Regency Romp 03 - The Alabaster Hip

by Maggie Fenton

  Despite his clear affection for his daughters, however, Minerva remained skeptical of his apparent reformation. Life had taught her the hard way that a leopard couldn’t change its spots. The viscount may have been an extraordinarily attentive father, but a saint he was not.

  Still, the last thing she expected to find when she stepped into the viscount’s library was a milkmaid dozing on the divan—though perhaps she should have known better than to be surprised by anything that happened in this haphazard household.

  She was not exactly pleased to not only be summoned at the crack of dawn but also be confronted by this: proof of the viscount’s low character. She’d suspected he’d soon tire of his reformation and revert to his old ways soon enough, but not in so blatant a manner.

  In this instance, though, she truly hated being proven right, and as she studied him in the weak morning light, her indignation was overshadowed by a deep-seated disappointment. She had started to like the man and all of his idiosyncrasies—like him perhaps too much, judging from the tight, unhappy knot that had taken up residence in her stomach.

  He sat scribbling at his desk, unkempt and disreputable as ever, his ubiquitous red silk banyan thrown carelessly over irredeemably wrinkled clothes, his rough-hewn jaw covered in at least a day’s growth of beard, and his mahogany curls at sixes and sevens, as if he’d spent the entire night running his fingers through them. She doubted that he had slept a wink, judging by his present company. And that he thought it appropriate to summon her while looking so disreputable, and while his . . . fancy piece still dozed not five feet away, just confirmed how much of a rogue he was.

  He could have at least had the courtesy to keep the sort of thing that currently occupied the divan in his bedchamber.

  She held her tongue—barely—but gave him her most disapproving scowl as he looked up from whatever he was scribbling.

  He seemed immune to her disapproval, however, giving her one of his crooked grins that absolutely did not make her feel weightless, or her heart flutter, or anything so absurd. He just looked so unfairly . . . innocent and . . . attractive—damn it, broken nose and all—when he smiled like that, but she was on to him.

  “Ah, Miss Jones! Just the person I wanted to see,” he said, as if her presence in his library had surprised him.

  “You did send for me,” she reminded him. “Before dawn.” Way before dawn.

  He looked out the window, where the sun was still only barely making an appearance, then back at her. His smile grew a bit devilish at the edges, which boded ill for her. She’d not been subjected to that particular smile since the ditch in West Barming. She braced herself.

  “My apologies. I know how much you love to sleep in, Miss Jones.”

  She narrowed her eyes—how did he know?—and struggled to come up with a suitable retort, but her mind came up blank, as it tended to do before she’d had at least four cups of tea.

  She really, really hated mornings. And this was shaping up to be one of her worst yet.

  She knew his weeks of good behavior had been nothing more than a ruse, lulling her into a false sense of complacency. Though he was right, obviously. Usually the twins had to literally jump on her to get her out of bed even when the sun was fully risen. It was a habit she knew she needed to change, for it wouldn’t do to continue to allow the girls to behave in so uncivilized a manner.

  But she had never liked mornings, no matter how hard she’d tried to overcome her weakness. It was bad enough that he knew about—and mocked—her love of Christopher Essex. Of course the viscount would call her out on the other area of her life over which she had no discipline.

  The viscount barreled on without bothering to wait for her tongue to catch up with her brain. “But no time to waste. I’ve a bit of a situation.”

  He gestured toward the little baggage on the divan, who had begun to snore rather unattractively. And really, what sort of dowdy costume was the girl wearing? Minerva would have thought that even the viscount would have more refined tastes in his women—and ones that weren’t so reprehensible. Her stomach soured even further as she took in the girl’s obvious youth.

  “She looks as if she’s still in the schoolroom,” she scolded in a harsh whisper.

  He gave her a strange look. “Of course she is. Or she should be, though I’m rather shocked my father even allowed her to be taught how to read and write.”

  This was worse than she could have ever imagined. His father? The Earl of Barming? Did they . . . share?

  “Allowed!” she cried, truly alarmed. “Is this girl some sort of prisoner?”

  The viscount snorted. “That is rather one way to put it. But she has come to me for protection now.”

  Minerva gasped in outrage at the implication. Protection indeed! “You cannot involve yourself in this . . . wretched business.”

  His brow creased in confusion. “Whyever not? I’ll not turn her away. What sort of unfeeling churl do you take me for?”

  “Someone who would not engage in such licentiousness with your children under the same roof. It is repugnant. This girl cannot be much older than they are!”

  His confusion was fast transforming into irritation. “She’s sixteen. And I don’t see what is so repugnant in this business. Unless you are referring to my father, for it shall indeed be extremely repugnant having to deal with him when he discovers she has come to me.”

  He was a despicable, utterly amoral villain who couldn’t even see how wrong his behavior was. Minerva wondered how she’d ever thought him capable of basic human decency.

  The viscount, however, seemed blithely unaware of her disapproval. “Now I need your help with her. The chit will need a firm hand while she settles into the household.”

  “I will not be your . . . procurer!” she gasped, utterly appalled at the idea.

  He gave her an incredulous look. “What the devil are you talking about?”

  “I think it obvious!” she scoffed.

  He ran a hand through his hair, disordering it even further, looking totally perplexed by her outrage. “It really isn’t, Miss Jones.”

  “But it is, Evie,” drawled an amused, sleep-roughened voice from the divan. Minerva froze at the sound of it, realizing she hadn’t heard snoring from that corner for some time. Slowly, she swiveled her head at the sound of rustling and met a pair of very amused, very familiar brown eyes peeking out of a tumble of brunette curls. The girl sat up and threw her legs onto the floor in a swirl of patched gingham skirts.

  “She thinks I am your ladybird,” the girl said, sounding far too gleeful for the hour and the subject.

  “What?” the viscount cried.

  “A strumpet,” the girl clarified with relish. “A barque of frailty. A bawd. A. . .”

  “Yes, I get the idea,” the viscount said, suddenly looking distinctly green about the gills.

  The girl continued, unrepentant. “You failed to mention who I was, though you did a cracking job of implying that our father has been imprisoning me against my will for rather nefarious purposes. Which I cannot entirely disagree with, since that is exactly what he has been doing. Though not quite in the way Miss Jones has implied.”

  The girl rose to her feet and bounded over to Minerva, looking much too awake for someone who had been snoring five minutes ago. And much too like a Leighton for there to be any doubt in Minerva’s mind that she’d made a terrible mistake. Alongside those distinctive eyes, the girl had the viscount’s same rangy build, long, unruly limbs, and all the grace of a bull in a china shop.

  It was rather unnerving to see the viscount’s demeanor translated onto someone of the opposite sex. Minerva was still struggling to get used to the viscount.

  The girl smiled sunnily at her and then proceeded to shake her hand as if they were blokes at a sporting match. “Lady Elizabeth Leighton. But you may call me Betsy.”

  Minerva could feel her face heating, and when she dared to glance over at the viscount, he seemed to be faring no better. He had his palm presse
d to his forehead as if he couldn’t believe what had just happened. Well, she couldn’t either.

  “This is my half sister,” the viscount finally managed, waving at the girl half-heartedly. “Not my . . .” He looked as if he were near to casting up his accounts.

  “Yes, yes, I think I understand now,” Minerva said quickly before he could finish that thought and make both of them sick.

  Lady Elizabeth looked from her brother to Minerva and broke into giggles. She laughed so hard she had to sit back down on the divan. “The look . . . on your faces!” she gasped out.

  Minerva had a sneaking suspicion that Lady Elizabeth was going to be as much a handful as her nieces. And her brother.

  “Betsy,” the viscount said, trying his best to ignore his sister’s giggles, “this is Miss Jones. She’s the twins’ governess.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Lady Elizabeth said commiseratingly, not looking sorry in the least.

  The viscount scowled at his sister. “And now, she is to be yours as well.”

  “What?” Minerva and Lady Elizabeth cried simultaneously. It was really much too early for this.

  “I am too old for a governess,” Lady Elizabeth declared.

  “Companion, then. Chaperone,” Lord Marlowe said. “Whatever you want to call it. You’re both rabid Misstophers, so I’m sure you’ll have enough in common to muck along together.”

  Lady Elizabeth’s disdain quickly gave way to delight. She turned to Minerva with a bright, hopeful smile. “You’re a Misstopher?”

  She looked so pleased and young that Minerva hadn’t the heart to deny it—though she wanted to. Vociferously. “I admire Christopher Essex’s poetry,” she allowed primly.

  “She’s a Misstopher,” the viscount confirmed to his sister. “And while you’re under my roof, you are to mind Miss Jones, Betsy.”

  Lady Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Fine.” Her expression lightened as she turned back to Minerva. “What is your favorite work?”

  “Wha . . . ? Le Chevalier, I suppose,” Minerva answered when her brain had finally caught up with the girl’s abrupt change of subject.

  Lady Elizabeth looked as if she approved. “Mine is The Hedonist, but only by a small margin. I can already see we shall get along famously.”

  Perhaps. But perhaps one more strong-willed Leighton would be just enough to tip the scales against her. “Are you here for long?” Minerva inquired as innocently as she could.

  “My sister has run away,” the viscount intoned before Lady Elizabeth could answer.

  “Oh, dear,” Minerva said, though she was hardly surprised, considering the consistently naughty behavior of Lady Elizabeth’s nieces. She could only hope that the twins didn’t get any ideas from their aunt while she was here.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” the viscount continued breezily. “We have decided that this is a good thing, as our dear father is attempting to marry her off to the Duke of Oxley.”

  “Poxley Oxley!” Minerva exclaimed, horrified.

  “You’ve heard of him, then,” Lord Marlowe said dryly. “I usually hate to give credence to gossip, but in Poxley’s case, everything you’ve ever heard is probably all horribly true. So Betsy will be staying with us until we can sort this business out.”

  “Don’t worry; I have a plan,” Lady Elizabeth assured Minerva, sounding so confident of herself that Minerva knew she was just the opposite.

  Lord Marlowe wore the same tolerant look he employed when the twins were being particularly trying. “We shall see about your plan,” he murmured doubtfully. “In the meanwhile, Miss Jones, if you would make sure she stays out of trouble, I would be most obliged.”

  “Of course,” she agreed. For the absurd amount he paid her, she could have hardly done otherwise, though Minerva could already see this ending in disaster. Three Leighton charges. And a viscount. She wasn’t sure she’d survive it.

  Lady Elizabeth grinned wolfishly at her. “Don’t worry, Miss Jones. I won’t do anything you wouldn’t do.”

  That was not as reassuring as one might think.

  MINERVA SOON DISCOVERED that Lady Elizabeth certainly made life interesting—though she’d thought it interesting enough, between corralling the twins and bickering with their father. However, far from being the hellion Minerva had expected, Lady Elizabeth seemed reasonably rational . . . unless she was waxing poetic about Christopher Essex. Minerva had thought herself embarrassingly immoderate in her own regard for the poet, but Lady Elizabeth took things to a whole new level of insanity. She truly was a Misstopher—not only that, she was one of those extreme cases who wrote stories about the poet. In compromising positions.

  One of which Minerva found herself reading just a few hours after their meeting in the study as they sipped tea in Lady Elizabeth’s new room, waiting for the twins to awaken.

  “Oh, Elizabeth!” the poet gasped into his beloved’s dew-kissed shoulder. “I have waited so long.”

  “No longer, dearest Christopher,” she murmured tenderly, caressing the rough, granite-hewn line of his jaw.

  “We mustn’t,” he murmured, even as his long, elegantly masculine fingers began to undo the buttons of her bodice and slip beneath. “We are not yet wed.”

  “We shall be in Gretna Green by dawn. What’s a few hours? Who is to know?” she whispered, coaxing him into continuing his caresses on silken skin.

  “I shall know,” he breathed. “God shall know. I may be a hedonist, but I love you too much . . .”

  “Then don’t stop; don’t ever stop!” she cried as his fingers touched her naked, quivering br . . .

  Minerva slapped the commonplace book closed, her cheeks burning, and shoved it back in Lady Elizabeth’s direction as if burned.

  Lady Elizabeth—Lady Hedonist to those who’d read her stories, whose ranks now, unfortunately, included Minerva—just laughed at her and winked. She looked so much like her brother in that moment that Minerva wondered how she could have ever mistaken her for anything other than a Leighton.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve never dreamed something similar,” Lady Elizabeth said slyly.

  Minerva cleared her throat and tried to look suitably disapproving. She couldn’t defend herself from the charge and stay honest. But an elopement to Gretna Green? And . . . that in the back of a carriage? She supposed to most sixteen-year-old girls that would seem romantic, but to her it just sounded dreadfully uncomfortable. She’d spent far too much time in overcrowded, bumpy mail coaches for it to ever sound like a good idea.

  She decided to avoid reading anything else Lady Elizabeth offered her in the future, for it seemed wrong to read about the heaving bosoms and dewy flesh inhabiting the mind of a sixteen-year-old girl.

  But she had to admit the writing itself was surprisingly well done, if just a tad too salacious for polite company. It seemed the earl had, in fact, allowed his daughter some schooling after all. Minerva would thus not judge the girl for her taste in hobbies, but rather praise her for her industriousness. And good grammar.

  But Minerva nearly spat out her tea when she was next introduced to Lady Elizabeth’s plan for avoiding her marriage to Oxley. She probably shouldn’t have been so surprised that it involved Christopher Essex, since even she had a few idle daydreams about meeting the man, but really . . .

  Marrying Christopher Essex?

  It was hard to tell if Lady Elizabeth were serious or not. She announced her intentions so teasingly and lightly that Minerva doubted she was in earnest. How could she be? Lady Elizabeth was only sixteen, but she seemed anything but naive. Surely she had enough sense to know how highly unlikely her plan was to succeed.

  Even if she were to unmask Essex—which no one had done in a decade—there was little hope he’d fall in line with Lady Elizabeth’s matrimonial plans—or that he was any more suitable a candidate for marriage than Poxley Oxley.

  Then again, Lady Elizabeth, under the secret guise of the notorious Lady Hedonist, was practically the leader of the Misstophers, so perhaps Minerva overestimate
d her levelheadedness on this particular matter.

  Whatever the case, one thing was certain: Lady Elizabeth could not marry Poxley Oxley. The only reason he’d not been thrown in Newgate long ago was his title and vast wealth. Even Minerva had heard the whispers about the fate of his past three wives, and though she hoped the rumors were exaggerated (for otherwise her faith in humanity was in danger of being severely compromised), she could not wish such a husband on the kind, exuberant treasure that Lady Elizabeth had turned out to be in the few short hours of their acquaintance.

  She vowed in that moment to be Lady Elizabeth’s friend—though she drew the line at calling her Betsy, as the girl kept insisting upon—and to aid the viscount in any way she could to help him extricate his sister from Oxley’s clutches.

  For the girl was going to need all the help she could get if her only plan of action was to marry a man who didn’t even exist.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IN WHICH MISS JONES BEMOANS THE LOSS OF HER PANTALOONS

  MINERVA SOON REALIZED that Lady Elizabeth wasn’t to be the only new addition to the household when strangers in livery began appearing in the hallways. The viscount had apparently lost most of his staff—not just the governess—during his long illness, and Mrs. Chips, through a judicious application of lukewarm tea and cold bathwater, had finally convinced the viscount to let her replace them.

  Expanding the household staff was a task Mrs. Chips threw herself into with great alacrity—or so Minerva presumed by the improved temperature of her tea. The day after she’d received her orders, Mrs. Chips had already brought in two chambermaids, a scullery maid, and two bewigged footmen, leading Minerva to suspect that the housekeeper had been storing them in the attic somewhere, just waiting for an opportunity to give them an airing.

  Mrs. Chips had even thrust upon the viscount a valet by the name of Pymm, a small, scrupulously turned out man who eyed the viscount’s dishabille with the look of a general preparing for battle. Marlowe had responded to the incursion by hiding in the nursery the entire first day of the man’s employment, grumbling about Pymm’s threat to burn all of his banyans (which Minerva privately thought an excellent idea).