Page 10 of Love and the Shameless Lady

“Au revoir, then.” He turned his mare and cantered away.

She watched him for a moment, feeling like a fool both for sending him away and for wishing she hadn’t. But she didn’t want to be seen with him at the Hollow, for the servants already gossiped too much. Besides that, he seemed perfectly content to leave her. Perhaps he’d satisfied his curiosity. This shouldn’t pique her interest.

Snappish sidled and danced, eager for his stable, so she gave him his head, thankful that in this instance her horse had more sense than she.

At the Hollow, she passed him to the stable boy and ordered the gig. She went indoors to use the necessary. While there, she took out the threatening letter and read it again. Nothing had changed. She folded it and put it away again.

On her way out, a footman appeared. “A letter came for you in the post, Miss Daisy.”

She thanked him with a sudden thudding of her heart. Another threat? But no, the letter came from her only correspondent in the Polite World. She broke open the seal on the way to the stable yard. She’d known Andrea Beaumont at school years ago, and Andrea had continued their correspondence in spite of Daisy’s disgrace.

Dearest Daisy, it began. The most exciting thing! I’m sure you’ve read The Lady’s Ruin. It must have reached the provinces by now.

This was typical of Andrea. She’d grown up in Northumberland, but since her marriage she spent most of the time in London, and anywhere north of St Alban’s was the middle of nowhere.

It’s a tremendously exciting novel.

Daisy couldn’t help a happy little leap of the heart at that.

But even more exciting, it has caused a scandal. Lady Bilchester—oh, of course, you haven’t even heard of her, I assume, living as you do at the back of beyond. She’s the wife of a respectable baron, and I thought of her as another boring matron until I heard the gossip. The Lady’s Ruin is actually about Lady B’s scandalous past!!!

What complete nonsense.

“The gig is ready, Miss Daisy.”

She glanced up, realizing the stable boy had been standing there for a while. He’d loaded the gig with her box of pastries from Liverpool, as well as two baskets of vegetables—the last of the spring spinach, some lettuces, radishes, and marrows from the kitchen garden, and the first unforced tomatoes. “In a moment, Harry.” She returned to the letter.

Years ago, before her marriage to Lord B, she was abducted by a smuggler, which is exactly what happens to Narcissa, the wanton heroine of The Lady’s Ruin! It was all hushed up, of course, and it was more than twenty years ago, so everyone had forgotten, but the book brought it all to light again.

This was exactly what Daisy had striven to avoid, writing a story which could be construed as true! It was why she read all the scandal sheets and kept up her correspondence with Andrea. She had sworn never to harm another woman’s reputation. How could she possibly have known about a scandal from when she was little more than a baby?

Old Lord B died ages ago, and everyone knows Lady B has had several lovers since then, so clearly she’s the wanton sort!! I believe she was ravished by the smuggler, just as in the novel, and that she enjoyed it, too. That she married a good man at the end of the story, Lord B in real life, only serves as more proof.

Drat. But it was too late to change the book. Lady Bilchester would just have to live it down.

None of this would matter if it were not for her daughter Diana, my dearest, dearest friend in the world (apart from you, Daisy darling, as my continued correspondence with you proves). Everyone is on tenterhooks about the author’s next book, The Lady’s Revenge, which will be published any day now. If the heroine of The Lady’s Revenge (whose name is Dianthus, which is very similar to Diana!!) proves to be as wanton as her mother in The Lady’s Ruin, no decent man will touch my dearest friend.

Daisy had never heard anything more ridiculous. She, for one, wouldn’t want to marry a man who was so stupid as to be swayed by gossip about a novel.

It was all a horrid coincidence. Daisy had chosen uncommon names for her characters on purpose. Dianthus was simply the name of a flower. Still, poor Miss Bilchester! Daisy’s heart twisted at the thought of the mortification she must be suffering.

Well, upon second thought, perhaps it wasn’t quite as bad as it seemed. Unlike her mother, Dianthus in The Lady’s Revenge only experienced carnal longings when she met the man she was to marry. The novel was just as exciting. While recovering the missing charms for her mother’s bracelet, Dianthus fought off several lecherous villains and punished her mother’s ravisher, but she remained a virgin until after marrying the hero.

Which was an act of pure cowardice, both by Daisy and the heroine she’d written, for it meant that neither of them trusted the hero. Not that Daisy had anything against waiting until marriage in real life—for many reasons, that made sense—but it was different in fiction. The whole point of consummating the marriage before the ceremony was to prove that the heroine trusted the hero, and to prove that he was indeed to be trusted.

No matter how hard she’d tried, Daisy couldn’t make Dianthus trust the hero implicitly. But wasn’t that what mattered most in love, a deep, abiding trust?

Not that Daisy knew anything about love, the Warren family being so utterly devoid of it, at least until recently. It seemed that both Colin and Lord Garrison loved their wives, but most likely that wouldn’t last. On the other hand, Colin had proven to be trustworthy, and—

The stable boy was standing there patiently, watching her. As she turned, he went bright red to the tips of his ears. She rolled her eyes and bit back a reprimand. Harry wasn’t more than fourteen years old, but he couldn’t help being male, and she’d brought this sort of interest upon herself.

She folded the letter and stuffed it into her reticule. If anyone believed the book was about Diana Bilchester, which they wouldn’t, for Daisy couldn’t imagine a friend of Andrea’s fighting off anything worse than an irritable goose, by the end she would be proven a virtuous girl, and no eligible man, however stupid, would have reason to believe otherwise.

“Bring Snappish to me tomorrow afternoon,” Daisy told the now-anxious Harry. She climbed into the gig and drove away.

Was this gossip the source of the death threat? Did it come from Lady Bilchester or the unfortunate Diana? Only a few hundred yards from the Hollow, she pulled the gig to a halt and dug in her reticule. Sure enough, the threatening letter had been sent from London almost a month earlier, when she would still have had time to stop publication of The Lady’s Revenge.

Not that she would have done anything so craven. She reread Andrea’s letter with scorn. Her ladyship and Diana were foolish society ladies, and neither of them would actually come north to murder her.