How I Met My Countess (2 page)

The voice ringing in her ear sounded suspiciously like that of Lady Geneva, the Duke of Hollindrake’s very proper and all-too-starched aunt, the one Sterling who had taken it upon herself as a personal endeavor to constantly chide her, correct her, write her scathing notes regarding reports of her conduct.

And don’t moon at him so …
, Lady Geneva would have added.

Something inside Lucy sparked, her infamous temper flaring to life. Perhaps it was just a bit too much chiding of late from her Sterling in-laws, or perhaps the duchess’s summons had her far more on edge than she cared to admit.

Or more likely, it was the sight of Justin Grey, the Earl of Clifton, standing before her, with his half-hearted condolences of “
a terrible tragedy.
” That was all he could say? Their deaths had taken away everything … everything she’d loved.

For she no longer counted him in that list.

She flicked a glance at him and did her best imitation of Lady Geneva. “I am so sorry you were inconvenienced. If I had but known where you were or how to contact you …”

Would have what? Written? Begged him to come help her?

Only to renew all the old heartbreaks from before? To rediscover the ugly truth when her pleas fell on deaf ears, to realize once and for all that she’d been naught to him?

“No, no, Miss Ellyson, it is I who should apologize,” he was saying. “I should have come sooner to make my regrets known.”

His regrets? Which ones? The ones about kissing her? The ones regarding his promise to return? Or was it just his regret over that night in his inn when they’d …

Lucy stopped herself right there. This was hardly the time or place, and she’d come to some sort of understanding over his place in her heart years ago—at least she thought she had until a few moments ago when he’d tumbled back into her life.

And here she’d been worried about him breaking a bone!

Thank goodness he hadn’t, for it left him hale enough to leave. And leave soon. For the growing panic on Thomas-William’s nearly apoplectic features said only too clearly that she should send the earl on his merry way. Yet there was still one piece of the puzzle that she had to know.

For she was her father’s daughter, and as he’d always said, “
Information is what keeps you alive
.”

Lucy pasted a smile on her lips and asked, “And what was it that brought you here to Brook Street, of all places?”

Of course there was always her father’s other favorite adage.

Know when to stop asking questions.

“I was looking for Lady Standon—” the earl began.

“Lady Standon?”

She’d have been less surprised if he’d professed his undying love for her—and had actually meant it this time.

Instead she shot a panicked glance over at Thomas-William, who was even now scanning the luggage as if deciding which pieces to grab if a hasty departure became necessary.

The earl nodded, his blue eyes fixed warily on the door behind her. “Yes, do you know her?”

“I-I-I-” Lucy looked helplessly down at Thomas-William.

But thankfully, the earl missed the point of her distress entirely. “My thoughts exactly. The lady just sent me packing with a flea in my ear.”

“She did?” Lucy replied warily, then rallied and tried to sound nonchalant. “I mean, whatever did you want with Lady Standon? She’s quite the terror …” Lucy shuddered, making a good show of it. “Or so I’ve been told.”

Thomas-William shook his head and got to work gathering up the hatboxes, tossing them back in the boot of the carriage.

Wonderful man, Thomas-William. He knew how much she loved those hats.

Clifton paused and studied her for a moment. After all, he’d been a student of her father’s as well, and thus he knew all the old adages too. “Some old business. Of no matter. Must be all a mistake anyway, though quite unlike Strout to make such an error—”

“Strout?” she muttered faintly. Oh, heavens, she hoped Thomas-William could manage the smaller blue trunk. Her best gown was in it.

“Yes, Mr. Strout,” he repeated. “But of course you’d know him. How foolish of me. He did business for your father, didn’t he?”

She could only nod.

“Well, I can’t see Malcolm having any association with that harridan. Not that I can imagine how he’d ever have met her,” he said with a nod toward the door.

“Malcolm?” she echoed. Dear God, she was starting to sound like a parrot. What she needed to do was change the subject and do so quickly.

“Yes, you did hear about him, didn’t you?” the earl managed. The pain in his voice tangled around her heart, so much so that she nearly reached out for him, like she might have done once before.

Instead, she folded her hands together in front of her and uttered polite, simple words. “I did. I was most sorry to learn of his … his …” Of his what? Death? She couldn’t say that, for it was hardly the truth. Murder, really. Shot as a smuggler on a beach near Hastings.

When Malcolm had been no such thing, had been so much more.

Just like his brother …

She stammered over how to finish, and finally rushed to say, “I would have written, but I didn’t know where to send—”

“Yes, well, I understand,” he said in a formal, tight voice that cut through her yet again.

Oh, heavens, Malcolm’s death must have ripped him in half, as it had …

The situation grew from bad to worse, for a terrible awkwardness sprang up between them, and they both looked left and right and not at each other.

Then Clapp, dear old fretful Clapp, came to her unlikely rescue. “Lucy, is this the place?” she called out from the carriage window. “Or must I stay out in this draft all day? You know this wind is likely to have terrible consequences.”

So is standing about mooning over the Earl of Clifton,
Lucy wanted to add. Instead, she said, “Please, Mrs. Clapp, stay where you are. I’ll have this matter sorted out forthwith.” She shot an apologetic look at the man before her.

Her
Gilby.

The Earl of Clifton,
she corrected herself. Never again her dearest Gilby. Hadn’t she given up on that foolish dream years ago? Hardly thought of him at all.

Well, not if once a day wasn’t often.

“I’m afraid I must—”

“Yes, yes, you must see to your employer,” he said, taking a glance back at the carriage and coming to all the wrong conclusions. Of course he thought her poor, and thought that now that she had no one left, she must make do in the world on her own.

Goosie, men like him never look at girls like you. Not in the way you fancy,
her father’s warning echoed up from the past.

The earl smiled politely at her. “I am heartened to see you well placed, Miss Ellyson.”

Not Lucy. Not his Goosie. But Miss Ellyson.

She planted her feet firmly on the steps to keep her boot from connecting with his shin.

“If you ever have need of anything, you or Thomas-William,” he continued, “please do not hesitate to contact me. I owe a great debt to your father.”

Not to her. To her father. Lucy pressed her lips together, the old hurt threatening to do something worse than causing a scene by booting him off the steps like a vagrant.

No, definitely worse than that. Like making a regular watering pot out of her. Right here on Brook Street. In front of a good part of Mayfair.

With that, he took her hand and shook it quickly. Then, just as hastily, he let it go, before tipping his hat slightly to Thomas-William and crossing the street to where a lad stood holding the reins of a great black horse.

As he strode away, in that commanding pace of his, Lucy tried to breathe. Tried to still her racing heart.

Call him back, Lucy. Tell him the truth. Set him straight. Tell him who you are. A widow. A marchioness, even. A real lady, worthy of being his …

And then what? Watch him take everything else she loved away? Have him rip into pieces what was left of her heart? Besides, the nobleman who had just turned his back to her was more a stranger than the man she’d once known.

Her hero. Her Gilby.

Bah! He was, as her father had always said,
one of them
.

The earl tossed a coin to the boy, got up on his horse in one smooth motion and rode down the street without taking a single glance back at her. Which was good, because before he was even halfway down the block, the door to her carriage opened up and a small figure tumbled out.

“Lucy, who was that?” the six-year-old lad asked, as he made his way to her side and took her hand in his small one.

Her other scandal. Her beloved little Mickey.

She squeezed his fingers. “An old friend.”

“Is he a toff?” the boy asked.

“Mickey, you know how I feel about using such language! You sound like a coachman.”

The boy set his jaws together, for she knew he thought growing up to be a coachman a far better thing than being a gentleman. “Well, is he?”

“Yes,” she replied, trying to keep the sigh out of her voice.

“A lofty one?”

“Yes, an earl. Actually he’s a hero, Mickey. He helped Wellington in Spain.”

“One of Papa Ellyson’s gentlemen?” Mickey asked, glancing back at the departing man with awe.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, he was.”

“And he was your friend?” he asked, not quite believing her.

“Yes.”

“Is he still a friend?” Mickey sounded hopeful, for he was forever pestering the Duke of Hollindrake for stories of Spain, and now, perhaps, here was another man to regale him with tales of outwitting Napoleon and battles hard fought.

“I fear not,” she told him.

“Too bad,” the boy said, kicking at a loose stone on the cobbles. “That’s a fine piece of cattle he’s riding. And I rather liked the cut of his jib.”

She didn’t correct his speech this time; instead she smiled down at his dark, fathomless eyes before she stole one last glance at Lord Clifton as he turned the corner and was lost from her sight.

For she rather liked the cut of his jib as well.

Though she hadn’t thought much of him the first time she’d met him. Quite honestly, she hadn’t liked him a bit.

Arrogant and proud and too lofty for his own good.

How Lucy wished she could still claim that sentiment, for it would be far easier to reconcile herself to that vision of him than to the truth—for it held all the pain threatening to break her heart all over again.

Hampstead, seven years earlier

Where the devil did it go?” George Ellyson complained as he made his way around his “map room,” as he liked to call his large, well-lit study.

The room took up half of the third floor of his house, with skylights overhead that flooded the room with illumination despite the cloudy day and the rain pattering against the panes. In the corner, a Franklin stove warmed the entire space, giving it a cozy, comfortable air.

But this sanctuary under the eaves, which seemed more suited for a quiet scholar or a gentleman scientist, was Mr. Ellyson’s domain, and right now he paced about it like a lion with a thorn in his paw, thumping his cane down with each step to have yet another way, one suspected, to emphasize his ill humor over his lost map.

Justin Grey, the Earl of Clifton, glanced over at his half brother, Malcolm, and shrugged.

This is England’s mastermind of intelligence?

Master of a grand mess
, he could almost hear Malcolm thinking.

The two men did not have the same mother, but they shared their father’s determined spirit and a resolute temperament—qualities that now saw them venturing across the Channel to the Continent to conduct, as their illustrious taskmaster, Mr. Pymm, liked to call it, “England’s other business.”

But first, they had to pass muster with the man before them.

Thump. Thump. Thump
. Mr. Ellyson and his cane progressed down the long wall of cubbyholes, where he kept a vast collection of rolled-up maps of all sorts. City maps, coach routes, old parchments that revealed faint, shadowy lines, paths only sheepherders might recognize, but for a man trying to slip past Napoleon’s guards and troops in the Pyrenees such knowledge could prove invaluable, life-saving even.

“Perhaps if—” Malcolm began, but he was cut off with a wave of the cane and an expletive that would have turned a sailor’s ears blue.

“Let me think,” the man blustered. “Where the devil did that gel put my map?” This was followed by a litany of cursing that had both the earl and his brother cringing.

Words that could curl a man’s ears, let alone send the “gel” who’d lost this map running for the timbers.

Clifton pitied the chit when she showed up. But then again, if she was a servant in this house, she was most likely used to Mr. Ellyson’s harangues.

So he and Malcolm continued to learn several new turns of phrase as they stood at attention, for they hadn’t been invited to sit.

Perhaps, Clifton mused, this lesson in profanity was also part of their initiation into ser vice. A rite of passage every gentleman endured with Mr. Ellyson, if only to gain the privilege to serve their country.

“I’ll send her packing,” Ellyson railed, shaking a finger at both of them as if they might have some share in this missing map. “I will.”

“Sir, if I may—” Clifton asked, stepping forward, his hand reaching out.

“Don’t!” Ellyson snapped, the cane flying up and at the ready. “Don’t touch the maps.”

Clifton backed up and retook his place next to a grinning Malcolm. Growing up, it had usually been Malcolm about to be caned, not Clifton.

So no doubt his brother was enjoying the rare sight of the lofty Earl of Clifton being chastened like an errant lad.

Never in his comfortable life had the earl ever been as disconcerted as he had been over the last hour. From the moment the large, imposing Negro servant, the infamous Thomas-William, had opened the door of Mr. Ellyson’s residence, staring down at the pair of them on the front steps as if he hadn’t known whether to let them in or carve them into pieces, a cloud of doubt had encompassed Clifton’s spirit. The good twenty minutes they’d spent left to wait on the steps outside in the rain like a pair of bill collectors hadn’t done much for his temper either. As if
he
had to be deemed worthy enough to be shown into this madman’s lair.

He was the Earl of Clifton, demmit, and that should be enough.

Even now, as their coats dripped on the carpet and they waited for Mr. Ellyson to find his map, a blistering argument from downstairs between two of the servants drifted up to their ears.

At least Clifton hoped the discord downstairs was between servants, for he’d never heard a lady raise her voice thusly—a harangue that nearly outdid Ellyson’s own tirade over the state of his papers.

“Demmed gel, I’ll have her hide if she’s been sorting them again,” Ellyson muttered as he thumped his way across the room to the door, yanking it open. “Organizing females, gentlemen, are the bane of a man’s life,” he warned before he turned and shouted out the open door, “Lucy! Lucy-girl, get up here. Now!”

The last word was punctuated with a loud
thump
.

Ellyson turned to his guests and glanced at them, blinking owlishly through his spectacles. Then, as if finally taking note of them, he did his best to sound congenial. “Going to Portugal, are you?”

“Yes, sir,” Clifton replied. Not to sea, as most of the Greys had done before him, not even to command troops, as a few of his more “reckless” forbears had done. No, he had chosen to break with the family’s noble tradition of valiant (meaning obvious and highly visible) ser vice to the King and England by skulking off to serve as a spy.

He could imagine the graveyard at Clifton House was full of skeletons rolling over in protest at such a plebeian choice. A Grey prowling about like a commoner? Taking part in underhanded and unscrupulous acts? Why, it wasn’t to be borne!

And yet here he was, not even sure himself why he’d come this far. Of what lay ahead …

Suddenly aware of the deep silence in the room, he glanced up and found Ellyson studying him. The earl hadn’t felt such an inspection since his first day at Eton … or that he was utterly failing, either.

He shifted slightly, trying to draw his shoulders in a tauter line, pull himself up to his full height.

This did not impress the man before him.

“Harrumph. Pymm must be out of his mind,” Ellyson muttered. “But who am I to argue with him?” The man went back to thumbing through his rolls of maps, muttering unintelligibly to himself.

Clifton cringed. For this was George Ellyson.
The
George Ellyson. The man reputed to have been England’s greatest agent of the last century, until he’d been shot in the leg in Paris. A man of dubious origins and even more questionable honor, but nonetheless, he was regarded in some circles as the most brilliant mastermind who’d ever lived.

And now he served his country by ensuring that the agents who went out into the field were ready. It had been no easy measure to get this far, Clifton knew, but without Ellyson’s final approval, he and Malcolm wouldn’t be given leave to venture a single foot off British soil.

“I assure you, sir,” Malcolm offered, “we have the will and the nerve.”

Ellyson paused all his anxious pacing and wandering movements. He stilled and turned slowly, casting his sharp, narrowed gaze toward Malcolm. “Do you?”

Clifton’s brother shifted, ever so slightly. “Certainly.”

“Ever killed a man?”

Malcolm shook his head. “Of course not.”

Ellyson glanced at them both, the chill of his eyes sending a shiver down the earl’s spine. “Can you?”

It was a question that took Clifton aback, for he hadn’t considered such a notion.
Can I kill a man?

When neither of them answered—for truly, how did one answer such a thing?—Ellyson went back to his pacing. “Bah! Running back and forth to the coast is child’s play. My daughter Mariana has done as much. You’re off to Portugal, you fools, not Hastings. Nerve, indeed!” Ellyson glanced at the door. “Demmit, where is that gel? Lucy!” he shouted just as the door opened and a young lady entered.

While the Earl of Clifton had been expecting a scullery maid or even a housekeeper to respond to Mr. Ellyson’s shouted orders, the minx who arrived in the man’s study was as much a contradiction to his expectations as George Ellyson was.

Her glorious black hair sat piled up atop her head, the pins barely holding it there, the strands shimmering with raven lights and rich, deep hues. It was a color that made one think of the most expensive courtesans, of Italian paintings and exotic bordellos.

Yet the illusion ended quickly, for beneath her shining crown of hair, the miss wore a plain muslin gown, over which she’d tossed a faded and patched sweater. There were mitts on her hands, for the rest of the house was cold, and from beneath the less-than-tidy hem of her gown, a pair of very serviceable boots stuck out.

This was all topped off by a large splotch of soot decorating her nose and chin.

She took barely a glance at Clifton or his brother before her hands fisted to her hips. “Whatever are you doing shouting like that? I’m not deaf, but I fear I will be if you insist on bellowing so.”

Crossing the room, she swatted Ellyson’s hand off the map he was in the process of unrolling. Plucking off her mitts and swiping her hand over her skirts—as if that would do the task and clean them—she caught up the map and reshelved it. “I doubt you need Paris as yet.”

There was a presumptuous note of disdain in her voice, as if she, like Ellyson himself, had shelved their guests with the same disparagement that she had just given the errant map.

And in confirmation, when she cast a glance over her shoulder and took stock of them, it was with a gaze that was both calculating and dismissive all at once. “Why not begin with ensuring that they know how to get to the coast,” she replied, no small measure of sarcasm dripping from her words.

Ellyson barked a short laugh, if one could call it a laugh. But her sharp words amused the man. “Easy girl, they’ve Pymm’s blessing. We’re to train them up.”

“Harrumph,” she muttered, putting one more stamp of disapproval on the notion.

Clifton straightened. It was one thing to be dismissed by a man of Ellyson’s stature, but by a mere servant? Well, it wasn’t to be borne. He opened his mouth to protest, but Malcolm nudged him.

Don’t wade into this one, little brother
, his dark eyes implored.

“I need to start with Lisbon,” Ellyson said, “but demmed if I can find it.”

“Here,” she said, easily locating the map from the collection. “Anything else?” Her chapped hands were back on her hips, and she shot another glance over her shoulder at Clifton, her bright green eyes suddenly filled with amusement.

Until, that is, her gaze fell to the puddles of water at his feet and the trail of mud from his boots.

Then she looked up at him with a thunderous glare that said,
You’d best not expect me to clean that up
.

Clifton could only gape at this bossy termagant of a chit. He’d never met such a woman.

Well, not outside of a public house.

Still, he couldn’t stop watching her, for there was a spark to this Lucy that dared to settle inside his chest.

She was, with that hair and flashing eyes, a pretty sort of thing, in an odd way. But she held herself so that a man would have to possess a devilish bit of nerve to tell her so.

Then she shocked him; at least, he thought it was the most shocking thing he’d ever heard.

“Papa, I haven’t all day, and I’ve a roast to see to, as well as the pudding to mix.”

Papa?
Clifton’s mouth fell open. This bossy chit was Ellyson’s daughter?

No, in the world of the Ellysons, Clifton quickly discovered, such a notion wasn’t shocking in the least.

Not when weighed against what her father said in reply. “Yes, yes. Of course. But before you see to dinner, I have it in mind for you to become Lord Clifton’s new mistress. What say you, Goosie?” he asked his daughter as casually as one might inquire if the pudding was going to include extra plums. “How would you like to fall in love with an earl?”

Lucy glanced over her shoulder and looked at the man standing beside the door. Very quickly, she pressed her lips together to keep from bursting out with laughter at the sight of the complete and utter shock dressing the poor earl’s features. He had to be the earl, for the other man hadn’t the look of a man possessing a title and fortune.

Oh, heavens! He thinks Papa is serious. And in a panic over how to refuse him.

Not that a very feminine part of her felt a large stab of pique.

Well, you could do worse
, she’d have told him, if the other man in the room, the one by the window— the earl’s brother, from the looks of him—hadn’t said, “Good God, Gilby! Close your mouth. You look like a mackerel.” The fellow then doubled over with laughter. “ ’Sides, I doubt Ellyson is serious.”

Lucy didn’t reply, nor did her father, but that was to be expected, for Papa was already onto the next step of his plans for the earl and his natural brother and therefore saw no polite need to reply.

“Sir, I can hardly … I mean as a gentleman … ” the earl began.

Lucy turned toward him, one brow cocked and her hands back on her hips. It was the stance she took when the butcher tried to sell her less-than-fresh mutton.

The butcher was a devilish cheat, so it made ruffling this gentleman’s fine and honorable notions akin to child’s play.

Clifton swallowed and took a step back, which brought him right up against the wall.

Literally and figuratively.

“What I mean to say, is that while Miss Ellyson is … is … that is to say, I am …” He closed his eyes and shuddered.

Actually shuddered.

Well, a lady could only take so much.

Lucy sauntered past him, flicked a piece of lint off the shoulder of his otherwise meticulous jacket and tossed a smile up at him. “Don’t worry,
Gilby
,” she purred, using the familiar name his brother had used. “You don’t have to bed me.” She took another long glance at him, from his dark hair, the chiseled set of his aristocratic jaw, the breadth of his shoulders, the long lines of his legs, to his perfectly polished boots—everything that was wealthy, noble and elegant—then continued toward her father’s desk, tossing one more glance over her shoulders. “For truly, you aren’t my type.”

Which was quite true. Well, there was no arguing that the Earl of Clifton was one of the most handsome men who’d ever walked into her father’s house seeking his training to take on secretive “work” for the King, but Lucy also found his lofty stance and rigid features troubling.