Temptress in Training

by Susan Gee Heino

  This was where her scheme hit a snag. A big one. Where on earth would she find such a fiancé? Someone so dreadful that even Anthony would not want her to keep him, yet at the same time there would have to be something about him that Anthony might think truly interested her. The scheme would never work if Anthony did not fully believe she wanted the fellow.

  So just what would this wantable, objectionable man look like? Certainly she’d never seen anyone like that, not in the tight, dull circle Mamma and Anthony kept her in. But perhaps her sister-in-law, Julia, might know someone who…

  A blustering shout interrupted her imaginings.

  She couldn’t quite see over the crush of ball-goers, but she could certainly hear there was some sort of racket going on near the door to the ballroom. Drat, if only she were a bit taller! Finally something interesting was occurring and she could not see it.

  She pressed through the crowd to get a closer look. There was, after all, no way she was going to miss ogling at what might be her only bit of excitement all Season.

  Whispers and scandalized murmurs breezed through the pack around her, but she could not hear enough to get the gist of things. She could, however, begin to pick out a few words here and there from the loud male voice shouting over the hushed din. Indeed, things were getting more than interesting. She ducked under Lady Davenforth’s enormous bosom and pressed past Sir Douglas MacClinty’s portly abdomen. No one noticed her, so she kept on, moving slowly toward the front of the room. Mamma would surely have a fit, but Mamma hadn’t seen her so far. She could gawk as blatantly as she liked.

  “It just isn’t seemly, sir!” the blustering male voice was saying.

  “Yes, it seemed a bit unusual to me, too,” another male voice said.

  This was a deep voice, a voice with tone and texture that Penelope was certain she’d recognize if she ever heard it again. It was a good voice, warm and amused and certain. She could picture the man it belonged to as smiling while he spoke. She could imagine he had a glint of mischief in his eye.

  She could also tell he was more than a little bit drunk.

  “But for shame, sir! You had your hand on my wife’s, er…arm!” the first voice stormed.

  “No, sir,” the second man corrected. “I had my hand on your wife’s, er, bosom.”

  The crowd gasped. Someone—most likely the blustering gentleman—choked. The man with the warm, amused voice said nothing, despite all the tumult around him. Penelope decided she simply must get a look at this person.

  There was a chair against the nearby wall, so she scooted herself to it and hoisted up her skirt. Surely with all the fuss these gentlemen were causing no one would so much as notice a woman with strawberry ringlets standing atop a chair, would they? Of course not. Up she went, steadying herself by grasping on to the nearby fern propped securely—she hoped—on a plaster column.

  Ah, now she could see the men. The first was very much as she expected, red-faced, jowly, and well, blustering. The other man was a different story. She drew in a surprised breath.

  For all his cultured tones and textured warmth, the man appeared very unlike his voice. She expected someone dashing and rakish, someone who lived by his wit and reveled in the stimulation of intelligent conversation, among other things. Someone who appreciated fine spirits and looked down on his nose at lesser men. A dandy even, who was sought after and used to being admired. That was how he had sounded, at least.

  What she saw when her eyes fell upon him was something quite different.

  By heavens, but the man was a hermit! He was unkempt, with dirt in his hair and whiskers on his face several days old. His clothes were a disaster. If he had been dressed for mucking a stable or plowing a field, he would have been only slightly overdone. The man was a positive horror!

  And now he noticed her. She clutched the fern for support as his eyes locked onto hers. When he smiled, she thought she felt the chair shift beneath her feet.

  “If you’d let me explain, Burlington,” he said to the blustering man, although his eyes remained fixed on Penelope. “I was trying to say that you have reached a hasty conclusion where your wife is concerned. I was walking into the room as she was walking out of the room, and we merely collided. There was nothing more than that.”

  “But you were alone with her. Your hand was on her…Well, don’t think I haven’t heard of your reputation, sir.”

  “Yes, yes. I daresay everyone has heard of my reputation and this is hardly going to rectify that, is it? Oh well. I assure you, in this instance, at least, I am innocent.”

  “I ought to call you out!” the first man blustered on bravely.

  “Well, I suppose I could shoot you on a field of honor if you insist, but I really would so much rather not. My head is going to be bloody ringing enough in the morning as it is.”

  The crowd laughed at that, and the red-faced man went even more red-faced. He seemed to realize he was running out of practical reason to continue his blustering, but it was obvious he wished to continue. He glanced around nervously and at last was reduced to giving his disheveled companion a frustrated sneer.

  “Since my wife would be very much distressed at the thought of a duel, I shall let you go this time.”

  “Ah, Burlington, that’s terribly kindhearted of you.”

  “But watch yourself, man. And do what your uncle sent you to town for in the first place—find yourself a wife and leave everyone else’s alone.”

  The hermit only gave half a smile at this advice. “Isn’t it thoughtful of my uncle to keep all of London so well informed of my endeavors.”

  “If your endeavors did not breed scandal and dishonor at every turn, no one in London would give a fig for them. Watch yourself, Lord Harry, unless you really don’t wish to live long enough to make use of that title your unfortunate uncle will be forced to leave you one day.”

  “Oh, that ruddy title. I tell you, Burlington, there are plenty of other things I’d very much rather make use of.” Again, his eyes fell on Penelope, and for just a moment she felt as if she might have an inkling what the man meant—and she did not mind it.

  “But I also tell you,” he continued, turning back to his grumbling confronter, “your wife is not one of them.”

  With that, Lord Harry nodded at those around who still observed their altercation, then he gave Penelope a special nod all her own and departed. He turned on his heel and abandoned the assembly. Penelope clenched the fern so tightly she was left with nothing more than a handful of tiny green leaves. The dratted chair was still moving. She was sure of it.

  “Penelope!”

  This blustering screech was her mother’s. Penelope started and very nearly fell off her precarious roost. Bother. Of course Mamma would appear now and discover her this way.

  “Oh, hello, Mamma,” she said, as if standing on chairs in someone’s decorated ballroom was perfectly normal. “I thought I saw a mouse.”

  “More like a rat,” her mother said, glaring in the direction Lord Harry had gone. “You pay no attention to that man, Penelope. Harris Chesterton might be heir to the Earl of Kingsdere, but he’s hardly fit for polite company. And here you are gawking on a chair? Honestly, Penelope, what can you be thinking?”

  Honestly? Well, she was thinking she’d just discovered the perfect fiancé.

  HARRIS CHESTERTON LEFT LORD HEVERSHAM’S HOUSE empty-handed, but he couldn’t help but smile. True, he’d not actually gotten what he’d come for, and yes, he had been caught prowling about the bowels of Heversham’s home when he should not have been there. And of course he’d very nearly gotten dragged into a duel with that blubbering fool Burlington—not to mention what he’d had to endure with that prying Lady Burlington—but still the night had not been a total waste. He’d seen something that changed his life.

  That girl, the one who stood on a chair. Ah yes, he’d seen her quite clearly. He couldn’t actually recall much of what she looked like, but he’d noticed something about her. She was wearing the scarab. />
  The Scarab of Osiris. He knew it instantly, had held it in his hand and felt the smooth gold, the carefully carved insect form, the warm amber orb at its head that fairly glowed like the sun. It was a beautiful piece. And it was stolen.

  He knew, because he’d been the one to steal it.

  After it was originally stolen from its place in a dead pharaoh’s tomb, of course. He’d been merely trying to return the thing, along with several other treasures that had been looted from their rightful place and brought here, to England, where they did not belong.

  Oh, certainly, he did not begrudge the legitimate men of science and conservation who worked within the proper authority to responsibly excavate and preserve antiquities to be shared with the world. He simply had a bit of a problem with the wholesale pillaging of one nation’s culture and history to fund the luxurious tastes of a few private citizens in another. The young woman on the chair was a perfect example of that.

  She was just another of these well-bred simpletons who were hungry for gold and sparkling things without ever stopping to wonder at the meaning, the history, the eternal significance of pieces like that scarab. No doubt she’d lined someone’s pocket well, probably with more thought to how the lapis lazuli of the scarab’s wings matched her blue eyes quite remarkably than to any concept of the hopes and dreams of its ancient creators.

  Damn. Harris could do little but kick himself. What an idiot he was to fail so miserably at keeping these articles safe. And just a matter of days before he’d needed to give his reclaimed collection back to the people who’d asked—no, demanded—it returned.

  But now that he knew where at least one piece was, perhaps he could track down the rest. Perhaps he could save these priceless treasures after all. And perhaps that would save his friend, Oldham. Indeed, far more than a friend.

  First, though, he’d have to find a way to locate that woman. It wouldn’t be an entirely unpleasant task, he had to admit. The scarab did bring out the blue of her eyes quite remarkably, now that he thought about it.

  “WE WILL HAVE NO MORE OF THIS EGYPT NONSENSE,” Anthony, Lord Rastmoor, declared, silencing Penelope when she tried to protest the morning after the dance. “It’s all I can do to keep you under control here in London. I can’t even imagine the havoc you might wreak traveling off to some foreign land on your own.”

  “But I wouldn’t be alone,” Penelope protested to her brother. “I would be traveling with Mr. and Mrs. Tollerson. They’ve been friends of the family for ages. They’d keep close watch over me.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Tollerson can’t even keep close watch over their own teeth. They are far too old to keep you on a leash, Penelope. You’d run all over them. Look what happened when I left you alone with mother and you nearly became prey to that loathsome Fitzgelder.”

  Oh, he just loved to bring that up, didn’t he? And he never seemed to have the facts right about it. Totally unfair.

  “That was five years ago, Anthony,” she reminded. “And as you recall, I was quite in control of things where Fitzgelder was concerned.”

  He merely snorted at her for that. “Just as you have been with your subsequent three fiancés, I suppose.”

  “I never really intended to get engaged to any of them, Anthony. The first one was a misunderstanding. The second one tricked me, and the third…well, I’m not entirely certain what happened there.”

  “It is always one disaster after another with you, isn’t it?”

  “But it’s never my fault! Anthony, if you’d simply give me a chance—”

  “No. If you want to go to Egypt, little sister, then find a husband. Let him take you there. Let him try to keep you from knocking over the Sphinx, or whatever ruddy mess you might make of the place.”

  He was serious, she knew. But where on earth in all this sea of London foppery and English propriety did he expect her to find a husband who might have the slightest inclination to go to Egypt? She did not run with an especially adventurous crowd. He and Mamma had seen to it the young men she met were all properly dull and impossibly proper.

  Very well, then. If a husband was what it would take to get to Egypt, then a husband she was going to find. Well, a fiancé, anyway.

  She would implement her plan. She’d thought to give begging and pleading one last try this morning, but since that had clearly failed, she had no other recourse. Anthony had pushed her into it.

  Now, all she had to do was find that dreadful gentleman from last night. And really, the morning post had already helped her along in that. The Earl of Kingsdere, as it turned out, was hosting a ball in honor of his own birthday. She and Mamma had received an invitation. They would accept, of course.

  Surely the man’s heir—the very hairy Lord Harry she had seen last night—would wish to help his uncle celebrate the occasion, even if he was a hermit. She only hoped he would not be forced to shave. True, he had seemed to be hiding rather nice features beneath that scruff, but Anthony would surely hate him more if he remained woolly.

  Penelope smiled for her brother over her breakfast. “Very well, Anthony. Your word is law. I suppose there’s nothing more to be said on the matter.”

  “There isn’t.”

  Silly Anthony. He actually believed he was correct.