Ethan: Lord of Scandals

Breakfast had gone well. Alice assured herself of this as Ethan proposed that their discussion of the boys’ lessons be moved from the library to the shady walking path.

“That will serve. After a good meal, one wants activity.”

And almost any time, it seemed one enjoyed having one’s hand on Ethan Grey’s arm, hearing his precise baritone, and catching his cedary scent.

As they stepped onto the path, Alice launched into a discussion of Latin primers.

“Boys don’t find Latin useful at all,” Ethan interjected. “Men like to toss around the occasional apt phrase, and sprinkle their conversation with wise sayings. It’s the only Latin one uses after university, I assure you.”

“You attended?”

“Cambridge.”

“A rebel?”

“Nick went to Oxford.”

She slipped her arm from his and stopped in the shade of an enormous maple. “The earl didn’t even let you attend the same university? What was wrong with your father?”

“He was being protective, or so I tell myself.”

“He was being an ass,” Alice hissed, hand fisting. “If ever there’s a man who could protect himself from unwarranted advances, it’s your dear little brother, particularly by the time he was sixteen or seventeen years old.” She reined in her temper, since she had no business making such pronouncements. “With respect to French, I find the verbal nuances are better—”

Ethan stood quite near her, his expression amused. “You’re very fierce, Alice Portman. I wish the earl were alive so you might blister his ears with your observations.” He took her hand, and there in the lovely morning air, kissed her knuckles, as a knight might kiss the hand of a lady whose favor he wore into the lists.

This flummery provoked a blush and put all thoughts of primers to rout. “I am not fierce, Mr. Grey.”

He smiled at her, likely for resorting to more formal address. And oh, that smile sent common sense gamboling after the errant primers. He was a handsome man in any mood, but distant, reserved, and safe. When he smiled, all the warmth in him was briefly visible, all the dearness that made him fret for his children and for his younger brother.

Maybe even a little for a governess. “I am not fierce,” Alice said again, feeling an awkward confession looming far too closely.

“Will you elaborate on your supposed meekness, Miss Portman? I confess, my own conjectures cannot encompass such a flight.”

He drew her by the hand toward a wooden bench in the dappled shade, and when he seated her, he did not drop her hand. Maybe he sensed the confession as well.

“Nick once told me your youngest sister, Della, is prone to breathing spells.”

“She is.” He seemed to have forgotten that their hands were joined. “They didn’t start until after I left.”

“If I were fierce, I would not be prone to spells when I can’t breathe, I can’t think, and every particle of my mind is filled with dread at my certain and imminent death. I don’t even like talking about such moments, I get so anxious.”

“And you suffered these spells at Belle Maison.”

“Only two,” Alice said, resisting the compulsion to take deeper breaths. She focused instead on the warmth —the improper and comforting warmth—of Ethan’s fingers closed around hers. “Mrs. Belmont was with me, and she knows I’m prone to them, but Nick has seen me through one too, and it’s unusual for me to have two in two weeks.”

“I am making a list, Alice Portman, that starts with megrims, progresses to a bad hip, and includes these breathing spells. You have nightmares too, don’t you?”

He spoke gently, but he knew. Somehow, this great, strapping, self-possessed man knew what it was to be reduced to an animal, cataleptic with fear and pain.

Alice managed a nod.

“I have gone for as long as three years without a spell.” And even longer without discussing this nuisance with anybody. She focused her gaze on the patterns of sunlight and shadow dancing on the grass rather than stare at her hand enveloped in his. “I used to have nightmares.”

Bringing up the topic had put a pinch in her breathing and a knot of unease in her belly. She leaned into him, just a little, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

His arm settled around her shoulders, suggesting her hope had been in vain. “Before you came here, when was the last breathing spell, Alice? And don’t think to dissemble.”

She didn’t dissemble, but she hesitated long enough to take a fortifying whiff of cedar, to concentrate on being this close to a man and wanting to be closer.

Surely that was a good thing? “In my room, after you’d offered me this post and I’d ridden the horse.”

“Because,” he said, his voice close to her ear, “any change brings with it anxiety and loss, even a change for the better. If you have more of these spells, Alice, what shall I do?”

She almost told him she wouldn’t have a spell if he were in the vicinity, but here she was, dragging in slow breaths, even as she was tucked against him.

“It helps to be warm and to put my head down, and it helps if you can talk to me slowly and quietly, exactly as you did. You can’t get anxious, and you shouldn’t be anxious. The worst thing that will happen is I’ll faint for a few minutes, and when I faint, I can breathe.”

He was quiet for a moment, his fingers drawing a pattern on her shoulder.

“But until you faint, you will be certain the entire world is coming to a horrible, unstoppable end. You might do stupid things—run from friends when in unfamiliar surroundings, draw a weapon for no reason, cower in corners gulping for breath and awaiting certain death.”

More awful knowledge. Thank God he didn’t mention the worst of it. She might lose control of bodily functions. She had, for the first two years.

He shifted then and wrapped his arms around her, abandoning all pretense that his proximity was a casual misstep by an otherwise unassuming gentleman. The tension in her belly quieted; the hitch in her breathing eased. Her conscience fell silent as well, because the comfort—the sheer, glorious comfort—of his embrace was too precious.

“It might help too,” he said, “if you put in your mind a picture of something good, something beloved and dear, and when you feel your breathing seize up and you sense your reason is deserting you, you bring that image to your mind and hold it hard.”

She nodded against his shoulder while his hand traced the line of her hair where it smoothed past her ear.

“I will do my best to make sure you are not plagued with frightening thoughts or frightening people, Alice. I’ve found a lot of peace here at Tydings, and despite the racket and mayhem created by my sons, I think it’s still a peaceful place.”

He made no move to shift away, to end this unlooked-for familiarity. Instead, he repeated that caress in a slow, soothing rhythm, until the pleasure of it and the warmth of his body seeped into Alice’s soul.

Her brothers were fiercely devoted, kindhearted men who would do anything for her, and yet she hadn’t allowed them this. When Ethan Grey said he would do his best to shield her from upset, it was as if he took a vow, and the sense of sanctuary Alice felt was a steady flame in an oppressive darkness.

Because he knew. Somehow, without being aware of any of the details of her ordeal, Ethan Grey knew what she had suffered.

* * *

Holding Alice Portman on a shady bench in the middle of a pleasant summer morning, Ethan felt as if he’d stepped off a cliff into some other morning in some other man’s life. Women were no more than fixtures to him. As an adolescent, they’d fascinated him; in his marriage they’d horrified him; and he counted himself lucky to be largely indifferent to sexual desire in recent years. His sisters, Lady Warne, and Leah, they were women to be admired and protected.

As was Alice Portman, maybe more than any of the others, maybe more than all of them put together.

Alice had been wronged somewhere in her past, egregiously wronged, and while Ethan’s mind knew that, his body was taking note of other things: Alice fit in his embrace wonderfully, like she wanted to be there, not like she