Ethan: Lord of Scandals (22 page)

“We can do that,” Alice said, her gaze glancing off Ethan’s.

“And we can feed our guests,” Ethan said, “if you’ll stop slicing that entire wheel of cheese, Nicholas, and put that knife to use on the beef roast.”

“I’ve put on a pot of tea,” Alice said, “but I’m thinking you gentleman might want something stronger.”

Nick beamed his approval. “Excellent thought, lamby-pie. My tender parts were in the saddle too long, and I am in need of something medicinal.”

“You are in need of a spanking,” Alice said, “as usual. Ethan, if you will fetch some brandy, I will find us some plates.”

Lord Fairly and Nick exchanged bemused smiles as Ethan meekly left to do his governess’s bidding.

***

Ethan hadn’t meant to bother Alice, but the silky curve of her bottom snuggled against his groin bore predictable results. He was half-asleep when he realized he was already shifting his hips lazily against her, seeking entrance, seeking the comfort and joy of intimate union with her. He gathered Alice in his arms and adjusted the angle of her hips, nuzzling her sex with his cock even as he buried his lips against her neck.

It was relaxing in a way he hadn’t experienced before, to join like this, letting arousal seep into all the tired and worried parts of him. He tried to find the same pleasure for Alice, stroking her back and arm and shoulders and hips with his hand, keeping his rhythm lazy and peaceful. After long, sweet minutes of that, she put his hand on her breast and began to shift with him.

“Easy,” Ethan whispered. “Let it steal up on you, like sleep.” Her grip on his hand loosened, her hips became less urgent, and she brought his hand to her mouth to kiss his palm. A few minutes later, Ethan felt her sex drawing on him in long, intensely pleasurable pulls. When he was sure she’d had her satisfaction of him, he let himself go in a similarly gratifying yet oddly peaceful orgasm.

He lay with her in his arms, gratitude nearly making him weep. Alice tucked his hand around her breast and squeezed his fingers gently.
Hold
me.

He’d like nothing better, for the rest of his life. He untangled his fingers from hers and patted her behind gently.

“I’ll be right back.”

As he tended to their ablutions, Ethan considered what lay between him and taking Alice as his wife. It was true he was illegitimate, but he was also the son of an earl, and wealthy. The stigma of his bastardy hardly seemed to matter, at least to those whose opinion mattered to him.

It was also true, though, Alice didn’t entirely trust him. He’d offered to listen to whatever scandal haunted her past, and she had declined to tell him. Scandals that sent a woman hundreds of miles from home, drove her from her only sister, and made her seek obscurity for the rest of her days were serious business. Ethan sensed without being told Alice would not marry anybody without confiding the details of her past. She would be honest both to assure herself her prospective spouse could weather the consequences, but also to give that man the last chance to betray her trust.

Ethan would not betray her trust. She could have ten children out of wedlock or have attempted to assassinate Wellington, and he would not betray her trust. Barbara had betrayed his trust as intimately and permanently as a wife could, and still, Ethan had understood, eventually, what she’d done and why.

He was already back in bed, arms around his prize, when he realized, in the twilight between sleeping and waking, the greatest barrier between him and a future with Alice was his trust of her.

Before he proposed in earnest—again in earnest—he’d have to tell her exactly what went on with Hart Collins all those years ago. Heathgate’s lectures to the contrary, reality to the contrary, Ethan still felt in his weaker moments responsible for what had happened to him and shamed by it. He should have been more careful; he should have never antagonized such a petty bully; he should have fought all six of them off.

He should have killed himself rather than live with the shame of surviving.

Old, hopeless thoughts, but they were losing their power over him. He breathed in lemon verbena and hope, and let sleep claim him.

***

At breakfast, Fairly had confirmed a diagnosis consistent with a version of glandular fever, and prescribed unlimited rest and comfort nursing. Jeremiah had towed Alice out to the stables to tell the ponies this good news, leaving Ethan to regard his brother.

The brother whom he had never been so glad to see as he had the previous night.

“Come with me, Nicholas. There are some things I want to show you, and I think I left them in the corner parlor.”

Still munching on a piece of buttered toast, Nick ambled along at Ethan’s side. “When are you going to marry Alice?”

“When she’ll have me,” Ethan said. “One doesn’t want a woman to get notions about repairing to the North because her employer can’t stop proposing to her.”

“Have you tried proposing to her? I don’t think many have.”

“Have you?” The question was out of Ethan’s mouth before he could stop it, and he really did not want to know the answer.

“I have not. She’s far too managing for me, meaning no disrespect to my countess, who had to sneak up on me from behind, so to speak. I would not have married Leah, either, had I been of sound mind.”

“Let’s be grateful she did sneak up on you.” Ethan opened the door, went to the middle of a small parlor finished in green décor and slightly musty with disuse, and swung his gaze in a circle. “I want you to have these.” He collected the miniatures from a quarter shelf and held them out to Nick, but Nick’s attention was riveted on the portrait hanging over the fireplace.

Nick cocked his head to study the portrait. “Is this your late wife? She was very attractive, but I have to admit she looks more than passingly familiar.”

Seeing the shrewd light of curiosity in Nick’s eyes, the strength of the intelligence with which he studied Barbara’s portrait, Ethan felt despair flooding all the relief and pleasure the day—the season, his life—had held.

How
could
he
have
been
so
stupid?
He’d kept that portrait for his sons, and to remind himself of his own folly, but he’d come haring up here, intent only on giving Nick some symbol of his unconditional welcome into Ethan’s family.

And one brief moment of thoughtlessness was going to cost him most of what mattered to him—Nick, their siblings at Belle Maison, and possibly the son who even now battled to overcome a frightening illness.

How could he have been so damnably, utterly, unforgivably stupid?

“She has the look of the boys about her.” Nick went on peering at Barbara’s image, ignorant of Ethan’s world crashing to pieces. “I’m sure I was introduced to her, wasn’t I? Did she mention it?”

Ethan could say nothing, could do nothing save stand there with two little portraits clutched in his hands.

“Ethan?” Nick took a step toward him. “Are you all right?”

Ethan shook his head, his eyes on the portrait of his late wife. He’d paid well for it, and it was a good likeness, the lady’s gaze conveying a kind of brittle, mocking gaiety. At one side of the portrait a blond man stood, his back to the viewer, only a portion of his head and shoulder visible. The lady smiled at him, but also at the viewer, and the overall impression was one of irony, despite the subject’s compelling blond beauty.

The design had been Barbara’s. When Ethan had seen the completed image, he’d wanted to burn it on the spot.

“I assume that fellow on the left is you?” Nick asked, frowning.

Ethan considered lying then considered that Nick would figure out the lie sooner or later.

“It isn’t me,” Ethan said on a heavy sigh. He returned the miniatures to the quarter shelves, feeling moments trickle by like the sands in a glass.

Nick crossed the room to stand behind Ethan. “What aren’t you telling me?” He sounded wary and puzzled, not yet furious. He would be furious and likely stay that way.

Ethan would not turn and face him. “You don’t want to know, Nick.”

Behind him, Ethan felt Nick pull himself up to his full height. “I do want to know. Tell me, Ethan. What fellow is the lady regarding with such mocking irony?”

Ethan put his hand out and steadied himself on the wall, feeling winded or aggrieved and barely able to keep to his feet.

“She’s looking at you, Nick,” Ethan said, turning to behold the portrait. “My wife is looking at her lover, and that man is you.”

Nick backed away, expression horrified. “I did not dally with your wife, Ethan. I would have known… I didn’t…” He scrubbed a hand over his face, and Ethan watched as Nick’s nimble mind started sorting and comparing, recalling and rejecting.

Ethan could at least spare his brother the uncertainty.

“You didn’t even know I had a wife until this spring,” Ethan said. “You didn’t know I had sons or a wife.”

“But she was your
wife
,” Nick protested. “I have not slept with females named Grey. I haven’t, Ethan. I wouldn’t.”

“And how would you know what a woman’s last name was, Nick?” While Nick looked to be reeling with shock, all Ethan could muster was sadness. He dropped onto the couch, feeling as tired as Joshua had been acting. “You take their word for who they are, you take their bodies for what they want to share with you, or you did until you married.”

“Christ…” Nick eyed the portrait with what looked like loathing. “I slept with your wife. You’re sure?”

“She told you her name was Barbara Fitzherbert, thinking it a great jest to poke fun at Prinny’s old amour,” Ethan said. “She was angry at me, Nick, angry at her life. She’d had my child, and I remained unwilling to squire her about in society or admit her back to my bed. When I departed for business in Copenhagen, she went prowling, with revenge on her mind.”

Nick eyed Ethan with the same expression he’d turned on the portrait. “I cannot believe you haven’t killed me or at the least called me out. How long have you known about this?”

“Oh, let’s see.” Ethan closed his eyes, the better to toss all hope, all caution, and all sense to the wind. “Joshua is going on six, so nearly seven years.”

Nick’s eyes narrowed. “What has my nephew to do with this?”

Ethan said nothing, feeling pity for his brother, for himself, and even for the departed Barbara.

“Ethan…” Nick began to pace, a big, caged animal in the grip of more emotion than even his grand body could hold. “Please tell me I did not plant a cuckoo in your nest… I could not live… Ethan?”

Ethan could not give his brother those words.

Nick turned toward the door, and rather than let his brother bolt out of his life, Ethan was on his feet in an instant.

“Don’t leave.” Ethan was at the door, blocking Nick’s exit bodily. “It’s as much my fault as anyone’s, Nick.” It being Barbara’s scheming—not the child it had produced. Never Joshua.

“It can’t be your fault, damn it.” Nick backed away, looking like he wanted to destroy something, someone, anything. “How can you stand to look at me? I swived your wife, got her pregnant, and you’re my brother, Ethan.”

Ethan advanced on him, glad they were in a closed room where they were free to shout and worse. “That is the first sensible thing you’ve said: you’re my brother. So sit your bony arse down and listen to me.”

Nick closed his eyes, his big hands fisting. Ethan knew him and knew what he was thinking:
I’ve betrayed the one person I never wanted to hurt, and we are supposed to solve it with
talk?

Ethan shoved him down into a chair, taking the decision from him.

“Barbara was a kind of predator,” Ethan said, keeping his voice even with effort. “She spied me, staked out with new wealth and no masculine confidence, and trained her crosshairs on me. Lady Warne nudged me to take her on as a mistress, and at first, I could not believe my good fortune. She was skilled.”

Nick winced, nodded, and kept his silence.

“Too skilled,” Ethan went on. “Even I could discern in a short time Barbara was tolerating my attentions, even as she pretended to encourage them. I began to see her less and less, but she’d made her plans for me, and I was as doomed as you were.”

“I had choices, Ethan,” Nick protested softly. “I always had choices.”

“So did I,” Ethan shot back. “Barbara conceived Jeremiah with all the forethought and planning in the world. She knew I would not
choose
to allow my son to be born a bastard, and she knew I’d capitulate to whatever she demanded to make it so. We married, and she immediately began taking other lovers, though she was at least amenable to discretion.”

“Ethan, you don’t have to tell me this.”

“Yes, I do, so you will not blame yourself unnecessarily, Nick. You were stalked like prey, and I did not see it coming and did nothing to warn you. She went after me the same way and was still coming after me when she dragged you into her machinations.”

“I had a choice,” Nick repeated numbly.

“Nicholas!” Ethan glared at him, the urge to slap sense into the man nigh overwhelming. “Will you listen to me? When Barbara took up with her lovers, I warned her that our marriage was over. I would not escort her in public. I would not grant her marital favors. I traveled as much as I could. The more she begged and bargained and promised, the more excuses I found to leave her to her own devices. She told me she’d met you, and as much as threatened to have an affair with you. I didn’t think even she would go that far, but she delighted—
delighted
—in announcing she had conceived your child. She said it was a belated Christmas present.”

Nick stared at his hands in misery. “You’re sure? Sure Joshua is my son?”

“I made sure there was at least a scintilla of doubt, and realized that I’d been a fool. Had I continued paying my wife even the casual attention of a normal husband, she likely would not have strayed, or at least not as wildly.”

“I am going to be sick,” Nick said on a sigh. “You’re right. She was Barbara Fitzherbert to me. There weren’t many people in Town, because it was the winter holidays, and she’d been cast into my path for the month or so before. She was pretty, charming, available, and amenable. I still recall some relief when she told me she was leaving for the country after Twelfth Night. She watched me… It wasn’t a hungry gaze, but it made me uncomfortable.”

“I saw you on the first day of the New Year,” Ethan said. “Barbara’s mood had shifted, from wronged and bitter to gleeful, as if she had a wonderful secret. I decided to follow her, and she met you in the park.”

Nick nodded, though clearly details yet eluded his memory.

“Ethan, I am sorry. For whatever it’s worth, I am so bloody sorry I could shoot myself.”

Fortunately, he sounded as if the threat were rhetorical.

“I am sorry too, Nick.” To say that felt astoundingly good. “I should have told you I was getting married, should have told you when Jeremiah was born. I should have told you the truth of my marriage. I should not have let it become one more thing separating me from you and from my family.”

“Don’t be so bloody noble,” Nick said bitterly. “I was a stupid, heedless billy goat, and my weakness was used to hurt you. I hate that, and now we have a child conceived in the midst of this deceit and stupidity, and I don’t know how you can stand the sight of him, much less me.”

The answer to that was so simple Ethan should have seen it years ago. “Even if he’s your son, I had no choice but to love him.”

“My son.” Nick turned away, his voice dripping with self-loathing. “God help me, I will have to tell Leah this. Short of that, I will honor your wishes, provided no harm comes to Joshua.”

As an earl, Nick had influence that far exceeded Ethan’s, and maybe this was why the truth had remained Ethan’s secret for so long. That Nick would not wield his power unfairly came as a relief and brought with it a burden of compassion. “If you were his father, Nicholas, what would you wish for Joshua now?”

“Love him,” Nick said, voice breaking. “Love him like he was your own, because as far as I’m concerned, he is your own. He’s such a busy little man, all smiles and energy and galloping everywhere… Jesus.”

He dropped onto the sofa like a stone, looking bewildered and uncertain for all his size and muscle. “Can’t you at least call me out?”

Ethan knew the exact contour of his brother’s sorrow: for the little boy created so carelessly, for the brother betrayed, for the stupid young man who might have sired a child without thought, and for the father who hadn’t known his own son.

And Ethan could not allow Nicholas to hold that sorrow too closely. “We’ll manage. I didn’t want this to hurt you, too.”

“How could it not?” Nick pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “You can’t tell him, Ethan. I won’t have the child suffer what you went through because I couldn’t keep my damned pants on.”

Ethan sat beside his brother. Any closer than that, and Nick would likely have tossed him through the window. “You and I are the only people who know the shadow on Joshua’s paternity. Alice knows I may not be his father, but she will take that knowledge to her grave.”

“You never told anyone?” Nick rose and went to stare out the window. “No one at all? Not in a bitter, drunken moment, not when you wanted to fling it in Papa’s face, not when a sympathetic mistress tried to pry it out of you?”

“I’ve had no mistress since I married,” Ethan said. “The whole business was too much bother, and it would have made me a little too much like my wife.”

“Like me, you mean. You’ve been a damned monk, just as I suspected.”

“Not a monk, Nick.” Ethan sighed, sensing they were going to plow through more rough ground. “I had experiences at Stoneham— one experience, really—that rendered me all but indifferent to the pursuits you found so enjoyable before your marriage.”

Nick’s gaze shifted from the grounds beyond the window to his brother.

“What sort of experience?”

“One Hart Collins, now Baron Collins,” Ethan said, and it was no relief, no relief at all to embark on this recounting—though neither did it engender the kind of choking shame it might have even a year ago.

“Collins rounded up his cronies, assaulted me in the stables my first week at school, and while they held me over a pickle barrel, raped me in the only manner one male can rape another. Heathgate came upon the situation while Collins was goading one of his minions to further violate me, and between us, we managed to break a number of bones.” Ethan fell silent for a thoughtful moment. “I understand the term ‘killing rage.’”

The words had come, Ethan marveled. They hadn’t been delicate words, but saying them, saying them to Nick, had left him lighter, not heavier, in his heart.

“You were…” Nick sucked in a breath. “Buggered. Raped.”

“Not a pretty word and not a pretty deed.” And thank a merciful God, Nick wasn’t scoffing at “school boy nonsense” or otherwise trying to diminish the vileness of the act. If he had, Ethan would have tossed
him
through the window. “It happened half a lifetime ago, Nick. I try not to dwell on it.”

“You never said.” Nick tone was accusing, quietly furious. “You never said a word, Ethan. You would not accept my letters. You would not see me. You shut me out, completely.”

“This is why. It’s hard to explain, Nick, what that kind of experience does to a young man. Ladies can be raped, and as gentlemen we protect them because they are vulnerable. A man does not conceive of himself being vulnerable in the same fashion. He just… does not conceive of it.”

“You were raped at the school our father sent you to. Surely, somebody told him?”

“I assume they did, and he did nothing. I can hope he didn’t know, but Heathgate’s parents got involved, and the other boys were quietly sent home to recover. I haven’t seen them since, nor have I wanted to.”

“Hart Collins is a dead man.”

Oh, Nicholas.
He sounded every bit as fierce as Joshua or Jeremiah, and yet Ethan could not indulge him.

“No. You cannot kill him out of guilt over what he did to me, Nick. And I will not take justice into my own hands. If I accused him publicly, he’d be tried in the Lords, and I am, after all, merely an earl’s by-blow. Then too, for all I know, the statute of limitations has run. If he keeps a wide berth from me, I’ll let it lie.”

The ire in Nick’s gaze did not diminish, and that was good to see, too. Misguided, but good to see. “That is not right, and you know it. You have been wronged—by me, but apparently by others as well—and Collins should at the least be gelded for what he did.”

“He should, for he left me all but gelded in spirit. It was part of the reason I was so willing to enjoy what Barbara offered.”