A Wicked Scandal For The Bluestocking (Steamy Historical Regency)

by Lucinda Nelson

  “I didn’t lay a hand on her,” Eric repeated peevishly. “Not here, and certainly not there. She merely needed my help. Her father is in quite the predicament. Apparently, he has been arrested for allegedly poisoning one of the peers.” He paused.

  Charlene hadn’t given him all of the details, but he had been able to piece things together as he lay awake all night thinking about their meeting.

  “I seem to remember some being suspicious of the circumstances of the death of Lord Henrich Galveston of Worsceshire,” Eric said quietly, looking back and forth between his friend’s faces for their reactions.

  The two of them tended to pay far more attention to gossip than he did, in part because they had the time to devote to such things. He had been woefully short on time since becoming duke. The two of them, as younger sons, would never know the weight of responsibility that he himself carried.

  Dalton’s eyes widened, and he let out a low whistle. “I had heard a rumour that some thought that Lord Henrich’s physician was poisoning him,” he confirmed. “They said that it was something to do with a dispute over how much the lord was paying to the physician.”

  Eric felt his heart sink as he heard that. He had hoped, somehow, that this wouldn’t be the case that Dr. Ellington was tied up in. If so, even with his involvement, Eric doubted there was much that Charlene could do to prove her father’s innocence. Lord Henrich’s death had shaken all of London.

  The man was not so old, and he had plenty of power. That it was foul play had been automatically assumed from the start.

  The eyes of all of England would be on the trial, and there were plenty who would be looking for nothing more than vengeance.

  As though echoing Eric’s thoughts, Dalton said, “If you get caught up in this, it would be your reputation at stake as well. This is the scandal of the century.”

  Percy nodded in agreement. Eric turned away from the two of them, staring out the window. “And yet, I fear I must get involved,” he said heavily. “I gave Charlene my word, once, that if she ever needed help from me, that she had but to ask. She saved my life, after all. Without her, I wouldn’t be here today.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Eric could see his two friends exchange glances. He already knew, in his heart, all the reasons why he shouldn’t get involved in this. Perhaps Dr. Ellington really had been responsible for poisoning Lord Henrich. It was clear to most that someone had.

  Eric couldn’t believe that Dr. Ellington had been the man, though. He couldn’t imagine how it would ruin Charlene to lose her father. In his mind’s eye, he could see her as she had been in his dream, sobbing as though her heart was broken. He knew that he had no choice.

  He was going to help her, however he could. Perhaps she truly did have other ideas about how she could help the man, but it wouldn’t hurt for him to attempt to help Dr. Ellington as well. It was the least that he could do.

  As soon as Percy and Dalton left, he sent out inquiries around London, looking for any information about the doctor, the trial, or anything else that anyone might have heard. He did it in secret, not wanting anyone to realize, just yet, that he was getting himself involved in this. Someone out there must know something, though. He was sure of it.

  He’d just see what his inquiries turned up, and then he would figure out how to act from there. It was the least that he could do for her, he told himself.

  In his heart, he knew it was because he was still fascinated by her, though, more than the fact that she and the doctor had saved his life.

  Chapter 7

  Miss Charlene Ellington

  The last thing Charlene wanted to do tonight was to head to yet another ball with Miss Matilda, but she couldn’t bail on her duties just because she had other, more important, things on her mind at the moment.

  She still had no idea how she was going to save her father, but she knew that she was running out of time to figure something out.

  Perhaps the ball would be a good thing, though. Perhaps some other brilliant idea would come to her.

  In any case, Lord Eric would be at the ball tonight, she suspected. She was sure that she would have heard if the duke had left London already.

  Instead, it seemed like every young woman in the city was planning new dresses with the hope of snaring the man’s affections. It bothered Charlene more than she would ever admit to hear Matilda talk with her young friends about how fetching a man the young duke was.

  Something made her want to tell them all about the time that she had saved the man’s life.

  She bit her tongue every time. The last thing Eric needed was for her reputation as a nobody to wear off on him. Not that it ever really could.

  Of course, Charlene had given up hope that Eric would change his mind about helping her. He had made it very clear that he had no desire to get involved in her family’s drama.

  Still, she couldn’t help but want to see him again tonight at the ball. Up close, not just from across the ballroom, through a sea of people. She would never dare to approach him again as she had before, however.

  She hadn’t expected to see him like this, though. She froze, taking in the scene in front of her. Lord Eric and Lady Annabelle Cartridge, the daughter of a viscount. The two of them were together out in the gardens.

  Charlene only saw them because Matilda had somehow managed to escape her watchful eye and Charlene had had to attempt to track the girl down. Now, she cursed herself for twice the fool.

  She had let Matilda get away from her, under the guise of wanting to talk to Miss Madeleine about her dress, and now she realized that she had foolishly assumed that because Lord Eric wasn’t engaged to anyone, the young duke didn’t have any paramours.

  She tried to push her feelings aside. What did it matter to her that Eric was evidently interested in Lady Annabelle? They were a great match. Lady Annabelle was young, beautiful, and accomplished. She came from a good family, and they would make a wonderful political match.

  And yet.

  There was something about seeing Eric with someone else, some other woman, that made her feel like a vice had clenched around her heart.

  It was silly, she knew. Lord Eric would never be interested in someone like her. He could never be. That kiss, once upon a time, had merely been a sign of his thanks because she had saved his life. Nothing more.

  Suddenly though, jealousy welled up inside of her, even more strongly than it did when she was forced to listen to Matilda and her friends gossiping about the young duke. Somehow, she had come to think of Eric as hers, if not in name then in the heart.

  The way that he was currently looking at Lady Annabelle belied that, though. He had no feelings for Charlene, and he never had. She should have realized that, at the very latest, when he had refused to help out when she needed him.

  He was going to make a great match. That was probably the whole reason that he was in London at the moment, and the reason he didn’t want to get caught up in the politics of helping her out with her father.

  He was looking to be married. His advisors likely wouldn’t like that as a duke, he remained unmarried.

  He wouldn’t remain unmarried for long, if Lady Annabelle had her way, Charlene was sure.

  Charlene paused there for another moment, watching the two of them. She couldn’t believe that they were being so obvious, so open in their affection for one another.

  If Charlene had discovered the two of them like this, who knew how many other people had already seen the two of them. It made her want to say something, but she had been raised better than to interrupt a moment like this, even if it was improper, and especially if it was only her jealousy that made her want to come between the two of them.

  It was hard for her to back away from the two of them. She had to find Matilda, she reminded herself, before the girl could get herself into the same sort of trouble that Lady Annabelle was apparently intent on bringing on herself.

  Not that anyone would ever chastise the viscount’s daughter for being c
aught talking with a handsome suitor in the gardens during a party like this.

  They were merely chatting, and although it was improper for the two of them to be there alone together, well, perhaps the woman’s family had already consented to the match.

  Still, she felt sadness settle into her heart as she walked through the halls, peeking into different rooms in her search for Matilda. She should never have expected that that kiss from Eric meant anything more.

  After all, it wasn’t as though she had anything that could attract him to her. She was comely enough, but she was no beauty of a kind like Lady Annabelle.

  And then there was her family. They had enough money that Annabelle had once hoped to marry well. Enough money that she could stay here at court and assume a position here. But her father was a doctor, nothing more. He certainly didn’t have a title.

  Then there was Charlene herself, and her accomplishments. Middling French, and the ability to prescribe the correct medicine and treatment for nearly any ailment that one could have.

  Those weren’t the sorts of things that would attract a peer. Maybe a skilled tradesman. Maybe a youngest son, if she was very lucky.

  And if she was younger. That was the real thing, at this point. She was twenty-five years old, and her courting days were all but done, despite what her father seemed to hope. If Eric had been interested in her, he would have approached her long ago. If anyone had.

  It wasn’t meant to be. She pushed her disappointment away and focused on finding her charge. Fortunately, she finally found her in the washroom, where she’d evidently been chatting away with her friends. Nothing more than that. Charlene would keep her job for another day.

  “Come, we should get back to the ball before they miss you,” Charlene said matter-of-factly.

  Matilda sighed exaggeratedly. “Don’t you realize that that’s the style these days?” she asked.

  Charlene quirked an eyebrow at her charge, wondering just what she meant by that. It was Miss Eleanor who responded with a quiet titter. “We let the men realize just what it is that they’re missing!” she said. “Then, when we reappear, they all clamour to dance with us.”

  Charlene nearly snorted with amusement. Every year, the girls introduced to society seemed younger and younger, and every year, the rules of the game seemed to get more complicated.

  But who was she to say what was good or not? She had barely had a man look twice at her in all her courting days. If these girls wanted to waste the ball as they sat around here in the washroom with their friends, then who was she to say anything?

  Matilda led the way to the door, though. “The game’s spoiled now you’re here, anyway. With my chaperone here, the boys are all to think that I’ve had something happen to me!”

  “We wouldn’t want that,” one of her other friends said with a giggle.

  “Come back out soon, before I’m bored to death,” Matilda sighed dramatically as Charlene pulled open the door for her and ushered her back to the ballroom.

  Back in the ballroom, Charlene couldn’t help but feel even more out of place, though. She felt old and frumpy, and she could barely breathe, for a moment, with how much she missed her home in Bath.

  Here, the balls all seemed to be full of lovely ladies dancing with dapper gentlemen in a life that would always escape Charlene.

  She wished that she could write to her father and ask him to invent some reason to call her home. Except that her father had been arrested and was facing possible execution. And there was nothing that she could do about it.

  The perfect cap to her unhappiness was seeing Lord Eric sweep back into the room with Lady Annabelle following soon behind. The two of them took their place on the dance floor, moving gracefully together.

  A perfect match, Charlene was sure. It made her feel sick with loss to watch them, in spite of the fact that you couldn’t lose something that you had never had in the first place.

  “I should have become a midwife instead,” Charlene mused quietly to herself. She could have remained in Bath, then, put her knowledge to use, and avoided all this discomfort and unhappiness.

  Of course, with her luck, she would have been there to help with the birthing of Eric’s eventual heir, borne to some other woman. Lady Annabelle, perhaps.

  The thought made even that dream sour in Charlene’s mind. Everywhere she looked, her future was bleak. And the only man who could possibly have fixed all of it – her father’s situation and her own – was bowing gracefully to someone else.

  Chapter 8

  Lord Eric Cumberland, Duke of Havenport

  Eric woke late in the morning after a night of fitful sleep. Ever since Charlene had come to visit him, he had been having a tough time sleeping.

  Whether it was dreams about her and how upset she was or other, darker dreams…or dreams where she was naked beneath his body, spread out on his bed…he never seemed to sleep through the night like he would have wished.

  He didn’t know how to fix that, except to gather information and hope the best when it came to her father.

  Fortunately, when he finally roused himself and went downstairs, he found that news had come in about Charlene’s father. At long last.

  He sat down with the reports from the mortician and Dr. Ellington’s staff, as well as the testimony of the apothecary’s assistant who had sold the doctor the drugs for Lord Henrich. He read through all of it, hoping that it would clear Dr. Ellington’s name. Instead, the reports seemed certain to damn the man.

  He thought back to when he had known Dr. Ellington before. He and Charlene, as far as Eric knew, made all of their medicines themselves. But now, it sounded like the doctor was contracting out, buying his medicines from someone else.

  That made a certain amount of sense, Eric supposed, if the doctor was as busy as the reports said that he was. Still, there was a certain amount of risk that came along with that. Perhaps that was the key.

  However, the apothecary’s assistant swore that he had been asked for medicine meant to treat stomach parasites. What’s more, the doctor had apparently signed off on the receipt, not seeming to find anything strange in the order.

  And yet Dr. Ellington had originally diagnosed the Lord as suffering from gout.

  There was no reason that the man would then have prescribed the medicine that he did, knowing that the man had gout. Unless he was purposefully trying to give the man a medication that was too strong, that wasn’t what the man needed. Unless he had wanted for the lord’s spleen to rupture as it had.

  Still, Eric wondered if somewhere along the line, there had been nothing more than a careless mistake.

  Oh, he was sure that the doctor had done something wrong – but was it as malicious as his jurors seemed to think? Perhaps it was an honest mistake.

  The doctor was busy, and he had a number of patients in his care at any given time, men and women who were drawn to the spas of Bath and its waters as a cure-all for their ailments.

  Had he forgotten what it was that he had diagnosed Lord Henrich with originally, or had he accidentally incorrectly relayed his original prescription to the apothecary’s assistant?

  Was there anything to be won by arguing that he hadn’t done anything on purpose? He had still killed a lord, with his carelessness if not out of some political motive.

  Anyway, it wasn’t as though Eric himself could help to argue the man’s case. Dr. Ellington had lawyers who would do that for him, and Eric was sure they would be looking at all the same information that he had in front of himself now, and then some.

  They would argue the same way that the young duke was thinking: that the doctor shouldn’t be executed because what he had done was accidental. Still, Dr. Ellington would never be allowed to practice medicine again. The trial would ruin his family either way.

  Again, Eric found himself wondering how Charlene was handling things. He had seen her briefly at the latest ball here in London. She had been there again with her young charge, Miss Matilda. Eric had tried to catch C
harlene’s eye.

  There was something inside of himself that told him that he should talk to her again. To let her know that in spite of his uncertainty that he should get involved in her situation (after all, what could he do? He wasn’t a lawyer), he was seeking information regarding her father’s arrest.

  That he was doing his best. He wasn’t sure why it mattered to him that she know that he was doing his best. He wasn’t sure why he thought that might matter at all to her. But he wanted her to know.

  Instead, he had been waylaid by Lady Annabelle. The woman was nice enough, but she was a little overzealous in her affection for Eric, and for whatever reason, he just couldn’t find it in himself to be interested in her. Not as a wife, anyway.