Last Night's Scandal

by Loretta Chase

  “I have no imagination,” he said. “I see what’s there and not what isn’t.”

  “Yes, I know, and that would make it excruciating for you to try to discover the beauty in a ruined castle,” she said. “What you need is an expert eye, and an imagination. I shall supply them, while you supply the practical side of things.”

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t understand the difficulties, my dear,” said Mother. “As Olivia said, sending you alone would be like sending a soldier into battle with a rifle but no ammunition.”

  He looked at his father, who smiled indulgently back at him. Indulgent! Father!

  And why not? Olivia had merely done to his parents what she did to everybody: She’d made them believe.

  “It’s a brilliant solution,” his lordship said. “You’ll be there to protect the ladies from any dreadful things that may be lurking about the place, and to get to the bottom of whatever has set off the unfortunate series of events.”

  “And Olivia will be there to protect you from decorating,” Mother said. She laughed. They all laughed.

  “Ha-ha,” said Lisle. “I find I’m too excited to eat my breakfast. I think I’ll take a turn in the garden. Olivia, would you care to join me?”

  “I should like nothing better,” she said, all glowing guilelessness.

  In the garden

  Ten minutes later

  Lisle loomed over Olivia, his grey eyes as hard as flint.

  “Have you lost your mind?” he said. “Weren’t you listening to me yesterday? Are you becoming like my parents, hearing only the voices in your head?”

  To be compared to his insane parents was infuriating. Nonetheless, Olivia maintained her cheerfully innocent expression, and didn’t kick him in the shins.

  “Of course I was listening,” she said. “That’s how I realized you were completely irrational about the subject, and I would have to take desperate measures to save you from yourself.”

  “I?” he said. “I’m not the one who needs saving. I know exactly what I’m doing and why. I told you we couldn’t give in to them.”

  “You don’t have a choice,” she said.

  “There are always choices,” he said. “I only need time to ascertain what they are. You didn’t even give me time to think about it!”

  “You don’t have time,” she said. “If you don’t take control of the situation now, they’ll raise the stakes. You don’t understand them. You don’t know how they think. I do.” That was what DeLuceys did and that was how they survived. They looked into others’ hearts and minds and used what they found there. “For once, you need to trust my judgment.”

  “You have no judgment,” he said. “You don’t know what you want. You’re feeling stifled here, and my parents have offered an opportunity for excitement. That’s all you’re thinking about. I saw the gleam in your eye when I first told you about our haunted castle. I could practically hear what you were thinking. Ghosts. A mystery. Danger. To you it’s an adventure. You told me so. But it’s no adventure to me.”

  “Because it isn’t Egypt,” she said. “Because nothing but Egypt can be interesting or important.”

  “That isn’t—”

  “And because you’re obstinate,” she said. “Because you won’t open your mind to the possibilities. Because you want to fight, as usual, instead of finding a way to make the best of the opportunity. You’re not an opportunist, I know. That’s my specialty. Why can’t you see that the cleverest thing to do is to pool our resources?”

  “I don’t care about being clever!” he said. “This isn’t a game to me.”

  “Is that what you think? That it’s a game to me?”

  “Everything is,” he said. “I spoke to you yesterday in confidence. I thought you understood. But it’s merely sport to you, playing people as though they were cards.”

  “I did it for your sake, you thickheaded man!”

  But he was too busy being all hurt and indignant to listen to anything she said.

  He went on as though she hadn’t spoken, “You’ve played well, I’ll admit. You’ve shown me you can manage even my parents and make them fall in with your ridiculous schemes. But I’m not them. I know you. I know your tricks. And I won’t have my life upended because you’re bored with yours!”

  “That is one of the most detestable, hurtful, willfully obtuse things you’ve ever said to me,” she said. “You’re acting like a complete idiot, and idiots bore me. Go to the devil.” She gave him a hard shove.

  He wasn’t expecting it. He stumbled and lost his balance and fell backward into the shrubbery.

  “Moron,” she said, and stormed away.

  White’s Club

  Shortly after midnight

  Lisle had spent the day trying to wear out his rage by boxing, fencing, riding hard, and, in desperation, firing at targets in a shooting gallery.

  He still wanted to kill somebody.

  He was sitting in the card room, eyeing the occupants over the rim of his glass and debating which one was worth picking a fight with, when a deferential voice at his shoulder said, “I apologize for disturbing your lordship, but a message has come.”

  Lisle looked around. The servant placed a silver tray on the table at his elbow.

  The folded and sealed notepaper bore his name. Although, thanks to a bottle or two, he was not as clearheaded as he’d been when he arrived, he had no trouble identifying the penmanship.

  Moreover, it wanted no special mental gifts to ascertain that a message from Olivia after midnight could not contain news he’d enjoy.

  He tore open the note.

  Ormont House

  Friday 7 October

  My Lord,

  Having waited In Vain all day for an APOLOGY, I can wait no longer. I shall leave it to you to Explain to Lord and Lady Atherton your Absurd Refusal to do what will make EVERYBODY happy. My Arrangements are made. My Bags are packed. The servants are ready for the Great Expedition. The Dear Ladies who have so kindly agreed to leave the Comforts of their Domiciles in order to accompany us me on this Noble Quest are Ready and impatient to set out.

  If you deem yourself Abandoned, you have only yourself and your base ingratitude to thank for it. My Conscience is Clear. You have left me NO CHOICE.

  By the time you read this, I shall be Gone.

  Yours sincerely,

  Olivia Carsington

  “No,” he said. “Not again.”

  On the Old North Road

  An hour later

  “I vow, it’s been an age since I was in a traveling carriage,” said Lady Withcote as the carriage stopped to pay the Kingsland Turnpike toll. “I’d altogether forgotten what a hard ride it is, especially over the paving stones.”

  “A hard ride, indeed,” said Lady Cooper. “Put me in mind of my wedding night. What a jarring exercise that turned out to be. Almost put me off the business permanent.”

  “Always the way with the first husband,” said Lady Withcote. “It’s due to a girl being young and knowing no more than what goes where.”

  “And maybe she doesn’t know even that,” said Lady Cooper.

  “As a consequence, she doesn’t know how to train him,” said Lady Withcote.

  “And by the time she does know, he’s past learning.” Lady Cooper sighed.

  Lady Withcote leaned toward Olivia, who shared the opposite seat with Bailey. “Still, it wasn’t as bad as you’d think. Our parents chose the first one, and he’d be twice our age or more. But then it was good odds we’d be young widows. Being older and wiser, we knew better how to get what we liked the second time.”

  “Some of us did try the second husband first, before consenting to marry,” said Lady Cooper.

  “And there were those who never troubled with marrying a second time,” said Lady With
cote.

  Olivia knew they referred to Great-Grandmama. She’d been scrupulously faithful to her spouse. After he died, she wasn’t faithful to anybody.

  “Well, we’re done with the paving stones for the present,” she said cheerfully as the carriage jolted into motion again.

  Even a luxurious, well-sprung traveling carriage like this was built for enduring rough roads and long journeys. It was not, as the town carriages were, built strictly for comfort. The wheels rattling over the stones made for a noisy as well as jarring ride.

  For the last hour, the ladies had shouted over the noise of the carriage wheels on paving stones, and bounced in their seats. Olivia had shouted and bounced along with them. Her bottom was sore and her back was aching, though Shoreditch Church, from which the distance from London was measured, was only a mile and a quarter behind them.

  But now the houses had thinned, and the road was smoother. The coach moved a degree faster, and the next mile passed more swiftly than the last. They passed through the Stamford Tollgate and climbed Stamford Hill. From the top, one was supposed to be able to see St. Paul’s.

  Olivia stood to put down the window panel. She leaned out and looked back, but the night was dark. She could see only the occasional faint glow of streetlamps and a bit more of a glow in the great houses where balls would continue for hours yet. The moon would not rise until after dawn, when it would be of no use at all, even if it hadn’t been only a degree past new, the thinnest of sickles.

  She raised the panel again, hooked it into place, and sank into her seat.

  “Any sign of him?” said Lady Cooper.

  “Oh, no, it’s far too soon,” Olivia said. “We’ll be well upon our way by the time he catches up. Too far to turn back.”

  “It would be dreadful to have to turn back,” said Lady Withcote.

  “This is the most exciting thing we’ve done in ages.”

  “So dull, these modern times.”

  “Not like the old days.”

  “Oh, that was a time, my dear,” said Lady Cooper. “I wish you could have known what it was like.”

  “The men dressed so beautifully,” said Lady Withcote.

  “Peacocks, they were, truly.”

  “But for all their fine silks and lace, they were wilder and rougher than the present generation.”

  Lisle excepted, Olivia thought. But then, he’d grown up among the Carsington men, and they weren’t tame, even the civilized ones.

  “Remember when Eugenia quarreled with Lord Drayhew?” said Lady Cooper.

  Lady Withcote nodded. “How could I forget? I was a newlywed then, and she was the most dashing of widows. He’d become too dictatorial, she said, and she wouldn’t tolerate it. She bolted.”

  “He hunted her down,” said Lady Cooper. “She’d gone to Lord Morden in Dorset. What a row there was when Drayhew found them!”

  “The men fought a duel. It went on for an age.”

  “It was swords in those days.”

  “Real fighting. None of this twenty paces and shooting off a pistol. All that wants is aim.”

  “But a sword, now: That wants skill.”

  “The trouble was, the two gentlemen were equally deadly with the blades. They scratched each other well, but neither could finish the other and neither would yield.”

  “They finally collapsed, the two of them. Couldn’t fight to the death but they fought to exhaustion.”

  “Those were the days.” Lady Withcote let out a nostalgic sigh.

  “Oh, they were, my dear. Men were men.” Lady Cooper sighed, too.

  Men would always be men, Olivia thought. The outer trappings changed, but their brains didn’t.

  “Never fear,” she said. “We don’t need men for excitement. With or without them, I know we’ll have a great adventure.”

  Meanwhile in London

  Lisle arrived at Ormont House as a carriage heaped with luggage and servants was making its way up the street.

  With any luck, that would be the advance carriage, not the last one.

  He didn’t count on having any luck.

  He paid the hackney driver, ran up the steps, and slammed the door knocker.

  The dowager’s butler, Dudley, opened the door. As his gaze took in Lisle, his blank expression soured into annoyance. Undoubtedly he was on the brink of summoning a footman to throw the intruder into the street.

  Though the Earl of Lisle’s other scrapes and bruises were fading quickly, his black eye had grown more colorful: green and red and purple and yellow. In his wild haste, he’d left his hat and gloves at the club. Nichols would never have let him out of the house in this condition, but Nichols had not been about to tend to him.

  Wise and experienced butlers, however, did not leap to hasty conclusions. Dudley took a moment to better scrutinize the deranged male standing on the doorstep at an hour when drunkards, vagabonds, and housebreakers began their rounds.

  The butler’s face smoothed into the usual blank, and he said, “Good evening, Lord Lisle.”

  “Here already, is he?” came a cracked but clearly audible voice from behind the servant. “Send him in, send him in.”

  The butler bowed and stepped to one side. Lisle strode into the vestibule. He heard the door close behind him as he continued to the great entrance hall.

  There stood the Dowager Countess of Hargate, leaning on her cane. She was dressed in an elaborately ruffled and laced silken robe of a style already long out of fashion when the Parisian mob stormed the Bastille.

  She eyed him up and she eyed him down. “Looks like someone ruffled your feathers,” she said.

  She might be a thousand years old, and everyone in the family, including him, might be afraid of her, but the art of saying what he didn’t mean didn’t come naturally to him. At the moment, he had no patience with mannerly niceties.

  “You’ve let her go,” he said. “You must be completely besotted with that awful girl to let her do this.”

  She cackled, the wicked witch.

  “When did she leave?” he said.

  “At the stroke of midnight,” she said. “You know Olivia. Loves her dramatic entrances and exits.”

  Midnight had struck more than an hour ago.

  “This is mad,” he said. “I cannot believe you let her set out for Scotland on her own. In the dead of night, no less.”

  “Hardly the dead of night,” said her ladyship. “The parties are only starting. And she’s hardly on her own. She’s got Agatha and Millicent with her, not to mention a brace of servants. I’ll admit that the butler is a featherweight, but her cook weighs sixteen stone. She’s taken half a dozen sturdy housemaids and another half dozen footmen with her as well, and you know I like big, good-looking fellows about me. Not that I can do much these days but admire the view.”

  Lisle’s mind started down the path of wondering what she’d done to or with footmen before old age got the better of her. He hauled it back to Olivia. “A motley assortment of servants,” he said. “Two eccentric old ladies. I know you dote on her and indulge her in everything, but this is beyond outrageous.”

  “Olivia can take care of herself,” said her ladyship. “Everyone underestimates her, especially men.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Don’t you?”

  He refused to let the unwavering hazel gaze disconcert him. “She’s the wickedest girl who ever lived,” he said. “She did this on purpose.”

  She knew he’d feel guilty and responsible, even though she was clearly in the wrong. She knew he couldn’t tell his parents she’d gone to Gorewood without him, and he was staying home.

  Staying home.

  Possibly forever.

  Home. Without Olivia to make it bearable, though she could be unbearable herself at times.

 
Curse her!

  “I can’t believe that there isn’t one person in this family who can control her,” he said. “Now I must turn my life upside down, drop everything, and race after her—in the middle of the night, no less—”

  “No hurry,” said the dowager. “Remember, she’s got those two beldams with her. She’ll be lucky to reach Hertfordshire before dawn.”

  Meanwhile on the Old North Road

  Olivia had known that, traveling with an entourage, one couldn’t match the speed of the Royal Mail. Still, when the dowager had said it would take a fortnight to reach Edinburgh, Olivia had thought she was joking, or referring to the last century.

  She was revising her thinking.

  She’d known they’d stop to change horses about every ten miles, and at shorter intervals during uphill stretches. While the best hostlers could change a team in two minutes, to accommodate the strict schedules of mail and stage, that didn’t apply to her and her retinue.

  Now it dawned on her that elderly ladies would require longer pauses at the posting inns. They’d disembark more often than mail or stagecoach travelers were allowed to do and spend more time, visiting the privy or walking about to stretch their legs or fortifying themselves with food and drink. Especially drink.

  The ladies had made short work of the large basket Cook had prepared. Now empty, it rested on the carriage floor at Bailey’s feet.

  Looking on the bright side, though, one couldn’t ask for more entertaining company for a long journey.

  They traveled on, the two older women telling hair-raising stories about their younger days until, at last, at Waltham Cross, they reached Hertfordshire.

  Given the easy pace, the same team probably could have taken them another ten miles, to Ware. But the coachman would stop here, at the Falcon Inn, to change horses. The Carsington family made the same stops, at the same posting inns, every time, the selection based on many years’ traveling experience. On Olivia’s copy of Paterson’s Roads, the dowager had marked the stops and written down the names of favored inns.