Page 31 of Scandal’s Daughter

Chapter 15

“Wherein the fates cause trouble and our heroine sets a dog among the pigeons.”

Sebastian ran up the stairs to find his mother’s companion white-faced and agitated, waiting for him outside her rooms.

“What’s happened?” he demanded. He was well used to his mother’s bouts of ill health and her nervous dispositions, but the summons today had seemed rather more urgent than usual.

“Oh, oh dear,” the idiotic woman said. “Oh goodness me!” A distant and impoverished cousin, Lady Rush was as hopeless as she was bird-witted and never ceased to annoy Sebastian with her dithering and predictions of doom.

“Never mind,” he said, striding past her and giving a brief knock before entering his mother’s rooms.

He found his mother laying prostrate on a fainting couch, attended by her dresser who was applying a cool cloth to her forehead that smelled strongly of vinegar.

“Mother?”

She looked up with a small cry and reached out her hands to him as her maid snatched up the cloth before it could fall into her lap.

“Oh, Sebastian, what are we to do?”

“I don’t know, dear,” he said, quickly realising he would have to gather his patience to get to the bottom of whatever tragedy had befallen them this time. If it was anything like the last time, it was probably one of her revolting little pug dogs going missing again.

“Why don’t you tell me what is troubling you and I’ll see what I can do?”

“Oh, but it isn’t me I’m concerned for,” his mother said, her large brown eyes full of sorrow. He gave her frail hands a gentle squeeze, hoping to encourage her to get to the point. “My poor, poor child. Oh, I knew this day would come. I just knew it! Oh, your wicked, wicked father. How could he do it ... how?”

Good God, she was back onto that was she? Whatever had got her in such a pelter? He glared at the maid who shook her head, clearly disowning any portion of blame. He had long since banned any talk about his dead father or the circumstances of his untimely demise as it was guaranteed to send his mother into one of her spasms.

The results of this could be felt by the entire household for many weeks and he often wondered that such an apparently weak and feeble female could hold him and his entire staff to ransom when she indulged on such an emotional spree.

“What on earth has father to do with anything?” he asked, striving to keep his voice even when he was getting the strong urge to shake someone until they explained what was going on.

“Because he ruined us all with ... with that evil woman!”

“Mother that was almost twenty years ago now. No one speaks of it anymore. It is old news I assure you. We have weathered the storm.”

“No!” she said, with such passion he was quite taken aback as she sat forward, gripping his hands with considerable force. Her eyes were febrile and not for the first time he feared for her sanity as she began to rage and rant. “No, we have not! It is all coming back again. She is coming back again! She’s come to haunt us, to ruin us, to ruin you!”

“Who’s coming back?” he demanded, wondering if she had finally descended into madness as he’d always suspected she might.

“The Siren!” she shrieked, gasping for breath and clutching at her throat.

“Agatha, get the hartshorn and mother’s vinaigrette,” he ordered.

“She’s had the hartshorn already,” the poor, harassed woman replied, thrusting the vinaigrette under his mother’s nose. “But she’s been beyond anything since she saw that wretched scandal sheet.”

He watched, relieved as his mother spluttered but seemed to calm a little and lay back on the couch breathing hard, but steady.

Sebastian’s face darkened.

“Dammit all!” he raged. “How many times do I have to tell you to keep the bloody things out of her reach? Show me, and then run and fetch Doctor Alperton. Tell him it’s an emergency.”

The white-faced dresser shoved a crumbled news sheet into his hands and ran for the door. With a cold feeling running down his spine like ice water he read the report that had caused his mother’s breakdown.

Rumours abound that the daughter of the notorious Miss D, otherwise known as The Siren - the voluptuous red head that led the esteemed D of S to his demise, is lately in town. Chaperoned by the Earl and Lady Falmouth, it appears the young woman possesses a remarkable likeness to her beautiful and fiery mother. It only remains to be seen if she resembles her in other ways.

The new Miss D is apparently an heiress of some considerable fortune. Fortune hunters beware, who will be the hunted here?

Nausea swirled in his stomach. God no. Not now, not after all this time? For that whole sordid scandal to have to be relived all over again. He remembered being told that the woman had left her child to run off with his father, but he’d never given it another thought. Hadn’t even known if it was boy or girl.