Love and Larceny

by Regina Scott

  “Catherine of Aragon,” she said, voice reverent as she cradled the three-hundred-year-old portrait. “Lord Hastings will be so happy to see her returned.”

  “And I warrant your husband will be equally happy to have an excuse to arrest the man who stole her,” Daphne said.

  “Another case to your credit, Emily,” Ariadne agreed.

  Emily smiled. “Another case to our credit. And I have been meaning to mention we have a request from a Scottish earl to determine why his horses keep disappearing, despite armed guards and a locked stables.”

  Daphne and Wynn exchanged glances.

  “When do we leave?” he asked.

  *

  A short time later, in front of the hotel, Hannah waved goodbye as her beloved students, now friends, headed home before starting their next adventure. Beside her, David slipped his arm about her waist.

  “I know that look in your eyes,” he said, his soft brown hair falling over his brow. “You’ve just managed a Society event that will be talked of for months, and you’re planning a painting.”

  “I am,” she admitted with a smile. “I tend to see people as they might appear in paintings, I fear. When I first met you, I was certain you were meant to be immortalized as King David.”

  He grinned. “Able to slay giants, eh?”

  “Ready to dance before the Lord. I think I fell in love with you from that moment.”

  He bent and kissed her, shocking the lady and gentleman who were passing. “One look at those paint-stained fingers, and I knew I’d found my match.”

  She made a face. “My fingers were not paint-stained. I was far more careful then. And now, I know just what to call this painting.”

  “Oh?” David asked.

  Her smile widened. “And They Lived Happily Ever After.”

  ***

  Thank you for choosing Love and Larceny. If you have followed our intrepid heroines from the first book, Secrets and Sensibilities, I hope you enjoyed the ride. If you missed out on any of the books, look for

  Secrets and Sensibilities, Book 1 in the Lady Emily Capers. When art teacher Hannah Alexander accompanies her students on a country house visit, she never dreams of entering into a dalliance with the handsome new owner, David Tenant. But one moment in his company and she’s in danger of losing her heart, and soon her very life.

  Art and Artifice, Book 2 in the Lady Emily Capers. What is Lady Emily’s betrothed thinking to insist on marriage before her first Season? And why is handsome Bow Street Runner Jamie Cropper dogging Lord Robert’s steps, and Emily’s? It’s up to Emily to use her art to uncover artifice and discover whether Lord Robert has something more up his sleeve than a nicely muscled arm. Along the way, a duke’s daughter might just form a perilous passion for a most unlikely suitor.

  Ballrooms and Blackmail, Book 3 in the Lady Emily Capers. Priscilla Tate is about to wring a proposal out of the Season’s most eligible duke when a blackmail note arrives, threatening to expose her secret. If she cannot uncover the mastermind, will Nathan Kent, the duke’s handsome personal secretary, no, no, the duke, forgive her for her past?

  Eloquence and Espionage, Book 4 in the Lady Emily Capers. Bluestocking Ariadne Courdebas never thought she’d play the heroine in her own romantic novel until a chance encounter with handsome intelligence agent Jason Sinclair pulled her into the world of espionage. Can Ariadne use her considerable eloquence to convince Sinclair to play her hero, forever?

  And, if you enjoyed Daphne and Wynn’s story, there’s several things you could do now:

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  Discover my many other books on my website.

  Turn the page for a sneak peek of my novella, “An Engagement of Convenience,” from Summer House Party, available now.

  Blessings!

  Regina Scott

  Sneak Peek of “An Engagement of Convenience” from Summer House Party

  Why did they always have to elope at midnight?

  Katherine Chapworth smothered a yawn as she waited under a neatly trimmed chestnut tree. Hugging her pink flannel dressing gown to her frame though the summer night was warm, she kept her gaze on the Grecian folly that marked the edge of the lands belonging to Chapworth Grange.

  It was always the folly, too. No, wait, Clementia’s besotted beau had attempted to scale a ladder to her window. How he had thought to carry her down the wooden rungs, Kitty had never known. In any case, the top of the ladder had broken the glass, and Clementia’s scream had been enough to wake the household (and the dead in the churchyard nearby), and Kitty’s work had been done.

  But Clive Bitterstock was a different sort. He’d been sniffing around her youngest cousin, Lucy, for the better part of the Season. His family, though not wealthy by any standards, was respectable. He was said to be prudent, thoughtful. Very likely Kitty could convince even Uncle to see the young man as a decent husband for the sixteen-year-old Lucy.

  So why elope?

  “Circle around the back,” she advised Bollers, who was waiting with her, and the tall, strapping footman stalked off to the side of the stone building and began to worm his way through the shrubs that clustered there. Thank goodness, most of the staff heeded her requests with respect and deference, for all she was only at the Grange on her uncle’s sufferance. As the chaperone for the Chapworth family for a decade, she’d safeguarded the reputations of all six of her cousins before they’d married. Once Lucy wed, she’d be done.

  And she was a little concerned about what happened then.

  The breeze brushed an auburn lock past her eyes, and she pushed the errant curl up into the mobcap she wore at night. Nearby, footsteps crunched up the graveled path from the lane to the church. The sound was as loud as gunshots to her listening ears. A shadow darted toward the stairs, running up to the graceful white stone columns. Inside the folly, a light sprang to life to reveal her cousin, dressed for travel, lantern shining in her gloved grip.

  Time to put a stop to this. Kitty strode to the bottom of the steps, the lawn of her nightgown flapping about her legs. “That’s far enough, Lucy.”

  Mr. Bitterstock stiffened, but her cousin gasped, clutching the chest of her pretty lavender Reddingote. Everything about Lucy was pretty and delicate, from her pale blond hair to her petite figure. She reminded Kitty of a Dresden shepherdess, fragile, frozen in time.

  “Oh, Kitty,” she said, hand falling. “You gave me such a fright. I thought you were Father.”

  “Be thankful I am not,” Kitty replied, “or I might have come armed.”

  Beside her, Mr. Bitterstock began to draw himself up, gathering a head of steam like one of the new locomotives.

  Kitty moved to cut him off. “This is an ill-advised venture. Kindly return to the Grange, Lucy. Now.”

  Lucy blinked big blue eyes. “But, Kitty, I love him.”

  “And I love her,” Mr. Bitterstock declared, puffing out the chest of his paisley-patterned waistcoat. She supposed he had to posture somehow. He was not terribly imposing, being of middling height with brown hair combed to one side of a narrow face and sharp blue eyes. But she knew Lucy found his tenor voice delightful.

  “How sweet,” Kitty told him. “Request her hand in marriage like a proper suitor, and stop making me stay up late.”

  She thought she sounded rather forceful. Waspish, even. Like Mr. Bitterstock, she had to do something to enforce her rule. She wasn’t much taller than Lucy, and her brown eyes could look soft and sweet, or so she had been told. Confidence in playing chaperone was key.

  But her stern demeanor was not enough to dissuade Mr. Bitterstock. He put his arm about Lucy’s waist. “Now, see here,” he told Kitty, eyes as cold as the stars that dotted the night sky. “You cannot stop us. You’re nothing but an o
ld raisin, shriveled on the vine. The only reason you’re interfering is you cannot abide to see other people happy.”

  The comment cut, but she wasn’t about to let him see it. “Oh, stand down, puppy,” Kitty returned, wondering what had happened to Bollers. “Raisin I may be, but at least I have the sense God gave me. What of you? You claim to love Lucy, yet you’re willing to steal her away from the bosom of her family, risk her safety by driving through the night on roads unknown to you and your team, and deny her the one shining moment of a young woman’s life, her wedding day.”

  Lucy’s lower lip trembled. “I did so want a pretty wedding gown, Clive.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Bitterstock warned, tightening his hold on Lucy’s waist. “She’s trying to trick us.”

  “If you consider truth trickery,” Kitty allowed.

  He scowled at her. “You’re a bully, madam, but I wager you wouldn’t stand so tall before a real threat.” He stepped away from Lucy and raised his fist.

  Kitty stared at him. He’d strike her? None of the men she’d confronted before had done more than protest. Where was that blasted footman? Bitterstock stomped down the stairs, head lowered like a bull’s and mouth set. He expected her to run, to cower.

  She would do neither.

  She braced herself, feet pressed into the gravel, ready to dodge or throw up her arms to block him if she must. He reared back his fist, and a hand materialized out of the darkness and seized it before the pup could make good on his threat.

  She thought surely Bollers had arrived, but the arm attached to that hand and the broad shoulders above it had better lines than the footman’s and were clothed in a fine green coat. Where the footman wore a powdered wig, her rescuer had hair the color of darkest chocolate and eyes to match. Besides, she would never forget those handsome features, arranged as if by a sculptor’s hand. The sight of the face that had haunted her dreams for a decade rocked Kitty more surely than any blow.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said to Bitterstock. “I have it on good authority that she bites.”

  Continue reading on my website.

  About the Author

  Regina Scott started writing novels in the third grade. Thankfully for literature as we know it, she didn’t actually sell her first novel until she learned a bit more about writing. Since her first book was published in 1998, her stories have traveled the globe, with translations in many languages including Dutch, German, Italian, and Portuguese. She now has more than thirty published works of warm, witty romance.

  She and her husband of more than twenty-five years reside in the Puget Sound area of Washington State with their overactive Irish terrier. Regina Scott has dressed as a Regency dandy, driven four-in-hand, learned to fence, and sailed on a tall ship, all in the name of research, of course. Learn more about her at her website.