A Wicked Scandal For The Bluestocking (Steamy Historical Regency)

by Lucinda Nelson

  He didn’t give a whit about his reputation, he found. And the more he realized that, the more he realized that he didn’t care to end up with Lady Annabelle or any of the other women that his mother saw him with in the future.

  He wasn’t going to tonight’s ball. He had made that decision that morning. There were more important things that he needed to do, and the last thing he wanted was to spend another night with Lady Annabelle conning him into yet another dance.

  He especially didn’t want to hear all the gossip about Charlene. It had only grown more rampant since the scene at the theatre and her subsequent disappearance.

  Everyone seemed to have some sort of story about where they had seen her, and none of them were favorable. It made him sick with worry about the woman, even though he doubted any of those people had actually seen her.

  Charlene was smart. If she didn’t want to be found, she would do a good job of hiding herself. Eric was sure of it.

  “Mother, I’m not going to tonight’s ball,” he told her evenly.

  “Are you feeling ill?” she immediately asked, looking worried. “Perhaps we should have someone tasting your food before you eat it. In light of the circumstances.”

  “What circumstances?” Eric asked through gritted teeth, even though he knew exactly what she was suggesting.

  Still, his mother refused to say anything scandalous aloud. “I just think that it might be best,” she said.

  “I’m not ill,” Eric told her flatly.

  His mother looked puzzled. “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head. “If you’re not ill, then why would you miss a chance to – ”

  “To do what, exactly?” Eric interrupted. “Oh, you mean to dance with Lady Annabelle again? To listen to everyone list off all the reasons why we are the perfect couple? I’m not interested in that.”

  His mother sighed. “I know you believe that Lady Annabelle is being improper in her advances towards you, but I’m sure that I don’t need to remind you what a match she would make for a duke.”

  “For the last time, I’m simply not interested in her,” Eric snapped. “I will not marry her.”

  His mother was silent for a long moment, and Eric felt guilty for snapping. It hadn’t been all that long since the woman had come out of her mourning period. And anyway, that was no way for him to speak to his mother.

  All the same, he couldn’t regret his words. Let her realize, once and for all, that he was serious when he said that he would not marry her. “There is nothing at all which draws me to that insipid woman,” he added.

  His mother slowly nodded. “Well, all right then,” she said brusquely. “All the more reason for you to attend tonight’s ball. Perhaps if you meet some of the other eligible women, you’ll find someone more suitable to your desires.”

  She paused, and Eric could tell that she was mentally running through a list of every eligible young lady that she knew, trying to come up with someone suitable.

  He no longer wished for someone suitable by his side, however. He wanted Charlene. Her absence had only served to make him realize that, no matter what people might say about the two of them, he just had to have her in his life.

  He couldn’t live without her. And he certainly wouldn’t marry someone else.

  “No, mother,” Eric said, gentling his voice. “I know that it isn’t what you would wish for me, in my position, but the only person whom I will ever wish to marry is Charlene.”

  His mother stared at him in horror, and Eric held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear you say anything about her reputation, please,” he said. “Or about how she doesn’t make the right bride for a duke. She is the only woman that I will marry. It’s as simple as that.”

  Finally, his mother sighed. “But Eric, you must realize that things will be…complicated if you do.”

  “I realize that,” Eric agreed gravely. “Part of the reason why I won’t go to the ball tonight is because the first thing I must do, if I am to marry her, is to clear her name.”

  “How do you expect to do that?” his mother asked. “You aren’t a lawyer. Nor an investigator.”

  “And yet – investigator, I feel I’ve become. I know who really poisoned Lord Henrich,” Eric told her simply. “I even know the man’s motive.”

  He was sure that it was Harvey. Dr. Ellington was the very reason that the man had been barred from his chosen profession. And the fact that it was to do with poison only made things more suspicious.

  In fact, Eric had to wonder why the doctor hadn’t even suspected that it might have been Harvey who really poisoned Lord Henrich. But then, and he smiled slightly at the thought, he suspected that the doctor was just as trusting as his daughter Charlene.

  Dr. Ellington wasn’t the kind of man who looked for revenge. The thought would never have occurred to him that Harvey might.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I have someplace that I need to be,” Eric told his mother. He knew that he needed more information to present at the trial. Of course, he wished he would have the man himself to bring in front of the jurors, but tracking down Harvey wasn’t a task for the duke himself.

  His men were working hard on that. That didn’t mean that Eric couldn’t seek out more information about the man, however. Perhaps someone else would vouch for Harvey’s character. He needed to discover if anyone else from the medical community remembered Harvey.

  His first stop would be the apothecary where Dr. Ellington’s office had been. It would be reduced to rubble, he was certain, but he doubted it had been all cleaned up yet. Perhaps there were more clues there. He had managed to locate an address for the apothecarist as well. A visit to that man might yield some information, or at least contacts to the medical college.

  “Oh Eric, do be careful,” his mother said worriedly. “I don’t like the idea of you being caught up in all of this.”

  “I don’t either,” Eric admitted. “What I like even less, however, is the idea that an innocent man could hang if I don’t manage to prove his innocence.”

  He left before his mother could formulate a response to that. He was only too certain that her response would be that she didn’t see why the Ellington family should be any of his concern, regardless of their innocence.

  When he got to the apothecary, he found that the place had been ransacked long before his return. There was nothing there which hadn’t burnt into unidentifiable pieces or ash. He sighed and turned down the street, keeping careful watch on his surroundings. The last thing he needed was for Harvey, or whoever it was that had started that fire at the apothecary, to find him again. He would be more careful this time.

  No more burning buildings. No more brushes with death or discovery.

  He made it to the apothecarist’s modest apartment without seeing anything out of the ordinary. When he knocked on the door, however, there was no answer. He frowned, weighing his options.

  It was possible that the apothecarist was attempting to set up shop somewhere else in town, but Eric doubted it. The man would likely not have the money for that, and all of his equipment was gone forever.

  Was it possible that the man had left town? Given up on his broken business and headed off for someplace else to start afresh? Eric nearly groaned aloud at the thought of that. He couldn’t waste the resources to track down two different men. But he was desperate to know if the apothecarist knew anything, as someone who had worked for so long alongside Dr. Ellington.

  He knocked on the door again, and when there was no answer, he looked back and forth. There was no one to see him. He tried the door handle and was surprised to find that it was unlocked. At least he didn’t need to break into another place, but he still felt a little guilty for entering like this.

  He pushed those thoughts away, though. He simply wanted to ascertain that the apothecarist was still living there. He wouldn’t go through the man’s belongings, even. If he could tell that the man was still living here, he would come back at another time.

  A
s Eric nudged the door open, he was met by a putrid smell. He tried not to gag as he wondered what it was. Perhaps the man lived in filth. Perhaps it was some medicinal experiment gone awry.

  What he found in the man’s apartment was far darker than those conjectures, however. The corpse of a man lay bloodied in the middle of one of the floors, bloated and covered in flies. This time, Eric truly did gag.

  Someone, whoever it was, had killed the man violently. Eric wondered if it could have been Harvey. After all, Harvey seemed to have a penchant for poison, and this was no poisoning death.

  Then again, Eric also suspected Harvey of being the one who lit the fire at the apothecarist’s shop. Perhaps Harvey didn’t care how a man died, as long as death was the outcome.

  He stood there for a long moment, wondering if he should go through the man’s things. But there was something in him that stopped him from going through the belongings of a dead man.

  Not least of which because he didn’t know if Harvey was still in the area. The last thing he needed was for the man to come after him as well. If the apothecarist’s corpse had yet to be found, Eric wondered how long it would be before his was found.

  Long enough that his corpse would be unrecognizable?

  He looked down at the corpse one final time. The man’s features were already distorted, hiding what he might once have looked like. Yes, it could be long enough that even his mother wouldn’t be able to identify him.

  He shook his head and turned towards the door, forcing himself to move away from the body. He had learned nothing more tonight, but regardless, he turned his steps towards his own home, looking over his shoulder every so often as he went.

  This time, he didn’t notice anyone slipping away into the shadows. Neither did he see Charlene.

  Chapter 27

  Miss Charlene Ellington

  Charlene hummed quietly under her breath as she used the mortar and pestle to create a paste, carefully following the recipe that the apothecary’s owner had given to her. If she didn’t think too hard, she could almost let herself pretend that she was back in Bath, working for her father.

  She was surprised at how easy it was to slip back into the routine of work like this. Not that she hadn’t had ample practice when she was younger, but it had been a while now since she had concocted much of anything beyond special herbal teas to help with Helene’s headaches or other minor ailments.

  Her arms had been a little sore after her first day, but other than that, it had felt as though no time had passed.

  At least, until she started thinking about all the things that had changed in her life since those idyllic days that she had spent helping her father around his practice.

  Her father. Every time she thought about him, it was like a stab to her heart. She wondered where the man was now, and if he was even alive. She wondered if she had made a mistake in disappearing like she had.

  What if she never found out what became of her family?

  At the same time, every time she thought about what her life would be like if she had come back, she thought she might be sick.

  She would have allowed herself to be pressured into an engagement, and an eventual marriage, to the Marquess. She would have found herself living under the roof of a terrible man, probably never seeing her father or her aunt again either way.

  She was sure that she wouldn’t have been allowed to see Eric again. And that thought made her certain that she had made the right decision, even if it meant that every day, she worried for her father.

  For the most part, however, she tried not to think about any of it. She focused on her work at the apothecary, following her directions to the letter, and when she went to her room in the evenings, she forced herself to empty her mind as she lay down to sleep.

  She had spent many a night, this past week, staring blankly up at the ceiling. But she had gotten good at refusing to let the thoughts into her head.

  She was so engrossed in her work now that she barely noticed when someone she recognized, and more importantly someone who might have recognized her, came into the shop.

  That is, until: “Charlene?” the other woman asked incredulously.

  Charlene looked guilty up at her, a lifetime’s worth of responding to her name making the action reflexive. In her head, she swore up and down: it was one of the other ladies from her circle, no doubt here to buy one of Miss Anne’s perfumes.

  At the last moment, she remembered that she was no longer ‘Charlene’ but ‘Teresa’. But the damage had been done.

  “It is you!” the other woman said, sounding scandalized. “And working with medicines, of all things. Disgusting!”

  Her raised voice was enough to draw the owner of the shop out of the back room. By this point, Elizabeth had her hands on her hips. “Miss Anne, I would have thought better of you,” she scolded the older woman. “Taking in the daughter of a murderer, and a witch herself, and helping her to exact her revenge! Oh, I’ll never shop here again.”

  Miss Anne looked shocked. “Whatever do you mean?” she asked Elizabeth, looking back and forth between the two younger women in puzzlement.

  Elizabeth pointed a shaking finger at Charlene. “That woman is none other than Charlene Ellington. Don’t tell me that she’s deceived you!”

  Miss Anne frowned. “Teresa, is this true?” she asked.

  Elizabeth gave a bitter laugh. “Teresa?” she scoffed. “Teresa isn’t her name. It’s Charlene!”

  Charlene tried to find some way out of the situation. But what was she to do? Invent a twin? She doubted that that would work.

  Besides, Elizabeth wasn’t through yet. “Oh, didn’t you wonder how the woman knew how to make medicines?” she asked. “She was trained by her father. Dr. Ellington! I’m sure you’ve heard his name.”

  Miss Anne was beginning to look appalled. “And to think that I allowed you to stay here,” she said. “To stay in my spare room!” She sounded as though she might faint.

  “I’m not a murderer,” Charlene pleaded. “Believe whatever you might wish about my father, but I had nothing to do with Lord Henrich’s death, and I certainly am not planning harm to anyone else!”

  Miss Anne shook her head, looking sad. Elizabeth still had hatred in her gaze.

  Charlene had never done anything to make Elizabeth hate her. She had barely even known the other woman. But it seemed that none of that mattered now. No matter where Charlene went, her reputation preceded her. Even if she had managed to save her father, this was the way that things must be.

  She was glad, in that moment, that at least she hadn’t bothered with marrying the Marquess. If she was to be scorned, then at least this lifestyle, no matter how uncomfortable, allowed her to feel almost normal for a limited while.

  She was certain now that even if she had married the Marquess, she would never have been able to return to a life in which she moved amongst the rest of society. Her reputation would never recover from any of this.

  In spite of the fact that she was still absolutely certain that her father had been innocent all along.

  “I’m sorry, child,” Miss Anne said, even though she didn’t sound apologetic in the slightest. “I’m afraid that you must go. I cannot bring down shame and suspicion upon my shop. This apothecary has belonged to my family for three generations now!”

  Charlene swallowed hard, but she knew better than to beg to keep her position. As much as she hated the idea of facing the streets again, she wouldn’t give Elizabeth the satisfaction of seeing her pleas. Besides, now that she had been found once, it was only a matter of time before the rest of them arrived.

  If Charlene truly wished to keep her anonymity, to disappear, then she needed to go elsewhere.

  She held her head high as she moved to collect the few belongings that she had brought with her to Miss Anne’s. Then, she headed out into London.

  She didn’t have enough money that she could waste it on lodging for the night, not even in the cruder parts of the city. Not only that
but her luck seemed to have all run out now. She couldn’t find anyone who was willing to take her in, as an apothecary’s assistant or otherwise.

  She felt as though the entire city knew her story and wanted nothing more to do with her.

  Again, she thought about returning to her aunt’s place. But what was she to do there? She had no idea if the trial had already happened. Perhaps Helene had already been dispossessed of the family home?

  Even if she hadn’t been, what if Charlene’s father had already hanged? What if the trial was still ongoing and her aunt pushed Charlene to marry Lord Ambrose?

  Charlene had made her decision, and she knew that there was no going back now.