How to Marry an Earl (A Cinderella Society 1)

His fingertips brushed her palm. Neither of them wore gloves. She thought she saw him swallow, as though he’d noticed. But she must be mistaken. He was accustomed to sophisticated widows and hungry debutantes who had left fleeting touches of the hand far behind them. Not to mention that her hands were not the soft perfumed hands of a lady of quality. They were the hands of an antiquarian who dug in the dirt. She snatched them back, curling her fingers into her palms. She would not be ashamed, she told herself sternly. Not about something she loved.

He was like a magnet and she had no experience with this kind of pull. She was out of her depths. Best to focus on what she did know: Cleopatra’s eye powder was made of powdered malachite and lapis lazuli. Ancient Egyptians used a paste of salt, mint, dried iris flower and pepper to clean their teeth.

She didn’t know what to say or how to stand, alone in a darkened bedroom after midnight with a handsome man and nothing more to say on matters of state. It seemed ridiculous to mention the weather. He was too striking in his evening clothes and the firelight glittering on the silver thread of his waistcoat. He was all juxtaposition, beautiful colours and fabrics, easy compliments, but then that hungry darkness. The glimpses of it should have frightened her, but they didn’t. They were thrilling. He was letting her see parts of him no one else saw. He was being uncovered like a treasure buried under gold and silk, instead of earth and barrow. It spoke to her in a way nothing else could.

“Oh, I nearly forgot,” he said abruptly when she began to wonder if the silence was stretching on too long and if he would think her dull and addlepated. “Wait right there.”

“You don’t—.” She was about to tell him he needn’t make excuses to return but he was already gone. A man such as him, with the people he knew, would hardly find her diverting. She was part of a bigger mystery; she wasn’t the mystery herself. And yet, he returned in moments, a wicker basket in hand. She stared at him. “You climbed the trellis holding a picnic basket?”

“You hardly ate at dinner.”

“Oh.” He’d noticed. That meant something, didn’t it? Stop it, Persephone. “I don’t enjoy being the center of that kind of attention.”

“Who does?”

“Lots of people do. I would have thought you were one of them.” She tilted her head. “But you don’t either, do you?”

“Not particularly. But it’s a means to an end.”

She nodded. “That makes sense.”

“Does it?” He knelt on the thick carpet by the fire and began to unpack the food.

“I’ve been trying to reconcile the Conall I knew years ago with The Earl of Northwyck, coveted by hostesses, matchmaking mamas and widows alike.”

“Any luck?”

“Only when we’re alone.” His head came up, eyes glinting. She shouldn’t have said that. It sounded too…intimate. She cleared her throat. “That is…” She trailed off when he smirked gently, eyebrow arching. “Oh, be quiet,” she muttered.

He laughed and it wasn’t his polished, courtly laugh of the ballroom; it was smoky, quiet. It made her want things she should not want.

It made her feel like fire.

“Come and eat,” he said softly.

She licked her lower lip nervously as she sank onto the carpet beside him. His eyes tracked the tip of her tongue and she felt suddenly powerful; adrift but also completely anchored. “I’ve never had a picnic indoors,” she said.

“Does it offend your sense of decorum?

She laughed. “I usually eat nuncheon in a hole in a field.” That was hardly the seductive image she’d wanted to present him with. If she’d wanted to present him with any such thing. Which she didn’t. At all. A little bit.

A lot.

He built a plate for her, adding a little bit of each dish: roast beef, cheeses, cucumber slices, raspberries, sugar biscuits flavoured with orange, and sugared grapes. And a crumpet from a basket absolutely stuffed with them.

“I did promise you crumpets,” he grinned. She grinned back. “And I always keep my promises.”

“I’ll remember that.” She nibbled on a crumpet with a bit of cheese, followed by a plump, tart raspberry. It tasted better here, with him, in the silent shadows than any food on gilded porcelain plates. He filled a delicate blue teacup with lemonade from a bottle. “You thought of everything.”

He’d clearly done this before. She refused to let it needle her. He was a man grown, for God’s sake. Of course, he’d done this sort of thing before. That she hadn’t, only made it more special, not less. “Thank you,” she whispered.

He shrugged a shoulder. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not,” she insisted, surprised and mortified by the stinging behind her eyes. She was being a goose.

“Percy?”

She forced a smile.