Scandal Wears Satin. Loretta Chase

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СКАЧАТЬ to do something naughty when her mother wasn’t looking. Apparently, Adderley saw his chance and turned a minor naughty into a major one. Apparently.” She frowned. There was something wrong with that scene. But she’d have to work it out later.

      The priority was the man standing a few inches from her. He seemed to have stopped breathing fire.

      “I’ll have to call him out, the swine,” he said. “Which means going off into some dismal wood at the crack of dawn. It’s the very devil on one’s boots, morning dew, not to mention the fuss Olney makes about gunpowder on my shirt cuffs.”

      Sophy grabbed his lapels. “Listen to me,” she said.

      He looked down at her hands in the same puzzled way he’d looked at his arm before.

      But his lordship was not the world’s deepest thinker, and a great deal could be counted on to puzzle him. She gave his lapels a shake. “Just listen,” she said. “You can’t kill him in cold blood.”

      “Whyever not?”

      Ye gods grant me patience. “Because he’ll be dead,” she said as patiently as she could, “and Lady Clara’s reputation will be stained forever. Do not, I pray you, do anything, Lord Longmore. Leave this to us.”

      “Us.”

      “My sisters and me.”

      “What do you propose? Dressing him to death? Tying him up and making him listen to fashion descriptions?”

      “If necessary,” she said. “But pray, don’t trouble yourself about it.”

      He stared at her.

      “Whatever you do, do not injure, maim, or kill him,” she said, in case she hadn’t made everything perfectly clear. “The right uppercut was excellent. It expressed magnificently a brother’s outrage—”

      “Did it, by Jove. You wouldn’t by any chance be composing your eulogy on my sister’s reputation? The one to appear in tomorrow’s Spectacle?”

      “If I don’t do it, someone else will,” she said. “Better the devil you know, my lord. Only let me do what I can—and you go out and be all manly and protective of your womenfolk.”

      “Ah.” His black eyes widened theatrically. “So that’s what I’m to do.”

      “Yes. Can you manage it?”

      “With one hand tied behind my back.”

      “I beg you to do it the usual way,” she said. “Don’t show off.”

      “Right.” He stood looking at her.

      “Yes,” she said. “Time to go. Your mother will be getting the news any minute now if she hasn’t already.” She made a shooing motion.

      He only stood, still looking at her in a very concentrated way, and she became aware of a heat and hurry within and a feeling of not being entirely clothed.

      Oh, for heaven’s sake. Not now.

      “You need to go,” she said. She tried to give him a push.

      It was like trying to push a brick wall.

      She looked up at him.

      “That tickles,” he said.

      “Go,” she said. “Now.”

      He went.

      Mere moments earlier, Longmore had been primed for murder.

      Now he had all he could do not to laugh.

      There Sophy was, in her demure housemaid’s dress, the wide-eyed, stupid look fading when she lost her patience and called him an ox.

      Then the darling had grabbed his arm, trying to manhandle him. That was one of the funniest things he’d seen in a long time.

      Leave this to us, she’d said.

      Not likely, he thought. But if it pleased her to think so, he was happy to please.

      In this agreeable state of mind he sought out his mother and sister. Finding them wasn’t difficult. All he needed to do was walk in the direction of the scream.

      Only one scream before Lady Warford collected her dignity and swooned.

      He arranged as graceful a departure as possible for his mother and sister. He acted all manly and protective, exactly as he’d been told to do.

      He’d deal with Adderley later, he promised himself.

      And then …

      Why, Sophy, of course.

      * * *

       Warford House

       Saturday afternoon

      Clara, how could you!” Lady Warford cried, not for the first time. “That bankrupt!”

      She lay on the chaise longue of her sitting room, a tray laden with restoratives on the table at her elbow.

      Clara had far greater need for restoratives than her mother did. She wished she were a man, and could solve her problems the way men did, by getting drunk and fighting and gaming and whoring.

      But she was a lady. She sat straight in her chair and said, “What sort of question is that, Mama? Do you think I humiliated myself on purpose?”

      “You did what you ought not to have done on purpose,” Mama said. “Of that I have not the slightest doubt.”

      It hadn’t seemed so very wicked at the time. Clara and Lord Adderley had been waltzing, and she’d felt dizzy. Too much champagne, perhaps. Or perhaps he’d steered her into too many turns. Or both. He’d suggested fresh air. And it was a thrill to slip out onto the terrace unnoticed. Then he’d said things, such sweet things, and he’d seemed so passionately in love with her.

      And then …

      Had she been alone at present, she would have covered her face and wept.

      But that’s what Mama always did. She wept and screamed and fainted.

      Clara sat straighter, hands folded, and wished she could climb out of the window and go far, far away.

      The door opened and Harry came in.

      She wanted to leap up and run at him the way she used to do when they were children and she was frightened or brokenhearted about this or that: A robin’s nest on the ground and the eggs broken. A sick puppy. An injured horse put down.

      But they weren’t children, and Mama was already using all the hysteria in the room. Harry had enough to cope with.

      “There you are, at last!” Mama cried. “You must fight Adderley, Harry. СКАЧАТЬ