The Earl's Keeper

Twenty-Five: Coming Out

Man, if this isn't a l o n g chapter.
If you like what you read, please vote and comment. I'm worried there might be a plot hole or ten in here, because I couldn't for the life of me be bothered to proof read this.
But it was way overdue so here you go!
(Please excuse my plot discrepancies!)

Enjoy!

~*~

First came the eyes. Everywhere.

They clung to her skin like threads, each pair creating a new nick on her flesh until the combined pull of them all threatened to tear her apart at the seams. It was so palpable it left her almost breathless. Even though she was decked to the nines, never had she felt more vulnerable and exposed. So naked under ravenous eyes.

If Mia had thought herself as invisible before, she now stood as the bleeding star of Nazareth. There was no hiding from them.

Then came the whispers.

Trailing in her wake and surrounding her in a current of their own, the soft mutters and hushed voices cocooned Mia and William at the centre of its spiral. Building steadily into a tycoon.

"I have you." His voice reached her amidst the noise, the pad of his thumb stroking over the skin of her hand. "You are not alone in this tonight, nor ever again."

She exhaled a rush of air, and with it a bundle of nerves. Excitement refuelled her veins as her husband reassured her of his presence. Anything was better than the mind-numbing pain of how they had treated each other before, or how she had lost not one, but two fathers and all she had ever known.

If she could overcome those, this was a piece of cake.

Social anxiety my arse.

"Ready when you are." She smiled confidently.

"I was born ready, love." He grinned, that crooked smile enducing a frisson of unexpected sexual tension, catching her completely off guard.

This man is a trigger to my ovaries.

***

The Earl and Countess of Bischester cut a pair of fine figures as they descended down the wide steps into the main hall. They were announced, an act that took Mia completely by surprise. She forgot that it was a thing. People were announced. She had to school herself to keep a neutral face on, rather than the twisted grimace of fright that lurked just beneath. Her title induced a ripple of snickers and hushed voices with eyes that honed in on her from every possible crevice of the place. Scrutinising everything and anything possible about her person.

That coloured skin.

Those south Asian features.

Is she from the continent?

I hear her father was a disgraced noble - a fallen man!

Don't you mean a pauper - I heard he was nothing but a farmer. A shoddy outcast.

On the edge of old town, no one goes there!