Free In the Arms of an Earl by Anna Small

Brooke,” he said, sighing as he sat and leaned against the wall, “being in the company of Lucinda and you makes all the difference.” He waved his hand at the book. “Any one of his poems will do.”
    She flicked through the pages until one poem caught her eye. “‘On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year.’” She glanced up to seek his approval.
    “I do not know it, but it sounds intriguing.”
    “Colonel B., are you not thirty-six?” Lucinda asked, already deep into the outline of her drawing of Jane as the queen who’d divided her heart between two men.
    “As old as that! Do I look so ancient, Miss Brooke?”
    A blush worked its way up her throat. She wanted to say he appeared not a day past five-and-twenty, but shook her head instead.
    “How old are you, then?” Lucinda asked pertly.
    “Thirty-four.”
    “Only two years younger than being so ancient,” Lucinda teased. Both girls laughed, and he with them.
    “Miss Brooke, please read what the illustrious Byron has to say about turning the ancient age of thirty-six.”
    She read the first stanza and set the book down. “It is quite depressing.”
    “Do read, Jane!” Lucinda looked up from her painting. “Is it very naughty? Jeremy told me Byron was a naughty fellow.”
    “It is not naughty, for goodness’ sake,” Jane said. “Colonel Blakeney, I should choose another.”
    “Let me see it first. I will decide if it is naughty enough for Miss Parker.” He took the book from her.
    “’ Tis time the heart should be unmoved ,
    Since others it hath ceased to move:
    Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
    Still let me love! ”
    He stopped, pondering the page as if there were some foreign object on the paper rather than black ink. Jane was anxious he stop before he read the rest, for she had skimmed ahead, but something invisible seemed to be driving him.
    “What is next?” Lucinda swept her brush across the paper.
    He cleared his throat, blinked.
    “ My days are in the yellow leaf;
    The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
    The worm, the canker, and the grief
    Are mine alone!
    “Good heavens!” He sighed loudly, waggling his eyebrows comically. “Has the man not had enough paramours he should write about losing love at the end of his life? The unknowing reader would assume he’d lived as a monk.”
    Jane giggled behind her hand, appalling herself in the next instant. “Truly, you don’t have to finish.”
    “Oh no—please, go on,” Lucinda begged.
    He shrugged. “He does ramble on about Greece for a bit…ah! Here’s the final, bitter note:
    “ If thou regret’st thy youth, why live?
    The land of honorable death
    Is here:—up to the field, and give
    Away thy breath! ”
    The flush returned to his cheek. Jane clenched her hands in her lap, agonized. Lucinda’s words about the lady who’d cast him off came back to her. His hand shook slightly.
    “ Seek out—less often sought than found—
    A soldier’s grave, for thee the best;
    Then look around, and choose thy ground,
    And take thy rest .”

Chapter Eight
    She’d looked forward to playing for the colonel later, but he didn’t come down for supper. Trying not to appear disappointed, Jane occupied her time by glancing at the drawing room door and listening with half an ear to Lucinda, who was naming her various acquaintances who would attend the ball.
    On the third time she glanced at the door, Jeremy looked up from his gazette. “He’s not coming down, Miss Brooke. His injury is bothering him.”
    Lucinda broke off in mid-sentence at her brother’s interruption. She clucked her tongue against her teeth. “Poor Colonel B.! Jane, it really is a shame. I do not comprehend how he can feel pain in a missing limb, but he does. It’s very strange, really.”
    Embarrassed because Jeremy had seen through her surreptitious glances at the door and guessed her intent, she pretended to be surprised by the turn of the conversation.
    “I thought we were having tea brought in.” No one