The Seduction of an Earl (2 page)

Chapter 3

An Earl Spies a Lady

At precisely ten o’clock on the very same morning, Henry Forster, Earl of Gisborn, peered out the carriage window at the grand Palladian mansion of the Marquess of Devonville. An odd excitement was building in his gut, one that made him wonder if he might be sick or if he was merely nervous. He had done this same reconnaissance mission the evening before, after making the journey from Kirdford in West Sussex to London in what might have been record time.

His sole purpose for the trip was to secure a bride. Which, considering how much he really didn’t want to get married, seemed suddenly ludicrous. But inheriting an earldom from a deceased uncle more than a year ago, and being nearly thirty years of age, apparently required one to have a wife and a nursery with an heir and a spare. Henry could only hope this could be done as quickly as possible (the marriage, of course – the heir and the spare would just have to come on their own time).

He intended to call on the marquess, and then, once he’d secured permission to court Lord Devonville’s daughter, he planned to request an audience with Lady Hannah Slater. But proprietary had prevented him from approaching the front door of Devonville House last evening. It was after seven o’clock, far too late in the day to be paying a call on a member of the
ton
.

Last evening’s trip proved somewhat successful, though, for when the coach pulled up to the carriageway in front of the stately home, Henry spied a rather large brown and white dog bounding about in the gardens next to the house.

At least, he was fairly certain it was a dog.

His initial guess was a short, overweight horse. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a bark and remembered Lady Charlotte’s description of the hairy beast.
Harold MacDuff,
she’d called him. Lady Hannah’s pet and constant companion. Lady Charlotte had assured Henry that if he was able to befriend the Alpenmastiff, he was sure to be more readily accepted by the dog’s mistress, Lady Hannah.

At second glance, Henry thought perhaps the dog was no larger than a collie or sheepdog. But when a vision in pale lavender appeared from behind the house and ran up to wrap her arms around the dog’s neck, the earl stared in disbelief. The beast had to be at least twelve stones! And then the girl began to laugh, the musical sound barely reaching his ears, as she angled her head to one side while the dog licked her neck.

He was sure she was a fairy.

Her pale blonde hair was braided and wrapped atop her head like a coronet, while ringlets danced around her delicate, rosy cheeks. Her eyes, closed as if she meant to protect them from her pet’s long tongue, were slightly upturned and surrounded by dark lashes. With her berry-colored lips shaped into a gleeful smile, her teeth shown white despite the deepening twilight. And then she was up and running away from the dog, giggling in delight as her long limbs were silhouetted in the fabric of her gown. She disappeared from view as quickly as she had appeared.

The beast finally lifted his massive body from the grassy lawn and lumbered after her, barking and jumping about, his tale wagging about behind him. A stick flew through the air and landed very near to where the two had just been sitting in the grass, the dog barking and bounding back to where it landed. Rather than retrieve the stick and take it to his mistress, however, the dog settled his heavy body back onto the lawn and began chewing on the large twig. “Harold,” he heard then, the word called out in a voice that made Henry wish his own name was Harold. “Time for your dinner, you hairy beast,” the girl called from somewhere out of sight. And then she reappeared, all proper and ladylike as she strolled toward the dog. She slapped her hand against the front of her gown and then turned back toward the house, disappearing once again.

Her brief appearance just then afforded Henry the best view of her. Almond-shaped eyes, rosebud lips, a pert nose.

Good God, the girl wasn’t a girl at all, but a gorgeous young woman!

Not gorgeous like the elegant painted courtesans who frequented the theatre in Drury Lane or the beautiful debutantes Henry noticed during the few soirées and musicales he’d attended two Seasons before. No, this woman truly looked like he imagined a fairy tale princess to look. Was
she
Lady Hannah?
Could I see myself married to her?
he wondered suddenly. That was the only reason he was here, after all. He needed a wife. She was not betrothed. And Lady Charlotte had assured him that Lady Hannah would be the perfect match for him and his situation.

His situation.

His mind wandered once more to the predicament he found himself in. Just a few days ago, the mail coach arrived at Gisborn Hall in Oxfordshire with a summons from Harold Bingham, the Earl of Ellsworth. Could Henry make the trip to Mayfair on an urgent matter regarding Ellsworth Park? The land, which included a beautiful but slightly shabby country mansion, bordered his own land in Oxfordshire, and it was Henry’s intention to purchase the property at a fair price and annex it to his own. He thought Lord Ellsworth’s summons meant the man was finally willing to sell him the property.

Unbeknownst to Henry at the time, it seemed Ellsworth was quite insistent his daughter, Lady Charlotte, be married to someone other than the second son who had recently inherited the Chichester dukedom. With most of the Wainswright family having perished in a fire last August, Joshua Wainwright was now the duke, and since Charlotte had been betrothed since her youth to the heir apparent and now deceased John Wainwright II, she was quite sure her betrothal now applied to Joshua.

Her father, however, was not about to have his only daughter married to a man who had been badly disfigured in the fire.
His Grace with half a face
, some in the
ton
called him. With her twenty-first birthday just a couple of weeks away, Ellsworth was determined to see his daughter settled.

To Henry Forster, Earl of Gisborn.

Henry thought Ellsworth’s summons rather timely. There being no evidence the Earl of Ellsworth planned to occupy the estate house at Ellsworth Park nor employ more than a few tenants to work the lands that extended south to the River Isis, Gisborn hoped to simply purchase the property. He had plans for the Gisborn lands – plans to employ more productive farm implements and to create a gated irrigation system using the nearby river as a water source. So he made the trip to London expecting to pay a fair amount for Ellsworth Park.

He was not expecting Lord Ellsworth to offer Ellsworth Park as a
dowry
.

But in Ellsworth’s apparent haste to marry off his daughter, he had already made arrangements with his solicitor to sign over the title of the unentailed property to Henry. Had the man no knowledge of Henry’s own betrothal to Joshua Wainwright’s sister? Jennifer Wainwright had died in the same fire that took the lives of John and the duke and duchess. Although Henry had met the girl, it had been years ago, when she was still in leading strings and he was barely twelve. He hadn’t seen her since and found it difficult to mourn a girl he couldn’t remember. At the same time, he found the circumstances uncomfortable at best.

According to Ellsworth, if Henry could wait a couple of weeks, Lady Charlotte would reach her majority and could marry without her parents’ permission. Or Lord Ellsworth assured Henry he could marry her by special license the very next day.

Henry left the Ellsworth townhouse with the title and the intention of calling on Lady Charlotte later that week. Given his infrequent visits to London, he had errands to run, a signet ring to order from a goldsmith in Bond Street (to replace the one his son had lost while using it as pirate treasure), a wedding ring to order from a jeweler in Ludgate Hill, a special license to obtain from the bishop at Doctor’s Commons, an appointment with his boot maker, an appointment with a tailor, and, perhaps the most important of all, he could take possession of his newly built coach at Tillbury’s.

And then, the unthinkable had happened. That very night, Lord Ellsworth had taken a nasty fall in his study, hitting his head on a massive mahogany desk as he did so. Since he had dismissed the servants for the evening, his poor wife and their daughter, Lady Charlotte, apparently found the man unconscious on their return from an evening out.

A Bow Street Runner had investigated the scene. Finding no evidence of foul play, the Runner ruled the fall an accident.

Only Lady Bingham and her daughter knew what truly happened that night. At least, they were the only ones who knew until Lady Charlotte explained it to him the day before, whilst Henry was at Wainwright’s home near Kirdford. Henry winced as he recalled the sight of the scar on Charlotte’s back, a long, ugly wound put there by the hand of her angered father. She had boldly refused his order to marry the Earl of Gisborn and been horse whipped for it. But her mother, appalled at her husband’s drunken behavior, had pushed him as he was about to raise the whip to strike his daughter a second time. In his unsteady state, the earl fell, his head hitting the desk and rendering him unconscious.

Harold Bingham now lay in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, Lady Ellsworth at his side. The heir to the Earl of Ellsworth’s estate, Nicholas Bingham, was said to be anxious to inherit the earldom if for no other reason than to secure more funds for his gambling habit. And there was the issue of his having drained Lady Charlotte’s ten-thousand pound dowry account. It seemed Nicholas intended for the empty escrow account to go unnoticed and unnecessary by arranging for her to be killed in an explosion.

Henry shuddered to think what would have happened if the Duke of Chichester’s home had been set afire again – it was still under reconstruction due to the fire that had disfigured the new duke and killed his family. Nicholas’ hired henchman had attempted to pull off that very scenario when he set dynamite to explode in a nearby tree. The oak tree, located just outside the bedchamber in which Lady Charlotte was staying, blew apart in the subsequent explosion. Charlotte could have been killed. And, upon the death of her father due to the head injury, her cousin would inherit the earldom and all of it assets, just as he planned.

The henchman had failed in his assassination attempt, though. And even though Henry held the title to Ellsworth Park, Lady Charlotte still intended to marry the Duke of Chichester.

Which left Henry without a bride.

If only Sarah would agree to marry him!

He sighed as he considered the only woman he had ever loved. The mother of his son. His bastard son. Although the ten-year-old was the light of life, his mother, Sarah, refused all his requests that she marry him. Over the years, she was quite insistent that Henry would one day need to marry a woman suited to the
ton
. A woman who would be accepted by the peerage because she was already a part of it. The daughter of an earl or a viscount or even a baron would suit just fine, Sarah thought.

The daughter of a marquess would be even better.

After a rather restless night spent at his rarely used townhouse in Bruton Street, he had decided that he rather liked the idea of being married to a beautiful fairy princess.

Which was why Henry sat in a town coach in Park Lane at ten o’clock in the morning, the driver waiting for space to clear in the drive in front of the house. He would have stepped out of his coach and made his way up the steps, but another town coach, a very new one in glossy black, sat in the semi-circular drive.

He watched as a beautiful, somewhat overweight woman descended the stairs and, with the hand of a groom supporting her, stepped into the marked coach. From her auburn hair and rounded front, Henry knew it wasn’t the woman he had watched in the park the night before. Which meant Lady Hannah was probably still in the house.

Once the town coach departed from Devonville House with its passenger, the driver of his coach set the horses in motion. Another minute, and the coach had come to a halt.

Yes
, Henry decided,
I could see myself married to Lady Hannah
.

Now he just had to convince her to marry him.

Henry pulled his thoughts back to the present. The driver was dismounting and about to open the door. The last thing Henry wanted was to be caught daydreaming about the woman he’d seen the night before. If she truly was Lady Hannah Slater, then Lady Charlotte had been almost remiss in not describing her with the more generous attributes the woman deserved. “This is the Marquess of Devonville’s residence, my lord,” the driver said, motioning to the grand house with the wide expanse of parkland to one side. Henry noted that the driver had pulled into the semi-circular carriageway. The equipage was parked at the base of the five stone steps leading up to the massive double doors framed by a portico and Grecian columns.

Nodding to the driver as he stepped down, Henry gave the man a coin and asked if he could wait. He silently chided himself for not yet having visited Tillbury’s to claim his newly built coach for the trip from his townhouse. Besides the added comfort of his new coach, the marked equipage would signal to the household staff that he was a member of the peerage. He’d considered riding in his late uncle’s ancient coach – the one he’d used to get to London from Oxfordshire – but the springs were long gone, and the condition of the exterior made for a poor first impression. The only other equipage the earldom owned was a curricle, but he’d left it behind on the off chance Sarah might require it for a trip to Bampton. She might not be his wife, but everyone in his earldom knew she was under his protection.

In lieu of a marked carriage, he made sure he had a calling card to hand to the butler.

Taking the risers with quick and efficient steps, Henry found one of the front doors opening even before he could pull the brass lion head knocker. “Is Lord Devonville in residence?” he wondered, handing the pasteboard to the butler.

The stout servant took only a quick glance at the card before nodding to Henry. “Indeed, my lord. If you’ll follow me, please, I’ll see you to the drawing room.” He took Henry’s hat and placed it rather fastidiously on a polished shelf before leading the earl down the ornately decorated hallway.

Henry had to resist the urge to answer; the butler’s welcome was spoken with more words than he heard from his own butler in a entire day.

If there was any question as to the financial status of the marquess, a quick look at the artifacts displayed on caryatids throughout the alcoves they passed would hint that he was quite flush. The thought of the dowry associated with Lady Hannah hadn’t even crossed his mind; he already held the title to Ellsworth Park free and clear, despite not having convinced Lady Charlotte to marry him.

The time he’d spent on the ride from Kirdford to London gave him time to reflect on the situation, though. Lady Charlotte and Joshua Wainwright, the new Duke of Chichester, were a perfect match for one another. He could only wish them well in life. Joshua had been most accommodating despite Henry’s poor treatment of the disfigured man when he’d first arrived at the recently rebuilt estate home. Any evidence of the fire that had left the new duke with burn scars had long been washed from the exterior stones of the west wing. From the whiffs of new cut lumber that made their way to the east wing of the house, it was evident the west wing interior was well on its way to being restored to its former glory.

The butler waved Henry into the drawing room and asked if he wished for refreshment. Henry considered for only a moment; with any luck, William Slater would offer an alcoholic beverage. He politely declined and made his way around the room, studying the paintings, listening to the faint strains of music coming from another part of the house, admiring the tasteful decor and the fashionably current furniture, including even a Grecian couch set in front of a window overlooking the side yard where he’d witnessed Lady Hannah and Harold MacDuff playing the night before.

The vision of Hannah’s head, thrown back in delight as the dog licked her neck, came unbidden to his mind. He found himself wondering if she would look like that when she was in ecstasy, her long, dark lashes resting on the tops of those beautiful cheekbones, her rosebud shaped lips parted slightly, her nipples ruched and ready for his mouth to plunder. His loins stirred at the thought.

Stunned at his body’s reaction to the thought of Lady Hannah in ecstasy, Henry had to resist the urge to look down at his breeches. Sarah was his first and only love. He couldn’t remember having such a reaction to any other woman, at least not since his days as a randy student at Oxford. Nor could he remember having daydreams about what a woman might look like in ecstasy!