The Earl's Keeper

Fourteen - Conniving Mouth

***

When he awoke the next morning, his hands stretched out across the bed as if on their own. His mind groggy but very sure a woman had lain with him. When he felt nought but bedsheets in his curled fist, he jolted upright. Remembering exactly whom it had been.

Mia!

She was gone. The bed cold and barren on her side. He looked around the room, suddenly feeling alarmed. Thoughts of bandits, highway men and petty thieves bombarding his mind. Jumping out of bed, he hurriedly pulled his trousers on and having his shirt from the night before, dashed out.

"Woah there!" George exclaimed, letting out an oomph of surprise as his brother barrelled into him. "I was just coming to wake you-"

"Where the devil is she?" He almost yelled.

George threw him a puzzled look while simultaneously stopping his brother from walking around him in the small corridor; by taking a step left to the side when he did, and then right. Copying him as if he were a mirror.

"George!" William snapped.

His younger brother let out a burst of laughter. His azure eyes crinkling with mirth.

"Bloody hell Will, my boy. She's got you quite tight on her leash if she can't even greet her maid. The chit arrived this morning with boxes of stuff, from that French lady in town-"

He stopped short as William groaned his protest. And to think, he had actually worried.

"Something on your mind, brother?" His sibling's voice was laced with sardonic and false concern.

George grinned. The kind of debonair grin that would make young ladies swoon at the playful mischief it suggested to, and the promise of a welcomed teasing to come.

Williams eyes snapped to his brother's. He knew that look. He had mastered it before they, after all, and practically handed it down to them!

"Never you mind, you bloody prick." He couldn't help the twitch of a smile as his face betrayed him.

Had it been George in the same situation, he could only imagine how much of a pain he would have been. Torturing the man with his leg-shackled behaviour and mother hen antics. Oh what a buffoon he was!

He turned back for his room, leaving George snickering behind him.

***

"These weigh almost two thirds of me body weight m'lady!" Nancy chirped as her mistress admired the small mountain of packages that had arrived with her maid in the carriage. "I don't ken how m'lady is ta wear a dress that heavy-"

Mia listened happily to Nancy's excited chatter. It had been refreshing to have someone to converse with after the stifling imprisonment she's experienced with not one, but two Berkeley's. Bethany hadn't come down, choosing to eat upstairs which suited Mia just fine. George on the other hand, had stopped to break his fast with the two women and chatter nostalgically with Gerty. The older woman scolded him so motherly it brought a smile to Mia's face instantly.

Mia had almost jumped out of her skin that morning to awaken at dawn as she was accustomed to, and find a grown man sleeping beside her. He didn't stir much in his sleep, for she had assumed she'd awaken to have him groping her. Taking advantage wherever he could. How she had misjudged him, made her feel wracked with guilt. She was a petty, assuming little miserable thing.

Little did she know, that William had stayed awake most of the night, forcing himself to keep his hands off her. Thus, he had only fallen asleep merely half hour before she had woken. A deep slumber brought on by the fatigue of forcing himself to stay up all night long. One that was too deep for his body to move, as it rested heavily. For if he was in normal spirit, he most definitely would confirm every single one of Mia's earlier assumptions - that and more. He was a man, after all. One that was not privy to being a gentleman at certain times. Especially not in bed beside a beautiful seductress for a wife, more so when he was feeling as physically frustrated as he was. Mia had been lucky. That was all.