Page 5 of How to Start a Scandal

‘Find him?’ Seth narrowed his eyes. ‘He is still at large?’

Rawley smoothed a hand over his brown hair as though worrying it had somehow been mussed out of place. The action was one he carried with him from his youth and had apparently not yet dropped. ‘It was my understanding that he absconded with nearly all of Lady Dalton’s jewellery and was never heard from again.’ He offered an apologetic shrug. ‘I could be wrong.’

‘No,’ Kenworth confirmed. ‘You’re not. The wretch buggered off to who knows where.’ He waved at someone across the room.

Seth’s mind spun at the news. Not only had no one been there to protect his mother and Caroline from theft in his absence, no one had even seen to the arrest of the man who had done it. The notion was unfathomable.

But then, Seth had put the whole business of his family from his mind, hadn’t he? He hadn’t taken the time to reach out to friends and ask them to look after his mother and sister. He hadn’t ensured someone was nearby to offer support should it be required.

No, he’d tucked away the news of William’s death as though it was a missive he could read later. Except while Seth let the responsibilities of the earldom slip from his care, his family had suffered the consequences.

His stomach clenched. Such a failure was unforgivable. He would not make so grave a mistake again. Not ever.

He’d start making up for his transgressions immediately. Starting by finding the bastard who’d had the temerity to steal from the Sinclairs.

‘Do excuse me.’ Kentworth slapped a hand on Seth’s arm. ‘Meet me at White’s later for a nightcap, then a trip to Kings Place. You won’t regret it.’ The Marquess lifted his eyebrows with the bawdy suggestion of visiting the area that housed his favourite brothel.

The ballroom had become thick with people. Someone bumped into Seth and murmured an apology.

Seth’s head spun with sudden lightness. The crowd was too thick, too close, the lights too bright.

Seth shook his head. ‘I have already told you that I cannot accompany you tonight.’

‘Please,’ Rawley hissed in a whisper.

Kentworth laughed at his friend. ‘What does it matter to you, Rawley? You’ll have a finger of Scotch, glance at your watch and be gone before my grandmother is in bed.’

Rawley gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘It doesn’t mean you won’t harass me to join you.’

‘Harass?’ Kentworth scoffed. ‘One day you might actually allow yourself to have some fun.’

With that, the two were off to chat with another university chum whose name Seth couldn’t recall. The press of people was even closer now, stealing his air, making it overwarm.

The battle had been the same way. Worse. The blasts of gunpowder, the cannons detonating, raw firepower igniting the fields of Mont-Saint-Jean into a damned inferno.

He fisted his hand at his side and focused on the pressure.

Don’t think of the battle. Not here. Not now.

He needed a distraction. Any distraction. He scanned the room, desperate for someone he might know that wasn’t Kentworth.

A woman with dark brown hair in a blue dress caught Seth’s attention. She was nestled among the spinsters and old women, tucked towards the back of the room, too beautiful, too vibrant to fade into the background as she was so obviously attempting to do.

The woman was one he would recognise anywhere—his neighbour’s daughter and childhood friend, Lady Violet Lavell.

Death at a ball!

A beleaguered soon-to-be spinster has passed on from sheer boredom at the most gossip-free ball there ever was.

Despite her early demise, it was widely considered that her fate was a gracious deliverance from the burdensome obligation of becoming an unpaid governess.

Violet tapped her slipper in time to music she would not dance to and kept a pleasant expression on her face even as she penned the sardonic header to the Lady Observer in her mind. To anyone who might notice her, she simply appeared to be enjoying the orchestra playing for the dancers. But it was not instrumentals to which she tuned her ear.

It was gossip.

Salacious, enticing gossip. Whispered words dominated any ballroom and tonight’s gathering was no exception. Unfortunately what was said was all redundant, information easily gleaned through the papers that prior week. She nearly issued forth a painstaking sigh.

Even watching those around her had proven to be lacklustre entertainment. No gentlemen danced with women they were not supposed to, no one appeared to have imbibed too much wine to the point of behaving foolishly. But then, supper had yet to be served.