Her Errant Earl by Scarlett Scott Page A

troubled musings. “Your face is suddenly bereft of color.”
    He realized he’d been gripping her arm with too much force,
and that he’d nearly led them into the river itself, so lost had he become in
his tumultuous thoughts. He took a deep, steadying breath, gazing down into his
wife’s sweet, heart-shaped face. She was ineffably lovely, her golden hair
artfully piled beneath a jaunty hat, her lips wide and lush, her eyes greener
than the grass at his feet. His cock surged against his breeches. What the hell
did she do to him?
    “I’m not certain if I am well,” he startled himself by
revealing. Apparently, she had turned him into a milksop.
    “What is it?” She slid a bracing arm around him, leaning
into his side as if he could somehow soak up some of her strength.
    He didn’t know how she could be so open and kind to him
after the beastly way he’d treated her. Even now, he lied to her still, while
she remained unwavering in her belief there was good in him after all. There
wasn’t good in him. If there was, he would have told her the truth right then
and let her choose to leave him as she ought.
    Instead, he was too selfish to let her go. He put an arm
round her cinched waist, holding her to him as if he could forever keep her
there, although he knew he hadn’t the right. “The river is beautiful, isn’t
it?”
    Wide yet shallow, the river cut through the eastern corner
of the Carrington House lands. It was one of the rare treasures of the
property, a place one needed to know existed in order to seek it out. As a lad,
he’d come here often, never imagining one day he’d stand here with his wife.
    “It’s lovely,” Victoria agreed. “But you haven’t answered my
question.”
    She was a persistent little woman, that much was certain. He
sighed, wondering how much he should divulge. No one had ever cared enough to
ask him about his past. “Carrington House is where my mother died,” he shared.
“She’d lost another babe, her fourth or fifth, I think. It was too much the
last time. She took fever and died.”
    “I’m sorry, William.” She turned to him then, taking him
into her arms.
    He held her tightly, burying his face in the soft, sweetly
scented skin of her neck. Her embrace touched a part of him he hadn’t known
existed, filling his chest with warmth and something indefinably odd. He felt
deeply connected to her in that moment, in a way he’d never known with another
person, and it scared the hell out of him. But damn if he didn’t savor it just
the same.
    “Does it hurt you to be here?” she asked quietly.
    “No.” He pressed a kiss to her throat. “Not with you, my
dear. You’ve transformed everything, it seems.” He paused, lifting his head to
look down upon her. Their gazes clashed, hers filled with sincerity and caring.
He tamped down the twinge of conscience that told him to confess everything to her
then and there. “Even me.”
    She reached up, cupping his cheek with her small hand, a
smile brightening her face and rendering her even more beautiful. “Thank you
for confiding in me. I hope I can help you to build new memories here.”
    “A lifetime of them,” he promised her before taking her
mouth in a possessive kiss. He wasn’t about to let anything destroy the
delicate relationship they’d built in the last fortnight. She meant too much to
him to ever let her go now.
    * * * * *
    Pembroke escorted his wife into the drawing room a few hours
later, the enchantment of their morning effectively dashed by the woman perched
on the edge of a striped silk divan. Devil take it, why did fortune’s wheel
always give him such a rotten turn? He swore he had the worst luck in the
history of misfortune.
    They had returned from their heavenly ride to the sight of a
foreign carriage in the drive and news that they had an unexpected and most
unwanted guest. Lady Jane Strathmore, a lonely widow of the accommodating
variety, had arrived. He knew of the woman, had danced and flirted