The Scandal of the Season

by Annie Burrows

  Her name is ruined,

  But her heart is untouched!

  Having saved Cassandra Furnival from scandal once before, it shouldn’t have surprised Colonel Nathaniel Fairfax that she was now attempting to lay siege to the ton’s eligible bachelors! Determined to thwart her plans, he’s as astounded by her defiance as by her beauty. But nothing shocks the jaded soldier more than discovering her innocence. Restoring her reputation is set to bring about the scandal of the season!

  “I know what you are,” Nathaniel reminded himself. “I know what you are capable of...”

  “No, you don’t,” she said, draining her cup and setting it back down on the buffet.

  What did she mean? That, no matter how hard he tried, he would never be able to stop her? Or was it a hint that, should she choose to really turn her sights on him, she could bring him to his knees?

  “You dare to threaten me?”

  “What?” Cassandra blinked up at him in a very convincing show of bewilderment. And then her lips quirked as though he’d just said something amusing.

  “And now you are mocking me,” he said.

  “No, truly,” she said, laying her hand on his sleeve. “It is just ridiculous to suppose that a mere girl could threaten a man who has fought real battles. Especially a man like you, who I have...” She swallowed. Turned an interesting shade of pink. “Well, to be perfectly honest, I sort of held you up, in my mind, as some sort of hero, in secret, for years. Ever since you rescued me from my folly, I...”

  He took a step back, shaking off her hand.

  “I have already told you that you are not going to wind me round your finger by laying on such patently false flattery,” he told her. Then tossed off the last of his wine and slammed the empty glass down next to hers. Before grabbing her wrist.

  “Colonel Fairfax, what are you doing? People are staring.”

  “Don’t you like people looking at you? Knowing that you’ve got me worked up into such a lather that I don’t know whether to shake you, or pin you up against the nearest wall and kiss you?”

  Author Note

  While I was writing A Duke In Need of a Wife, I became very interested in the duke’s dysfunctional family and ended up writing a follow-up story about his half brother, the Marquess of Devizes, which became A Marquess, a Miss and a Mystery.

  And then I couldn’t stop thinking about the stepmother, who is frequently mentioned but never appears on the page. I could see why she wouldn’t be the hostess for the house party her stepson arranged to make the final choice of a wife. But why wasn’t she at the wedding, when even her son and two daughters attended, in spite of their long-standing dislike of their half brother?

  Well, in this story, you will finally get to meet her on the page, as she sweeps in like a fairy godmother to give disgraced Miss Cassandra Furnival a season in London.

  ANNIE BURROWS

  The Scandal of

  the Season

  Annie Burrows has been writing Regency romances for Harlequin since 2007. Her books have charmed readers worldwide, having been translated into nineteen different languages, and some have gone on to win the coveted Reviewers’ Choice Award from CataRomance. For more information, or to contact her, please visit annie-burrows.co.uk, or find her on Facebook at Facebook.com/annieburrowsuk.

  Books by Annie Burrows

  Harlequin Historical

  The Captain’s Christmas Bride

  In Bed with the Duke

  Once Upon a Regency Christmas

  “Cinderella’s Perfect Christmas”

  A Duke in Need of a Wife

  A Marquess, a Miss and a Mystery

  The Scandal of the Season

  Brides for Bachelors

  The Major Meets His Match

  The Marquess Tames His Bride

  The Captain Claims His Lady

  Regency Bachelors

  Gift-Wrapped Governess

  “Governess to Christmas Bride”

  Lord Havelock’s List

  The Debutante’s Daring Proposal

  Brides of Waterloo

  A Mistress for Major Bartlett

  Visit the Author Profile page

  at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  For Oliver James. Although I don’t think Mummy and Daddy will let you read this until you are eighteen!

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Excerpt from Lilian and the Irresistible Duke by Virginia Heath

  Chapter One

  Cassandra pressed her nose right up to the window pane as the carriage containing Miss Henley of Henley Hall went lurching past the front gate.

  ‘You can come away from the window now,’ said Aunt Eunice, from the cutting table where she was working. ‘She’s gone.’

  Along with all the beautiful clothes Cassandra and her aunts had spent the last few months, often late into the night, creating.

  Would Miss Henley wear the white muslin with the periwinkle ribbons and spangled overdress, with which Cassandra had fallen half in love, to a ball? Or, once she reached London, would she discard it in favour of something created by a fashionable town modiste? The way she’d so easily discarded Cassandra the minute she could, apparently. Miss Henley hadn’t even leaned out of the window to wave as she’d gone past just now, the way Cassandra would have done had she been in the coach, and Miss Henley the one whose fingers had developed calluses as she’d sat up till all hours, making sure everything was finished on time.

  A heavy, invisible cloak seemed to settle over Cassandra’s shoulders as she thought of how much effort she’d put into making each and every garment that comprised Miss Henley’s wardrobe for her Season. She’d wanted them all to be perfect, because of the way Miss Henley had stood up to her mother, who’d wanted her to take her custom to a more reputable dressmaker with a shop in Exeter.

  ‘I want nobody but my dear, dear friend, Miss Furnival,’ she’d said, ‘to make the clothes I’m going to wear in town. Because every time I put on something she has made for me, I will feel as if she is with me in spirit and then I shall feel less alone.’

  The statement had touched something so deep inside Cassandra, she hadn’t quite known how to deal with the feeling.

  ‘You won’t be alone,’ Lady Henley, her mother, had said tartly enough to dispel it. ‘I shall be with you. And so will your papa.’

  ‘Yes, but I shan’t have any friends my own age,’ Miss Henley had objected, with a pout. ‘And everyone will be so...sophisticated and they are bound to make me feel like a mere country miss, and...’

  Her big blue eyes had swum with tears. And Lady Henley had promptly capitulated.

  ‘I suppose at least it will save us a deal of expense,’ she’d said, looking round the front parlour of the cottage where Cassandra’s aunts carried on their business. ‘Which will please your papa. And we shan’t have the fatigue of travelling up to Exeter whenever you need a fitting, either. Very well, my puss
. You may have your way.’

  ‘Spoiled madam,’ Aunt Cordelia had muttered. After the Henleys had left, of course.

  ‘Still, it is a big order,’ the ever-practical Aunt Eunice had pointed out. ‘And at least Sir Barnabas will pay promptly.’

  ‘That is the one advantage of having a vicar with evangelical tendencies,’ Aunt Cordelia had replied. ‘He would rain down fire and brimstone on anyone who brought hardship on any of his flock by neglecting to pay what they owe.’

  ‘Especially two spinster ladies of genteel birth, who have fallen on such hard times that they are forced to earn their living by the needle,’ Aunt Eunice had said, her tongue most decidedly in her cheek.

  Cassandra felt her lower lip wobble as Miss Henley’s coach swept round the bend in the lane, taking it briefly out of sight. Would its youngest occupant ever really think of her when she was driving round the park in a curricle tooled by some handsome young buck? Or when some dashing blade was rowing her down the river to a grassy bank where dozens of dazzling young people would be gathering to take a picnic?

  Probably not, she reflected, heaving a sigh.

  ‘I’m just going to watch,’ she said with a sniff, in belated answer to Aunt Eunice’s comment about getting back to work, ‘until they’ve gone over the bridge.’ It might take her a while to shake off this fit of the dismals and she had no wish to show a glum face to her aunts, since it would smack of ingratitude.

  ‘You won’t be able to see them going over the bridge,’ Aunt Eunice said, before Aunt Cordelia shushed her.

  ‘The girl might be able to glimpse the trunks strapped to the roof when they get to the brow of it,’ she said.

  Yes, the trunks. And there they were! She could see them now as the coach crested the narrow bridge over the River Teene. Each and every one of them stuffed to bursting with outfits she’d helped create, outfits which were going to London, a place she had never been, nor would ever be likely to go, not now, even though it was an experience most girls of her age and station considered their right.

  Because she’d committed a Fatal Error.

  ‘Leave her be, Eunice,’ said Aunt Cordelia. ‘It can’t be easy watching a stuck-up little madam like that swanning off to town when our Cassy...’

  Had been stupid enough to trust in a handsome face and a scarlet jacket, and a kindly demeanour...

  Oh, dear, there went her lower lip again.

  She dug into the pocket of her apron for a handkerchief, and surreptitiously dabbed at her left eye, which was, in spite of her resolve, starting to leak. She had no intention of letting the aunts see that she was on the verge of tears. It might make them think she was unhappy with her lot. Which would be terribly...disloyal. Because if they hadn’t taken her in and given her honest work, she could easily have ended up lying dead in a ditch somewhere. Or, worse, staying alive and earning her living by...

  She pulled herself up short with a sniff. She hadn’t had to endure such horrors. Because the aunts had taken her in. Even though her own mother and stepfather had refused to do as much, claiming she would bring shame on them and blight her younger brother’s reputation, as well.

  It was true that Aunt Cordelia, who was not really an aunt but only some sort of cousin of her mother’s, had only opened her door grudgingly. But that hadn’t been anything to do with Cassandra’s actions.

  ‘We don’t mix socially any longer,’ she’d said gruffly. ‘Not since we’ve set up house together. And if you come to stay the rest of the family will turn their backs on you, because they will consider you’ve been...er...contaminated by our sort of...’

  ‘Eccentricity,’ Aunt Eunice had concluded when Aunt Cordelia had floundered.

  ‘Yes, that’s the least unpleasant way they have described our arrangement,’ Aunt Cordelia had mused.

  Cassandra hadn’t understood what they’d meant, not then. So she’d simply said that it wouldn’t make any difference, because none of her immediate family would have anything further to do with her anyway. Her stepfather had warned her that he would see to that.

  ‘Well, he has no say here,’ Aunt Cordelia had said firmly. ‘I’ve never had any time for that old lecher who married your mother for her money. And as for the rest of them...well, they all washed their hands of me many years ago, when I refused to marry some oafish male, and set up home with my good friend instead. But...that’s why you came to me, isn’t it?’

  Cassandra had nodded.

  ‘Then you can stay for a while and see if we can all rub along together.’

  And they had. They did.

  Cassandra blew her nose. She had become, if not exactly happy, then at least content with her lot. Her aunts never made her feel she was a failure, or a disappointment, or a burden. On the contrary, they made her feel that she was making a valuable contribution to the upkeep of the household, since she was such a swift and neat stitcher. Which was, ironically, thanks to her stepfather’s insistence that she and her mother make all their own clothing rather than pay a dressmaker to do it.

  However, on days like this, when the clouds looked as though they might part and let the sun through at any minute, and spears of daffodils were nosing their way through the frosty ground, bringing a sense of hope to everyone else, she was always particularly susceptible to suffering from regrets.

  So Cassandra didn’t think she’d better attempt to converse with her aunts until she was in better control of herself. Therefore she stayed where she was, gazing out of the window that overlooked their front garden and the lane which led, eventually, to the road to London. And kept her handkerchief at the ready.

  She had blown her nose for the fourth, and positively the last, time when she saw the top of a carriage driving over the hump-backed bridge.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It looks as though Miss Henley has forgotten something. At least...no, actually, I don’t think that is her carriage coming over the bridge. There are no trunks on the roof. And, oh! You should see the horses. Four of them. All greys.’ And all of them a distinct cut above the mixed team of chestnuts and blacks that Sir Barnabas occasionally put to work on his home farm.

  Cassandra heard the clatter of scissors falling to the table an instant before feeling the presence of Aunt Eunice at her back.

  ‘She’s right, Cordelia. A spanking team. And, oh, my word, a crest on the door,’ she said as the coach drew level with the cottage.

  ‘A crest?’ Now it was Aunt Cordelia’s turn to toss her work aside and join them at the little bow-fronted window. ‘What on earth can somebody of that rank be doing in an out-of-the-way place like Market Gooding? Especially up this end.’ For the lane on which their cottage stood only ran between Henley Hall and the London Road.

  ‘They must have got lost,’ said Aunt Eunice as the carriage drew to a halt by their front gate. ‘Look, that fellow,’ she said, as one of the pair of footmen, who’d been perched up behind, jumped down and opened their gate, ‘is coming to ask for directions.’

  ‘Then why is the other one opening the carriage door and letting down the steps?’ asked Aunt Cordelia.

  All three ladies fell silent at the first glimpse of the passenger, who was clearly a very grand lady to judge from not only the crest on the door, but also the air of reverence with which the footman held out his arm to help her alight.

  ‘A lady like that wouldn’t get out to ask her way from the inhabitants of a cottage like this,’ said Aunt Cordelia.

  ‘She must be a new customer,’ said Cassandra as her footman deftly caught the lady’s muff and the furs which must have been swaddling her, before they scattered in all directions.

  ‘Not she,’ said Aunt Cordelia. ‘No lady decked out in a carriage dress that fine could possibly want to mar her image by buying anything from a provincial dressmaker.’

  Cassandra felt Aunt Eunice swell with indignation at the slur on her creative talent. For sh
e was the one with the eye for seeing just what would suit those who consulted her, as well as the skills of measuring and cutting. Cassandra did the rough basting, and plain stitching nowadays, while Cordelia added the finishing touches. ‘I could turn her out just as fine,’ she growled.

  ‘Well, yes, you could,’ Aunt Cordelia acknowledged. ‘If you were able to get your hands on that amount of velvet, in just that shade of blue, and if she were to ask you to, but she wouldn’t, would she?’

  ‘Well, we’re about to find out,’ she retorted, as the footman who’d been stalking up the garden path rapped imperiously on their front door, causing all three ladies to cease their perusal of the vision of sophistication, who was finally ready to take the arm of the second footman, and rush to adopt various industrious poses around the room while Betty, their maid, went to answer the door.

  Although Cassandra strained to make out the conversation taking place in the hall, the thick oak door to the parlour kept it frustratingly muffled. Her aunts, who were merely holding the tools of their trade, while leaning in the same direction, were looking equally frustrated.

  But at last the door opened and the lady in blue velvet came floating into the room on a cloud of exotic perfume. It was as well they’d watched her arrive, otherwise they would all probably have sat there gaping at the vision of fashionable elegance, flanked on either side by two footmen whose heads almost brushed the ceiling.

  As it was, all three of them managed to rise to their feet and drop into suitably deferential curtsies, with an air of aplomb that conveyed the message that they were used to entertaining titled ladies practically every day.

  The lady stood there for a moment, looking them over, then abruptly flung her arms wide and headed straight for Cassandra.

  ‘Darling,’ she said, enveloping her in a highly scented hug. ‘I have found you at last!’

  The aunts shot her looks of enquiry, which Cassandra had to return with a shrug. For she had absolutely no idea why this lady was hugging her and calling her darling.

 
-->