A Most Scandalous Proposal

by Ashlyn Macnamara

  “What?”

  “Keaton. Ludlowe’s had biblical knowledge of the man’s betrothed.”

  Benedict fixed his friend with a glare. “Why did you force me to listen to that drivel? I’d just as soon knock the idiot’s block off.”

  Upperton grinned. “Just shoring up my bets.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “IS IT true what I’ve been hearing?” Watery eyes narrowed, Lady Epperley surveyed Julia from behind her lorgnette.

  Blast it all. She was trapped in the corridor that led to the ladies’ retiring room. Of all the times to tread on her hem and require a quick repair. She’d had the chiffon resewn so often already, she doubted there was much material left to work with.

  Julia tapped her fingers against her fan. Between Lord Chuddleigh making a nuisance of himself once again and gossip-mongering dragons, she should have stayed far away from the Pendleton ball. Not that she had a real choice, tonight of all nights.

  “That depends on what you’ve been hearing, my lady.”

  The dowager’s frown deepened. “Don’t give me such nonsense. You must know. It was all anyone could talk about at the opera last night.”

  “I’m afraid we did not attend the opera. Too many family matters.”

  “Humph.” Lady Epperley’s jowls twitched in cadence with the feathers on her headdress.

  Julia cast about for any possible subject of gossip. “Did it have to do with Princess Charlotte’s upcoming nuptials?”

  “Of course not. Anyone who matters is thoroughly tired of discussing who might be invited to the wedding and whether her royal highness is actually planning on wearing gold.”

  “I’m afraid I cannot answer your question, then.” Julia took a hopeful step in the direction of the retiring room.

  “Don’t be silly, gel. You most certainly shall.”

  Did the old dragon intend to infuriate her? “Perhaps if you were a bit more specific.”

  The dowager leaned so close, the peacock feathers on her fan tickled Julia’s nose. “Didn’t I have a chat with you at the Posselthwaites’?”

  Thoroughly confused, Julia fought off the urge to scream. “A bit of a chat. I believe you had more to say to my sister.”

  “Your sister, yes. I daresay—”

  “Oh, Julia, I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” Face flushed, Sophia came striding down the corridor as fast as her tightly laced stays allowed. “Mama says you must come to the ballroom quickly. They’re waiting for you.”

  “Who is?” Not Benedict. Please, not Benedict. Although a few days had passed since their ill-advised kiss, she still was not prepared to face him. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. The mere thought of him turned her palms moist.

  “Mama and Papa and Highgate and his sister, of course. They’re ready to make the announcement.”

  Snap! Out came the lorgnette. “Highgate, is it? You’ll be the one I want to talk to.”

  “My lady?”

  Julia couldn’t blame Sophia for the note of caution in her voice. The dowager’s tone carried all the subtlety of a rampaging bull.

  “Have you gone and betrothed yourself to the likes of him? Well, gel, speak up. Have you?”

  Sophia paled and retreated a pace. “Yes,” she squeaked.

  “The way I heard it, you did not have a choice but to accept his offer,” Lady Epperley went on. “In my day, young ladies approached marriage with a great deal more circumspection.”

  Sophia stared at the dowager with wide eyes.

  “If you’ll excuse us,” Julia said, “I believe our mother needs us.”

  Like the figurehead on a warship, Lady Epperley advanced on her quarry. “I am not finished. You young chits. Clearly, you’re in need of a better education. Running about, refusing decent proposals and then flinging yourselves on such men as Highgate.”

  Julia slanted a glance at her sister. Sophia’s lower lip trembled, and she sucked it between her teeth.

  “What of such men as Highgate?” Julia asked, although she dreaded the reply.

  “Please don’t,” Sophia whispered.

  Julia fixed her sister with a hard stare. Why stem the tide of this conversation? By her own admission, Sophia was planning to cry off. Lady Epperley’s gossip might well give her the excuse she needed. Unless … unless Sophia already knew something.

  “Don’t what? What have you heard about Highgate?”

  Lady Epperley lowered her lorgnette and leaned closer.

  “It was something Mr. Ludlowe said.” Sophia eyed the dowager. “Please do not make me repeat it.”

  “Mr. Ludlowe?” Lady Epperley frowned. “Heard he’s to be called Clivesden now. At any rate, I would not put stock in anything he has to say about Highgate.” She stepped closer, mischief dancing in her eyes. “They have a history together, you see.”

  Sophia blinked once and then again. “They do?”

  “Yes, my dear. I should not believe anything one says about the other.” Without warning, she snapped her fan closed and took herself off, leaving Julia speechless for a moment.

  “What was that all about?”

  Sophia’s head turned as she surveyed the dowager’s progress back toward the ballroom. “I don’t know.” Her words carried an odd mixture of distraction and relief.

  “You have an idea.”

  “Beyond the fact she’s going feebleminded in her old age?”

  A feeble mind was likely the least of Lady Epperley’s faults. More likely, she acted that way a-purpose to provoke. “If it was mere feeblemindedness, you wouldn’t have reacted so strongly.”

  “There’s no time for that now. Mama—”

  “Can wait. I need someone to sew my hem.” Julia headed toward the ladies’ retiring room once more. “You can tell me while the maids fix it.”

  “I will not repeat what William told me in front of a servant.”

  Julia stopped in her tracks. “If it’s that bad, why haven’t you leaped on the excuse to get out of your betrothal before now?”

  “I don’t suppose I really believed it deep down. William tried to warn me off Highgate the day he came to call on you, but then at dinner, he never spoke a word against the betrothal. If what he told me was true, he would have said something, surely.”

  Julia paused in front of the door to the retiring room. “And what did he tell you?”

  Sophia stared at the toes of her beaded slippers. “He hinted Highgate is responsible for the death of his first wife.”

  Julia bit back a screech. “Sophia, you knew this before Highgate proposed, and you still accepted?”

  “I can’t explain, exactly. I did not quite believe it to begin with, and then Highgate was quite persuasive.”

  Julia opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment, the door opened, and a pretty young brunette emerged. On spotting Julia, she stopped short. Her face twisted itself into such an expression of loathing, Julia felt its impact in her gut. Without a word, the brunette turned the full force of her hatred on Julia, eyeing her from head to toe. She then pushed past Sophia and flounced off down the corridor.

  Accustomed to the snub from certain sticklers due to her mother’s antecedents, although perhaps not with this level of venom, Julia stared after her. “And who was that, I wonder?”

  “The strumpet,” Sophia murmured.

  Julia gaped. “Sophia! If Mama heard you using such language about a lady of quality, why … I don’t know what she’d do.”

  “That is no lady of quality. I tell you, she’s no better than a common trollop.”

  “What makes you say so?”

  “At the Posselthwaites’, Ludlowe tossed me aside to flirt with her. She carries on so, when she’s supposed to be engaged to young Keaton.”

  “Then why did she look at me as if I were some beggar woman dressed in rags?” Julia regretted the question immediately. It might well lead her sister to pose a few of her own—questions with no easy answers, at least if she wanted to preserve Sophia’s heart.

  Fortunate
ly, Sophia lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “Who knows how the minds of such, ah, ladies operate? Come, we must hurry, or Mama will be along looking for us herself.”

  She ushered Julia into the room and hailed a maid to see to her sister’s trailing hem. While the girl bent and took needle and thread to the silk and chiffon confection, Julia turned the topic back to Highgate.

  “Are you really in such a rush to go through with all this, considering what you’ve heard?”

  Sophia cast a glance about the room before replying. Lady Epperley might have taken herself back to the ball, but she was not by any means the ton’s only gossip. “What am I going through with, exactly? It’s a temporary charade, and when it’s finished, we’ll part ways and have done.” She gave a sharp little nod that set her blond ringlets bobbing.

  Julia pressed her lips together. Sophia’s scheme sounded like another one of her fancies. The reality was bound to be far different than her sister’s imaginings.

  “There ye be, miss.” The maid pushed herself to her feet. “That ought to do ye until ye get home.”

  Julia smiled at her absently and started for the door. Sophia clutched at her arm with trembling fingers as they made their way through the cream-paneled corridor and down the stairs. Music swelled from the lower story to greet them.

  They met their mother at the entrance to the ballroom. “There you are. You’ve kept your father and Highgate waiting far too long as it is.”

  Sophia’s nails dug into Julia’s arm.

  “It was my fault, Mama,” Julia put in quickly. “My gown needed a repair.”

  Mama’s brows lowered. “We must hurry. Lady Wexford will want to leave soon.”

  “But it cannot be midnight yet,” Julia protested.

  With a smile and nod, Mama angled past a pair of gossiping matrons. “Just so. She’s not used to keeping town hours, and I do not want her to miss the announcement.”

  “I thought she was dead set against any sort of public announcement.”

  A wicked glint sparkled in Mama’s eye—the very same sky blue as Sophia’s. “Which is precisely why I want her on hand to witness this.”

  Sophia slowed her steps until she dragged at Julia like a dead weight. “I don’t know, Mama. You know how capable she is of creating a spectacle. Recall what I told you she said in the park.”

  “Oh, she would not dare. Not in front of the entire ton.” Mama’s observation might not be such an exaggeration. The Pendleton ballroom was packed with guests. Ladies’ skirts swirled with color to the lively steps of a reel. Around the room’s perimeter, groups stood in conversation. “Besides, it’s not as if we’re going to stop the orchestra and announce it to the entire assembly. Only a select few will do.”

  As they pushed their way through the crush, Julia saw that her mother’s notion of a select few included Lady Epperley. The peacock plumes drifted above her blue turban as she inspected the crowd.

  Beside her, Highgate edged a safer distance from the feathers. Not fast enough. She leaned across him to exchange a few words with Lady Wexford, and, in a sudden, violent motion, he threw back his head in a sneeze.

  Julia’s gaze passed beyond Lady Wexford, glowering in purple bombazine, to settle on her father—and a distinctly unwelcome sight.

  An icy sense of foreboding washed over her, and she pulled up short. “What’s Mr. Ludlowe doing there?”

  Mama turned. “Come along, dear, we’ve waited long enough.”

  At the same moment, Ludlowe caught her eye and smiled, his gaze shrewd, piercing, too perceptive. An urge rose within to spin on her heel and march straight from the ballroom, but the combination of Sophia’s gloved fingers digging into her arm and the surrounding crowd made flight impossible.

  Bad enough that her parents were about to announce an unwanted betrothal, doomed to failure ahead of time—they were about to do so in front of the one man whose proposal Sophia would accept without hesitation.

  What a disaster, with most of the blame laid at her parents’ feet.

  “Ah, there they are at last.” Her father raised a glass of pale liquid to his lips. Bubbles rose to the surface in dizzying spirals. Champagne. “My ladies, each more lovely than the last.”

  Julia’s gaze narrowed in on his nose—suspiciously red, of course. He must have imbibed a great deal of the sparkling wine to make such ebullient pronouncements.

  “Come, come.” He stepped aside to make room next to Highgate.

  Sophia’s fingertips threatened to leave bruises on Julia’s arm. “You agreed to this,” Julia grated to her sister. “Now you must go through with it.”

  As Sophia trudged to her place next to Highgate, Papa cleared his throat. Fortuitously—for him—the final notes of the reel sounded just then. In the ensuing quiet, his next words rang out loudly.

  “My lady.” He nodded toward Lady Epperley. “I’m sure you’ll be interested to hear this.”

  The dowager was not alone. Nearby, heads turned.

  “It seems I have a rather splendid bit of news. My daughter Sophia has accepted the suit of Highgate, here.”

  The lorgnette snapped out as Lady Epperley eyed the couple from head to toe. “I knew the gel would get there at last. How many proposals did it take her before she came to her senses?”

  A blush crept up Sophia’s cheeks, and Julia’s heart made a sympathetic flip for her sister’s sake. Papa raised his glass to the couple. Around them, the buzz of conversation rose. St. Claire was finally going to marry off a daughter.

  One down, one to go.

  The buzz grew in intensity until it seemed to fill the ballroom, enough to make the orchestra hold off launching into the next number. Another icy jolt coursed through her. Why couldn’t they begin the next set?

  And then the unthinkable happened.

  Papa held up his hand and cleared his throat once more. In their corner of the room, the buzz died away into silence.

  “Seems I have a second bit of news. Most astounding, really.”

  He phrased his words as if he were addressing Lady Epperley in a private conversation, but all around them bodies strained in their direction. No one wanted to miss this.

  “I’ll be marrying the other one off, too.”

  Julia’s jaw dropped. Angry words, most of them gleaned from conversations with Benedict and thus unfit for utterance in front of the ton, crowded into her mouth, each jumbling into the next until none of them escaped. They jammed together in the base of her throat and formed a knot, impeding both speech and breath.

  Her mother’s sharp elbow made painful contact with her ribs, and she tripped forward. Ludlowe loomed out of the group to take her arm.

  No!

  But the denial could not escape. It remained trapped in her throat, joined the knot of words, and held back the scream she so desperately wanted to release over the ballroom.

  “My lord Clivesden here has offered for Julia. Well, of course, I accepted.”

  The buzz started up again, swelling this time into an overwhelming rush. It drowned out all other sound. Julia’s feet remained rooted to the spot. Next to Ludlowe—no, he was Clivesden now. A title, an earl. Her mother’s dream for her, a dream whose fingers dug sharply into her flesh, leaving no opportunity for escape.

  How Julia wanted to escape. For all she could focus on was the expression of utter betrayal on Sophia’s face.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ALL AROUND Julia, a chorus of congratulations erupted. Well-wishers crowded her toward Clivesden, whose fingers curled about her arm to pull her close. She was too numb to protest, too numb to move from the spot.

  Nausea roiled in her gut. If she took so much as a single step, she might double over and spill the contents of her stomach all over the pale rose chiffon of her ball gown.

  Mama and Papa glowed with pride, but Julia’s most pressing concern was her sister. She threw Sophia a glance of desperation.

  Her sister’s blue eyes glittered coldly in response. That expression of awful betrayal�
��rosy cheeks turned to chalk, lips pursed, chin puckered—engraved itself on Julia’s heart. “I never meant for this to happen,” she wailed, but shock turned her voice thin and reedy. Her words were lost in the uproar.

  The news was spreading—it must have already extended to the other side of the ballroom. By morning, word would have reached the ears of even the most reclusive members of society: The infamous St. Claire sisters, both betrothed in a single night.

  No doubt her parents had planned the announcement this way so Julia could not say a word against it without creating a scandal. No matter. In the morning, she’d have a talk with her father away from prying eyes, and she’d make him see. She was not about to tolerate this turn of events.

  SOPHIA inhaled through her nose and fought for a calm demeanor—no mean feat when inside her emotions warred. Anger and heartbreak fought for the mastery, but on the exterior, she trembled with cold.

  Five years. Five years she’d loved that man in vain, and it all came to this. He’d chosen her sister, who had never paid him a whit of attention.

  It was not fair.

  She’d have gladly offered him her beating heart on a platter, but he didn’t want it.

  Black spots danced before her eyes. No. She’d resolved never again to swoon at one of these functions. She would not do it now. Not here with only Highgate to catch her.

  Mechanically, she accepted congratulations of one of her mother’s acquaintances. She barely noticed who. Faces blurred into one another, and the entire ballroom closed into a single, stifling cell.

  Air. She needed air. More than that, she needed to get away from that insipidly grinning idiot she’d cast her heart away on, that idiot who’d taken her sister’s arm, who shook hands with all and sundry.

  “I say, gel, are you feeling faint?” The words solidified in her ears, the sounds rearranging themselves to make sense. She blinked. Lady Epperley frowned from behind her lorgnette.