The Earl's Secret

Then there was that fingertip-kissing business. Had the seductive tingles racing up her arm been unintended? Probably. Christopher was a man accustomed to—and obviously very good at—arousing such feelings in women. But he no doubt had gone through the motions automatically. She could picture him bussing the plump hand of an octogenarian duchess, then turning unconcernedly away as she swooned. All in a day’s work for a handsome earl, what?

Although Jennifer’s head told her the feelings he’d left her to sort out meant nothing, her heart wouldn’t cooperate. Now is the worst time to complicate your life, she told herself.

She had to protect her own and her mother’s financial security. That was her first priority, and it meant working long hours to pay off the last of the debts her father had dumped on them before her mother finally divorced the rogue. It would be nice to have a man in her life, yes. But none she’d ever met could guarantee her the security she needed. And she’d be damned if she let one come between her and the financial well-being she needed!

Jennifer thought about her father, then about Christopher. The only type of male worse than a womanizer with a penchant for gambling was a playboy who threw money away on extravagant clothes, cars and parties for his friends. And he lived on another continent! Imagine the weeks of separation, wondering if he was spending his last pound or sleeping with another woman while they were apart. Even if he was faithful to her, imagine the money wasted on long-distance calls and airfare.

Getting hung up on someone as sexy and charming as the earl of Winchester—who lived in an honest-to-goodness castle, raced the length of polo fields astride wild-eyed ponies and made women weak-kneed at the touch of his lips…that would be the worst mistake of her life.

Stop it! Jennifer ordered herself as she shakily gripped the iron rail outside the bleak stone walls of Hollyrood. Why on earth was she thinking like this? She had spent exactly ninety minutes in the company of Christopher Smythe. She knew next to nothing about the man, and here she was daydreaming an already-doomed relationship with him! She must be losing her mind.

At the end of the day, Jennifer made sure that everyone in her charge was well fed and settled into their respective rooms at the stately Caledonia on Princes Street. Bringing her maps and brochures with her, she took the lift down to the hotel pub and found a seat in a quiet corner. There would be no more mistakes made on this trip! With a determined little cough, she unfolded the city street map of Edinburgh.

“Good idea,” a deep voice stated from nearby.

Jennifer looked up, startled. “What are you doing here?” She grinned at Christopher, her insides quivering with pleasure at seeing him again, even as an inner voice whispered, Don’t you dare get all wobbly inside!

“Business,” he said quickly. “Need a second opinion on those maps?”

She laughed. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt, although we’ll be walking most of the time tomorrow. I don’t know what happened today. I never get lost, honest. If my mother ever found out she’d have a fit.”

“Then we won’t tell.” He winked at her and pulled out the chair beside hers. Leaning over the table, he scrutinized another of her maps, the one showing Scotland’s highways, one of which she’d highlighted in bright orange.

“Is Donan the real name of your castle?” she asked. She had noticed earlier that he pronounced it as a Scot would: Dun-in. “I couldn’t find it on the Historic Registry.”

“It’s taken from the Gaelic, the name of an ancient clan. I haven’t yet been able to qualify for the registry, because of its condition.” He pointed with one long finger at a symbol on the map. “Here was today’s problem. You should have waited for the next exit off the A7, just after the loch. Then you would have been fine.”

“I know, I figured that out when we stopped for lunch. I really do feel foolish. By the way, I owe you for covering for me. Although most of the folks in my little crew are very nice, I have one problem couple.” The rest of the group was easy.

She had four couples, three of which were married and seniors. The other couple was in their thirties and evidently had been dating for several years. The remaining two clients were a single man in his forties, who was tracing his genealogy, and a fiftyish woman who seemed to enjoy the security of traveling with a group.

He frowned. “What kind of problem?”

“They’re never satisfied with anything, or at least they pretend to be upset. I have a feeling they’re building up to ask for their money back. We guarantee satisfaction with all our excursions.”

“Surely just one little slip like getting lost for an hour shouldn’t cost the entire holiday.”

Jennifer shrugged. “You’d be surprised. Some people sign up for trips knowing they can get at least half their fees refunded if they complain loudly enough. It’s a scam of course. But sometimes it doesn’t pay to let them drive away new business, especially if you’re a small company like us. You just have to take the loss.”

Christopher shook his head.

She studied him. The irises of his eyes were a darker, more intense blue here in the pub. She sensed a serious side to him that hadn’t been as evident at Donan. He had a habit of locking his jaw when he was displeased with something—like the unfairness of con-artist travelers and thoughtless guests who dared touch his treasures.

“You’re not just in this hotel by coincidence, are you?” she asked intuitively.

He looked up from his glass of whisky. It was half-gone, and she suddenly suspected that, whether or not business had brought him to Edinburgh, he had been waiting here for her. The thought sent a warm, liquid shiver through her body.

“How did you find me?” she asked.

“It wasn’t difficult. When you climbed in your van to leave, a brochure from the Caledonia lay on the passenger seat. I figured the odds were good you’d be staying here tonight. If I hadn’t found you in here, I would have called up to your room.”

A pleasantly nervous chill rippled up her spine. “And did you have any particular reason for tracking me down?”

He studied her, his lips firmly closed, his expression verging on severe, brooding. It took him a long time to answer. “I guess I just wasn’t ready for the tour to end.”

“You were the one who said the other rooms in the castle were off-limits.”

Slowly his mouth relaxed into a wicked smile. “Not that tour.”

She could feel the heat filling her cheeks like the diluted pink wash from a watercolorist’s brush when touched to paper. The way Christopher was looking at her felt dangerous, in a delicious sort of way. She told herself that her reaction was because she was so far from home, on foreign territory…alone. And she wasn’t accustomed to receiving propositions, if that was what this was, from castle-owning aristocrats. How many women were?

Jennifer looked down to find Christopher’s hand pressed warmly over hers on the tabletop. Desperately she tried to force her brain to function, tried to come up with something witty and sophisticated enough to impress an earl. Her mind was a maddening blank. A second later, it kicked into gear, only to deliver a troubling question. Does he have a girlfriend? She had seen his photo with a long-legged, spa-polished woman in that London tabloid. Had his companion been more to him than a simple date?

“Does this sudden silence mean the tour has ended?” he asked at last.

She smiled brightly and aimed for a politic line. “If you ever visit Maryland, be sure to drop in on us in Baltimore. I’ll show you the sights.”

“Those aren’t the sights I’m most interested in seeing.” His eyes. His eyes were impossible to escape. They drew her in. She tried to pull her hand away, but his fingers closed tightly around hers. Her pulse throbbed in her throat.

“Let’s try this again, luv.” The last word, which sounded more Liverpuddlian-Beatles than upper-crust British, took her by surprise. Christopher leaned across the table and looked into her startled eyes. “No more beating around the bush. How about going out to dinner with me tonight?”

“I’ve already eaten.” The words tumbled out of her mouth before she had a chance to consider whether or not she wanted to fib herself into a second meal.

“We could go somewhere for dessert and coffee,” he suggested.

Jennifer stared down at their clasped hands. She was beginning to be able to read him, which was a little scary after knowing him for so short a time. What she understood from his voice and body language was that Christopher Smythe wasn’t going to take no for an answer. And if he refused to listen to the word, where food was concerned, what did that tell her about his willingness to understand and honor her wishes when more was at stake than overeating? Her only countermeasure was to seek neutral ground, fast.

She looked around at the dark wood paneling, bronze sconces casting their golden light, the beautifully aged leather banquets, the other guests conversing in hushed tones—a classically masculine setting, very British, very earlish. Ver-r-r-y Christopher. But all that mattered to her was that it seemed safe here.

“I have an early morning tomorrow,” she said. “Why don’t we just stay here and talk.”

He appeared neither pleased nor disappointed. “Fine. What will you have to drink?”

“A white zinfandel, please.”

His hand barely raised above the level of the table before the steward appeared beside him. Moments later a glass of pale pink wine was set before her. Jennifer took a few cautious sips, and mellow warmth enfolded her.

Christopher settled back in his chair and observed her over the amber liquid in his own glass. “Why Baltimore? Why do you live there when you’ve obviously seen so many exciting cities?”

“I live in Baltimore because it’s my home,” she said simply, then came back at him. “Why do you live in Scotland when you’re English?”

He seemed startled by her question, and the muscles in his jaw visibly tightened. “I live in Scotland because I like it,” he responded brusquely.

Not satisfied, she set her wineglass on the table between them. “That’s no answer. Everyone chooses to do things because, for one reason or another, they find them appealing.”

“Not always. Sometimes we act in a certain way because we have no choice.”

“Everyone has choices.”

“Not always,” he snapped. Then, as if he thought he might have spoken too harshly, Christopher reached out for her hand again and rubbed his thumb soothingly over the back of it, creating a warm spot. “Life sometimes surprises you,” he said enigmatically.

Jennifer decided the level of tension in the air dictated a change of subject. She asked the first question that came to mind. “What are your favorite London restaurants?”

He seemed to welcome the new direction of their conversation. As he spoke, his voice grew less tense. She watched his thumb trace hot little circles over the back of her hand, entranced by the motion as much as by his touch.

At one point she caught a glimpse of him in the mirror beside them, and she thought to herself—though it didn’t seem logical at the time—this is a tormented man. But how could that be when a man had so much money, so many friends, so many opportunities in life? She dismissed the thought as overly romantic, far too Jane Austen: the lord, the castle, the dark moods.

When she turned back to face him, he was studying her and had stopped speaking.

“What?” she asked.

He shrugged. “You’re so pretty and so American.”

She didn’t know how to react to the compliment, or was it a subtle dig? She sipped her wine and decided to address the second part of his statement. “What’s that mean—to be so American?”

“You have an optimistic, nothing-ventured-nothing-gained attitude.” His eyes still seemed shadowed with sadness, regret or resentment…but they warmed as he looked at her. “You’d be fun to be around, Jennifer. You would make me laugh, and I would tease you until you blushed, everywhere.” His glance dropped suggestively to the front of her blouse.

She was so shocked, she didn’t know how to answer. But his gaze created a lovely pool of heat in her center. She liked it. Liked all of the sensations, even though some of them might be risky. Nevertheless, when Christopher brought his eyes up along her throat to her face, she met and held them with her own.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’d really like to get to know you, too. But I’m working for as long as I’m in England, and I’ll have to leave soon.”

“Yes,” he said. It was the only time she remembered hearing a single word sound wistful. He lifted his glass to her. “Here’s to missed chances, luv.”

Two

Jennifer decided to take her breakfast alone the next morning. Room service was a small luxury she felt justified allowing herself. She needed time, a telephone and no interruptions to complete her plans for the remaining days of the trip. Just as the tray with her breakfast arrived, the telephone rang. She tipped the waiter and dashed across the room to answer.

“Good morning! I was hoping I’d catch you before you left for the day.”

“Christopher?” Her heart raced at the rich timbre of his voice. Her fingers threaded through the coils of the telephone cord, twisting them tighter. She’d lain awake all night wondering if she’d done the right thing by brushing him off.

“Did you sleep well last night?”

“Absolutely,” she lied energetically. “Was the drive back to Donan very bad in the rain?” It had started to pour at ten o’clock, just after he had left her.

“I ended up staying in the city at a friend’s place.”

She couldn’t help wondering about the gender of that friend, but immediately told herself it was none of her business. A man like the earl undoubtedly had social connections in most every city in Europe. Some were bound to be with attractive and wealthy women—a good match for him.

“My business is going to keep me in Edinburgh longer than I’d expected,” he continued. “But I won’t be able to accomplish much of anything until the afternoon. I wondered if you’d mind my tagging along this morning. I’d make myself useful, help out with the driving if you like, give a running narration as we move around the city.”

“That would be nice,” she admitted as calmly as possible, while her heart hammered out a wild tattoo in her chest.

“That isn’t to say you didn’t do a beautiful job at Donan.” His voice slid lower, became subtly intimate. “You are a remarkably insightful woman, for one so young.”

She looked down at her fingers, which were hopelessly snarled in the cord, and decided she must be imagining the change in tone. “You can only get so much out of books,” she said quietly. “A person has to live in a country to really understand it. You have that advantage over me.”

For a moment neither of them spoke. Then he seemed to rouse himself at the other end of the line.

“What time shall we meet?” he asked.

“Nine o’clock in front of the hotel. If you like, you can arrange for the valet to bring the van around.”

“That I’ll do, lass,” he said, in a fine imitation of a Scottish brogue that set her grinning.

Jennifer hung up the phone. Her hand was trembling, and the nape of her neck felt damp with perspiration. Why did he affect her so strongly?

She had met plenty of interesting men, but she wasn’t prone to being swept away by the mere touch of a hand or flash of blue eyes. Was she afraid of that dark inner core of him? No, she answered herself. Christopher seemed to be a man with principles. If he’d been truly dangerous, the gossip columns would have had even more ruthless comments on his flamboyant lifestyle.

So, yes, he was flirtatious, but she was certain he would never attempt to force her to do anything against her will. Was he the sort of man who got his kicks seducing female tourists? She’d run into that type before—identified, cataloged and dismissed them without hesitation.

No, she decided, Christopher Smythe was different. But what made him different and what he wanted from her—those were the real questions.

Despite her preoccupation with the earl, by nine o’clock Jennifer had finished drafting her plans for the day, selected the appropriate maps and guide notes she’d written up before leaving Maryland and called each of her clients’ rooms to make sure they were ready to set out. True to his word, Christopher was waiting beside the rental van when she stepped outside, followed by most of her group.

“Oh, it’s that handsome young groundskeeper from the castle!” one of the women twittered.

“Dashing, dear. Here in Britain, all the young men are dashing,” another woman corrected her. “You know he looks an awful lot like that young lord we saw in that newspaper in the hotel lobby.”

“I wonder what he’s doing trailing after us to Edinburgh,” Mr. Pegorski commented, waggling his eyebrows in Jennifer’s direction.

She pretended not to see or hear any of them. “Everyone, this is Christopher Smythe from the castle yesterday. You remember him, of course. He’s agreed to give us a local’s view of the city.”

Jennifer could feel the estrogen level rise in her group as the females ogled Christopher. The rest of their party arrived then, so they all piled happily into the van and started out for an overview of the city.

While Christopher drove, she sat beside him in the passenger seat and studied his profile—elegant, but purely masculine, she decided. His features were powerfully drawn; his blue eyes made the more vivid by the dark lashes outlining them. A very faint scar ran close to the hairline along one temple, and she wondered if it had been caused by a polo injury. The article she’d seen mentioned his aggressiveness on the polo field. From the little she knew of the game, it was a rough sport requiring strength and daring. His hair was a dark, glistening brown that verged on black when out of direct sunlight.

She admired his speaking style, which combined a touch of dry humor with crisp intelligence, all wrapped up in an English accent she found irresistible. But over all of this was a veneer of a darker emotion—like mahogany laid over paler oak—disappointment or sadness, or something fragile she couldn’t yet define.

“Do you have family around here?” she asked between stops along their route.

He seemed startled by her question, then glanced sideways at her, still keeping an eye to the road as they sped along. “My father still lives in Sussex. I have two brothers.” His voice was clipped, to the point.

I’ll wager they’re both as devilishly handsome as you, she thought. Were they as terse and secretive, too?

“Then your brothers live in Sussex as well?” she asked.

“In Sussex? With my father?” He choked on an involuntary laugh. The taut muscles in his face relaxed enough to allow a thin smile. “My father isn’t the kind of man who encourages his family to remain close to home. As soon as we were old enough to be away from our nanny, he shipped us off to boarding school. None of us have gone back for more than the occasional holiday.”

“How old were you then…when you first went away to school?”

“Six.”

“Six years old!” She knew that the upper-class English put great stock in educating their youth away from home, but a six-year-old seemed hardly more than a baby to her. “Didn’t your mother object?”

The corners of Christopher’s lips pinched grimly inward, and she knew she’d said something terribly wrong. But before she could apologize, he was speaking in that incredibly dry, unemotional way she was beginning to suspect might be his form of self-protection. “Apparently, her sons’ welfare wasn’t at the top of her list of priorities. She left my father and the three of us before I turned a year old.”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, shocked at the very idea of a woman abandoning three sons and a husband.

“It’s all right. I remember nothing of her.” The chill in his words was a thing she could almost touch. His pain showed in the fine lines around his eyes and mouth, despite his unemotional denial. She didn’t know what to say to comfort him, but she sensed she had to keep him talking or risk losing the one chance she might have of understanding him. For some reason, that seemed important to her.

“Are you and your brothers close?” she asked hastily.

It took a moment for him to gather his thoughts and answer this time. “Not in any way you might expect. My oldest brother, Thomas, is an advisor to the King of Elbia. He lives with the royal family, travels with them, rarely returns to England. He recently married an American woman and inherited a gaggle of youngsters in the bargain.” He chuckled affectionately. “Thomas has his hands full now, but seems happy as a clam in an ocean of mud. Our middle brother is Matthew. I think he took our mother’s desertion the hardest. He was three years old when she left, and swears he remembers her vividly. As soon as he turned twenty-one and collected his inheritance, he lit out for America. He’s been there ever since, running an import business.”

She waited for Christopher to go on. Something in the halting way he had spoken told her that he wasn’t accustomed to talking about his family. When he didn’t continue on his own, she prodded gently. “Do you often travel to visit your brothers?”

“I have obligations here,” he said, casting her a sharp, sidelong glance.

That was it then. He was ending the conversation.

“I see,” she murmured. But she didn’t, not really. What was more important than family?

Elbia, she mused, as her clients chatted happily among themselves in the seats behind her. She tried to envision a simple map of Europe. Wasn’t that the tiny alpine country about the size of Monaco? How difficult could it be for a man with Christopher’s means to jet across the continent for a quick visit with his brother? Traveling to the States was a little more difficult but surely the business that kept him tied down in Scotland would allow for a few weeks off now and again to see his own family.

“What are your plans for the rest of the day?” Christopher asked after a long silence.

“Edinburgh Castle, of course, then Queen Mary’s Bathhouse and the Royal Mile for shopping and house tours.”

He glanced up at the sky. “The rain should hold off long enough.”

She nodded, then let a grin slip out.

“What is it?” he asked, glancing at her curiously as he pulled over a lane to let a lorry pass.

“Queen Mary of Scots. Legend has it, she bathed in white wine and goat’s milk. I wonder if that mixture really is good for the complexion.” She held her arm out to inspect it as the truck sped past them.

“I’ll bring the wine and milk, you try it out and—” he lifted a dark brow aimed toward the dip in her neckline “—I shall be the judge.”

She laughed, thinking she wouldn’t put it past him. Stand ready for inspection, miss! He’d insist on seeing every inch of her. Fat chance she’d let him!

Christopher accompanied Jennifer’s group to the castle and sixteenth-century cottage known as the queen’s bathhouse, which, more likely, had been a simple summerhouse or dovecote. He then asked her to drop him off at his car and arranged to meet them after lunch.

Jennifer watched him drive off in a bottle-green Jaguar, weaving expertly through the noonday traffic. She promised herself that when he returned she would find out one more thing about him. Just one more thing before she let herself like him any more than she already did.

So far, she had been careful. She had done nothing wrong. It was all just talk and a little flirting, the way strangers do—particularly when one is from out of town. Talk, harmless glances, a few touches. That was all.

But she felt in her bones that he wanted more. And, in truth, so did she. She wanted him to run his thumb in those little circles on the back of her hand. She wanted him to call her “luv,” in that playful, un-aristocratic, bad-boy way. She wanted him to touch her where his eyes had suggestively rested as they discussed Queen Mary’s baths.