Ethan: Lord of Scandals

Nine

Why had she waited so long to try simply controlling a horse? Alice had been on a strange horse when she’d had her accident, a beast she’d never seen before, much less ridden, and she’d been in a panic even before she leapt onto its back and found the stirrup leathers much too long for her legs.

And having ridden again… this was heady stuff, this feeling of lightness and joy, something she would never have predicted. Had the Earl of Greymoor not come calling, Alice would have hugged Waltzer and kissed him on his big, horsy nose.

“Miss Portman?” A single knock on her door told her Ethan Grey was not going to allow her more solitude.

“Come in,” she called, hopping off the bed. She wanted to throw her arms around him too, and squeal like little Priscilla in a happy moment.

“One notes you are smiling, madam. This is encouraging.”

“I can breathe.” She beamed at him shamelessly where he lingered near the door. “And I met an earl.”

“A half-smitten earl.” He did not sound pleased about this. “Once he’d dispensed with the issuance of a social invitation, Greymoor complimented your eyes specifically and called you pretty when you’d abandoned us. He barely bothered to inspect me or my property.”

“I did not abandon you.” An earl had called her pretty, though the earl was clearly smitten with the small blond girl he’d had up before him.

“You most certainly abandoned me,” Ethan groused right back, taking a couple of steps into the room. “Lady Lucy rifled the entire library before tossing a book directly at her papa’s lemonade, managing to provide him, his shirt, waistcoat, and cravat quite the cold bath. I was obliged to loan the man clothing and entertain his offspring while he made himself presentable.”

He sounded quite pleased with himself, lending clothing to an earl attacked by a toddler.

“You poor thing. Having to manage a single, adorable child for an entire five minutes. The boys will be so proud of you.”

“You are supposed to be proud of me.” He ambled closer then stopped by her escritoire. “Lady Lucy is accounted a woman of particulars, and I convinced her not to shatter my hapless eardrums with her caterwauling.”

Had they teased each other like this before? “Children are sometimes fascinated with strangers. You should be pleased, nonetheless. Generally, the young have good instincts about people.”

“How you flatter me, Miss Portman.” He offered an ironic bow. “May I take it you are none the worse for having ridden with me? Be honest, Alice.”

Alice. The way he used her name was sweet, special, and a little stern. “No trouble breathing. I cannot credit it. For the past twelve years, any time I have been at the mercy of a horse, I could not manage it.”

“You managed it today. I am pleased for you, Alice Portman.”

Alice recalled the feel of him at her back on the horse, steady, solid, and calm. She grabbed her courage with both hands and locked her gaze with his. “Pleased enough to help me try again?”

“Of course.”

How easily he assented. “It might not go as well. In fact it probably won’t.”

His lips quirked up. “Or it might go better.”

“I would settle for being able to start, stop, and steer at a placid walk,” Alice said. “I would be thrilled with that, to be honest.”

And when was the last time she’d been thrilled with anything? Anything save her employer’s kisses?

“You look so serious.” Ethan frowned at Alice, wondering what went on inside her busy head. Her second venture in the riding arena, between tea and supper, had gone without incident, much to his relief. “Are you doing as the jockeys do at Newmarket and reliving each moment of your ride?”

She walked along beside him in silence for a moment, the evening sun finding red highlights in her hair. “Hardly that. I am contemplating the contrasts in my life.”

“This sounds weighty. Shall we pursue the topic while we stroll?” He offered his arm, and she took it, something that might have been a minor struggle between them only days ago. “Tell me about these contrasts in your life, Alice Portman.”

“When I lived at Sutcliffe,” Alice said as they reached a gravel walk that turned toward the stream, “we had such quiet. Days and days of quiet, nothing louder than Reese’s voice in conversation with my own.”

“It sounds Gothic.” Also like a waste of at least two women. “Were you happy there?”

“I enjoyed Reese and Pris,” Alice said, “but it was a bleak place. Most of the servants did not respect the lady of the house, which meant a great deal of work went undone. We managed our own mending, much of our own cooking and cleaning. If we wanted a bath, we carried the water, or it would not come up hot.”

“You lived as if you had no servants.” As if she deserved to have no servants. “Shall we sit? The evening grows pretty, and we are not at the end of this discussion.”

“We aren’t?” Alice settled on a bench at the base of a venerable oak. The tree was so large two people on the bench could both lean back against the trunk comfortably.

“We are not.” Ethan lowered himself beside her and wondered idly how many kisses the tree had witnessed. “The topic is contrast in the life of Miss Alice Portman.”

“So it is,” Alice said. “In any case, my life now is different from what it was for five years.”

“Different, how?” Ethan let his back rest against the oak and crossed his ankles. He did not take her hand, not when she was working up to confidences of some sort.

“Sutcliffe was peaceful. Predictable, stable, and safe.”

“You aren’t safe now? Should I be concerned?”

“Safe…” Alice huffed out a breath. “It’s hard to define what I mean by that. Relative to my time at Sutcliffe, my time since then has been a constant uproar.”

Uproar was not a good thing. Something cold trickled down Ethan’s spine, so he went on the offensive.

“You wanted a quiet rural post, and instead you find yourself dealing with an oversized, widowed social misfit, riding a comparably oversized horse, and a neighborhood full of titles suddenly expecting you to provide your charges—among whose number I might include myself—for socializing.”

If she left them… that cold sensation congealed into that familiar and unhappy acquaintance: dread.

“I feel as if,” Alice said slowly, “the mild breeze I’d used to sail along in my little boat has turned into a fickle gale, tossing me in all directions at once.”

“You’re knocked off your pins. It isn’t a pleasant sensation.”

“I thought you were going to say, ‘I’m knocked off my horse,’” Alice said softly. “And maybe that’s it. I feel a little of the same disorientation as I did then, when I was minding my girlish business one day and then literally knocked off my horse the next.”

Rage at her malefactors warred with the compulsion to take her in his arms.

“Your disorientation is understandable. The sensation will likely fade in time, as you gather more confidence in your changed circumstances.” But always, upset like this took too bloody much time to fade. Years and lifetimes.

“It isn’t…” Alice bit her lip and colored up furiously. “It isn’t just my circumstances.”

Ethan had to lean closer to catch her words, which had the effect of filling his awareness with lemon verbena. “I beg your pardon?”

“It isn’t just my circumstances,” Alice said a little more loudly. “I am knocked off my pins by… you.”

Silence, as Ethan studied Alice’s profile, from the compressed line of her lips, to the brilliant blush on her cheeks, to the quiet misery in her eyes.

“Alice?” His voice was carefully neutral. “Can you explain yourself?”

He gave her credit for turning to face him, despite the blush trying to swamp her dignity. “You are part of this gale-force wind, Ethan Grey. You…” When she might have risen and paced off to a safe distance, he laced his fingers around her wrist.

“Tell me,” he commanded softly. “Please.”

And because of that one entreating word, he knew she would.

“You touch me,” she said, dropping her gaze to her lap. “When I had such a bad breathing spell, you weren’t too fussy to offer comfort to a mere governess. At Belle Maison, on Argus, you put your arms around me, and I did not fall. Here, on the horse, you don’t let me fall, and then too…”

“Then?”

“You kissed me,” Alice said, her voice dropping again. And Ethan realized that she’d gone long years without a friend, but far longer years without a kiss.

“I kissed you,” Ethan said, “but you kissed me as well.” He was fiercely glad to recall this.

“And there is the problem.”

“Are you making too much of a single incident, Alice? You aren’t going to leave your post over some backward female notion of protecting my honor, are you?”

“It isn’t that one kiss. It’s that I want another.”

Thank God for all His mercies. “Does this have to be a problem?”

She was female, and she was Alice, so his question was rhetorical.

“Of course it’s a problem. You are my employer, and by all rights, if you’re kissing a decent woman, you ought to be doing so in the interest of finding a mother for your boys. You need not humor a lonely governess.”

“Good God.” Ethan shot to his feet and jammed his hands in his pockets. “Is that why you think I kissed you?”

“You’re kind, though you’re shy about it.” Alice rose as well, her chin coming up as her blush faded. “I know this about you, and I know as well that in the years I’ve been in service, I haven’t exactly had to fend off the advances of drooling hordes of fevered men.”

“I should hope not!” Ethan looked at her in consternation. “You wear those great ugly glasses that distort your lovely eyes, you scrape the most glorious hair on God’s earth back into an old woman’s snood, you dress as if in half mourning for your former life and in gowns that hide the most luscious…” He glared at her then reached for her with both hands, anchoring her by the upper arms and bringing her flush against him.

“I did not kiss you out of some condescending motive like pity, Alice. I kissed you because I had to, and I have to.”

He framed her jaw gently in his hands, angling her face toward his, and then brushed his lips across hers in a whisper-light warning caress. When she made a yearning sound, he joined their mouths and gathered her to him.

“Ah, God, Alice…” His sigh held longing, humor, and resignation to go with her name, and then got down to kissing her in earnest. One hand slid down her back, to press her tightly against his groin; the other drifted to her nape and buried itself under that scraped bun, and held her captive for his mouth.

He did not plunder, not exactly. He tasted and hinted and suggested, until Alice’s tongue was tangling with his, and her breathing was accelerating. Her hand found its way into his hair and, if anything, she was pressing her body eagerly to his.

Eagerly!

Which would lead them… Ethan withdrew his mouth and rested his chin on her crown. He wasn’t about to let her go, not when she rested against him nigh panting with the effects of a brief, fully clothed kiss.

“Dear Almighty God,” she whispered. “Dear Almighty, Everlasting God.”

“Amen.”

Alice raised her face from Ethan’s chest and regarded him curiously. “Are you laughing at me?”

“Good heavens, no.” Ethan stepped back, ignoring the shriek of disappointment echoing through his body. “I need to sit, Alice, and so do you.”

Though she at least wasn’t hiding her arousal.

And arousal itself was a relief for Ethan. He’d begun to conclude his capacity for unbridled passion had prematurely aged. In almost two decades of sexual experience, he couldn’t once recall being so physically enthusiastic about a woman so quickly. He’d learned caution at a high price, but with Alice…

“I’ll go,” Alice said quietly, and Ethan realized she was sitting a few inches from him on the bench, primly not touching. To blazing hell with that. He threaded his fingers through hers and drew her wrist to his lips, because nobody was going anywhere just yet.

“Back to the house? Or you’ll sail your little skiff right out of my life, out of the boys’ lives, and find another bucolic retreat where you can once again impersonate a forty-nine-year-old spinster?”

“You can’t allow an immoral influence around your children,” Alice said with soft insistence. “I can’t allow it.”

“Well, that’s all right, then.” Ethan reached out his free hand and drew it down Alice’s hairline. Her bun should have been in shambles, but it was like her today, well anchored in the proprieties. “If we’re to remove all pernicious influences from their lives, then I’ll merely accompany you, and they’ll be free of both our wicked selves.”

“You’re not wicked.”

“But you, who were the kissed, not the kisser, are somehow Satan’s imp?” He looped his arm across her shoulders and scooted to tuck himself against her. She wasn’t going to bolt off to her lesson plans until they’d come to some understandings, and—given her endless determination—that meant it could be a long evening.

“You are a man,” Alice said, a hint of exasperation in her voice.

“You noticed. How fortunate. I was at risk of forgetting it myself.”

Alice scowled at him. “You were not. You’re among the most masculine people I’ve met.”

“Because you’re a governess, sweetheart. You don’t exactly consort with the dragoons and the grenadiers.”

“I have brothers, Ethan Grey.” She was getting her dander up, which relieved Ethan no end. That meek, defeated version of Alice Portman made him want to howl and break things for her. “And my brothers have acquaintances, and I’ve been in your brother’s household, and Mr. Belmont’s, and Baron Sutcliffe’s. No governess goes into service without a keen wariness regarding a man’s animal urges.”

“And you are prepared to tell me about these urges? Say on, Alice. I’m all ears. My own urges haven’t been in evidence since shortly after Joshua was conceived, so you likely know more about my urges than I do.”

Her brows went up as the meaning of his words sank in.

“Hushed your scolding with that one, didn’t I?” Ethan muttered, surprised that Alice remained sitting snug against him, making no move to withdraw her hand from his. “Well, it’s the truth, my dear. I married unwisely, and life hadn’t exactly handed me the instincts of a libertine before that. The realization that my wife was a bad choice rather killed my appetite, and in the general sense, not just for her.”

“But Joshua…”

“Is five years old. It has been a long, long six years.” During which, he silently added, he’d heard a constant string of tales regarding his brother Nick’s prowess in the bedrooms of London’s demimonde, each more impressive than the last.

Alice’s gaze became concerned. “Are you sure he’s your son?”

Now who was prying confidences from whom? And yet, Ethan wanted the truth between them.

“He is my son in every way that counts.” Ethan dipped his face against Alice’s hair as he spoke, needing the comfort of lemon verbena and Alice. “My wife might have known a different truth, but I have never regarded it as relevant.”

“Why are you telling me?”

Ethan raised his face and spoke slowly. “Could it be I trust you would never do anything to hurt a child?” And perhaps, his conscience added, he was damned sick of carrying this alone? Wondering if the boy might somehow find out and turn on the only parent he’d known?

Taking his brother with him…

“You love him,” Alice said staunchly. “Joshua would be devastated to think you aren’t his papa. What was wrong with your wife?”

“Marriage was wrong with her,” Ethan said tiredly, even as Alice’s immediate defense of him warmed his heart. “Marriage to me was wrong for her, anyway. And when I would not oblige her intimately, she had an affair. She was angered by my neglect of her and fought back with the only weapon she felt she had. My lack of expertise with the fairer sex was such that I could not see the corner I drove her into.”

“Oh, Ethan.” Alice did lean into him then, bringing her hand up to the back of his head and holding him as much as he was holding her. “You deserved so much better.”

“I am beginning to think perhaps I do.” He wanted better, and that was a start. “But I suspect you do not mean what you say.”

“You think I’d lie to you?” Alice drew back and resumed her frowning. He was coming to adore that starchy, prim expression on her face, because it was such a pleasure to relieve her of it.

“I think you do not divine the direction of my thoughts, Alice Portman,” Ethan replied, and in his chest, he felt his heart begin to beat with a slow, palpable throbbing. He was going to lay himself open to intimate rejection, and he knew it. He chose to do it, though, because wanting and not having was better—far, far better—than never wanting anything at all.

“So elucidate your thoughts for me,” Alice said while her fingers tightened around his.

He could prevaricate and hint and complicate what was simple and precious. His regard for Alice would allow none of that.

“I want you,” Ethan said. “I want your body under mine, overcome with desire. I want to share intimate pleasure with you, to drive you to incoherence with longing and satisfaction.” He wanted that desperately. “I want the taste and scent of you filling my senses, the texture of every inch of your skin burned into my memory. I want to hear you cry my name in the dark, Alice Portman.”

Before she could formulate a scathing set down, Ethan charged forth, determined she should hear him out.

“I know, Alice, you will not countenance marriage, and I suspect this relates to having been mistreated in your past. I do not account myself any sort of bargain as a husband, in any case, and would not offend you by presenting myself as a candidate for your hand. But I can offer you pleasure and joy and… friendship, or some version of it.”

“You are propositioning me.” She sounded astounded rather than offended.

“I am offering you a liaison,” Ethan clarified. “Though I can exercise enough restraint to assure you I would not get you with child.”

“And if I wanted a child?”

Ethan battled back joy that she’d even ask such a thing. “No bastards, sweetheart. I can’t do that to a child of mine, nor would you want it for our child either.”

He fell silent but remained beside her, giving her time to recover from what was clearly an unanticipated overture, while he tried not to contemplate their options if she did—despite his best intentions—conceive a child.

Such thoughts blundered perilously close to hoping, and Ethan knew better than to countenance that folly.

“I’m not without experience,” she said softly, turning to rest her head on his shoulder.

If she’d expected him to stiffen, pull away, or physically display disappointment, he was determined to confound her. He pulled her closer and kissed her temple.

“God, Alice, neither am I. For you, I wish I could be.” It was an odd, heartfelt sentiment he would never be able to explain to her. “Were you mistreated?”

“No.” Ethan heard a silent “but” following her denial. “I was engaged, when I was sixteen, and could once again walk without much of a limp. My brothers had seen to it I was well dowered, and a young man I’d known most of my life offered for me. He was of decent family, and I saw him as my means of leaving Cumbria and its memories far behind. I accepted him, on the condition we’d leave the area and settle elsewhere. America would have done for me, or the Antipodes. I just needed to get away.”

“And this young man,” Ethan conjectured, “the one you refer to as decent, he took liberties, thinking you would not cry off after that no matter what, and then announced he had no intention of taking you anywhere.”

Alice’s smile was rueful. “More or less.”

“But you,” Ethan went on, “having a spine of Toledo steel, did cry off and left the poor idiot without a wife, her dowry, or a semblance of his honor, which was exactly what he deserved. I am proud of you.”

“Proud of me?”

He had surprised her, and he was damned glad of it. “There is no explaining the courage it takes to face down the judgments and expectations of Polite Society. Did your brothers try to dissuade you?” Ethan tried to recall where his dueling pistols were stored in the event he did not approve of her answer.

“Benjamin knows the whole of it, and he understands my decision.”

Bastard. “He never told you he was proud of you, that he admired your fortitude and integrity? He never told you the scoundrel wasn’t good enough for you in any regard?”

Alice looked away. She scuffed her half boot against the dirt. “He brought me South. He keeps an eye on me.”

He had kept that eye from a distance, when the man by reputation was well able to provide a roof over her head. Ethan made a note to locate those dueling pistols.

“Mr. Durbeyfield thought he was doing me a favor.” Alice turned her head, and Ethan thought she might have sniffed at his shoulder. “I was, in the local parlance, touched with an unfortunate past, which he was willing to overlook.”

“So that he could get his lying, smug, unworthy paws on your dowry. Your brothers should be ashamed.”

Alice sat up then and cocked her head at him. “Perhaps they are. I always thought they were ashamed of me… Men are odd creatures. But dear.”

Dear was encouraging. Ethan would shoot her brothers some other day, because he would like to be dear to her. Dear and desired; it was a frightening, exhilarating, and ambitious combination. He hadn’t his brother’s charm or his title or his tremendous amatory experience, but Alice was on this bench, tucked obligingly against Ethan, not Nick.

It was enough to keep Ethan on the bench all night, if she’d allow it.

“We should be going,” Alice said. “They’ll be ringing the bell soon for supper, and the boys will be looking for me.”

“You’re going to make me work for it,” Ethan decided. “Good girl.”

“Work for it?” Alice let him assist her to her feet.

“You do not respond to my offer, Alice, and it’s an offer that requires a yes or no answer. If you refuse me, I will understand I do not appeal to you as a woman finds a man appealing. I will not enjoy the rejection, but neither will it destroy me.” He hoped. “If you reject me, you will continue to be the person to whom I entrust the education of my sons, a respected member of my household, and safe at Tydings from any unwanted advances, including my own.” Damn it.

“We simply ignore this extraordinary discussion and both kisses?”

Ethan smiled over at her. “We pretend to, as best we can.”

“And if I accept your offer?” Alice kept her eyes focused ahead, depriving Ethan of the insights they might yield.

“You decide.” Ethan dropped his voice. “You decide if I come to you or you come to me. If we join in a bed or in the hay mow or on a blanket in the woods. You decide if you remain in the position of governess—I think you like it, for one thing, but it protects your reputation and mine, for another—or we find another governess. You decide.”

He liked—he adored—the idea of them deciding together something as significant as who the boys’ next governess should be.

She turned her face up to the dying sun as she walked along. “I cannot abandon the appearance of propriety, and I am wicked for admitting I’d even consider such a thing. You do kiss exceedingly well, though, and you…”

She trailed off, while Ethan waited.

And waited. He what? Got her on a horse? Would die to keep her safe? Made the loneliness and doubt recede when he took her in his arms?

For she surely did that for him.

“I have much to think about,” Alice muttered. “We would have to be very discreet.”

She was considering it—considering allowing him to become her lover. “I can be discreet.” Ethan ushered her up the terrace steps at a sedate pace, when he wanted to vault them three at time. “And so can you.”

“Give me a week, Ethan. At least a week.”

A week was seven entire days and nights, an infinite procession of moments. How could a yes-or-no decision take that long?

“You may have as long as you please, Alice. It is a lady’s prerogative. I will see you at dinner?”

“I think not. Some solitude will allow me to clear my head.”

“As you wish.” He saw her guard relax a trifle before he swooped in and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to her cheek. “I will see you at breakfast and in my dreams.” He left her there in the golden evening sunlight, her fingers pressed to her cheek.