Ethan: Lord of Scandals

Ten

“It’s Buttercup!” Joshua spotted the big mare first, and only his father’s bellowed command stopped the boy from galloping the remaining distance to the stable yard.

“Uncle Nick!” Joshua yelled from the back of his pony. “Uncle Nick, we’re home!”

“You may trot,” Ethan allowed, because they were nearing the arena. “You too, Jeremiah.” Ethan drew his horse to a halt and waited beside Alice’s mount when the boys’ ponies started forward at the faster gait.

And here their outing had been going so well. “It appears my brother is paying a visit. Shall we greet him?”

“I suppose I have no choice?” Alice looked around as if seeking a hiding place.

“You can dismount here. Go on up to the house if you wish, but Nick will see the sidesaddle and ask questions.”

“I’m being silly.” Alice nudged Waltzer forward at the walk. “Nick will tease me, though, and I’d as soon avoid that.”

Her reaction, far from enthusiastic, held a petty kind of reassurance for a man whose overtures took a week to consider. “Nick will behave, or he won’t be welcome under my roof.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Alice murmured as they neared the barns. “He never means anything but fun.”

Ethan was torn between a guilty pleasure that on the face of the entire earth, there was at least one woman whose heart didn’t leap for joy at the prospect of spending time with Nick, and an odd disappointment. Having been assured Alice was not attracted to Nick, Ethan wanted her to like his brother.

Nick came out of the barn looking golden and splendiferous in riding attire. “Can these be my little nephews? You’ve grown just since leaving Kent.” He knelt, so the boys could try to strangle him with hugs around his neck, then rose with a nephew on each hip.

“Ethan.” Nick smiled up at him. “I’ve found some urchins to take back to Kent with me. I think this one will be a boot boy and this one a potboy. Or maybe I’ll keep them until they grow into a matched set of footmen for my lady. She’ll be the envy of Mayfair when she goes shopping.”

“Not shopping!” Joshua screeched dramatically. “Please, Uncle Nick. I want to be a stable boy.”

“Then go put up your pony,” Nick said, setting both boys on their feet. “If you’re quick about it, you can help put up Buttercup, too, while your papa introduces me to the lovely la—Alice?”

Nick’s expression went from that buccaneer’s charming grin, to consternation, to a beaming, genuine smile in a succession of instants.

“I see you’ve met.” Ethan swung down and came around to assist Alice from her horse lest Nick usurp that pleasure for himself. “Alice Portman, may I make known to you your friend Wee Nick. Nicholas, you’d best shut your mouth if you’re to extricate yourself from this without catching a fly.”

“Alice Portman.” Nick shook his head as Ethan lifted her from the horse and set her on her feet. “You prevaricating, deceitful, naughty girl. The air in Surrey is most certainly agreeing with you.”

Alice smiled at him. “Nice to see you again, Nicholas, but you knew I’d been taught how to ride.”

Nick’s smile tilted back toward flirtatious. “I’m not complaining about hiding your ability to ride, sweetheart, though it’s a pleasure to see you in the saddle. I’m taken aback by your ability to hide a siren in governess’s clothing.”

“From you,” Ethan muttered, loud enough for his brother to hear.

“Point taken,” Nick said, still regarding Alice thoughtfully.

“Alice was willing to make the effort to get on a horse for the boys, because she’s to accompany us to Greymoor’s picnic on Wednesday.” Ethan handed his horse off to Miller. “We can toast her with some cold cider or something stronger, now that the morning’s ride is accomplished. May I assume you’ll stay at least the night?”

“Am I welcome?” Nick asked. “I debated sending you a note, but can make other arrangements easily.”

Nick was studying the arena, the trees, the barns… perhaps thinking Ethan would turn aside his own brother. “You will always be welcome, Nicholas. Now come up to the house and let me feed you as best as I can. The staff has Sunday off, and we make do.”

“Alice? Will you be joining us, or will you tarry here with your charges?”

“I do not supervise them in the stables,” Alice replied, but her eyes shifted to Ethan, clearly seeking guidance.

“Come.” Ethan tucked her hand over his arm and did not look at Nick. “You must celebrate your success with Waltzer and supervise Nick and me as we raid the larder.” Alice slipped her arm from Ethan’s as they reached the back entrance.

“If you gentlemen will excuse me, I’ll change out of this habit.”

“If I must.” Nick said. “But not until I tell you again how fetching you look, Alice. Turn yourself out like that on the Ladies’ Mile, and you’ll leave a trail of love-struck, callow swains.”

“Callow swains of any description are of little appeal.”

Ethan let her go, noting that Nick, for all he was happily married, watched the twitch of her skirts with unabashed admiration.

“It’s the glasses,” Ethan said because he’d been guilty of the same oversight, and without Alice’s presence, some of his possess—protectiveness ebbed. “And that bun, and all those sack dresses, and her…” He waved a hand around. “Governess airs.”

“Yes. Governess airs are excellent camouflage. Are we really to fend for ourselves in the kitchen?”

“We are. Fear not, though. I’ve figured out where the bread and butter hide, and which key opens the larder.”

“You have a very pretty property, Ethan.” Nick followed his brother to the kitchen. “I’ve ridden by from time to time, but the walls and hedges make it hard to see much from the lanes.”

“Why didn’t you stop by?” Ethan washed his hands, then extracted a loaf of fresh, white bread from the bread box rather than watch Nick’s reaction to the question. “Did you really think I’d not be home to you?” Because until Barbara’s death, he might not have been.

“I didn’t know.”

Ethan starting cutting the loaf into exactly even slices. “You’ve always had my direction.”

“And you’ve had mine. I see now your property is in excellent repair, your stables full of handsome horseflesh, and your house larger than any of ours, except for Belle Maison itself. I’ve worried about you when I didn’t need to.”

Was that resentment in Nick’s tone, or hurt? “Because I’m well off?” Ethan fetched a half wheel of cheese from the larder and again put the knife to use. “You can slice some of the ham hanging in the hallway, if you don’t mind.”

“You’re well off enough to remarry,” Nick observed, using a basin in the sink to wash his hands before he went to work on the ham.

Ethan wrapped the cheese and took it back to the pantry, then fetched a bowl of ripe peaches, which reminded him of Alice.

Rather than comment on Nick’s observation, Ethan fished in the drawers and cupboards until he found everyday cutlery, linen napkins, and plates. Nick’s arrival on a Sunday was something of a mercy, allowing them privacy while they tried to find a rhythm with each other.

“So how did you get Alice on a horse?” Nick asked, carrying bread, meat, and cheese to the table.

“She knows how to ride.” Ethan put salt, pepper, mustard, and butter down next to Nick’s tray. “She just needed an incentive to deal with her understandable fears.”

“Reese Belmont said she’d been hurt trying to report a crime of some sort.” Nick carried the pitcher of lemonade to the table, while Ethan opened a bottle of sweet white wine and found glasses.

“I don’t know the details.” Ethan set the wine on the table to breathe. “And I don’t want to know them unless Alice wants me to. It must be bad, though. Hazlit was out here, strutting and pawing like a papa bear.”

“Hazlit?” Nick’s eyebrows rose. “My Benjamin Hazlit?”

“He’s Alice’s brother. I assumed you knew they were related.” And wasn’t it gratifying to know something Nick did not?

“I had no idea,” Nick muttered. “How odd.”

Ethan poured them each half a glass of lemonade, added a portion of wine, and took a seat across from Nick. “For what we are about to receive, we are damned grateful, amen.”

“Amen.” Nick reached for the bread. “I cannot fathom Benjamin Hazlit confiding in you, Ethan. Meaning no offense, but the man’s lips are closed as tightly as a king’s coffin.”

“His younger sister works for me,” Ethan said, waiting for Nick to finish with the butter. “He told me he’d call me out if I offended Alice, and I had to like him for it.”

Nick set the butter knife down, his expression distracted. “You like him for threatening you?”

“He’s protective. I would want our sisters to be able to count on us for the same. Mustard?”

“Please.” Nick accepted the mustard and set it down beside his plate. “I feel as if… First, you find a lovely woman where Pris’s starchy little governess was standing when last I looked. Then you turn up living not in some gothic horror but on a gracious, perfectly pleasant and prosperous estate. And now you tell me Benjamin Hazlit is revealing family secrets to you, and you like him for threatening your life. Maybe the ale was bad at the last posting inn I stopped at.”

“What did you expect, Nick?”

“I don’t know. For Alice to be holed up in her room, reading over the boys’ school work, you to be scratching away at your infernal correspondence, Tydings to be somehow grimmer. I don’t know.”

“Are you disappointed?”

Nick smiled self-deprecatingly. “Maybe. You don’t need rescuing, do you? Mustard?”

“Please.” Ethan accepted the mustard and tried not to flinch at the question. “Reserve judgment on whether I am in need of rescuing until after the picnic. Greymoor himself came by to issue his summons for this bacchanal. I found him likable enough, and might have to return his call.”

“You don’t visit?” Nick scowled at his plate. “Not even Greymoor or Heathgate or Amery?”

“I know Heathgate slightly.” Ethan sipped his drink, wishing it was something more fortifying than this bland concoction Nick favored. “I’m hardly his social equal, and why would I visit the others?”

“Because that is what one does in the country, Ethan Grey.” Nick directed a pained stare at his drink. “You visit, and you talk about the hunting and the shooting and the crops, or the lack of hunting, shooting, and crops. You bump into each other riding out. You cadge a Sunday meal after church. You stay for a pint at the local inn. You stand up with the wallflowers at the assemblies.”

Ethan remained silent, regarding his brother levelly because he honestly did not know what to say.

“I’ll shut up,” Nick said. “Pass me that tray. Growing boys need sustenance.”

Ethan passed him the tray and the butter and mustard.

“I don’t go to church,” Ethan said. “I don’t ride to hounds, I don’t go to the assemblies, and I don’t frequent the local watering hole.”

“Ethan?” Nick’s voice held consternation and concern.

“I do ride out,” Ethan allowed, “and thus I bumped into Heathgate. I’ve met Greymoor and that other fellow.”

“Amery,” Nick supplied. “Have you met Westhaven?”

“Not that I recall.”

Nick put down his glass with a soft thump. “You can’t live here in legendarily pleasant surrounds, cut off from all around you. It isn’t… It isn’t right.”

“Not right for you,” Ethan said, his tone mild. “But I accomplish a great deal, Nicholas, when I’m not dancing, visiting, gossiping, and watching a pack of dogs tear an arthritic fox to pieces.”

“Miller told me you’ve promised to take the boys cubbing this fall,” Nick said, apparently willing to reserve further sermons for later.

“They need to know the protocol if they’re to be gentlemen, and they ride well enough.”

Nick set his second sandwich down only half-eaten. “I feel like you’ve gone away, like you grew up and became somebody my brother could not have turned into. You were not like this as a boy.”

“Like what?” Ethan was truly curious, but concerned too, because he could see Nick was getting genuinely upset with him.

No, not with him, for him.

“You enjoyed people,” Nick said. “You joked with the stable boys, flirted with the dairymaids. The little girls wanted you to read them their stories and braid their hair and check under their beds at night. You beat Papa at cribbage and led me into one silly prank after another. And now…”

“Now?”

“You accomplish a great deal,” Nick said in exasperation. “You may not write to your brother but once in seven years, but you accomplish a lot. You’ll take your boys cubbing so they learn their manners, but you don’t call on your neighbors, nor they on you. You’re a good-looking, wealthy widower, but you won’t stand up at the assemblies. You probably make more money year by year, but you couldn’t be bothered to tell me you were married, much less widowed, much less a father twice over. What happened, Ethan? What on earth happened to you?”

Nick’s tone was so bewildered, Ethan couldn’t have been offended if he’d wanted to be, and he did not want to be.

Nor would he tell Nick what had happened. Not ever. For his own sake, but equally for Nicholas’s sake.

“I grew up, Nick. It wasn’t my choice, entirely, but I’m doing the best I can with it.”

“Is this how you felt about me, when all the wild talk circulated about my womanizing?”

Ethan pursed his lips. “Felt how?”

“Like some strange man was using your brother’s name,” Nick said. “Doing things your brother wouldn’t, and saying things he’d never dream of uttering?”

“No.” Was that how Nick felt? “I worried, Nick. That much carrying on isn’t about having the occasional recreational tumble.”

“It wasn’t.” Nick scrubbed a hand over his face. “How did we ever get onto such gloomy topics?”

“You are disappointed in me,” Ethan suggested gently. “I am socially backward, reclusive, and much preoccupied with my commerce.”

“And all of that”—Nick waved his big hand again—“would be of no moment, Ethan, but are you happy?”

Ethan had stopped asking himself this question at the age of fourteen. It had no bearing on anything.

“Happiness is a luxury,” Ethan said, staring at his empty glass. “If it comes to pass, it should be appreciated, but life doesn’t owe us happiness. I am content, Nick, and much less unhappy than I was when Barbara was alive. If that makes me evil, then so be it. Before she died, we learned what it meant to hate each other, though fortunately that was not the last page of our dealings. I did not marry well, and you did. Can we leave it at that?”

“For now.” Nick looked mightily disgruntled at the idea. “It isn’t that simple.”

“No,” Ethan agreed, rising, “it isn’t, but you are my first houseguest in the seven years I’ve been here, and I am not inclined to spend your afternoon rehashing ancient history. How long can you stay?”

“Miller mentioned that George might be out this way,” Nick said, getting to his feet.

“I’ve invited him and Adolphus both. We’ll see if he accepts.”

“Let’s say I’ll head back to Kent on Thursday morning. My business in London is done, and if I can spend time with George, I’ll consider my travels a success.”

“You may already consider your travels a success,” Ethan said, pausing with the pitcher in one hand and the wine bottle in the other. “I am glad you’re here, Nick.”

“I’m glad to be here.” His tone and his expression suggested this was not an entirely genuine sentiment.

Ethan set his burdens on the counter. As younger men, they might have settled this—whatever this was—with a round of fisticuffs. “I know you mean well, Nicholas, but please bear in mind, I am not you, and I am not the affable, innocent boy with whom you shared your childhood.”

This was an understatement the proportions of which defied description. Ethan wasn’t going to tell Nick that, either.

Nick sidled along the counter and hooked a beefy arm around his brother’s shoulders. “You are my brother, and if you are not happy, it’s hard for me to be happy.”

“We aren’t boys anymore.” Ethan wanted to pull away, but that would hurt Nick’s feelings. “You can’t create happiness out of a long summer afternoon, two boys, bare feet, and a cold stream.”

Nick didn’t say anything. He just put his other arm around Ethan and hugged him until Ethan stepped back and resumed tidying up their lunch.

“It’s Sunday,” Ethan said as he crossed the threshold to Alice’s room. “You cannot be working, Alice.”

“Says who?” Alice put down her pen and capped her inkwell. Why was it that Ethan Grey in riding breeches, boots, and waistcoat looked handsomer than any man she’d laid eyes on? His sleeves were rolled back to the elbow, exposing tan muscle dusted with golden hair. She wanted to lay her cheek against that forearm, taste the strength in his wrists.

“Almighty God gave us the example of resting on the Sabbath.” Ethan ambled over to her escritoire and peered over her shoulder. “Because I am the almighty lord of this property, I condone the notion. What are you about?”

“Making a list of Latin aphorisms,” Alice said as Ethan leaned over and scanned her work. Her imagination suggested he inhaled through his nose, but then, so had she.

“Why do you laugh?” Ethan quoted. “Change the name and the same can be said of you.”

“That one’s too long, though your boys do a great deal of laughing.”

“More lately.” He remained half-bent over her while Alice tried to lecture herself into ignoring him. “This is an interesting collection, Alice Portman. Is Hazlit’s Latin as facile?”

Ethan straightened and crossed to sit on her bed. The door was open, and nobody was about, but still, sitting on her bed was intimate, and Alice liked the look of him there—heaven help her.

“It is not, and neither is Vim’s.”

“What of your sister, the one you haven’t seen for five years?”

“Avis.” Alice’s smile dimmed. “She was neither a bluestocking nor given to competing with our brothers.” She did, however, run the entire estate of Blessings so their brothers could lark about all over the realm.

Ethan ran a hand over her pillow, and Alice’s insides became muddled. Just like that, drat him. “Have you made up your mind about going to visit her?”

“You were serious when you said I might?”

He did it again—ran his palm over the linen and wreaked havoc with Alice’s composure. “We can agree, I think, I am generally serious.”

Not as serious as he wanted people to think. “I’ve written to Avis, suggesting she might come south, and I could come north, and we’d meet in the Midlands, but there hasn’t been time for a reply.”

Another stroke over her pillow, over the very spot where she laid her head. “Can’t your brother send one of his famous pigeons? He must have some flying between Blessings and his southern residence.”

“I hadn’t considered Benjamin’s pigeons. Even if he has such, they can carry only very brief messages.”

He rose and turned to smooth over the covers where he’d sat, and the back of him was no less unsettling to look upon than the front. “You should send such an invitation. I am here, in fact, to issue a summons to you.”

“To me?” Alice tidied her papers and set her pen in its stand. “It’s Sunday. One may not be summoned.”

“Nicholas has taken it into his head to make muffins and has asked you to attend him and the boys in the kitchen.”

Alice rose, relieved—truly and honestly relieved—to be getting Ethan out of her bedroom. “If I have to go, then you have to as well.”

“Nick didn’t include me on the writ,” Ethan said as they made their way down the back stairs. “You are female, so he assumes you will know where things go in the kitchen.”

“I avoid the kitchen. Your cook is a cantankerous and territorial old dame. Mrs. Buxton made it clear Cook is not to be trifled with.”

“Valid point, but Cook also consumes a fair amount of the cooking sherry and takes her Sundays off to heart.” Ethan lowered his voice and bent near as they walked along. “I think she has a follower.”

“Or a drinking companion.”

“Who has a drinking companion?” Nick asked. He stood at the kitchen counter, a towel around his waist as an improvised apron. “If there’s any drinking going on, I’d like to be informed. Joshua, stop kicking the drawer and find us three clean spoons. Jeremiah, we’ll need some mugs of cold milk to sustain us.”

Ethan quirked an eyebrow at his brother. “Perhaps we, who have been mucking around the stables, ought to wash our hands, hmm?”

Nick’s expression was arrested. “Good idea. Boys, wash up, and then step lively. Uncle Nick is hungry for muffins.”

Ethan scanned the counter, where ingredients were lined up in recipe order. “You’re not going to drown the apples in cinnamon, are you?”

To the ears of any governess, the question was laden with challenge from one boy to another.

Nick propped his fists on his hips. “You blaspheme on the Lord’s day, Ethan Grey. I do not drown my apples in spices, but I am not stingy with cinnamon or cloves.”

“So you completely overpower the equally worthy, less pungent flavors,” Ethan scoffed. “As usual.”

“You could do better?” Nick glowered at him, the boys watching the exchange with round eyes.

“I always have.” Ethan’s smile appeared exactly designed to goad a younger brother.

“You’re on.” Nick slapped his towel against the counter. “Alice and the boys will judge, and may the best muffin win.”

“Muffin him silly, Papa,” Joshua said.

“Make yours double enormous, Uncle Nick,” Jeremiah joined in.

“Joshua Grey!” Nick turned to his smallest nephew in mock offense. “How can I name you one of my seconds if you’re rooting for the other team?”

“I can root for Papa and be your second. Miss Alice can be Papa’s second.”

“Alice?” Ethan crossed his arms over his chest. “This is a matter of honor, and my sons are turncoats. That leaves me you or the pantry mouser.”

Alice plucked the towel from Nick’s hands. “I’m your man, Mr. Grey.” She gently whapped the towel across Nick’s chest, while the boys hooted and shrieked with glee.

When she was left alone in the kitchen an hour later, and the boys had dragged the men out to the garden, Alice did not immediately start to clean up. Instead, she sat down with a cup of hot tea and enjoyed the silence. If anyone had told her two weeks ago she’d be participating in a duel-by-muffin between two grown men, she would have laughed.

And this afternoon, with Ethan, his brother, and his sons, she had laughed. That set her to thinking about the recipe that was her life—too much caution and observation, not enough participation or spice.

She was thinking so hard she didn’t hear the door open or the footsteps behind her. A pair of lips settled on her cheek, and her first instinct was to melt into the kiss, except…

“Nicholas, behave yourself for once.”

“I was thanking you.” Nick smiled at her and slid onto the bench across the table from her. “You looked so serious and pretty sitting there, staring at your teacup as if it held the answer to all life’s mysteries.”

“I’m English. A good cup of tea does hold the answer to many of life’s mysteries. That doesn’t excuse your kissing me, Nicholas, and I’ll thank you to keep your lips to yourself in future.”

“Or what? You’ll paddle my backside?”

“As if you’d mind.”

“Did I truly offend?” Nick asked, his smile fading. “If I did, I do apologize.”

“You nearly did, except I know you are harmless. You left Ethan outside with the boys?”

“I did.” Nick rose. “I am off to fetch some paper and pencils from the library. Ethan suggested we sketch designs for a tree house. When will the muffins be ready?”

Alice rose, because dishes had never once in the history of kitchens washed themselves. “The muffins won’t be ready until Wednesday next. Shoo, or I’ll issue another edict.”

Nick scampered out of the kitchen, his hands playfully covering his behind, so Alice had to snap a towel at him for good measure. She turned around, intent on piling dishes in the sink, only to find Ethan lounging against the hallway door, observing her with a slight smile.

“Forgive my brother his airs. The title weighs on him heavily.”

Alice took down an apron from a peg. “I think it does, too. Bring me some hot water, please, and I’ll get these soaking.” He brought her the kettle from the hob, and leaned in to kiss her jaw as he did.

Alice smiled, closed her eyes, and forgot entirely about the dishes. “You’re as bad as your brother.”

“That scamp did not offer to help with the dishes.”

“He did not. If you and Nick are in the house, who is with the boys?”

“They popped down to the paddocks to stuff carrots into the shoats named Lightning and Thunder.” Ethan refilled the kettle, and the reservoir in the stove for good measure. He tidied up as Alice rinsed things off and added them to the collection soaking in the big kitchen sink.

“Ethan Grey, did you just finish my tea?”

“There was only one cold swallow left.” Ethan brought her the empty mug. “Shall I make you another?”

“So you can pilfer from that too? I think not. What are you… Oh, Ethan.”

He’d come up behind her and linked his hands around her waist to pull her back against his chest. She kept her hands in the water, closed her eyes, and enjoyed the simple, warm proximity of him.

Ethan’s voice rumbled at her ear, as she felt his lips graze her jaw. “I told myself I would not pester you, but you look so desperately pesterable, with the apron around your waist and your mouth all pinched up like that.”

“And my hands sopping wet and not a towel within reach. I used to think you weren’t anything like Nick, you know?”

“How could you think such a thing?” Ethan murmured, and dear Jesus, was that his tongue tracing her ear? “We are both tall, blond, blue-eyed, and of an age. We have features alike, and we both make excellent muffins, though mine are better.”

“Turn loose of me.” Alice wiggled a little against him, but not to get away. “Somebody could come along, and this isn’t how you preserve anybody’s reputation, Ethan Grey.” He stepped back, slowly.

“You are a woman of considerable resolve, Alice Portman. Right now, I do admire you for it, but I cannot like it.”

“I’m crushed.” Alice fluttered her lashes dramatically. “Go find your sons and collect your brother before I’m interrupted again by some errant pair of lips. And do not think of peeking into that oven, Mr. Grey, or you’ll forfeit the contest.”

“That wasn’t one of the rules.”

“And neither was it good sportsmanship to try to cozen a judge.” Alice gave him her best The-Governess-Is-Not-Happy glare. “The other team is guilty of the same, so I will not assess a penalty.”

“I will take my leave.” Ethan executed an elaborate bow. “If you see my opponent, tell him I’m at the stables, corrupting his seconds.”

“Out!”