Scandalous Scoundrels

by Aileen Fish

  He looked away once more, his gaze trained on the orchestra as the musicians stuck up the beginnings of a quadrille. “I believe I have promised this dance to Lady Winston. Perhaps you will allow me the next?”

  Emily handed her dance card to him and watched as he scrawled his name for the next waltz.

  “It was a pleasure speaking with you,” he offered, already turning away.

  Well, that went well, Emily thought with a small satisfied smile. Really, he was so handsome and she’d been sweet and charming. Hadn’t she? Yes, yes, she was quite certain she had been.

  Pleasantly light-headed, Emily wandered around the ballroom enjoying the music and the flashes of color from the dance floor as ladies and gentlemen twirled about. A waiter offered her another glass of champagne which she happily accepted. When she finished it she went in search of another, tossing it back and giggling as the bubbles burst upon her tongue.

  Across the ballroom she spied the gentleman Nicholas Avery had been conversing with when he’d first arrived. He was not quite as tall as her All But Betrothed and his build was leaner, but he had the same wavy blond hair and crisp blue eyes. Beside him stood a lady with hair so fare it appeared silver in the candlelight.

  “Good evening,” Emily called out gaily as she approached the couple.

  The lady turned and looked behind her as if to see to whom Emily addressed her greeting.

  “I know I ought to wait to be properly introduced.” Emily stopped before the couple and offered her hand. “But truly, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a sillier rule.”

  The gentleman took a small step forward, plucked the empty glass from her extended hand and gave her a proper bow, his lips twitching. “Good evening.”

  “To be sure, you’re a gallant fellow,” Emily praised with a laugh.

  The lady’s mouth fell open, her brows winging up. And fine brows she had, perfectly arched and surprisingly dark for such a fair haired lady.

  “You’ve beautiful arches,” Emily informed the lady.

  “Beautiful arches?” the lady repeated, her pewter gaze sweeping the room. “This is not my home.”

  “Thank goodness for small favors,” Emily exclaimed. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a more hideous room. What do you suppose the architect was thinking, adding Grecian arches to a room done up in the Baroque style?”

  The lady looked back at her in obvious confusion. “I’m sorry, but who are you?”

  “Why, I am soon to be your…” Emily began, before a new thought occurred to her. “Are you married?”

  “Married?”

  “To one another?” Emily clarified.

  “Yes, of course,” the couple answered in unison.

  “One never can tell. Why, one time I assumed a lady was the mistress of a gentleman when in fact she was his wife. But really she was so young and lovely and he was an old toad. How could I know?”

  “Oh,” the blonde lady replied.

  “I don’t mind telling you, I was never invited back to their home again.”

  “No,” lovely brows agreed.

  “Which was just fine with me. The gentleman’s son tended to allow his hands freedom to wander while dancing. I’m quite certain you know what I mean.” Emily gave the lady a wink before turning to her husband. “You are Mr. Avery’s brother?”

  “I am.”

  “Splendid,” cried Emily clapping her hands together. “Don’t you just love when you are proven correct? I thought to myself that you must be related to Mr. Avery. Why you are nearly as beautiful as he is.”

  “Pardon me, Madam,” Emily’s soon to be sister-in-law hissed, and really she sounded downright ferocious.

  “Oh, good gracious! But you don’t know who I am.”

  “Yes,” said her husband. “I believe I do.”

  Emily beamed at him.

  “Dearest,” he turned to his wife. “May I present Miss Calvert? Miss Calvert, Lady Avery.”

  “No,” his wife whispered.

  “Yes,” Emily answered. “I am all but betrothed to your giant of a brother!”

  Even in her opium-addled state, Emily recognized the surprise upon both of their faces.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Calvert,” Lady Avery said after a beat of silence.

  Just then Emily sensed a presence at her back. Without looking around she knew he was behind her. She knew it by the shiver that raced up her spine, by the tingling in her fingers, by the sudden loss of breathable air.

  “Oliver, Lady Avery,” Nicholas greeted his brother and sister-in-law before turning to her. “Miss Calvert, I believe this is my dance?”

  “I believe it is,” Emily agreed readily, only too happy to escape the shocked faces of Mr. and Lady Avery.

  Nicholas twirled Emily around the dance floor, one hand all but swallowing hers, the other resting warm at her waist. Goodness, he was a large man. She had, of course, known he was a tall man; she had recognized it at the theater and again earlier in the evening. But now, dancing so close to him, his broad chest at a level with her eyes, his height and breadth was almost too manly. Emily had never danced with such a blatantly masculine man. It was thrilling and comforting all at once.

  Forcing herself to look up from Mr. Avery’s chest, she met his clear blue eyes twinkling in the candlelight. “You’ve very pretty eyes.”

  “I was just thinking the very same thing about you,” he responded with a chuckle as he turned her sharply to avoid a collision with another couple.

  Emily’s vision blurred with the quick movement and she stumbled.

  “Pardon,” she whispered, her head beginning to spin in the oddest manner. Perhaps she ought not to have gone in search of that third glass of champagne.

  “Entirely my fault,” Nicholas assured her.

  She was suddenly dizzy, pinpricks of light flashed in the corners of her vision and her flesh broke out in goose bumps.

  Looking away from his gaze, she fastened her eyes to the sapphire pin in his immaculately tied cravat as she concentrated on the steps of the waltz and attempted to regain her equilibrium.

  “One, two, three. One, two, three.” Emily only realized she was counting off the steps aloud when she heard Nicholas’s soft laughter.

  Her head shot up to see the merriment in his eyes. Unfortunately, the abrupt motion also intensified the strange vertigo she was feeling. Stumbling to a halt, she stared up at her partner in mortification as waves of nausea rolled up from her belly.

  “Miss Calvert,” he began, alarm evident in his voice. Other dancers had noticed their stop and were beginning to stare at them.

  Without a word Emily turned and walked slowly and stiffly from the dance floor, out through the French doors, across the terrace, down the steps, and into the dark garden beyond, all the while hoping she was not going to embarrass herself by losing the contents of her stomach.

  Lady Margaret watched her niece walk away from Nicholas, leaving him standing on the dance floor staring after her.

  “That silly girl,” she murmured to Viscount Talbot.

  “Is she as addlepated as she seems?”

  “And then some. My brother assured me she is an intelligent chit, actually said she was too smart for her own good. Bah, he always was an idiot.”

  “This scheme may not come to fruition,” Andrew warned. “Nick would sooner marry a homely girl than a stupid one.”

  Margaret sighed. It had been too good to be true. At the advanced age of four and fifty Margaret Morris had finally decided it was time to marry her long-time love. But she would not marry a pauper. Viscount Talbot was as poor as a church mouse. He had inherited a title and estates that had been nearly run into the ground by his father’s penchant for gambling. Andrew had disregarded the problem of his dwindling fortune until it had grown to such proportions that it could no longer be ignored.

  Last year, he had finally admitted to his love that he was near to bankrupt. Together they had hatched a plan to provide a much-needed influx of capit
al into the dwindling family coffers.

  Margaret had a spinster niece with a staggering fortune; Andrew had a bachelor son with charm and a handsome face. Arrange a marriage and solve all their problems. What could be simpler?

  “Perhaps I should start looking elsewhere for an heiress for Nicholas,” Andrew suggested.

  “Don’t give up yet,” replied Margaret. “There may be another way.”

  Andrew looked down at her with a question in his blue eyes.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time a marriage has come about in the midst of a small scandal.”

  “Ah, right you are,” he replied with a smile. “The age-old custom of compromising the young lady. Splendid notion, my darling.”

  “No time like the present,” suggested Margaret.

  “She is alone in the garden,” Andrew agreed.

  “Shall I send him out after her or shall you?” she asked.

  “I’ll do it. You gather a gaggle of geese and I’ll meet you beside the fountain. Shall we say ten minutes?”

  Nick found the lady sleeping on a bench in the farthest corner of the garden a few minutes later. His father had insisted he follow her out into the deserted garden, practically shoved him out the door. Nick was no fool. He knew what was expected of him. As he looked down at the mass of wrinkled blue silk and pale limbs, his mind shied away from the task.

  He could not marry this girl. He simply could not shackle himself to this empty-headed, fragile creature for life. There must be another way, another heiress.

  He thought of her anger when she had realized he was laughing at her counting out the steps to the waltz. Had she simply looked up and smiled, shared in the humorous moment, he might have agreed to this harebrained plan. But could he spend the rest of his life holding back his laughter for fear of offending her?

  He had attempted to engage her in conversation, only to be thwarted by her vacant eyes and wispy shrugs. Could he spend an eternity of dinners with a lady incapable of the simplest of dialogue?

  He looked down at her painfully thin arms and gaunt face. Could he spend night after night in marital intimacy with a woman he was afraid he would injure with his passion?

  Nick heard voices behind him, quickly approaching. Three or four ladies from the sound of it. He had only a moment to decide, a moment in which to define his future.

  Margaret led Lady Palmer, Mrs. Elliott, and Mrs. Thaddeus around the tall hedge to the scene that awaited them.

  “I don’t know what she could have been thinking of, coming into the garden alone,” she said to the three biggest gossips in London.

  “Perhaps she is not alone,” replied Mrs. Elliott with a giggle. Alicia Elliott liked nothing so much as a scandal.

  “Don’t be silly, Alicia,” cried Margaret. “My niece is a true lady.”

  She allowed the ladies to come abreast of her, so that they too could share in the first sight of Emily in Nicholas’s arms.

  “Goodness,” whispered Lady Palmer.

  “I’ve never seen such a thing,” squealed Mrs. Elliott.

  “Poor dear,” Mrs. Thaddeus murmured.

  “What?” Margaret shrieked.

  Emily did not so much as lift an eyelid as the ladies stood above her watching her sleep on a cold hard bench in the garden of Clevedon House while the opening ball of the Season raged on.

  And just like that, Emily Ann Calvert’s reputation was ruined in London.

  The Sleeping Wraith, the next day’s paper called her.

  “Theater goers some evenings past must be pardoned for thinking they were attending a surprise rendition of the Ghost of Sleeping Beauty rather than King Lear as the playbill proclaimed. All eyes were upon the box of Lady M and the Sleeping Wraith within. The slumbering lady is Miss C, Lady M’s American niece, rumored to have come to London to make a match with Mr. A. In light of Mr. A’s dwindling family fortune, one could be forgiven for wondering if he would allow the lady’s gentle snores to dissuade him from the match. This author wonders no longer. For last evening at Lady C’s ball, the American heiress was seen fleeing from the arms of Mr. A during a waltz only to be found mere minutes later reclined upon a bench in the garden. Was the Sleeping Wraith perhaps dreaming that a prince, or perhaps a viscount’s second son, would awaken her with a kiss? This writer has it on good authority that Miss C would do better to return to the wilds of America and commence kissing frogs.”

  “Really, Aunt, I would never kiss a frog,” Emily said with a laugh when her aunt finished reading the paper to her.

  “You find it funny? That all the ton is laughing at you? That you are ruined?”

  “A lady cannot be ruined by such nonsense. Sleeping is hardly scandalous behavior.”

  “It is scandalous when you do it at the theater and then again at a ball,” Margaret cried.

  “You English wouldn’t know a scandal if it pinched you on the backside.”

  “Pinched… on the backside,” Margaret stammered.

  Emily rose unsteadily from her chair. The room spun crazily before righting itself and she found her aunt staring at her as if she had suddenly sprouted horns. “I know scandals. To be sure, I am an expert on scandalous behavior.”

  “What are you saying?” Margaret demanded.

  “Only that I created one scandal after another at home.” Emily waved her hands about in the air for emphasis before grabbing onto the back of her chair for balance. “Nothing but scandals. Scandals here, scandals there, scandals everywhere. Without even trying.”

  Emily took perverse pleasure in her meddling aunt’s obvious shock, stepping away from the chair to stand with hands on her hips. Never mind that she seemed unable to keep still, instead listing from right to left as if buffeted by a strong breeze.

  Margaret squinted, her face screwing up as if she’d caught an unpleasant odor upon the same breeze.

  “Scandals the likes of which you silly English have never seen,” Emily added before turning and weaving her way out of the room as quickly and carefully as she could manage.

  In her bedchamber, she fell upon the bed with her face buried in the coverlet, her amusement falling away entirely.

  Ruined? Again? Why? She’d been good. She’d been quiet. She’d been a veritable model of propriety. Good Lord, she’d been a ghost!

  Emily sat up and reached for the bottle on her nightstand with a hand that shook. She tried to remember when her last dose had been. No matter, she needed another.

  Ruined. Again.

  As Emily allowed the potion to lull her into a misty world between wakefulness and sleep, Lady Margaret penned an urgent letter to her brother.

  Chapter Six

  Nicholas Avery leaned forward to look out the window of the carriage that carried his family to Lady’s Margaret’s country estate in Buckinghamshire. The hills that spread for miles around were golden, the trees stripped of their leaves. There was a decided chill in the late-autumn air.

  “The hunting should be fine this year,” Viscount Talbot rumbled from beside him. “Margaret hasn’t hosted a hunt in years. Her woods are full of fowl and deer.”

  “Venison sounds divine,” Lady Avery replied with a tinkling laugh. “I find myself quite hungry these days.”

  Three pairs of blue eyes followed the movement of her gloved hand as she caressed her as yet flat stomach.

  Nick smiled and turned back to the window.

  Funny how one’s life could change in what seemed the blink of an eye, how fickle Lady Fate could be. Six months ago, Nick had been a much-sought-after gentleman. After the debacle with his All But Betrothed, the marriage-minded mamas had been clamoring for him to notice their daughters. That bit in the papers about The Sleeping Wraith had awoken them to the desperation of the Avery family. The rumors of their financial difficulties coupled with the presumed inability of Lady Avery to produce an heir had paved the way for countless dreams of a title up for sale.

  Then Joan and Oliver had announced that a miracle had occurred, there would be a child
of their marriage after all. Now Nick was once more only an impoverished second son. Marriage to him was not likely to provide a title in the next generation. Oh, he was still considered a good catch by those who desired the connection to a noble family, but his market value had dropped considerably.

  Nick had come close to offering for Miss Lumberton before the news of Oliver and Joan’s anticipation of a joyous event. The lady’s mother had made it quite clear that they could aim higher for her daughter and Miss Lumberton was quickly betrothed to Lord Almsey, son and heir to the nearly impoverished Earl of Riverton.

  The Avery family was becoming quite desperate. Nick was seriously considering courting one Miss Veronica Ogilvie, daughter to a wealthy Scottish wool merchant. Miss Ogilvie, along with a number of other possible matches, had been invited to enjoy two weeks in the country at Lady Margaret’s sprawling manor house.

  Nick was pulled from his thoughts by the sight of a huge black horse and rider galloping across the fields in the distance. They were virtually flying over the golden hills. The rider, who appeared to be a boy too small to manage the great beast, leaned low over the horse’s neck as if urging his mount to greater speed. Sure enough, the horse strained forward and gave that much more to the rider.

  “Who is that?” Nick asked his father.

  “Who?” Viscount Talbot leaned forward to peer out the window. “No idea. Stable boy, perhaps. Fine horse.”

  Father and son continued to watch as the pair approached a stone wall and then they were soaring over it in one long, effortless leap. The boy’s wide-brimmed hat fell from his head and a long stream of fiery red hair spilled out behind like a banner in the wind.

  “Well, what do you know,” his father said with a chuckle before he sat back.

  Nick watched as the woman and the giant black horse disappeared behind a copse of trees. One of Lady Margaret’s guests? Surely no lady would ride astride in men’s breeches. A servant? The stable master’s wife or daughter?