The Good, The Bad, And The Scandalous (The Heart of a Hero Book 7)

by Cora Lee

  “Are you sure, my lord? It doesn’t seem right—”

  “I know how it seems, but your cooperation will be very helpful. And I’ll see that you’re properly compensated, of course.”

  The voices were coming from the direction of the dressing room at the far end of the room, and Sarah recognized the second as Hartland’s. The first sounded familiar, but she couldn’t wake her brain enough to place the woman speaking. And what was she to be compensated for?

  “What if someone finds out?” the woman asked, the pitch of her voice rising. “What if the mistress finds out?”

  “No one will find out...” The volume of his voice dropped and his words became an unintelligible murmur.

  Find out what? The woman in the dressing room was most likely one of the maids. Ah, it was Lucy, Sarah’s new lady’s maid. She was probably unpacking Sarah’s belongings and tending to her wardrobe. But what had Hartland been doing with her in his wife’s private chamber?

  The voices died away and Sarah counted to one hundred before pulling herself into a sitting position. The gown she’d slept in was a wrinkled mess and her hair was most certainly a fright, but she climbed off the bed and wandered toward the dressing room.

  Lucy poked her head out and smiled brightly, bobbing a curtsy. “Good evening, my lady. Was your nap restful? I hope I didn’t wake you with my work in here.”

  “No, you didn’t wake me,” Sarah replied, walking past the maid and into the dressing room. “I thought I heard you speaking to my husband just now, though. Where did he go?”

  Lucy followed her, pointing to a second doorway at the other end of the dressing room. “Oh no, my lady. Perhaps you heard his voice carry from there—it connects to his lordship’s own dressing room.”

  Sarah doubted very much that she’d heard Hartland so clearly through a closed door, but decided not to challenge Lucy on it right then. It was entirely possible that he’d propositioned the girl, who would feel compelled to accommodate her employer or risk losing her position. If Sarah were to press, she might make things worse.

  “Perhaps I did. Or perhaps I dreamed it. I was sleeping rather deeply.”

  “Certainly, my lady. I understand you had a long journey.”

  And not just in distance. Sarah had gone from wealthy shopkeeper’s daughter to woman of imminent poverty to countess in less than a week. “All the way from London.”

  “Are you quite refreshed? Mrs. Nichols said you mightn’t want to take dinner with his lordship tonight, but instead would want a tray here. I can let Cook know—”

  “Thank you, Lucy, but I believe I will dine with his lordship tonight. We are newly wed after all, and this is to be our honeymoon. I should like to spend as much time as I am able with my husband.”

  Sarah watched the red creep into Lucy’s cheeks for a moment before the maid turned toward the clothespress. “Then let us find you an elegant gown, my lady, and we’ll do your hair in a classic style. His lordship won’t be able to take his eyes off you.”

  ~~~

  Hart waited in the drawing room for his bride. A little voice in his head—one that sounded remarkably like Ollie—chastised him for being too harsh with Sarah when they carriage pulled up in front of the house. His promise to Ollie to be considerate of his new countess had put a damper on his lust, and also, apparently, on his judgment. Or perhaps he was as tired as he thought her to be. He hadn’t slept all that well in the carriage, either, bouncing along some of the rougher roads, trying to keep his hands from ending up somewhere inappropriate. And then he’d woken up with her head pillowed on his chest...

  “Good evening, Hartland.”

  He pulled himself away from his musings and focused on Sarah. She stood just inside the doorway, her hands clasped together in front of her. The gown she wore was simpler than what he was accustomed to seeing during the Season, some darker shade of pink he couldn’t name with only a few embellishments. It suited her, though, and Hart wished for a moment that he’d told her he did require an heir. He wouldn’t have taken her to bed while trying to protect her, though. There was no telling what they would have to endure before she was safe again, and a pregnancy would only complicate matters.

  “Good evening, my lady. You look lovely tonight.”

  She offered him a demure smile. “Thank you. You look rather handsome yourself.”

  Did he? He hadn’t even paid attention to what Richards had laid out for him. “Thank you. Shall we go in to dinner?”

  He offered her his arm and escorted her to the dining room. He’d asked that their places be laid close together rather than at the head and foot of the table so they might talk more easily. If he couldn’t investigate in Town, he could at least begin gathering information from his wife.

  Hart sat at the head of the large table, with Sarah seated at his right hand. Bearing in mind his earlier irritability, he allowed her to direct the conversation for the first two courses. By the time the third course was served, her expression had relaxed and her pretty blue eyes sought his gaze more and more often.

  “Sarah, may I ask you some questions about your trip to Dover?”

  She placed her knife and fork on her plate and folded her hands in her lap. “I suppose you’ll want to know everything that happened while I was there.”

  He threw his napkin onto the table and leaned on one elbow. “Just the unusual things. Did you anger anyone? Offend anyone? Get in anyone’s way?”

  Her eyes shifted away from his. “There was a steward I met. He wasn’t very happy when my aunt told him I was marrying you.”

  So there had been a suitor before him. Interesting. “Did he... Did you...”

  “We weren’t betrothed,” she supplied, meeting his gaze again. “I’d hoped that we might become so, and apparently so did he.”

  “But the two of you were on friendly terms while you were in Dover?”

  Sarah nodded. “Which means he couldn’t be the one who wants me dead. Even if he was that angry with me, and I don’t think he was, the timing is all wrong.”

  “That’s right—I didn’t ask for your hand until after the threat had been issued.” He dropped his arm onto the table. “There has to be someone else, then.”

  “Just the gentleman I bumped into in town.”

  “Another gentleman? I’m starting to think you didn’t need to marry me after all.”

  Sarah brushed a nonexistent strand of hair from her face. “He was dressed as a gentleman, but I’d never seen him before that day. I literally bumped into him walking down the street. He dropped the box he was carrying and I thought I heard glass break, but he insisted everything was fine.”

  “That was it?”

  “That was it,” she confirmed. “I didn’t see him again after that.”

  Her voice was steady, her posture straight but not rigid. Odds were she wasn’t hiding anything. “Couldn’t have been him, then, either. The threat named you specifically, and you didn’t know him. Could he have known you?”

  “If he’d been to our bookshop, perhaps. But even then it’s unlikely. How many shop girls’ names do you know?”

  “Well, let me see. I knew yours before I married you...” He let the word trail off and genuinely tried to put names to the faces he saw in shops every day. Some of the proprietors’ names he could recall, of course, but not that of a single other woman who had waited on him. “Huh. You’re the only one.”

  “Should I be flattered?”

  She was smiling, and he decided it would be more fun to flirt with his wife than dwell on the gaps in his memory. “Yes.” He clasped her smaller hand in his and brought it to his lips for a gallant kiss. “You are the one I chose, after all.”

  Her smile faltered. “I am the one who was forced upon you.”

  “No one forced me to do anything,” he replied, lacing his fingers with hers. “Our journey to the alter may not have been conventional, but my choice was freely made.”

  Too late he remembered that hers wasn’t, not really.
His earlier harshness in the carriage nibbled on his conscience again. The deal he’d struck with Sarah’s young maid did, too. “Did you find your chamber satisfactory?”

  She arched a single eyebrow at his abrupt change in topic, but nodded. “It’s much more spacious than I expected. And the bed is the softest I’ve ever slept on. I’m sure I’ll be very comfortable for however long we’re here.”

  “Good.” He idly ran his thumb over the back of her hand. “If you find you should need anything, and I do mean anything, I am at your disposal.”

  “Thank you.”

  She smiled once more, glancing down at the table. Did she think he was going to kiss her again? He wanted to, but he was afraid he’d imposed upon her enough for one day, and he had promised Ollie he’d behave. “And if you think of anything else unusual that happened while you were in Dover, tell me immediately.”

  “I will.”

  “Good,” he repeated. How had this woman garnered a death threat? Yes, she had some backbone, but she otherwise seemed like so many other ladies of the ton. What was so special about Sarah?

  ~~~

  “I’m sorry, my lady. This just isn’t something we could use.”

  The woman stormed across Horse Guards Parade with the words ringing in her head. Isn’t something they could use? What army couldn’t use a weapon that would bring the enemy to its knees? She and David had already done the work for the Master-General of the Ordinance. They could produce the gas in quantities large enough to use on the battlefield. They could contain it within several different kinds of large projectiles, which could then bombard an opposing force. They could even contain it within smaller projectiles that an individual soldier could carry on his person, very much like grenades.

  But Lord Mulgrave had refused her every suggestion. He declared phosgene impractical and ineffective and decreed that the Royal Army would have nothing to do with it.

  She climbed into her waiting carriage, setting down her satchel—David’s leather satchel from his lab—and banging her fists against the velvet seat. How could Lord Mulgrave not see the importance of such a weapon? Transportation of the gas wasn’t easy, and it didn’t kill instantly. But almost immediately it made the eyes water and disrupted the breathing of anyone unlucky enough to inhale it. That alone would disable a line of enemy soldiers long enough to take them all prisoner.

  Surely with a weapon like that, Britain would dominate Napoleon’s Grande Armée and end this never-ending war. How many Allied lives would be saved? How many Spanish and Portuguese people would be able to return to their homes and begin their lives again?

  The satchel slid at her feet as the carriage rounded a corner and the woman picked it up. She’d brought a sampling of her phosgene grenades, hoping to demonstrate their effect on a box of rats she’d had delivered prior to her arrival. She didn’t get to make her demonstration, and the grenades were volatile. It wouldn’t do to have one of them break open and release a deadly gas inside the confines of her carriage.

  But perhaps she could make a demonstration of a different kind.

  A demonstration that was sure to get the attention of other important people within the Army’s structure. One that would prove to them what an asset phosgene would be in every battle they fought.

  She banged on the roof of the carriage and gave her driver a new destination when he opened the little hatch. Bond Street would do nicely.

  She chose a shop at random, not even bothering to see what was being sold. She did pause long enough to notice that there were other females inside, and many of them were well-dressed. At least she wouldn’t stand out. Taking a deep breath, she entered the shop with her satchel and pretended to peruse the shelves that lined the walls.

  It was a bookshop.

  Not Shipton’s—it was closed now—but still she smiled. How satisfying it would be to make her grand demonstration in a place sacred to the woman who killed David. Not quite as satisfying as seeing Sarah herself dead on the floor, but close enough for today.

  The woman discreetly removed the grenades from her satchel, concealing them among the shelves and under a table, wrapping the long fuses around the thin iron spheres as she lit them. She made sure to stay in a section of the shop that wasn’t heavily trafficked. There was less of a chance she’d be caught, and people would eventually go over to see what happened. That’s when the phosgene would do its work.

  She saw smoke rising from one of the shelves where she’d placed a grenade. One of the fuses must have caught a book on fire. No time for the last grenade, then.

  “Someone help! Something is smoking!”

  She scurried to the other side of the shop as a couple of gentlemen went to investigate. A few people made for the door and she went with them, stepping out onto the street just as the first grenade exploded. She skirted the crowd that poured out of the bookshop, finding a place near the back to take in the results of her work.

  It was only a few minutes more before people exited the shop in distress. One was an old woman, coughing so hard she needed assistance to remain on her feet. Two children trailed along behind her, one holding a handkerchief to his forehead, the other with bloodstains on her sleeve.

  The woman sucked in a breath. Other people left the shop, some of them in worse shape than the others, but she ignored them. She followed those first three victims with her eyes, unable to look away. Of course she’d known that people would be hurt if she used her grenades in a Bond Street shop, but she hadn’t thought much about it. They were just faceless strangers, their damage necessary to prove phosgene’s worth and make David’s dream of ending the war come true.

  But these people had faces. They had voices that cried and moaned. They bled real, red blood. And she was the cause of their pain.

  The woman finally turned away when the crowd began to disperse, wishing she’d followed her first instinct to run from the shop when the book caught fire—to run and not look back. Her heart ached for the victims of her work and she struggled to keep the tears from spilling down her cheeks.

  If only David had been there with her. None of this would have had to happen if he’d still been alive. He would have been the one to speak with Lord Mulgrave, who surely would have seen the merits of phosgene as a weapon of war when David explained them. Then these innocent people wouldn’t have been subjected to a bombing in the middle of Bond Street and she wouldn’t be feeling this awful ache in her heart.

  If it weren’t for Sarah Shipton, none of this would have happened.

  Chapter Six

  The nap Sarah took upon arrival at Hartland Abbey turned out to be the only time she had completely to herself. In the four days since then, Hartland had taken to looking for her if she was out of his sight for more than an hour. They slept in their separate bedchambers, but his adjoined hers so he was never far away from her at night, either—assuming he was actually in his chamber at night.

  As if she’d conjured him, Hartland strolled into the drawing room where Sarah sat on a sofa nestled in a sunny bay window. He acknowledged her with a nod and dropped into a chair on the far side of the room, opening the book he’d brought with him. She shook her head a little and returned to her own book, but only a few minutes later Hartland popped out of his chair and chose another.

  Ordinarily, she would have said something. It would have been inconsequential, but it would have eased the slight tension hanging in the air. It was a lady’s responsibility, after all, to see that every person in the room was comfortable. This time, though, she decided to conduct a little experiment and remain silent to see what Hartland would do when left to his own devices. She’d been thinking more of her mother and Diana than paying attention to her book, anyway.

  What he did was fidget. For ten straight minutes he shifted positions in his chair, drummed his fingers on all the nearby hard surfaces, tapped first one foot then the other against the chair leg, and generally made himself a nuisance.

  Was he regretting their marriage and his promise
to protect her? Or was he simply unused to living with a person who wasn’t a servant? “Will you tell me about Major Oliver? How did you two meet?”

  He glanced sharply in her direction. “Why do you want to know about Ollie?”

  “You said he was your closest friend, but I didn’t have the chance to speak with him very much. I thought I might get to know him better through you.” And perhaps listening to stories of her husband’s best friend would ease the ache of missing hers.

  Hartland eyed her, an expression that wasn’t so much suspicion as it was an appraisal. “We went to public school together,” he responded in an even voice. “He was having a difficult time with Physics and I offered to help.”

  “That was nice of you.”

  His eyes shifted away from hers for a moment and his forehead creased. “...in exchange for the biscuits and treats his mother sent him every month.”

  “You forced him to pay you in sweets?”

  “Yes.” His gaze met hers and he looked as though he was trying to suppress a grin. “It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

  “Did Major Oliver feel that way?”

  “Probably not.”

  Sarah carefully put her book down on the sofa cushion. “How is it the two of you have managed to stay friends all these years after a beginning like that?”

  “I don’t know.” Hartland propped one ankle on the opposite knee and—to Sarah’s surprise—kept his dangling foot still. “I suppose it was because neither of us really knew children our own age when we arrived at Harrow. Ollie is the youngest of his siblings by a number of years. I, of course, have no siblings, and I suppose we bonded over that as well as our studies.”

  “Brothers in spirit, though not in blood.”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “Is that why he has rooms set aside here for him? Mrs. Nichols mentioned it when she was giving me a tour of the house.”