I Kissed an Earl: Pennyroyal Green Series by Julie Anne Long Page B

mention captains who also happened to be earls.
    “Thank you again for seeing to my breakfast,” Violet said hurriedly, before Lavay, her ally, departed.
    “My sincere pleasure, Miss Redmond.” He left behind his charm like a sparkly little gift, then Lord Lavay bowed with swift elegance, to both of them, and Violet curtsied. She was alone with the earl.
    “Why don’t you eat your breakfast whilst I shave, Miss Redmond? It’s porridge.”
    It was really more of an order than a suggestion. Like as not he spoke to everyone in just that tone.
    Violet lifted the dome and peered beneath.
    It was indeed porridge. Accompanied by what appeared to be a pale rock. She poked the rock. It rolled on the tray. She sniffed the porridge. It had virtually no scent. Unless beige could be considered a scent.
    A mug of tea alongside both smelled mercifully familiar. She sipped it first. It was bracingly black and bitter as a punishment. There was nothing with which to sweeten it. She didn’t mind in the least. She sipped at it and shuddered as it surged its way through her veins. Very reviving.
    “Haven’t you a valet?” she said to the earl, surprised.
    He threw a baleful sideways glance at her as he strode across the room with the soap in hand.
    “‘Haven’t you a valet?’” he mimicked girlishly under his breath, shaking his head. He ducked slightly to avoid brushing his head on the ceiling, and peeled off his coat, folding it neatly and placing it over the back of a chair, and rolled up his sleeves, revealing hard brown forearms covered in coppery hair. He splashed his face with basin water. He twirled the brush into the soap vigorously then painted the bottom half of his face with soap. He whisked the razor up and tugged his cheek taut, and scraped the blade over it.
    Violet spooned in porridge. She tried not to stare. Watching a man casually take off his coat and then whiskers seemed almost as intimate as watching him disrobe completely. The porridge was nearly flavorless, though perhaps a bit of bacon fat had been stirred in. The rock, she finally concluded, was a sort of bread. It was about the size of her fist. She hefted it gingerly in one hand and tapped it with the finger of the other. It even sounded very like a rock.
    He watched her experiment with the food in his mirror as he shaved.
    “Likely the weevils were cooked from it before it was brought to you. They stalk off the bread when it’s heated, you know. Disgruntled, I imagine, at the indignity of being so treated.”
    She froze. Her fingers loosened in horror on the bread, which suddenly seemed alive and pulsing. She would rather have died than drop it, however.
    “Do you fire these from cannons at enemies?”
    Insulting it would have to do.
    “When we’re out of shot,” he said easily. “They taste a bit like mustard,” he said cheerily.
    “Weevils do. Can’t harm you if you bite into one. So tuck in.”
    Tuck in. How American he sounded.
    She held the thing gingerly. She cleared her throat.
    “How did I get to the bed?”
    “Well, of a certainty you levitated, Miss Redmond. Angels such as yourself would surely never do anything so gauche as walk to the bed.”
    He turned as he said this, patting his face dry. His eyes glinted a wicked blue above the towel. He pulled the towel down, drying his hands, hiked one brow, unabashedly enjoying her discomfiture. Shrugged at her silence; conversation was of no consequence to him. The hard angles of his face were even more pronounced now that they’d been polished clean of whiskers.
    He’d carried her to the bed, and yet she couldn’t remember it. She looked down, disoriented by a rush of blood to her head, imagining herself dead to the world, at his mercy in that moment, she who had truly never been at anyone’s mercy. Had he slung her over his shoulder like a sack, or carried her in his arms, in the manner of fainting maidens hauled out to the garden during ton crushes?
    The sharp, masculine scent of