Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by Grace Burrowes
Cover and internal design © 2012 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover illustration by Anne Cain
Cover photograph by Shirley Green Photography
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Windham Family Tree
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
A Sneak Preview of Lady Louisa’s Christmas Knight
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
This book is dedicated to older sisters, and in particular to my oldest sister Gail Cecelia, who is the most tenderhearted, determined, kind, practical, intelligent, lovely person ever to take on impossible tasks and see them through to successful completion. Gaily, you are a gift to all who know you.
One
“The blighted, benighted, blasted, perishing thing has to be here somewhere.” Maggie Windham flopped the bed skirt back down and glared at her wardrobe. “You look in there, Evie, and I’ll take the dressing room.”
“We’ve looked in the dressing room,” Eve Windham said. “If we don’t leave soon, we’ll be late for Mama’s weekly tea, and Her Grace cannot abide tardiness.”
“Except in His Grace,” Maggie replied, sitting on her bed. “She’ll want to know why we’re late and give me one of those oh-Maggie looks.”
“They’re no worse than her oh-Evie, oh-Jenny, or oh-Louisa looks.”
“They’re worse, believe me,” Maggie said, blowing out a breath. “I am the eldest. I should know better; I should think before I act; I am to set a good example. It’s endless.”
Eve gave her a smile. “I like the example you set. You do as you please; you come and go as you please; you have your own household and your own funds. You’re in charge of your own life.”
Maggie did not quite return the smile. “I am a disgrace, but a happy one for the most part. Let’s be on our way, and I can turn my rooms upside down when I get home.”
Evie took her arm, and as they passed from Maggie’s bedroom, they crossed before the full-length mirror.
A study in contrasts, Maggie thought. They were the bookends of the Windham daughters, the eldest and the youngest. No one in his right mind would conclude they had a father in common. Maggie was tall, with flaming red hair and the sturdy proportions of her mother’s agrarian Celtic antecedents, while Evie was petite, blonde, and delicate. By happenstance, they both had the green eyes common to every Windham sibling and to Esther, Duchess of Moreland.
“Is this to be a full parade muster?” Maggie asked as she and Evie settled into her town coach.
“A hen party. Our sisters ran out of megrims, sprained ankles, bellyaches, and monthlies, and Mama will be dragging the lot of us off to Almack’s directly. Sophie is lucky to be rusticating with her baron.”
“I don’t envy you Almack’s.” Maggie did, however, envy Sophie her recently acquired marital bliss. Envied it intensely and silently.
“You had your turn in the ballrooms, Maggie, though how you dodged holy matrimony with both Her Grace and His Grace lining up the Eligibles is beyond me.”
“Sheer determination. You refuse the proposals one by one, and honestly, Evie, Papa isn’t as anxious to see us wed as Her Grace is. Nobody is good enough for his girls.”
“Then Sophie had to go and ruin things by marrying her baron.”
Their eyes met, and they broke into giggles. Still, Maggie saw the faint anxiety in Evie’s pretty green eyes and knew a moment’s gratitude that she herself was so firmly on the shelf. There had been long, fraught years when she’d had to dodge every spotty boy and widowed knight in the realm, and then finally she’d reached the halcyon age of thirty.
By then, even Papa had been willing to concede not defeat—he still occasionally got in his digs—but truce. Maggie had been allowed to set up her own establishment, and the time since had seen significant improvement in her peace of mind.
There were tariffs and tolls, of course. She was expected to show up at Her Grace’s weekly teas from time to time. Not every week, not even every other, but often enough. She stood up with her brothers when they deigned to grace the ballrooms, which was thankfully rare of late. She occasionally joined her sisters for a respite at Morelands, the seat of the duchy in Kent.
But mostly, she hid.
They reached the ducal mansion, an imposing edifice set well back from its landscaped square. The place was both family home and the logistical seat of the Duke of Moreland’s various parliamentary stratagems. He loved his politics, did His Grace.
And his duchess.
One of his meetings must have been letting out when the hour for Her Grace’s tea grew near, because the soaring foyer of the mansion was a beehive of servants, departing gentlemen, and arriving ladies. Footmen were handing out gloves, hats, and walking sticks to the gentlemen, while taking gloves, bonnets, and wraps from the ladies.
Maggie sidled around to the wall, found a mirror, and unpinned her lace mantilla from her hair. She flipped the lace up and off her shoulders, but it snagged on something.
A tug did nothing to dislodge the lace, though someone behind her let out a muttered curse.
Damn it? Being a lady in company, Maggie decided she’d heard “drat it” and used the mirror to study the situation.
Oh, no.
Of all the men in all the mansions in all of Mayfair, why him?
“If you’ll hold still,” he said, “I’ll have us disentangled.”
Her beautiful, lacy green shawl had caught on the flower attached to his lapel, a hot pink little damask rose, full of thorns and likely to ruin her mantilla. Maggie half turned, horrified to feel a tug on her hair as she did.
A stray pin came sliding down into her vision, dangling on a fat red curl.
“Gracious.” She reached up to extract the pin, but her hand caught in the shawl, now stretched between her and the gentleman’s lapel. Another tug, another curl came down.
“Allow me.” It wasn’t a request. The gentleman’s hands were bare and his fingers nimble as he reached up and removed several more pins from Maggie’s hair. The entire flaming mass of it listed to the left then slid down over her shoulders in complete disarray.
His dark eyebrows rose, and for one instant, Maggie had the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Benjamin Hazlit at a loss. Then he was handing her several hairpins amid the billows of her mantilla, which were still entangled with the longer skeins of her hair. While Maggie held her mantilla before her, Hazlit got the blasted flower extracted from the lace and held it out to her, as if he’d just plucked it from a bush for her delectation.
“My apologies, my lady. The fau
lt is entirely mine.”
And he was laughing at her. The great, dark brute found it amusing that Maggie Windham, illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Moreland, was completely undone before the servants, her sisters, and half her father’s cronies from the Lords.
She wanted to smack him.
Maggie instead stepped in closer to Hazlit, took the fragrant little flower, and withdrew the jeweled pin from its stem.
“If you’ll just hold still a moment, Mr. Hazlit, I’ll have you put to rights in no time.” He was tall enough that she had to look up at him—another unforgivable fault, for Maggie liked to look down on men—so she beamed a toothy smile at him when she jabbed the little pin through layers of fabric to prick his arrogant, manly skin.
“Beg pardon,” she said, giving his cravat a pat. “The fault is entirely mine.”
The humor in his eyes shifted to something not the least funny, though Maggie’s spirits were significantly restored.
“Your gloves, sir?” A footman hovered, looking uncertain and very pointedly not noticing Maggie’s hair rioting down to her hips. Maggie took the gloves and held them out to Hazlit.
“Can you manage, Mr. Hazlit, or shall I assist you further?” She turned one glove and held it open, as if he were three years old and unable to sort the thing out for himself.
“My thanks.” He took the glove and tugged it on, then followed suit with the second.
Except his hand brushed Maggie’s while she held out his glove. She didn’t think it was intentional, because his expression abruptly shuttered further. He tapped his hat onto his head and was perhaps contemplating a parting bow when Maggie beat him to the exit.
She rose from her curtsy, her hair tumbling forward, and murmured a quiet “Good day,” before turning her back on him deliberately. To the casual observer, it wouldn’t have been rude.
She hoped Hazlit took it for the slight it was intended to be.
“Oh, Mags.” Evie bustled up to her side. “Let’s get you upstairs before Mama sees this.” She lifted a long, curling hank of hair. “Turn loose of that mantilla before you permanently wrinkle it—and whatever happened to put you in such a state?”
***
“Not the done thing to stare at a man’s daughters under his own roof.”
Lucas Denning, Marquis of Deene, kept his voice down, but Benjamin Hazlit heard him nonetheless.
“You’re happy enough to be staring,” Hazlit said, taking his walking stick from the footman.
Deene glanced around. “Discreetly. Not like I want to leap upon the girl naked. What on earth did you do to that woman? Her hair is quite the most glorious thing I’ve seen outside a certain brothel in Cairo.”
Hazlit felt an abrupt need to plant his fist in Deene’s handsome face. “Now who’s being rude?”
“We both are.” Deene grinned momentarily, turning his severe Nordic features almost boyish. “But Lady Maggie never affords me more than the passing notice due to a family friend, so it matters little. Are you off to your club for a beefsteak?”
“I am for home, and it’s a pretty day, so I’ll be on foot.”
“I could take you up. My tiger is walking my horses as we speak.”
“Thanks, but after sitting for two hours and listening to my betters parse the state of the realm, I can use some fresh air.”
They parted, Hazlit trailing after the guests who hadn’t been detained by a red-haired Amazon bent on mischief.
Except, to be fair, the whole little business had started without anybody intending anything, and it should have ended that way. Lady Maggie hadn’t appreciated his nonsense with the flower, so she’d stabbed him with his own pin.
She’d done him a favor, in truth, because his wits had gone begging at the sight of all that silky, warm hair tumbling around her shoulders. He’d caught a whiff of her fragrance, a clean, bracing scent laced with cinnamon, and he’d tangled his fingers in a few long, silky strands of her hair. The feel of it sliding over his skin had momentarily shut down his reasoning powers, something the lady must have sensed.
He didn’t often give offense to a lady, but there was something about Moreland’s by-blow that threw him off stride and brought out the ungallant side of his nature. They’d met only a handful of times, for Hazlit generally avoided the ballrooms and soirees and Venetian breakfasts. His half brother had recently become the first man to marry into the present generation of Windham daughters, making it even more imperative that Hazlit keep his distance.
Socially, he had to keep a hand in, mostly for business purposes, but nobody was glad to see him arrive at their polite functions, and everybody was relieved to see him leave. The parliamentary matters were little better. On behalf of the Earl of Hazelton, for whom he ostensibly worked, he attended meetings such as Moreland’s earlier strategy session. Moreland and a few of the senior titles knew better, but they kept their mouths shut.
Miss Windham’s mouth had been open. For just an instant, her jaw had dropped, presumably at the heat in Hazlit’s gaze. That was not well done of him. She was a lady, for all her unfortunate origins, and he was a gentleman.
Most of the time.
He made his way to his town house in less than a half hour, which really wasn’t long enough to get the mental stench of the duke’s meeting out of his mind. Moreland was a staunch Tory, though he had sympathy for the yeoman and could be surprisingly effective garnering votes from the moderates on even the most divisive issues.
Still, Moreland’s meetings went on forever and all too often degenerated into grumbling and finger-pointing.
Hazlit handed his hat, walking stick, and gloves to his butler, glanced at the longcase clock in his foyer, and headed for his library. There was still time to plough through several hours’ worth of correspondence and reports prior to the evening’s obligations.
Before he sat at his desk, though, Hazlit scanned his shelves until he came across a volume of Wordsworth. He unfastened the little rose from his lapel and tucked it carefully between the pages of the book, then forced himself to get down to work.
***
“Valentine!” Maggie flew across her bedroom, throwing her arms around the tall, dark-haired man who’d appeared unannounced in her chambers. “Oh, I have missed you so, you scamp. You scoundrel! When did you get back to Town, and is Ellen with you?”
He hugged her tightly, a good solid hug as only a brother who’d been rusticating with his new wife since Christmas could deliver to his sister, and kept an arm around Maggie’s shoulders as he walked her to a window seat.
“Ellen accepted my plea for her to eschew travel,” Valentine said. “She gave me a letter for you.” Val passed her a single folded piece of paper.
“Ellen is well?” Maggie asked, some of her joy dimming as she glanced at the pretty hand on Ellen’s note. Ellen and Val had been married only a short time, and already, they were in anticipation of a joyful event. She was happy for them, truly she was. Also envious.
“Ellen is quite well, though my own nerves are sorely tried to think of her increasing. But, Mags”—he glanced around at the upheaval in her sitting room—“have I come to Town only to find my sister taking fits?”
If Maggie Windham loved any men, it was the men of her family—her father and brothers, Uncle Tony, and her cousins. They were the best of fellows, but they fretted endlessly and called it doting on her, her sisters, and the duchess.
“I’ve lost track of a favorite frippery. I got a little carried away searching for it.”
“I’ll buy you another. I’m back in Town to do rehearsals with the Philharmonic Society but expect I’ve already been spotted by Her Grace’s spies. I might as well take you shopping before I face the maternal interrogation.”
“You don’t have to stay at the mansion. You could stay at Gayle’s place, since he and Anna have the room.”
“He said as much.” Val rose and began to wander the room, putting things to rights. He was sinfully handsome, with emerald green eyes, sable hair
just a tad too long, and hands that could conjure from any kind of keyboard the sweetest music ever played.
But he had the Windham gift for fretting over family, probably amplified by impending fatherhood.
“You are not my lady’s maid, Val.” Maggie rose to straighten the pillows her searching had thrown into disorder.
“I’m your darling baby brother,” he replied, holding up a dancing slipper with little roses embroidered on it. “Lovely, but not very well used. Are you still impersonating a recluse, Mags?”
“I go out,” she said, folding an afghan over her fainting couch. “Her Grace will not permit me the privacy I’d choose, were I allowed.”
“Neither will I.” Val held up another slipper. “I’m attending the Winterthurs’ ball tonight. Say you’ll come with me to be my protection. If I’d known how sincerely the merry widows considered married men fair game, I’d likely have declined tonight’s invitation.”
“You’d best call on your mother before you show your face in public,” Maggie warned. “She could hardly sip her tea today, so anxious was she to interrogate you in person about your wife’s well-being.”
“She’s your mother, too.” Val began draping silk stockings over the open lid of a cedar chest.
“She is not my mother. Valentine, those are my unmentionables.”
He shrugged. “I like unmentionables. I like pretty things and pretty ladies. Come dancing with me tonight, Mags. I won’t go without you.”
“Very well, but you come by for me after you’ve made your bow at the mansion.”
“Fair enough.” He smiled at her, wrapping a stocking around his neck and holding it up like a noose. “If I tell Her Grace you’re to come out socializing with me, she’ll hardly let me finish my tea.”
“Stop disrespecting your sister’s personal effects.” She snatched the stocking from around his silly neck. “And how are you, really? You look tired.”
“I’m working on a new composition, and it rather takes over my schedule. Ellen is very understanding, perhaps too much so.” As he spoke, he picked up a little music box from Maggie’s vanity.
Lady Maggie's Secret Scandal Page 1
