A Scandalous Countess: A Novel of the Malloren World (2 page)
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Authors: Jo Beverley
Tags: #Romance, #General, #Contemporary, #Historical, #Fiction
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to author Margaret Evans Porter, who shared her knowledge of Georgian gardens and helped me find out when flowering tobacco came to Britain and how it was used.
Prologue
June 9, 1764
London
“H
uhn…?” Even through slitted eyes, Georgia, Countess of Maybury, could detect early-morning light—something she rarely encountered. Especially when she’d not gone to bed until past two in the morning.
“What?” She moistened her mouth, forcing her eyes fully open, prepared to glower at her lady’s maid.
“Mother?”
She pushed upright, sweeping tendrils of red hair from her face. At nineteen, she was still close enough to the schoolroom to be alarmed.
Loose hair? Why? No cap?
Now she remembered!
Dickon had come to her bed last night.
That was why she’d returned home so early from Lady Walgrave’s ball. He’d insisted that they leave, eventually muttering, “Dammit, Georgie, I want to bed you.”
She’d hoped his startling urgency promised a change, but the messy business had been as dull as always.
Lud!
Here she was, all disheveled in the bed where she’d lain with her husband.
No wonder her mother was frowning—her straight-backed, square-shouldered mother, who could make generals quake if she’d a mind to. What on earth was she doing here?
“Mother? Is this some dream?”
The Countess of Hernescroft sat down on the bed in a rustle of skirts and took Georgia’s hand. “No, daughter. No dream. Rather, a nightmare. You must be strong. Maybury is dead.”
“Maybury? Dead?” The words held no meaning.
“Your husband is dead, killed in a duel fought not two hours ago.”
“Duel? Why would Dickon fight a duel?” Before her mother could answer, Georgia said, “Dead? He can’t be dead. He was here last night!” She pulled back the covers as if Dickon might be hiding under them.
Her mother seized her hands, dragging back her attention. “Death can come in a moment, Georgia. You know that. Maybury is dead and you must rise and do what’s necessary.”
Georgia obeyed the pull of her mother’s hands and climbed out of the big, high bed. But then she broke free.
“Dead? How can he be dead? A duel? No, no. He’s the most easygoing man in the world!”
“Maybury met Sir Charnley Vance this morning and died of a sword to the heart.”
“To the heart?” Georgia whispered, clutching her chest as if she too might be wounded there. Her mind felt blank. She shook her head. “No, no, no. It must be some mistake. A tease. He likes to tease.”
“Would I be party to such a tease? The proof is at hand. They are laying out his body downstairs. You must dress and go down.” The countess spoke to one side. “Something sober.”
“I’m not sure there is any such, milady,” Georgia’s maid replied, her voice seeming far away.
“Then as pale and plain as possible.”
“I need to use the chamber pot,” Georgia said, grasping onto that natural need. See, life was as normal.
“Assist her,” her mother commanded Jane.
“I don’t need assistance.” Georgia hurried into her dressing room and behind the screen.
Dickon dead?
He was only twenty-three. No one died at twenty-three.
Except in wars. Or sometimes of sickness. Or from falling off a horse, or drowning at sea.
Or in a duel.
A sword through the heart…
She sat on the closestool, hugging herself and rocking. Dickon. Her Dickon. Her husband, her friend…
“Milady,” Jane called, “come on out now. Your lady mother awaits.”
“Go away.”
“Your mother—”
“Send her away.”
“Oh, milady, do please come out. You can’t—”
The screen was pulled aside. “Georgia, stop this.” Her mother grabbed her arm and dragged her into the room. “Dress!”
Jane took over more gently. “There, there, milady. Let’s have your nightgown off. I’ve your ivory lustring—”
Georgia twitched free. “Stop it, stop it,
stop it
! You’re both wrong. You have to be wrong!” She escaped clutching hands and ran back through her bedchamber and into her husband’s. “Dickon! Dickon, where are you? You won’t believe what they say.…”
The bed was disordered. See, he’d just risen.
She ran toward his dressing room. “Dickon!”
His valet appeared in the doorway, a shirt over his arm.
“He’s in there?” Georgia stepped forward, but tears ran down Pritchard’s pale cheeks and he shook his head.
She mirrored him, shaking her head. “It isn’t true.”
“It is, milady. His lordship’s…gone. I’m taking down a fresh shirt. The other one…”
Georgia kept shaking her head, but the truth was battering its way in.
Her husband, her friend, her Dickon, was dead.
“No!” She staggered over to clutch one carved bedpost, to stare at his bed, at the dip in the pillow made by his sleeping head, willing him back.
But he’d never be back.
She flung herself on the bed, weeping.
“Leave her for a moment,” the Countess of Hernescroft said, grasping the maid’s arm but looking at her daughter.
Such a radiant beauty, the countess thought, such a blithe spirit, and now this tragedy when she was not yet twenty.
Perhaps it had been a mistake to promote a marriage between Georgia and Maybury when the girl was but sixteen, but she’d been mature beyond her years and already driving men mad. It had seemed simpler to settle her early to a good-natured neighbor only three years older.
Georgia had been delighted to wed the new Earl of Maybury, whom she knew well. She’d been cock-a-hoop to leave the schoolroom and become mistress of her own properties ahead of her older sister. Maybury had never been able to manage her, however. They should have foreseen that and tied her to someone older.
“Shall I get a sleeping draught for her, your ladyship?” whispered the maid.
“Prepare it, but first she must come down to see the body.”
“Oh, your ladyship, is that necessary?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, your ladyship,” the maid said, and left.
Lady Hernescroft grimaced at the thought of the
storm clouds gathering, but then she heard someone else enter the room, and turned.
Thank God. One of her sons, the Honorable Peregrine Perriam, had arrived, slender, elegant, and despite the early hour, perfectly dressed for the occasion in dark gray. Perry was distressingly dilettante, but he was a master at court and Town protocol.
“You must handle matters in society,” she said quietly to him, “and control what is said. Unpleasant suppositions are already stirring.”
“Poor girl.” Perry was fond of his sisters, if perhaps less so of his brothers.
“Is it true, do you think?” she murmured.
“Georgie and Vance? He’s not the type for fashion and boudoirs. Maybury invited him to manly affairs for his sporting abilities, but I doubt Georgie saw much of him.”
“Logic won’t carry weight when she’s indulged in so many follies, some of them with men. You should have steered her to a better path.”
“She had a husband,” he pointed out.
“Who was not up to the task. What details have you gleaned?”
“At this hour, very little. I spoke with the men below. According to Kellew, his second, it happened last night at a tavern. There’d been a race and they were in their cups when Vance sneered at Maybury’s driving skills. Maybury threw his wine in Vance’s face and the duel was on. Dickon Maybury was a dolt of a driver, but I’d have said he was too easy natured to go to swords over it.”
“Quite,” Lady Hernescroft said. “Which is dung that will enable this weed to grow. Trivialities are often used to protect a lady’s name in a duel, and what lady could be the cause here but Maybury’s flighty wife?”
“The cats who envy Georgia’s beauty and charm will delight in this. Wives have fled abroad in such situations.”
“No Perriam will become an outcast. About your
work. Ensure that the right story greets the beau monde when it wakes today. I’ll make sure the gentlemen below see her in all her raw grief and carry that tale to the clubs. Tell her maid to bring her robe.”
She went forward to draw her weeping daughter up from the bed. “Come now, you must want to see him.”
“Must I?” The wide, reddened eyes seemed like those of a child—a shocked child, bewildered by fate.
“You must. No need to dress. See, here’s your maid with your robe.” She herself helped her daughter to put on the pink silk. “No, don’t attempt to tidy her hair. Come along, daughter. I will be with you.”
Perry had gone to his allocated task, and she could trust him there. Lady Hernescroft thanked God her husband was at a race meeting. He was inclined to thunder, but this required a more subtle touch.
A mere two months ago Lady Lowestoft had fled after a similar duel, but all the world had known that she was the killer’s mistress and that she’d run off with him. There was no true similarity, but vicious tongues would find one. Would it be best to take Georgia away from Town or compel her to face the world to put paid to any comparisons?
She guided her trembling daughter along the corridor and down the stairs of the fashionable Mayfair house to where Maybury’s body lay on a chaise. His bloodstained shirt had been changed for a fresh one and his body covered to the neck with a red brocade coverlet. His eyes had been closed, but he did not look as if he slept.
At sight of him, Georgia made a choking sound, and Lady Hernescroft wondered if she would vomit and whether that would have good or bad effect.
Instead her daughter stumbled over, hands outstretched. “Dickon? Oh, Dickon, why?” She brushed brown hair from his temples but then flinched back. “Already cold. Cold!” She collapsed down, pink robe and Titian red hair spread over the crimson brocade. Lady Hernescroft was not poetical, but it was a striking effect.
“Oh, why, Dickon, my darling, why?”
Lady Hernescroft slowly let out a breath. Without any artifice, her daughter was putting on just the right show. Two of the four men were dabbing their eyes, and Kellew was sobbing.