Page 10 of This Earl of Mine

Georgie suppressed a groan. Juliet had been besotted with Simeon Pettigrew, the vicar’s son from Little Gidding, the Lincolnshire village closest to their familyhome, for years. Mother had hoped that Juliet’s first London season would make her forget all about him, but nothing—not even the undivided attention of the unmarried male half of theton—had done the trick. Worse, Georgie had promised Juliet that if she still wanted silly Simeon after a whole season, then she would lend her support to the union.

Juliet sniffed. “Don’t look like that, Georgie. It’s not my fault. I never meant to fall in love with a mere mister.” She crossed her gloved hands over her perfectly proportioned bosom and sighed dramatically. “The heart has no discernment. Besides, Upton’s awful. A lord with whom to be bored, as Simeon would say.” She snorted at her own joke.

Georgie winced. Simeon’s poetry was unaccountably bad. Byron, Shelly, and Keats could rest easy in their beds. Simeon had a habit of trying to make everything rhyme, with no regard for sense or meter, but that hadn’t deterred Juliet, who thought him wonderfully romantic.

“I do wish Mother would relent. I miss him, Georgie.” Her lower lip pushed out in a hint of a pout. “It’s all right for you. You’re safe from her matchmaking. Even when you married acriminaland she barely batted an eyelid.”

“That’s because she’d given up hope of me ever choosing a husband. And I wouldn’t exactly say she ‘didn’t bat an eyelid,’” Georgie muttered. “She called me a headstrong, impetuous hellion far too much like Father.”

“She meant it affectionately. You know how much she loved Papa. And she’s secretly proud of the fact that you’ve inherited his talent for business, even if she dislikes you to show it in public.”

So unladylike, Georgiana. No man wants a wife who dabbles in trade.

Georgie sighed. Maybe she should take a lover? She was twenty-five, for heaven’s sake. Most girls had beenmarried off at sixteen or seventeen. She’d missed out on seven years of knowing what physical pleasure could be had between a man and a woman. Such an arrangement might lack the steady friendship and loving support that her parents had found in their marriage, but at least it would besomething.

She cast her gaze over the assorted crowd and tried to muster some enthusiasm for one of the titled fops who milled around. If she were to avoid a scandal, she needed a rake. A discreet rake. There were a few potential candidates in attendance. But Turnbull was too loud. Coster was too sweaty. Elton was too short. Woodford was too old. Wingate was attractive, but irredeemably stupid.

Not one of them made her heart thump in her chest or made her stomach swirl in that delicious way her prisoner’s wicked gaze had done.

She’d dreamed of him. Alone at night, tucked in her lonely bed, it was his eyes she imagined, his big hands touching her skin. Their brief kiss haunted her, teasing her with a hint of how much more there was to experience in life. It was just her luck to discover she was attracted to rogues, instead of gentlemen. To lean, dark ruffians with soft brown hair and taunting eyes.

What he was doing, her pirate, her highwayman? She’d never actually discovered his crimes. Wherever he was, she hoped he was alive and well. It did her heart good to think of him laughing somewhere in the sunlight, thumbing his nose at convention, having adventures in the great wide world.

Part of her wished she could have gone with him. She wanted that freedom, the challenge of the great unknown, the excitement of knowing whole uncharted continents lay ahead, just waiting to be explored. She wanted to be Robinson Crusoe, or Gulliver, or Byron’s Corsair, sailing “o’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea” to findsome “Pirate’s Isle.” She owned ships that sailed across the world, to exotic locations like Alexandria and Ceylon, Calcutta and Peking, but she’d never been adventuring on any of them. She’d never even been over to France, given Britain’s near-constant state of warfare with that country for most of her adult life.

Ladies don’t do that, Georgiana.

But, oh, how she wanted to.

The closest she’d ever been to a life on the ocean wave was sailing her single-mast sailboat,L’Aventure, on the artificial lake Father had created back in Lincolnshire.

Lucky pirate.

It was a shame she’d never see him again.

Chapter 7.

He was back.

Benedict had spent three weeks chasing down leads, trying to glean something from the idle chatter in London’s darkest and least salubrious taverns. But apart from some vague whispers about the plot to rescue Bonaparte from St. Helena, he’d learned little of value.

He’d rarely bothered withtonparties since his return from Belgium; he preferred to spend his free time in the card rooms at the Tricorn, listening to the gossip, but Alex had begged him to accompany him tonight, and he hadn’t had the heart to refuse.

Ben glanced sideways at Alexander Harland, second son of the Duke of Southwick, the man who, along with Sebastien Wolff, had been his best friend since their first days at Eton. All three of them were younger sons, the “spares” as opposed to the “heirs,” shipped off to receive a decent education without the stifling expectation of one day inheriting a title or having to take their seat in the House of Lords.

They shared a wicked sense of humor and an unquenchable thirst for adventure, and their friendship had sustained them through school and their subsequent studies at Cambridge. When they’d left university five years ago, they’d thrown themselves enthusiastically into town life, not rising until midday, drinking and flirting away the nights. They’d gleefully cultivated reputations as gamesters, reprobates, and all-around rogues.

But even London’s endless whirl of dissipation had begun to pall, and when Nelson trounced Napoleon at Trafalgar, the three of them had signed up to the Rifles, looking for adventure, naively convinced the war would all be over in a matter of months.

But their “short stint” in the Rifles had turned into three long, grueling years—years which had included any number of close shaves, hellish conditions, moments of elation and despair, hardship and loss.

Benedict shook his head. War had made men of them, had shown their previous existence to be shallow and frivolous. They’d made a pact, one evening, seated around a smoky campfire on a sodden field in Belgium, the dawn before Waterloo. A vow that when they returned—if they survived the battle ahead—they’d make their fortunes together.

Alex and Seb already had money, of course. Alex was wealthy in his own right, thanks to a generous maiden aunt who’d left him a tidy sum, and Seb was the younger son of a duke and had his own funds.

In stark contrast, Benedict’s father had left his offspring in dire straits. Benedict’s older brother, John, had inherited the title Earl of Morcott, but little else save a monstrous pile of debt, which Benedict felt honor bound to help him reduce. John had sold off everything that wasn’t entailed and had managed to retain the principle seat, Morcott Hall, and a few hundred acres, and wasbusy returning the estate to profitability. He was currently in town on the lookout for a wealthy wife, but Ben hadn’t caught up with him for weeks.

He’d offered John the money he’d received when he sold off his commission and left the Rifles, but John had staunchly refused. Not out of pride—he appreciated the gesture, but he insisted that Benedict invest in something to secure his own financial future.

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