposite him at the table. “Be warned I’m not the tattling kind.”

“It’s only tattling if somebody has misbehaved. Are you happy here?”

Not the question she’d anticipated. “Happier than I thought I’d be. Overwhelmed too.”

“Overwhelmed?” Nick frowned at his sketch. “I’m not sure I can credit that such a thing is possible. They are good boys, Alice. How can you be overwhelmed to be teaching them their sums and declensions? Priscilla was overwhelming, with her wild imagination and careless heart.”

“Wild imagination?” Alice took a sip of her tea, aiming a pointed look at the sketch on the page. Nick had designed a two-story affair patterned to blend right into the surrounding foliage, complete with birds and a birdhouse secreted among the leaves and branches.

“Wild.” He used the eraser the better to shade the foliage, while the scents of cinnamon and clove filled the kitchen. “The stories that child concocts should be published.” He frowned at his sketch then paused to help himself to a sip of Alice’s tea. “You put cinnamon in this, and you’re dodging my question.”

“The boys are busy,” Alice said, “and you’re right. Academically, they are well within my abilities.”

“But?” Nick set his sketch aside and regarded Alice closely, all hint of teasing gone from his features.

“But I realize I am tromping around Tydings like a mountaineer, Nick. I used to go for days at Sutcliffe without leaving the walls of the manor. My hip hurt, true, but here, it seems the more I walk, the less it hurts.”

“This overwhelms you? And why didn’t you just tell us you stayed indoors because you hurt?”

Yes, why hadn’t she? “It doesn’t bother me much now. That’s a change, a big change. Miss Portman,” she said with some consternation, “does not enjoy the outdoors.”

Nick cocked his head. “But you do. You were positively beaming on that horse, Alice. You were enjoying the outdoors and being on horseback.”

“That overwhelms me too. Before this week, I’d gone twelve years without managing a horse, Nick. I’d avoided titled company, but ended up on the arm of an earl here in Ethan’s gardens, and we’re off to do the pretty with more of same on Wednesday. It makes my head swim, to tell the truth.”

“I’m a title.” Nick swiped more of her tea.

“You’re just you, for which I am grateful.”

“So are you overwhelmed with joy, or worries?”

“Both.” Alice peered at her almost-empty mug. “Then there is your brother.”

“Ah.”

What a man could do with one syllable. “He overwhelms me too.”

“It’s the family charm. We’re endowed with it in proportion to our size.”

“Abominable man.” Alice stalled by sipping the last of her tea. “Ethan is charming, and you should not mock him.”

Nick sobered. “I don’t mock him, and I don’t understand him either. He used to have charm to burn, Alice. I was convinced, growing up, he would have made a much better earl than I, and I used to pray he’d end up with the title, though it was a legal impossibility.”

“Why would he have made the better earl? You’re the heir.”

“Ethan is so much more of a man than I am. He’s not just smarter, he’s wiser. He’s not quite too big, whereas I have the dimensions of an ox. He never descended to chasing skirts out of immature resentment of life’s responsibilities. He managed to dust himself off after Papa’s wrongheaded foolishness, and he comprehends finances with an intuition I lack. He’s just… better. I am glad Leah did not meet him first.”

“Have you told him this?” Alice asked, wondering why women were considered less rational than men.

“He would just give me that cool, kind smile of his.” Nick scrubbed a hand over his face. “He’d tell me he hadn’t any idea what I was going on about, then change the subject. It unnerves me.”

“Why would that unnerve you?”

“Because the old Ethan, my brother Ethan, would have argued me right out of my positions, because they are not entirely logical—I comprehend that—and he would have done so without causing me to resent his superior reasoning. He took a first in mathematics, you know.”

“And his Latin is excellent. Where did he go to school before Cambridge?”

“Stoneham,” Nick replied. “Some dreary place up north. Lady Warne about tore a strip off Papa when she got wind of it. I gather it is not a congenial environment, as boarding schools go.”

Alice felt the tea in her belly abruptly curdle. “God above. Stoneham is not far from Blessings, Nick. It’s a horror.”

Nick’s hand went still, the eraser poised above the whimsical sketch. “A horror? What constitutes a horror, Alice? And don’t spare me the details.”

“Adequate academically, and probably not too harsh for the typical meek younger son, but for an earl’s disgraced bastard… Stoneham is one of the places boys go when they’re sent down from the better schools. There’s an assumption at such institutions that ‘boys being boys’ means many boys will be hurt, deprived of their meals, beaten, and worse.”

Nick looked heartsick, a disquieting thing on a man so large and generally sunny. “What you describe is bad enough. Ethan did nothing to deserve such a fate.”

“Some would call such a fate an opportunity. He got into Cambridge, and did well there.”

“What aren’t you telling me, Alice?” Nick met her gaze squarely, but Alice could see him steeling himself for her reply.

“My half brother Vim attended Stoneham at one point,” Alice said. “He came home with a broken arm after only a few weeks of the Michaelmas term. He got crosswise of some baron’s lordling and was attacked by a gang one night on the way to the privy. He lost the hearing in one ear for most of a year as well, and we weren’t sure he’d be able to see out of one eye.”

Nick stood, almost knocking the bench over. “At Stoneham?”

“At Stoneham. And from what Vim said, the proctors and deans regarded this as tolerable behavior between young men of unequal standing.”

“Because your brother was a bastard?”

“He wasn’t. He was my mother’s son from a prior marriage, wealthy, much loved, and very bright. His family was right at hand and outraged on his behalf.”

“Ethan was there for two years. He didn’t leave the premises even once.” Nick scrubbed a hand over his face again, and his gaze slewed around toward the door. His expression was tortured as he backed away from Alice. “I have to… You’ll excuse me.”

And then he was gone, leaving a sketch of such whimsy and grace on the table, Alice thought it worthy of framing and hanging on the schoolroom wall.

“You look a little tired,” Ethan remarked, pushing off the door jamb to Alice’s room and settling himself at her escritoire. The desk wasn’t far from the bed, but Alice was relieved he’d stopped there.

And… disappointed.

“I am tired. I sleep better here at Tydings than I did at Sutcliffe or Belmont Hall. I think it’s because the boys keep me moving, and not just about the house, but all over the grounds.”

“Does it bother your hip?”

“At first, yes. It ached, but now it seems stronger.” A good deal stronger. How had this happened in just a few weeks?

“Maybe the riding helps. Are you ready for tomorrow?”

“I will be relieved to have it over with, though the boys are looking forward to it and promising to be on their best behavior.”

“I’ll bring Davey,” Ethan said. “If there are three adults to manage two little boys, we might stand a chance.”

“You aren’t to manage them. You’re Mr. Grey, the invited guest, and Davey and I will see to the children.” To remind him of the hierarchy reassured Alice, or it ought to.

Ethan rose and ambled the short distance to the bed, coming down beside her. “I wish you did not see yourself as subordinate.”

With his weight on the mattress, Alice was pitched against his side. “I don’t see myself as subordinate. I see myself as employed.”

“You don’t have to be,” Ethan went on. “Your brother said there’s a great deal of family wealth.”

“There is, and when I’m too old to keep up with a child, I’ll have need of it. Benjamin invests my share, and it does quite nicely.”

Ethan had turned his head, as if he’d study Alice’s ear. The thought was unnerving. “I’d be happy to speak with him regarding some worthy projects. I don’t bruit it about, but I am occasionally called to Carlton House to whisper in the Regent’s ear regarding his finances.”

Whisper in the… “You’re what?”

“That’s my reaction as well.” Ethan looked a little puzzled. “I peer at the records for that monstrosity he’s building in Brighton, assess which roads ought to be improved in which order, that sort of thing. Suggest a few investments that might turn him a profit. He’s an intelligent man, is Prinny, and in a difficult position, but he does listen and seldom forgets what he’s heard—unless he’s passed out or far gone with some other sin.”

“Sin. Always a worthy topic in lofty circles.” And in the bedrooms of lowly governesses.

“Are you contemplating the sin of fornication with me, Alice? Do I dare hope you are considering such a thing?”

“Ethan.” Alice made herself pull away. “The door.”

“It’s closed.” He nuzzled at her neck.

Alice shut her eyes and angled her jaw. “It’s not locked.”

“Alice?” Ethan’s gaze was curious, but in his eyes, Alice saw banked heat.

She shook her head. “I am not suggesting we… sin right here and now. Your sons are across the hallway, probably still whispering and plotting about tomorrow, and they could interrupt at any moment.”

“A gap in my strategy,” Ethan chided himself as he rose and went to the door. “And now the door is locked.”

His walk as he crossed the room this time was the relaxed, feline glide Alice usually observed. The grace was there, and the power, but the purpose had changed. He was stalking her, closing in on his objective with single-minded determination.

“This isn’t the right time, Ethan.”

“Agreed. You are nervous of me, and I would reassure you.”

Was the gazelle nervous of the lion? “You won’t hurt me,” Alice said, believing it. He wouldn’t hurt her physically, for all his size and muscle.

He peered down at her. “Of course I wouldn’t. I promise you that.”

To her consternation, he dropped to the floor before her, stuffed a pillow under his knees, and wrapped his arms around her waist.

“Ethan?” Alice’s hand settled on his golden hair, unable to resist touching him in such a docile pose—such a deceptively docile pose.

“Nick and George went at it just before dinner.” Ethan laid his head in her lap, resting his cheek against her thigh. “They all but resorted to fisticuffs in the grand fraternal tradition.”

“That would be a rousing match. Nick is nigh half a foot taller than your brother George.”

“And carrying considerably more muscle. They were spoiling to get a piece of each other, but I couldn’t allow it.”

“What were they arguing over?” Alice asked, stroking Ethan’s hair then feathering her fingers over his cheek, forehead, and jaw. To touch him this way was lovely; to hear his troubles and worries was lovelier still.

“Each accused the other of behaving badly without regard to the family’s sensibilities or his own safety,” Ethan summarized, “and they were both right.”

“Nick was a tramp,” Alice said flatly. “I hope his wife understands this about him. His ability to remain faithful to her should not be taken for granted.”

“I know.” Ethan nuzzled at Alice’s hip. “That feels good, what you’re doing.”

“You are tired.” He was tired and cuddled in her lap, and who would have thought him capable of such a thing?

“I am.” He sat back, and took off his neckcloth and unfastened the collar of his shirt. “So I won’t trouble you for long.” He tucked himself against her again, and then went still, until Alice’s hands found him once more, and he let out a quiet sigh.

“George was at university until this summer, wasn’t he?” Alice asked as she kneaded the muscles of Ethan’s neck.

“Good Lord.” Ethan’s sigh was louder. “That feels heavenly, and yes, George has just completed his formal education. He’s agreed travel would complement his studies nicely.”

“Travel?” Alice switched her grip with one hand and cradled Ethan’s jaw with the other. “As in, on the Continent?”

“For now.” Ethan shifted his shoulders, wedging himself more snugly against her. “George prefers the intimate attentions of men, and this is unsafe behavior.”

“Unsafe?” Alice knew her tone held more than a touch of dismay. “It’s considered immoral, unsanitary, and felonious.”

“You judge him? How is it any more immoral than carousing the way Nick did, or taking to wife a woman only tolerated on the fringes of Society as I did?”

“I understand you and your brothers haven’t been saints, Ethan, but George’s preference could get him hanged. I suppose this is why Nick wanted to use his fists.”

“It is,” Ethan muttered, sounding drowsy. “And George was just as frustrated, because he envisioned Nick with diseases that could have taken his reason or his ability to ensure the succession, or blotting the family escutcheon with his peccadilloes.”

“George has a valid point. I suppose both men were insisting they’d been careful, but obviously not careful enough if each knew of the other’s risks.”

“They were able to see that.” Ethan shifted to rest his face against Alice’s other thigh. “Nick apologized, as some truly dreadful gossip devolved to George as a consequence of Nick’s behaviors, and George agreed essentially to go on reconnaissance and see if there might be some places he’d enjoy living abroad.”

These were familial confidences. A governess did often learn of them, but not from the master of the house as he cuddled against her lap.

“Seems a shame.” Alice let go of Ethan’s neck and brushed her hand over his hair in a slow, soothing caress. “You just meet your brother George as an adult, and he’s sent away to avoid scandal.”

“He’s choosing to travel to avoid a grim and unnecessary death. I’d rather lose George to the charms of Paris than to death.”

“But what a sad choice, hmm?” Alice leaned down and wrapped her arms around Ethan’s shoulders. It wasn’t a sexual embrace. Nothing they’d done since locking the door had been sexual. She breathed in the cedary scent of him and felt a desire to protect him from having to part from his brother, from any of his brothers.

“Let me brush out your hair.” Ethan ended the embrace, remaining on his knees before her, hands on her hips. “I’ll leave you in peace then, and you can dream of me.”

She wanted to keep touching him, to keep comforting them both by touching him. “I don’t think dreams of you will be peaceful.”

“They’ll be pleasurable.” Ethan was up on his feet in one lithe move. “My dreams of you certainly are.”

“Such talk.” Alice’s lips compressed rather than let a smile show.

“Come.” Ethan tossed the pillow back on the bed and drew her to her feet. “I said I wouldn’t stay long, and I am a man of my word. I’ve been longing to see what you look like with your hair down, so stop stalling.”

“You’ve seen it down,” Alice replied, but she let him guide her to her vanity. How dangerous could it be to let him simply brush her hair?

“I’ve seen it coming down, and I’ve seen it in a braid. That isn’t down.”

“It’s just hair.”

Ethan said nothing, taking the glasses from her nose and then letting his hands rest for a moment on her shoulders. The gesture quieted her, brought her calm inside, where she still wasn’t quite settled enough from her busy day to contemplate sleep.

“Relax, Alice.” Ethan held her shoulders. “I will merely brush out your hair and bid you good night.”

She waited, but instead of getting down to work, Ethan’s hands massaged her shoulders, then her neck, until Alice was leaning forward, her forehead resting on the arms she’d folded on her vanity.

If this be seduction, then let it never end.

“Better,” Ethan murmured, and only then did Alice feel his deft fingers sliding pins from her hair. He worked with a kind of methodical rhythm, until her braid swung free, then he easily unplaited her hair, leaving it flowing down her back.

“So pretty.” In the mirror, she watched while he brought a handful of her hair to his nose. “And this is why you smell of lemon verbena.”

“I keep sachets with my clothing too,” Alice said as Ethan trailed her hair down her back. “It’s a perky scent, suitable for a governess.”

“Perky.” Ethan’s lips quirked. “Tart, bracing, unexpected, with an underlying allure.” She thought, from the husky note in his voice, he might start in kissing her neck. She loved it when he kissed her neck—he’d already taught her that about herself—but he took the brush to her hair, sweeping it in long strokes that tickled her back through her nightclothes.

“You like this,” Ethan mused as he divided her hair into three thick skeins. “Left or right?”

Alice stifled a yawn. “I switch off. I’m right-handed, so over the right shoulder is easier.”

“Then I’ll do you a left-handed braid.” He got it just so, not too tight, not too loose, and positioned to lie over her left shoulder. When he finished, he rested his hands again on her shoulders.

“Thank you.” Alice could not hold back this yawn. “You have a nice touch with a brush, Ethan.”

He smiled at her reflection in the mirror. “So nice, I’ve put you to sleep.”

Hadn’t that been his aim? “I do feel more ready for rest now. Thank you.”

He held her chair, and as she got to her feet, Alice felt a little frustration that he wouldn’t use their proximity to kiss her further.

“Good night.” She met his gaze, finding his expression half-amused, half-veiled.

“I wasn’t going to do this,” he muttered. He drew her closer and dipped his head. When he settled his lips over hers, Alice snuggled in against him, relieved to be in his embrace. It was an easy, undemanding, friendly kiss, with Ethan’s mouth moving slowly over hers, his tongue lazy.

“Good night, Alice,” Ethan said, drawing back only the half inch necessary to permit speech.

She rose on her toes and fused her mouth to his, causing Ethan’s lips to quirk up when she went foraging with her tongue.

He tolerated her quest for a moment, then drew back and tucked her face against his chest. “You need your sleep, and if you toy with me, I won’t answer for the consequences.”

His words did not initially sink in, because Alice was making an investigation of the taste of his neck and throat, but the stillness in his body—and rising hardness pressing against her belly—did.

“You are serious.”

“I desire you mightily, Alice Portman.”

“Alex,” she corrected him. “My real name is Alexandra, but that isn’t a governess name.”

“Alexandra.” His hand smoothed over the back of her head. “You honor me with such a confidence. It’s important.”

“It’s just a name.” She rested her forehead against his chest.

“It’s just your name,” Ethan corrected gently. “Just your hair, just your trust. Yours, Alexandra.” His arms around her were gentle yet secure, and she felt the sting of tears. To hear her name, her real name, was such a gift, particularly spoken with the near reverence he gave it.

“I’ll leave you now,” Ethan said, but he held her a moment longer. “Nick and I will ride out with George in the morning. You sleep in. The day will be trying.”

She nodded, not wanting him to go, but slipping her arms from his waist when he kissed her forehead, then her nose, then her lips.

“Good night, Ethan.” She smiled as he turned at the door to blow her a kiss.

“Good night, Alex.” He smiled back, and then he was gone.

But not before Alice caught a glimpse of Nick leaning against the wall outside the boys’ room, arms crossed over his chest, expression thunderous.