An Infamous Betrayal

by Lynn Messina

  Taunton laughed and took another puff of the cheroot, not at all concerned by the threat. “Please, my dear, feel free. You think anyone will believe you? For one thing, you are a woman, so immediately your truthfulness is suspect. For another, I have no idea who you are, which means your standing in society is insignificant. Lastly, you are plain. Nobody notices plain-faced women unless they are attached to a sizable dowry and we know you are not, as we’ve already established your insignificance. You may return to the ballroom and say whatever you like, just as I am afforded the same privilege. What might I say, you ask?” he said mockingly, enjoying the game now. “I will tell them about our very satisfying tryst on the balcony, as I’m sure at least one person saw you follow me out. I’m delighted to inform you, my dear, that you are an extremely skilled woman, quite daring in your tastes, but, alas, so very bitter at being rejected. Obviously, I cannot be expected to wed an insignificant woman with no dowry. Nobody would doubt me, for you are too old for me to consider you as a marital prospect.”

  It was a good threat, indeed a very good one, for even as she remained inured to its persuasion, she felt the mortification of being known as a woman who was quite daring in her tastes. It did not matter that the specifics of such a designation eluded her.

  Nevertheless, Bea suffered no actual apprehension at his words because she had a significant advantage of which the villain knew nothing. The Duke of Kesgrave would believe every single word she said and would make sure the truth was shared with the magistrate. He would not be swayed by a self-satisfied lord bragging about his conquests and would certainly never believe anything so low of Bea. He had far too much admiration for her intelligence to doubt her conclusions and too much respect for order to allow a murderer to go unpunished. Even if the magistrate decided there wasn’t enough evidence to bring charges against Taunton, everyone in London would know he had cold-bloodedly arranged for the death of a family retainer.

  The House of Taunton would be disgraced, and the sixth marquess would endure the consequences whatever they were.

  Looking into her eyes, his lordship perceived something that unsettled him, perhaps her complete lack of fear, for Bea noticed the first crack in his implacable confidence as confusion, then worry, crawled across his face.

  Good, she though, he’s not invulnerable after all.

  Satisfied, she spun on her heels to return to the ballroom and had taken no more than a step when Taunton reached out a hand and grabbed her arm. He wrenched her to his side, slammed her back against the stone balustrade and said with chilling scorn, “You silly, insignificant little nobody. Did you really think I would allow you to spread gossip about me? This is what’s going to happen. First, I will snap your neck. Second, I will throw you over the balcony. Third, I will return to the ballroom as if nothing happened. Don’t worry, my dear, it will be fast and painless. Are you ready? On the count of three, then. One…”

  Bea had barely processed the threat, his cold indifference to human life, before she began to struggle against it. Terror piercing through her, eyes darting wildly, she writhed under his weight as she fought to free herself from his grasp.

  The torch!

  It was so close.

  If she could just squirm an inch or two to her left to reach it….

  Twisting, she gasped for air. The bash against the railing, hard and brutal, had knocked the wind out of her, and his body pressed against her chest with so much force she couldn’t regain it.

  “Two…”

  Squealing with anger and hate, writhing in desperation, every bone in her body reeling in terror, she thrust her head forward and rammed it into his chest.

  Bam!

  The blow, landing in the middle of his rib cage, stunned him for a moment. Briefly, fleetingly, his grip loosened, and she slithered a fraction of an inch closer to the torch. She stretched out her arm—she…was…so…close—and screamed with frustration when her fingers couldn’t touch it.

  Taunton, so much larger than she, lurched forward, immobilizing her with his bulk, and took her head into his two large hands.

  “And thr—”

  “Goddamn it, Bea!” A furious voice rent the cold night air. “Is it not enough that you torture me with Nuneaton? Must you flirt with every man?”

  The sound, the question, the anger, the company—something caused Taunton’s grip to slacken, and Bea, her back scraping the stones as the force of her struggle propelled her to the side, finally reached the torch. Frantically, she wrapped her hand around the cradle, pulled it free, and whacked him over the head with it as hard as she could. Staggered, he stepped back as Bea dropped the torch to the ground, then screamed in terror as burning tendrils of hair seared his scalp. Horrified, Bea threw all her weight against him and knocked him to the ground, a maneuver made considerably easier by the fact that he was already collapsing in a faint. Her movements frenzied, she pounced on his head and smothered the flames with her dress before the blaze could do little more than singe him.

  “Is this what you mean by ‘quite daring in my tastes,’” she shrieked at him as she sat on his chest, pounding his head with her fists and skirts. “Is this what you mean?”

  And then Kesgrave was there, kneeling beside her, halting her assault by pulling her into his arms and saying, “No, my love, no. You are safe. He is vanquished.” He kissed her cheek and her forehead and her lips and her eyes.

  But Bea couldn’t stop, her arms still flailing wildly even as she let the hem of her gown fall. Kesgrave grasped her shoulders to calm her thrashing and looked into her eyes. “I love you, you daft woman. I love you madly. And if you had allowed me to speak any time in the past two weeks, you would have known it already and not be sitting here on a villain after extinguishing flames in his hair.”

  The pedantry!

  By all that was holy, he was pedantic even now, the esteemed Duke of Kesgrave, with his fastidiousness and his precision and his battleships listed in order of appearance, unable to declare his love without also ensuring that the facts were appropriately aligned.

  The clarity of it sliced cleanly through her terror, and she felt an overwhelming surge of calm wash over her, as paradoxical as it was peaceful. She inhaled sharply, relieved to finally catch her breath, and leaned into the warm strength of his embrace. How wonderful he felt, how solid and safe, and she stayed firmly there, her arms around him, perched on an insensible murderer, far longer than was decent.

  As much as there was to explain, she couldn’t bring herself to say a single word. Not now. Not yet. Soon enough they would get into all the gruesome details—Lady Victoria, she thought in amusement, as much as Lord Taunton—but for now she was content to let her pounding heart slowly quiet.

  Finally, she lifted her head and said, “I must beg to disagree, your grace, as there is no cause and effect that ties the two events together and I defy you to come up with one.”

  Oh, he liked that.

  Kesgrave liked that very much indeed, and despite the fact that she was sitting on top of the Marquess of Taunton, whose groan of pain seemed to indicate a growing awareness of the situation, he leaned forward to press his lips against hers. It was a gentle kiss, soulful and sweet, and Bea’s eyes fluttered shut as her heart settled into place.

  “I love you,” she breathed softly.

  “I love you,” Kesgrave said, resting his forehead against hers for several lovely, serene moments.

  How long they would have stayed like that had Taunton, fully awake now from his faint, not begun to struggle, neither one could say.

  “Judging by the assault I just witnessed—and do note that we will be discussing at a later date your ill-considered decision to confront a murderer all alone—I can only assume Taunton did in fact kill Wilson?” Kesgrave observed mildly.

  Although Bea wanted to protest his characterization of the confrontation as “all alone,” as they were at a ball attended by hundreds of the ton’s finest, she paused to acknowledge the partial validity of his complaint
. Additionally, the marquess was flapping his arms wildly as he tried to dislodge her from his chest, and it didn’t seem like the proper moment for a protracted debate.

  “You are a fool, Kesgrave, if you believe a single word this hussy says,” Taunton snarled through gritted teeth as his efforts yielded no results. He squirmed, shifting his weight from one side of his body to the other in an attempt to throw Bea off balance. “I am quite cut up by my friend Charles’s death, so cut up I felt compelled to step away from the gaiety of the ball, for how can I enjoy myself when the poor fellow had been killed in my stead? It’s a terrible burden to bear, quite, quite terrible. And this woman here, this brute of a female, sensed my weakness and tried to use it against me. She thought I would be easy prey for her wiles, and when I proved impervious to her seduction, she turned violent. You saw it yourself, Kesgrave. This harridan launched a brutal attack on my person and then set me on fire.”

  The marquess could have no idea how ridiculous he looked making these charges against Bea, his cheeks red from his exertions, his forehead flecked with ash, half his head of hair singed away. Amused, she shook her head at him and tsk-tsked disapprovingly. “Insulting a man’s fiancé—I’m not really sure that’s your best strategic maneuver in this particular situation. Would you like to consider another approach?”

  Taunton gasped.

  Kesgrave’s lips twitched as he looked at her. “You’re not going to let me propose?”

  Bea smoothed the front of her dress primly, a wasted effort as it merely spread the soot more evenly across the silk, and held out her hand to request his assistance in standing. “It took you more than two weeks just to declare yourself. I cannot trust you to act with sufficient resolve.”

  “She’s not what you think, Kesgrave,” Taunton cried as they both rose to their feet. “She’s a charlatan. She dressed as a man and pretended to be a lawyer to swindle me. She will swindle you too.”

  Paying the marquess no heed at all, Kesgrave helped Bea straighten her gown, which, though ruined beyond repair, was still presentable. “I’m not sure I can be held responsible for that. I did visit every day and send a dozen letters that were returned unopened.”

  Bea was likewise happy to ignore Taunton, who was now shouting that she had stolen several invaluable objects from him, including a priceless snuffbox. “I seem to recall you were adept at climbing trees at Lakeview Hall. Was a brick wall more than you could manage?”

  “Oh, I see now. So I was meant to atone for my sins like Hercules performing the twelve labors,” he replied as they crossed the balcony to the building.

  She listed the few labors she could remember from her lessons as a child—steal the Mares of Diomedes, capture the Erymanthian boar, slay the nine-headed Learnaean Hydra—and observed that scaling the wall of a London town house was a minor challenge in comparison.

  “Slay the nine-headed Learnaean Hydra, capture the Erymanthian boar, Steal the Mares of Diomedes,” he corrected with pointed emphasis. “If you’re going to list some labors but not others, the least you can do is put them in the correct order of appearance in the story.”

  Smitten beyond reason, she said softly, “HMS Goliath, HMS Audacious, HMS Majestic.”

  The recitation of the ships in the Battle of the Nile in their correct order was more provocation than his grace could withstand, and even though Taunton had finally managed to rise unevenly to his feet, Kesgrave paused in the doorway to kiss her languidly.

  “And to think I once foolishly believed I could desire your mind with every ounce of my being,” he said softly as he released her lips, “and not crave your body with every breath. We must get married at once, my love, for I am not accustomed to the sting of self-denial.”

  Although his confession had an unsettling effect on her body, for she suddenly felt at once delightfully loose-limbed and agonizingly taut, she smiled and offered to provide him with a few helpful tips on abstemiousness, a subject on which she considered herself an expert. Before Kesgrave could respond, she heard the hum of a growl and stepped back in surprise. Eyes blazing with anger, Taunton charged at them, determined, it seemed, to cause as much damage as possible before his inevitable disgrace. Bea barely had time to let out a gasp before Kesgrave raised his fist and plowed it into the side of the marquess’s face. The other man dropped to the ground like a sack of apples.

  Bea watched Taunton for signs of movement, and assuring herself he was quite unconscious, turned to the duke. “May we leave him there?”

  Kesgrave nodded, stepped into the gallery and closed the doors. “I think so. He’ll be out for a while, and in the meantime, I’ll send one of the servants to get a Runner.”

  “An excellent plan,” Bea said, discovering, now that the danger had passed, she was desperately parched. Fighting for one’s life was thirsty business. “While you do that, I will avail myself of the refreshments. Do come find me when the Runner arrives so I may make my report.”

  Kesgrave agreed, then tilted his head to the side and asked if she didn’t think it was perhaps a little unwise to return to the ballroom in a filthy dress and tousled hair.

  Although Bea knew his comment was entirely reasonable, something about it struck her as unbearably funny, and she dissolved into a fit of giggles. As she struggled to regain her breath, as the gales of humor continued to undermine the effort, she silently conceded the likeliness that her excessive mirth was the product of her relief at not lying on the garden paving stones with a broken neck.

  Calmer now, although still deeply amused, she said, “Your remark demonstrates how little you understand life among the lower stratum of society, your grace. I am plain, six and twenty and insignificant, so no, I do not think it’s unwise for me to return to the ball in my slightly disheveled state. What I do think is unwise is not to fetch a class of ratafia, for it feels as though I swallowed an entire desert of sand. Now please excuse me.”

  But Kesgrave was not quite ready to let her go, for he tugged her hand and drew her close. “Oh, but you are very significant now,” he said foolishly, lowering his head for another kiss.

  As much as Bea appreciated the sentiment, she could not let it go without making a mildly satirical comment, and when her lips were free, she said, “Because you find yourself utterly incapable of drawing your next breath without me?”

  Now the duke laughed with sincere amusement. “No, my love, because you are marrying me, and I’m a leader of society whom everyone holds in high esteem.”

  Of course that was his answer. His arrogance knew no bounds. “You are giving yourself far too much credit, your grace, but I will leave you to your misconceptions because I’m far too thirsty to argue the matter.”

  “That is for the best,” he said, his blue eyes twinkling with such delight it actually took her breath away, “for you would surely lose.”

  “A challenge,” she said with relish, pleased to discover that love had not made her facile. His beautiful face might addle her lungs, but it left her brain unimpaired. “As you know, there’s nothing I enjoy more than skewering your towering self-regard, and it will be quite lowering when you realize not even your credit is enough to carry me over the finish line. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be at the refreshment table imagining Lord Taunton being led through the ballroom in chains. You will make sure to instruct the servant to tell the Runner to bring chains, won’t you?”

  And with that said, she stepped free of his embrace, spun around on her heels and walked through the galley toward the ballroom. She had taken no more than two dozen steps, however, before she found herself suddenly engulfed by a swarm of sweet-smelling hostesses inviting the future Duchess of Kesgrave to tea.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Lynn Messina is the author of more than a dozen novels, including the best-selling Fashionistas, which has been translated into 16 languages. Her essays have appeared in Self, American Baby and the Modern Love column in the New York Times, and she’s a regular contributor to the Times Motherlode blog. She lives
in New York City with her sons.

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  Itching for more Bea?

  Don’t worry, she’s on the case.

  A BRAZEN CURIOSITY

  Twenty-six-year-old Beatrice Hyde-Clare is far too shy to investigate the suspicious death of a fellow guest in the Lake District. A spinster who lives on the sufferance of her relatives, she would certainly not presume to search the rooms of her host's son and his friend looking for evidence. Reared in the twin virtues of deference and docility, she would absolutely never think to question the imperious Duke of Kesgrave about anything, let alone how he chose to represent the incident to the local constable.

  And yet when she stumbles upon the bludgeoned corpse of poor Mr. Otley in the deserted library of the Skeffingtons' country house, that's exactly what she does.

  Available now!

  A SCANDALOUS DECEPTION

  As much as Beatrice Hyde-Clare relished the challenge of figuring out who murdered a fellow guest during a house party in the Lake District, she certainly does not consider herself an amateur investigator. So when a London dandy falls dead at her feet in the entryway of the London Daily Gazette, she feels no compulsion to investigate. It was a newspaper office, after all, and reporters are already on the case as are the authorities. She has her own problems to deal with anyway-such as extricating herself from a seemingly harmless little fib that has somehow grown in into a ridiculously large fiction.

  Truly, she has no interest at all. Except the dagger that killed the poor earl seemed disconcertingly familiar…

  And so Bea is off to the British Museum because she cannot rest until she confirms her suspicion, while trying to allay her family's concerns and comprehend the Duke of Kesgrave's compulsion. For the handsome lord has no reason to waste his time solving a mystery alongside a shy spinster. And yet he turns up everywhere she goes.