Anyone But the Earl

Book 1: The Whitford Crew

by Irene Davis

Genres: American Romance; Gilded Age Romance; Victorian Romance

Synopsis

A headstrong heiress...
Daughter of a wealthy New York family, Octavia Sewell is on track to be the next American heiress married into the British aristocracy. Her mother is thrilled—Octavia is not.

An unwanted earl...
The Earl of Brackley is a detestable bore, and there are much more interesting prospects among the rowing friends of Octavia's brother.

...and a scandal in the making!
Octavia has a plan to make herself unmarriageable, and she's determined to pick her own partner for the endeavor. But who knew that offering your virginity to a man was quite so awkward an endeavor?

Release date: April 16, 2019

Publisher: Skookum Creek Publishing

Print pages: 324

Content advisory: attempted sexual assault, toxic parent

Sample

Tavi would dearly have loved to slam the heavy oaken door of her family’s Fifth Avenue brownstone, then run up the stairs and slam the door of her bedroom as well. Instead, she stood calmly, refraining from fidgeting with the buttons on her gloves, while the butler closed the door with an unhurried and elegant movement.

“I trust your evening has been agreeable, miss,” Hornaday said as she handed over her wrap.

“Of course,” Tavi said, lying pleasantly. “Just a bit of a headache. My mother will be back soon. Is anyone else at home?”

“Mr. Sewell is at his club,” Hornaday said. “Master August is in the library.”

“Thank you, Hornaday.”

The butler nodded and withdrew, leaving her in the cool stillness of the front hall. Outside, the late summer streets of New York still sweltered in the evening, the stench of sunbaked garbage seeping into the well-swept avenues where the Four Hundred made their homes. Inside the brownstone, the air was sweetly scented by large vases of pale pink tea roses.

Tavi peeled off her gloves and flexed her fingers. All the trouble she’d gone through to convince her mother to return to the city from Newport before the summer season was entirely over, and the dratted Lord Brackley had followed her! No doubt her mother had told him they were leaving and had been the instrument for his sudden appearance at Mrs. Paxton’s as well.

She caught sight of her scowling face in the large gilt-framed mirror at the base of the stairs. She was also mangling the delicate kid gloves. She smoothed them with her fingers. There was no one to see, however, so she bared her teeth and growled at herself in the mirror. She would have liked to growl at her mother, or the earl, but such things weren’t done.

The doorbell rang. Tavi straightened quickly. She’d barely been home five minutes—surely her mother hadn’t followed her so quickly! She wanted to be in bed and feigning sleep before her mother returned. She’d been depending on Mrs. Paxton to keep her mother occupied for at least half an hour, possibly longer.

Or had Lord Brackley come after her to continue their conversation? The very last thing she wanted was a private interview with the man. Should she run up the stairs to her room? Whoever it was would probably spot her flight. She moved down the hall toward the library before Hornaday reappeared to answer the bell.

As she approached, however, a loud burst of laughter indicated that her brother wasn’t alone. Of course he would be taking advantage of their parents’ absence to entertain his own friends.
She could picture the scene in the library: men lounging on the leather chairs or leaning against the imported marble fireplace, while her brother passed out their father’s French cognac and Havana cigars. She sniffed the air for the incriminating smell of tobacco.

Behind her, she heard Hornaday greeting someone with stiff formality. Not her mother. She’d have to go into the library now. Better to intrude on her brother than to be confronted by the Earl of Brackley, and better to be surrounded by American men she was acquainted with than alone with an Englishman who made her skin crawl.

Still, she hesitated to push open the doors. Her mother might be annoyed by Augie making free of the library to entertain his friends, but she would be properly scandalized to think of her unmarried daughter entering a room with so many men, even if in the company of her brother.

At her back, a man cleared his throat. Tavi turned around hastily. Her heartbeat jumped to a higher tempo even as she saw it wasn’t Lord Brackley, but one of Augie’s friends. Her brother had spent his college years rowing and continued the habit in the city at the Naiad Rowing Club, which meant his social circle was almost exclusively made up of men like the one in front of her: tall and well-muscled, with skin tanned by long hours on the water. This one was Mr. Clifton, part of the Whitford College Crew with whom her brother had won so many races between 1886 and 1890.

Since she’d been traveling in Europe for much of the last year, it had been eighteen months, if not two years, since she’d seen any of the oarsmen. She’d forgotten how strikingly masculine they could be and for a moment she merely stared at him. The muscles of his legs and shoulders pulled his suit tight, for all that it was well cut to the form of his body. She had seen the crews at races; she knew that beneath the layers of coat, vest, shirt, and undershirt, his body would be as sculpted as any of the classical statues she’d seen in Italy. He wasn’t as tall as Michelangelo’s David, but she was certain that his naked body wouldn’t look out of place on a plinth in Florence.

He said nothing as she looked up at him, merely raised one eyebrow. He couldn’t know the outrageous image of him she’d formed in her mind, but no doubt he thought he’d caught her listening at the door. Which was exactly what she’d been doing.

Tavi knew she was blushing, but suddenly she was angry again. She’d already left one evening entertainment because of the interfering earl, and this was her home. She was tired of changing her own plans on account of others. She wasn’t going to be chased off just because her brother had filled the library with great hulking oarsmen. She looked boldly back at him and raised an eyebrow of her own.

“Good evening, Mr. Clifton,” she said. Maybe she had been listening at the door, just a little bit, but it was hardly better manners to sneak up on a lady.

“Miss Sewell,” he said, nodding. Was that a ghost of a smile on his lips? He set one large hand on the carved wood paneling and pushed open the door. “After you.”

Five pairs of eyes turned toward her as she entered the room, and her brother frowned at her. “Hullo, Tavi,” he said. “I thought you were with Mother.” He peered behind her, obviously hoping not to see their maternal parent following her in. “Is that Clif?”

“I’ve just come from the office,” Mr. Clifton said. Tavi glanced at him, but he didn’t accuse her of loitering and eavesdropping. Instead, he moved past the other men to stand a little apart, near the window.

“Mother’s still with Mrs. Paxton,” she said. “Discussing business for the Ladies’ Committee.” She looked around at the assembled men, who looked back at her with unalloyed curiosity. “What are you doing?”

“We’re planning for the Venetian Fête,” Augie said.

“1896 is the year we’ll have better decorations than those Endeavor bigmouths,” said a man sitting in one of the overstuffed chairs in front of the unlit fireplace.

“Isn’t it late to be planning?” Tavi asked. “I thought it was always at the beginning of September.” The previous year, she’d missed the parade of barges and launches from the boat clubs. She’d been with her mother in the original Venice, visiting one of the innumerable churches that were required stops for a European tour. Or perhaps they’d been in Milan. Either way, she would much rather attend the informal dancing held in the boathouses along the Harlem River than receive a lecture on what Mr. Ruskin thought about the coloring of St. Mark’s Basilica. She had been polished raw in Europe, and now she never wanted to leave New York again.

“The first Saturday in September,” confirmed another man.

“You’re invited, of course,” her brother said. “Bring your friends.”

“So you don’t have to dance with your sister?” Tavi returned.

“I’ll dance with you,” offered the man in the chair.

Augie glared at him, and Tavi rolled her eyes.

“I’m sure I can’t fill up my dance card two weeks in advance,” she said. “But I shall certainly entertain your invitation in September.” This provoked a round of good-natured chuckling from the others, and the one who’d asked her to dance colored with embarrassment.

“You fancy yourself such a ladies’ man, Daniel,” said Mr. Clifton, “and yet you haven’t even offered the lady a seat.”

All the chairs were instantly vacated. Even Augie stood grudgingly. Tavi took her brother’s seat.

“That’s mine,” her brother said when she reached for his cognac glass.

“Oh, please,” Tavi said.

“You won’t like it,” he warned.

“Don’t tell me what I want.” She resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him and lifted the snifter instead. The vapor of alcohol tickled her nose as she drank. Flavor burst in her mouth, sudden as a firecracker, and she could feel the trail of heat all the way down to her belly. It was a larger swallow than she had intended; her eyes watered, but she managed to smother a cough. She looked over at the window and found Mr. Clifton watching her. She met his gaze, and it sent a shiver over her skin. Perhaps it was the cognac. She looked away.

“What are your ideas for decorating your barge?” she asked. “Perhaps I can help think of something.”

“We're going to do Charon, crossing the River Styx.”

“What? We are not. We're going to be Cleopatra's barge.”

“We don't have a Cleopatra. Unless”—Daniel turned to Tavi—“you'd care to?”

“No, thank you,” Tavi said. “I'd rather watch from shore.” The fit her mother would have if she learned Tavi was sitting here, drinking cognac in the warm, leather-scented air of the library with half a dozen young men, would be a mere hiccup next to her reaction to her daughter parading before the whole city in costume as the adulterous Egyptian queen. Nor did the idea of spending a cool September evening half-dressed on a barge appeal.

“Washington crossing the Delaware, then,” suggested another man.

“We can't do that. The Passaic barge did Washington two years back.”

They rejected slaves in the trireme as too obvious and too confusing but began arguing about whether it would be possible to create the appearance of the three banks of oars without actually having triple tiers of oarsmen in the barge. Tavi listened and took a second, more careful, sip of cognac.

“Have you thought of anything?”

Mr. Clifton had left his place by the window to stand beside her. Either he was quiet on his feet for a big man, or the other oarsmen were being uncommonly loud. But she was less peevish than when she’d arrived home, so she considered his query. What other well-known, recognizable watercraft could she think of?

“Perhaps…” she said. “But it may be too far-fetched.”

“Far-fetched or not,” he said, “surely you can see that we’re in need of a fresh contribution on the topic.”

The half-light of the lamps emphasized the strong line of his jaw but she couldn’t see enough of his face to tell if he was making a joke at the expense of his crewmates or not. He was, as far as she could recall, generally a straight-faced and taciturn fellow.

“Well,” she said, “you might set yourselves up as the Nautilus. Like in Jules Verne’s story.” She’d read her brother’s copy of the novel when he’d gone away to college, and thrilled to the descriptions of the undersea world. Why couldn’t she have made a Grand Tour to the South Pole rather than to Europe?

“The submarine?” asked Mr. Clifton. “From 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea?”

Tavi nodded. “You’d need a metal plating,” she said. “I know it’s not very practical. It would probably be too heavy. I’m sure you’ll come up with something else.”

“The barge is already a heavy boat,” said one of the other men, abandoning the trireme argument.

“It doesn’t have to be the barge itself that’s decorated. It could be a shell towed behind the barge. I think you’ve given us a wonderful idea, Miss Sewell,” Mr. Clifton said and smiled at her. The warm glow of the lamps illuminated the lines the expression made around his eyes. Tavi’s heart gave an extra ba-bump in her breast. He was no Greco-Roman statue: he was living flesh.

She felt flushed, more than could be attributed to a few sips of cognac. No wonder he smiled so rarely; it was a powerful weapon. He would have women, and perhaps even a few men, falling at his feet if he unleashed it more often. “Augie,” he continued, “did you hear your sister’s idea?”

“What, Cleopatra?” asked her insufferable, inattentive brother.

“The Nautilus,” Mr. Clifton corrected.

All of the men looked at her as she repeated her suggestion. Their attention, combined with the intoxication of cognac and Mr. Clifton’s smile, suffused her with pleasant warmth. She’d entirely forgotten about the earlier part of her evening when her brother suddenly broke off to say, “Good evening, Mother.”