One Good Earl Deserves a Lover (The Rules of Scoundrels 2)

Not at the altar.

Not marrying Castleton.

The door closed once more, leaving them in the cold, grey quiet, and he couldn’t stop himself. He reached out and pulled her to him, lifting her from the ground, holding her close enough to feel the heat of her through a half dozen layers of clothing, close enough to revel in her smell and her shape and the way she gave herself up to him whenever he touched her. And there, on the steps of St. George’s, in full view of God and London, he kissed her, loving her little sighs and the flexing of her fingers as she threaded them through his hair and forgot that the entire city could see them.

He broke the kiss before it consumed them both and pulled away, cupping her face in his hands. “I love you.” She sucked in a breath at the words, and he ran his thumb gently across the wicked bruise that encircled one of her enormous blue eyes. “My God,” he whispered, consumed by emotion, before he repeated, “I love you so much.”

She shook her head, tears welling. “You never said it.”

“I’m an idiot.”

“You are, rather.”

He gave a little laugh and kissed her again, softly, lingering on her lips, wishing they were anywhere but here, in about the most public place in Mayfair. “I never believed I was worthy,” he said, placing a finger over her lips when she started to speak—to correct him. “I never believed I was worthy of my family . . . of my sister . . . of happiness. And then you came along and made me realize that I am utterly, completely unworthy of you.”

She grabbed his finger, pulled it away. “You’re wrong.”

He smiled. “I’m not. There are a hundred men—many of whom are inside that church right now—who deserve you more. But I don’t care. I’m a greedy bastard, and I want you for myself. I can’t imagine a life without you and your unsettling logic and your beautiful mind and your terribly named hound.”

She smiled at that, and he could breathe again, thinking for a moment that he might win her. That he might succeed. The thought pushed him on. “And I don’t care that I’m unworthy of you. Which probably makes me the worst kind of man . . . precisely the kind of man whom you should not marry. But I vow here and now that I will do everything I can to make myself worthy of you. Of your honesty and your kindness and your love.”

He paused, and she did not speak . . . staring up at him, eyes enormous behind her spectacles.

His salvation. His hope. His love.

“I need you, Pippa . . .” he said, the words soft and ragged. “I need you to be my Orpheus. I need you to lead me out of Hell.”

The tears in her eyes spilled over then, and she threw herself into his embrace. He wrapped her tight in his arms and she whispered in his ear, “Don’t you see? I need you, as well. Two weeks, I’ve struggled under the weight of what you do to me . . . what you make me feel. How you own me, body and soul.” She pulled back, meeting his gaze. “I need you, Cross or Jasper or Harlow or whoever you are. I need you to love me.”

And he would. Forever.

He kissed her again, filling the caress with everything he felt, with everything he believed, with everything he vowed. When it ended, they were both breathing heavily, and he pressed his forehead to hers once more. “You did not marry him.”

“I told you; I couldn’t.” She paused, then, “What were you going to do?”

He wrapped her in his arms again, caring only for being near her. For keeping her close. “Whatever it took.”

“You would have stopped Olivia’s wedding?” She sounded shocked.

“Do you think she would have forgiven me?”

She smiled. “Absolutely not.”

“Do you think you would have forgiven me?”

“Absolutely. But I’d already stopped the wedding.” She grimaced toward the door. “There shall be wicked gossip when everyone realizes it . . . but at least Olivia will be a viscountess by then.”

He’d repair it. He’d make Tottenham prime minister and Olivia the most powerful woman in England.

And he’d make Pippa a countess for the ages.

“You wouldn’t have married him,” he said, rocked by gratitude to whatever higher power had brought her to him. Had kept her from marrying the wrong man.

“I told you once that I do not care for dishonesty,” she said. “And there is nothing more dishonest, I find, than pledging to love one man when I have given my heart entirely to another.”

She loved him.

“It seems impossible,” he whispered, “that you might love me.”

She came up on her toes and pressed a kiss to the point of his chin. No one had ever kissed him there. No one had ever loved him as she did. “How strange,” she said, “as it seems quite impossible that I might not love you.”

They kissed again, long and lush, until his options were end the caress or throw her down onto the great stone steps of Mayfair’s parish church and have his way with her. With regret, he chose the first option, breaking the kiss.

Her eyes remained closed for a long moment, and he stared down at this beautiful, brilliant woman who was to be his forever, quiet satisfaction like he’d never known spreading warm and welcome through him.

“I love you, Philippa Marbury,” he whispered.

She sighed and smiled and opened her eyes. “Do you know, I’ve always heard people say they heard bells ringing when they were very very happy . . . but I’ve always thought it an aural impossibility. And yet . . . now . . .”

He nodded, loving her thoroughly, his strange, scientific beauty. “I hear them, too.” And he kissed her.

The smartest couple in London did hear bells—a happy, cacophonous symphony celebrating the end of the marriage ceremony uniting the new Viscount and Viscountess Tottenham . . . a ceremony both Pippa and Cross seemed to have forgotten.

They were forced to remember, however, when the doors to the church opened, and half the aristocracy poured out into the grey April morning, desperate and finally, finally able to gossip about the most important part of the double wedding—one missing bride—only to discover the lady in question was not missing at all. Indeed, she was right outside the church. In the arms of a man to whom she was not affianced.

Ignoring the collective gasp of their audience, Cross kissed the tip of her nose and rectified the situation. Jasper Arlesey, Earl Harlow lowered himself to one knee and—in front of all the world—proposed to his brilliant, bespectacled bluestocking.

Epilogue

If my work has taught me anything, it is this: While a great many curiosities can be explained using thorough scientific research and sound logic, there are a handful of them that resist such easy hypothesis. These mysteries tend to be the most human. The most important.

Chief among them is love.

That said, there remain scientific truths . . .

The Scientific Journal of Lady Philippa Marbury

August 10, 1831; four months after her wedding

Cross woke in a lavishly appointed bed, in the town house that had been inhabited by generations of Earls Harlow, already reaching for his wife.

Coming up with nothing but a wide expanse of crisp white linen, he did not hesitate in rolling to his feet, pulling on the silk robe she had gifted him on their wedding night and going in search of her.

He did not have far to travel; when they had taken up residence in the town house, Philippa had summarily chased away the demons that had lurked in its darkest corners, reminding him again and again that he was worthy of her, of their love, of this place, of this life.

As part of her exorcism, she’d turned the suite of rooms that had once belonged to Baine into a small indoor garden—a lush, green Eden hidden away in the family’s quarters, smelling of soil and sunshine and life.

She was hunched low over her worktable when he entered the room, still wearing her own night rail, hair arranged in a haphazard pile atop her head,

surrounded by pink roses. He approached quietly, moving to the sound of pen on paper, noticed only by Trotula, who stood guard over her mistress, long pink tongue lolling happily from the side of her mouth.

He snaked one long arm around his wife’s waist and pulled her to him, loving the way her squeak of surprise turned to a sigh when he set his lips to the soft skin of her neck.

“Good morning,” she whispered, one hand reaching up, her fingers threading into his hair.

God, he loved her touch. His tongue rewarded it with a little swirl at the place where neck met shoulder, and he smiled against the heat of her, reveling in the fact that her pulse raced for him. Only for him. “Good morning to you, Countess.” He looked over her shoulder to the journal on the table, and the pile of correspondence nearby. “You’re at work early.”

She turned in his arms, lifting her lips to his for a proper kiss, which he was more than happy to give her. After several long, heady caresses, she pulled away with a smile. “I couldn’t sleep.”

He lifted her to sit on the workbench, sliding one hand along the side of her body, loving the shape of her, luxuriating in the feel of her—in the barely believable fact that she was his. Pressing his forehead to hers, he said, “You know I am always willing to help you with that problem if you care to remain abed.”

She laughed, the sound warm and welcome. “Or out of bed, I’ve noticed.”

“I simply attempt to be the best possible research associate,” he said, reaching for the hem of her nightgown and sliding one hand around her soft, slim ankle. “What are you working on?”

For a moment, she seemed to have forgotten, and he loved that he had the power to befuddle her quick mind. Loved, too, that instead of thinking too much about the answer to his question, she kissed him. Thoroughly. Until he couldn’t think either.

Which was why, when she lifted her head from the kiss, and said, “The roses!” it took him a moment to follow.

She twisted to reach for a discarded piece of paper on the table. “The Royal Horticultural Society has considered my research, and to their knowledge, no one has ever cultivated a new species of rose before. They invite me to attend the meeting of the Society next month to present my work. And they ask that,” she read, “I inform them of the name I have selected for the rose at my earliest possible convenience.”

She grinned up at him, and he was filled with admiration and pride. “I am in no way surprised, my beautiful scientist. Indeed, I would have expected nothing less.” He paused, then added, “But are they aware that you’re quite terrible at naming things?” He looked to Trotula, who lay in the shade of a large potted fern.

Pippa laughed. “It’s not true!” She followed his gaze to the dog.

“It’s most definitely true. Castleton’s hound was never so lucky than the day Meghan Knight named her.” The evening Pippa ran the tables at Knight’s had begun a whirlwind courtship of the Earl of Castleton and his new bride; Knight had earned himself a title even as he’d lost his club.

“Trotula, he maligns you,” Pippa said, and the hound’s tail set to instant wagging.

Cross looked to the dog. “She could have named you anything. Daisy. Or Antoinette. Or Chrysanthemum.”

Pippa cut him a look. “Chrysanthemum?”

He raised a brow. “It’s better than Trotula.”

“It is not.” They smiled, loving each other. Loving the way they matched. “At any rate, I’ve already named the rose. I thought I’d call it the Baine.”

He caught his breath at the quiet certainty in the words, at the way she stripped him bare and gave him the most simple, perfect gift she could. “Pippa,” he said, shaking his head, “I don’t know . . . love . . . I don’t know what to say.”

She smiled. “You needn’t say anything; I think it a fitting memorial to your brother.”

It was suddenly difficult to swallow. “I agree.”

“And an excellent legacy for our son.”

And then it was difficult to breathe. “Our—son?”

She smiled, her hand coming to his, moving it to the soft, perfect swell of her belly. “It could be a daughter . . .” she said, as though they were discussing the weather, “but I like to think he’s a son. A handsome, ginger-haired son.”

He stared at the spot where he touched her, his hand seeming to belong to another. To two others. It wasn’t possible that this was his . . . that she was his . . . that this life was his. He met her gaze. “You’re certain?”

She smiled. “There are scientific truths, my lord. One of which is that all that research that we have conducted has a very specific outcome.” She leaned in and whispered at his ear, “That is not to say that I have concluded this line of inquiry.”

His attention returned to her. “I am happy to hear that.”

She hooked her ankle around his thigh, pulling him toward her, and lifting her lips to his. They kissed for a long moment, separating only when they were both breathless. “Are you happy?”

He took her face in his hands and told her the truth. “I have never in my life been happier. I feel as though I’ve had the greatest run of good luck there ever was.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in luck?”

He shook his head, “Even I am not this good at running the table.” His fingers were at her ankles then, trailing up the soft skin of her calves as she opened to the caress. “Speaking of tables, what do you think will happen if you lie back on this one?”

She chuckled. “I imagine that I shan’t finish my letter to the Royal Horticultural Society anytime soon.”

“I wouldn’t dare disagree,” he teased, worrying the lobe of one ear. “You are, after all, one of the great scientific minds of our day.”

“It is a complex field of research . . .” She sighed as his fingers trailed higher, along the skin of her inner thighs. “ . . . but ever so rewarding.”

He kissed her again, long and lush and deep, pushing the linen nightdress high on her thighs and pressing between them, close to her. She gasped as he rocked against her, her hands coming to the sash of his robe, pushing the fabric wide, and finally finally touching him.

He let out a long, shuddering breath and met her beautiful blue eyes. “Your touch still devastates me, you know.”

She smiled, trailing her hands down his torso, the movement a delicious promise. “Do not worry, my lord, you have years to become accustomed to it. It is entirely possible that someday, you shall take it entirely for granted.”

“That will never happen.” He captured one hand in his, lifting her perfect fingers to his lips and kissing their tips before laying her back on the table. “But if you like, I am happy to continue to research the theory.”

She laughed, her fingers threading through his hair. “In the name of science, of course.”

He shook his head. “Hang science,” he said, grey eyes flashing with passion and promise and something much much more. “This is for love.”