Ethan: Lord of Scandals

Eight

“You are comfortable with Wednesday’s outing?” Ethan asked Alice at breakfast the next morning. The boys had taken off with Davey to try to dig a pond suitable for the reenactment of Trafalgar, though Davey was under strict orders to keep the ocean blue smaller than the size of two horse troughs.

“What I want doesn’t matter,” Alice said. “My charges will go off to socialize with the neighbors, and I will attend them.” Her lips were compressed into a prim line, and she was taking only the smallest sips of her tea.

This testiness on Alice’s part wasn’t about an invitation to picnic with the neighbors, though she was probably not looking forward to that. Ethan regarded his boys’ governess and concluded she was unhappy with her employer, and maybe, were she honest, a little bit with herself. Ethan was unhappy with himself, too.

Alice was under his protection, plain and simple. In the dark hours after midnight, he’d decided he wasn’t to be kissing her, importuning her, or—if he could even figure out how to manage such a thing—flirting with her. She seemed to be sending him the same message, not in so many words.

“I’ve known Heathgate since well before he succeeded to the title,” Ethan said. “We’ve been neighbors for years, but this is the first invitation I’ve been issued. Refusing would have been unpardonably rude.”

Alice sipped her tea, not meeting his eyes. “I understand, Mr. Grey.”

Mr. Grey. To hear her address him thus in that tone of voice rankled exceedingly. “There will be other boys to play with. I’d think you’d see that as a good thing, Alice.”

She closed her eyes at his use of her name, and Ethan felt his temper spike.

“Good God.” Ethan covered her teacup with his hand when she would have raised it to her mouth again. “It was one harmless, albeit passionate, kiss, Alice. Will you punish my children as well as me for that single lapse?”

“I’m not punishing anybody,” Alice said, drawing her hand away from the teacup. “I’m simply not looking forward to being amidst a bunch of twittering ladies and their titled menfolk.”

Ethan considered that and turned loose of her tea.

“They were thoroughgoing rascals as younger men, but both of the Alexander brothers have settled down in recent years. They tend to their business and their land. They raise their children and dote on their wives. They’re domesticated, Alice. They won’t, unlike your employer, be stealing kisses from you in bushes. And for the record, I married my mistress. Some would say that makes me the biggest rascal in the shire.” More fool he.

“You didn’t steal that kiss.”

“I am heartened to hear it. Even such a one as I frowns upon larceny.”

“Stop it.” Alice tossed her napkin on the table and got up, pacing over to the window.

“Stop what?” Ethan rose and stood just behind her. Kissing and taking advantage were deplorable and inexcusable, and he would never do such things again. Probably. There was nothing in the code of gentlemanly behavior to prohibit inhaling a woman’s fragrance though, or admiring the slope of her breast from a discreet angle.

“You refer to yourself as if you’re some reprobate off the hulks.” Alice crossed her arms over her chest, still facing away from him. “In the company you describe, you will be among the better behaved, I’m sure.”

Ethan took a step away as a disturbing notion got hold of him. “You’re not sure at all. Are you ashamed to be seen with me, Alice? Or with my children?”

“Of course not,” she shot back, expression gratifyingly horrified. “How could you think that?”

“Because others have been. If you aren’t concerned about being seen in our company, then what on earth is the problem?” She turned her back again, and Ethan had to strain to hear her.

“How will we get there?”

What queer start was this? “It’s within walking distance, if we take the bridle path. The boys would likely take their ponies, and were I left to my own devices, I’d ride Waltzer.”

Ah, but walking was hard for her, and so was riding.

Ethan almost smiled with relief. “I’ll help you. You can take Waltzer, and I’ll be up on Argus, how’s that? Waltzer is a capital fellow, very willing to please, and as solid as a plow horse.”

“A plow horse?” Alice’s cheeks lost color.

“Yes. Very docile, biddable, sensible, that sort of plow horse.”

Was this what had her in such a taking? She was afraid to ride?

“We could send you in the coach,” Ethan said, “along with whatever contribution we’re making to the picnic, and extra clothes for the boys, in case they should spill their lemonade, for example.”

“Would anybody notice?” Alice asked, her voice small.

“Nobody will think twice about it,” Ethan lied glibly. “If we bring along some blankets, the boys’ hoops, a pillow or two, it will not be remarked. But, Alice?”

“Ethan?”

He was back to Ethan, and that was good.

“I would like to teach you to ride.”

She drew in one shaky breath and shook her head.

“No.” She shook her head again. “No and no. It is good of you, and I appreciate your generosity, and you have my thanks, but no. Absolutely not.”

“What if I rode with you,” Ethan posited carefully, “and we took the stirrups off the saddle?”

“Removed the stirrups? How would that help?”

“I assume you were dragged because your foot caught in the stirrup. No stirrup, no getting caught.”

“How can you teach me to ride sidesaddle? Do you even own ladies’ saddles?”

“I own several,” Ethan said. “I’d hoped, at one point, to at least be able to hack out with my wife. She ordered a number of habits, for riding both to the left and to the right, but never wore a one of them.”

“That is a waste. But no, I cannot imagine I would survive five minutes in the saddle without having a breathing spell.”

“You didn’t have a spell the last time you rode with me,” Ethan said. “We covered nearly a mile on Argus. It isn’t much farther than that to Willowdale.”

She turned to face him, her expression troubled. “I know you want to do this for me, and I appreciate it more than I can say. But once I get on that horse, I will feel like you are inflicting torture on me. It feels so high up, and all I can recall is bouncing against the ground, the horrible pain, and knowing I was going to die.”

That was not all she recalled. Ethan knew she recalled all manner of odd details, and each one could trigger an entire panorama of awful memories.

“In the intervening years, Alice, you haven’t died. You didn’t die then.”

“I wanted to.”

And in her mind, Ethan knew, the bad fall was part and parcel of the scandal Hazlit had alluded to. God above, he knew what that was like. Ever since his first week at boarding school, Ethan had been unable to stomach the smell of a barrel of pickles. If the scent hit him without warning, he’d still become ill. When he met people named Hart or Collins, he flinched mentally and tried not to shake their hands.

Pathetic, but after all this time, he no longer castigated himself for these weaknesses. They were the instincts of a man who wanted to live to see his children grown, and that was a good thing.

Ethan turned Alice by the shoulders then dropped his hands. “You will be safe on any horse I put you on. I promise you that.”

“You can’t promise me that. Nobody can promise that. The most competent rider in the world can be tossed when his horse steps in a rabbit hole or takes a bad spot in the hunt field.”

“Your brother said there was a scandal.” Ethan kept his gaze on hers and let the words stand alone, an invitation for Alice to say more.

She paced away from him. “Estrangement from one’s brothers might not be entirely bad. Why on earth would Benjamin burden you with such a confidence?”

“Two reasons.” Ethan watched as Alice drew in on herself, arms wrapped around her middle. “First, he wanted to explain the different last names, though he might have simply allowed me to conclude you are half siblings, as it’s common enough. Second, and I think it the more compelling concern for him, he demanded that should this scandal erupt anew, I give him a chance to ride to your rescue before I toss you over the transom to whatever wolves and vultures are waiting to devour you.”

She wrinkled her nose. “And you didn’t call him out?”

“I have siblings, Alice. For several years I could barely learn how they went on, or let them know the same regarding me. Your brother cares about you.”

Alice dropped her arms and marched back to the window. Outside across the gardens, Davey, sans livery and flanked by a boy on each side, a shovel over his shoulder, ambled toward the stream. “I suppose now you want to know the whole of it?”

“Not unless you want to tell me. I’ve endured scandals of my own, Alice, and telling you about them would neither abate the pain of those memories nor raise me in your esteem.”

“It might.” Alice smiled the faintest, sad smile. “Just to know you didn’t die either, it might.”

“I haven’t yet.” Ethan’s smile matched hers for sadness.

“Was Barbara the reason you didn’t reconcile with Nick?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.” He thought for a moment, trying to choose words and sort out how much to tell her. “When I met Barbara, it was nearly eight years ago. I’d been down from university for several years, but I spent my time on my commercial endeavors, crass as that might seem. I wanted to be able to support a family in appropriate style, and quite honestly, I enjoy commerce.” He flicked a glance at Alice’s face but saw no judgment there. Yet.

“Barbara approached me at some function where I was escorting Lady Warne. I’d never go about in society unless Grandmother inveigled me into it. Lady Warne suggested Barbara was exactly the kind of diversion I needed, and I’ve never regretted an impulsive decision more.”

“You didn’t care for her?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Ethan said, and what was he doing, imposing his past on her, when she was the one who was supposed to be confiding in him? “I had kept very much to myself, at school, at university. There were reasons, and they seemed like good ones at the time, though it left me appallingly unsophisticated with respect to the ladies and Society in general. But she was persistent, available, and physically appealing.”

And this characterization of his past was not mendacious, but it was different from any previous descriptions he might have given of it.

“You were besotted.”

He’d been horny, plain and simple, and wretchedly, painfully inexperienced with women. “Parts of me were besotted, perhaps, and Barbara was adept at reading people and being what they wanted, for a time anyway.”

“Do you suppose she intended to conceive your child?” It was a bold, personal question, but the whole discussion was outside the bounds of propriety, and Ethan rather liked it there.

“She admitted as much on many occasions,” Ethan said, wincing in memory of the way Barbara had laughed at his incredulity over her conniving. “I was the most gullible fool ever to stumble up a church aisle.”

“That is…” Alice sank back down onto a seat at the table—Ethan’s seat, in fact. “That is the most heinous, despicable… that is like rape, but worse, because in addition to a betrayal of one’s vows, it’s willfully inflicting on a child enmity between the parents. It’s an abysmal… I am so sorry.”

In a few words, she’d gotten to the heart of years of misery and conflict, summing up even more heartache than she knew. He wanted to kiss her again.

“I was sorry too, for a while, but now I have the boys, and I consider I got the better of the bargain.”

There was no sadness in her smile now. She beamed radiant approval at him, and that made him want to kiss her too. “Oh, you did. You very certainly did, Ethan. They are wonderful boys, and you will always be glad they are yours.”

Ethan saw such a light of longing in Alice’s eyes, he had to look away. God above, the woman wanted children. She wanted children of her own, and she’d be a wonderful mother. And yet Barbara, to whom children had been merely pawns, was given two, while Alice was denied any of her own.

“You’ll ride with me.” Ethan patted her hand briskly. “Say you will, just once, to give it a try and shut me up.”

“You won’t let this alone, will you?”

Never. Maybe he couldn’t give her children, but he could give her this. “I’ve told you more about my wicked past than I’ve told my own brother. I’m not asking you to trust me with the details of your own unhappy history, Alice, I’m asking you to trust me to keep you safe for a few minutes on a very reliable horse.”

The two were related. He’d bet Argus on it.

“Very well, but I have no proper attire.”

Victory without bloodshed, the best kind. “That’s my girl. You won’t need it, because we’ll start off astride.”

“You won’t take me up like you did before?”

“That has to be the worst way to ride a horse,” Ethan scoffed. “Yes, I get to put my arms around a pretty lady, but you are trying to balance contrary to the movement, which makes no sense.”

“You did not think I was pretty.” Alice snorted, then put a hand over her mouth as if to recall the words.

“You are pretty.” Ethan had never been more sincere. “And your scent is delightful, as is your form. And while you went above stairs and couldn’t catch your breath, I went above stairs and thanked the Almighty for a governess with a bad hip.”

So to speak.

Ethan saw he’d silenced her, and shut his maw before he said even more. When had he become so damned loquacious?

He tapped her nose with a single finger. “Go put on some half boots. Meet me in the stables in thirty minutes.”

She could change her shoes in five minutes, and what Ethan had planned behind the privacy of his locked bedroom door would also take about five minutes—all three times.

Alice’s mind went in two directions at once. Part of her was preparing for a nasty breathing spell; another part was suggesting if she’d just glance down at the horse’s neck, she could find the reins to pick them up.

But that she could not do, lest she see the ground yards and yards away, so she fished with her fingers in the thick mane until she encountered leather. “I’ve got them.”

“Now we just sit here.” Ethan’s voice was right at her ear, his cedar scent was a soothing fragrance on an otherwise horsy breeze, and his chest was a solid presence at her back. “We’re well trained, and we know we don’t take a step until my lady tells us to. I don’t think it’s quite as warm today as it was yesterday.”

Hang the bloody weather. “Neither as hot nor as humid.”

“I asked you what you’d consider a treat by way of reward when we saddled up. You never answered,” Ethan reminded her pleasantly. His hands were resting lightly on her waist, and but for that, Alice knew, she knew in her bones, and muscles, and organs, she’d fall and be dragged again.

“Getting off would be my best treat.” Though in the barn, when Ethan had mentioned a treat, she’d been helpless not to gaze at his mouth. “How long do we sit here?”

“Until you tell him to do something else, but I want to know your next-best treat.”

Alice gave the smallest, most useless tap of her heels. “And I want this to be over.”

Waltzer moved one front hoof then swung his left ear forward and back.

“Again,” Ethan coaxed. “He wasn’t sure you meant it, and he’s asking for clearer orders.”

Alice felt her shoulders move with the depth of her breathing, but she gave her mount a firmer tap, and he moved two steps then flicked his ear again. She wanted to pat him for being such a careful horse, but that would mean moving her hands, which were gripping the reins for dear life.

“Try again,” Ethan said. “This time, let your seat go a little too, or he’ll think you mean go with your heels but stop with your seat.”

“My seat?”

“Your hips. Here.” He pressed against her waist and angled his hands down, as if to rock her hips in the saddle. “You recall the motion of it from your childhood rides. Just think about it when you tap him again.”

Alice tried it, and the horse started walking at a very sedate pace.

“Oh, God. Now I have to steer.”

“Not necessarily. He’ll go forward in this direction until he lumbers up to the fence, and then he’ll stop and ask you what you want next. Watch.”

Because she couldn’t do anything else and breathe, Alice did as Ethan suggested. The horse stopped, sighed, then turned his head around to peer at Alice’s knee.

“What next?” Ethan interpreted. “Just tap again, and because he’s already looking around to the right, he’ll probably saunter in that direction.”

It took two tries, but the horse was rapidly figuring out the game.

Ethan kept his hands on her waist. “I think you might steer, if you wanted to.”

Hang him and his helpful thoughts. “Oh, no, I couldn’t. We’ll just find our way to the rail again.”

“Let’s be very daring.” Ethan dropped his voice. “Try another turn to the right.”

“Ethan, please don’t make me do this.”

“We’ll stop when you say, Alice, though I think you could steer us back to the mounting block.”

She bit her lip, because she didn’t want to get off all the way down to the ground. Just as she tentatively tugged on the right rein, the gelding began to shuffle along in that direction.

“Can he read my mind? Or did you make him do that?”

“You did it. You looked at the mounting block, you probably leaned toward it, and you picked up the right rein. Now why is it,” he went on in the most conversational tones, “you won’t tell me what your second-best treat is?”

“Hush,” Alice hissed. “He’s coming to the mounting block.”

Except he’d approached at an angle, and because the previous three times the horse had asked, the lady had told him to bear right, Waltzer, being an obliging soul, sauntered past the mounting block and strolled off to the right.

“Oh, blast and damn,” Alice wailed. “Now what?”

“Such language. Now you simply steer him back toward where you want him, and this time, we’ll ask him to stop.”

“I can’t. They don’t go when you ask. They don’t stop when you ask. They turn by themselves, and they’re just too big…”

“You’re doing splendidly, but think of wee Waltzer as a little boy, Alice. You have to tell him how to go on, and when you’re crossing a busy thoroughfare with a small child, you take his hand firmly. To Waltzer, there are many distractions, such as every blade of grass, every dropping, every breeze and sunbeam. You must make your directions clear, so it’s easy for your charge to know his task.”

In the midst of that little homily, Alice’s hips had finally started moving in rhythm with the horse’s walk. The image of the horse as a child in need of guidance tapped some vein of confidence unknown even to her, because she wordlessly directed him back to the mounting block, but this time, steered him left as they went around it. Ethan kept silent behind her but kept his hands on her waist as well.

“And now,” Ethan suggested a few minutes later, “you must tell him he’s doing well.”

“You’re doing well, Waltzer. You’d best keep doing well.” And Ethan Grey had best shut his helpful, interfering, gorgeous, handsome mouth.

“Oh, that was encouraging to a lad who’s trying his heart out for you. He doesn’t understand your words, Alice.”

“So you tell him.” She was beginning to think her best treat would not be forbidden pleasures with Ethan Grey, but rather, to fashion a gag for him.

“Pet the boy. Put both reins in one hand and pet him on his neck. He’ll be your devoted and humble slave.”

“Devoted and humble.” Alice carefully arranged the reins and leaned forward slightly to pet the animal’s neck.

“Tell him.”

“Good boy, Waltzer,” Alice said softly. “Very dear, good boy.”

“Well done. Now take me home, Alice, and don’t spare the horse.”

She actually nudged a little with her seat and steered the gelding on a direct course for the larger mounting block, then halted him right alongside of it.

“Oh, well done, indeed. And off we go.”

“Exactly, how?” Alice kept her eyes forward, because she’d done well so far by not looking at the ground. “I know how to do it with a stirrup, but this…”

“It’s simple. Waltzer will hold absolutely still while I get off, and then you will let me assist you.”

“How do you know he’ll hold still?” In the time it had taken Alice to state her question, Ethan had slid over the horse’s tail, landed on the ground, and hopped to the top of the ladies’ mounting block.

“Rest the reins on his neck, Alice. He won’t budge, since he understands his exertions are done.”

Alice put the reins down and tried to breathe. Bad things could happen during a dismount. Awful things. “Ethan, please get me off this animal.”

“Arms around my neck,” he coached. “Hold tight, and I’ll lift you out of the saddle on three.” Except the scurrilous varlet lifted on “one,” and Alice was on her feet, standing in his embrace, before she could even close her eyes in dread.

“See?” Ethan smiled down at her. “You’re safe and sound, Waltzer is dutifully catching a nap, and all is well.”

“Oh, Ethan.” She slumped against him, needing the physical support—surely she was entitled to that? “That was awful. That was the worst… I can’t…” She huffed out an enormous sigh, feeling lighter and looser than she had in years—despite the trembling in her knees. “It wasn’t awful. It wasn’t awful at all. You’ll give Waltzer a treat?”

“Waltzer is given a regular ration of oats for his efforts. I’m interested instead in the treats that would appeal to you.”

His smile was approving and genuine, almost tender. Alice was about to go up on her toes and seize for herself a sample of the treat she most desired when a patrician voice called out from the back of a large black horse over by the arena gate.

“Greetings, all. Have I come at a bad time?”