Page 41 of Earl Crazy
Lucius came first,his toenails clicking against the floors as he wandered into Kit’s study.
A dozen questions flew through his head as the dog came toward him, but they were all the wrong questions. He should have been asking how Lucius happened to be there, how he’d gotten past the closed front door, and what the dog wanted this time, but instead, only one question echoed in his mind, and it silenced every other.
Where was Tilly?
He didn’t have long to wait. Soft footsteps approached the study door, and she appeared a moment later, the dim light from the hall sconces behind her liming her dark hair and the long, slender lines of her body.
A young lady in her night rail wandering into his home in the middle of the night should have been cause for more surprise than he felt. But they’d been here before, he and Tilly, and no matter how unlikely a thing was, once it happened once, it could happen again.
Or perhaps, just this once, instead of punishing him, fate was gifting him with the one thing he’d come to want more than any other. Because somehow, there was a part of him that had been expecting her.
It didn’t make sense, that she should have crept so thoroughly under his defenses, that a lady he’d met only a month ago could have curled so tightly inside his chest and made a home for herself there.
But he no longer cared whether any of this made sense. He cared only that she was here, and her gaze was onhim.
Only him.
She drifted closer, the white hem of her night rail dragging silently over the carpet, and came to a stop in front of his desk, like a figment from one of his dreams come to life. “Tonight at the ball, you said something about bad luck following the Prestwicks.”
“Yes.”
“Were you referring to the curse?”
Ah, someone had told her, then. It was hardly surprising. Thetonloved to repeat the rumor of the ancient curse that had chased his family from one century to the next. “Yes. I suppose you think I belong in Bedlam, entertaining such foolishness.”
She cocked her head to the side, studying him. Her long, dark hair was bound in a thick braid that dangled down her back, but a few dark chestnut locks had slipped free, the loose waves drifting over her shoulders and curling around her flushed face. What would those wispy curls feel like against his fingertips? Would they be as soft as they looked?
“I don’t think it’s foolish at all, Kit. Have you forgotten what I said about my family attracting scandal?”
It wasn’t what he’d expected her to say, but when had she ever done as he’d expected? He shook his head. “No. Not a word of it.”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe, in any case.” She drew closer, and slipped into the chair across from his desk. “What matters is whetheryoudo. Do you believe you’re cursed to die in a duel?”
Did he? God, he didn’t know. It was so far-fetched, he half-questioned his own sanity for giving it a second thought. “I didn’t used to, but then…” He swallowed.
“Then your uncle was killed in a duel,” she murmured.
“Yes.” He’d meant to end it at that, but somehow his mouth was opening again, words tumbling out. “It happened at Primrose Hill, only a few miles south of here. He took a ball to the stomach. He made it back to Prestwick House, but died soon afterwards in his bedchamber.”
She was quiet for a moment, then she murmured, “That’s why you stay here, in the cottage, rather than in Prestwick House.”
“Yes.” He’d hardly breathed a word about his uncle’s death to anyone, but now the words were tearing loose, as if they’d been there on the tip of his tongue all along, waiting for someone who’d listen.
Waiting forher.
“It wasn’t…a good death.” It was an absurd thing to say. Was any death a good one? But she remained quiet, waiting. “It was excruciating, and bloody, and…and he regretted his life, at the end. Regretted the wrongs he’d done, and the people he’d hurt. I don’t…”
He didn’t want to die as Freddy had, wishing he’d been a better man.
“The curse,” she said, when he remained silent. “I understand it was meant as a punishment for the ruination of a young lady. A young lady who was compromised, and then abandoned.”
“So the rumor goes, yes. I have no idea whether or not the story is true. It’s said to have happened some five or six hundred years ago, but I don’t see why my distant ancestors should have been any different than the more recent crop of Prestwick earls.”
“Kit.” Her voice was gentle. “You can’t mean to say you think youdeserveto be cursed.”
Did he think that? “Not exactly, but—”
“I know you’re meant to be very wicked.” She gave him a faint smile. “But I don’t recall having heard that you’ve compromised and then abandoned any innocent young ladies.”
