Deb Marlowe - Scandalous Lord, Rebellious Miss

Jack arrived just then, excited and fully ready to defend his brother’s honour, but the fight had gone out of Lord Avery. He hung his head in his hands while Charles greeted his brother and while the brandy was brought in. He accepted a drink, threw it back, and held out his glass for another. Then he stood.

‘I will accept your explanation for now, Dayle, but I shall check out your claim, and if I find it’s a lie, I’ll be back. Why would your name be mixed up in this if you weren’t involved? Makes no sense.’

‘You echo my own thought exactly,’ said Charles.

Lord Avery bristled. ‘This is no laughing matter! My honour, and my wife’s, has been destroyed.’ He looked thoughtfully at Charles. ‘I know that there are those in the Party who believe in your transformation. The rake reformed.’ He snorted. ‘I know your history, and today’s work smacks of it. Blatant. Insulting. Just like your soft-hearted politics. It’s bad enough to side with the unwashed masses against your own kind in the Lords, but this! Unforgivable is what I call it, and so will many a Tory, after I am through with you.’ He marched to the door and paused on the threshold. ‘If your whereabouts last night are uncertain, then tomorrow morning’s will be assured.’

The echo of the slamming door was much quieter on this side. Charles looked away and began to pace, from the sidebar to the crackling fire, then away to the full wall of books. He couldn’t bear to look upon his father’s portrait above the mantel.

‘I’m sorry, Charles.’ Jack’s tone was quiet, careful. ‘God knows I don’t understand it, but I do know how important your political interests have become to you.’

Charles nodded again and drank. He crossed to the window and watched as the rain began to come down in sheets.

‘Throw me a bone, would you? I’m trying to play the supportive brother here.’ Jack rose and came to stand behind him.

‘He’ll check your story and find that it’s true. After that it’s only a piece in a scandal rag. Is it really so bad?’

Charles stared at his brother’s reflection in the window. ‘It’s bad, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time. The Board of Trade is looking for someone to head an investigative committee on distressed farming areas. My name has been mentioned. It could set me on a path to much higher places.’ He scrubbed a hand through his hair. ‘I’ve worked hard, and come so far. Take a good look around, little brother, this country is in an horrendous mess. I have finally got myself into a position where I can do something about it…I could help.’

He slammed his fist into his hand. ‘And now someone wants to use my past against me? No one will consider me seriously. I’ll be just another ton wastrel who cannot keep his bodkin buttoned up. This could ruin me. My political career could be over before it has truly begun.’

‘Would that be such a terrible thing?’ His brother’s hand was suddenly heavy on Charles’s shoulder. ‘Phillip is dead. You are not. Perhaps it is time to let all of this go. You could get back to your own pursuits, spend some time at Fordham with Mother.’

‘No,’ Charles barked. ‘I could not.’ He stared down into his drink, but there were no answers there. And no solace either, as he had good reason to know. How could he explain his desperation to his little brother? There were some things that Jack could never understand. ‘I need this, Jack. I can’t explain it, but I need to do this, and I need you to help me out of this mess.’

There was a moment’s silence, and then Jack took his hand away and went to pour himself a drink. ‘Is the situation salvageable? What do you mean to do?’

‘I suppose I must demonstrate a higher standard of character,’ Charles said with a wry twist of a grin.

‘Higher than what?’ Jack laughed suddenly and the tension in the room became a little more bearable. ‘That wasn’t really you climbing out of the old jade’s window?’

‘Good Lord, no! I’m willing to sacrifice a good deal in the name of politics, but that’s taking the matter too far. In any case, I believe she only flirts with us young bucks to stir her husband up, to get his attention off the quarter of a million military men set adrift with no pensions and back on her. But she’s evidently gone too far this time.’

Charles scrubbed a hand across his brow while he thought. ‘Still, I have to admit this was a master stroke. Whoever is behind this is clever. They’ve negated months of work, and done it by painting me with my own brush. All with no hint of his own identity or agenda.’

‘Someone doesn’t like the influence you’ve begun to gain. How do we track the whoreson down?’

‘First I’m going to find the baseborn idiot who wrote that piece for the Oracle. Whether he wants to or not, he’s going to tell me who his sources are. But it’s not going to be enough to find out which coward is behind this. The damage is done.’ He moved back to the window and gazed out at the gathering intensity of the storm. ‘I’m going to have to give them all something better to talk about.’

Jack nearly choked on his drink. ‘Better than sex and scandal? There isn’t anything the ton loves better.’

‘Oh, yes, there is, little brother.’

‘What?’ Jack demanded as an enormous branch of lightning split the sky.

Into the brief moment of calm, Charles spoke. ‘Marriage.’

His brother’s jaw dropped. Thunder broke open in the heavens. The house shuddered.

‘Marriage? To whom?’ Jack managed to ask.

‘To the most priggish lady you can drag up from the muck of the ton, I should imagine.’ Charles shrugged. ‘It seems clear that the only way I will ever live down the excesses of my past is to secure the dullness of my future. I don’t know, draw up a list. Only the primmest and most proper to be considered. I’ll marry the one at the top.’

Thunder throbbed through the house once more. The windows shook in their frames. Behind them their father’s portrait rattled off its moorings, crashed into the mantel, and flipped face down in front of the fire.

Her step light, her portfolio swinging and her maid scurrying to keep up, Sophie Westby strode through Cheapside. A gusting wind swept past in brisk imitation of the traffic in the streets, whipping her skirts and challenging the knot holding her bonnet. Sophie raised her chin, breathed deep of the pungent air and grinned in delight. London might be dirty, occasionally rank, and surprisingly lacking in colour, but it was also a huge, bubbling cauldron of life.

After years of quiet country living and near isolation, Sophie’s own life was suddenly beginning to simmer. Furniture design had long been her passion, and in an effort to ease her dearest friend Emily Lowder’s unusually long and difficult confinement, she had indulged them both with an extensive nursery project. It had been a smashing success. They’d had such fun and Emily had been so enchanted with the result, she had quickly swept Sophie up into a redesign of her dark and cluttered drawing rooms. The new suite had been unveiled at little Edward Lowder’s birthday celebration and, to Sophie’s chagrin, the room had nearly eclipsed the cherubic infant.

The grandest lady of the neighborhood, Viscountess Dayle, had been most impressed. Lady Dayle had run an assessing eye over both the new room and its designer, and in a bewilderingly sudden turn of events, she had them all established in town for the Season and for a large, mysterious design project.

Almost before Sophie could catch her breath, she found herself out of Blackford Chase, ensconced in the Lowders’ London home, and finally encouraged to pursue her design work. The result was one ecstatic young lady.

A young lady who perhaps should not have left her coach behind, stuck in the snarl of vehicles blocked by an overturned coal cart. Against her maid’s protests Sophie had climbed down, left instructions with the driver and set off on foot. And she could not bring herself to regret the decision. Walking was so much more intimate. She felt a part of the city rather than a bystander.

‘Paper! The Augur!’ The newsboy hefting his heavy sack of papers looked perhaps ten years old. He had inked-smeared hands, a scrupulously clean face, and eyes that made Sophie’s fingers positively itch for a pencil. An old soul smiled hopefully out of that young face.

‘Paper, miss? Only sixpence and full of society’s latest doin’s.’ He spotted a pair of well-dressed young ladies emerging from a shop across the street and waved his paper high to get their attention. ‘Paper! The Augur! More exciting tales of the Wicked Lord Dayle!’

He could not have used a more enticing lure. Sophie promptly bought a copy, then turned to Nell, the maid assigned to her from the Lowders’ town staff. ‘Will you tuck this away in your bag, Nell, just until we get home?’

The maid looked startled. Sophie smiled at her. ‘I promise to share as soon as I’ve finished.’

Gossip was like gold below stairs, and Sophie knew she had an ally when Nell, her face alight with mischief, took the paper and shoved it under the mending in her bag. The newsboy flashed them both a gap-toothed smile, then a cheeky wink. Nell giggled, but Sophie caught herself unthinkingly reaching for her sketchbook.

No. Not this time. She took a tighter grip on her portfolio and firmly set herself back to the task at hand: reaching the shop of a particularly well-recommended linen draper.

It was a scene that she had replayed with herself countless times in the past week. With so much history, so much energy and so many human dramas unfolding about her, the temptation to put it all down on paper was nearly overwhelming. From the towering glory of the churches, to the saucy curve of the newsboy’s cheek, to the flutter of the fine ladies’ dresses, London was full of sights, textures, and subtle images that she longed to capture in her sketchbook.

But she did not intend to succumb to the temptation. Sketching meant taking a step back, imposing a distance, becoming an observer, and Sophie Westby was done with being an observer.

Fate had finally smiled upon her and she meant to make the most of it. That was one reason why today’s errand was so important. Though she as yet had no idea what project Lady Dayle had in mind, Sophie intended to dazzle her. Themes, colour schemes, and any number of preparatory steps could be readied ahead of time and individualised later. When the time came Sophie would be ready with an array of ideas and choices that would quickly highlight the viscountess’s tastes. And when the project was complete, she vowed, Lady Dayle would have reason to be proud.

Sophie could do no less for the woman who had been so kind and generous. And indeed, Lady Dayle had no true idea just how much her kindness had meant, for she could not know that in the very act of bringing her to London, she had brought Sophie that much closer to two of her most heartfelt desires.

First, of course, were the incredible opportunities that could arise from a London project. She smiled when she remembered thinking that Emily’s drawing room had been such a coup. As wonderful as that had turned out, it was as nothing compared to what exposure to the ton’s finest might do. So much might be accomplished if her designs were well received.

Second, and somehow more importantly, Lady Dayle had placed Sophie squarely in a position where she might see Charles again. Her pulse leaped at the thought.

She wondered what Lady Dayle knew of their relationship—but perhaps relationship was the wrong word. Friendship, then, because he had indeed been her friend. Her friend, her companion, her confidante, the knight of her youth.