Ripe for Scandal (2 page)

If their host’s garden wasn’t so well lit and filled to overflowing with guests, he’d have steered the oh-so-willing Lady
Cook outside and satisfied them both. As it was, he’d have to wait and see if her husband accompanied her home.

Lady Boudicea disapproved of his dallying with married ladies. Hell, she disapproved of
him
. She always had. She’d been scathingly disapproving as a girl, more haughtily so since she’d left off playing with dolls
and taken her place among the
ton
in London. Even muddied from head to toe and only twelve years old, she’d already had the ability to make him feel like an
impudent fool. A decade later, he still couldn’t say that he’d ever come out on top when they’d clashed.

And clash they did. It seemed inevitable at this point. Unavoidable. Was it wrong of him to enjoy it? To look forward to their
little skirmishes? Probably so, but it was too delicious an entertainment to give up. Or it had been. He’d made a concerted
effort to avoid such interactions of late.

He schooled his expression, concentrating on Lady Cook’s breasts, the creamy flesh overflowing her bodice, begging for admiration.
Anything to keep from glancing across the room, from meeting Beau’s frosty gaze, from crossing the room to see if he could
tease a smile out of her, make her rap him with her fan, provoke her into some small indiscretion…

Lady Cook inhaled, holding her breath for a moment, breasts rising until the edge of her areolas peeked out of the fabric.
Full, soft, ripe. But somehow not as tempting tonight as they’d been previously. Tonight her smile was brittle, and the powder
obscuring her skin was too heavy, making her corpse-like rather than luminous. The small taffeta beauty mark she’d placed
beside her mouth was half-obscured in a frown line.

Beau’s laugh caught his attention like a whip. He clenched his jaw and forced himself not to follow it back to its source.
She was haunting him this season. Her brother Leonidas had asked him to keep an eye on her while he was absent from town.
It hadn’t seemed much of a burden at the time, but now that March was giving way to April and the Season was well and truly
underway, a mild irritant had become outright torture.

Why was she was still unmarried? Were his fellow Englishmen blind, deaf, and utterly stupid?

She’d been out for several years, and while rumor had
her engaged a dozen times over, nothing had ever come of any of it. It was maddening.
She
was maddening.

She was the daughter of a duke, with a dowry that was likely to be immense, and she was far from being an antidote. Her one
fault—aside from that temper—was her height. At nearly six foot, few men outside her own family were tall enough not to appear
ridiculous beside her.

Look at the poor fop she was dancing with now. Gareth blew his breath out in a disgusted huff. Even in his evening pumps,
the man was barely her match. If not for the poof of his wig he might even have appeared shorter than she. But still, somewhere
there must be a man who was suitable? They didn’t call the
ton
the top ten thousand for nothing. Even if you discounted those who were too short, too old, too young, and female, that had
to leave a score or more who would suit? Didn’t it?

Life would be so much simpler if she were married and happily domesticated somewhere far away like York or Dublin or Edinburgh.
She was Scottish, after all. That should have expanded the pool of suitors. And everyone knew Scots tended to be great tall
fellows. Surely there was a Highland laird or two in need of a wife.

Yes, life would be simpler if only she were somewhere else. Somewhere where she couldn’t spend her evenings glaring at him
and making him wish that he were something other than a penniless younger son.

That fact was like a flea biting deep below the layers of his clothing, niggling and occasionally sharply painful. He had
more than enough for a life of elegant leisure for one, but it wouldn’t stretch to supporting a wife. Certainly not one of
Beau’s quality and station.

They had a term for men like him who married girls like her: fortune hunter. Her father would shoot him before he’d give permission
for such a match. Her brother Leo wouldn’t bother with the gun. He’d use his bare hands.

No, men of his sort didn’t marry, unless they took orders or found themselves a wealthy widow. There was no reason to do so,
and every reason not to. And they certainly didn’t marry girls with Lady Boudicea’s pedigree and prospects. Not since Hardwick’s
Marriage Act went through anyway. Damn the old blighter.

Gareth forced a smile as Lady Cook pressed herself against his arm suggestively. She leaned in, close enough that he could
almost feel her lips on his skin.

“I feel faint.” Lady Cook opened her fan with a flick of her wrist, the sound causing heads to swivel toward them.

“Of course you do, my lady. Perhaps some air?”

Lady Cook smiled in response. Gareth propelled her through the thick of the crowd, circumventing the dancers. Her fingers
slid possessively over his biceps.

A lady with the heart and soul of a whore from the gutter. She was everything a man such as he needed in life. Beau passed
them in the whirl of the dance, so close her skirts struck his leg, silk and wool clinging to each other. Gareth ground his
teeth and swallowed hard, ignoring the way his pulse leapt.

He’d known since the first time that he’d seen Beau with her hair up that he was done for. She’d come down the stairs in her
father’s house in a spangled silk gown, hair dressed and powdered, eyes glittering with excitement, and his lungs had seized.

Gone was the muddy child. Replaced, as if by fairy
magic, with a startling young woman whose vivid green eyes had a secret dancing behind them. A devilish, teasing secret.

If he’d thought for a moment that he had any chance at all, he’d have made himself miserable over her. As it was, he simply
avoided her when possible and picked fights with her when avoidance wasn’t an option.

Tonight, Lady Cook was going to be all that he needed to keep Beau at bay. They cordially loathed one another. Had done since
their very first encounter. Beau would never seek him out so long as Lady Cook was on his arm. Lady Cook glanced unhappily
around the garden. It was brightly lit with colored lanterns, and revelers had spilled forth from the house to choke its narrow
walkways.

“My husband will be here all night playing cards and drinking too much port. Escort me home, Sandison. It will take hours
simply to extricate my carriage from the mess outside… I’ll need something to keep me amused.”

Gareth nodded, tucking her hand securely into the crook of his arm. Lady Cook’s idea of entertainment would no doubt prove
entirely unimaginative, but it was better than spending half the night watching the unattainable Lady Boudicea Vaughn dance
with other men, one of whom might someday actually get to call her wife.

His chest felt empty, soulless, as he hurried Lady Cook toward the door. This was his lot: unchaste wives and widows with
an itch to scratch.

There’d been a time when he thought his life perfect.

CHAPTER 2

R
ush off to Firle Hill? Now?” Gareth’s friend Roland Devere stared at him across the table. Sunlight streamed in through the
window, casting half of Devere’s face into shadow. Gareth squinted and slid his seat so that he wasn’t staring directly into
the light.

The taproom at The Red Lion was nearly empty. Most of his fellow League members had taken themselves off to a mill and the
rest must still have been abed, exhausted from their exertions the night before.

Gareth blew out his breath in a disgruntled sigh and nodded. “Got a letter from Souttar this morning demanding my presence
in no uncertain terms.”

“How much trouble could your brother possibly have got himself into? He’s only been married three months. Perhaps he needs
advice of a very delicate nature?” Devere grinned wickedly.

“More likely he’s bored, mired in the country, and simply wants Sandison at his beck and call,” Lord Peter Wallace said with
a shake of his head. “Someone to order
about, someone to go shooting with, someone to play cards and chess with. You know what Souttar’s like.”

“Likes to have a fag. Always did,” Devere said with a hint of disgust. “Never happier than when ordering someone about. I
remember that much clearly. You’d think his new wife would fulfill that role admirably.”

Gareth wrinkled his nose. The summation was perfectly accurate when viewed from the outside. He’d always been his brother’s
favorite subject, but it had also always been the two of them against their father. They might treat each other dreadfully,
but when it came to dealing with the earl, he could always count on Souttar to have his back. He’d been close to refusing
when he’d first read Souttar’s summons, but truth be told, there was a hint of desperation in the wording, and a week or so
away from town and Lady Boudicea would be a welcome relief.

He’d very nearly called out her name while fucking Lady Cook in her plush carriage. Whatever his brother wanted—and it was
sure to be petty; it always was—it would still be better than causing a scandal of epic proportions because his mind was endlessly
bent on a single subject. He’d come so very close to disaster with Lady Cook…

Gareth shuddered as the implication of his near slip worked its way down his spine: death, dismemberment, scandal, ruin. One
simple word, one mistake, and he could have destroyed both their lives. Lady Cook wouldn’t have taken the mistake lightly,
and she wouldn’t have spared either him or her former rival. The gossip would have lit up London like the Great Fire of 1666.

Not a soul would have believed either of them inno
cent. He was a rake, known for dallying with other men’s wives. The leap to seducing virgins wasn’t all that far… and when
the girl in question was the outrageous Lady Boudicea Vaughn? Well, very few would want to believe her innocent. Seduction
and ruin were her just deserts. Her entire family was considered either mad or depraved, and her brother marrying a courtesan
had only added to that image.

Gareth shook off the sensation of doom. Better to put up with his family’s decidedly feudal ideas for a few days or weeks.
He’d be happy to see his mother, at least. His father’s idea of her rights and prerogatives was nearly as ancient and restrictive
as what he thought the dues of an elder son. Everyone was there to serve the earl first and the heir second. No one else really
mattered.

Gareth could only be thankful he had no sisters. Their lot would have undoubtedly been worse than his, mere pawns for his
father’s machinations. At least he, as a man, could escape the greater part of his father’s control now that he was grown.

The small independence that his maternal grandfather had left him had helped immensely. His father hadn’t even bothered to
threaten to stop his allowance for the past year or so. The earl took no pleasure in making empty threats, but Gareth knew
with a cold certainty that his father would eventually attempt some new method of bringing him to heel. The earl simply couldn’t
help himself.

Devere waved his cup high, and the landlord’s daughter appeared scant seconds later with a pot of steaming coffee. He heaped
lump after lump of sugar into his cup until Gareth nearly gagged at the thought of drinking it.

“How long do you think you’ll be gone?” Devere asked. “You’ll be back for our cricket match, won’t you?”

“Cricket’s a sacred trust, especially when it’s us versus the chuffs from Eton. Even my father wouldn’t seek to prevent my
returning for that.” Gareth grinned and topped off his own cup.

“Bloody Etonians.” Devere blew on his coffee, steam curling up and obscuring his eyes for a moment. “It’s Harrow forever,
and we’ll show them this year as we have for the past ten.”

“Now, now,” a deep voice scolded from the door, and Anthony Thane crossed to join them. “League first; school second.”

Gareth watched as the largest of his friends settled onto a chair that appeared far too small to hold him. Thane was certainly
tall enough to be in the running for Beau’s hand, but like himself, Thane was hobbled by his status as a second son. That
and his position as an MP.