Last Night's Scandal (The Dressmakers 5)

But she always tempted him. She’d been doing it since she was twelve years old. If he hadn’t spent most of the last ten years in Egypt, she would have made a shambles of his life.

“I should not have to tell you this,” he said. “But since you’ve lost your mind, I reckon I must: You may think of me as a brother but I’m not. You can’t travel with me unchaperoned.”

“Of course I must be chaperoned,” she said. “But you can leave all the arrangements to me. All you have to do—”

“I’m not doing anything,” he said. “Of all the harebrained schemes—” He broke off, shaking his head. “I can’t believe this. My father has cut off my money, I have nowhere to go and nothing to live on—and you want me to take you four hundred miles to a moldering old castle. In October, no less! Do you know what Scotland’s like in October?”

“It’s dark and wet and cold and gloomy and terribly romantic,” she said.

“I’m not going!” he said. “I can’t believe I’m even arguing with you about this.”

“It’ll be fun,” she said. “An adventure.”

An adventure. He had them all the time. But not with Olivia. Not in years.

But this wasn’t the same Olivia. He’d been able to manage that one. To a point. But then he’d been a thirteen-year-old boy, oblivious when not actively hostile to females.

“It’s my one and only, my very last chance for an adventure,” she said. “The family is sick to death of my carryings on, and Grandmama and Grandpapa Hargate are insisting I marry. When they start insisting, one might as well give up fighting. You know how they like to have everybody wed and settled. I shall have to settle on somebody and settle down and be a wife and mother. Settle, settle, settle. I shall never have a chance to do anything interesting, ever again.”

He remembered how fearless she’d been, setting out on her own . . . climbing into wagons . . . luring a pair of grooms into a card game. He thought about her life now, one party after another, where the mildest departure from propriety set the scandalmongers whispering behind their fans.

“Dammit, don’t do this to me, Olivia,” he said.

“You know it’s true,” she said. “Women lead narrow lives. We’re somebody’s daughters, then somebody’s wives and somebody’s mothers. We never do anything, not as men do.”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I will not let my parents coerce me.”

“You don’t have a choice,” she said. “You’ve always been able to ignore them or get around them, but they’ve finally realized they have one powerful hold over you.”

“And you’re playing into their hands,” he said. “Have you any idea what’s involved in rebuilding an old castle?”

“I have an excellent idea,” she said.

“It could take years. Years! In Scotland. With the bagpipes!”

She smiled. “It won’t take years if I help you,” she said. “And it won’t hurt to let your parents think they’ve won one battle. If we play this game properly, you’ll be back in Egypt in—oh, by spring, very likely.”

The smile was enough to make him yield. But the guardian voice that had kept him alive all these years said Wait. Think.

It was very hard to think when the full power of those blue eyes was turned upon him, and things were stabbing at his heart.

Yet he wasn’t altogether bewitched. He was still the stubborn boy who’d known her long ago, as well as the scholar, the detached observer who’d watched her in action recently. He knew she could make people, especially men, believe anything.

“No,” he said as gently as he could. “If I let them control me this way, they’ll use it again and again. If I give in to this demand, they’ll make more.”

Her smile didn’t falter. “Ah, well, if you won’t agree, you won’t,” she said cheerfully.

“I knew you’d understand.”

“Oh, I do. Absolutely.”

“Good, because—”

“You needn’t explain,” she said. “I understand completely. But I can’t stay. I’ve a great deal to do today.”

She touched her crop to the brim of her hat and galloped away.

Chapter 4

Atherton House

Friday 7 October

Lisle should have realized.

He should have been prepared.

But of course that was out of the question in anything involving Olivia.

Olivia. Suddenly. Unexpectedly.

The three words engraved in his mind.

He came down to breakfast, and there she was.

Not only Olivia, either. She’d brought along the dowager Lady Hargate and two of the Harpies, Lady Cooper and Lady Withcote.

Lisle hadn’t slept well. In the quiet of his club he’d come up with any number of schemes for dealing with his parents, but each proved fatally flawed. Then Lord Winterton turned up. Their paths had crossed in Egypt more than once, and they had a great deal to talk about. Winterton invited Lisle to his house to examine a fine set of papyri he’d brought back from his latest trip. The papyri were a welcome distraction from Lisle’s parents and Olivia, and the cool-headed Winterton made an agreeable antidote to all the emotional turmoil. Lisle accepted an invitation to dine, and time slipped away.

As a result, he had no more idea this morning how to deal with his parents than he’d had yesterday when Olivia galloped away.

Everyone beamed at him as he entered the breakfast room.

Lisle prided himself on having no imagination. He didn’t believe in a sense of impending doom.

Until now.

He went to the sideboard and filled his plate. He walked to the table and sat down next to Lady Withcote and opposite Olivia.

“Olivia has been telling us of your plan,” said Mother.

Lisle’s insides went cold. “My plan,” he repeated. He looked at Olivia.

“To take me to Scotland to help you with the castle,” she said.

“What?”

“I thought you would have told them already,” she said. “I’m sorry I

spoiled the surprise.”

“Everyone understands, child, I’m sure,” said the dowager. “You were carried away with excitement and couldn’t wait.”

“What?”

“It was a surprise, indeed,” said Mother. “And I will confess I was not altogether enthusiastic at first.”

“But—”

“She thought it wasn’t the thing,” the dowager told Lisle. “A pair of young people setting out for Scotland together. Not at all suitable for a young lady, she said. As though we didn’t know that and hadn’t already worked it out.”

“Worked out—”

“Lady Cooper and Lady Withcote have kindly agreed to act as chaperons,” Olivia said. “We’ll each take our lady’s maids. Great-Grandmama has agreed to lend us some housemaids and footmen until we can hire permanent ones. And I shall borrow Mama’s cook and butler, since they won’t be needed while the family is in Derbyshire.”

Lisle looked about him at the cheerful faces. She’d done it. She’d gone ahead and done it after he’d told her in no uncertain terms. . .

No, this was a nightmare. He wasn’t awake.

Were his parents blind? Was he the only one who noticed how suspiciously well the dowager was behaving? Did no one else see the evil gleam in her eye? No, they saw nothing, because Olivia had completely bamboozled everybody.

It was mad, mad.

Cooper and Withcote as chaperons! Like all of the dowager’s friends, they lived to gossip, drink, gamble, and ogle young men. There couldn’t exist more unsuitable chaperons outside of a brothel.

This was absurd. He would have to bring everybody to their senses.

“Olivia, I thought I made it clear—”

“But you did,” she said, all wide-eyed innocence. “I understand completely. If I had a calling, as you do, only a matter of life and death could distract me from it. Your calling is ancient Egypt. A Scottish castle does not seize your imagination.”