Font Size
Line Height

Page 25 of Only Earl in the World (Taming of the Dukes)

“Hullo! Briar, are you even listening?” an exasperated voice said. “Good heavens, it’s like talking to a rock.”

Briar blinked as a scone waved wildly in her face.

She jolted, flushing slightly when she realized that Vesper, Laila, Effie, and Nève were all staring at her with raised brows as if they’d been talking to her for some time.

She’d nodded at the right moments, sipped her tea, and eaten her sandwiches during their usual afternoon tea party, but her brain had wandered.

How could she reply to her best friends that no, she hadn’t been listening because all she could think about besides the fact that the Earl of Lushing was an incredibly generous lover, that he had told her he loved her, or the fact that he had read Lady Ivy…

and now he knew her deepest, darkest secret.

And claimed he was her most devoted admirer.

So much so that he’d acted out an entire scene from her last book, one she hadn’t even recognized until she was in the throes of an orgasm so powerful, she’d been lost to utter oblivion for a handful of minutes.

It had only been in the aftermath, lying in his arms, when the pieces—and her written words—had truly connected in her head.

How long had he known? She trusted that Lushing wouldn’t expose her.

The viscount, however, was another matter. She had much worse to worry about. Sackley had sent a final note to Lethe with an ultimatum: marry him or he’d expose her to the ton .

Honestly, it was a miracle that her emotional state wasn’t worse. Between her feelings for Lushing and the unforgettable evening they had shared, as well as Sackley’s threats of being exposed to the ton as Lady Ivy, she was pulled thin.

Briar pushed a wan smile to her lips. “Sorry, Ves. I have a lot on my mind right now.”

Her friend wrinkled her nose. “Your head has been in the clouds since you arrived for tea. Has something happened?”

“I don’t want to dampen anyone’s spirits,” she replied.

Laila patted her arm. “That’s what we are here for, Briar. The good and the bad. Now, spill what’s on your mind before I’m forced to take desperate measures like convincing the girls to tickle you for information.”

Briar couldn’t even force a smile. She met their curious and concerned gazes.

“Viscount Sackley knows about Lady Ivy. He says that he’s going to have Theo, my publisher, arrested, and he’s holding the information over my head as well.

” She hesitated when they instantly expressed noises of alarm.

“Apparently, he has been keeping track of my whereabouts for months. He knows about Lady Amberley and the suffragist meetings, as well as what I do”—she hesitated for a moment before drawing in a deep breath—“at Lethe.”

“What do you do at Lethe?” Nève asked curiously at the same time that Effie let out a jubilant noise of victory.

“I knew it!” Effie crowed when everyone stared at her.

“I told Gage when we were in Scotland that you were much too familiar with that club after his boxing match. You knew those corridors like someone who had been there often. He told me to respect your secrets and that when the time came, you would share them. Is that time now?”

“Yes, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Briar said weakly.

She bit her lip and glanced at Vesper before swallowing.

“I approached Lushing a while ago about hiring women who had found themselves in compromising situations like Minthe. He was the only one I knew in our set who was in a position to give anyone a second chance and employment, so I made him a proposition. I might have forced him to comply, in hindsight.”

Vesper snorted, interjecting, “Forced him, my twitching eyeball. Of course he agreed because my brother has carried a bloody torch for you since the dawn of time. Haven’t you realized by now that he’ll do anything for you?”

“Not if the idea doesn’t have merit,” Briar said flushing, knowing this was the moment when everyone would expect her to say something scathing about the earl, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so.

She reached for her teacup and took a gulp of her lukewarm tea.

“He agreed to help in part. I said I would pay them out of my own income, which fortunately I had from my pin money and the profits from Lady Ivy. ”

“Wait, does Lushing know?” Nève asked, shoving a large bite of seedcake into her mouth. “About her?”

“He does.” Briar willed her rising blush away, but it seemed that she could hide nothing these days. Especially when it came to the earl. Her cheeks flooded and her friends—the queens of theatrics—pounced.

“What? Since when?” Laila shrieked.

Effie’s eyes rounded. “Why the blush? My God, has he read Lady Ivy?”

“How did he find out?” Vesper demanded.

Briar chose the easiest question to answer first, ignoring Effie’s because no explanation could properly suffice— yes and he made me come so hard by seducing me with a reenactment of my own salacious imagination that I was rendered temporarily insensible .

“I don’t know when, and I suspect he could have overheard one of us at some point.

” Briar waved an arm at their messy tea table.

“We are not exactly the quietest bunch. Also, I might have also let slip that I enjoy uplifting women with my stories during an argument, so he put two and two together. The man is ridiculously observant.”

She didn’t add the information about his other nickname, Poison Ivy , which wasn’t such a stretch from her nom de plume. That had probably been silly of her, but maybe somewhere deep down, Briar had intuitively wanted to use one of his silly pet names.

“Yes, he’s very vigilant,” Vesper said with a sly look. “Especially when he’s obsessed about something.”

“Or someone ,” Effie added, attempting to peer into her soul again.

Briar swallowed her snort. She wanted to scream that she knew …and that she was just as smitten. But she and Lushing hadn’t discussed making their true feelings public, despite their ongoing fake engagement. That revelation would have to wait.

“So, what happened with Sackley?” Nève asked, frowning. “Did he threaten you? You said he was holding the knowledge over your head as well. What has he done?”

“He came to the house and said he wanted to reinstate the engagement.”

“Tell me you didn’t take that louse back,” Vesper said. “I saw him criticizing poor Penelope last week about slouching, and she looked quite petrified.”

Wincing, Briar shook her head. “No, I did not. Because, well, there’s more.” She paused to collect herself. “I never told you any of this because I thought I could manage him. I was so focused on my goal that I didn’t see…what I should have.”

This was the part she didn’t want to talk about, but Briar also didn’t want to hide what the viscount had done, and clearly what he was doing to Penelope as well. This was how men held power over women…out of fear and not being held accountable for their words or actions.

Reaching for courage, Briar rubbed at her arms and then reached for one of the linen napkins on the table.

She dipped an edge into a pitcher of water and then rubbed it gently over the Crème Céleste facial paste she had applied on her chin to conceal the unsightly purple bruises in the shape of large fingerprints.

Tears sprung to her eyes at the collective sounds of outrage when she set the napkin back down.

“He dared !” Laila snarled .

Effie and Nève wore matching expressions of pure fury—they had both been the targets of cruel men in the past. “Oh, Briar, I’m so sorry,” Effie seethed, her pale face mottled red with rage. “I hate him!”

Nève was visibly shaking. “How many times has he done this?”

“Never on my face,” Briar said. Peeling down her glove, she turned sideways where bluish-purple shadows marred her skin there, too. “Usually here. He likes to pinch whenever he’s displeased.”

“I’m going to fucking eviscerate that sackless bastard,” Vesper growled. “We will murder him, and no one will ever know where to find the body. Who was that woman you told us about, Briar? The one with the arsenic?”

“Madeleine Smith,” she said, recalling when she’d jokingly told Effie that they could make the Duke of Vale disappear when she’d found out about the asinine wager he’d made to court her in London.

All had ended well, thankfully, with no murders.

Or time in prison for any of the Hellfire Kitties.

“You would have to get in line. Levi is furious. Lushing, too.”

“My brother will rip him limb from limb,” Vesper bit out.

“Levi says there is no proof to bring any charges against him, and before you get up in arms about the bruises, it would be my word against his in a court of law. No one has ever seen him doing anything who can corroborate my claims.” She let out a hollow laugh.

“It’s ironic, isn’t it? I help women escape men like him, and here I am, caught in the same trap. And I didn’t even realize it.”

“He needs to pay,” Effie hissed.

Briar nodded with a resigned shrug. “ Trust me, I had a hard enough time convincing Levi and Lushing not to do anything that could send either of them to Newgate. And Sackley is much too cunning to allow himself to be caught. For now, I simply must be careful…and make sure I’m not alone.”

“So, he can just hurt you and get away with it?” Vesper said through gritted teeth.

Briar understood her rage. She loathed the feeling of being so powerless…

especially in the eyes of the law. “You all know what we’re up against, what I’ve been fighting for years with Millicent and Katherine.

We don’t have a voice or the vote, or anything to protect ourselves from men like him.

” A choked sob caught in her throat, and her friends immediately crowded around her.

“I thought once we were married, his attention would be elsewhere, but he’s more fixated than I ever imagined. He wants to rehabilitate me.”

“What?” Laila whispered.

Ad If ads affect your reading experience, click here to remove ads on this page.