Page 4 of An Earl Like You (Games Earls Play #6)

Chapter

Two

MELROSE HOUSE, KENT, EARLY MAY

“ D id you fetch my silk ribbons, Hattie?” Sarah mumbled around a mouthful of pins as Hattie entered the small parlor with her marketing basket over her arm.

“Silk ribbons? No.” She stripped off her gloves and set them down on the table beside the door. “Was I meant to?”

“For pity’s sake, Hattie! I asked you to?—”

“Kindly remove those pins from your mouth before you speak, Sarah.” Margaret glanced up from the book she’d been reading. “I don’t wish to explain to Dr. Paulson how you managed to swallow half a dozen sewing pins. He already thinks we’re mad as it is.”

“Oh, hang Dr. Paulson! What do I care what he thinks?”

“I daresay you’ll care when those pins are lodged in your throat,” Margaret said mildly. “I can’t think it would be at all pleasant. Rather like swallowing a cactus.”

Sarah plucked the pins from between her lips, dropped them onto the table beside her chair and turned to glower at Hattie. “I asked you to fetch four yards of violet silk ribbon from the mercantile to trim my new straw bonnet.”

Dash it, she had, hadn’t she? That is, Sarah had shouted something to her from the doorway as she’d made her way down the pathway that led to the tiny village of Chatham, and it was just as likely to have been about ribbons as anything else. “Oh, dear. I beg your pardon, Sarah. I forgot.”

“Honestly, Hattie, you may as well let Molly do the marketing if you’re going to be so forgetful.” Sarah tossed the unfinished bonnet onto the table with a tragic sigh. “I was going to wear that bonnet when I called on Mrs. Lyons today, but I can’t possibly wear it without the violet ribbon.”

“I truly am sorry. Perhaps this will cheer you up.” Hattie rummaged inside her basket and pulled out a letter. “Alice Weatherby has written to you from London.”

“Another letter already?” Sarah held out her hands, brightening at once. “Look, it’s a lovely long one. What a pity Alice is leaving London at the end of the week, just when the season is about to begin. There’s sure to be one delicious scandal after another, and no one to report it.”

“Dear me, whatever shall we do without an endless flow of gossip from London?” Margaret turned over a page of her book. “What will become of us?”

“I know. It’s tragic, is it not?” Sarah huffed. “Alice has all the best gossip.”

Hattie stifled her sigh as she dropped into her chair opposite the window. Alice had been as faithful a correspondent as she’d promised Sarah she would be.

Far more faithful than certain other people, despite the promises they’d made.

She’d had such high hopes when Mr. Briggs, the postmaster had handed her the letter this morning, only to have them immediately dashed. Cass hadn’t written to her since last October, and the eight months since she’d received his last letter felt like an endless, lonely walk through a barren desert.

Eight long months, and this despite the dozens of letters she’d sent him during that time. At first, she’d put his silence down to his father’s illness, but the Sixth Earl of Windham had drawn his last breath nearly four months ago, and still she hadn’t heard a word from Cass.

Perhaps he no longer had time for her. He was the earl now, after all, handsome, elegant, and wealthy, and she…

well, she was who she’d always been. Harriet Parrish, the quietest of Lord Melrose’s three reclusive sisters.

No one special. A spinster in the making.

Certainly not the sort of lady who could hold the attention of a fashionable earl like Lord Windham.

“Ooh, listen to this! Alice says Mr. Allan and Lord Fullerton were spotted stumbling about the streets outside of Brooks’s Club in the wee hours of Monday morning!”

“There’s nothing so scandalous in that, surely?” Margaret turned over another leaf of her book. “Don’t all the most fashionable gentlemen frequent Brooks’s Club?”

“They do, yes, but it seems Lord Fullerton had been dipping rather deep that evening, and…” Sarah let out a gasp.

“My goodness! Alice says Mr. Allen accused Lord Fullerton of cheating at whist, and Lord Fullerton responded by issuing Mr. Allen a challenge to a duel! Dear me, London is terribly exciting, isn’t it? ”

“Exciting? No. Scandalous and disgraceful, yes.” Margaret snapped her book closed and set it aside. “I do wish Alice weren’t quite so fond of gossip.”

“Indeed. I can’t imagine it does you any good, reading about such nonsense, Sarah.” Hattie rose, marched across the room and snatched her book of pressed flowers down from the bookcase. “For my own part, I don’t care a fig for the scandals of London’s fashionable aristocrats.”

Sarah ignored this and continued reading, breathless with excitement.

“Lord Henry and his brother, Viscount Golding, were seen entering Madame White’s, a notorious brothel in the Strand in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

They emerged some hours later in the company of a pair of birds of paradise, and?—”

“For pity’s sake!” Hattie slammed the heavy book onto the table, making Sarah and Margaret jump. “No brothels, and no birds of paradise, if you please, Sarah.”

“You needn’t make such a fuss, Hattie. I know all about birds of paradise.” Sarah gave a nonchalant wave of her hand. “ Chère amies , too. Alice says all the fashionable gentlemen have them.”

“That’s quite enough, Sarah.”

Sarah glanced up from her letter at Margaret’s stern tone, her cheeks coloring. “I beg your pardon. I’ll just read to myself, shall I?”

“Yes, I think that would be best.” Margaret opened her book again and a companionable quiet settled over the parlor.

It should have soothed Hattie’s jangled nerves, but instead she found herself staring down at her book, the colorful page of pressed larkspurs swimming before her eyes.

Perhaps she’d been a fool to believe she and Cass would always be friends. She hadn’t seen him since the summer he’d come to Kent. That had been twelve years ago, and with every subsequent year that passed it seemed less likely she’d ever lay eyes on him again.

But for him to just go silent as he’d done, with no warning or explanation felt like…her heart gave a sharp throb of pain in her chest, as if it had been speared with a dagger.

If felt like betrayal. Or worse, abandonment.

But then if the scandal sheets were to be believed, he spent his every waking hour engaged in one debauchery after another. Apparently, it was rather time-consuming, being a wicked, dissipated earl, and left him little leisure to write.

Not that it mattered much anymore. It was just as well he’d ended their correspondence, as it wasn’t proper for a lady to write to a gentleman to whom she wasn’t betrothed. Her brother would have worried if he’d known of it, and she didn’t like to lie to Johnathan, or go behind his back.

Cass was doubtless taken up with his fashionable friends at Brooks’s, and his chère amie , and…and…well, whatever it was young aristocratic gentlemen got up to in London.

Yes, it was much better this way. She’d forget all about him soon enough, and the good news was she’d have much more time to devote to her flowers now. Really, it was a tremendous relief to be free of such arduous correspondence.

A tremendous relief, indeed.

She turned to a blank page in her book and plucked up the white larkspur she’d picked several weeks ago. She’d dried it between two sheets of the special absorbent paper Johnathan had brought her from London, so the white petals wouldn’t turn yellow after it was pressed.

It was ready now, and she had the perfect place for?—

“Goodness, that’s…oh, my.”

Hattie turned to Sarah, her hand going still over the thick book spread out on the table in front of her, and her heart plummeted from her chest into her slippers at the stricken look on her sister’s face. “What is it?”

Except she knew. Even before Sarah said a word, she knew.

“It seems, ah…well, it sounds as if Cassian has got himself into a bit of a scrape.”

“What scrape?” Hattie’s voice was much higher than it should have been, and her cheeks went hot as Sarah’s and Margaret heads jerked toward her. “What’s he done this time?”

“Perhaps it would be best if we—” Margaret began, but Hattie interrupted her.

“No. I want to hear it. Read it, Sarah.”

Her sisters exchanged a glance, but then Sarah began reading in a halting voice. “Cassian Fitzgerald, the newly minted Earl of Windham was seen stumbling down Maiden Lane after a street brawl near The Deuce in Covent Garden.”

“A brawl?” Margaret let out a breath. “What, another one?”

“It seems so, and this one must have been quite a melee. Listen to this. Lord Windham’s friend Lord Hayward?—”

“Lord Hayward!” Margaret exclaimed. “Stephen Beaumont, the Earl of Hayward?”

“Alice doesn’t say, but I suppose there’s only one Lord Hayward, isn’t there?

” Sarah resumed reading. “Lord Windham’s friend Lord Hayward, who was bleeding profusely from his nose, was obliged to assist his unsteady companion from Maiden Lane to Garrick Street, where Lord Windham’s carriage and driver were waiting.

Lord Windham was staggering, either from an excess of drink or a nasty blow he sustained to his temple. ”

The stem of the larkspur she was holding snapped between Hattie’s fingers.

Margaret let out a breath. “Dear God. What can Cass be thinking, brawling in public in such a disgraceful manner?”

Hattie stared down at the broken flower cradled in her palm until it blurred in front of her eyes. Silly of her, to get so upset over it. She could replace it easily enough. There were dozens of white larkspurs in the Melrose House gardens.

She could pick another one. One was as good as another?—

“Lord Windham’s left eye was swollen shut, and according to our witness he collapsed as soon as he gained his carriage.”

She was going to be sick. She pressed a hand to her abdomen as if she could push back the nausea welling there.

“Sarah.” Margaret glanced at Hattie. “Perhaps the less said about Cassian’s antics, the better.”