How Not to Chaperon a Lady--A sexy, funny Regency romance

by Virginia Heath

  * * *

  In times of crisis, the Brookes family rallied united against the world, and the instant she had stepped through her parents’ front door the call had gone out irrespective of the late hour. Now, several hours later and feeling empty, bereft and devastated that Griff had made absolutely no effort to make any amends, Charity was surrounded by all of them. All trying to make her feel better and fix her unfixable broken heart.

  ‘You married an I-M-B-E-C-I-L-E.’ Her mother clasped her to her bosom and stroked her hair as the clock in the hallway struck four. ‘And you are well shot of him. How dare he accuse you of such nonsense!’

  ‘I’ve a good mind to go punch the blighter on the nose again!’ Her father was pacing, smacking his fist in his palm like a prize fighter about to go into the ring. ‘No man makes one of my daughters cry and escapes the consequences!’

  ‘Why are men so stupid?’ Hands on her hips, Faith railed at Piers.

  ‘Because they are all blithering idiots who think they know everything, that’s why!’ Hope jabbed an angry finger at Luke. ‘Irrespective of what their eyes, ears and basic common sense tell them to the contrary!’

  ‘Can I remind you that in this instance, Piers and I haven’t actually done anything wrong?’ As Luke defended himself, the unmistakable sounds of a curricle rattled along the cobbles outside the window and they all froze.

  ‘Charity!’ Griff’s voice echoed in the silence. He hammered on the door and her father stalked towards it. ‘I am going to kill him!’ Like lightning, Piers and Luke followed ready to either assist or hold him back.

  ‘I need to urgently speak to my wife.’

  ‘She doesn’t want to speak to you. You made her cry! You broke my poor daughter’s heart!’

  ‘I know. I’ve come to explain and to beg for her forgiveness and I will raise merry hell if anyone tries to stop me.’

  Before a scuffle broke out between all the menfolk, Charity called out, ‘I will hear him out, Papa, and then he can go.’ It seemed only right to end their sham of a marriage face to face.

  With her sisters and her mother standing guard behind her back, and her brothers-in-law and her father standing behind him ready to evict him at a moment’s notice, Griff walked warily into the room looking every bit as wretched as she felt. ‘I would prefer to do this in private.’ He swallowed painfully when she refused to budge from the chair she was sat in then shrugged resigned. ‘I think it goes without saying that I behaved like a blithering idiot tonight and that my overreaction was as indefensible as it was uncalled for but...’

  He raked an agitated hand through his dark hair and swallowed hard again. ‘Sometimes, things need to explode to be able to accept how badly wrong they are and how shoddily they were put together in the first place.’ Was that an admission that he too felt they needed to call time on their relationship? ‘I’ve been labouring for weeks over the fact that our basic premise is all wrong. We’ve cobbled together a marriage on little more than a wing and a prayer and so many missing essential components, but I thought I could fix it regardless if I worked out how to slot in everything that was missing. I was wrong. I would have come here sooner to tell you that, but I decided to give the puzzle one last go and stripped it back to the place it first went wrong in the hope I could rebuild it from there and it turned out I had to go back quite a way.’

  He took a cautious step forward and tried to smile. ‘Seventeen years in fact to that fateful first day when you burst into my life and I fell head over heels in love with you.’ Behind her, Faith sighed as Hope squeezed her shoulder. ‘I’ve been battling against that reality ever since.’ Griff grimaced at her father. ‘I tried to fight it, because our parents kept saying we were brother and sister, but while I had no problem accepting Faith and Hope as such, I never felt that for you. Not once. Then as adulthood dawned and lust reared its head...’ He winced at her mother looking so delightfully mortified she almost caved.

  ‘Well let’s just say I didn’t handle that well at all and all my frustrations leaked out as anger and I tried to avoid you.’ He noticed the slight tremor in his hands and instantly clasped them behind his back. ‘I even went to Sheffield for four years to try to get over you but none of it worked, and when I came back, all these feelings I have for you...’ He touched his heart and hers melted. ‘They all got worse and so did my behaviour. I wish I’d told you how I felt before I left and then repeated it every day in all the years since and then perhaps I wouldn’t have made the huge hash of things that I have. But instead, I buried it as I always do and hoped it might go away, drove myself mad with jealousy over blasted Denby until I could barely see straight let alone think straight and then kept lashing out at you like a wounded animal because you preferred him to me.’

  ‘Griff...about that...’ Before she could correct him he held up his palm.

  ‘Let me finish, because I cannot fix this unless I am entirely honest with you and it’s long past time that I was after tonight’s spectacular display of complete stupidity. I just cannot keep bottling it up inside. All to no avail because I lacked the willpower to avoid you, no matter how hard I tried. I forced my way on to your trip north knowing full well I wanted you. I’ve watched you in Figaro forty-two times since January just so that I could gaze upon your face.’

  ‘I told you I saw him!’ Luke’s outburst earned him a curt shush from his wife.

  ‘And every single time you sing that final aria I am hopelessly undone. Every time you smile at me, my heart swells. Every touch makes it stutter. I married you because I always wanted to, not because I had to. I want you to know that solemn truth too. And after a long, hard evaluation of all my pent-up, irrational hatred of that dandied fop and his blasted emerald, I have come to the conclusion that I couldn’t care less how many men you’ve kissed in the past, as long as you still deign to kiss me in the future.’

  Then he took her hand and stared deeply into her eyes and she saw every one of his feelings as clear as crystal. All the remorse. All the anguish. All the adoration. All the love she had always yearned for.

  ‘Charity Grace Brookes, I realise I am unworthy and that you could doubtless do better. I realise I am a mere mister and will never be a duke, and I appreciate that I have been an unadulterated, unbearable and insufferable gruff fun spoiler for seventeen long years and that at best you find me tolerable. But it turns out that I cannot live without you for even one second, so I was wondering if you would take pity on me and give me just one more chance to make our marriage work and in return I solemnly swear that I will love you like nobody else ever could for all eternity and that I will never stop trying to make you fall in love with me back.’

  She shook her head, overwhelmed. ‘I am afraid you are too late, Griffith Philpot...’ She couldn’t resist making him suffer a little bit more. Then she took pity on him. ‘For I am already there. You stole my heart and took my breath away at the tender age of six and you never gave either back.’

  He laughed in relief as he hauled her into his arms as the unfixable was fixed for ever in the space of a single heartbeat. Then they kissed, with such unfettered and joyful abandon, that all the unseemly, complicated, forbidden and wonderful emotions they had both spent seventeen long years trying to hide from one another were finally laid unashamedly bare for everyone else in that crowded room to see.

  * * *

  In a strange turn of events, Gentle Reader, and for reasons best known to themselves, the fêted soprano Mrs Charity Philpot, née Brookes, married her husband of only one month, Mr Griffith Philpot, for the second time again yesterday in Bloomsbury just hours after she performed in The Marriage of Figaro for the last time.

  In another break with convention, the bride wore a daring gown of bold scarlet silk, which she had apparently borrowed from her eldest sister, the like of which had never been seen beneath the hallowed spire of St George’s before.

  Also wearing red, her siste
rs, the Viscountess of Eastwood and the Marchioness of Thundersley, and her recently married best friend Mrs Sinclair acted as her bridesmaids.

  Once the vows were said, Mrs Roberta Brookes delighted the congregation with a romantic medley of operatic arias while a dozen white doves flew above the congregation.

  After the service two hundred people attended the lavish wedding celebrations where, I am told, the now twice-married Mr and Mrs Philpot waltzed together exclusively until midnight, when they left in his curricle.

  I have it on the highest authority that the besotted young newlyweds are to honeymoon for the next month in the unlikely destination of Sheffield, while Mr Philpot rectifies a persistent problem with an exploding steam engine.

  And if that wasn’t enough gossip from our favourite regular scandals in Bloomsbury, it appears the boisterous celebrations continued well into the night, culminating in the ton’s favourite portraitist, Mr Augustus Brookes, being charged with a breach of the peace for causing a ruckus in his nightshirt in the middle of Bedford Place.

  Once his sons-in-law, the Viscount E. and the Marquess of T., had wrestled him into a pair of breeches, Mr B. was presented with a bill for eight pounds, four shillings and twopence, after all attempts to find the twelve turtle doves he had drunkenly pardoned and then freed from their crates failed.

  Should anyone in the vicinity of Bloomsbury, or the streets thereabouts, happen to spot one of the missing birds, their furious owner has offered a significant reward for their safe return as he needs them all for another lavish society wedding tomorrow...

  Whispers from Behind the Fan

  —September 1815

  * * *

  If you enjoyed this story, be sure to read

  the first two books in Virginia Heath’s

  The Talk of the Beau Monde miniseries

  The Viscount’s Unconventional Lady

  The Marquess Next Door

  And why not check out her other great reads

  Lillian and the Irresistible Duke

  Redeeming the Reclusive Earl

  The Scoundrel’s Bartered Bride

  “Invitation to the Duke’s Ball” in

  Christmas Cinderellas

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Lord Grantwell’s Christmas Wish by Diane Gaston.

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  Lord Grantwell’s Christmas Wish

  by Diane Gaston

  Chapter One

  Yorkshire, December 1817

  ‘Barren winter, with his wrathful, nipping cold...’

  Where the devil had that dreary quotation come from?

  John Grantwell, ‘Grant’ to his friends, laughed aloud.

  He turned away from the window after looking out on the snowfall quickly covering the walkways and gardens of the country house in which he’d grown up. He scanned the shelves of books for an answer.

  Shakespeare. Yes!

  But what was a captain in the East Essex Regiment doing quoting Shakespeare?

  Grant rubbed his face.

  He was Viscount Grantwell now, no matter how much he wished he could go back to his army years. He’d been Viscount for more than a year and a half, but he still thought of this room as his father’s library and his brother George as the tormenter of his youth. Could he be more doltish? His father had died eight years ago and that meant his brother had spent eight years being Viscount Grantwell.

  His poor brother. Killed in a carriage accident, his wife with him, almost two years ago.

  Barren winter, indeed.

  Grant shook off those less than cheerful thoughts and turned to the desk strewn with papers and ledgers.

  Better get on with it.

  He opened a ledger and ran his finger down the page of figures.

  The hidden servants’ door opened a crack—almost every room in the great house had such a door, thanks to his grandfather’s abhorrence of even setting eyes on servants. In the crack Grant spied the faces of two children.

  His newest responsibilities, an eight-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl. What the deuce were they doing in the servants’ passageway?

  ‘You there!’ He rose and took a step towards the door.

  ‘Run!’ the boy cried.

  The door slammed and Grant could hear the pounding of small feet making their escape. By the time he reached the door they’d disappeared. Where was the poor maid into whose care he’d thrust them? Had she lost control of them again?

  Grant stared at the expanse of wall that was really the hidden door.

  As a boy, escaping from his governess or hiding from his brother, he’d learned every twist and turn of the labyrinth that led to all the rooms. The servants now used the main passages. These unruly scamps had discovered the servants’ passageways quickly enough, though.

  The children had arrived a week ago—without notice. Before then Grant had not known of their existence. They were the issue from his brother’s wife’s previous marriage. Another piece of information of which he’d not been informed. Apparently the marriage acquired some scandal attached to it, because the children had been pretty much hidden away at their grandfather’s house until he’d died. They’d never lived here with his brother, and none of the servants had ever heard of them.

  The executors of their grandfather’s estate, in their extraordinary wisdom, decided the best guardian of the children would be Grant, a single man, a former soldier, a new viscount just coming to terms with the complexities of vast estates and responsibilities. Two neglected, unloved, undisciplined children had been sent to a man who hadn’t a clue what to do with them.

  Was there a Shakespeare quote for that?

  He’d inherited an estate riddled with debt, followed by two dismal growing seasons due to this damnable cold weather and the post-war economic hardship, but he’d turned matters around—with help. Although financial solvency and a title apparently made him prime prey for every ingenue in the marriage mart.

  He must marry eventually, of course, but these marriage-mad mamas thrusting their daughters in his path had just driven him away from a Christmas house party. Or had it been the vivid memories of battle, triggered by the firing of guns in the daily partridge and pheasant hunting?

  He’d not lasted a week.

  Grant walked back to his desk and closed the ledger. Surely, though, there was something in the pile of papers he’d forgotten to do or had never known to do.

  Thompson, who’d been his family’s butler since he was a boy, entered the room. ‘Beg pardon, m’lord.’

  ‘What is it, Thompson?’ Grant’s tone turned sarcastic. ‘Has the roof collapsed? Did the children break a priceless vase? Has Cook mutinied?’

  Thompson seemed to take him seriously. ‘Nothing like that, m’lord.’ He sounded incredulous. ‘An applicant for the position of governess has arrived.’

  ‘For governess? Already?’

  Incredulous, indeed.

  Grant had advertised for a governess. Given that the children were apparently running free through the servants’ passages, a governess was much needed. But he’d only sent the notice to an agency one week ago. The agency had hardly enough time even to receive his letter. An applicant in person? In a snowstorm?

  ‘Indeed, sir,’ Thompson responded. ‘On our doorstep. She waits in the hall.’

  Grant clapped his hands and stood. ‘Well, Thompson! Things are looking up! At least one of my prayers is answered—that is if she does not have two heads or reek of gin or something.’

  Thompson shook his head. ‘None of those things, m’lord.’

  The tables of fate were turning. A governess would be a godsend.
<
br />   Grant gestured grandly. ‘Send her in, Thompson!’

  Grant stacked the papers neatly on the desk. Good thing he’d shaved himself that morning. Since giving his valet and most of the servants extra time off for Christmas—that detestable house party was to have lasted until Twelfth Night—he’d been tempted to revert to his days of marching through Spain, when a bearded face had not much mattered.

  Thompson reappeared at the door. ‘Miss Pearson, m’lord.’

  With a ready smile, Grant looked up as the governess walked in and Thompson exited the room.

  The blood drained from Grant’s face.

  ‘Hello, Grant.’

  Standing before him was a woman he’d wished never to see again—the one woman with whom he’d shared an irresistible passion...the woman who’d betrayed him so thoroughly.

  God save him, she was as beautiful as ever. Hair dark as night. Eyes like warm chocolate. Nose regal. Lips naturally pursed, as if always ready for a kiss. But she was unusually pale and thin. Her clothes hung on her and he could smell their dampness from the melted snow.

  He knew her as Lillian Carris. He’d first seen her feeding the hungry refugees who’d poured into Lisbon over the winter of 1810 when, as a green lieutenant, he’d first arrived in Portugal with his regiment. Later he’d made her acquaintance when attending entertainments with the Portuguese aristocrats who’d remained in Portugal after Prince John and others of the royal family fled to Brazil. She was widowed, she’d told him, and their affair had been as torrid as that winter had been cold.

  Until she’d stolen from him and almost succeeded in committing treason on his country and hers.