Beauty and the Earl (10 page)

“Wait until you taste dessert, pet,” he murmured.

Liam jolted. It was entirely inappropriate for his man to be so familiar with a woman at his table. More than that, it was entirely unexpected. Mal never took an interest in women beyond a fulfillment of his physical needs. He was too wrapped up in his duties.

But right now Mal didn’t seem capable of breaking his gaze from Olivia’s.
 

“How long have you worked for Liam?” Violet asked, arching a brow at her friend as if to encourage her to tone down the physical expression of her attraction.
 

Mal jolted and straightened up. “Windbury and I have been friends since…” He shook his head and cast a quick glance toward Liam. “School, I suppose. We’ve been friends for years and I began managing his estates when—”

He cut himself off, and Liam shifted. Mal had taken over some of his estate business when the accident happened. When he had been too injured and emotionally gutted to do anything but drown in laudanum and anger.

Mal had seen him through the worst and Liam appreciated it. He
didn’t
appreciate the fact Mal had very nearly revealed that truth to strangers. Although Violet didn’t feel much like a stranger to him anymore.

Olivia continued to ignore the tension in the room and reached out to squeeze Malcolm’s arm.
 

“Violet and I have also been friends for an age, haven’t we?”

Violet cleared her throat, her gaze held firmly on Liam’s face, trying to read him. Irritation sluiced through him.
This
was why he didn’t keep company, this constant appraisal and talking and dancing around topics.

“We have,” she said. “I think it is lucky that both I, and Lord Windbury, have had such good friends.”

“Foolish as they may be,” Liam grumbled.

His short dismissal made Mal look at him sharply.
 

“And now we’ve all met thanks to those friendships,” Olivia continued, her attention still on Mal. “We’re lucky indeed.”

His friend seemed torn now, looking back and forth between the man he’d called brother for years and the woman he clearly wanted to fuck. To Liam’s surprise, it was the girl who won in the turmoil, and Mal’s lips turned up in a smile as he leaned closer.

“Very lucky.”

Liam pushed his chair back with a screech and every person in the room swiveled their heads to look at him. He clenched his napkin in his hand and stared at the group at his table. This all felt like a game to him.

And he was no longer capable of playing it.
 

He opened his mouth, but nothing would come out. So he threw his napkin across his plate and left the room without so much as a glance behind him.

Chapter Eight

Violet flinched as the room sat in stunned silence for a moment after Liam’s departure. His sudden anger and inability to control that reaction worried her. What troubled her more was the idea that
she
had caused it by her intrusion on his office earlier that day.

Liam was on the edge. She had now seen him balancing there. Once that happened, she couldn’t see anything else or do anything but fear the consequences for him in the future.

Olivia leaned back in her chair. “His ill-humor is impressive. I didn’t mean to bother him with my silly chatter.”

Mal shook his head, staring at the door where his friend had departed. Violet explored his face carefully. He was worried about Liam—the lines of concern were deep in his handsome face. It made her own trepidations all the sharper and more in focus.

“I apologize, ladies,” Malcolm finally managed. “My friend has been a little...
rough
since his accident. And he doesn’t keep company often, probably because his emotions can overtake him when he isn’t expecting it. I think the reality of being around others remains troublesome to him.”

“He was hard on you,” Olivia pressed, reaching out a hand to cover Mal’s.
 

Now she wasn’t flirtatious, but comforting. Violet couldn’t help but be surprised at that shift. Normally Olivia was all about fun. Her expression of other emotions, especially with men, was vastly limited, and purposefully so.
 

He shrugged. “Sometimes he lashes out. I can ignore it most times, though we do occasionally have words if he takes things too far. I have been through the worst with him and seen him when I thought he might—”

Malcolm cut himself off and his face twisted with pain and worry and deep sadness. He took a breath before he continued, “I understand Windbury’s motives for lashing out. Though I admit, he can be harsh.”

Violet tilted her head. “And yet you stay with him.”

Mal looked at her, his face clear of any judgment of his friend. Any anger. “He needs me.”

She flinched. Need. Yes, Liam had needs, that was crystal clear. And
she
was exploiting them for the bargain she had made with his sister and brother-in-law. Even now, questioning his friend was as much an exercise to wheedle more information about the enigmatic man she pursued as it was because of her own interest.

What a person she was to do such a thing, whatever her ultimate motives might be.

She pushed her plate away and folded her hands on the table before her. “I would like to follow him, talk to him,” she said, looking at Mal.
 

He drew back. “I warn you, he will likely be inhospitable.”

She swallowed. “Yes. But if his anger comes from pain, then he may need company, even if he refuses to acknowledge that fact to any of us. He may desire a friend, if you don’t mind my offering myself in that position instead of you.”

“Is that what you want to be to him? A friend?” Mal asked, tone carefully neutral.

There was an immediate reaction inside of Violet. A screaming voice that said
yes
to that question so loudly that it shook her. But she pushed it away, pushed it far down. She couldn’t afford it—she had other people to think about.

“If he would allow it,” she whispered, hating the catch to her voice.
 

Mal looked her up and down. Yes, he still maintained a detachment from her, his questions about her purpose lingered in his dark eyes. But he lifted his eyebrows in acquiescence nonetheless.

“Actually, Miss Milford, I think what you offer may be what he needs more than anything I can provide. If you want to follow him, I would assume his office is where he will lick his wounds. It generally is.”

She frowned as she got to her feet. Their encounter there before supper now felt even more like an intrusion.

“Good evening, you two. If I don’t see you again, I hope you enjoy your dessert.”

Olivia caught her hand and looked at her with concern as she passed her friend.
 

“Are you certain?” she asked softly.

Violet hesitated. She was not certain. But this was her course. She could not vary it when so much was at stake.

“Of course,” she said with a smile far brighter than she felt. “Good night.”

She left the room, her hands shaking as she made her way back to the office where she had encountered Liam earlier. The door was closed, a clear, ominous message that he wished to be left alone. She stared at the barrier that now separated them. She could turn and walk away. She could continue her plan without going inside.

She could do all those things, but she lifted her hand and knocked anyway.

Silence greeted her, another message to leave him alone. Another message she ignored as she opened the door and stepped inside.

The fire had burned down, dimming the lights in the room, and Liam hadn’t lit a lamp, so it took her a moment to find him in the big room. He wasn’t at his desk or the chair by his fire.
 

He stood in front of the massive picture window across the room, standing and staring into the inky black nothingness outside. He had removed his jacket, tossing it across a chair before the fire.

“I didn’t give you leave to enter,” he said. “Can’t you leave well enough alone, Mal?”

“It’s not Mal,” she said softly.

He pivoted and stared at her in surprise. The scar slashed across his lean, angular face was bright in the firelight, but that wasn’t what she noticed. She more saw how his face was filled with emotions: anger, sadness, regret. They were written across every line and every curve. And she wanted, so desperately, to erase them in that moment. To find a way to make him whole again.

That realization nearly had her turning on her heel and running, not just from the room, but from his house, her bargain be damned. She didn’t
want
to take care of this man. She didn’t want to get close to him or think of him or wonder what made him who he was.

“Why did you come?” he asked, his voice rough and barely carrying.

She blinked. “I-I don’t know,” she admitted, the truth spilling from her lips before she could fashion an adequate lie. “I was worried about you.”

Again, the truth rather than a manipulation. Her heart pounded and her hands shook as she forced herself to step into the room and shut the door behind her. She had gone too far to run now. She had to calm down and put herself back on track.

A rather humorless smile turned his lips up slightly. “Ah yes,
everyone
worries about me, don’t they? It is almost a household pastime.”

“You give them reason to do so,” she said quietly. She moved forward and stopped at his desk. She couldn’t help but notice that the portrait of Matilda had been removed from view. As if her touching it had spoiled it somehow and forced him to hide it.
 

Why that stung, she didn’t want to consider.

“I suppose I do,” he said, shaking his head as he turned back toward the window. “I would like to ask you a question, Violet.”

She swallowed hard before she said, “Go ahead. I have nothing to hide.”

“I rather doubt that,” he murmured, just loud enough for her to hear. She tensed further but was not allowed to reply, for he continued speaking. “Why don’t you comment on my sister or my troubled past or my accident? Hell, you don’t even coo over my scar. Women always do that during their ‘seductions’. They stroke and mewl and pity me.”

She stepped closer. “And you feel their expressions of concern aren’t true.”

He glanced over his shoulder and pursed his lips. “No.”

When he turned away, she gasped in a breath. Guilt swelled in her, so powerful that it nearly took her off her feet, but she forced that reaction away. If she did her duty, she would not only help herself but very likely help him as well.
 

At least that was what she kept telling herself.

“I know full well about your past,” she began, somehow managing to wrestle free of her emotions and refocus on matters at hand. “Your accident, your family’s feud with the family of your sister’s husband and your eventual break with her after she married your greatest enemy…all of that is the stuff of legend, even in my lowly circles.”

He didn’t face her, but his shoulders stiffened in reaction.

“But I’m sorry, my lord, I do not preen or pity, even under dire circumstances. If you want a woman to do that, you have not found her.” He faced her in surprise, and she shrugged. “Everyone has their heartaches, Liam. Yours are
very
tragic, yes, I would never deny that or pretend otherwise. But ultimately, they are no more tragic than a hundred or a thousand others I have met or seen.”

He didn’t move or say a word for a very long moment. As the firelight hit his face, she caught his breath, both at how handsome he was and how unreadable he had become.
 

“Do you count yourself amongst those with tragedies to contend with?” he asked.

She met his gaze. She might have to reveal something of herself to get what she wanted, but she refused to do it with a bent head. What she had endured had made her who she was, she felt no shame about her past.
 

“You know some of my story. I suppose it is tragic enough.”

“Some of your story, yes,” he said, and now he was the one to step toward
her
. His green gaze never wavered from her face and she found heat filling her cheeks under his close regard.

“But your father’s attempt at a forced marriage and the bastard who tried to subvert it in the most disgusting way possible isn’t the whole story, is it?”

She shook her head. “No, of course not.”

“Then tell me more.”

She forced herself not to fold her arms across her chest in an expression of self-protection. She drew in a long, deep breath and began the next part of her tale.

“Obviously, you can see I am not the usual woman who walks the streets of London. My mother was Spanish and came here to work as a servant when she was a young woman.”

He examined her face and she waited. Some men flinched away if her heritage was revealed. One of her protectors had once broken with her when he found out, though he had praised her for her “dark, exotic looks” before that moment.

“Spanish,” he repeated with a nod. “That was my first guess.”

She drew back slightly. Most men didn’t even try to guess her background.