Three Schemes and a Scandal (9 page)

James raised the Ming Vase of Unbreakable Porcelain high above his head. Every gaze was riveted.

Would he truly drop it?!

Charlotte slipped out from behind the curtain, seizing the discrete opportunity to rejoin the group that James was providing.

James let the vase drop. With force. Onto the parquet floor. It promptly shattered.

Charlotte gasped with all the rest. It was the most romantic thing she had ever witnessed. James had destroyed a priceless heirloom to protect her reputation.

As the crowd burst into a froth of exclamations and chatter, Charlotte caught James’s gaze. He winked.

She fell in love.

Then she was promptly distracted by the arrival of Sophie.

“Ah, there you are Charlotte! I have been looking for you. Harriet thought you might have fainted somewhere.”

“I was feeling dizzy when I came in to see the Eversham Motif. All the crowds, you see. I did faint, and luckily Lady Layton and Lord Beaverbrook stayed with me until I recovered myself,” Charlotte explained, knowing they would never contradict the alibi she had just created for them.

“That is too kind of them. We must find them and thank them,” Sophie said.

“Indeed. Although perhaps another time. I am feeling not quite myself,” Charlotte said. Wasn’t that the truth! She had just discovered the most outrageous pleasure she had ever known
and
fallen in love. Somebody fetch the smelling salts.

The Drawing Room

When James called upon Charlotte the following day, he was not surprised at how swiftly and deviously she engineered a moment alone.

After a moment of polite chatter with her and Sophie, her sister-in-law and chaperone, Charlotte gasped, dramatically, apropos of nothing.

“What is it?” Sophie asked suspiciously.

“I forgot to tell you,” Charlotte answered meekly with an adorably sheepish shrug of her shoulders.

“Tell me what?” Sophie asked, warily.

“The nanny wished to speak to you about the baby. I was supposed to tell you at breakfast, but it just slipped my mind. I do hope it wasn’t an urgent matter,” Charlotte said sounding so apologetic that James almost believed it. Almost.

“Excuse me, please,” Sophie said, rushing out of the room. She paused at the doorway to admonish Charlotte to “stay out of trouble” and then she dashed off.

“There was no message from the nanny was there?” he asked.

“Of course not,” she replied, sipping her tea innocently. “What brings you here, James?”

That
was the question. There were two things he had come to discuss.

“I had heard you fainted at the Capulet ball. I thought I might come in to inquire about your health,” he said politely. But her eyes were shining with their secret and he was sure his were as well.

“You are too kind,” she replied demurely.

“How are you feeling today? I hope you are improved.”

“I still feel a touch faint. Perhaps a
walk
in the fresh air and sunshine would prove beneficial to my delicate constitution,” she said.

“What the hell!?”

There was a flash of movement and the strangest sound on the far side of the sitting room; James caught it out of the corner of his eye. He startled and his shock did not cease when his brain fully registered the reason.

“I beg your pardon?” Charlotte inquired, completely oblivious.

“What the hell is a fox doing in your drawing room?” he asked. He eyed it warily as the fox in question stalked over from the settee where it had been napping, only to sit at Charlotte’s feet.

In James’s world, foxes were things one hunted. They were not creatures that inhabited drawing rooms.

“Oh, that’s Penelope. She would probably like a
walk
as well,” Charlotte said. And then the fox uttered a noise like an unearthly combination of a dog’s bark and a baby’s scream. It was ghastly. “That is your second cue to inquire if my fox and I would fancy a stroll in the park with you.”

“Has anyone ever told you how bossy you are?” James asked, deciding to ignore that
she kept a pet fox in the drawing room.
This was Charlotte. He should not be surprised.

“I wouldn’t say that I’m bossy,” Charlotte remarked thoughtfully. “I just always know what to do before anyone else does and I do not keep the information to myself.”

“I don’t know what to say to that,” James replied. And honest to God, he did not.

“Shall I tell you?” she offered obligingly.

“Bossy … bossy …” he muttered. Could he live with that for the rest of his life? Yes, he was considering … that. It was one of the two things he had come to discuss with her.

“But admit it—You find me vastly preferable to one of those vapid, missish creatures that are the ideal of young, aristocratic womanhood,” she said matter-of-factly.

And that was the truth of the matter. He far preferred Charlotte’s bossiness to other women’s missishness.

“Lead the way, Charlotte,” he said. She wrapped a length of blue ribbon around the fox and, after pausing for her gloves and bonnet, they set off for a walk in Hyde Park.

James quickly discovered that with Charlotte even a mere three-block stroll through Mayfair was an event. At least three respectable matrons shrieked upon seeing a fox trotting merrily alongside a young woman, bound only by a silk ribbon.

Grown men crossed the street.

Friends and acquaintances merely waved and nodded rather than pause to converse politely.

“Penelope wards off the dullards,” Charlotte stated simply, and carried on, not at all bothered that people went out of their way to avoid her.

His heart broke for her a little bit. But he also admired her brilliance. After all, he didn’t want to talk to any of those boring acquaintances who had avoided them. Instead, the swarm of pedestrians parted like the Red Sea as she happily strolled along.

When they got to the park, the fox slowed her pace to stop and sniff every blade of grass, shrubbery and pebble.

“I’m afraid I have bad news,” he told Charlotte frankly.

“Ooh,” she gasped, and her eyes widened.

“Why are you excited by that?”

“I take bad news as a challenge,” she replied with a shrug, which gave him pause.

“Anyway,” James said, “Dudley has been mentioning a curious thing he spied at the Capulet ball. He was part of the later tour of the Eversham Motif, as you’ll recall. He was also not distracted by my breaking a priceless vase from the Ming Dynasty.”

“Dudley, that loathsome pet-eating cork brain, is usually not interested in anything but himself. I cannot imagine what he saw. It should go without saying that I have an incredibly active imagination.”

“He claims to have seen a particular young lady emerge from a hiding spot behind the curtains,” James said. Some of the irritation he felt about the situation seeped into his voice. He wanted Charlotte, but not because the Despicable Dudley was spreading damaging rumors that would force his hand.

“Yes, I had gone to get a spot of fresh air after my fainting spell. Sometimes, smelling salts are just not sufficient,” Charlotte replied, not at all bothered because she had what she
assumed
was a perfectly good reason and alibi. Perhaps it was. But Dudley was despicable. He was capable of evil.

James stopped and tugged Charlotte’s wrist so she faced him.

“Charlotte, we might have been seen,” he said urgently. Did she not realize the implications of that?

She sighed impatiently.

“James. Dudley is a notorious bounder whom nobody likes. Also, I put it about that Lady Layton and Lord Beaverbrook were with me as I had fainted in the library. You and I both know that they will support that story with their last dying breath.”

It was his turn to sigh impatiently. She just didn’t realize what he was getting at, did she? The “M” word burned on his tongue.

If necessity wouldn’t compel her, he would have to resort to revealing his feelings, which were, at present:
I am in equal measures enamored and terrified of you. But enamored is winning.

“Well, well. Speak of the devil,” Charlotte said, glancing at someone past his shoulder. She called out: “Hello Lady Layton! Lord Layton!”

James groaned. Did Charlotte really just call her over—with her cuckolded husband? He had planned a romantic walk in the park and now he would have to politely chatter with a woman from whom he’d heard every panting breath and call to God during an adulterous romp. Perhaps Charlotte wasn’t quite
fun
all the time, but she certainly was never dull.

“Lady Brandon. I hope you are recovering nicely,” Lady Layton said kindly. It seemed Charlotte’s rumor had reached her.

“Indeed. I cannot thank you enough for your tending to me. I don’t know what I would have done had you not availed yourself to come to my aid,” Charlotte said, smiling sweetly. Lady Layton bit her lip, obviously keen to understand
why
she had been dragged into this ridiculous tale. Yet it was impossible with her husband standing on.

“Very kind of you, dear,” Lord Layton mumbled and patted his wife absentmindedly on her arm. He was old enough to be her father. James saw the romp in the library in a new light.

“It was my pleasure,” Lady Layton replied graciously.

“And what a pleasure it was,” Charlotte said sweetly, which caused Lady Layton to redden and James to cough.

“I say, is that a dog?” Lord Layton inquired.

“It’s a fox. My pet fox,” Charlotte replied.

“Is it friendly?” Lady Layton asked, though she held herself at a distance.

“Are you
friendly,
Penelope?” Charlotte inquired of the animal. On cue, Penelope growled and gave another one of those wounded dog, baby scream barks.

Both Lord and Lady Layton visibly shuddered and bid their farewells.

“I trained her to do that,” Charlotte explained after they had left.

“Let me guess: You stumbled upon her, injured and alone in the forest as dusk was settling,” James said, revealing his startling insight into the inner workings of Charlotte’s mind. “Instead of letting nature take its course you brought her home, swaddled in your finest shawl, and personally tended to her and tamed her.”

It should be noted that Charlotte did not contradict a word. Not one word.

“You should have seen her, James. I found her, wounded as if a hawk had caught then released her. She was so lonely on my little patch of land,” Charlotte said, referring to the ten crucial acres of land that were part of her dowry. They comprised the only accessible part of the Avonlea River which went through their county … and happened to be smack in the middle of the Duke of Brandon’s holdings and James’s father’s estate.

For the first time, James paused to question why Brandon had added that portion to her dowry. Did he mean for her to marry Gideon? It was the only logical explanation. His father would be damn pleased if it became a part of the Hastings holdings.

“I could not leave her to her fate and let Nature take her course,” Charlotte said, affectionately patting the creature on its head.

“Bossy … bossy …” he murmured again. “Lady Charlotte Brandon, who knows better than Nature Herself.”

That was the woman he was thinking of marrying.

He ought to speak to her brother.

Or to a doctor.

Or the lady herself.

“Charlotte,” he said in his most devastatingly rakish voice. He paused in his walking and clasped her hand in his, turning her to face him.

“James,” she replied in a matching tone.

He searched her blue eyes, seeking a hint of her feelings. Was it mad of him to consider making her his wife? He didn’t think so, because he thought he might just be the only man for her. The question was: Did she think the same?

He knew his days with her would be spent in a constant state of anticipation. Nights with her would give deep satisfaction to them both. With Charlotte, he would never be bored. With him, she wouldn’t be stifled.

“Charlotte,” he said again because he didn’t know where to begin. It didn’t seem she would marry him out of a sense of propriety.

It would have to be for love.

He didn’t know the words for asking about that.

“Charlotte.”

“James,” she repeated. He detected mirth in her eyes. And then panic. “Penelope!”

The fox had apparently spied a squirrel, and apparently decided it would like to pursue that squirrel.

Charlotte pursued her pet fox.

James pursued Charlotte—but quickly overtook her thanks to his superior masculine strength and speed (and lack of skirts to tangle around his ankles). He shifted his sights to that damned fox, knowing that recapturing the animal would endear him to Charlotte forever.

Ah, courtship.

James reconsidered this method of courtship when he had to chase the fox through a thicket of shrubs and other brush, an irritating amount that bore thorns.

What ever happened to flowers? Or poetry?

Where the devil was a pack of bloodthirsty hounds when one needed them?

“Penelope!” Charlotte yelled. “James!”

He spied Penelope—standing possessively over the squirrel. When she saw him advancing upon her she emitted a low growl.

He dared to stalk closer.

What a man did for love,
he thought with a sigh.

“It’s all right, Penelope, I’m friendly,” he said. With that, she growled again and uttered that horrid shriekish bark. Then she began wolfing down her prize as he advanced.

When he was just a few paces away, the fox picked up its quarry and dashed off. James followed, to the sound of Charlotte tearing through the brush after him. He glanced over his shoulder, seeing her cheeks flushed with the exertion, her eyes bright and determined, her hair tumbling around her shoulders, her dress torn and muddied at the hem.

She was breathtaking.

But he could not dwell on that now. Not when Penelope had taken to the Serpentine.

When he awoke this morning, James did not anticipate that he would discover just how well foxes could swim.