A Scandalous Adventure

by Lillian Marek

Mr. Carruthers had timed it quite neatly, she thought. As the music ended and he twirled her into the final spin, they came to a halt just before the terrace doors. These were standing open, letting in the scent of roses on the breeze of the soft June evening.

  “It is rather warm in here, Lady Elinor, is it not?” he said. “Would you care for a turn on the terrace?”

  Before she could answer, a strong hand clasped her arm just above the elbow. “Lady Elinor, your mother wants you.” When she turned to object to this high-handed treatment, she found herself staring up at the all-too-familiar scowl of Lord Tunbury. “Harry…” she started to protest.

  “If Lady Elinor wishes to return to her parents, I will be delighted to escort her.” Carruthers spoke frostily.

  “Lady Penworth requested that I find her daughter.” Harry’s even icier tone indicated that there was nothing more to be said on the subject.

  Lady Elinor looked back and forth between them and wanted to laugh. Carruthers was tall, dark, and handsome, or at least decorative, with a pretty bow-shaped mouth. Harry, equally tall, had broad shoulders and a powerful build. His square face was pleasant rather than handsome, his middling brown hair tended to flop over his middling brown eyes, and his wide mouth was more often than not stretched into a broad smile. Not just now, of course.

  One would say the two men were not much alike, but at the moment they wore identical scowls. They did not actually bare their teeth and growl, but they were not far off. She could not manage to feel guilty about enjoying the sight. It was too delightful.

  Carruthers stopped glaring at Harry long enough to look at her. He may have stopped scowling, but he was not smiling. He was stiff with anger. “Lady Elinor?” He offered his arm.

  Harry’s grip on her arm tightened and he pulled her back a step. His grip was growing painful, and she would have protested, but she feared it might create a scene not of her own designing, so she smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Carruthers, but if my mother sent Lord Tunbury, perhaps I should accept his escort.”

  Carruthers bowed stiffly and sent one more glare at the intruder before he departed. That left her free to turn furiously on Harry. “There is no way on earth my mother sent you to fetch me. What do you think you are doing?”

  He caught her hand, trapped it on his arm, and began marching her away from the terrace. “I cannot imagine what possessed your parents to give you permission to dance with a loose fish like Carruthers.”

  “They didn’t, of course. He at least had enough sense to wait until they had left me with Pip.” Harry was dragging her along too quickly, and she was going to land on the floor in a minute. “You might slow down a bit,” she complained.

  “You little idiot!” He turned and glared at her but did ease his pace. “He was about to take you out on the terrace.”

  “Well, of course!” She gave an exasperated humph.

  “What do you mean, ‘Of course’?” By now they had reached the end of the ballroom, and he pulled her into the hall and swung her around to the side so he could glare with some privacy.

  She shook out her skirt and checked to make sure the pink silk rosettes pinning up the tulle overskirt had not been damaged while Harry was dragging her about. She was very fond of those rosettes. “I mean, of course he was going to take me out on the terrace. That’s what he does. He takes a girl out on the terrace, leads her into one of the secluded parts, and kisses her. Marianne and Dora say he kisses very nicely, and I wanted to see if they were right.”

  Harry made a strangled sound. “Marianne and Dora? Miss Simmons and Miss Cooper…?”

  “Among others.” Lady Elinor waved a hand airily. “He’s kissed so many of this year’s debutantes that I was beginning to feel slighted, but I think perhaps he is working according to some sort of pattern. Do you know what it might be?”

  He was looking at her with something approaching horror, rather the way her brother looked at her much of the time. “You and your friends discuss… What in God’s name are young ladies thinking about these days?”

  She shrugged. “Young men, of course. What did you suppose? That we discuss embroidery patterns? Don’t you and your friends talk about women?”

  He closed his eyes and muttered a prayer for patience. Then he began speaking with exaggerated formality. “Lady Elinor, under no circumstances are you to even dance with a rake like Carruthers, much less go into the garden with him. You have no idea what he would do.”

  “Fiddlesticks! I know precisely what he was going to do. He apparently has only two speeches that he uses to persuade a girl to let him kiss her, and I want to know which one he is going to use on me. Then I’ll know if I am generally considered saucy or sweet.”

  “Norrie, no one who is at all acquainted with you would ever consider you sweet.”

  “Well, I should hope not. You know me better than that. But I want to know how I am viewed by the people who don’t know me.”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. “Norrie, I want you to listen to me. A bounder like Carruthers will try to do far more than simply steal a kiss.”

  “I know that. You needn’t treat me as if I am simpleminded. But I am hardly going to allow anything more.”

  “It is not a question of what you will allow. Just precisely how do you think you could stop him from taking advantage of you?”

  She gave him a considering look and decided to answer honestly. “Well, there is the sharply raised knee to the groin or the forehead smashed against the nose, but the simplest, I have always found, is the hatpin.”

  “Hatpin?” Harry looked rather as if he were choking as he seized on the most innocuous part of her statement.

  “Yes. It really doesn’t matter where you stab. Gentlemen are always so startled that they jump back.” She offered him a kindly smile. Sometimes he sounded just like her brother.

  He went back to glaring at her. “Norrie, Lady Elinor, I want your word that there will be no strolls in the garden with disreputable rogues.”

  “Like you?” she interrupted.

  “Yes, if you like, like me! Forget about rogues. You may not always recognize one. Just make it all men. You are not to leave the ballroom with any man at any time.”

  “The way we just left it?”

  “Stop that, Norrie. I am serious.”

  He did indeed look serious. Quite fierce, in fact. So she subsided and resigned herself to listening.

  “I want your promise,” he said. “If you will not give it, I will have to warn your brother, and you know Pip. He might feel obliged to challenge anyone who tries to lead you into dark corners, and you know he is a hopeless shot. You don’t want to get him killed, do you?”

  He had calmed down enough to start smiling at her now, one of those patronizing, big-brother, I-know-better-than-you smiles. It was quite maddening, so she put on her shyly innocent look and smiled back. “Oh, Harry, you know I would never do anything that would cause real trouble.”

  “That’s my girl.” He took her arm to lead her back to the ballroom. “Hatpins indeed. Just don’t let your mother find out you’ve heard about things like that.”

  She smiled. He really was quite sweet. And foolish. He had not even noticed that she gave him no promise. And then imagine warning her not to let her mother find out. Who did he suppose had taught her those tricks?

  * * *

  Tunbury hovered at the edge of the ballroom and watched Norrie hungrily. He had not seen her in more than a year, and then two months ago, there she had been. It was her first season, and somehow the tomboy who had been his and Pip’s companion in all their games and pranks had turned into a beauty. Her dark hair now hung in shiny ringlets, framing the perfect oval of her face. Her eyes—they had always been that sort of greenish blue, shining with excitement more often than not, but when had they started to tilt at the edge that way? And when had her lashes gr
own so long and thick? Worst of all, when had she gone and grown a bosom?

  But she was such an innocent.

  She thought herself so worldly, so knowing, when in fact she knew nothing of the ugliness lurking beneath the surface, even in the ballrooms of the aristocracy. That ugliness should never be allowed to touch her. Her parents would protect her and find her a husband worthy of her, a good, decent man who came from a good, decent family.

  Not someone like him. Not someone who came from a family as rotten as his. The Tremaines thought they knew about his parents, the Earl and Countess of Doncaster, but they knew only the common gossip. They did not know what Doncaster had told him, and he hoped they never would.

  Yes, Norrie would find a husband worthy of her, but he couldn’t stay here and watch. That would be too painful. He had to leave. He would leave in the morning and disappear from her life.

  And don’t miss the second book in the Victorian Adventures series!

  Constantinople, March 1861

  Constantinople had looked so promising to Lady Emily when they arrived this morning, with the city rising up out of the morning mists, white and shining with turrets and domes and balconies everywhere. The long, narrow boats in the harbor all sported bright sails. It had been so new and strange and exotic.

  Now here she was, walking with Lady Julia behind her parents on Wilton carpets. Wilton carpets imported from Salisbury! When even she knew that this part of the world was famous for its carpets.

  She heaved a sigh. They had traveled thousands of miles to finally reach Constantinople—the Gateway to Asia, the ancient Byzantium, the capital of the fabulous Ottoman Empire, a city of magic and mystery—and for what?

  To be tucked up in the British Embassy, a Palladian building that would have looked perfectly at home around the corner from Penworth House in London. She understood that it was British and represented the Queen and the Empire and all that, but did it have to be so very English?

  The doors at the end of the hall were flung open and a butler, dressed precisely as he would have been in London, announced, “The Most Honorable the Marquess of Penworth. The Most Honorable the Marchioness of Penworth. The Lady Emily Tremaine. The Lady Julia de Vaux.”

  They might just as well have never left home.

  Emily smiled the insipid smile she reserved for her parents’ political friends—the smile intended to assure everyone that she was sweet and docile—and prepared to be bored. She was very good at pretending to be whatever she was expected to be. Next to her, she could feel Julia straighten her already perfect posture. She reached over to squeeze her friend’s hand.

  “Lord Penworth, Lady Penworth, allow me to welcome you to Constantinople.” A ruddy-faced gentleman with thinning gray hair on his head and a thinning gray beard on his chin inclined his head. “And this must be your daughter, Lady Emily?” He looked somewhere between the two young women, as if uncertain which one to address.

  Emily took pity on him and curtsied politely.

  He looked relieved and turned to Julia. “And Lady Julia?” She performed a similar curtsy.

  “My husband and I are delighted to welcome such distinguished visitors to Constantinople,” said the small, gray woman who was standing stiffly beside the ambassador, ignoring the fact that he had been ignoring her.

  Emily blinked. She knew marital disharmony when she heard it. She also knew how unpleasant it could make an evening.

  “We are delighted to be here, Lady Bulwer,” said Lord Penworth courteously. “This part of the world is new to us, and we have all been looking forward to our visit.” He turned to the ambassador. “I understand that you, Sir Henry, are quite familiar with it.”

  “Tolerably well, tolerably well. I’m told you’re here to study the possibility of a railroad along the Tigris River valley. Can’t quite see it myself.” Before the ambassador realized it, Lord Penworth had cut him out of the herd of women and was shepherding him off to the side.

  In the sudden quiet, Lady Penworth smiled at her hostess and gestured at the room about them. “I am most impressed by the way you have managed to turn this embassy into a bit of England,” she said. “If I did not know, I would think myself still in London.”

  Lady Bulwer looked both pleased and smug. She obviously failed to note any hint of irony in Lady Penworth’s words. Emily recognized the signs. Her parents would out-diplomat the diplomats, smoothing over any bumps of disharmony in the Bulwer household, and conversation would flow placidly through conventional channels. Boring, but unexceptionable. And only too familiar.

  Then Julia touched her arm.

  Still looking straight ahead, and still with a faint, polite smile on her face, Julia indicated that Emily should look at the left-hand corner of the room. Emily had never understood how it was that Julia could send these messages without making a sound or even moving her head, but send them she did.

  In this case, it was a message Emily received with interest. Off in the corner were two young men pretending to examine a huge globe while they took sideways glances at the newcomers. This was much more promising than the possibility of trouble between the ambassador and his wife. Refusing to pretend a lack of curiosity—she was growing tired, very tired, of pretending—she looked straight at them.

  One was an extraordinarily handsome man, clean-shaven to display a beautifully sculpted mouth and a square jaw. His perfectly tailored black tailcoat outlined a tall, broad-shouldered physique. The blinding whiteness of his shirt and bow tie contrasted with the slight olive cast of his skin. His hair was almost black, and his dark eyes betrayed no awareness of her scrutiny. He stood with all the bored elegance of the quintessential English gentleman. Bored and probably boring.

  The other man looked far more interesting. He was not so tall—slim and wiry, rather than powerful looking—and not nearly so handsome. His nose was quite long—assertive might be a polite way to describe it—and his tanned face was long and narrow. Like his companion, he was clean shaven, though his hair, a dark brown, was in need of cutting. While his evening clothes were perfectly proper, they were worn carelessly, and he waved his hands about as he spoke in a way that seemed definitely un-English. He noticed immediately when she held her gaze on him and turned to return her scrutiny. She refused to look away, even when he unashamedly examined her from head to toe. His eyes glinted with amusement, and he gave her an appreciative grin and salute.

  The cheek of him! She laughed out loud, making Julia hiss and drawing the attention of her mother and Lady Bulwer. Sir Henry must have noticed something as well, for he waved the young men over to be introduced to Papa.

  They both stopped a proper distance away, and the handsome one waited with an almost military stiffness. Sir Henry introduced him first. “This is David Oliphant, Lord Penworth. He’s with the Foreign Office and will be your aide and guide on the journey. He knows the territory and can speak the lingo. All the lingoes, in fact—Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic, whatever you run into along the way.”

  Oliphant bowed. “Honored, my lord.”

  Lord Penworth smiled. “My pleasure.”

  “And this young man is Lucien Chambertin. He’s on his way back to Mosul where he’s been working with Carnac, digging up stone beasts or some such.”

  “The remains of Nineveh, Sir Henry.” Chambertin then turned to Lord Penworth with a brief, graceful bow and a smile. “I am most pleased to make your acquaintance, my lord, for I am hoping you will allow me to impose on you and join your caravan for the journey to Mosul.”

  He spoke excellent English, with just a hint of a French accent. Just the perfect hint, Emily decided. Sir Henry was not including the ladies in his introductions, to her annoyance, so she had been obliged to position herself close enough to hear what they were saying. This was one of the rare occasions when she was grateful for her crinolines. They made it impossible for the ladies to stand too close to one another, so she p
laced herself to the rear of her mother. From that position, she could listen to the gentlemen’s conversation while appearing to attend to the ladies’. What’s more, from her angle she could watch them from the corner of her eye without being obvious.

  “I cannot imagine why you should not join us,” Lord Penworth told the Frenchman. “I understand that, in Mesopotamia, it is always best to travel in a large group. You are one of these new scholars—what do they call them, archaeologists?”

  Chambertin gave one of those Gallic shrugs. “Ah no, nothing so grand. I am just a passing traveler, but I cannot resist the opportunity to see the ruins of Nineveh when the opportunity offers itself. And then when Monsieur Carnac says he has need of assistance, I agree to stay for a while.”

  “Well, my wife will certainly find the ruins interesting. She has developed quite a fascination with the ancient world.”

  Oliphant looked startled. “Your wife? But surely Lady Penworth does not intend to accompany us.”

  “Of course.” Lord Penworth in turn looked startled at the question. “I could hardly deny her the opportunity to see the ancient cradle of civilization. Not when I am looking forward to it myself.”

  “I’m sorry. I was told you were traveling to view the possible site of a railway.”

  “I am.” Penworth smiled. “That is my excuse for this trip. General Chesney has been urging our government to build a railway from Basra to Constantinople. His argument is that it would provide much quicker and safer communication with India. Palmerston wanted me to take a look and see if there would be any other use for it.”

  The ambassador snorted. “Not much. There’s nothing of any use or interest in that part of the world except for those huge carvings that fellows like Carnac haul out of the ground.”

  The handsome Mr. Oliphant looked worried. Before he could say anything, dinner was announced, the remaining introductions were finally made, and Emily found herself walking in to dinner on the arm of M. Chambertin. He had behaved quite correctly when they were introduced and held out his arm in perfectly proper fashion. He said nothing that would have been out of place in the most rigidly proper setting imaginable. Nonetheless, she suspected that he had been well aware of her eavesdropping. There was a decidedly improper light dancing in his eyes.