A Dangerous Damsel (The Countess Scandals) (23 page)

Chapter 27

The steady pop of—what the bloody hell was that?—slowly dragged Deidre back from the abyss of sleep she’d fallen into after Ewan extracted her promise to marry him. She was filled with a deep sense of satisfaction. Except for that damned pop.

“Gavan, stop. Leave them be.”

“Absolutely not. I’ve been waiting ages for this day—”

“You are being highly immature.”

“And I intend to enjoy every minute of it.”

Ewan groaned. Another small impact, this time with force, landed directly between his eyes. As it fell between them, Deidre realized it was a chestnut.

“Go to the devil, Gavan Dalreoch,” Ewan groaned.

It seemed Ewan was familiar with their new arrival, and not overly concerned by his presence. Considering every other acquaintance had been a cause for great tension in her future husband, Deidre found herself very curious. She tried to catch a peek at him, but Ewan’s shoulders blocked her view.

“Good morning, cousin!” The cousin’s voice was overly loud and chipper, making Ewan wince with each syllable.

“Go away.” Ewan dragged the tapestry they’d improvised as a blanket farther over Deidre, doing his best to cover her.

“Ewan.” The settee indented as their visitor sat on its edge. “Am I correct in assuming that you and your lovely companion have recently indulged in an excess of whiskey?”

“Just him.” Deidre craned her head so she could look at his cousin. There was little to indicate they were family—he was lean where Ewan was broad, dark and pale where Ewan was tan and russet. There was a mischievous twinkle to his green eyes, though, that Deidre liked. “Hello.”

“Even better, and hello. Are you the Miss Morgan I’ve been hearing about?” he asked, as if there were nothing at all odd about their circumstances.

Deidre was hardly shy. She twisted under the blanket, nestling her backside against Ewan. “That depends. Who are you?”

“Gavan Dalreoch, Earl of Rhone, and all-suffering moral compass for this degenerate . . .”

Another earldom. Bloody hell. Was there a corner where someone just handed the things out?

“Hannah,” Ewan called over the back of the settee. “For the love of God, can ye stop his mouth, even just for a minute?”

“I wash my hands of you both.” The clipped English accent of his cousin’s wife drifted toward them. “But for Miss Morgan’s sake, I will make the attempt. Gavan?”

Deidre stiffened. There had been a second voice, hadn’t there? And a female voice, at that. Where were her clothes?

Lord Rhone arched an eyebrow over the back of the settee before continuing to speak to Deidre. “Where are my manners! Miss Morgan, may I introduce you to my wife, the Countess of Rhone.”

For God’s sake. Any hope she’d had of starting this new life out on the right foot was completely sabotaged. She was meeting a countess while stark naked.

With a sigh, a tiny brunette came into view. She smiled at Deidre, holding out her hand. “Goodness, you’re gorgeous. Call me Hannah, please. I apologize for my husband. He is overly fond of the absurd.”

“Properly fond of the absurd,” Lord Rhone corrected.

“Properly a jackass,” Ewan growled.

Deidre clutched the tapestry to herself, taking the offered hand. She searched for some sign of disdain, some indication of judgment, but there wasn’t any.

Hannah pinched her husband in the ribs. “Get up and let them put some clothes on.”

“I’m—”

“Going to be the one to explain to Fiona and Jane if they find us before you start behaving yourself.”

Hannah thought her husband was the one behaving badly? Deidre was stretched out, nude, with a man who was not her husband. He would be, but they couldn’t know that yet—she’d only just agreed herself. Who were these people? And who were Fiona and Jane?

It was the earl’s turn to sigh. He stood up from the settee with the promise, “If you’re not out in ten minutes, I’m coming back in. I know what sort of—”

He was cut off as his wife pushed him out of the room.

“And that’s my family,” Ewan said with a lopsided grin.

“Is it too late to change my mind?” Deidre joked.

“Aye. Yer stuck with them, same as I am.”

***

It took longer than ten minutes to find Deidre something to wear—Ewan considered the possibility that he needed to stop ripping her clothes off, but decided he’d rather just buy her more clothes—but Gavan did not make good on his promise. They came down the stairs into the great room to find it set for formal breakfast.

“What the—”

“Good morning, Lord Broch Murdo.” The cryptic baritone of Gavan’s butler met him at the bottom step. “Congratulations on your new title.”

“Thank ye, Magnus.” To his cousin, Ewan said, “Of course ye brought half yer household with ye.”

“Traveling light is for peasants,” Gavan said from his place at the table.

Christ. Would Deidre know he was joking? Was there any point in trying to explain Gavan to her?

“Ewan!” A flurry of skirts and dark curls barreled into him, nearly knocking him off balance. “Angus said you were tortured.”

“What’s this? Practicing sounding like an Anglish, are ye?” Ewan squeezed the girl around the shoulders.

“It’s part of my education,” Fiona said with her nose in the air. “So I sound like a lady when we go to London.”

“Well then, Lady Fiona, may I introduce ye to Miss Deidre Morgan?” Ewan was holding Deidre’s hand, and Fiona looked at it with marked suspicion.

“That depends. Who is she?”

“My wife, eventually.” He winked at Deidre. “Deidre, meet my younger cousin, Fiona.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Fiona dropped into a mostly proper curtsy before immediately turning back to Ewan. “Is it true? You were tortured?”

“Aye, but it’s nae talk for ladies. Or for breakfast.”

Jane Bailey, Hannah’s companion-turned-civilizer of the young Fiona, arrived to rein in her charge. “He’s quite right, Fiona.”

“Ladies aren’t allowed to talk about anything interesting,” Fiona complained.

“That’s not true, there’s . . .” Miss Bailey pondered for a moment. “Oh, bother. I can’t think of anything, so you may speak about whatever you like—as long as you do it at the other end of the table and let your cousin eat his breakfast in peace.”

Fiona sprinted off to Angus’s end of the table, chattering away.

“I told ye. Dinnae I say so?” the old Highlander responded.

Ewan raised his eyebrows at Jane. “Miss Bailey, are the Dalreochs wearing off on you?”

An embarrassed blush crossed her face. “I’m afraid they must be.”

“It suits ye,” he said back with a wink. It was good to see her relaxing a bit. In London, she’d been terrified of her own shadow and rigid as an oak.

“Miss Morgan, come sit by me,” Hannah called to Deidre. “We have a great deal to discuss.”

Deidre stiffened beside him. Ewan gave her a reassuring squeeze and led them to an open pair of chairs.

“About?” Deidre asked as she sat down next to Hannah.

“Smuggling,” Hannah said. “I hear you’re something of an expert, and the taxation on our whiskey shipments is abhorrent. Until we get Parliament to sort it out . . .”

Ewan settled back, letting the discussions ebb and flow around him, surrounded by the people he loved most.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Gavan leaned back with him.

“Aye.” Ewan turned to his cousin. “How’d ye ken to come?”

“Angus wrote us when you tried to get yourself killed. I told Hannah you’d be fine.” Gavan grinned. “But she insisted we cut the honeymoon short. The woman has no faith.”

Hannah overhead him and leaned across Deidre. “Don’t listen to him. The captain almost threw us overboard twice because Gavan wouldn’t just let the man do his job.”

“His sailing speed was highly inadequate.”

“We’re here.”

“Far too late. If he had actually been on his deathbed, and not just faking it, he would have died long before we arrived.”

Deidre was watching the back and forth.

Ewan leaned over to her, placing his lips against the soft skin of her ear. “Ye all right, leannain?”

“Is it always like this?” she asked in a low voice.

“Aye, for the most part.” He reached for her hand. “Is it too much? Say the word and we’ll toss them all off the cliff.”

She laughed, filling the great hall with the joyful sound, and shook her head. “It’s wonderful.”

Aye, it was.

Keep reading for a sneak peek at the next book in Kimberly Bell’s

Countess Scandals series

A BALLROOM TEMPTATION

Coming soon from InterMix

The Carolina coastline grew more and more distant as Adam watched from the ship’s railing. He hadn’t bothered when they were leaving port. Adam hadn’t enjoyed the bustle and noise of a city for years now, but—once they’d sailed far enough out to give a view of the labyrinth of inlets and islands he’d come to love—he’d come up to the deck to say good-bye.

Crumpled in his fist was the letter he’d received from his father. It wasn’t long. They’d never had much to say to each other—especially not since he’d sent Adam away in exile—and the Earl of Clairborne didn’t mince words. Not even when he was turning his son’s entire life upside down.

The land has been sold back to the crown. Come home at once.

Nine words that ruined everything Adam had spent the last ten years building. Four that sent him into a fury. The Earl might as well have disowned him for all the help Adam had received since being banished to the colonies, and now he claimed the right to once again order Adam about like a pawn on a chessboard?

The tittering of female laughter floated toward him on the breeze. Adam looked over to realize he’d gained the attention of two female passengers posted farther down the railing.

“. . . can’t be a native. Look at his blonde hair . . .”

“. . . dressed like a gentleman, but his skin is so brown . . .”

Adam looked down at his hands. They were browned from the sun—from long days spent working the land and earning the respect of the men who worked with him. For him. What would happen to those men? To his neighbors? To his friends? There had been no notice. Just a curt letter and suddenly the place that had been his home since his twentieth birthday wasn’t his any longer.

He blamed himself. Adam knew what the old man wanted. There had been other letters from his mother over the years suggesting he come home. Letters suggesting it was past time he find a wife. Adam had never expected they would sell the land out from under him to force it.

If he had anything of his own, he would have stayed. But, like a dutiful son, like a fool, he’d stayed true to the pretense they’d used when they sent him away. He was in the Carolina holdings to manage the family interests. For ten years, Adam had kept up the lie. After the first year, when he’d fallen in love with the land and with having a purpose, it had become the truth.

Adam’s letter hadn’t been the only one his father had sent, just the last one. By the time it arrived, all of the accounts and lines of credit had been frozen. All of the profits he’d accumulated were trapped in the family accounts and he was banned from accessing them. Even his passage back to London had been paid in advance through a third party. If he weren’t so angry, Adam might admit that it was cleverly done.

He had no choice but to go home but he’d be damned if he would stay. Whatever it took, Adam would find a way to get the land back and return. He wouldn’t betray the trust of the men he’d worked beside for a decade. The Earl of Clairborne might not flinch at uprooting honest men in a ploy to bring his son to heel, but Adam wasn’t about to sit by and be reckless with men’s lives. He wasn’t the same boy that had left England ten years ago.

“The female passengers seem quite taken with you, Lord Clairborne.” The Captain came to stand beside Adam at the rail. They’d made open water and his expertise was no longer required at the helm.

“If they know what’s good for them, they’ll recover from it quickly.”

The captain gave him a sideways look. “You’re not interested in the attention of beautiful women?”

“No,” Adam said. That was how the whole trouble had started in the first place.

***

Jane was blind, trapped in complete darkness. A boot heel sounded against the stone to her right. Her head snapped to follow it. The air just behind her left ear moved. She spun in that direction. A shove to her shoulder knocked her off balance and she flailed into the unknown coming up with a fistful of . . . settee cushion?

A chuckle came from across the room.

“I know that was you, Charlie.” Jane righted herself.

“It’s not Blind Man’s Bluff without the buff.”

“You don’t have to shove so hard.” Jane fumbled a circumspect path in his direction.

Parlour games were a regular diversion in the Bailey house growing up. Jane knew from experience that her brother couldn’t resist teasing her, especially when she pouted. If she kept him talking long enough, she could corner him and claim her victory.

Suddenly, a swish of skirts was heard perilously close to her location. She leapt in their direction, crying out with triumph when her hand closed around a silk-clad shoulder. Jane pulled the blindfold off to see who she had caught.

“Damnation,” Hannah cursed. “I’m slow as an oxcart,”

“You’re with child,” Jane soothed.

Hannah rubbed the small of her back. “Well it’s exceedingly inconvenient. How is a person supposed to do anything swelled up to the size of a house?”

“They’re not supposed to do anything. They’re supposed to take their husband’s sage advice and spend the ordeal in blessed repose while adoring clansmen wait on them hand and foot.” Lord Rhone did not look up from the chess game he was engaged in with his cousin, Lord Dalreoch.

“I’m not going to lie about enciente for the better part of a year,” Hannah argued with her husband, not for the first time. “Not anytime, but certainly not through my very first Christmas celebrations.”

“I don’t blame you, dear.” Aunt Mathilda climbed down from the armchair she had been standing on.

Charlie stepped out from behind a suit of armor. “Thank God. I was running out of ideas.”

Deidre and Tristan hopped down from the windowsills.

“Does this mean I won?” Fiona, Lord Rhone’s younger sister, rolled out from under the settee.

Jane gaped at them. “Was everyone cheating except Hannah?”

Her friend blushed inspecting an invisible wrinkle in her skirts. “I tried to climb the windowsill, but Deidre beat me to it.”

“For your own safety,” Lady Dalreoch said.

“You’re all horrible,” Jane declared. “I refuse to play any more games with you because you do not play fair.”

Mathilda patted her niece on the shoulder. “It’s probably not wise for us to blindfold Hannah and send her crashing into furniture anyway. Why don’t we call the game and enjoy drinks around the fire?”

Oh good, more drinking. Because they hadn’t done enough of that already. Honestly, between the cheating and the whiskey they might as well be spending Christmas at a dockside pub.

“Why don’t we each open a present instead?” Jane suggested.

“Can we?” Fiona asked. “I want Gavan to open mine.”

It was agreed that they would all exchange one present—over drinks, of course—and the gathering broke apart as soon as the chess game finished to go claim their chosen presents from where they were hidden. They couldn’t be placed in a pile, like any normal Christmas. Not with this lot. They had to be hidden to ensure no one peeked.

“While they’re gone there’s something I need to tell you,” Charlie told her ominously.

“What is it?”

He took her hands, leading her to the settee and replacing the cushion. “I think you should sit down.”

“All right.” She sat. “Tell me.”

“I invested all the money we’ve made working for Lord Rhone.” Charles said.

Her brother at least had the courtesy to look sheepish. Seven years ago their father had invested the family fortune to the hilt, losing it all when the South Sea Bubble burst. Jane hadn’t explicitly told him not to invest the money she made as a companion. She hadn’t felt comfortable telling him what to do with it when he had been supporting her all these years, but quite frankly she had assumed he would know better.

She sighed. It really wasn’t all that bad. She wished he hadn’t done it, but they each had secure positions here with Hannah and Lord Rhone. “We’ll make it back, Charlie. It will be all right.”

“Make it back? You have it all wrong. We made a killing.” He leaned close, willing her to understand. “I did it, Jane. We don’t have to work anymore. I can become a gentleman of leisure. You can have a real season—not like the mess we made of the last one. Hell, we might even be able to re-open the house in Sussex!”

It took a moment for what he was saying to register. When it did, Jane was consumed with a rising sense of dread. A real season in London, with everyone looking at her. With everyone talking about her first season and the way they’d left halfway through in disgrace. What if she saw Geoff? She couldn’t. She couldn’t do it.

“That’s wonderful, Charlie,” she lied.

“Isn’t it though?” he exclaimed. “I’ve already broken the news to Aunt Matty, but I’m sure you two will need to do all sorts of womanly planning that I don’t know about.”

“Surely it can wait until mother and father come home.” Relief settled over Jane like a blanket. Lord and Lady Bailey were living rough out in the colonies, pursuing fortune and adventure. It would take months for word to reach them and for them to travel back to England.

“I wrote them this summer. Father was on about some sort of issue with the corn and a hard winter? They said they’re not sure when they’ll have time to make it back, so we should proceed without them.”

“Oh.” Just like that the relief drained away. “I might be too old, Charlie. It’s been so long . . .”

“You’re four and twenty. It’s not the usual, certainly, but you’re hardly on the shelf.” Charles looked at her, puzzled. “You’re happy about this, aren’t you, Janey?”

She pasted a very convincing smile on her face. “Of course I am. I’m just . . . in shock is all.”

He jumped, too excited to sit still. “I told you I’d do it. I told you I’d get our lives back.”

“Yes, you did.” Jane needed to get out of the room, away from his excitement, before the walls started closing in on her. “I’ll just go tell Aunt Matty you’ve told me.”

She left her brother, grinning like a lunatic, and went upstairs to her Aunt’s room.

As soon as Mathilda saw her, her aunt put down the present she’d been digging out of the armoire. “He’s told you, then.”

Jane nodded.

“Jane, dear, if you don’t want to go to London, tell him.”

Jane shook her head. “I can’t. He’s so proud of what he’s done. And it’s wonderful. It truly is.”

“You’re white as a sheet just from the news. If you don’t tell him—”

“No,” Jane said. She straightened her spine. “I won’t ruin this for him. I haven’t seen him this happy in years.”

“And what about you?”

“I’ll manage. I always do.” She would. She would manage, just as she always did.

Aunt Mathilda didn’t appear convinced.