A Scandalous Countess: A Novel of the Malloren World (46 page)

Could they?

What would be the interest income on twelve thousand? No more than a thousand without taking foolish risks, and probably no more than six hundred. They’d need at least a third of that to rent a decent house.

Madness. She’d need servants and a carriage, and then there was her love of fine clothes. He’d read that one grand gown for the queen’s birthday celebrations had cost three thousand pounds. They’d end up spending the principal, and that was a sure road to ruin.

In any case, he didn’t want to live in London year-round. The parks, pleasant though they were, couldn’t compare to true countryside, and no labor here could be as rewarding as bringing Dracy back to prosperity. In time that income could at least match the investments, but it would be a long time unless he used much of her dowry on the estate and stud.

Georgia Maybury wasn’t for him, and if not for the business of Fancy Free and Cartagena, he’d never have dreamt of reaching so high.

He’d reached. He’d touched. But she might as well be the moon.

He turned wearily toward the nearest coffeehouse,
but halfway there, he changed direction to return to Hernescroft House. Dolt that he was for letting his lust and miseries blind him to important matters.

He still hadn’t shared his thoughts about Sellerby. They’d seemed outrageous, but after the man’s behavior last night, perhaps less so, and the incident last night could have pushed him to new menace. He’d been publically rejected by Georgia and then manhandled in front of his precious beau monde. He’d left the masquerade immediately after the incident, but he would be today’s breakfast snigger. It served him right, especially if he was the one behind that letter, but he was the sort of weasel to need to bite back.

When he entered the house and inquired, he was told that Lady Maybury was in the drawing room. The world seemed brighter as he went quickly up the stairs. He went in and paused to smile at the vision she presented.

She was sitting by an open window in yesterday’s plain gown, her hair, a mass of copper and bronze in the sunlight, forming a halo around her glowing loveliness.

But then he realized she was staring into nowhere like a dead person.

Chapter 28

“G
eorgia?”

She blinked and looked at him wildly, her hand moving to cover some paper in her lap.

Some proof of her guilt?

Sick, he went forward. “What is it?”

“Nothing!” She’d have crumpled the paper, but he snatched it from her.

“Don’t!” she cried, but then thrust a knuckle between her teeth.

He smoothed it out.

Not an incriminating letter, but a cartoon, the sort of satirical drawing seen everywhere. But this one…

He shoved it in his pocket and pulled her into his arms. “Forget it.”

“How?” she wailed, and burst into tears.

He held her, rocking her. Then he carried her to the settee, where he could hold her in his lap as she wept her misery.

The clearly etched picture had shown a filly, labeled “Lady M**b**y,” tail high in invitation, with Maybury and Vance, swords in hands, arguing over the finer points of her legs, breast, and rump. In a bubble from her horse’s mouth came, “Cease your squabbling, gentlemen. I need one of you to mount me for a rollicking ride.”

In one corner another picture showed a man lying dead, a sword still in his chest, while nearby, a couple embraced.

The paper wasn’t new, so it probably dated from the time of the duel. Hundreds must have been printed, perhaps thousands, and she would have realized that.

Her family must have kept such things from her. It had been intended as a kindness, but ignorance makes a person vulnerable, and in this case it had led her to underestimate her scandalous reputation. He too had had no idea it went so far. A wonder she’d been accepted as much as she had. Testimony, he supposed, to her family’s power and influence, and to her own true nature. But perhaps this explained her parents’ puzzling drive toward her marrying him.

They’d not believed she could fully recover from the disaster and sought a husband who would take her away from London and the cruel beau monde. They probably had investigated his character and found him adequate, but above all they’d wanted no more scandal in the family.

They’d thought to trap her at Thretford House and settle matters there, but Georgia had plotted her escape. So, then, the spurious betrothal, intended to pave the way to a real one. Had the placement of their bedchambers so close been part of the plan?

He damned the Hernescrofts even though their plotting might take him where he longed to be.

Not like this, however. Not like this, with Georgia brokenhearted in his arms.

Who had sent this poison? No attempt here to increase the scandal—only to hurt.

Sellerby, taking revenge for last night?

Miss Cardross, venting her spite?

Some other viper, simply outraged that the scandalous Lady May had dared to appear so carefree, had been chosen to stand high above all in switching on that damned dove?

When would it stop?

Her sobs eased and she dragged out a handkerchief to blow her nose.

“I’m sorry. So silly…”

“Not silly at all. That disgusting drawing must have been a shock.”

She could only nod.

He pushed back hair that had fallen near her eyes. “I’m sorry you had to see it, but it’s always best to know your enemy.”

“But I don’t want to
have
any enemies!”

He cradled her face and put a soft, soothing kiss on her unsteady lips. “Be brave, Georgia.…”

Someone cleared a throat.

Georgia pushed off Dracy’s lap. Dracy swiveled to face danger. But saw only a slender man in a plain but elegant blue suit.

Dionysus.

“Perry!” Georgia said, running to him. “Do shut the door.” She did it herself. “That wasn’t…Well, it was. But I just received a horrible shock!”

“What shock?” the Honorable Peregrine Perriam asked, but his manner raised Dracy’s hackles. He realized he might be facing an enemy to all he wanted.

“Oh, I don’t want to talk about it,” Georgia said quickly. “Come and sit. Do you know Lord Dracy?”

Perriam bowed with the expertise of a dancing master, and Dracy felt obliged to return it as best he could. He passed the crumpled cartoon to Perriam.

Georgia turned and went to the window.

“He’ll have seen it already,” Dracy said to her back.

Perriam put it in his pocket. “Yes. I’m sorry, Georgie. How did it reach you?”

She turned, superficially composed. “Enclosed in a letter. I mean, there was no letter, but it formed a packet for it.”

Perriam went to pick up the paper from the floor and inspected
it. “Blank seal, and from H. True. Clearly a false name.”

Dracy ached to take Georgia back into his arms. She looked so vulnerable standing there alone, and Perriam had already seen them embracing, but he suspected that she didn’t want any more coals on that fire.

“Eloisa Cardross?” he said to her. “Or even someone who envied your costume at the masquerade.”

“Nerissa Trelyn was spiteful.”

“There you are.”

“But it could have been anyone!” she exclaimed. “And that’s the problem. It seems I have a host of enemies, and I can never know what she, he, or anyone will do next. I didn’t know it was as foul as that. Why did no one tell me?”

He put his arm around her. “You’ve been protected too well, but perhaps it served. If you’d known, could you have returned to the beau monde so bravely, chin high?”

She looked up at him, tears still on her lashes. “No, but now I know.…” She leaned her head against him. “I don’t know how I can go on.”

“Courage, Georgie. You’re a Perriam,” her brother said.

Dracy could have throttled him, but it did seem to brace her.

“This is new to you,” Perriam went on, “but old news to Town. It changes nothing unless you permit it.”

He was making no objection to the embrace, but Dracy still felt the chill. He was Georgia’s favorite brother and she put great store in his advice.

“Now we’ve dealt with that,” Perriam said, as if all anguish was past, “order tea, Sis, and we’ll discuss your situation in depth.”

Georgia moved out of Dracy’s arms to ring the bell. Had that been the intent? She had some of her courage back, however, so perhaps her brother knew how to handle her.

“
In depth?” she asked.

“In depth,” Perriam said. “It seems a great deal has been happening in my absence.”

“I didn’t ask you to go north at such a time!”

“No, but a friend did, a duty that supercedes care for a sister. Or so it seemed at the time.”

A footman came in and was sent to bring the tea.

“I anticipated no great problems in my absence,” Perriam said. “My apologies.”

“Nor did I,” she said, sitting wearily on the settee. “Or, nothing like the ones I’ve faced.”

Dracy wanted to sit beside her but took a chair.

It seemed unfair when Perriam sat beside her and even took her hand. “Tell me what’s been happening.”

“Father wouldn’t permit me to come directly to Town, so I visited Winnie in Hammersmith. She held a ball for me, though it turned into a political affair. I intended to dress demurely in order to obliterate any scandalous notions, but in the end I couldn’t. It wouldn’t have been me,” she said. “You understand that, don’t you?”

He smiled. “Perfectly. What did you wear?”

“The peacock.”

“Perfect.”

“Truly? I’ve thought since, that if I’d…”

“No. When the beasts are circling, never show fear.”

Dracy agreed but said, “That’s a trifle harsh, Perriam.”

Perriam looked at him, but whatever he might have said was silenced by the entrance of servants with a tea tray and plates of thin biscuits.

When they’d left, Georgia busied herself with the making of the tea, and perhaps a purpose helped her.

“Were you at my sister’s ball, Dracy?” Perriam asked.

“I was.”

“And your assessment?”

“People were intensely curious. Some wanted to believe the scandal and some didn’t. Some, of course, being jaded, hoped for trouble to provide amusement.”

“
Such behavior is as common in a village as in Town,” Perriam said, “and as common in the navy as in the coffeehouses, I’ll be bound.”

Unwillingly, Dracy said, “A point, sir, I grant you.” Peregrine Perriam seemed a Town idler, but he might have as many complex depths as his sister.

He accepted tea from Georgia, and Perriam did the same, choosing a biscuit with irritating precision. The man looked up. “My sister’s ball?” he reminded.

“Ah yes. Matters turned awry. People murmured about a letter, but I lack the charts for these waters and I couldn’t track the problem. You’d tell it better, Georgia.”

She sipped her tea. “It was the dowager’s letter, Perry. The one she claimed to have but never showed anyone, and which didn’t turn up after her death. We assumed she’d invented it to add fuel to her spiteful fire, but…At Winnie’s ball, the rumor started that someone actually had it, and would show it to trusted people before publishing it for all to see.”

“Who?” Perriam asked.

“We tracked it down to Eloisa Cardross, and she admitted it.”

“Eloisa Cardross? Why would that ninny do such a thing?”

“Because she’s a ninny,” Georgia said. “But also out of jealousy. You know she and Millicent were considered great beauties in Gloucestershire. When her family compelled her to move to Herne to play companion to Millicent during her time, she was confronted with me. It was all pettiness until the dinner after the horse race. Beaufort was there, and Richmond. They, Sellerby, and a number of other gentlemen made much of me. Only because it was my first appearance, of course, but she took it amiss.”