The Worthington Wife. Sharon Page

      He still held her gaze. “I’d better go and get dressed,” he said.

      Wiggins, the butler, moved close to him. “If you need to avail yourself of evening dress, I do believe there are clothes belonging to the late earl that would fit you—”

      “I don’t need them. I’ve got my own sets of fancy duds.” The anger seemed to abate. His unhurried, naughty grin dazzled again. “I like dressing like this, because I don’t need to impress anyone with what I wear. I don’t judge a man by his suit. I judge him by his actions.”

      Julia saw her grandmother lift her lorgnette. “Appropriate dress is an action,” the dowager pointed out haughtily.

      “I suppose it is.” Cal turned his stunning smile onto Grandmama. “But I know how to clean up when I want to.”

      Then he was gone. Julia’s heart was pounding. For some reason, the man set her pulse racing.

      “He is awful, isn’t he?”

      The whisper by her ear startled her. Diana stood at her side, and bit her lip. “He’s so rough and uncouth and common. I don’t want to marry him, but at the same time...I can’t help wanting him.”

      “Wanting him?” Julia echoed, confused.

      “You know...in bed.”

      “Diana!” Julia exclaimed in a horrified whisper.

       2

      The American’s Revenge

      As the butler led him to his bedroom, Calvin Urqhart Patrick Carstairs—now the 7th Earl of Worthington—remembered the shock on Lady Worthington’s face when he walked into the drawing room and grinned.

      A month ago, he had been woken from a hangover, hauled out of his bed in his apartment in Paris and told by a pale, nervous young lawyer named Smithson that he had inherited a title, three estates and the contents of four modestly invested bank accounts from the family who thought he wasn’t good enough to lick their boots.

      The lawyer who tracked him down had stammered and blushed throughout the meeting. Cal’s latest model, Simone, had been walking around the room half-naked. She liked to feel sunlight pouring through the window on her bare breasts, and she liked to keep Cal looking at her. The lawyer had looked like his eyes were going to leap out of his head.

      Cal had poured himself a glass of red wine to clear the hangover, then he’d let the lawyer explain his supposed good fortune—

      “The master’s apartments have been prepared, my lord.”

      The snooty tones of the Worthington butler brought Cal back to the present. The man had his hand on the doorknob of the room, but wasn’t opening it. Maybe he hoped to learn it was all a joke before he let Cal across the threshold of the earl’s bedroom.

      It was a double door, so Cal shoved the other door open and walked in.

      His trunk and his case were already in the room. The butler pointed out the bed, probably assuming he had no idea what a bed looked like if it wasn’t a dirty mattress on the floor. The man opened the doors to the bathing room and the dressing room, as well as a small room with large windows where the earl would traditionally retire to prepare his correspondence.

      “It’ll do,” Cal said indifferently.

      Haughtily, the butler tried to look down his nose at Cal—though his eyes came up to Cal’s shoulders. “Is your manservant traveling with you?”

      “Don’t have one,” Cal replied, and he laughed at the look of smug satisfaction on the butler’s face. “I’m bohemian. Wild and uncivilized. If you think you’ve been proven right about me because I don’t have a valet, wait until I start holding orgies in the ballroom.”

      The butler turned several fascinating colors. His cheeks went vermilion, his forehead was puce and he developed an intriguing blend of violet and scarlet on his neck.

      It gave Cal the itch to create a modernist portrait of an English butler, done in severe blocks of color. Red, purple, yellow-green and stark white.

      “When should I tell the countess you will return downstairs?” the man asked, sounding as if his windpipe wasn’t drawing air. “I will send a footman to unpack.”

      “I won’t stay up here long. The footman can finish that job while I’m at dinner.”

      “Very good.”

      The butler turned away and stalked toward the door, but before he reached it, Cal called, “Wait.”

      The man turned, lifting his brow self-importantly.

      “The dark-haired woman with the pretty blue eyes—Julia Hazelton. Was she really my cousin’s fiancée? Anthony died at the Somme, isn’t that so?”

      “Yes. We lost Lord Anthony to that battle. Indeed, Lady Julia Hazelton was his intended. It was a tragedy, devastating to us all.”

      Yeah, Cal imagined it would be, since he was standing here now. “Why is she here?”

      “Her family was invited to dine, and she is a close friend of the family.”

      “Did she find someone else—after my cousin died?”

      “Lady Julia is still unmarried, my lord. If I may ask, what is the purpose to these questions, my lord?”

      “I’m curious,” he answered easily. “And if you’re going to ask a question anyway, don’t waste time asking permission to do it.”

      The butler, whatever the hell his name was, glared snootily. “Very good, my lord.” Bowing, he retreated.

      The door closed behind the butler’s stiff arse.

      For the hell of it, Cal jumped on the bed, landing on his arse in his dusty trousers. He crossed his ankles, his boots on the bed.

      He could just hear how his mother would berate him for that, so he slid off.

      He went into the bathroom to wash and shave. Showing up scruffy had been his plan and it had served its purpose. The Countess of Worthington, his aunt, had looked like she was going to faint. She would expect him to show up at dinner looking equally bohemian and she would expect that he would have the table manners of an orangutan.

      His family had stared at him with suspicion. He’d seen condescension on the countess’s face, resentment on the faces of his cousins. His family had all glared at him, sullen, angry...and scared.

      Lady Julia had been the only one to welcome him. She had been the perfect English lady to him, polite and unflustered.

      Traits he should have hated, given how he knew the aristocracy really behaved. She was likely no different than the rest of them. Masking her disdain behind a polite, reserved smile.

      But she had been nice to him. And his mother would say that she didn’t deserve to have him judge her—and dislike her—just because of who she was.

      Cal opened the bag that contained his straight razor and he filled the small sink with some water—

      Hell. That was freezing cold. He ran the other tap, but it didn’t get any warmer. Cold-water shaving it would have to be.

      He drew the sharp blade along his cheek, slicing off dark blond stubble. He had been looking forward to this ever since that morning when he’d been drinking while the lawyer was outlining the meaning of his new position.

      At first he’d wanted to tell the young lawyer with the slicked-back hair to go back to the damned countess and tell her where she and her snobby family could stick their title.

      They had disowned his father; they had rejected and vilified his mother for the sin of being an honest, decent woman from a poor family. His mother, Molly Brody, had gone into service to