“Is everything all right, my dear?” Mama called loudly from across the table.
Oh, yes. Splendid. My brother all but called out the man I love. Perfectly splendid. Winnie gave a murmur of thanks to the servants who finished cleaning off her place setting, and returned with a new, unsullied plate. From across the table, her brother glared at her. She held his stare and glowered in response. “I am fine,” she said tightly.
Then, everyone returned to their previous discourse. Mama and Papa whispering in one another’s ears. Prudence making eyes at Christopher Chance. All the evidence of other peoples’ happiness came with their laughter and giggles until the chatter about the table blurred into one large cacophony of incoherent sound in her ears. She balled her hands to keep from slapping them over her ears.
It was too much. She could not feign indifference or happiness, even for her family’s benefit… Winnie shoved back her chair with such alacrity it scraped the hardwood floor. She jumped to her feet. Heart thundering, she rushed out from behind her seat.
“Winnie?” Mama asked, concern underscoring her words.
“I can’t,” she rasped. “I need,” to flee, “my gown,” she finished lamely, stringing together fragments that together made little sense to even her. Footsteps sounded in the hall. “I—”
The Earl of Weston’s butler cleared his throat. “Lord Trent Ballantine.”
Winnie stilled and stared unblinkingly at her mother. The butler’s nasal intonation of a name…nay, his name, sucked what had remained of rational thought inside her head and left her frozen.
“My goodness, Trent, whatever happened to your face, my dear boy?” Her mother’s concerned words drew her back from the abyss of confusion.
Winnie swung her gaze to the front of the room, and her eyes collided with his. Pain lanced at her heart. The bluish-black about his eyes and slightly bent nose bore the evidence of that horrific day. Through that nearly swollen shut left eye, a fierce intensity still blazed through and singed her with the heat. He is here. She momentarily closed her eyes. “What are you doing here?” she whispered.
“Yes, what are you doing here?” James gritted out. The fury underscoring his question hinted at his thinly veiled rage. “I thought I’d made myself very clear when last we spoke.”
Trent’s face contorted and she hated he should be so hurt at the hands of a man he’d called friend for almost eleven years.
“James!” Their mother gasped.
“Lord Trent,” Lady Weston called out over the family squabbling, ever the gracious hostess. “We did not expect you, but what a pleasure it is.”
Trent cleared his throat and looked about the table. “It was not my intention to interrupt your families’ holiday revelry.”
“Do not be silly,” Lady Carlisle intoned. “Isn’t that correct, Lady Weston?”
“Indeed.”
He momentarily slid his focus over to James. “You were clear I was not to enter your household.”
Her brother gritted his teeth, loudly. “Go to the devil, Ballantine.”
Another round of shocked gasps met her brother’s ungentlemanly outburst. “James,” Mama scolded, and glared him into silence like he was a boy of seven and not a man of twenty-seven.
A grin pulled at Winnie’s lips; the first smile she’d worn since he stormed from the billiards room. Ah, God, how she loved him.
His garments wrinkled and dusted from his journey, Trent took a step forward. “I have no right to be here,” he directed those words to her.
“Don’t be silly, boy.” Her father’s low baritone boomed from the walls. “You are very much a part of this family, and as such, welcome.”
The muscles of Trent’s throat worked. Her heart tugged. Did he not know how much a part of her family’s fabric he’d become? He turned his gloved palms up and continued walking toward her. “Your brother is indeed correct. Any one of these gentleman present would make you a worthy husband.”
“I do not want any of these other gentlemen,” she said softly. From the corner of her eye, she saw the looks exchanged by the four mothers present. Her poor mama was the only one whose furrowed brow bespoke her confusion.
Trent stopped before her. With a tremulous hand he reached inside the front of his pocket and withdrew a familiar sack. Her heart tugged as he held up the bag with its snowflake embroidered upon the front. “I am selfish and self-serving, but this is not enough.” He palmed her cheek, and she leaned into his touch.
James leapt to his feet. Rage burned from his eyes. “Take your bloody hands off my sister, Ballantine,” he thundered.
“But I love you, Winnie,” Trent continued as though her brother hadn’t spoken. He dropped his brow to hers. “I love your spirit. I love the way you pretend to not know how to play billiards to wheedle something from me.”
His words rang a breathless laugh from her. “You know that?”
“I know everything from how your eyes sparkle when you’re scheming to how you despise mince pies.”
“But the mince pie is delicious,” her mother moaned from across the table.
She and Trent laughed softly, and then his amusement faded. He stroked his hand down her cheek. “I’ve spent the better part of two years fighting myself, but you have proven me hopelessly weak.” He fell to a knee.
Winnie widened her eyes. “Wh-what are you doing?” She touched her fingertips to her mouth.
Gasps went up about the table.
Her brother slumped down in his chair. “Oh, bloody hell.”
Mama leaned over and pinched James on the arm. “Why do you not apply yourself to something your sister wants for a change, my boy.”
“I love you, Winifred Isolde Grisham,” Trent said quietly. “And with your father’s permission,” he raised his gaze.
All four mothers called out in unison. “You have it.”
A twinkle lit her father’s eyes. “I think you have your answer, boy.”
Trent gave a slight nod and looked once more to Winnie. “I would have you as my wife.”
A shuddery sob escaped her and she hurled her arms about him. Trent staggered under the force of her movement. He righted them, and ran his hand over the back of her head. “I love you,” he whispered against her ear. “You see, I left, and pledged to stay away and do you know what I realized?”
Tears misted her vision, and she gave her head a slight shake. “What?” she managed to whisper.
He captured a single teardrop with the pad of his thumb. “I promised I would never let you go, and I never intend to. Never again.”
A smile played on Winnie’s lips. Why, it seemed her mother had been correct, after all.
Anything could happen at Christmas.
The End
To Make a Perfect Scandal
By
Danelle Harmon
Chapter One
December 1813
Norfolk, England
She was good at eavesdropping.
To the servants who were dusting the paintings that hung in the large portrait gallery of this grand house that she and her mother were visiting, the Honourable Miss Letitia Ponsonby, only daughter of Lord and Lady Penmore, was a study in perfection. Perfect posture as she sat in a chair reading just outside a drawing room door. Perfect hair, a lustrous blend of amber and gold, parted, pinned and encircled in a teal velvet band from which tiny curls escaped to frame her heart-shaped face. Perfect silence as she engrossed herself in the small book open in her lap.
Silence was, of course, necessary for perfect eavesdropping.
She sat primly at the edge of her chair, her pelisse of pale blue-green velvet arranged carefully around her. Her slippers, white lace over a color that mirrored the sea on which her father had made his fame and fortune, peeped out from beneath the hem of her muslin gown, each toe set against the line that separated one marble tile from another. A true lady was the beautiful Letitia but only her mother, quietly conversing behind that closed door with their host, Lady Ariadne, kn
ew that appearances were deceiving … and how acute her daughter’s hearing actually was.
Letitia could hear the words as clearly as if she had pressed her ear to the ancient wood panel.
“It is good to see you again after so long, Ariadne. I hope you know how grateful my Lettie and I are for the invitation to stay here with you on our way down to Leeds, especially with the roads being as they are this time of year. Frankly, I’d have never left Lincolnshire to make such a long trip, but when Lady Weston summons one to her home, one must go. The situation has reached crisis status, I’m afraid.”
“Situation?”
“Our daughters. And especially my daughter, Letitia. Wild as the wind she is, and still unmarried. Seth and I despair of her ever making a match. Who would wed a young lady who walks the fence line between respectability and scandal? But my Lettie … she cares for nothing but horses and the freedom to do as she pleases … probably my fault, as I have never taken a firm hand with her. The mold has been cast, and it is too late to change it.”
Letitia sat very still, willing even her heartbeat to pause for a moment. She hid a smile. This was getting interesting.
“My friends are all in the same boat, and if we pull any more hair out over the unmarried state of our daughters, we’ll all be as bald as a newly-laid egg. It’s why Lady Weston summoned us down to Kent and why we’re making this trip. She, the Countess of Portland, and the Marchioness of Carlisle are all despairing over this … this situation every bit as much as I am. It’s gone from being embarrassing to downright alarming, I tell you. Four of the loveliest girls in England from four of the oldest and most prestigious families and they are still quite happily unmarried.”
“So what will you do?”
“Do? What can I do?” Letitia heard the plaintive wail in her mother’s voice and could just picture her wringing her hands. “The only thing I can do. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and I am beyond desperate. I have sent word to the Honourable Mr. Homer Trout, inviting him to this same Christmastide house party that we’re attending. The Captain and I have already made it quite clear that we would encourage his pursuit of our daughter’s hand.”
In her chair, Letitia actually did feel her heartbeat stop.
Homer Trout?
Encourage the pursuit of our daughter’s hand?
Her head jerked up and she stared blankly at the opposite wall, her throat tightening, the blood draining from her face. Shock rendered her temporarily unable to think beyond a single silent, plaintive cry: Mama! Mama, how could you do this to me?
“It is my opinion,” her mother was saying, “that the Honourable Mr. Trout will suit my Lettie well. He is mannerly, staid, solid as a rock and quite capable, I suspect, of reining in a girl of her wild and ungovernable nature. In short, quite suitable even if he is not, shall I say, a man to exactly turn a young lady’s head.”
Homer Trout? The blood rushed back to Letitia’s face. Panic rose within her as her mother continued blithely on:
“In any case the deed is done, and Homer will be ready and waiting at this house party and this problem will finally be solved,” she said with chipper finality. “But enough of me. How are things with you? I understand Colin recently had a paper on colic accepted by the Royal Veterinary College. Such a smart man you married, Ariadne. And how are the horses? The farm? Rumor has it you’re in need of a head groom.”
“Oh, not me, but my brother Tristan. His ran off after Amir bit him one too many times, nearly taking a finger. The man had had enough. It’s too bad, really. Amir is a gorgeous colt, so much like his sire and his full brother but oh, he’s got teeth and he knows how to use them.”
“Is this one of the Norfolk Thoroughbreds that your father, the late earl, spent forty years developing?”
“Yes, and this colt is particularly stunning … I would have kept him here with us, but now that he’s got his life in order following all that nasty business from a few years back, Tristan wanted to raise him up at the family pile just west of here in Burnham Thorpe. It would be nice, though, if he could find someone willing to work with the little devil. You don’t know of anyone, do you?”
Letitia froze, a crazy, half-baked idea taking shape in her suddenly desperate mind.
“Sadly, I do not,” her mother was saying, and Letitia heard the clink of a china cup against a saucer. “But even though my family is one of mariners, we’re connoisseurs of fine bloodstock ourselves. I understand the need for reliable help, especially to oversee the development and care of something as priceless as one of your Norfolk Thoroughbreds.”
Letitia stood up.
She had two choices. On the one hand was Homer Trout, pale and insipid and with a conical brown mole on the side of his nose from which a hair the length of an eyelash sprouted, a hair that was as stiff and short as a bristle and which would make the act of kissing him an exercise in the personal grooming of her own skin. On the other hand was a Norfolk Thoroughbred colt who dined on people’s fingers.
If there was one thing Letitia knew her mother to be, it was determined.
Clever.
And as unswerving in her course as Nelson at Trafalgar.
She had to buy time. To do something, anything, to give her opportunity to decide how to address this newest and most shocking development. She needed to think, and Letitia Ponsonby did so best on the back of a horse.
I have to see this colt. I can slip out for an hour or so and Mama, who takes a nap in the afternoon, will never miss me.
If nothing else, a stiff bracing gallop and time spent admiring some of the finest horseflesh in the world would give her time to figure out how to address the matter of Homer Trout. To even beg off going to this house party, if it came down to it.
Resentment filled her. It wasn’t often that she got to visit with her childhood friends Jane, Winnie and Pru, but the knowledge that Homer Trout would be there changed everything. Now, it seemed like a trap where he waited, complete with mole and bristle. Now it seemed like the end of her freedom. She had to think fast if she wanted to out-think, outsmart, her mother.
There was no time to lose.
She hurried back to her rooms and there found her maid, Beryl, laying out her clothes for the evening meal.
“Beryl, I have decided that I am going riding in order to clear my head before dinner. Please lay out the breeches I wear under my riding habit, and find me a plain shirt and a boy’s waistcoat. A coat, too, as it is cold.”
“M’ lady?” the maid asked, eyes widening.
Letitia smiled and laid a reassuring hand on the maid’s shoulders. “I intend to sneak out for only an hour or two, but I have to do it in disguise. I have no chaperone as you don’t ride, and Mama would never approve of my going out riding alone. It will cause talk. So find me the clothes of a boy.”
“Beggin’ y’r pardon, m’ lady, but Oi think that’s flirtin’ with danger.”
“It is only dangerous if I get caught. I don’t intend to get caught, only to go look at a horse at a nearby farm and come right back. No one will be the wiser. It is all perfectly safe, I can assure you.”
“Ooh, Oi don’t loike the sound of this, Oi don’t.”
“As far as anyone else is concerned, you know nothing about it. Now be a dear, Beryl, and do find me some appropriate clothes.”
Chapter Two
God and the devil below, he hated Christmas.
Hated the damp winter days, one after another lasting from November all the way into late March, maybe even April, each one full of mist and dull gray clouds that hung so low to earth that one forgot that blue sky existed somewhere above. Raw, bone-chilling cold off the North Sea and rising damp in an ancestral home with which he was struggling to keep up the repairs. Winter, of course, with its drearily short days and expectations of being “happy” in the Christmas season, was not, and never would be, his favorite time of year. The cold and damp aside, the reality that all work stopped so that everyone could celebrate the season and be
idle when he had no time to be idle, only served to remind him with relentless persistence that it wasn’t just a season of cold.
It was a season of loneliness and regret.
He was still unmarried. He had given his beautiful sister Ariadne away to her naval captain-turned-veterinarian two years past, and they were enjoying their growing family and the sight of Norfolk Thoroughbreds cavorting through pastures of thick winter mud. They knew cozy fires and the laughter of children and the pleasure of their own company on a cold winter night, and Tristan St. Aubyn, the Earl of Weybourne, was happy for them.
“Why don’t you join us for Christmas this year, Tristan?” Ari had asked, riding over to visit him a fortnight past.
He had pretended to consider, though the joy and happiness of his sister’s family only served to highlight all that he had done wrong, all that he was missing, in his own life. Someone to warm his bed at night, someone with whom to enjoy his life’s passions, someone to laugh with, cry with, dream with, love with. But he had not found anyone who shared his passions, whose eyes lit up when he talked horses and the continuation of his father’s legacy—the Norfolk Thoroughbred, the fastest horses in the world. Most of the herd that his father had spent a lifetime developing had been lost with the exception of a single stallion, Shareb-er-rehh, and the beautiful mare Gazella. Tristan had made it his own life’s work to pick up where his father had left off. That left no time for London Seasons or courting. Besides, most women he’d ever met didn’t want to talk about horses; they wanted to gossip, to discuss clothing, and to pretend to be simpering, swooning, delicate little flowers. Perhaps some were but most, Tristan had long since decided, were not delicate flowers at all, but thorn bushes; tougher than they looked, ruthless, and all too willing to cause harm.
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