Ethan: Lord of Scandals (6 page)

Ethan’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Who taught you to jump like that?”

“Nobody taught us,” Jeremiah piped up, ever protective. “The ponies just know, and it’s shorter to get home if you hop the stiles. Shorter to get to the village too.”

“So you
hop
them frequently at a dead run?” They had ridden the jump like little jockeys, their form flawless and relaxed.

“We canter them,” Jeremiah said, his chin coming up. “Mostly.”

So they’d cantered them the first time, and gone screaming over forever after. Ethan did not know whether to be proud or horrified.

“I suppose we’ll have to get you proper hunting attire, then. Cubbing starts in September.”

He turned Argus without another word, feeling his sons staring agape at his back.

“We’re to ride to hounds?” Joshua’s tone suggested he could not believe such a thing.

“Cubbing.” Jeremiah said, nudging his pony forward. “It’s not quite the same, but it counts.”

“But, gentlemen,” Ethan called over his shoulder then stopped Argus and turned him to face the ponies. “Tearing off that way in company is considered the height of bad form, though I know between the two of you, it’s great fun to startle your brother’s horse. When we ride in company, though, there’ll be none of that, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Correct, sir.”

“And now we will walk our horses out, for they’ve exerted themselves mightily, but I see we’re on the wrong side of the fence, aren’t we?”

Joshua and Jeremiah were exchanging one of those puzzled, fraternal looks when Ethan surreptitiously nudged at Argus’s side with his spur, sending the gelding back toward the stile at a brisk trot. The ponies fell in behind without benefit of direction from their riders, and they cleared the same obstacle, one, two, three, at a more dignified pace but with the same excellent form.

When they gained the stable yard, the boys were grinning, and whacking their ponies with appreciative pats on the neck, and betting each other their ponies could clear anything old Argus could.

“Let’s not put it to the test,” Ethan interrupted them. “And if I ever learn you were foolish enough to attempt an obstacle without me or a groom to supervise, I will forbid you to ride for a considerable while, not that I think either of my sons would be so foolish.”

His sons surely would, but Miss Portman’s favorite gentlemen might not.

***

“Outside?” Joshua and Jeremiah grinned at each other. “Now?”

“I suggest you stop up in the playroom to mass your troops,” Mr. Grey said, sounding very stern indeed. “Get a shovel from the garden shed and ask Tolliver where you might find some shade and a patch of earth to memorialize British military heroism. You will be expected back upstairs, with clean hands and faces, by teatime.”

“That’s five bongs of the clock,” Joshua said. “Let’s go, Jeremiah.”

“And thus the Corsican monster meets his deserved fate,” Alice said from her place on the bed. The boys bounced away from her sides, leaving her in blessed quiet—and quite at sea—with their father.

Mr. Grey—or
Ethan
, since they were in private—lowered himself to sit on the bed at her hip. He was inspecting her, not in any way trespassing against propriety.

“Thus my sons are given an excuse to be loud, get muddy, and plague the gardener.”

“You would have made a tolerable governess, you know.” Alice smiled at him, even knowing he was assessing her complexion, her eyes, and any other aspect of her person that might provide insight. “Disguising mud as British military heroism is ingenious.”

“I suspect a fair amount of mud was involved at Waterloo, if the stories are true. You look better.”

“Which is not saying much.” Alice smoothed a hand over her quilt, not sure how to deal with an Ethan Grey who could outwit his sons and play nursemaid to a governess. “I was in wretched shape this morning, and you have my thanks for your kindness.”

He sat there at her hip, regarding her out of solemn blue eyes. He wore riding attire very well, and a faint odor of horse clung to the edges of his usual cedar scent. That she could enjoy any scent when blended with horse was a puzzlement.

“What will you do with your afternoon, Alice Portman?”

“I have many letters to write. I slept most of the morning. Perhaps I will tend to correspondence.”

“A letter or two only.” He frowned and tucked a strand of hair over her ear. The touch was not proper, but cowering in bed while bleating like a trapped sheep rather trumped all comers in the impropriety department.

“The headache and nervousness are slipping away, creeping back down into my vitals from whence they sprang.”

“That’s how it feels, isn’t it?” He rose, making the mattress shift. “Where is Clara?”

“I sent her downstairs.” Alice settled against the pillows, relieved to have the bed to herself though curious as to how Ethan Grey knew the exact contours of a bout of panic. “She is a dear, but twittery, and recovery from a spell like this morning’s is facilitated by calm.”

He said nothing, but stood at her window, where the curtains were drawn back halfway. While Alice cast around for something innocuous to say, he spoke over his shoulder.

“Why are the boys so concerned with death? As we rode in this morning, Joshua asked me if you were going to die. From a simple headache, such as I might suffer any day of the week—I told them you suffered only that—they leapt to making your final arrangements.” Then he did turn, though he stayed across the room, leaning his hips back against the windowsill and crossing his ankles. “Or do I perhaps misperceive my children?”

Not a question she’d anticipated, but a sound one, and they could discuss it with a whole room between them. “I don’t think you do. They know your father just died, and of course their mother died, which leaves them with only you.”

“Only me.” Even frowning, Mr. Grey was a handsome man. A handsome, largish man who looked perfectly comfortable to be visiting her in her boudoir. That came as a lowering realization since, despite his buss to her cheek earlier, it implied he could not conceive of improprieties transpiring here. “I haven’t said anything to them about the old earl passing on, and they never met him.”

“They know anyway. Leah explained to the little boys that you and Nick had the same father, and thus the boys’ grandfather had died.”

“Good of her.” Ethan’s—Mr. Grey’s—Ethan’s—frown intensified. “Barbara died in August. The night of the nineteenth.”

This was not a confidence. Any governess learned these bits of family history sooner or later. “How did she die?”

“Typhoid.” He turned back around to stare out the window. “It is neither a tidy death nor quick.”

“Were the boys here?”

“Of course. As was I. I wasn’t going to let her die alone, regardless of the state of our marriage. She was ill for a good month, and sometimes the fever even seemed to abate, but then it spiked again. She was lucid from time to time and asked to see the boys when she was.”

“And you allowed it?”

“I did. She was dying. I tried to keep them from touching her, but they did visit the sickroom on good days. Joshua was still in nappies. I can’t think he remembers much.”

While the boys’ father probably forgot little.

“He might not have much recollection, but Jeremiah has no doubt talked with him at length about their mother, so Joshua thinks he recalls everything his brother does. It must have been very difficult.”

“It was… hot.”

Likely stifling in a sick room, stinking horrendously, humiliating for the patient and trying for the family. And this had gone on for weeks. Of course the children had a recollection of it.

With his back to her, Ethan went on speaking. “She… apologized. In one of her lucid intervals, she apologized for her…” Alice was sure he hadn’t meant to say that, but to her surprise, he finished his thought softly. “For her betrayals.”

Gracious heavens. Betrayals—plural. That could not be good.

“May I offer you the library?” he asked, facing her, his expression once again that of a solicitous host. “It will be cooler, and you’ll have everything you need to tend to your letters. I’ve done most of my writing for the day, which leaves me the accounting, for which I do not need the desk.”

The change in topic was a relief, probably for them both. “Cooler sounds lovely. I’ve been in this bed long enough, but I hardly think it will serve to have me in my nightgown below stairs in broad daylight.”

He pushed away from the window. “This is my house, and if I permit it, then nobody will say anything to it. I am not an earl, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Mr. Grey was more arrogant than any earl. Alice had met a few and was in fact related to one. “The gossips will say whatever they please,” she retorted, “though not to your face, and maybe not to mine. If you’d give me a few minutes, I’ll be right along.”

“As you wish.” He turned to go then rounded on her. “You are not to pin your hair up in some frightful concoction designed to aggravate a lingering headache.”

She accepted this edict, because Clara had tidied her braid very nicely, and because Mr. Grey liked to have the last word. Alice regarded his retreat, noting that he walked like the lions she’d seen in the Royal Menagerie, slinky, silent, and graceful, but somehow menacing in their very elegance. She did not doubt Ethan Grey was capable of sending an enemy to his final reward, and as big as he was, it would be quickly done.

And what kind of thoughts were those? Alice eased from the bed and crossed to her wardrobe. Maybe the boys weren’t the only ones preoccupied with death, but as to that, it was good to know the anniversary of their mother’s death was approaching.

A capable governess kept her eye on such things, for they caused havoc when ignored. She slipped into the most comfortable of her old summer dresses, a short-sleeved, high-waisted muslin faded with age, and put her feet into a pair of comfortable house slippers.

Alice made her way to the library, composing a letter to her sister Avis in her head. She was halfway to the desk when she realized she wasn’t alone. Ethan Grey sat on the couch, his papers and an abacus spread out on the low table.

Alice stopped abruptly and felt her balance weave. “I did not know we would be sharing the room.”

“It’s a large room.” His lips were moving soundlessly as he ran his finger down a column on a page. “A moment, if you please.” He scratched something on the page then got to his feet.

“Ciphering appeals to me,” he said with a slight smile. “There is one right answer, and when things balance out, one has a sense of satisfaction about one’s work. The pen, ink, and paper are in here.” He opened a drawer on the desk, coming near enough that Alice got a whiff of cedar. “The sand is in here, and wax and seal are here. I’ve rung for tea, but with lemon and honey, because you’re probably ready for a change from the mint.”

“Thank you. That was considerate of you.”

“It was not.” He set a penknife on the desk. “I was thirsty, but I am not intentionally rude.”

Her smile widened to a grin.

“Well, not all the time,” he amended, his lips quirking up. “I’ll leave you to your correspondence.” He was back at his figuring, while Alice mused that he
was
intentionally rude, frequently, but acts of consideration and kindness, those he seemed to produce only with a struggle.

But produce them, he did. Alice settled at the desk and bent to her task, but she recalled the sensation of Mr. Grey’s large hand on her nape, his body supporting hers while he rearranged the pillows, his voice low and soothing as he did what was needed to ease Alice’s discomfort. He wasn’t a flirt like Nick—thank God—but he knew his way around a female body, and for the first time, Alice wondered what sort of man he’d be in intimate circumstances.

She let her gaze wander over his broad shoulders where he hunched like a golden raptor with his ledgers. He was muttering again. From time to time he’d pounce with his pen on an inaccuracy, talking to the figures under his breath as if they were some sort of sparring partner.

“Got you, you…”

“You don’t belong in expenditures, and you know it.”

He was down to shirt and waistcoat, in deference to the heat, and he’d dispensed with his neckcloth. The tanned skin at his throat fascinated Alice. She’d had her face against that skin, felt the heat of it. She’d inhaled the clean scent of him and felt the urge to remain in his embrace, her face hidden against him, her body slack and safe in his arms.

“Don’t know what to tell them?” he asked.

He was on his feet, leaning back against an arm of the sofa, regarding Alice with amusement.

“It’s repetitive,” Alice said. “My sister still lives in the North, at the family seat.” Though how Avis tolerated such proximity to the Collins estate was a mystery. “Both my brothers are from home, so one must write the same news twice, at least, if not three times. And then I need to write a simpler version of things for Priscilla, and a not-so-simple version for Leah Haddonfield and Reese Belmont.”

“All those people are to know the illustrious doings of my boys’ governess. I am impressed.”

“You are not,” she said mildly, stifling the urge to yawn. The library really was very pleasant, with a ceiling of at least twelve feet, clerestory windows over the French doors, and shade trees beyond the windows all contributing to a cool, airy feel.

“Have some lemonade,” he said, pouring her a glass. “You’ve been scratching away for more than an hour, and I propose a recess on the terrace.”

“A fine idea.” Alice rose, held steady for a moment, then preceded him through the French doors to the shady terrace. “How do you suppose Waterloo is proceeding?”

“The Corsican has probably been routed halfway to Kent by now, several times.”

“And covered with mud,” Alice added, letting him seat her at a wrought-iron table among boxes of flowering lilies. “Your house is very pretty, Mr. Grey. Is that your late wife’s influence?”

He studied his drink. “Barbara wasn’t the domestic sort. Lady Warne—Nick’s grandmother—pointed out to me after Barbara’s death that I was always happier in the country. I began to take more of an interest in Tydings after that, but anybody can order the gardener to plant a few flowers.”

“Not everybody does,” Alice rejoined, declining to point out that it was far more than a few. Roses ringed the terrace in thriving abundance, their fragrance blending with the breeze. A rainbow of beds of cutting flowers spread across the back lawns. “What had you muttering and threatening away the afternoon?”

The question was a bit beyond the bounds of what a governess might ask her employer, but then, this employer had kissed the governess. True, it had been a rhetorical kiss, a point made in the interest of some sort of debate, but it left Alice more conversational latitude than she might have assumed otherwise.

“I was working on the accounts.” His smile was sheepish. “I get fierce when the numbers aren’t as they should be. What of you? Have you completed your letters?”

“I haven’t written to Nick and his countess.” Alice hid another yawn behind her glass of lemonade. “He insisted I let him know we are safely arrived, because he didn’t trust you to see to it.”

“He wanted to know you hadn’t left us in a fit of wrath.”

“I will not hare off in a fit of pique.” Alice sipped her drink, enjoying the cool of the glass against her fingers. “I would not do that to the boys. But why don’t you write to your brother and spare me the effort?” One needed to make such a suggestion casually. Alice drew her finger around the cool, wet rim of her glass.

“Perhaps I shall. I should thank him for putting up with my darling sons, shouldn’t I?”

“He was happy for Ford and John to have other playmates. One has the impression Nick will always enjoy having children around, and Leah doesn’t seem to mind, when they make her dear Nicholas happy.”

“Are you jealous of her?”

That
was definitely not an employer’s question to the governess, though Alice didn’t resent his curiosity. Much.

“Oh, certainly.” Alice considered her drink, which could have done with a touch more sugar. “Leah has the love of a good man, material comforts, a loving family, and the certain knowledge her dragons will all be vanquished before her morning tea. Few women are so blessed.”

“Do you harbor a tendresse for my brother?” Ethan asked, swirling his drink slowly—casually.

An inquiry that qualified as
odd
. “Nick?” Alice snorted. “He is a shameless flirt and oblivious to the dictates of Polite Society. He was a prince with Priscilla and calls her his princess to this day.”

Ethan wrinkled his nose, as if the noisy, busy child he’d met earlier in the summer was in nowise a candidate for a crown. “Were you somebody’s princess?”

Alice considered remarking that they’d probably have a storm by nightfall, except Ethan’s question was a version of what an employer might ask—
before
he allowed a woman to have the care of his sons.

“I was my papa’s princess, and my brothers’, as was my sister.”

“And your brothers don’t mind you traveling all over England to see to other people’s children?”

That question, she did not want to answer. “Of course they mind. They are my brothers, and my older brothers at that. But they understand I need to make my own way. We correspond regularly, and when I’m in London, I try to see them.”

“We’ll be in Town for Nick’s investiture, though if you need to see your family sooner, you’ve only to ask.”

Alice smiled at him patiently. “You’ve spent one morning with your boys, Mr. Grey. You would not be so generous were it a long week of mornings, I assure you.”

“If you need to see your family,” he said again with peculiar gravity, “you have only to ask. We’ll put you in the traveling coach, you can stay with Lady Warne, and the boys and I will manage. And you agreed to call me Ethan.”

“Thank you.” Alice cocked her head, seeing he was dead serious, and Ethan Grey’s version of dead serious was serious indeed. “Ethan.”

“Better.” He sipped the last of his drink, and quiet settled around them. For Alice, it was pleasant and peaceful to be out on the shady terrace, sipping lemonade and enjoying a summer afternoon. Out in the sun, particularly if one were active, it would be hot.

“Shall we move a bit?” he asked, rising and extending a hand. “I promise to keep you in the shade.”

“A little movement would be appreciated. I can become too accustomed to the indoors, and that is a waste of pretty grounds.”

“I’m fortunate that Argus makes it worth my while to keep him in regular work. The consequences of neglecting a morning hack don’t bear consideration.” Mr. Grey—Ethan, now—tucked her hand onto his arm. Because his sleeves were turned back, and Alice without her gloves, this put her hand on the bare expanse of his muscular forearm. “This path keeps to the shade and takes us by the stream. If my hearing serves, we are likely to come across a great battle on the way.”

Alice strolled along beside him, thinking he was relaxing more the longer he was on his home turf. Lady Warne had been right to hint he should spend time in his own home, but then again, maybe it wasn’t travel that put him out of sorts, but time with his brother, the earl.

“How was it you were separated from your siblings?” Alice asked when they’d gone some way in silence.

“A misunderstanding. The story of record, until recently, is I accidentally branded Nick’s fundament with an
H
, and the old earl thought I was a danger to his heir.”

“Nick’s famous scar.”

“You’ve seen it?” His eyebrows rose, but his voice dropped with some severe sentiment—censure, or possibly disappointment.

“I most assuredly have not, but not for lack of hearing him offer to show it to the dairymaids, the goose girl, the vicar’s granny, and my own self. He says he was branded like a bullock because he was mistaken for one by a drunken herdsman.”

“He would.” Ethan’s smile held relief. “Our father burned an
H
for Haddonfield into the harnesses and saddles and anything in the stables that might tend to disappear. Nick and I were fooling with the branding iron, I tripped, and Nick’s nether parts got stuck with the hot iron. I’m told he did not ride for several weeks, but even then, he wasn’t offended.”

“No doubt he enjoyed having the maids tend his wound. But you were sent away for this?”

“Not exactly.”

Alice heard the boys shrieking with glee over by the river, heard the soft, summery sounds of the afternoon: birds singing, a breeze soughing through the oaks, a cow lowing for her calf. She forced herself to let out a breath and waited, because Ethan was not done answering her question.

“The earl came by our bedroom at night to check on his injured son,” Ethan said, pausing on the path but keeping Alice’s hand at his elbow. “He found Nick and me in the same bed, which happened frequently. We were great ones for whispering and plotting and rehashing our days so the younger boys couldn’t hear us. I have no doubt we were sharing the same pillow. The next night his lordship found the same situation, and he concluded I had enticed my younger brother into an unnatural association. He feared for his sons, his legitimate sons, and so he sent me away.”

“He thought you had enticed Nick…?” Alice said slowly, while a feeling like panic, but angrier than panic, took hold in her belly. “And, of course, you had not. Not in any way.”

This explained much, all of it bitter and dreadful. Her instinct was to protect the boy he’d been, the boy who might somewhere still lurk inside him. She shifted, so her arms went silently around his waist and her head came to rest on his chest, hugging him as she would one of her charges. “I am so sorry, Ethan. For you, for Nick, and for your father. Did he ever apologize?”

“For his mistake, yes.” His arms closed around her slowly, slowly. “He never knew all the consequences of his error, and I let him die in ignorance.”

“That was kind of you,” Alice murmured against his chest. “What an awful thing to do to one’s children. You and Nick must have been devastated, and I’m sure your father lived to regret his decision.”

She spoke in the plural, regretting the consequences for him, for his brother and father too, but she kept her arms around the man with her.

“It’s in the past,” Ethan said, and still he didn’t let her go.

“Our entire lives are in the past,” Alice snapped. “Your papa might have been a good man, Ethan. I hope he was, but he was terribly wrong.”

“He was.” Alice felt him take a deep breath. “He was about as wrong as a father can be. I loved Nick. I do love Nick, and I’d never…”

“You wouldn’t,” Alice agreed, stepping back and slipping her arm through his. “You absolutely would not, and neither would Nick. Your father was simply wrong, and we must allow that this happens with human beings, but we don’t have to like it one bit or pretend it wasn’t such an egregious error. I suppose you wanted to bellow at him in righteous anger, and he deserved at least that.”

They paced along the path for a few yards while Alice seethed with upset for the man beside her. Fourteen was not so very old, especially not for a boy raised in the sheltered environs of an earl’s country seat.

Ethan paused beside her and cocked his head. “I hear the boys. Shall we leave them in peace or find out how goes the war?”

“You are a man,” Alice said, allowing the change in topic. “War will fascinate you. I am a female. It will appall me. Why don’t you see to the boys and I will return to the house? I think I’m due for another nap.”

“I should escort you,” he said, hesitating. His scowl was aimed briefly at her hip. “Come.” He started to turn them around, to return to the house.

“Don’t be silly. I am well enough to stroll through the shade back to the library. You’ll tend to the letter to Nick for me?”

“Of course.” He let her slip her hand from his arm. “And to the vanquishing of the Corsican and any chance-met dragons.”

***

Ethan found a dry, shady spot between the battlefield and the water, and sank to the grass to watch his children. They had such energy in their play, such unstinting commitment to the joy of having fun. And yet, they were mindful of each other. He and Nick had been like that. Ethan knew it; he just could not recall the experience of it. He let the boys frolic and splash and dunk each other for a good half hour in the name of washing off the mud of battle.