Page 111 of One Night with an Earl

The question took her mind off other, disturbing thoughts. “We have to stop them.”

“Why?”

This simple question, asked in a forthright manner, made her brows pinch together. “Because she is the daughter of Lord and Lady Malvern and Lieutenant Smithfield is…is…”

“Is what? A man beneath her station?”

“Yes. An untitled, younger son of a family in dire need of an heiress. Her parents wouldn’t approve of the match.”

“They love each other.” His voice was a velvet murmur.

His words made her chest tighten like a hand had reached inside her chest and squeezed. She stayed silent.

“He makes her happy. Don’t you wish her happiness?”

She whirled to face him. “Of course! But I also understand the harshness of living without means.”

His broad shoulders stiffened beneath his coat, and a flicker of anguish crossed his features. “I can only imagine how you suffered after everything was taken from you. I regret all of it. If you allow me, I want to remedy it now.”

“I want nothing from you, my lord.”

“It’s Oliver. Before I met you, I believed marriage was meant as a business arrangement, a means to an end. My requirements were simple. I wanted a wife who would be an adequate hostess and bear an heir and spare. Nothing more. Affection was not a requirement. It was a duty that the earldom required. And one that I wasn’t even remotely interested in dealing with anytime soon.”

“How very aristocratic.” And cold.

“I knew nothing else from my youth. But then you walked into my life dressed in a scarlet gown and everything changed. I changed.”

She refused to fall under his spell. Her life had taken another unexpected turn, and she would survive and find a way, just as she always had. “We both knew our time together could not last.”

He’d mentioned regret for his family’s sins, not love. She’d fallen helplessly in love with him, and she would settle for nothing less than true love in return. If he devastated her once more, she had no one to blame but herself.

“Ana, please listen.”

She’d find another man. A husband who would give her children. She deserved more than secret meetings at night with a man who could never offer her marriage. It may be a fantasy, her fantasy, but something to give her hope when her future looked bleak from heartache.

A shout from the driver alerted them to activity outside. Ana lifted the tasseled shade to look out the window. She spotted an inn with a conveyance parked outside, but it was a man with a tumble of fair hair who walked inside the inn with the aid of a cane that caused her to reach out for the door handle.

“That’s Lieutenant Smithfield,” she said. “Penelope must be inside!”

…

Ana burst inside the inn with Oliver right behind her. An innkeeper was serving tankards of ale to a group of workmen dressed in corduroy jackets.

“We are looking for a young couple,” Ana said. “A blonde woman and a fair-haired man.”

“Newly married?”

Ana’s eyes widened. She had no idea, but if Penelope and Timothy had spent the night together, then it was best if people believed they were married. She nodded.

“Upstairs. My only occupied room tonight. Will his lordship need a room?” The innkeeper looked from her to Oliver. Despite his disheveled appearance, the earl’s dress and manner proclaimed him a lord of the realm. Did he think she was Lord Drake’s countess or his lover? It didn’t matter either way.

Ana was halfway up the stairs and did not hear Oliver’s shout. She rapped on the wooden door and called out.

“Ana, wait!” Oliver’s booted footsteps sounded close behind.

She pounded once more, and the door swung open. Timothy blocked the doorway. “What in God’s name?” He stopped short when he spotted her. “Miss Gardner? How did you—?”

Ana ignored him and craned her neck to see Penelope sitting on the edge of the bed. She pushed her way past the young soldier to burst into the room.