Wentworth Hall (16 page)

The duke held his nose.

“You don’t love it?” Snobby asked, aghast.

“Frankly my dear, everything about you has started to stink. How long do you think you can toy with my affections? You’re young enough to be my daughter and I no longer think it would be fun to have a spoiled brat running around my lavish estate.” He bowed deeply, and the effort he expended brought on a coughing fit.

“But Duke, I could tend to you in your dotage,” Snobby insisted, solicitously helping him stand straight.

“Sorry, young lady. I retract my offer. I bid you adieu.” The duke stormed off, leaving Snobby there to watch him leave. “Oh, who cares about you, you old coot?!” she shouted after him. “I still have Richard, who adores me, and he’s richer than you.”

“Did you say I adore you?”

Snobby whirls around to see Richard behind her. “Of course you do,” Snobby replied with confidence. “Time is running short. When shall we marry?”

“To be honest, Snobby, time is not running short,” Richard replied.

“It’s not?” Snobby questioned.

“No. It’s run out.”

“Run out?!” Snobby cried, shocked. “What do you mean? You adore me!”

“Alas, once I did. But now I have my inheritance and I see that… well, that…” Richard hesitated, momentarily at a loss for words. “There’s no other way to say it, Snobby: I’m just too good for you.”

Lord Worthless enters, dragging a chandelier behind him. “Who is too good?” he inquired.

“Daddy, Richard thinks he’s too good for me now that he is fabulously wealthy,” Snobby explained, running to her father’s side.

“Well, of course he is,” Lord Worthless confirmed. “Everyone is too good for us these days.”

“Who will I marry, then, Daddy?” Snobby whined.

Doodles Worthless came in at that moment. “Why don’t you marry your secret admirer?” she asked guilelessly.

“Who?’ asked Lord Worthless.

“Shhh!!!!” Snobby hissed at Doodles.

“Oh, is it a real secret?” Doodles asked, covering her mouth with her hand.

“Who is this secret admirer?” Lord Worthless asked Snobby. “Does he have money?”

“There is no such person,” Snobby told him. “You know how Doodles is.”

“Do I?” Lord Worthless pondered. “She’s always disappearing like that. Most confusing.” He turned to Richard and held up the chandelier. “Care to buy a lighting fixture?” he asked. “It literally fell right into my hands.”

“Do you mean it fell from the ceiling?” Richard inquired.

“Yes!” Lord Worthless confirmed. “It keeps happening to me. I suddenly discover that I’m holding a doorknob or a kitchen cabinet handle. Chandeliers fall right into my arms.
Wall moldings fall into my pockets. I seem to have become a magnet for all sorts of pieces of the estate crashing down around me. It’s most perplexing!”

“Perhaps your estate could use some fixing up,” Richard suggested delicately.

“Faded Glory Manor?! Never! Faded Glory Manor has stood just as it is for over three hundred years. If I did anything to change it, it would no longer be, well… Worthless.”

“Exactly,” Richard agreed.

“Precisely,” Lord Worthless said. Nodding, he surveyed his crumbling estate, confident that it would always be Worthless… as it should be.

Chapter Fifteen

M
AGGIE HAD NEVER SEEN HER FATHER IN
such a state. His skin was red as a beet and the veins at his temple throbbed visibly. The
Sussex Courier
was spread on the desk in front of him. He had called the entire family to his study to “discuss” the satires Wesley had brought to their attention. At the moment, though, he was so infuriated that he was incapable of anything resembling discussion. Standing beside her husband, the usually mild-mannered Lady Darlington appeared equally put out, her arms folded tightly across her chest.

“Is there any truth here, Maggie?” she blasted their oldest daughter. “Have you offended both Teddy and the duke?”

“No! I’ve told you ten times! No!”

“There had better not be anything to this,” Lord Darlington muttered darkly, holding Maggie in his scrutinizing glare.

“I have told you how I feel about your getting married soon,” Lady Darlington said in a low, angry tone. “The older you get, the more difficult it will be for you. We have presented you with two highly suitable candidates for husbands and it seems, according to this, that you have alienated and rebuffed them both.”

“You both know this is all lies,” Lila jumped to Maggie’s defense. “These satires show you not caring for the estate. Is that true? Of course not! And it portrays the duke’s ball to have taken place here—which we all know isn’t true. Are we even certain this is about us? Perhaps we’re leaping to conclusions.”

“Please, Lila,” Wesley said, putting his arm protectively around her shoulders. “It’s pretty obvious. This is us, without a doubt.”

“Well, just because we realize it doesn’t mean everyone will know it’s our family being skewered,” Lord Darlington allowed. “No one around here pays much
attention to this cheap rag. Anyone who matters reads
The London Times
.”

“Well, that’s true,” Lady Darlington agreed, seeming to calm down a bit.

“We had better hope so, at least until we can find out who is behind this scurrilous tripe and put a stop to it,” Lord Darlington said, his anger rising again. “And when I find out who it is that person will be sorry he or she was ever born.”

Lord Darlington dismissed them all, with a reminder to be careful who they trust. Maggie followed the rest of the family out into the hallway. Noticing that Lila appeared on the verge of tears, Maggie put her hand on her sister’s shoulder. “It’s not as bad as all that,” she soothed. “Try to think of it as funny.”

“Funny!” Lila shouted. “They depict me as fading into the wallpaper and eating moths! They make me out to be an imbecile!” As tears splashed down her cheeks, Lila fled down the hallway.

“Poor kid,” Wesley sympathized.

“Go! See what you can do,” Lady Darlington urged her son. “You’ve always known how to cheer her up.”

“I’ll try,” Wesley agreed, hurrying after Lila.

“It will be all right, Mother,” Maggie said, desperate to say anything that might take the stricken expression from her mother’s face.

Lady Darlington forced an insincere smile. “Honestly, dear, could it be any worse?” The parallel frown lines between her eyebrows had never looked deeper. “I want to go look in on James. Would you like to come along?”

“No. Well not today,” Maggie declined. Her mother gave her a pointed look as if to say
You can’t avoid him forever
, but she accepted her answer. Maggie retreated down the hall. She headed for the staircase, and met Teddy coming up, holding the latest
Sussex Courier
. “Where did you get that?” she demanded.

“Where do you think? The newsstand in town.” The smug way he was grinning at her was infuriating and it told Maggie that he was well aware of the paper’s spurious contents. If she could have wiped the grin off his face with a slap, she would have gladly done so. Instead, she chose to ice him out without a glance as they passed on the stairs.

“It’s a hoot, isn’t it, Snobby?” he hissed as their shoulders brushed.

“I wouldn’t laugh, Richie Sterling,” she shot back.

“Why shouldn’t I? Richie and Richina come off looking pretty good compared to the rest.”

Maggie knew he was goading her and that the best thing to do would be to keep going, but she felt helpless to resist. “Funny, isn’t it, that you and Jessica get such light treatment?” she challenged. “One might even think that you and your sister are the authors of this trash.”

“Oh, please,” Teddy scoffed. “Neither Jessica nor I have any need for the pittance the rag would pay for this bit of entertainment. And I have better things to do with my time than think about you and your absurd family.”

“Absurd?!” Maggie fumed, immediately regretting that she’d registered the jab at all.

“Completely absurd,” Teddy twisted the knife. “Your family is exactly as depicted in this paper and everyone will recognize it immediately.”

“You ingrate!” Maggie growled. “And after my parents took you in.”

“Don’t insult my intelligence,” he came back at her fiercely. “You know your father simply wanted to get a piece of our fortune by selling you off to me. To think I
almost fell for it too. I will always consider not marrying you was a bullet dodged.”

“As will I,” Maggie said.

“I don’t look so bad to you now that you realize what your choices are, though, do I?” Teddy added with a smarmy smile. “You passed on a young, handsome millionaire in favor of a thousand-year-old duke. Good work, Maggie. That was really using your brain. What a fool!”

It took every ounce of Maggie’s self-control not to leap at him and rake his face with her nails. He was the most arrogant, conceited person she’d ever met. “I can’t wait until you leave here,” she spat.

“Neither can I,” Teddy shot back. “It won’t be long now, either. I turn eighteen next month and then the family fortune will be mine. Jessica and I will be gone the next day; You can count on that. The only reason we came in the first place was to cull some social standing from the Darlington name. What a mistake that turned out to be. After these satires make the rounds, your precious family name will be so irrevocably tarnished you’ll want to change it.”

* * *

“Breathe, Lila, please!” Ian crouched in front of the straight-back floral damask couch where Lila sat sobbing and hyperventilating. “You’re going to pass out.”

Lila’s hands were pressed against her collarbone as her chest heaved up and down. “I-I-I-I,” was all she could manage to say. These newspaper satires were so awful! Her coming out into society was only a year and some months away, and now it was ruined. She was a laughingstock. Who would want to be seen at her ball? What young man would ever ask her out?

Wesley strode into the room. “There you are! I’ve been searching everywhere for you!”

“I think she’s hysterical,” Ian explained, answering the unspoken question in Wesley’s eyes.

Wesley dropped down onto the couch beside Lila and took hold of her shoulders. “Calm down, Lila! It’s not that bad. Really!”

The sound of her big brother’s voice filtered through the haze of panic surrounding Lila and gradually her heartbeat slowed and her breathing followed. “That’s the girl,” she heard him say. Through her tears, his familiar face slowly came into focus. “You’re not facing this alone,
Lila. We’re all here and we’ll get through this together.”

Lila gulped in great swallows of air as her tears subsided.

“There might even be a positive side to all this,” Wesley added.

With her curiosity piqued, Lila rubbed the tears from her eyes. “A positive side?”

Wesley sat back on the couch and folded his arms. “Well, consider this. Suppose everyone does guess that we’re the Worthless family.” He stopped to chuckle. “I sort of think the name is amusing.”