A Scandalous Countess: A Novel of the Malloren World

by Jo Beverley

  “You’d be wise to guard your tongue, Miss Cardross,” Dracy said. “This letter is a forgery, and by spreading word of it, you’re an accomplice to a wicked act.”

  Eloisa went from triumphant to stricken. “I didn’t…She…”

  “A wicked act,” he repeated. “Who gave you this letter?”

  “I don’t know!” Eloisa cried, pale now. “It was brought to me by a footman.”

  “The cover,” he demanded.

  She scurried to the drawer and produced the sheet of paper. Georgia wasn’t surprised that Eloisa had crumbled. Dracy was terrifyingly stern.

  He looked at both sides of the paper and then handed it to Georgia. “Do you recognize the hand?”

  She studied the name on the front and the single sentence inside. Use this as you see fit to right the wrong.

  “It’s carefully written,” she said. “As in a child’s copybook.”

  “A way of disguising the natural writing.” He looked at Eloisa, who was sniveling into a handkerchief. “You may want to consider how Georgia’s family will regard your actions.”

  “You won’t tell them. Georgia, please!”

  “Come, Lady Maybury.” He steered her out of the room.

  Georgia heard Eloisa burst into tears but could take no comfort from it.

  “I have no defense! I know the letter is false, but others will believe it. Thus, they’ll see me as my husband’s murderer!”

  He grasped her shoulders. “You can’t fail now, above all times. We are going below, and you will be Lady May, disdainful of all suspicion.”

  “I can’t!”

  “There’s no limit to what we can do if we are brave enough. Remember, you are innocent.”

  She stared at him. “You believe in me?”

  “Completely.”

  “Why? You hardly know me.”

  He smiled. “I know you well enough for that. I knew you were honorable at our first meeting.”

  She remembered. “At Herne. Yes, you did. It strengthened me then, when the challenge was so small.”

  “Let it strengthen you now. Anyone who knows you knows all foul rumors to be false.”

  She laughed a little. “Then very few know me.”

  “A wise woman told me once that the human heart can cherish only a few. Too wide a circle makes a shallow pond.”

  “Which makes the beau monde little better than mud.” She took a deep breath. “Very well. I am restored. At least the lions can’t actually eat me.”

  “Rats,” he said. “At worst, they can only nibble.”

  “I believe I’ve heard of people nibbled to death by rats, sir. But onward.”

  Lizzie and Babs were waiting around a corner. “What happened?” Babs asked. “We heard some yells, and you look dreadful.”

  “Full of dread, yes. Eloisa didn’t invent the letter. It’s real and unfortunately it looks believable.”

  “Forged, of course,” Dracy said, giving Babs the letter.

  Georgia wanted to protest, but it was already done.

  “Forged!” Lizzie gasped. “That’s a hanging offense.”

  “Only forging money, I think,” Babs said, reading.

  Georgia turned her mind to the encounter. “I wonder why she didn’t show people the letter but only spoke of it.”

  “Too bold for her,” Dracy said. “She’s a rat that wanted to stay behind the wainscoting. You saw her face when I mentioned the reaction of your family.”

  Georgia did, and felt pity, but only a little.

  Lizzie was reading the letter too. “Oh, Georgie, what are you going to do?” From her expression, she was thinking of such things as fleeing the country, or at least scuttling back to Herne.

  “Find out who’s behind all this,” Georgia said, “and stamp the rat into the ground.”

  “You must burn that letter,” Babs said.

  Dracy said, “Trust it to me. It’s evidence. I won’t let it escape.”

  Georgia longed to burn the vile thing to ash, but she wouldn’t squabble over it now. “Very well, but we must all return below, and not in a group.”

  “Are you sure?” Lizzie asked.

  “What else can I do? Go.”

  Lizzie and Babs left, and Georgia turned to Dracy. “We can’t go down together either.”

  “Very well, but meet me on the terrace.”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “In full view of others. We can’t dance again, but we need to discuss this further. And I can’t abandon you to the rats.”

  She shivered at the thought. “Very well. On the terrace, shortly.”

  With her new knowledge, Georgia expected an attack of some sort, but of course that wasn’t the way of the beau monde. She passed through the house and out onto the terrace without any interruption at all, almost as if she didn’t exist. Cold or even angry looks would have been a relief. Even though it would ruin the dress, she wished she had a warm woolen shawl.

  When she joined Dracy, she said, “It’s as if I don’t exist.”

  “You exist for me and for your true friends.”

  “That’s a very little world.”

  “Plague take the person behind this.”

  “Eloisa—”

  “Not her. Whoever sent her the letter, here, where she’d be unable to resist speaking of it.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” Georgia looked back at the pretty, illuminated house. “There’s another person there who hates me. Why?” she asked, turning back. “Why? I swear, I’ve never intentionally hurt anyone. Or unintentionally, to my knowledge.”

  “I believe you. You have a kind heart. May I fight in your cause?”

  “A duel! Never!”

  “No, no. A poor choice of words. Fight to vindicate you. We must find the sender of the letter and the forger who created it, but above all, we must find Sir Charnley Vance. Then I’ll get the truth out of him.”

  She smiled at him, but sadly. “Dear Dracy, but many have tried to find him and he’s eluded all of them. Perhaps he did shoot himself in Cologne.”

  “Even corpses turn up. Who might know Vance’s hand?”

  “You think you can prove that letter a forgery?” she asked, allowing a flicker of hope.

  “It is a forgery, so why not?”

  “Sent from Cologne?”

  “Perhaps that’s forgeable too.”

  “I had one thought,” she said, “though perhaps because I want the letter to be false.…”

  “Tell me.”

  “The writing is rough, but the language, the phrasing, is not. I hardly knew Vance, but I don’t think he’d express himself in those words.”

  “Ah. When I think about it, you’re right. We need to find this Major Jellicoe and discover if Vance wrote any sort of letter to him. Do you know him?”

  “No, but he served as Vance’s second at the duel. His regiment shipped to India a month later.”

  “In July.” He took the letter out of his pocket and tilted it to catch a little light. “I thought so. Dated October the nineteenth.”

  “Vance fled the country within hours of killing my husband, so he wouldn’t know that Jellicoe was no longer in London.”

  “Convenient for the forger as well. Who else might know Vance’s hand?”

  Talking about it so purposefully was helping her, so she applied her mind. “Sir Harry Shaldon was in the same sporting set as Vance and my husband.”

  “Then I’ll find Shaldon, and if not him, others in that sort of man’s world.”

  “Dracy, you have work to do on your estate, and I’m sure it will reward you better than a wild-goose chase. Why are you so sure I’m worthy of all this?”

  “Because I’ve known many wanton ladies, and you don’t have their ways.”

  “Perhaps I’m a skillful deceiver.”

  “My dear Georgia, you’re an open book.”

  “Am I indeed?” she protested.

  “Even your father offered that you are honest.”

  “Di
d he? When?”

  He looked a little embarrassed to admit, “When we spoke once of your many charms.”

  “I’m surprised he thinks I have any. Oh, enough,” she said, disliking her own tone. “I should return, but it’s too Arctic in there for me. Let’s walk to the edge of the terrace. The lights on the pond showed very prettily from my room.”

  He walked with her but said, “I intend to find out all about that duel as well.”

  Georgia touched the mourning bracelet, wanting Dickon with her now more than ever before. Idiocy. If he were here, none of this would be happening. But she couldn’t speak of the duel now, perhaps not ever.

  She halted at the balustrade at the closest point to the pond. “They’re not so effective from here.”

  “But still charming.”

  He was standing behind her, big and strong, like a guard against all the malice in the house. Some of the aching tension inside her leaked away, but she still felt hollow.

  The letter must be proved false. She must be proved innocent. She couldn’t bear exile from all she loved.

  “The candles bob on the water,” he said. “I wonder how they’re supported. We could stroll down and look.”

  Leave the terrace and go into the darkness?

  “It rained earlier,” she said. “The grass will be damp.

  “By the time you rise tomorrow, the servants will have cleared it all away. Will you allow a damp hem to bar you from enlightenment?”

  She was being dared. In the past she wouldn’t have hesitated.…So she wouldn’t hesitate now. The pond was no more than twelve feet away.

  “I don’t suppose I’ll wear this gown again, anyway,” she said as she turned and walked toward the short flight of steps. “Twice is once too many.”

  “A sorry waste,” he said, by her side.

  “It’s done me little good tonight. You see the folly of wearing a grand gown twice.”

  “The back is beautifully worked with great skill. It deserves to be appreciated.”

  He was criticizing her for extravagance, as she’d predicted he would. Proof positive they would not suit.

  “You could hang it as a work of art,” he said.

  “That would be very odd.”

  “People hang tapestries.”

  “Then I’ll do so,” she said, raising her skirt to go down the shallow steps. “When I have houses to decorate, that is. The grass is damp,” she pointed out. “My shoes will stain.”

  “You mean you wear shoes more than once?”

  “What an odd mood you’re in, Dracy. Dark gray silk goes with a number of gowns. One need only change the buckles to suit.”

  “What buckles do you wear tonight?”

  She raised her skirt and pointed a toe into the light of a lantern.

  “Sapphires?” he asked.

  “Merely chips.”

  “Set in gold.”

  “No, pinchbeck!” she snapped, fighting tears as she picked her way over to the pond. This was too much after everything else. She needed him to be her friend, not to sneer at her over her gown and her buckles.

  She concentrated on the pond. “Little wooden boats. How clever. Do you think the candles are glued in place?”

  “I’d spear them on spikes, and tie them as well.”

  “Perhaps I could create a naval battle.” When I have a lovely house to ready for parties.

  “Perhaps you could.”

  She turned to him. “How?”

  “Merely by being you.” He added, “Helen.”

  “I do recognize a reference to Helen of Troy without it being hammered home, but I don’t appreciate it. She was the death of a thousand men or more. I’m only accused of one.”

  “Georgia.” He took her hand, but she snatched it free, and then regretted it.

  “Excuse my mood,” she said, swallowing. “It’s been a trying night. Let’s plan a pond battle.”

  He looked as if he’d persist, but then he looked back at the pond. “It can’t be done. The ships would have to maneuver, and those ones are fixed. I suspect they’re tethered to the bottom.”

  “They could be untethered.”

  “Then they’d float around at random and simply collide. Hardly a battle.”

  Georgia concentrated on the problem. “Servants with long black poles,” she said. “One per boat. About twenty would do, all dressed in black so as to be almost invisible.”

  “Twenty servants,” he echoed. “Their poles would get in each other’s way.”

  “Plague take it.…Ah, perhaps the sticks could merely nudge, then retreat.”

  “You’re very inventive.”

  “I enjoy such things. The boats would be ships, accurate in their details, with rigging and sails. I’d need cannon fire.…Fireworks!”

  He grabbed her hand and dragged her away. “You’d end up igniting the neighborhood, you madwoman.”

  “But it would be magnificent! Will you be my naval adviser?”

  Too late to take the words back.

  “We must return,” she said quickly, returning to the steps. “People are probably already talking of my disappearance into the dark and putting the worst interpretation on it. I think I see the attraction of a fit of the vapors. It might stir sympathy.”

  “Have you ever had one?”

  “No.”

  She raised her skirts and went up two steps, but hesitated.

  Ahead, Thretford House glowed with candlelight, and music floated out. Inside, some were still dancing and others would be talking.

  About her.

  “Ah, the tobacco,” he said behind her.

  She turned, finding him on the step below. By chance, the nearest lamp lit the left side of his face, putting the scar in shadow.

  She touched the rough skin. “So tragic.”

  He covered her hand with his. “It could have been much worse.” But then he met her gaze. “What are you doing, Georgia?”

  “Being driven mad by tobacco, I think. Kiss me?”

  “Why?”

  “That’s looking a gift horse in the mouth!” When he only waited, she said, “Because I want it.”

  “And that is reason enough?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many men have you kissed?”

  She thought about it. “Perhaps ten.”

  “How many of those kisses did you enjoy?”

  “Why all these questions? If you don’t want—”

  He put an arm around her and drew her close, so that she was pressed to his warm, strong body. He held her eyes as he slid a hand up her neck and into her dressed curls, as his fingers played in her hair, and then as he lowered his lips to hers.

  Perhaps it was the touch on her scalp that alarmed her. She pushed back, but he kissed her anyway, and her push lost all its strength. Pressed to him, her mouth hotly joined to his demanding one, she could do nothing but submit.

  And be devastated.

  She had never, ever, been kissed like this, by the whole man and a hot clever mouth.

  She surrendered, and then she explored—with her own mouth, with her own tongue, with her hands beneath his jacket, sliding over the silk of his waistcoat to delight in his hard, vibrant body. Shivers ran through her, but of pure pleasure.

  She could do this forever, and ever, more deeply, more hotly, forever and ever.…

  He was the one to break the kiss, but he didn’t let her go. He held her, breathing deeply, resting his head on hers.

  Georgia pushed back again, but this time to look at him.

  “None,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I have kissed no one, until now.”

  “Your husband…”

  “Not like that.”

  He stroked her face with his knuckles. “Poor Circe. Poor husband.”

  “Do you think…? No.”

  “What?”

  She eased out of his arms, even though it made her feel chilled. “A foolish thought,” she said, smoothing the front of her gown and
looking away. “That kisses like that might have something to do with conception.”