Twelve Nights 0f Scandal Read online

  “Have a care for your place, Miss Forsythe.”

  “My place here is not in doubt.” Harper’s eyebrows arched gracefully upward.

  Miller took one step closer. He was so quick that she didn’t understand what was happening until his tongue was slithering around in her mouth. His hand was hard on her chin, holding her in place.

  “Gah!” Harper wrenched away. Across the rickyard, one of the patients pointed, muttering to his companion.

  “You’d make a fine wife for an asylum director if you were more biddable. You’re beddable enough, for a know-it-all shrew.” Miller watched her scrub away the unwanted kiss with the back of her hand, his lips a sneer of bewildered contempt.

  Harper leaned down and picked up a glob of mud and manure in her bare hand. She chucked it at his face, only to miss when he sidestepped the missile.

  She reached for another handful. This time she hit him square in the back as he turned away.

  “You’re hopeless, Harper,” he shot over his shoulder.

  Harper returned directly to Dr. Patton's office, panting a little from the exertion of dashing up the stairs as she burst through the door. Let him mistake her agreement for enthusiasm.

  "I'll do it," she declared. "I'll go."

  The doctor beamed his approval. “I shall write the earl directly.”

  She turned toward the door. The doctor’s voice stopped her.

  “Harper.”

  “Yes?”

  “Have you read the papers?”

  She felt her shoulders droop fractionally. “Not yet.”

  “See that you do. Praemonitus praemunitus.”

  Forewarned is forearmed.

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  Becoming Lady Dalton: London Scandals 2

  Mrs. Viola Cartwright traced a length of roller-printed linen and sighed. The fine fabric slipped beneath her gloved hand as smoothly as silk. If only the dressmaker hadn’t asked her to keep her gloves in place, Viola would have removed one—discreetly—to enjoy the texture of material that had been out of reach until a few months ago. Before then, had she tried touching delicate, expensive cloth, the dressmaker would likely have slapped her hand away instead of gently reminding her not to smudge the wares.

  Absorbed in making her selections, Viola sensed a presence at her back before a whisper-light touch brushed the scant inch of exposed skin between her sleeve and the edge of her thin cotton gloves. Viola jolted.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she breathed, glancing up over her shoulder. The room suddenly grew heated. Viola’s corset laces mysteriously tightened, threatening to constrict the breath right out of her.

  Lord Dalton had that effect on her. Likely, he had this effect on many women. Viola greedily wished she could keep this man’s blood-stirring regard all for herself. She supposed half the women in London felt the same way. Late last summer, she’d arrived on her grandmother’s doorstep with little more than the clothes on her back, and her eight-year-old-son and lovelorn younger sister in tow. Within a few short weeks, Harper had married Edward Northcote, the heir to the earl of Briarcliff, to the surprise of just about everyone. The couple’s first wedding had been an overwrought fiasco, followed promptly by a fire that had burned the Briarcliff town residence to its foundation. It was whispered that Richard, Edward’s younger brother, had caused the fire in which the previous earl had collapsed and died, leaving Edward the new earl.

  Harper and Edward remained in the country, adapting to their new lives. But Viola had decided to return to London for most of December. After spending fifteen years on a farm near Upper Cotwold, a hamlet in the north of England, she’d taken to city life with an enthusiasm her sister and new brother-in-law lacked.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” Dalton murmured, his hand hovering near hers. It had been months since their last meeting. What was he doing here, in a dressmaker’s shop?

  The answer stood behind him, a tiny girl in a blue wool dress. A heap of outerwear overflowed the child’s arms as she struggled to contain a velvet cloak and wool cap. She must be Dalton’s daughter, four-year-old Emily.

  “Here, Papa.”

  She dumped the pile at her father. Dalton accepted the bundle of damp fabric. Emily scampered off, led by a seamstress, to look at pictures of children’s clothes.

  “She’s grown a full two inches since her birthday. Nothing fits her anymore,” Dalton complained with affectionate pride.

  “I know the feeling. Matthew’s outgrown two pairs of shoes since last summer.” Never mind that the first pair had been woefully too tight to begin with. Five months ago, Viola had lost her home in Upper Cotwarren in the northern parts of England. Too-tight shoes had not been her primary concern. Penniless and homeless, Viola and Matthew had been forced to travel to London with her sister, Harper, to find their long-lost grandmother, Baroness Landor. The whirlwind of her sister’s marriage to the Earl of Briarcliff’s heir still made Viola’s head spin when she tried to think of all the changes her family had weathered in such a short time.

  “Has he now?” A slow grin spread across Dalton’s sensual lips. Oh, the man was handsome. Her heart fluttered at the thought that she, lowly Viola Cartwright, nee Forsythe, appealed to a young buck like Dalton. The four-year age gap between them was not in her favor, either.

  “Yes. He’s off to school in January.” Which would leave her all alone. Viola brushed away the thought like a cobweb. “I’m here to order his school wardrobe.”

  “Eton?” Dalton asked idly as he shifted the bundle of his daughter’s clothing from one arm to the other. A second seamstress appeared to relieve him of the burden. Viola mused that the shop was well-staffed—a luxury she had never experienced before a few months ago. It was all for the best the dressmaker wanted her to leave her gloves on. Viola’s chapped and scarred hands were as unfit for fine company as they were for fine fabric.

  “Bainbridge,” Viola replied. It was the nearest competitor to Eton. Only her new brother-in-law’s notoriety had secured Matthew a place. Her sister’s newfound status as a countess had brought with it unimaginable advantages. Viola was determined to enjoy every single one.

  Dalton’s dark gaze, like brown sugar caramelized over a flame, cut to her with an intensity that made Viola’s blood pound. If she could bottle that look and sell it, she’d be a rich woman in her own right, instead of a poor dependent. Sadly, however, Dalton was one luxury Viola could not afford for herself.

  There was nothing to prevent her from looking, though. With his dark locks curling about his ears and temple, and the severity of his cheekbones offset by the hint of a sardonic smile perpetually playing at the corners of his sensual mouth, she often caught herself staring at Dalton. Indeed, that had been how they’d initially met last fall. Her forward ogling had led to his impertinent introduction, and now…what?

  She was staring again. Dalton let her, with humor playing over his lips as his gaze met hers and slid away. Embarrassed heat flooded through Viola.

  “A worthy institution,” was all he said, meaning the school. “I’d best see to Emily.”

  “She looks enthralled.” Viola glanced across the room to where the seamstress had given her a doll with miniature clothing to dress. A wistful sadness ghosted through her. “My firstborn was a girl. She would have been twelve now.”

  Had she lived.

  Immediately, Viola froze in place. She never spoke of the child she’d borne at seventeen, who had died before her first birthday. It was a confession Viola could make without thinking only to Dalton, and precisely what made him so dangerous to her peace of mind. With his priest-like austerity and wicked, teasing gaze, the man tempted Viola to speak openly when she ought to mind her tongue.

  “Do you ever think of her as if she’d lived?” Dalton asked.

  “Of course. Don’t you think of them?” Viola asked softly as her embarrassment subsided slowly. She wished the man didn’t have this loosening effect on her lips. Her trust was hard-won. Though Dalton had proved himself wort
hy of her confidence last fall, she didn’t know him well enough to blurt out personal details about her life as she’d just done. Her cheeks flamed. She ought to conclude her business and flee into the cold December air of London’s streets before she embarrassed herself any further.

  But he’d lost his entire family as a boy. Then his first wife, Emily’s mother, had died before their daughter was a year old. Dalton knew loss. Worse, most of London regarded Dalton with a degree of superstition, because nearly everyone he loved died. No one wanted to be next.

  “Never,” Dalton replied evenly, unfazed by her breach of etiquette in the midst of a bustling shop. Perhaps the man enjoyed her company because Viola had never developed the habit of dancing around delicate matters, Viola mused. Dalton appeared to find her company refreshing.

  “I think of them as frozen in time. Forever six, eight, eleven, and seventeen. My parents never age. My late wife, however…” He trailed off as he contemplated his daughter. “It’s not quite the same. I can imagine moments when she’s alive beside me, because Emily is very like her.”

  Viola’s heart wrung like a dripping rag.

  “Emily is a lovely little girl. Very spirited and winning,” Viola offered hastily, glancing at the little girl who was charming the seamstress into giving her a tea cake. “I’ll bet she’s enjoying the day out with you. Does she ordinarily come here with her governess?”

  “Of course. But Miss Templeton is feeling unwell, so today I took a personal interest.”

  Dalton turned to her with a penetrating look. Viola felt his gaze rake up and down her body, admiring, just as she had done to him a moment before. The urge to flee, which always came hard on the heels of a private conversation with Dalton, no matter how innocuous, raced through her veins.

  Piers Ranleigh, sixth Viscount Dalton, was one luxury she could never afford to indulge.

  Despite this, he tempted her above all other delights. Viola would forego silk and satin by the bolt, fine linen sheets, dancing to exquisite music, evenings at the opera, even the pleasure of raiding her grandmother’s extensive book collection.

  She caught herself. Maybe not the library. One must have some standards, after all. Especially as regarded the male sex. Having naïve expectations was how she’d become Mrs. Cartwright, after all.

  “Are you, by chance, attending the Townsend ball tomorrow evening?” Dalton asked, pulling Viola out of her reverie.

  “I may. I may not.” Viola flashed a smile. She needn’t avoid all flirtatious interaction with the man, only the kind that tempted her to kisses…and more. “It depends upon whether my gowns can be made ready in time. Which is my second purpose in coming here today.”

  As if she’d conjured her, the dressmaker appeared to beckon her into the back room.

  Dalton gave her a devastating half-grin. A dimple flashed in the smooth expanse of his cheek below the sharp cheekbone and above the strong line of his jaw. Viola blinked at the ephemeral appearance of the divot. If she’d seen him smile fully before, it had been too brief and shallow for the whimsical mark to make an appearance.

  “Then, I may or may not see you there,” he responded with a slight bow. “But if I should be so fortunate…”

  He paused.

  “Yes, my lord?” she prompted.

  “Wear the crimson velvet.”

  Dalton turned on his heel and moved to attend to his daughter.

  Viola gaped after him, her mind awhirl with longing. Not for you, she reminded herself, grateful to return her attention to more accessible pleasures.

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  The Lost Lord: London Scandals Book 3

  Miriam glanced quickly up the beach for the hundredth time in as many minutes. Perched on a rickety chair in the sand beneath a sort of tent rigged from a length of striped linen and scavenged pieces of driftwood, she let the wind flap the pages of her book like a bird’s wings. Every few minutes, Mrs. Kent leapt up to secure a flap that had been tugged loose by the breeze. Miriam hoped the effect was charming, for she expected the entire contraption to collapse and suffocate her at any moment.

  She dug her toes into the sand as though she could bury her impatience. It had been an hour since they had arrived for sea bathing. In another hour their little party would depart for a lavish midday meal taken in the shaded glen a short drive from their boarding house. There was no sign of Lizzie.

  There was no sign of Lord Northcote, either.

  Miriam saw in her mind’s eye the way his dark hair ruffled in the breeze. She imagined the soft texture were she to run her fingers through the length of it and swallowed. His cheekbones were as sharp as oyster shells that cut her feet on the rocky beach. Behind his lashes the man’s eyes were pools of dark promise, as rich and as tempting as chocolate.

  Lord Northcote had an air of mystery about him. What was he doing in New York? Was he truly exiled, as Lizzie had claimed?

  Why did she care?

  She didn’t, Miriam decided. There was no denying her fascination, but she hardly knew anything about the man other than his name and that he was what Mrs. Kent would call as handsome as the devil. Mrs. Kent held a puritanical view of pleasure. Even innocent pleasures led inevitably to hell. Miriam felt that pleasure was there to make life interesting, and that she did not partake in enough of it.

  Miriam felt as though she had spent her whole life waiting for something to happen. As a child she had yearned to play with other children. She had desperately wanted to climb trees, run through the grass, and tumble like a weed through long afternoons of no responsibility. Instead, her fickle lungs demanded she remain indoors much of the time. To amuse herself, Miriam had read the classics in Latin and French when she tired of reading them in English. When possible, she had followed at her father’s side when he went to visit the lumber mills that were the source of her family’s considerable fortune. She had learned the language of business at his knee, when other children were climbing trees, playing hide-and-seek, or jackstraws.

  Then, she had been sent to school. Miriam had hated girls’ boarding school. Upon her return home that summer, she’d quarreled with her father, Livingston, for the first time. The episode had provoked an asthma attack so potent that Miriam had nearly died. An unorthodox physician had pumped her body full of caffeine and belladonna extract and saved her life.

  Livingston Walsh, terrified of the prospect of losing his daughter, relented and allowed her to skip the next two years of schooling. Mrs. Kent had arrived, and Miriam had a degree of freedom to pursue whatever interested her intellectually. What she’d lost in privacy with an attendant, she had gained in physical mobility. With Mrs. Kent at her side, Miriam’s father had felt more comfortable allowing her to explore the world.

  School proved to be unexpectedly fun the second time around. Mrs. Kent was stationed at the school, on call but not shadowing her. In the sterile, spacious girls’ dormitory, then-sixteen-year-old Lizzie had been a beacon of fun, irreverence, and trouble. She was well-liked. Miriam felt so grateful to Lizzie’s inclusion of her in her antics that it had given Miriam only a moment’s pause whenever matters veered out of control.

  Shortly after their third year, Lizzie had come out. Within weeks, she married the besotted middle son of the wealthy Van Buren family, shocking everyone. Yet only months after their hasty, lavish wedding, Lizzie had privately split with her husband. Since then, Lizzie had danced at the edges of good society, neither good enough to be fully accepted nor badly behaved enough to warrant full condemnation—until she’d taken up with the handsome foreigner named Northcote.

  Miriam scanned the beach again. There were no handsome men traversing the sand. His lordship wasn’t coming. Now that she’d met him, Miriam understood the risk Lizzie had taken. Arthur was nice. But Richard was compelling.

  “Mrs. Kent, I fancy a turn sea bathing,” she said.

  Her companion jerked her chin up from the book she was reading, a book of psalms, which while fine in their place seemed altogether too serious for
the beach. “Are you certain that you are strong enough to resist the tide?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Kent. I am certain.” Miriam rose and shook sand from her skirts. In their little cove, it ought to be perfectly safe. She removed her scarf and hat and set them aside.

  “Do at least wear your bonnet,” her keeper admonished.

  Miriam sighed. Dutifully, she returned the broad-brimmed straw hat to her head. A hot, ungracious thought seared through her. Why couldn’t she be more like Lizzie, thumbing her nose at the most basic conventions? Miriam sighed.

  Why couldn’t Lizzie be more like her, obedient to even the most inconsequential rules? With their traits better split between them, they could have both been perfect women, instead of two utter failures of proper womanhood.

  The tide sucked at her skirts. Miriam rejoiced in the ocean spray dampening her cheeks and lashes. Cool drops revitalized her spirit. Lizzie and other friends were splashing in the cool water, meeting each wave as it crested and broke at their knees. One of the lads was flirted with Lizzie. He picked her up and tossed her into deeper water. Lizzie came up sputtering.

  “Miri! The water is almost bearable, don’t you think?” she giggled. Lizzie’s teeth were chattering.

  “By Atlantic standards, perhaps,” Miri laughed. Her skirts were wet and heavy around her legs. As refreshing as the saltwater was, she knew she would not be sea bathing for more than a few minutes longer. “Where is your foreign friend?”

  Lizzie’s expression shaded. “We have had a falling out. I don’t know that he’ll come today.”

  She reached behind her and splashed the lad who had sent her into the wave. “Cheeky brat!” he yelled, slapping water back at her. Miriam stepped out of the way. A child, no more than eight, paddled by. Recognizing him, Miriam caught his ankle. He flipped onto his back and kicked free, knocking her into the water.

  Miriam laughed when she surfaced, shaking water out of her face. The hat was gone, floating a few feet away. The boy retrieved it and tossed the soggy thing to a friend, who caught it and pretended to use it as a bucket.