The Perks of Being a Beauty (11 page)

“Thank you, Miss Smithson,” Quentin said with a slight bow. “Now, wish us luck.”

“You’ve got it,” Harriet said before shooing them through the doorway and shutting the door behind them.

When the door opened, Mrs. Smithson, who had been in mid-tirade, stopped speaking and stared. “Well, it’s about time,” she said, crossing her arms over her ample bosom. “What do you have to say for yourself, Miss Snowe?” she demanded. “Because I hope you know that I won’t keep a light-skirt in my employ no matter how much town bronze she might be able to promise my daughter.”

“Now, Kitty,” Mr. Smithson said with a wince, “there’s no need for that.”

“Mrs. Smithson,” Quentin said before Amelia could even respond, “I’m afraid I must ask you to apologize to my fiancée. She really does not deserve that sort of disrespect from you. Especially given how hard she’s worked to see to Harriet’s future.”

“Fiancée?” the older woman demanded.

“Congratulations, the both of you,” Mr. Smithson said, breaking out into a huge grin. “This is wonderful news, make no mistake.”

“But,” Mrs. Smithson began. “How could you? After all we’ve done for you! You ungrateful girl!”

She raised her hand as if she was going to slap Amelia, but Mr. Smithson was there first. He grabbed her hand in midair and held her fast. “No, Kitty. That’s not the way. If you wish to blame anyone, blame me. I’m the one who invited Lord Quentin. We were working on a business deal and I thought he might enjoy the party seeing as how he knew Miss Snowe from before.”

Mrs. Smithson’s eyes grew round. “A business deal?” she demanded. “He is a duke’s son! A duke’s son I wished to pair with our Harriet! He’s been tempted away by this hussy and our Harriet will be an old maid.”

“Mrs. Smithson, really,” Quentin said with a frown. “If you continue to speak of Miss Snowe in those terms I will be forced to take action against you.”

No longer frightened of losing her position, Amelia allowed herself to ask the question that had plagued her since she’d first been hired by the Smithsons. “Mrs. Smithson, why do you despise me so? I thought it might have been because you wished to ensure that I knew my place, but it seems to be more than that. Isn’t it?”

The other woman’s lips were pursed so tightly they must have pained her. Still, she glared at Amelia and said, “Because you’re just the sort of girl who made my life miserable when I made my come-out years ago. I know your type, Miss Snowe. You taunt and belittle and demean until the object of your scorn is utterly devastated.”

“Kitty,” Mr. Smithson said, slipping an arm around his wife’s shoulders, “you never told me this. I thought you enjoyed your time in London. You certainly seemed to be enjoying it when we met.”

Mrs. Smithson shook her head. “By that time I’d learned to stand up for myself, but I never forgot what those girls did to me. I thought by hiring Miss Snowe, I’d finally turned the tables,” she continued, her eyes bright with unshed tears, “but she’s behaved true to type and has stolen the handsomest man here for herself instead of leaving him to Harriet as she should have done.”

“I am sorry for your bad experiences in the
ton
, Mrs. Smithson,” Quentin said with a troubled expression, “but Amelia wasn’t even out of the nursery when that happened. She can’t be expected to pay the price for the girls who shunned you in your youth.” Amelia would have thrown her arms around his neck, but she didn’t want to give her erstwhile employer any more ammunition.

“And I’m not sure what gave you the notion that I might be interested in Harriet,” Quentin continued, squeezing Amelia’s hand, “but she’s far too young for the likes of me. And if I don’t miss my guess she’s interested in someone else altogether.”

“Never you mind, young fellow,” Mr. Smithson said with a nod. “You’ve nothing to apologize for. Kitty will change her tune soon enough when she hears what I’ve got to say to her.”

Turning her attention back to her husband, Mrs. Smithson demanded, “Well, what is it?”

“Young Mr. Carstairs has asked me for Harriet’s hand and I’ve given him my permission to pay her his addresses.” Mr. Smithson smiled. He was clearly pleased about the match, as was Amelia. She had seen Harriet and Mr. Carstairs chatting with each other just yesterday and they had seemed quite compatible.

At the news, Mrs. Smithson gasped. “Oh! Oh dear! How wonderful! Robert, why didn’t you tell me before?” she demanded with her arms akimbo. “I shall have to begin preparations immediately. Do you suppose Cook still has the recipe for wedding cake that I gave her last year when we had hopes of Mr.… oh, never mind. I’ll go check with her at once.”

Smiling, which was something she rarely indulged in, she turned to Amelia. “I am sorry for being so difficult. It’s just that Harriet is the only daughter I have so I wish the very best for her. Carstairs is the heir to an earldom. Did you know?”

Amelia might have answered, but Mrs. Smithson was already leaving the room.

“That was … odd,” Amelia said with a dazed expression.

“Indeed,” Quentin said with a shake of his head. “Now, Smithson, I hope you won’t mind, but Miss Snowe and I mean to leave for Scotland tonight. I could get up to London and purchase a special license, I suppose, but I don’t want to be out of her company for even that long. We’ve spent enough time apart to last us both a lifetime.”

“I understand, my boy,” Smithson said, clapping Quentin on the back. “When you find the one lady for you, you don’t wish to waste a minute.”

Then, perhaps seeing the look that passed between them, Smithson said, “I’ve just remembered something I need to discuss with my wife. If you’ll just excuse me.”

Amelia barely heard him leave the room before she was in Quentin’s arms.

After a moment, she asked, “Did you mean what you said? About not wanting to be parted from me anymore?”

“Of course,” he said, kissing her on the end of her nose. “In fact, I greatly resent the amount of time it will take you to pack your bags.”

“Well,” she said, eyeing him speculatively, “I suppose it wouldn’t be too terribly scandalous if you were to follow me to my bedchamber and help me with my packing. I don’t have a maid after all, so there’s no one to embarrass you.”

“Your bedchamber wouldn’t have a bed in it,” Quentin asked, the intense look in his eyes making her shiver. “Would it? Because if so, I could think of things we might do in addition to packing. We are, after all, betrothed now.”

“I like the way you think,” she said with a grin. “And there must be
some
benefits to being betrothed, else why would people bother?”

“Why indeed?” he asked against her lips. “Though I’ve just remembered something.”

Amelia pulled back. “What is it?” she asked, her eyes worried.

“It’s just this,” Quentin said, softly, kissing first her eyelids, then her nose, then her cheeks. “I love you to distraction, Miss Amelia Snowe. And I cannot wait to marry you.”

At his words, she melted into him in relief. “I was afraid you were going to cry off.”

“Not on your life,” he responded with a playful growl. “Now, don’t you have something to say to me?”

Amelia smiled, so full of happiness that she wondered it didn’t shine from her like rays from the sun. “Lord Quentin Fortescue,” she said, placing her hands on either side of his face, and pulling his mouth down to meet hers, “I love you as much today as I did all those years ago in Cornwall. And I don’t intend to ever let you go again.”

“You’d better not, my beauty,” he said, tilting his mouth over hers. “We have a great deal of time to make up for.”

“Then I suggest we start,” Amelia said. Right now.

Read on for an excerpt from the upcoming novel by Manda Collins

WHY DUKES SAY I DO

Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

Prologue

“Your grace,” Lady Isabella Wharton coaxed, from the other side of the Ormonde library, “really, you must put the knife down. Whatever will your grandmama think?”

But the Duke of Ormonde, accustomed to ignoring his family’s dictates, didn’t lower the knife at his wife’s throat. “Who gives a hang what that old bat thinks?” he demanded, his red-rimmed eyes devoid of conscience, his normally handsome visage turned ugly with anger. “She’s the one who made me marry this miserable bitch. And look where that’s gotten me.”

As the miserable bitch in question was Isabella’s younger sister, she could hardly be expected to agree with him. Perdita, the youngest daughter of the Earl of Ramsden, had married the young Duke of Ormonde in a ceremony that had rivaled the royal wedding a decade before. Isabella had been hopeful that her sister’s marriage would be successful where hers had failed. Yet here they were now, a few years later and the groom was threatening the bride with a knife. Hardly the stuff dreams were made of.

“Won’t you let me go, dearest?” Perdita asked, her voice surprisingly calm as she held her chin up higher to escape the prick of the blade. A ringlet of her auburn curls brushed the knife’s edge as she trembled in her husband’s arms. “You know you don’t mean me any harm.”

“Put the knife down, your grace,” said the fourth member of their mad party, Mrs. Georgina Mowbray, whose husband had also been less than ideal. Her brisk tone had been honed through years following the drum. Her petite stature suggested a daintiness that the blonde’s determination belied. “Killing your wife will not make you feel any better.”

The sisters had befriended the Army widow when they’d all three been on the same committee for the Ladies’ Charitable Society to which they belonged. Perdita had come to the meeting with a bruise on her face and a nonsensical story about falling into a door, and Georgie had guessed the truth of the situation at once. When she’d revealed her own history with the celebrated war hero who had been her husband—a history in which the hero had battered his own wife in every possible way before dying in glory on the battlefield—the three women had forged an unshakeable bond.

“She wouldn’t be able to leave me,” the duke said with the twisted logic that only madmen and drunkards could understand. “She was fine before the two of you got hold of her with your lies about me.”

Isabella nearly screamed in frustration. This was her fault. All her fault. Because Perdita could hardly leave her husband—the laws were made by men, and as such stacked in their own favor when it came to things like wives, who were little more than property in the eyes of the law—the three ladies had thought they might be able to approach the duke in such a way that he would agree to treat Perdita with the dignity she deserved as his wife. The idea was laughable now, of course, but Isabella had not known the extent of the duke’s madness at the time. Her own husband had been a brute, but he’d been fairly easy to understand. Ormonde’s possessive nature coupled with his brutality was far more dangerous than Wharton had ever been, she saw now.

“I would never leave you,” Perdita said, her voice trembling a little as her strength began to flag. “You know I love you.”

Isabella could see her sister was nearing the breaking point. She exchanged a look with Georgie to see if she’d noticed.

She had.

Wordlessly, Georgie glanced down at her left hand, which held her reticule. With her other hand she formed a pistol with her thumb and forefinger. Oh God, Isabella thought. She’s brought her gun.

When their friend had first informed the sisters that she carried a small pistol with her wherever she went, they’d been both fascinated and slightly frightened. Neither of them had ever had anything to do with firearms. Their father and brothers hunted, of course. As did their husbands. But it was hardly something that they’d been interested in. To Isabella’s mind it was rather revolting to think of animals being chased and killed solely for sport. But Georgie had been matter-of-fact about the weapon. Following the army, she’d often found herself in situations where her safety was in question. The pistol was a practical means of ensuring that safety. Her father, also an army man, had taught Georgie how to use it, and when she’d married, he’d given her the ladies’ weapon as a gift. Fortunately for Perdita, she’d come to their meeting with Ormonde today ready to ensure their safety.

Swallowing, Isabella realized that if Georgie were to get the gun out of her reticule, she’d need to distract Ormonde’s attention away from her.

“Ormonde,” she began, then deciding that she might need to seem more familiar, she used his given name. “Gervase, we aren’t here to take Perdita away from you. We simply wish for you to perhaps be a bit gentler with her.”

“Why?” the duke demanded, his eyes suspicious. “She’s not gentle with me. She scratched my face earlier. Damn her.” He gripped Perdita tighter, and she whimpered.

The nail marks on his cheek bore testament to his tale, but like any abuser he saw the failing as hers not his, conveniently forgetting that he’d been trying to rape her at the time. Isabella knew that if they didn’t get her sister out of his arms and out of his house soon, he would do worse still.

Needing to make him loosen his grip, she decided to improvise. “You should be gentle with her because she might be carrying the next Duke of Ormonde.” It wasn’t true. Not that she knew of anyway, but since one of the failings that Ormonde laid at Perdita’s door was her failure to give him an heir, Isabella guessed that he might be convinced to let her go if he thought he might be endangering his child.

She risked stepping forward as she watched the revelation sink in. “There, now,” she said, “you don’t wish to harm your heir, do you?”

But she’d miscalculated. Rather than being transported with joy, Ormonde instead became angry. “What? Is this true?” he asked, turning Perdita in his arms so that he could look her in the face. “You lied to me?” he demanded, the knife trapped between Perdita’s arm and Ormonde’s fist while he began to shake her. “You lying bitch! You told me it wasn’t possible!” he cried.

“No!” Isabella shouted, rushing forward to pull him away from her sister. “Stop it! Stop it!”

Then several things happened at once.

Surprised by the deadweight of Isabella on his back, Ormonde let go of Perdita and stumbled backward, taking Isabella with him.