Her Christmas Earl Read online

  “I hardly think you care about my opinion,” she said in a repressive tone.

  “I’m a sensitive soul.”

  “Clearly,” she responded just as drily. “Now unlock the door.” She paused and added a sugary edge to the next word. “ Please.”

  He laughed, wondering why her bossiness charmed him. He didn’t in general like managing females, but something about this small, confident woman touched the heart he’d imagined immune to tenderness. “Did that hurt?”

  Another of those delightful, dismissive snorts. “You’ve had your fun, my lord.”

  Not by a long shot, my dear. “Believe me, Miss Sanders, unless I can open this door, nothing can save you from the consequences of your foolishness. It seems fortune doesn’t favor the brave.”

  He should be in a blind panic about what might happen if they were discovered together in such a compromising situation. Somehow, he…wasn’t.

  “This isn’t funny.”

  “I’m not laughing.” He paused. “You’re most welcome to search me if you believe I have a key.”

  Her faint gasp made him wonder if she too relived that searing moment when she’d touched him. “The door’s really stuck?”

  “It’s really stuck.”

  He heard the faint rustle of her plain dark blue dress, the same dress she’d worn sitting across the table from him at dinner. Her expression had been critical as she’d observed her overbearing cousin’s attempts to captivate him. Caroline had been almost as busy as the beauteous Amelia making cow eyes at him.

  When he’d accepted Sir Theodore Liddell’s invitation, he hadn’t realized matchmaking lay on the horizon. Although damn it, he should have. He was hardly a green boy when it came to ambitious parents.

  Beside him, the doorknob rattled. Miss Sanders wasn’t one to give up before she was well and truly defeated. He admired her stalwart soul. He’d mocked her bravery in sneaking into his room to steal her sister’s letter, but it was a damned gallant act. An act that, unless they were very lucky, would have major repercussions.

  As she moved, he caught a drift of her scent. Like Philippa Sanders, it was an intriguing mixture of tart and sweet. Lemon soap. And something warmer and earthier.

  He couldn’t let her continue battling with the door. Already she breathed in frantic little gasps. He placed his hand over hers. There was that same shock of connection that he’d felt when she flattened her palm on his bare chest. “Do you believe me now?”

  “Yes.” She sounded young and frightened, not at all like the assertive miss who had demanded the letter’s return. “This is such a disaster. We can’t say here alone. What if someone finds us?”

  Chapter Two

  ERSKINE DIDN’T EVEN consider sugarcoating his response. “We’ll find ourselves in the middle of an almighty scandal.”

  “Please…please try and get the door open.”

  Her shaky request tugged at his heart. No, she didn’t sound at all like the imperious chit so keen to put him in his place. Of course she was frightened. He was a stranger and he could imagine what exaggerated stories she’d heard about his amorous exploits. Hell, even without exaggeration, the truth was bad enough to terrify an innocent.

  This tiny room wasn’t his preferred venue for flirtation, but up to this point, unrepentant devil he was, he’d enjoyed himself. More, he hated to admit, than he had in years.

  But because of that barely concealed fear in her voice, he accepted that he must make some genuine attempt to break free. With a muffled sigh, he stepped back, braced himself, and plowed his shoulder into the solid oak door.

  Then bit back a decidedly unheroic groan.

  Hartley Manor had been built for a more warlike age. It was designed to withstand trebuchets and cannons. A mere human shoulder, no matter how enthusiastically applied, hardly rattled the latch. All Erskine got for his trouble was a bruised arm.

  Although Miss Sanders didn’t speak, he felt her desperate hope that he’d get them out. Only that made him apply himself twice more to battering at the door. With equally disappointing results.

  “It’s useless.” Miss Sanders paused, and for the first time, he heard a trace of warmth. “But thank you for trying. I can’t imagine this is your idea of the nicest way to spend Christmas Eve either.”

  She’d think he was mad if he told her that right now he couldn’t think of another person he’d rather have with him. Was he getting old? He was only twenty-eight, but this last year or so, the parade of decadent pleasures had begun to pall. As a younger man, he’d enjoyed kicking up his heels in London and shocking his straitlaced and tyrannical father back in Scotland. But since the old man’s death two years ago, Erskine had a grim feeling that his hell-raising smacked of going through the motions. Nothing in ages had compared to the piquant thrill of knowing that he and Philippa Sanders were alone together—and that at last he might discover what lurked beneath her serene shell.

  “Someone will come and get us.”

  Her laugh was hollow, but he admired her ability to squeeze amusement, however bleak, from their dilemma. He heard a faint bump as she slumped against the wall beside him. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “Odds are that it will be my valet Mills. He’s the soul of discretion.” With a master of such rackety reputation, Mills had to be.

  “Does he wait up for you?” She sounded a little brighter. “Perhaps he’ll check soon.”

  Erskine slid to the carpeted floor and leaned his head against the recalcitrant door. He extended his legs until his feet bumped the opposite wall. Stupidly he hated to disappoint her. Absurd as it was, she awoke a faint chivalry in his black soul. “I gave him the night off.”

  “Oh.”

  More rustling. Then something soft dropped across his lap. “What’s this?”

  “A coat. It’s getting colder.”

  It was. And he wasn’t dressed for a winter night. He’d been in the process of preparing for bed when he’d caught his little burglar. It was yet another sign of his jaded mood that he’d forsaken the drunken buffoons in the dining room and come upstairs to sleep.

  “Very sporting of you, Miss Sanders.” He slipped the coat over his shoulders. The wool was scratchy, but he appreciated the immediate warmth. “Considering that my arrogance in trying to teach you a lesson got us into this trouble.”

  “You meant well.”

  He almost laughed. Her generous response surprised him and sparked a faint gratification. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had said that to him. He couldn’t remember the last time those words had accurately described his motives. The irony was that Miss Sanders was right. He’d been horrified to discover her in his room. And doubly horrified at the salacious pictures invading his mind of how to take advantage of her presence. “You took an awful risk. What if you’d broken into the room of a man with no principles?”

  Another laugh, self-mocking. “I thought I had.”

  His lips flattened. “In that case, you should be scared out of your mind.”

  More rustling and she dropped to sit. The restricted space meant that she ventured dangerously close. “I don’t scare easily.”

  He didn’t bother pointing out that only minutes ago, she’d sounded petrified. “I’ll see you don’t suffer any consequences.”

  “Very noble, my lord, but you’re making promises you can’t keep.” Her words were heavy with discouragement. “If there are consequences, you’ll face them, too.”

  The inevitable price an unmarried man and woman paid for spending an extended period alone together in a private place. Damn it, Miss Sanders sounded considerably more cut up about the prospect of marriage than he did. She spoke as if she’d rather face the hangman than a parson reading the wedding service.

  To Hades with her, women all over England had tried to shackle him. He was rich. He was young. He was healthy—whatever the long-term effects of his rakish life. Society accounted him a dashed eligible fellow.

  Then he reminded himself tha
t he had no right to pique. They were stuck in this damned uncomfortable spot because he’d pretended to lock them in. He should have known that breaking the wicked habits of a lifetime and taking the high moral ground would only cause trouble.

  “Hopefully Mills will find us before long.” Except Mills wasn’t likely to seek his master until morning. He knew better than to intrude upon the Earl of Erskine after midnight.

  “You’re taking this surprisingly well.” She paused. “After all, I’m here uninvited.”

  “You were trying to save your sister from ruin.”

  “Amelia can be a twit. But if she settles to the match, I hope she and Gerald will be happy.”

  Erskine didn’t respond. From what he’d seen of Miss Amelia Sanders, she was, at the very least, an unregenerate flirt. That stripling Gerald Fox would need to be considerably more awake than he currently was if he intended to be master in his own house.

  Erskine’s silence must have conveyed criticism because Philippa spoke with more emphasis. “She’s gone a bit silly with the success of her first season.”

  “It’s your first season, too,” he pointed out.

  “I’m not the kind of girl that society takes to its heart,” she said without resentment.

  Regrettably that was true. Amelia Sanders was considered a diamond of the first water and Erskine was connoisseur enough to admit that the girl was pretty in the conventional fashion. Blond and willowy with big blue eyes holding no more intelligence than a sheep’s. The younger sister, on the other hand, was well outside the common run of debutantes. Hardly surprising that those nincompoops infesting the capital’s ballrooms hadn’t discerned the treasure lurking beneath Philippa’s direct manner.

  He frowned through the darkness. His eyes had adjusted to the stygian gloom, but he’d give a hundred guineas for a candle. “That’s society’s loss.”

  She sat close enough for him to feel how she stiffened in response to his compliment. “Lord Erskine, no need to waste time flirting. I know I don’t meet your standards.”

  She sounded repressive again. Unfortunately for her, he found her scoldings more appealing than another woman’s praise. Besides, he’d much rather hear disapproval than fear in her voice.

  Still, he was annoyed that she dismissed his sincere compliment as a rakish trick. “You’d meet the standards of any intelligent man.” He paused. “Has nobody ever flirted with you before?”

  Another dismissive snort. “I’m considered far too serious for anything as frivolous as flirting.”

  Erskine laughed, enchanted by her dry assessment of the world’s opinion. “If you practiced, my dear Miss Sanders, I suspect you could become alarmingly proficient.”

  “The world mistakes you, my lord.” For the first time, her voice held no wry note. “You’re not the rapacious beast of legend. Instead, I think you might be kinder than you want to admit. You’re trying very gallantly to distract me from our predicament.”

  Heat prickled his neck. When she called him kind, he felt about a thousand years old. Damn it, she must be at least twenty. He wasn’t that much older than she was.

  “Yes.” He paused. “And no. You’re so deuced convinced that nobody notices you.”

  “Nobody does.” Not a hint of self-pity.

  “I did.”

  “Really?” She didn’t bother to hide her skepticism.

  “Really.”

  “You hardly spoke to me.”

  He smiled into the darkness, encouraged to hear she’d paid that much attention. “Whenever I approached you, you regarded me with complete disdain.”

  “I didn’t,” she said, shocked.

  “You don’t approve of me, Miss Sanders.”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  A prickly silence descended and he heard the slide of fabric against the wall as she turned toward him. These soft, hellishly suggestive sounds of her body moving inside her clothing drove him crazy. He wondered if she wore one of his coats, too. The idea was arousing. The urge stirred to cross the mere inches between them and find out. But the memory of her earlier nervousness kept his hands at his sides.

  This was a confounded odd encounter. He couldn’t see Miss Sanders, but every other sense was alive to her. Her scent teased him. Fresh and innocent. And as alluring as Eve to Adam.

  “You must think me odiously judgmental.” Her voice was low.

  He sighed. “I imagine that you listened to a lot of gossip before we met.”

  She shifted again. Dear God, he wished she’d stop doing that. Every time she moved, his restraint battled the urge to touch her. And if he manhandled her, that would only prove she was right to despise him.

  “That makes me sound even worse. Not only am I judgmental, I base my judgments on unreliable public report.”

  He laughed softly, charmed despite increasing discomfort. “You’re awfully hard on yourself, aren’t you?”

  “You have no idea.” Humor warmed her voice. “But you’ve behaved like a gentleman tonight and I apologize for any unfavorable thoughts.”

  “I’m no saint,” he was compelled to point out, much as he hoped to rise in her estimation.

  Heaven help him, what had got into him? He never wanted a woman to think him a better man. He’d devoted his time to women who expected the worst of him, then generally got even less.

  Philippa’s sigh was breathy and alluring. He fought the surging need to seize her in his arms. This tiny room transformed into a torture chamber.

  “I assumed you set out to seduce my sister, but if that was so, you’d never have destroyed the letter. If nothing else, it would make a fine tool for blackmailing Amelia into doing what you wanted.”

  When she paused, he leaned forward. Damn it, moving closer filled his head with her intriguing scent. After tonight, he’d know her among a thousand just by her fragrance.

  “And you haven’t been angry with me. And you should be.”

  He admitted the truth, even if it made him feel like an awkward schoolboy instead of a worldly man with a history of too many lovers. “I always wanted the chance to talk to you.”

  The disbelief in her short laugh roused another of those unwelcome pangs in his chest. She was so convinced that she was of negligible interest. Erskine developed a hearty dislike for her overbearing mother and birdbrain sister.

  “For a man renowned for his rakish ways, you’re not very rakish.”

  “It’s Christmas Eve. I’m taking a rest from wickedness.” If she could see into his mind, she’d know that was far from true.

  She sighed again, more heavily this time. “Surely it’s well after midnight.” She paused. “If you’d stayed downstairs as usual, I’d have been in and out of your room and you’d be none the wiser.”

  Unworthy pleasure flooded him. “So you’ve been watching me, too.”

  Another of those dry laughs. “You’re very noticeable. You’re the handsomest man I’ve ever seen.” She stopped on a gasp and he heard her squirm with embarrassment. Her damned wriggling would be the death of him. “Oh, no. Shoot me now.”

  He bit back a laugh, although her artless sincerity touched him. Sensual curiosity stirred. He was still a rake, no matter what good influence the lovely Miss Sanders exerted on his deplorable character. Could he translate her admiration for his looks into permission to touch?

  Oh, he was a bad, bad man. At Christmas and at every other time of the year.

  A long and bristling silence fell. Then he heard a smothered sound near his shoulder.

  Astonished, he turned in her direction, although he saw nothing through the blackness. “Is that a yawn? Good God, you can’t possibly be bored.”

  Lord above, she was a tonic for his vanity. Yet again, he wondered why he liked her so much. She certainly didn’t exert herself to flatter him. On the other hand, she’d been calm throughout this ordeal. The game would be up immediately if he’d been lumbered with a screaming female. They’d have no chance of avoiding dis
covery if she’d started shrieking like a skinned cat. Not to mention that shrieking was damned wearing on a man’s nerves.

  Another yawn. “You’ll think me the most rag-mannered hoyden in creation.”

  He wanted to tell her she was charming, but he recalled too well how she’d brushed over his last attempt to tell her she was exceptional. “Captivity after midnight with a man of shady reputation tests the bravest lady’s nerves.”

  “I was nervous. I probably should still be.” Another tormenting whisper of fabric as she settled more comfortably. “I was up at dawn to help my aunt with Christmas preparations. I’m awfully tired.”

  He’d lay good money that Amelia had stayed abed until noon. “There’s nothing much we can do except try and get some sleep.”

  A blatant lie. He could think of a hundred things he’d prefer to do. He chanced sliding a fraction closer. “May I offer my shoulder as a pillow? We should make ourselves as comfortable as we can. We’ll be warmer huddled together.”

  Very gently, expecting her to flinch away, he slid his arm around her straight shoulders and drew her down until her head rested on his shoulder. His heart gave a great thud of joy when she didn’t move away. She wasn’t in one of his coats and the worn merino of her dress was soft to his touch. Nowhere near as soft, he was sure, as her skin. The thought didn’t make him feel any sleepier.

  “We shouldn’t do this,” she whispered, although nobody was within earshot.

  “It’s purely for self-preservation.”

  With her so close, a tantalizing female scent teased his senses. Tentatively so as not to alarm her, he brushed his cheek against her hair. It was as silky and thick as he’d imagined. Miss Philippa Sanders might have a sharp tongue, but she proved a lusciously sweet armful. He tightened his hold, ignoring her half-hearted protest, and rested his head back against the wall.

  However undeserving he might be, Christmas this year had provided glorious gifts.

  Chapter Three

  GRADUALLY PHILIPPA SURFACED from sleep. Beneath her ear, something pounded deep and steady like the ocean upon the shore. Whatever she rested upon was firm and warm. She murmured and rubbed her cheek against her lovely pillow. Lazy pleasure trickled through her as someone rhythmically stroked her hair.