Three Schemes and a Scandal (21 page)

As an avid reader of romantic novels, Annabelle knew a hero when she saw one. The dark good looks. The power. The wealth. The intensity with which he might love a woman—her—if only he
would.

But the real reason for her deep and abiding love had nothing to do with his wealth, power, appearance, or even the way he leaned against a table or the way he swaggered into a room. Though who knew the way a man leaned or swaggered could be so …
inspiring
?

Derek Knightly was a man who gave a young woman of no consequence a chance to be
something.
Something great. Something special. Something
more.
It went without saying that opportunities for women were not numerous, especially for ones with no connections, like Annabelle. If it weren’t for Knightly, she’d be a plain old Spinster Auntie or maybe married to Mr. Nathan Smythe who owned the bakery up the road.

Knightly gave her a chance when no one ever did. He believed in her when she didn’t even believe in herself. That was why she loved him.

So the years and weeks and days passed by and Annabelle waited for him to really notice her, even as the facts added up to the heartbreaking truth that he had a blind spot where she was concerned.

Or worse: perhaps he did notice and did not return her affection in the slightest.

A lesser girl might have given up long ago and married the first sensible person who asked. In all honesty, Annabelle had considered encouraging young Mr. Nathan Smythe of the bakery up the road. She at least could have enjoyed a lifetime supply of freshly baked pastries and warm bread.

But she had made her choice to wait for true love. And so she couldn’t marry Mr. Smythe and his baked goods as long as she stayed up late reading novels of grand passions, great adventures, and true love, above all. She could not settle for less. She could not marry Mr. Nathan Smythe or anyone else, other than Derek Knightly, because she had given her heart to Knightly three years, six months, three weeks, and two days ago.

And now she lay dying. Unloved. A spinster. A
virgin.

Her cheeks burned. Was it mortification? Remorse? Or the fever?

She was laying ill in her brother’s home in Bloomsbury, London. Downstairs, her brother Thomas meekly hid in his library (it was a sad fact that Swifts were not known for backbone) while his wife, Blanche, shrieked at their children: Watson, Mason, and Fleur. None of them had come to inquire after her health, however. Watson had come to request her help with his sums, Mason asked where she had misplaced his Latin primer, and Fleur had woken Annabelle from a nap to borrow a hair ribbon.

Annabelle lay in her bed, dying, another victim of unrequited love. It was tragic, tragic! In her slim fingers she held a letter from Knightly, blotted with her tears.

Very well, she was not at death’s door, merely suffering a wretched head cold. She did have a letter from Knightly but it was hardly the stuff of a young woman’s dreams. It read:

Miss Swift—

Annabelle stopped there to scowl.
Everyone
addressed their letters to her as “Dear Annabelle,” which was the name of her advice column. Thus, she was the recipient of dozens—hundreds—of letters each week that all began with “Dear Annabelle.” To be cheeky and amusing, everyone else in the world had adopted this salutation. Tradesmen sent their bills to her addressed as such.

But not Mr. Knightly! Miss Swift indeed. The rest—the scant rest of it—was worse.

Miss Swift—

Your column is late. Please remedy this with all due haste.

D.K.

Annabelle possessed the gift of a prodigious imagination. (Or curse. Sometimes it felt like a curse.) But even she could not spin magic from this letter.

She was never late with her column either, because she knew all the people it would inconvenience: Knightly and the other editors, the printers, the deliverymen, the news agents, all the loyal readers of
The London Weekly.

She loathed bothering people—ever since she’d been a mere thirteen years old and Blanche decreed to Thomas on their wedding day that “they could keep his orphaned sister so long as she wasn’t a nuisance.” Stricken with terror at the prospect of being left to the workhouse or the streets, Annabelle bent over backward to be helpful. She acted as governess to her brother’s children, assisted Cook with the meal preparation, could be counted on for a favor when anyone asked.

But she was ill! For the first time, she simply didn’t have the strength to be concerned with the trials and vexations of others. The exhaustion went bone deep. Perhaps deeper. Perhaps it had reached her soul.

There was a stack of letters on her writing desk across the room, all requesting her help.

Belinda from High Holburn wanted to know how one addressed a duke, should she ever be so lucky to meet one. Marcus wished to know how fast it took to travel from London to Gretna Green “for reasons he couldn’t specify.” Susie requested a complexion remedy, Nigel asked for advice on how to propose to one sister when he had already been courting the other for six months.

“Annabelle!” Blanche shrieked from the bottom of the stairs leading to her attic bedroom.

She shrunk down and pulled the covers over her head.

“Annabelle, Mason broke a glass, Watson pierced himself and requires a remedy, and Fleur needs her hair curled. Do come at once instead of lazing abed all day!”

“Yes, Blanche,” she said faintly.

Annabelle sneezed, and then tears stung at her eyes and she was in quite the mood for a good, well-deserved cry. But then there was that letter from Knightly. Miss Swift, indeed! And the problems of Belinda, Marcus, Susie and Nigel. And Mason, Watson and Fleur. All of which required her help.

What about me? Annabelle thought. The selfish question occurred to her, unbidden. Given her bedridden status, she could not escape it either. She could not dust, or sweep or rearrange her hair ribbons, or read a novel or any other such task she engaged in when she wished to avoid thinking about something unpleasant.

Stubbornly, the nagging question wouldn’t leave until it had an answer.

She mulled it over.
What about me?

“What about me?” She tested the thought with a hoarse whisper.

She was a good person. A kind person. A generous, thoughtful, and helpful person. But here she was, ill and alone, forgotten by the world, dying of unrequited love, a virgin …

Well, maybe it was time for others to help Dear Annabelle with her problems!

“Hmmph,” she said to no one in particular.

The Swifts were not known for the force of their will, or their gumption. So when the feeling struck, she ran with it before the second-guessing could begin. Metaphorically, of course, given that she was bedridden with illness.

Annabelle dashed off the following column, for print in the most popular newspaper in town:

To the readers of
The London Weekly,

For nearly four years now I have faithfully answered your inquiries on matters great and small. I have advised to the best of my abilities and with goodness in my heart.

Now I find myself in need of your help. For the past few years I have loved a man from afar, and I fear he has taken no notice of me at all. I know not how to attract his attention and affection. Dear readers, please advise!

Your humble servant,

Dear Annabelle

Before she could think twice about it, she sealed the letter and addressed it to:

Mr. Derek Knightly

c/o The London Weekly

57 Fleet Street

London, England

T
HE
M
AN
A
BOUT
T
OWN

No man knows more about London than Mr. Derek Knightly, infamous proprietor of this newspaper’s rival publication. And no one in London knows one whit about him.

The London Times

Offices of
The London Weekly

57 Fleet Street, London

D
EREK KNIGHTLY SWORE
by three truths. The first:
Scandal equals sales.
Guided by this principle, he used his inheritance to acquire a second-rate news rag, which he transformed into the most popular, influential newspaper in London, avidly read by both high- and lowborn alike.

The second:
Drama was for the page
. Specifically the printed, stamp-taxed pages of
The London Weekly,
which were filled to the brim with salacious gossip from the ton, theater reviews, domestic and foreign intelligence, and the usual assortment of articles and advertisements. He himself did not partake in the aforementioned scandal or drama. There were days where he hardly existed beyond the pages he edited and published.

The third:
Be beholden to no one
. Whether business or pleasure, Knightly owned—he was not owned. Unlike other newspapers,
The London Weekly
was not paid for by Parliament or political parties. Nor did theaters pay for favorable reviews. He wasn’t above taking suppression fees for gossip, depending upon the rumors. He’d fought duels in defense of
The Weekly
’s contents. He’d already taken one bullet for his beloved newspaper and would do so again unblinkingly.

When it came to women—well, suffice it to say his heart belonged to the newspaper and he was intent that no woman should capture it.

These three truths had taken him from being the scandal-borne son of an earl and his actress-mistress to one of London’s most infamous, influential, and wealthiest men.

Half of everything he’d ever wanted.

For an infinitesimal second, Knight paused, hand on the polished brass doorknob. On the other side of the wooden door, his writers waited for their weekly meeting in which they compared and discussed the stories for the forthcoming issue. He thought about scandal, and sales, and other people’s drama. Because, given the news he’d just heard—a
London Times
reporter caught where he shouldn’t be—London was about to face the scandal of the year … one that threatened to decimate the entire newspaper industry, including
The London Weekly.

Where others often saw disaster, Knightly saw opportunity. But the emerging facts made him pause to note a feeling of impending doom. The victims in this case were too important, the deception beyond the pale. Someone would pay for it.

With a short exhalation and a square of his shoulders, Knightly pushed opened the door and stepped before his team of writers.

“Ladies first,” he said, grinning, as always.

The Writing Girls. His second greatest creation. It had been an impulsive decision to hire Sophie and Julianna to start, later rounded out by Eliza and Annabelle. But the guiding rational was:
Scandal equals sales.

Women writing were scandalous.

Therefore …

His hunch had been correct. The gamble paid off in spades.

The London Weekly
was a highbrow meets lowbrow newspaper read by everyone, but the Writing Girls set it apart from all the other news rags by making it especially captivating to the women in London, and particularly attractive to the men.

To his left, Miss Annabelle Swift, advice columnist, sighed. Next to her, Eliza—now the Duchess of Wycliff—gave him a sly glance. Sophie, the Duchess of Brandon—a disgraced country girl when he first met her—propped her chin on her palm and smiled at him. Lady Roxbury brazenly took him on with her clear, focused gaze.

“What’s on this week, writers?” he asked.

Lady Julianna Roxbury, known in print as A Lady of Distinction and author of the salacious gossip column “Fashionable Intelligence,” clearly had news. “There are rumors,” she began excitedly, “of Lady Lydia Marsden’s prolonged absence from the ton. Lady Marsden is newly returned to town after she missed what ought to have been her second season. I am investigating.”

By investigating, she likely meant all manner of gossip and skulking about, but that was what
Weekly
writers did. Like the writers at
The Times
, but without getting caught.

No one else in the room seemed to care for the significance of a debutante’s whereabouts. Knightly barely did, he knew only that it would sell well to the ton. If the news covered one of their own, they talked about it more, which meant that more copies were sold just so people could understand conversations at parties.

To his right, good old Grenville grumbled under his breath. His irritation with the Writing Girls was never far from the surface. If it wasn’t the deep, dark inner workings of Parliament, then Grenville wasn’t interested.

“Annabelle has quite the update,” Sophie interjected excitedly. “Much more interesting than my usual news on weddings.”

Knightly turned his attention to Annabelle, the quiet one.

“My column this week has received more letters than any other,” she said softly. She held his gaze for a quick second before looking down at the thick stack of correspondence on the table and a sack on the floor at her feet.

He wracked his brain but couldn’t remember what she had submitted—oh, it had been late so he quickly reviewed it for errors of grammar and spelling before rushing it straight to the printers. Her work never required much by way of editing. Not like the epics Grenville submitted or the libel Lady Roxbury often handed in.

“Remind me of the topic again?” he said. Clearly, it had resonated with the readers, so he ought to be aware of it.

She blinked her big blue eyes a few times. Perplexed.

There was a beat of hard silence in the room. Like he had said something wrong. So he gave the room A Look tinged with impatience to remind them that he was an extremely busy man and couldn’t possibly be expected to remember the contents of each article submitted the previous week for a sixteen-page-long newspaper.