Simply Scandalous Read online

  Juliet gasped. "The Duke of Auckland! I danced with his Grace twice last week at Almack's! An amiable old gentleman. Indeed, I was terrified he might make me an offer. Some older gentlemen do seem to prefer the plainer girls, you know, especially when they are in the market for a second wife. Well, perhaps they don't prefer us exactly." She smiled ruefully. "Perhaps it's just that they have learned not to trust the really pretty ones!"

  Stacy, who ought to have been accustomed to such frank talk from his best friend's sister, found himself blushing. "My dear Juliet," he stammered, "you are anything but plain."

  "Thank you for your gallantry," she answered with a faint smile. "But I know very well I am not a beauty like your cousin Serena. All the same, I expect I shall manage to find a nice, quiet, respectable husband. Don't look so shocked," she teased him. "Someday, someone will make me an offer, despite what you might think, Mister Calverstock. I just hope it won't be his Grace of Auckland-I absolutely refuse to marry a man old enough to be my grandfather! I must say," she continued in a more serious tone, "I can scarcely believe that Auckland has a son capable of such outrageous conduct! Why on earth would Lord Swale want to harm my brother? Has ... has Cary done something terrible to Lord Swale?"

  Stacy snorted. "On the contrary, Cary has honored his lordship too much by challenging him to a curricle race. Cary's chestnuts against his lordship's grays. If it is any consolation, I ... I don't think Swale wanted Cary dead."

  `Just out of commission for the race," she retorted. "The shameful coward! Someone should teach this Swale a valuable lesson about good Ton and bad Ton."

  "I intend to," said Stacy resolutely, inspired by her flashing eyes and heightened color. "Tomorrow ..." A glance at the pretty ormolu clock on the mantel forced him to correct himself. "In a few hours, I shall ride down to the yard of the Black Lantern Inn, where everyone will be assembled for the race at the ungodly hour of seven o'clock. My dear Julie, I mean to call him out! "

  "Call him out?" she scoffed. "Is that the best revenge your feeble brain can invent? What good is a duel to us? There will always be people who say that my brother was the coward for forfeiting the race. And if you were to shoot his lordship, you would have to leave England forever, and I would miss you, Stacy." She regarded him intently, her eyes dark with feeling.

  "Would you-would you really miss me, Julie?" he cried, the pain in his nose forgotten.

  "Of course," she said briskly. "Quite awfully. What a pity you never learned to drive properly! If you had, you might take Cary's place and beat Lord Swale at his own game."

  "I'm afraid I would only disgrace myself," he said ruefully. "Worse yet, I might damage your brother's chestnuts. Then my crime would throw Swale's perfidy quite into the shade!"

  Juliet smiled thinly. "Cary will owe a great deal of money, I suppose. What was the wager?"

  "Now, look here," he protested. "Leave all that to me."

  "How much?" she said, tapping her foot. "How much, or I swear I shall never call you Stacy again!"

  "Five hundred pounds," he said weakly.

  "Good Lord!" she whispered, horrified. "Why are men such fools? For five hundred pounds, I could have a gown encrusted with diamonds and pearls. Encrusted, I tell you!"

  "I should be happy to pay Lord Swale," he said uncertainly.

  "Indeed?" she murmured. "You must have a stomach lined with copper! The thought of paying him a farthing, let alone a monkey, makes me positively ill. Still, we must pay him his money, the nasty cheat." She stood up abruptly, and he correctly interpreted this as his dismissal. She extended her hand to him, and, to her surprise, he bent over it and kissed it. They had always shaken hands before.

  "I think you are quite fuddled, Stacy," she remarked as she walked with him as far as the stairs. "Go home and go to bed. And you needn't trouble yourself about the money. I'll send Bernard 'round with it. The Black Lantern Inn, you said? Seven o'clock? You can see yourself out, can't you?"

  Before he could answer, she was already dashing toward the staircase that led to the third story of the town house, where the bedrooms were located, leaving him to make his way down to the front door on his own. "Good night, Julie," he called after her.

  "'Night, Stacy," she called back carelessly, and Stacy realized that, whatever had happened to his own heart that night, her feelings for him remained unchanged.

  When the surgeon arrived shortly thereafter, he found that not only was Cary's arm broken in two places, but several ribs were cracked as well. "Mr. Calverstock thinks they weren't trying to kill him, Mr. Norton," Juliet told him, blinking back tears. "What do you think?"

  "I've seen better looking corpses, Miss Wayborn," the surgeon replied grimly. "But Mr. Cary won't give in so easily," he added with an encouraging smile. "He's a Wayborn, isn't he?"

  When he had gone, Juliet dried her eyes and instructed the footman to ask Bernard, Gary's groom, to come up from the stables.

  Tom was shocked. "Oh, he wouldn't come into the house, Miss Julie! He'd have to be dragged in chains, and even then, he'd say it wasn't right for a stableboy to set foot in the house."

  "Nonsense," said Juliet. "Tell Bernard if he doesn't come to me at once, I shall be forced to go down to the stables in my nightgown and bare feet."

  This threat was enough to bring the reluctant groom not only into the house, but up the stairs to Miss Juliet's bedroom, where the young lady showed him the battered body of his unconscious master.

  "Good God almighty!" the Irishman breathed, crossing himself. "I never thought I'd live to see the young master lying so still and the breath of him rattling like the wind through the trees."

  "Listen to me carefully, Bernard," she said. "A foul insect called Lord Swale has done this to Master Cary."

  "You don't say, Miss-and he a lordship!"

  "There was to have been a curricle race tomorrow. Our chestnuts, Bernard, against his lordship's grays. Swale must have known he'd never beat my brother honorably, so he hired two lowborn curs to cripple him the night before the race. Now, would you say that Lord Swale is a coward?"

  "I would so, Miss Julie!" said Bernard stoutly. "And a damned dirty coward besides, begging your pardon for the strong language."

  "Bernard," she said, her eyes gleaming, "I am going to teach this dishonorable wretch a lesson about the Wayborns that he will never forget. And you're going to help me."

  "Well now, Miss Julie," he said, scratching his shiny bald head. "Sure I'd not advise a wee lass to be going up against the likes of himself, and he the devil's own limb."

  "I don't care if he's Satan's hound," responded the wee lass. "He's grist for the mill now, and I'm the miller."

  "More grist to his lordship than you'd think, Miss Julie," said Bernard coolly. "Seven foot high, if he's an inch, with a blacker heart than Henry Tudor. Sure, it's your own darling neck he'd be after breaking, Miss Julie, and never a pang of conscience."

  `It's very simple, Bernard," Juliet said firmly, cutting through this Gaelic digression. "If Cary doesn't show up for that race tomorrow, he'll be the laughingstock of London."

  Bernard sighed. "Faith, Miss Julie. Sure, it's only a

  "Only a race! Bernard Corcoran, I want you to look at your master lying there bandaged from head to toe, and then tell me it's only a race! He could very well be crippled for life. He could die!" She shook her head vehemently. "No, Bernard. It was only a race, but now it's a matter of honor. I may be a wee lass, but I'm still a Wayborn; Lord Swale will rue the day he ever wronged my family."

  Bernard accepted the inevitability of trouble and sorrow with a shrug. "Right you are, Miss Julie. But what's to be done, short of murder?"

  "There's only one thing that can be done, Bernard. Cary has to show up for the race tomorrow, and he has to win."

  "Are you wise, Miss?" Bernard spluttered. "Begging your pardon, Miss Julie, but could it be that you've taken leave of your senses? Sure, your brother's half-killed with a broken arm."

  "I shall have to go in his place, of
course. Thank you for pointing that out to me."

  "Oh, now, Miss," Bernard protested. "His lordship the Marquess would never consent to such a thing as that, racing against a female. He's not what you'd call modern."

  "So,"Juliet said, smiling calmly, "you would advise me not to tell his lordship that I'm a mere female? I should let him think that I'm Master Cary? What an excellent plan. Bernard, you are an absolute mastermind."

  Bernard guffawed. "Begging your pardon, Miss Julie, but there's no mistaking your shape for the young

  "They'll think I'm Gary indeed," said Juliet reasonably, "if I have his hat, his coat, his spectacles, his curricle, his horses ... and his groom."

  "Oh, now, Miss," Bernard said softly, his eyes glowing, "that'd be a raking grand humiliation for his lordship, and no mistake. Though to be honest, I don't know how you'd beat them grays atall."

  Juliet stiffened. "I drive just as well as Cary. Indeed, I've beaten him dozens of times when we've raced in the country, thank you very much, Mr. Bernard Corcoran."

  Bernard shook his head regretfully. "Aye, but-"

  "And Lord Swale obviously knew himself outmatched," she interrupted him to point out. "Why else would he hire mercenaries to break Cary's arm? I will win that race tomorrow, Bernard. I will win it because I have to. I will win it because the honor of the Wayborns is at stake. I shall be like one of the Furies of ancient myth."

  "You'd not be content to roast him alive with your eyes then?" he asked hopefully.

  "No, Bernard, I wouldn't," she said firmly. "Like all swine, his lordship deserves to be roasted properlyin a fire with the sharp end of a skewer up his backside!" She cleared her throat delicately. "Begging your pardon for the strong language," she added without a hint of contrition.

  Geoffrey Ambler, Marquess of Swale, could not help his looks, but even the Honorable Mr. Alexander Devize, Swale's closest friend, was forced to admit that the Duke of Auckland's heir had done much to deserve his reputation as a brutish lout. His lordship's palate could discern no appreciable difference between claret and Madeira; he stubbornly maintained in the face of all evidence to the contrary that Shakespeare was the horse that had won the Lincolnshire in the year '03; and he had the uncanny habit of knocking flat anyone who irritated him, though to his credit, his abuse had never yet extended to servants, animals, children, or females.

  While admitting to his friend's many faults, Mr. Devize steadfastly maintained that deep inside the rough exterior of this undisciplined brawler, beat the heart of an English gentleman. True, Swale was ignorant, obstinate, and completely unable to control his fiery temper, but this was entirely due to the fact that his lordship had been cursed at birth with a head of bright red hair. As a child, his natural cheerfulness and easy generosity of spirit had been crushed by constant teasing, and almost through no fault of his own, the young Marquess had become that old cliche, a redhead with a foul temper.

  The Swale-Devize alliance had begun at Eton College, where they had roomed together. For many months, Alexander Devize had regarded this arrangement as one of life's unfortunate incidents, but in the Michaelmas Term of 1805, his opinion changed abruptly when an upperclassman had attempted, innocently enough, to attach the nickname of Ginger to the red-haired Marquess. Despite being half the boy's size and three years younger, Swale had knocked him flat. No one had ever dared to Ginger his lordship after that, and Alex Devize began to find him an interesting object.

  Because of their friendship and despite the certainty of Swale losing this morning's race to Cary Wayborn's magnificent chestnuts, Alex had bet Stacy Calverstock five hundred pounds that his friend would be victorious.

  Swale, who had bet the same amount on himself, likewise was under no illusion that he would win. "I don't say I'll win, Alex," he kept saying as they waited for Cary Wayborn to appear in the yard of the Black Lantern Inn, "but, by God, I shall make a damned fine showing! "

  "It was a great compliment to be challenged this year," Alex reminded him, holding his bay mare steady next to his friend's curricle. 'Win or lose, old man, you are now one of the Select."

  Swale reddened with pleasure. High spirits had made his face tolerably pleasant this morning, but even his friends agreed that under no circumstances, was the Swale countenance ever worth looking at. There was too much of the bulldog in his short nose and fighting chin for him ever to be called handsome, and more often than not, he was not in high spirits anyway. He was usually found with an ugly scowl on his face, as though being born rich and titled were an injustice he could scarcely bear.

  "I'm betting on you, Geoffrey," Alex said, slapping the Marquess on his broad, strong back. "If any man in England can beat Wayborn, it's you."

  Swale grinned. "You like my chances then?"

  "He's won eight races in a row," Alex pointed out. "No one can win all the time, not even Cary Wayborn. Today he falls."

  "Damned peculiar, ain't it, that he never bets more than five hundred pounds? Fellow could be rich as Midas if he'd learn to lay a proper wager."

  "Apparently, there was a vow to his Mamma on her deathbed," Alex explained with a shrug. "Can't be helped. Economy seems to be catching on with younger sons in this our Silver Age. My own brother never bets at all."

  Swale was appalled. "What, never?"

  "We're all thoroughly ashamed of him. You don't have a brother, do you?"

  "No."

  "Bloody nuisances," Alex said with the air of a learned doctor establishing an absolute fact. "Mine's raison d'etre seems to be pointing out all my flaws to our father. He rather breathes down my neck, if you see what I mean. Really, younger sons ought to be strangled at birth."

  "I'm rather fond of my sister," said Swale a little stiffly, not being an advocate of strangling one's relatives at birth or, indeed, at any time thereafter. Abruptly, he took out his watch again. "I just hope I acquit myself creditably in the next two hours. God knows I don't expect to win."

  "My dear Geoffrey, we've all lost to him. There's no shame in it. But, by God, I hope you beat him! " Alex added with feeling.

  Swale grinned irrepressibly. "By God, so do I. I should dearly love to fling that hideous purple hat of his into the dust."

  Alex took out his timepiece and studied it carefully. "My watch must be losing time," he remarked, frowning. "Wayborn is never late."

  "There's Calverstock," said Swale, catching sight of his opponent's friend arriving mounted on a tall roan. "Where the devil is Wayborn?" he called irritably as Stacy Calverstock approached his curricle. "Not going to be late, I hope?"

  "Why should my friend be late?" Stacy demanded in cold fury. Unfortunately, cold fury made his voice high and wavering, almost shrill. "Why should my friend, Mr. Cary Wayborn, be late, my lord? Is there some particular reason why your lordship would think Mr. Wayborn should be late?"

  Swale scowled at him. The fellow was talking nonsense. Swale had little enough patience for people who talked sense. For a man of his temperament, there could be no enduring people who talked nonsense. "What the devil are you blathering on about, Calverstock?" he bellowed, his gingery brows coming together in a fierce scowl. "He bloody well had better not be late; that's all I have to say!"

  "Your lordship seems certain that my friend will be late," Stacy shrilled at him. "Pray, why is that, my lord?"

  Swale was unable to put a finger on what it was exactly, but something in Calverstock's address made him want to pull the other man off his horse and knock him flat.

  But before he could act on his impulse, a cheer rose from the assembly. Gary Wayborn's chestnuts cut through the yard just as the bells of St. Martin's began to peal. Stacy gave a start and swung his horse around to get a better look at the tall, slim figure in the curricle. It wore the bizarre purple tricorn; the purple greatcoat, still damp from Tom's not entirely successful efforts to remove the bloodstains; and the lavender spectacles, but there was no evidence of a broken arm.

  Stacy's mouth fell open. "What the devil-" he murmured.

 
Juliet Wayborn had never been so frightened in her life, and that she would, at some point very soon, disgorge her breakfast of tea and toast seemed inevitable. Gentlemen, many of whom she knew at least slightly, were wedged into the yard in startling numbers, and all of them seemed to be drinking ale from hideous pewter tankards. Drunken laughter and the odor of tobacco filled the air. Men, she decided, should never be permitted out of doors without the supervision of some respectable female. Away from their mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters, they apparently threw off all the restraints of civilized society and became no better than the savages of Borneo. It depressed her spirits beyond description to know that her future husband-her nice, quiet, respectable husband-very likely was among the crowd assembled in the yard of the Black Lantern Inn, for these gentlemen were, she was to understand, the cream of English manhood. Many of the drunken brutes were on horseback and clearly intended to follow the two curricles all the way to-

  A wave of fresh fear washed over her, and she felt a burst of cold perspiration in her armpits. For the love of God, she had no idea where they were racing to! This tidbit of information, which she had never bothered her head about before, now seemed rather a necessity, and her failure to procure it was a glaring flaw in an otherwise magnificent plan. Brighton, she knew, was her brother's favorite destination, but the Black Lantern Inn was on the Colchester Road, which ran northeast out of London into Essex. Could they actually be racing to Colchester?

  "Bernard!" she croaked to the groom standing on the board behind her seat, brandishing his whip like any good petit tigre. "Bernard, where do I go?"

  The Irishman misunderstood the question. `Just you line up alongside himself the lordship there, Miss Julie," he called over her shoulder in a low voice that made the chestnuts prick up their ears attentively. Before she could ask him again, he had already turned to the crowd and begun employing his whip to keep the chestnuts' heads clear of the traffic, and there was nothing she could do but bring her brother's curricle alongside his lordship's grays.