The Cheer in Charming an Earl (The Naughty Girls) (8 page)

Elinor scarcely waited for her to continue before she prodded impatiently, “Know what?”

Aunt Millie sighed as though her thoughts were far away indeed. “I’m an actress. Was an actress.”

Elinor gaped at her elegant aunt. “That cannot be true!”

Aunt Millie’s languishing expression transformed into the striking, self-assured visage of a woman who’d experienced the world and found it to her liking. And while her low, throaty chuckle was too similar to Mrs. Fawcett’s purr to be of any comfort, it did lend credence to her claim.

Elinor jumped away. “But you must be very scandalous, then!”

“Indeed, child.” She reached over and patted Elinor’s hand. “I assumed you knew.”

Elinor didn’t know what to think. Why would her mother have allowed her to come if she knew her sister had such a shocking reputation?

Did Gavin know?

“I cannot credit it,” Elinor said. “My mother sent her love with me. Why would she have let me come if…?” She fumbled to comprehend Mama’s mind. Unless…unless Mama had finally accepted what Elinor and her sisters had always told her: in a village as small as theirs, with no available bachelors and no dowry to lure one anyhow, Elinor was as unmarriageable as a young woman who’d been ruined. She was condemned to be a spinster forever, even if she did keep her virtue intact.

She rose so fast her shin hit the low table in front of her. “Good heavens, I’ve been cast off!”

Her aunt sat straighter. “Be calm and don’t carry on so, child. Madge never was one for theatrics.”

Elinor
couldn’t
be calm. She went to the window and pulled back the curtain. For several shaky breaths, she stared at the wintery wonderland with unfocused eyes. She’d thought she’d been doing her part to earn her room and board as a spinster, but now she knew how her mother truly felt about her failure to marry. She was a mouth to feed that they couldn’t afford, and an expendable one at that. Now she was marooned here with her scandalous aunt. What a dirty trick!

The tea arrived. Her aunt poured out, but Elinor let her cup cool on the table. Deep down, she knew she deserved this.
Mama
hadn’t caused her to sabotage her means to return. But oh, to have all of her innocence ripped from her within hours! First Grantham and now
this
.

“Elinor, have a care for your face. Wrinkles form around the most unbecoming expressions. Now, sit
down
and tell me what happened to your carriage. I’m sure your mother wouldn’t have forced you to ride a day and a half in the dead of winter, and besides,” her aunt’s husky voice almost laughed, “I’ve heard a most intriguing rumor.”

Elinor spun around. “You have? But how—?”

Aunt Millie shrugged and sipped her tea. “Why, I’m sure it’s all over the county by now. Shabby carriages don’t plow into the sides of grand houses every day, even in the country.”

If Elinor hadn’t felt like the biggest fool in the midst of Grantham and his ghastly friends, she could have claimed this as the most embarrassing moment of her life. Just remembering the lengths she’d gone to and the danger she’d risked for an introduction to that blackguard, that lying, whoremongering
rapscallion
—

“Your face, darling,” her aunt reminded her with one raised, fiery eyebrow, “I’m deathly serious about it. Now, if I know Lord Chelford well, you took a toss right into the middle of his annual Twelfth Night party. No wonder you appear so shaken.”

Did everyone know what a shameless libertine he was? Everyone except
her?

Vitriol bubbled to her surface. She didn’t attempt to hide her disgust. “I had no idea a man could be so
monstrous
. Prostitutes!” she fairly spat. “At Christmas!”

Her aunt laughed. The graceful
clink
of her teacup against its saucer was at odds with the sultry noise that hummed from her throat. “Where would those poor women spend the holiday, if not for his party? One might think him generous, rather than repulsive. He allows them the run of his house for almost an entire month. It must cost him a small fortune but he never complains.”

“It’s clear what he receives in return,” Elinor said bitterly. “I’ve never been so disgusted.”

Her aunt leaned forward, causing a curl to tumble from her messy coiffure and land across a liberal expanse of bosom most women her age would have concealed. “And how well do you know men? Men under thirty years of age? Men with twenty thousand a year? Men with no wife? If he’s sowing his oats, then it’s nothing that isn’t expected of him. But is he?” When Elinor didn’t reply, her aunt lowered her voice to a dramatic whisper. “It’s said he can’t stand the silence of Chelford at night. Reminds him too much of his sister, God rest her soul, and the day she died.” Aunt Millie leaned back against the couch. “I’m not calling the man a saint. But perhaps what he trades those women is company. Can you fault a person for their loneliness?”

Elinor gasped. “Grantham is melancholy?”

Aunt Millie shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s said he doesn’t talk about it. I suppose that’s proof enough.”

Setting one foot in front of the other, Elinor crept bravely toward her now-cold tea. It was occurring to her more and more that she’d been too naïve to know exactly how naïve she’d been. Goodness! The man kept jaded, experienced women around to chase his night terrors away. Not only had she not known the first thing about him, but she hadn’t even known it was possible for a man to be damaged, yet so handsomely good-humored.

The man kept
lightskirts
.

“It wasn’t in Debrett’s,” she muttered as she attempted to dissolve a lump of sugar in her cold tea. “Nor my
Ladies’ Companion
.”

“Madge lets you girls read that trash?” Aunt Millie’s lips curved. “Good for her.”

Elinor thought of the subscription she and her sisters were careful to smuggle through the village postmaster. “Not in so many words,” she said, in case the odd relationship between Aunt Millie and Mama suddenly blossomed into a bosom friendship. “But I would have thought Lord Chelford’s roguishness would deserve a passing mention, when so many good things about him are written into its pages.”

Her aunt gave her an arch look. “Do you recognize ‘Lady T.,’ or ‘the Frosty Duchess,’ or any of the other Cyprians whose aliases might be linked to him? Because the rest of us are quite well-versed in his accomplishments, and we read the same delicious rag.”

Aliases? Yet more duplicitousness. Elinor sipped her tea. She hoped the infusion would cure the sickening feeling in her stomach. Or was that hollow pain located just below her breast? It all
felt
the same, as if she needed to curl into a tight ball and hide beneath the covers forever.

“I suppose not,” she murmured. “Would it trouble you too much if I went to my room now?”

Her aunt’s expression was achingly sympathetic. “I, too, was a girl in the first blush of womanhood once. It does agonize to realize one’s calf love was directed at some entirely ill-suited young man. But aren’t I getting ahead of myself? You couldn’t have known Lord Chelford well, not from a few stray words printed in the pages of a magazine.”

Elinor felt the last of her girlish fancy slip away. “No, ma’am,” she whispered, “I can honestly say I didn’t know Lord Chelford at all.”

GRANTHAM STOPPED in the doorframe of his drawing room. The hedonism had resumed. Becky was showing the brunette how to roll off her stocking properly. They seemed to be engrossed in the lesson as if it were as important as maths. On the wingback chair across from their couch, Scotherby was stripped to his shirtsleeves with Fanny cuddled shamelessly in his lap. The pretty waif was kissing his collarbone and cooing unintelligible phrases against his skin.

Steepleton and Tewsey had gone off with a hookah into a corner; if the sickly stench was anything to go by, they were smoking opiate-laced tobacco. And the blonde lightskirt was sketching the entire, nauseating debacle into a thick leather sketchbook spread across Hannah’s cherished escritoire.

Grantham clenched his jaw. For years, he’d relied on his friends for distraction. He was beginning to realize he’d been hiding like a coward, shirking responsibility because it hurt too much to make mistakes. That had done nothing but prove darkness begat darkness. Now he knew brightness did exist in the world. It simply wasn’t in this room.

“Snow’s cleared.” He enjoyed watching them jump at the sound of his voice.

Lord Steepleton set his mouthpiece across his knee and looked at Grantham with glassy eyes. “But the chit’s gone.” With painstaking effort, he brought the silver draw back to his lips and inhaled deeply. His next words wheezed out as he attempted to talk and hold his breath at the same time. “We’ve twelve more days.”

Becky lounged against the armrest of the couch. She wiggled her ten fingers and one bare foot toward Grantham’s face. “Shall I count them for you?”

He grimaced. “She only left because we’re disgusting. Look at this mess. How did it all come to this?”

No one answered him. They didn’t even have the wherewithal to look bashful.

He spun to quit the room and came face to face with Mariah. He
ought
to have felt a cold breeze behind him.

Her lips curved upward. “Three berries left.”

He followed the direction of her finger to see the kissing ball looming over his head. “God’s teeth, woman. Have you no decency?”

She swayed closer to him until the red lace peeping from her bodice brushed against the topmost button of his waistcoat. “None at all.”

He tried to step around her, but she didn’t so much as flinch. “I don’t
want
to touch you.” He’d never liked her, but he disliked even more the thought of his coat brushing against her when Elinor might one day be pressed against that same swath of fabric. “Step aside.”

“Your little country girl must be a good screw.” Mariah placed a hand on his chest. “So am I.”

He removed her hand from his person with a flick of his wrist. She whipped her arm behind her back and glared at him. Good. She needed to learn not to paw at him like a dockside wench.

“I should slap my glove across your cheek for that insult,” he said. “She’s no lightskirt. I won’t have you spreading rumors to the contrary.”

Mariah’s dark eyes dared him to name his second. “Then slap me.”

As if he would truly challenge her to a duel. Grantham scowled. This was all a game to her. The less he desired her, the harder she tried to win his attention. With a guttural noise of disdain, he pivoted back into the room. Much as he wanted to cast her aside bodily, he wouldn’t treat a woman so poorly. He went to the sideboard instead.

De Winter materialized in the doorframe behind Mariah. He glanced from the kissing ball to Scotherby’s seething mistress beneath it, then caught Grantham’s eye.
“You?”
he mouthed, indicating the Cyprian.

Grantham grimaced and nodded.

De Winter shook his head as if he found the situation utterly incomprehensible. Then he murmured, “A kiss for me, Mariah?” to the back of her head.

She whirled around. Upon realizing the drawl belonged to the earl, she arched her spine toward him. “If tradition dictates it, my lord.”

De Winter shot Grantham a look of chagrined amusement. “For posterity, then,” he said, and wrapped his arms around the beautiful cow. Without raising his head, he reached overhead and tugged one berry from the mistletoe.

“Since we’re all here,” Grantham announced once Mariah was left breathless and de Winter looked as though he could use a stiff drink, “I want you all gone by morning. Except you,” he amended for the earl. “You may stay.”

De Winter shrugged. “Someone has to be here to talk sense into you.”

Steepleton dumped his ash bowl onto a plate. “I do hope she condescends to marry you, Chelford. If not, my favorite flavor of humble pie is cherry. I shall lick the fork with relish.”

“My patience for you runs thin,” Grantham warned Steepleton. “I suggest you make haste before I do cut the menus down to gruel and porridge.”

Steepleton shot him a look of repugnance. Tewsey cracked a smile. Mariah, Becky, and the other lightskirts sulked. But by the next afternoon, his house was blessedly silent. Not a distraction remained, and his drawing room no longer reeked of smoke and ferment. He was finally free to sit in his favorite chair and be alone with his thoughts.

That was when he remembered the reason he invited them to Chelford every year.

Hannah.