Page 1 of The Lost Lord
June
1825
Manhattan
Chapter 1
The scent of coffee tickled Richard’s nose as he lay hiding from the day. It meant Lizzie wanted something from him.
He lay tangled in a white sheet redolent of sweat and the musk of a woman, overlaid with the all-too-familiar scent of stale liquor. His head throbbed like the very devil. He rolled onto his back, the muscles of his stomach bunching beneath his bare skin. His fingers idly traced up his abdomen, scratching as he tried to force his mind into alertness. The open window let in a strong late-spring breeze off the Hudson River and the clanging bustle of life below.
Howard would be happy with this weather. Full ship’s sails meant money in his pocket.
There came a harsh rattling sound, as if his visitor had yanked the curtain off the rod. Sunlight speared his half-open eyes. Richard pulled a pillow over his head to block it out.
“Are you awake yet? I made coffee,” a woman’s voice penetrated Richard’s den. He peeked out from his nest. Lizzie Van Buren’s mane of red-gold hair floated around her sharp-featured face like a halo of pure energy. Foxy Lizzie, as she was known—among other names, most unkind.
Richard’s eyes drifted down to the transparent shift she wore. Lizzie possessed spectacular breasts, at least in the judgment of a man who had seen many fine bosoms in his lifetime. She caught the direction of her interest, lifted her chin, and puffed out her chest.
“Did I startle you, my lord?” she asked, drawing out the last word with a giggle. “Or is it, ‘your grace?’ I never can keep it straight.”
“I don’t know why you insist upon referring to a title,” he complained in a sleep-roughened voice. At their first meeting several months ago, Richard had introduced himself as Lord Northcote, out of longstanding habit. No matter how he attempted to correct her, admittedly not very hard, Lizzie insisted upon addressing him by his brother’s rightful honorific. As the second son of an earl, Richard’s proper form of address ought to be The Honorable. After fifteen years as the heir presumptive to the Briarcliff earldom, however, Richard had found it galling to be demoted in rank. Who did it harm if he continued usinglordamong these ignorant strangers?
No one.
After Lizzie had followed him into a hallway and kissed him, Richard forgot about the issue. He had been shocked enough to let her.Were all American women so forward?he’d wondered before surrendering to her affections with utter gratitude. He’d rather spit than admit how badly he’d missed the touch of another human being since he’d been banished from his homeland of England.
That was before he’d discovered Lizzie was married.
Lizzie leaped on him as he tried to rise, pushing him back down into the soft bed. She liked to run her fingers over the ridges and valleys, pausing to tug on the smattering of hair. When she was feeling impish, she tried to tug one out at the roots. When angry, she’d attempt to yank out a cluster from near his flat nipples, deliberately, to make him wince. If he bled, she laughed and called him weak. Richard, in his weak and lonely worthlessness, accepted her mean-spirited affections rather than make do without any human contact at all.
He ran his palms up her legs. Lizzie also had a set of very fine calves, leading to even better thighs. Physically, she was a treasure. By the time he he’d figured out that Lizzie was the black sheep of Dutch New York society, it had seemed rather late to try and extract himself or to correct her on the subject of his family. His older brother, Edward, had reappeared fifteen years after he’d been kidnapped in the Amazon and stolen the earldom right out from under Richard by virtue of being the eldest son. Now, he was merely a spare—or he had been until Edward had successfully supplanted him by producing a son with that quack woman doctor he’d married. To say that relations between Richard and his eldest brother were icy was like saying an Arctic winter was a mite chilly.
Lizzie giggled and kissed him deeply. Richard let her. He let Lizzie do anything she wanted to. She had been the one to suggest their first carriage ride, where he’d been the one ridden hard and put up wet. She had been the one to unfasten his trousers, as practiced as any whore. Lizzie was a walking scandal, and it quickly became clear that her husband tolerated his wife’s actions because he was the only person in the world who genuinely wanted her—for his own demented reasons, Richard presumed. Richard had met him briefly before he decided to avoid the man socially. Hardly a difficult task given Richard cultivated acquaintances solely on behalf of his friend, Howard.
Apart from balding at the tender age of twenty-three, Arthur Van Buren seemed a nice enough chap. Wealthy, earnest, if not very exciting. Then again, Lizzie offered more than enough excitement for ten men. In that sense, she and Arthur were the perfect match.
Richard had come to believe that Arthur allowed his wife so much leeway because he believed Richard would soon take his wayward wife off his hands. Indeed, Lizzie had been pushing for that exact outcome for weeks. But the thought of being married to Lizzie Van Buren made Richard shudder.
Lizzie broke off their kiss, though she left her legs wrapped around him. “Come and get your coffee before it gets cold.”
“Why? What’s the rush?” Richard asked, palming one wonderful breast. She shook him off.
“I want to go on holiday. Come into the kitchen, and I’ll tell you when and where,” she said.
Richard yawned, leveraged himself up, and padded after her into the kitchen. Soft linen pajama pants with frayed hems swirled about his ankles, an indulgence he’d brought with him from England upon his departure. Outside, the sounds of city life banged unfiltered through his open windows. Each morning, if he was awake to hear it, the sounds of carts rumbling and horses clip clopping over cobblestone streets reached his third-floor apartments. A towering London plane tree shaded his front windows where birds liked to roost and warble or squawk in noisy umbrage. Richard would never have confessed how soothing he found the sound to another living soul. Especially not to Lizzie.
“Here you are, piping hot just how you like it,” Lizzie chirped in an awkward and affected English accent.
Richard accepted the cup, hiding a grimace. Lizzie made exceptionally awful coffee. Richard preferred tea, but he’d grown accustomed to the bracing bitterness of coffee, America’s brew of choice. This newborn country of industrious rebels certainly knew how to nurse a grudge. That Boston Tea Party incident had taken place a generation ago.
“Thank you.” Richard sipped it and barely managed not to choke.
Lizzie’s expression turned radiant. Few would call her beautiful. It didn’t matter. An irresistible energy animated her elfin features.
“Darling,” she smiled up at Richard winningly. “I want to take a holiday.”
“You had mentioned something to that effect.” The coffee was even worse than usual. Lizzie must be scheming up a storm this morning. Last time she’d made coffee for him, earlier in the spring, she’d tried to convince him to let her move in with him. As though it wasn’t bad enough that Lizzie spent several nights a week in his bed. He choked down a sip and set the cup aside. “What brought that on?”
