An Unexpected Earl (Lords of the Armory #2) - Anna Harrington Page 0,7

you…

If Freddie’s recent behavior was any indication, the threat was very real.

She pressed her hand to her belly. Just thinking about it made her sick! But she hadn’t dared speak to Freddie yet. What good would it have done? She loved her brother and knew him well, which meant she knew his character. Moral fortitude, unfortunately, wasn’t part of it. If she confronted him, he’d simply deny everything, accuse her of meddling where she didn’t belong, or outright lie, just as he had to his prefects at school whenever he’d been caught breaking the rules and to Papa whenever he’d done far more than that. Worse, because if he suspected that she was stirring up trouble—or if he had done something illegal that he didn’t want her to discover—he had the power to close down her charity shop.

She could never let that happen. The war widows who worked there depended upon her for their livelihood, and she depended upon them for giving her a reason to rise from bed every morning. Her throat tightened. What would she have left to live for if she lost her charity?

Eventually, she would have to confront Frederick, she knew. But not yet. Not until she had more facts, at least enough to force him into telling the truth. Even if it meant having to dress like a courtesan to hold anonymous conversations about blackmail in order to get them.

Sweet heavens, how had her life come to this?

“So why were you running?”

“I—” She bit down the sting of guilt at lying to the woman who had been with her since she was eighteen. “Frederick saw me.”

A new string of Irish curses poured from Maggie, even more creative than the ones before. “Did he recognize you?”

“He only saw me in my mask, only for a moment.” And mostly as she was running away. “No, I’m certain he didn’t.”

But the other man who’d seen her had recognized her immediately. Brandon Pearce… Good heavens, what was he doing there?

It had been over a decade since they’d last seen each other. Since that horrible night of her sixteenth birthday when he’d come to her bedroom, crawling in through her window just as he’d always done since they were children to give her his present—a little gold locket that he’d saved up all his money to buy. The same night when he’d come close to taking her innocence. Very close. She would have let him, too, if Papa hadn’t burst in upon them.

Even now her cheeks heated with the humiliation of it, their friendship abruptly over and both of them banished—Amelia to school in Scotland by her father and Pearce into the army by his cousin, the Earl of Sandhurst, who’d called in favors to quickly purchase an officer’s commission for him. Neither man wanted the scandal that would befall both their families if anyone learned of what happened. Or risk the possibility that it might happen again.

Her father’s plan had worked. Not one mention of scandal was ever raised about the two of them, and they never saw each other again.

Until tonight. When the sight of him had ripped Amelia’s breath away.

Twelve years… Could it truly have been that long since they’d last been together? But her heart knew it was so. The foolish thing had kept count.

He’d changed over the years. The gangly eighteen-year-old she’d known had become a man, leaving behind almost no trace of the boy he’d once been. Yet she would have known him anywhere despite the fine wrinkles that age now crinkled in the corners of his blue eyes and the wide breadth of the muscular shoulders that army life and hard work had given him. Gone, too, was the restlessness she remembered, transformed now into a confidence that radiated from him like his rich scent of port and cigars. So heady and powerful, and just as masculine.

When he’d approached her tonight, she felt as if time had folded in upon itself and those years apart had never passed. The ache in her belly came so swiftly and fiercely at seeing him that for one excruciating moment she’d been transported back to Birmingham, when her world hadn’t yet crumbled around her. When she’d still believed that she would always be with him.

An earl and a brigadier—wouldn’t her father have laughed his wig off to know that this was what Pearce had made of himself, against all odds?

But then, maybe not. Gordon Howard had never possessed a strong sense of humor. Nor did he hold