Page 5 of Scandal’s Daughter

“Well, just you stay away from the Gower estate, young lady. For all your reading and knowing talk you’ve no understanding of how these men carry on and I won’t have you putting yourself in danger. If you don’t promise me, I’ll have to make old Lambert your chaperone and you know how well you’d like that.”

“Lambert!” Georgiana cried in horror. The crotchety old man who passed for their groom would suck the joy from any walk or ride through the countryside like blotting paper on wet ink.

Her aunt gave a sage nod, pleased that she’d been so well understood.

“We’ll be needing a quantity of dandelion as I’m set on making a good batch of dandelion and burdock. Your uncle looks a touch liverish to me and I think it would do him the world of good. So, if I send you out to gather dandelions, be good and sure you don’t head over that way.”

“Oh but, Aunt! You know the four-acre field has the best dandelions, it will take ...”

She stopped in her tracks as a forbidding look entered her aunt’s usually placid blue eyes. “Yes, Aunt Jane,” she said meekly, and returned her attention to the linens.

Chapter 3

“In which the beau monde is too rich for his grace’s appetite.”

Sebastian looked out of the window as the rain lashed the surrounding countryside and he wondered what in the name of God had induced him to come here. He raised a slightly unsteady hand to his head and winced as he applied it tenderly to his aching temple. Never again. It was a phrase that occurred to him all too often in the aftermath of one of Beau’s nights of debauchery and had never seemed more apt.

He had a vague memory of the room he was standing in filled with revelry and half-naked women and suppressed a groan. How the devil was he supposed to extricate himself now? Gower had professed to have given extensive thought to the following week or so’s entertainments, no doubt with Beau egging him on, and last night, he’d said with relish, was only the start of it.

Easing himself with care into a tapestry covered wingback chair, he massaged his pulsing temples. The vast stone fireplace beside him belched forth a disagreeable plume of grey smoke every time the wind howled past the chimney and Sebastian frowned at it, putting some careful thought into the idea of going home. As soon as possible.

He was getting old, he decided with a melancholy sigh. Once upon a time he would have been just as happy to spend a debauched week or three in the country while his commitments and obligations could go to the devil. Now he couldn’t help but look upon those commitments with a rather fonder eye and wish to go back to them. Marlburgh House was an ancient and sprawling pile full of draughts and leaks, and the land had been growing steadily sicker due to neglect during his own youth and mismanagement by those who should have been keeping the place in order. But after a great deal of investment and a lot of coaxing the surrounding lands were beginning to repay that investment.

It was therefore with a wry smile that Sebastian realised he’d rather be walking his fields and talking to his estate manager about the terrible summer and how it would impact on all their plans, than lounging around with a scantily clad female in his arms. He resolved to keep such thoughts to himself. If Beau ever discovered his thoughts, he’d never hear the end of it.

Speaking of the devil, he thought in amusement as the man himself came and sat opposite him. Moving just as carefully as Sebastian had, Beau lowered himself into the chair with a soft groan and sat back with his eyes closed.

“I take it the brunette was every bit as energetic as you imagined she would be?” Sebastian said, smirking as Beau cracked open one bleary eye.

Beau shook his head and then winced, clearly deciding the movement was a bad idea. “She was a blonde,” he murmured, pinching the bridge of his nose with long, elegant fingers.

Frowning, Sebastian cast his mind back to the admittedly foggy events of the previous evening. “No, she was definitely a brunette when she left.”

Beau opened his eyes, frowning and then giving a little shrug. “Well, I woke up with a blonde.”

Sebastian snorted and shook his head. “I need to get out of here, get some air.”

“In this? Are you mad?”

Casting an eye back towards the window and the rain that lashed against the it, Sebastian stretched out his legs. “This will be gone by midday. Will you come?”

“No,” Beau replied. “I will not.”

“Suit yourself.”

“I always do.”

Sebastian regarded his friend with a frown. There was something troubling Beau, he was sure of it. But Beau was not one to share his troubles as a rule. Though Sebastian knew Beau would never begrudge him his wealth, he was prickly about his own lack of it. His father, the Duke of Ware, gave him a pittance of an allowance and it was only Beau’s own skill and the devil’s own luck with cards and dice that kept him afloat.

Most of the time Beau was paying off one creditor just as another began to pound at the door. His extravagant lifestyle was not something he would in any way curtail. It was a situation that Sebastian rarely referred to. He’d tried, once, to speak to Beau and to lend him money to see him through a particularly awkward time, but it had led to the worst and most violent argument they’d ever had, and he would never dare broach the subject again.

To his surprise he didn’t have to, as Beau brought the subject up later the same day as they ate lunch together. Lord Gower still hadn’t appeared, which surprised neither of them, having seen the state of him last night.

“I have to marry,” Beau said, staring with a gloomy expression into a mug of ale.

“Ah,” Sebastian replied. “I did wonder what was amiss.”

“I can’t see any other way. It’s that or debtor’s prison.”