The Scandal of the Season

by Aydra Richards

  Her face contorted into a disturbing imitation of her father’s, Lady Arabella rose to her feet. “Well!” she snapped, her weak chin quivering in fury. “Well!”

  It was such a bland response that Serena very nearly pitied the lady for having no elder brothers of her own from whom to have learned any words more suitable to the occasion.

  “Lord Pershing,” Serena said. “Lady Arabella. I think we can have no further business together. Davis will show you to the door.”

  As if he had merely been awaiting the opportunity, her giant of a butler strode smoothly into the room and bustled the two out of it, gently but relentlessly, and in the silence that fell after their departure, Sarah threw back her head and laughed uproariously as William wilted onto the abandoned couch, his courage exhausted.

  “Oh, my lord,” Sarah said, dabbing at her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve. “You were brilliant.”

  William gave a great groan, covering his eyes with one hand. “Thought I was going to cast up my accounts.”

  But he hadn’t—he hadn’t, and he had been marvelous. Serena felt the sting of tears behind her eyes, and blinked them back. “William, I am so very proud of you, but—whatever has brought this about?”

  “Granbury, if you must know,” William groused. “He tracked me down and laid into me. A proper lambasting, truly. I think father could have learned a thing or two from the sodding ass; I’ve never felt so low.” He heaved a sigh, shoving himself upright. “But he was right, the utter bastard—I’ve been a failure of a man, a lord…a brother.”

  Grey had confronted him? But why? Serena shifted uncomfortably, fisting her hands in her skirts. “William—”

  “Would it trouble you, Serena, if I were to meet with Granbury in the future?” William interjected. “He has made it quite clear that I ought not to prevail upon you for support, but he has offered to, er…teach me to make prudent financial investments. Says a man ought to be self-supporting, and he was…not wrong.” A dull flush crept over his cheeks, as if he had embarrassed himself. “I suspect he’ll be taking Hugh in hand, as well,” he admitted. “Blast it, I know well enough how to spend money, but I haven’t got the faintest idea of how to make it—or how to make it last.”

  This was not surprising in the least; there were a great number of impoverished noblemen as of late, men who would need to marry well to restore their dwindling coffers of coin lest they otherwise be forced to sully their hands with employment. Men who would rather continue their spendthrift patterns on credit than face the unfortunate fact that their lifestyles had become unsupportable.

  Perhaps the Ton needed more gentlemen like Grey, who knew not only how to make a fortune but to keep it, and to see to it that none under their protection came to harm through their own irresponsibility.

  “The world is changing,” Serena said softly. “Of course I do not mind.”

  Chapter Thirty One

  Three days later, in a secluded corner of the park, long after the fashionable hour had passed, Serena shifted uncomfortably on a park bench as the stiff material of her stays pinched her skin beneath her gown even through her chemise. “I loathe stays,” she said to Sarah. “And this set in particular is dreadful. I can hardly breathe and it does pinch.”

  Sarah gave a light laugh. “You’ve got to have them for a dress like that,” she said. “Unless you want to appear utterly shapeless.” Popping a bit of pastry into her mouth, she chewed thoughtfully and added, “But do remember that one does not mention one’s undergarments in public.”

  “Rubbish,” Serena replied with a grin, amused with the vaguely supercilious tone Sarah had employed—as if she’d been quoting some stodgy old matron. “I think I’ll leave the stays off entirely next time. Do you think that would shock the Ton?”

  “To their very toes.” But Sarah’s blue eyes danced with laughter. “For a lady, you are a strange one indeed.”

  “Have you known so very many, then?” Serena teased.

  Some strange expression flickered across Sarah’s face, and she ducked her head, her cheeks hollowing as she pursed her lips. “Some. It comes part and parcel with being a lady’s maid, you know.” With a queer little laugh, she continued, “Most ladies of your station ignore the staff, you see. Like we’re invisible. I doubt my last employer could recall my name.”

  Scattering a handful of crumbs left over from her own pastry to the pigeons pecking about her feet, Serena said softly, “That sounds very lonely.”

  “It was, often,” Sarah said. “Even when I was glad to be invisible, it was lonely.” Heaving a sigh, she rose to her feet, smoothing her skirts.

  “But why should you be glad to be invisible?” Serena inquired. There was a rustling in the bushes behind her, and she supposed some creature or another had made some sort of nest within it. “I should think everyone has the right to be acknowledged.” It was an unfortunate truth that certain echelons of society considered others so far beneath their notice as to be utterly inconsequential, not worth the bother of recognizing.

  Not so very long ago, she had been the sort of creature deemed beneath the Ton’s notice, unacknowledged. But whatever magic the duchess had worked had taken effect, and while there were still those who would look past her as if she were indeed invisible, there were equally as many who would nod to her if they chanced to pass her on the street. Men who tipped their hats, ladies who smiled as if they had not snubbed her only weeks ago.

  In the setting sun, Sarah’s dark hair glowed auburn. “You’re a peculiar sort of lady. Not one of those that always look as if they’ve smelled something dreadful. You know the ones.” She plunked her fists on her hips and tilted her nose in the air, affecting an expression of noble arrogance and disdain.

  It was a perfect parody, and Serena smothered a laugh behind her hand. “I suppose not,” she allowed, sobering. “But one wonders what one might have been. What one might have become.” With one hand she dusted the flaky crumbs from her skirts, and squinted in the burning orange sunset. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Of what I want to do.”

  “Oh?” Sarah asked archly. “Ought I be concerned? Is there more laundering in your future? Perhaps you’ll try your hand with a mop?”

  “Oh, stop,” Serena chided. “I concede I am not likely to flourish there. But I’ve been thinking of what you said—that I might do anything.” She gave a hesitant smile. “I thought I might like to open a school. A finishing school of sorts—not for girls, you understand, but for women who wish to ease their path in polite society. The wives of businessmen, perhaps, or any lady seeking to improve herself.”

  “Interesting,” Sarah mused. “But why?”

  “I think that refinement should not be only within the purview of the nobility,” Serena said simply. “There is such an arrogance that permeates the Ton, you know. As if the circumstances or position of one’s birth determines the respect one is owed. I contend that every woman is a lady, whether or not she was born with the right to use the title. If she wishes to learn, why should any path be closed to her?”

  Sarah considered this, canting her head to the side, and a loose curl fluttered on a brisk breeze that whisked by. “Well,” she said. “You’ll have your work cut out for you, I suppose.”

  Picking at an imaginary bit of lint on her skirt, Serena asked, “But do you think it foolish? Would you help me?” In the swiftly-fading light, she saw the carriage draw near, likely so that she and Sarah would not have to hunt for it in the growing dark.

  “I suppose I’d have to, wouldn’t I?” Sarah said, her lips quirking into a wry grin. “I hope you don’t think you’ll be teaching the finer points of embroidery to anyone.”

  Serena tipped back her head and laughed. “Fair enough. I admit that I have no fondness for embroidery. But I could teach dancing, deportment, watercolors—”

  “If you say the pianoforte, I’m liable to knock your head clean off your shoulders,” Sarah said. “We’ll hire that one out, or we’ll have a passel of ladies
who pound out Mozart like demons.” With a delicate shudder, she turned toward the carriage. “We can discuss curriculum on the way home,” she said. “It’s too dark to carry on here, and too chilly besides.”

  “Oh, very well.” With a sigh, Serena began to rise from the bench. The sound of tearing fabric burned her ears, and there was a fierce rustle of the bushes, as if the sound had startled whatever creature lurked there. “Oh, dear. I’ve snagged my dress on something,” she said, feeling the uncomfortable pressure of something at her back where the fabric had torn.

  But as she turned to untangle the fabric from whatever had caught at it, the fading sunlight glinted off the silver of a blade clasped in the grip of a grubby hand. With a gasp, she jerked back as an arm flashed out of the hedge behind her, lashing out with the knife once again. The attacker obscured within the shelter of the bushes flailed his arm wildly, catching her bodice, and there was again the rending of fabric, a sharp pressure against her ribcage.

  “Serena!” Sarah screamed, rushing forward as Serena pitched off the edge of the bench in her desperation to escape. She grasped Serena beneath the arms, dragging her backward to safety.

  A flurry of pounding steps resounded—the footmen, having been drawn from their posts near the carriage by Sarah’s scream. Bracing herself against Sarah’s attempts to extricate her, Serena kicked out with her foot and was rewarded with a howl of pain as she struck her attacker’s hand, jolting to knife free. The villain retreated at once, and the rustling of the bushes quieted as the sound of harried footsteps receded into the distance.

  Trembling, Serena let Sarah hoist her to her feet, grateful for the presence of the footmen who surrounded her, a formidable defense.

  “My lady, are you well?” one of the footmen inquired, offering her his arm. “Your, er—your gown is….”

  Serena glanced down in shock to see a large section of her bodice had been peeled away by the lance of the knife that had cut cleanly through it, revealing her stays beneath. In the fading light she could see straight through even the torn fabric of her stays to the wooden busk beneath. A gouge had been carved into the thin strip of wood, which had deflected the knife her attacker had wielded.

  Someone had nearly killed her. And they might have succeeded, if not for her stays.

  Shaken, Serena grasped Sarah’s arms. “I’ve reconsidered my position on stays,” she said with an unsteady laugh. “I shall never complain of them again.”

  ∞∞∞

  “For the love of God,” Grey snapped as he arrived home to find Mouse’s brothers awaiting him in the drawing room. “What the devil are you doing here? I assure you, Lansdowne, whatever assistance I might be prevailed upon to lend you, it does not extend to playing host to you in my home.” And certainly not when the pair of them had failed to soften Mouse toward him in the slightest—if the men of the Tyndall family had a single redeeming quality, he’d yet to discover it. Worthless, the lot of them.

  “Don’t be an ass, Granbury,” Hugh grumbled. “We’re no happier to be here than you are to see us.” He gave a sulky shrug of his shoulders. “Serena would skin us alive if she knew.”

  Lansdowne slanted his brother a chiding glance, raking his hand through his dark hair. “What Serena doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” he said. “But the fact remains, Hugh, that Granbury has got resources we lack. We need him—Serena needs him.”

  Mouse certainly did not need him. That much had been made perfectly clear. She had carried on well enough without him, to all appearances. And he—he was miserable without her. In a rather cruel twist of fate, she hadn’t even required the knife he’d once given her to leave him broken and bleeding. Her indifference was far more effective a weapon.

  For the first time in years he had lost, and he was finding that he was not a gracious in defeat.

  And yet, if there were even the slightest, most remote possibility that Mouse did need him…. “All right,” he said. “Out with it, then.”

  Lansdowne took a deep breath and hunched his shoulders. “Serena was attacked in the park yesterday.”

  “What?” Striding the length of the room in agitation, Grey launched an avalanche of questions. “Was she wounded? Did she summon a constable? Has the assailant been apprehended?”

  “She’s well enough, given the circumstances. A bit shaken, but nothing more than that.” Lansdowne rose to pour a glass of liquor from the sideboard and thrust the drink into Grey’s hand. “You’ve told me that investing is a game of knowledge, that nothing is irrelevant, that all facts must be considered to give weight to one’s conclusion. That what is not said can be as crucial as what is.”

  So the viscount had been listening to Grey’s many lectures on the subject. Listening, and perhaps even learning, which was a good deal more than Grey had expected of him. “What has that got to do with Mouse’s situation?”

  Lansdowne hesitated. “Serena—and the constable besides—were certain that the assailant was likely a common footpad, that their chances of apprehending such a fellow were slim, since Serena did not truly see the man’s face. Robbery is a common enough crime in the area, especially after dark, but I realized later that she had made no mention of a demand for her purse. The brigand had a knife and wielded it against her, but didn’t bother to demand money.”

  “It wasn’t a robbery,” Grey said slowly. “It was an attempt at murder. Lansdowne, I think you might not be entirely hopeless after all.”

  “The effusiveness of your praise warms me,” Lansdowne replied sardonically, even as he furrowed his brow. “But I cannot think it simply a random attack,” he said. “It is true it was growing dark, but the risk of being caught was still high—Serena was with her maid, within shouting distance of her footmen. She was not a likely target for a random act of violence.”

  “No,” Grey agreed. “So we must examine the motive. Who stood to benefit from her death? Who would carry a grudge against her?”

  “There’s Lord Pershing,” Hugh said speculatively. “Although perhaps his grudge would better rest on William’s shoulders.”

  “Oh?” Grey inquired. “And what happened there?”

  Lansdowne shrugged. “He’d concocted some scheme to bring Serena’s assets beneath his control and impressed upon me the necessity of my support to achieve that end. I refused to support it.”

  Surprise lifted Grey’s brows toward his hairline. “I’d not have thought you had it in you, Lansdowne.”

  “To be honest,” Lansdowne replied, “neither had I. But I suppose I can, occasionally, be prevailed upon to do the right thing.”

  Grey chuckled. “And a good thing, too. Pershing would be in for a nasty shock had he tried to wrest control of Mouse’s fortune from her. It’s tied up tighter than a hangman’s noose. Still,” he said, “even murder wouldn’t have gotten him control of it. He wouldn’t stand to inherit—” Hell. Hell and damnation! Grey swore vividly, casting the last of his liquor back and slamming the glass down atop the pianoforte.

  “What?” Lansdowne asked. “What is it?”

  “This is my fault,” Grey said. “Every bit of it is my fault. I put her in danger, and I hadn’t even realized it.” He slammed his fist down upon the table, rattling the decanters. “Mouse is an unmarried woman with no children—if she were to die, everything she possessed would naturally fall to her nearest male relative.”

  Hugh began to bluster, “How dare you! She is our sister—”

  “Not you, you halfwit,” Grey snapped. “Your bloody father!”

  Silence descended, thick and heavy and fraught with a terrible tension. At last Lansdowne said, “I saw him onto the ship. He was bound for Calais. I wanted to be sure he had left.”

  “And did you watch the ship leave port?” Grey inquired. “Did you watch him sail away?”

  “No,” Lansdowne admitted, shamefaced. “I had assumed—but no, I did not stay.”

  An ugly laugh boiled from Grey’s throat. “Don’t judge yourself too harshly, Lansdowne. This is of my do
ing. I underestimated the lengths to which he would go.” He had been accustomed to men who wished him dead, but he had never expected that Andover’s murderous tendencies would extend to his own daughter. A critical error that could have cost Mouse her very life.

  Lansdowne sunk onto the couch beside his brother, his head in his hands. “What are we to do?” he asked. “How are we to prove such a thing?”

  “Unfortunately,” Grey said, “there is no proof. It’s mere speculation…and the nobility rarely pays for its crimes. We’d have to—” A nebulous idea began to form in his mind. It had been a good long while since he’d been given to any sort of scheming. Weeks at least since he’d been occupied with thoughts of rats and mazes, of people as playthings to manipulate to his will, because Mouse had appealed to a better nature he’d not even known he’d had.

  For once, his baser nature suited the situation better. For once, he could use his particular talents in her service rather than to her detriment.

  “What?” Hugh inquired. “We’d have to what?”

  “Set a trap,” Grey replied darkly. For the most devious, the most deserving rat of them all. “We shall set a trap, and let him walk right into it.”

  Chapter Thirty Two

  “Where the devil is she?” Grey asked, his keen eyes sliding over the packed ballroom once again before drifting back toward the longcase clock situated to the right of the room, near the refreshment table.

  Beside him, Lansdowne sighed, casting his gaze heavenward in exasperation. “For the fifth time, she’ll come. She agreed to it, if you’ll recall.” He made a scathing sound in his throat and set aside his empty champagne glass. “Granbury, you’re glowering at the clock as if it has done you an injury. You are going to have to learn the ways of the aristocracy if you intend ever to truly join it.”