Page 30 of Truth about Leo


  Charlotte frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous, Gilly. The earl is not a monster; at least, not to look at. He is quite handsome if you like large, brooding men, which I most definitely do. When they’re earls, of course. And perhaps viscounts. But nothing lower than a viscount, you understand.” She forestalled Gillian’s questions by turning toward the doors. “Come stand with me and we will watch to see if the rumor is true.”

  “Which rumor—that the earl killed his wife or that he is looking for a new one?”

  “The latter. I will know soon enough if he is—men cannot keep a thing like that secret for very long.”

  “Mmm, no, I imagine not. If their intentions are not clear in the speculative gazes they impart on every marriageable female who can still draw breath, it’s in the way they check the bride-to-be’s teeth and make sure her movement is sound.”

  Charlotte tried to stifle a giggle. “Mama says I am not to listen to a thing you say, that you are incorrigible and a bad influence.”

  Gillian laughed with her cousin as they entered the ballroom arm-in-arm. “It’s a good thing she doesn’t know I’ve learned it all from you, my dear Char. Now, after we view this rogue of the first water, tell me who has caught your fancy. As I told Aunt Honoria, I’m determined you will end your Season with a stunning match, but I cannot help you become deliriously happy if you do not tell me who your intended victim is.”

  “Oh, that’s simple,” Charlotte replied with a beatific expression of innocence that was spoiled only by a perfectly wicked smile. “Everyone knows rakes make the best husbands. I shall simply pick out the worst of the bunch—one riddled with vices, bad habits, and a reputation that will make Mama swoon and Papa rail—then I shall reform him.”

  “That seems like a terrible amount of work to go to just to find a suitable husband.”

  “Not really.” Charlotte whipped open her fan and adopted a coy look. “After all, you know what they say.”

  “No, what do they say?”

  “Necessity is the mother of intention.”

  Gillian stopped. “Invention, Charlotte.”

  “What?”

  “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

  Charlotte stared at her for a moment, then rapped her cousin on the wrist with her fan. “Don’t be ridiculous, where would I come up with an invention? Intentions I have aplenty, and that’s quite enough for me, thank you. Now let’s go find this delicious rake of an earl. If he’s as bad as Mama says, he might just suit.”

  From Noble Destiny

  “You can’t leave me now! Not when I need you! How selfish is it to leave just when I need you most? I forbid you to leave! I absolutely forbid you to leave me in my time of Great Distress!”

  “I have no choice. I must leave now.”

  “Widdle, Mama.”

  “Stop just where you are, Gillian. Don’t you dare take another step toward this door!”

  “Charlotte, give me the key.”

  “Shan’t!”

  “Mama, want to widdle!”

  “Char, Dante needs to use the necessary before we leave. Now please, if you have any love for me, hand over the key. Noble’s going to be in a terrible fury if he finds out you’re holding us prisoner in his library, and I can assure you from experience that Dante does not announce his intention to widdle unless that event is nigh on imminent.”

  The petite blonde blocking the two oak doors cast a hesitant glance toward the figure of a three-year-old child doing an urgent dance before her. Two thin furrows appeared between her dark blond brows.

  “It’s a trick. You’ve taught him to say that. You’re using your own child’s plumbing as a weapon against me, cousin, and I find that a completely nebulous act.”

  “The word is nefarious, Charlotte.” Gillian, Lady Weston, picked up her son and pointed him toward her cousin. “If you do not unlock the door and release us, I shall allow him to widdle upon you.”

  The child giggled in delight. Lady Charlotte di Abalongia nee Collins, sucked in a horrified breath and leveled a defiant glare at her cousin. “You wouldn’t!”

  “Gillian? Wife, where are you hiding? This is no time for play, woman. We should have left an hour ago!” The doorknob rattled ineffectually.

  “Papa, have to widdle!” Dante squirmed in his mother’s arms.

  “Now you’ve done it.” Gillian nodded, stepping backwards. “Now you’ve annoyed Noble. I would advise you to move away from the doorway since he is sure to—”

  Three sudden bangs against the door at her back caused Charlotte to jump a good foot off the ground.

  “—want in. We’re in here, my love,” Gillian called. “Charlotte seems to have misplaced the key. We won’t be a moment finding it.”

  “WANT TO WIDDLE!”

  “What’s that? Charlotte? What the devil is she doing here? I thought she ran off to be some Italian’s mistress years ago.”

  “I didn’t run off, we eloped!” Charlotte bellowed at the door. “We were married in Paris. It was romantic!”

  “It doesn’t matter. Open the door! Gillian, we have to leave. Now!”

  “WIDDLE!”

  “Charlotte,” Gillian said, her voice low and urgent. Charlotte eyed the door with alarm as the Black Earl pounded on it, demanding immediate entrance, but she paid heed to the steely note in her closest friend and relative’s voice. “I understand you’re terribly upset,” Gillian continued, “and I know you’ve had a horrible time returning to England from what sounds like a perfectly ghastly old ruins in Italy, but my dear, I have a son full of widdle, two impatient children in the carriage with Nurse, and a husband who”—she paused as a particularly loud barrage of swearing accented the increased pounding on the door—“is fast losing a temper that has been extremely tried today. Please, please, Char, give me the key before Noble is forced to take drastic measures.”

  Charlotte glanced from the squirming child to the look of concern in Gillian’s emerald eyes. Tears had always worked well for her in the past. Perhaps if she could work up a few, her cousin would see how serious she was. She waited for the peculiar prickling sensation to indicate that her cornflower-blue eyes would soon be becomingly framed in a pool of tears, and allowed a note of raw desperation to creep into her voice. “Gilly, I need you. I truly do. You’re all I have left. There’s no one else left who will receive me. Papa saw to that. I have nowhere to go and no money. I sold what remained of Mama’s jewels just to buy a few traveling gowns and passage to England on a merchant ship. You’re the only one in the family who will acknowledge me, and now you are sailing to the West Indies…” Her voice cracked as she brushed at the wetness on her cheeks, surprised to find her crocodile tears had suddenly become real. “Oh, Gilly, please stay. Please help me. I’ve never been alone. I don’t know what to do.”

  Gillian shifted the child in her arms and squeezed Charlotte’s hand. “You know I will do everything I can to help you—”

  Charlotte shrieked in joy and hugged her cousin, widdly child and all. “I knew you wouldn’t leave me!”

  A tremendous splintering noise reverberated through the room as Noble Britton, known by the (in Charlotte’s mind, understated) sobriquet of the Black Earl, burst through the doors, followed by a tall, bewigged man with a hook where his left hand should have been, and two smaller footmen in livery.

  “Are you all right?” the earl asked his countess, rushing to her side.

  She smiled reassuringly. “Of course we are. Charlotte just needs a moment or two of my time, and then I will be ready to be off.” She forestalled protests on both her husband’s and cousin’s lips by thrusting the squirming child into his father’s arms just before she grasped Charlotte firmly and tugged her toward a nearby emerald-and-gold damask couch. “While you’re taking Dante for his widdle, I’ll speak with Char. Crouch, please take Lady Charlotte’s things up to the Blue Suite. She??
?ll be staying here for a time. Dickon, Charles, tell the other carriages to start, we’ll be along directly.”

  Noble shot his wife a questioning look before settling a glare on Charlotte, who was profoundly thankful it was a short glare, as she never could stand up to one of the earl’s scowls. Both father and child hastened away when the latter announced his intention to widdle right there in the library.

  “You have five minutes until I must leave,” Gillian told her cousin sternly. “You are welcome to stay here for as long as you like. Now, what else can I do to help you?”

  Charlotte’s heart underwent a peculiar motion that felt suspiciously as though it had dropped into her jean half-boots. “You’re leaving? You’re still leaving me?”

  “I have no choice,” was the calm reply. A burst of pain flared to life within Charlotte’s breast at her cousin’s defection, but a moment’s consideration led her to admit that Gillian really could not remain behind while her husband and children sailed to their coffee plantation. She shoved down the pain of abandonment and focused her energies on explaining what a shambles her life had become.

  “Very well. You received my letter that mentioned Antonio died of sweating sickness in November?”

  Gillian nodded. “And you wanted to leave Villa Abalongia because you had a difficult time with his family, but you mentioned going to Paris, not home to England.”

  Charlotte’s eyes threatened to fill once more with scalding tears that she suspected would leave her with unattractive, swollen, red eyes and a nose that would require much attention with a handkerchief. “And I don’t even have a handkerchief anymore,” she wailed, unable to stop the tears. Charlotte seldom had recourse to real tears, but they were just as uncomfortable as she recalled. “Everything’s gone, everything! The contessa took it all for her two horrid, fat daughters. She said I wouldn’t need my fine gowns when I was in mourning for Antonio. She said I’d have to go live on a tiny little farm in the mountains and tend a bunch of smelly goats, that I wasn’t welcome to stay in Florence as I wasn’t truly a member of the family, all because I hadn’t given Antonio an heir!”

  “That was very cruel of her.”

  “Yes.” Charlotte sniffed. “It was. Especially since it wasn’t my fault. I wouldn’t have minded a child—you seem to enjoy yours so much—but Antonio refused to do his husbandly duty by me.”

  Gillian’s eyes widened. “He…he refused?”

  Charlotte nodded, her eyes filling again at the memory of such a grave injustice. “It was all he could do to consummate the marriage. After that…oh, Gilly, he wouldn’t even try. And the contessa was forever making nasty remarks that I was not doing my duty properly! I tried, I honestly tried! I wore naughty nightwear, I allowed him to catch me en dishabille on many occasions, and I even sought advice from the local strumpet as to how to arouse the passion of Antonio’s manly instrument, but to no avail. His instrument resisted all my efforts. I think it hated me,” she added darkly.

  “Oh, I’m sure that wasn’t—”

  “It wouldn’t even twitch for me!”

  “Well, really, Charlotte.” Gillian looked a bit embarrassed. “It’s not as if it were an animal trained to jump on your command.”

  “I know that, but the strumpet said it should at the very least twitch once in a while, and not lie limp and flaccid like a week-old bit of blancmange. It wouldn’t make even the slightest effort on my behalf. If that’s not cruel and petty-minded of a manly instrument, well, I just don’t know what is!”

  Gillian blinked once or twice before patting her cousin’s arm and handing her a lace-edged handkerchief. Charlotte viewed it with sorrow. “I used to have handkerchiefs like this,” she cried, mopping at her eyes and blowing her nose in a less-than-dainty manner. “But that evil woman took them away from me, just as she took everything else, even my husband!”

  “Oh, surely she couldn’t have taken Antonio’s affection from you—”

  “Not his affection.” Charlotte sniffled loudly. “He was fond enough of me, although he never dared act so before the contessa. No, she took him away and sent him to a nasty little town on the Mediterranean for his weak lungs. And he died there!”

  “Char, I’m sorry about Antonio. I know you must have loved him greatly…”

  Charlotte stopped dabbing at her eyes, a look of utter astonishment on her face. “Love him greatly? Where did you get that idea?”

  Gillian stopped patting her cousin’s hand. “Well…that is…you eloped with him! You dismissed all your suitors and eloped with the son of a minor Italian nobleman. Why else would you sacrifice everything you held dear if you didn’t love him greatly?”

  “Oh, that,” Charlotte responded dismissively, gently prodding the region below her eyes to ascertain whether they were swollen from her recent tears. “It was my third Season, and I didn’t care for that year’s suitors. Antonio was just like the hero in Castle Moldavia, Or, The Dancing Master’s Ghost. He was so very romantic, but Papa was being stiff-rumped about my marrying him, threatening to cut me off without a shilling if I didn’t marry someone suitable instead. Papa became ever so tiresome, and the Season was really quite boring, so I did the only sensible thing.”

  “Sensible?” Gillian stared at her cousin in disbelief. “Are you telling me you ran off to marry knowing that your father disapproved of your husband, knowing he would disinherit you, knowing that such an elopement would cause a scandal that would even now keep all of the doors of Society closed to you, and yet you did it not for love, but because you were bored?”

  Charlotte frowned. “Most of the doors of Society, not all, and I don’t see what that has to do with anything. You said you would help me. I really don’t think spending my five minutes discussing the past four years is helping me. I don’t see how chastising me for actions viewed by some as romantic and daring—”

  From The Trouble with Harry

  Harry wished he was dead. Well, perhaps death was an exaggeration, although St. Peter alone knew how long he’d be able to stand up to this sort of continued torture.

  “And then what happens?” His tormentor stared at him with eyes that were very familiar to him, eyes that he saw every morning in his shaving mirror, a mixture of brown, gray, and green that was pleasant enough on him, but when surrounded by the lush brown eyelashes of his inquisitor looked particularly charming. And innocent. And innocuous…something the possessor of the eyes was most decidedly not. “Well? Then what happens? Aren’t you going to tell me?”

  Harry ran his finger between his neckcloth and his neck, tugging on the cloth to loosen its constricting grasp on his windpipe, wishing for the fifteenth time in the last ten minutes that he had been able to escape capture.

  “I want to know!”

  Or found another victim to throw to the one who held him prisoner.

  “You have to tell me!”

  Perhaps death wasn’t such a wild thought after all. Surely if he were to die at that exact moment, he would be admitted into heaven. Surely St. Peter would look upon the deeds he had done for the benefit of others—deeds such as spending fifteen years working as a spy for the Home Office—and grant him asylum. Surely he wouldn’t be turned away from his rightful reward, damned to eternal torment, left to an eternity of hell such as he was in now, a hell dominated by—

  “Papa! Then…what…happens?”

  Harry sighed and pushed his spectacles high onto the bridge of his nose, bowing his head in acknowledgment of defeat. “After the hen and the rooster are…er…married, they will naturally wish to produce chicks.”

  “You already said that,” his thirteen-year-old inquisitor said with the narrowed eyes and impatient tone of one who is through being reasonable. “What happens after that? And what do chickens have to do with my unpleasantness?”

  “It’s the process of producing offspring that is related to your unpleasantness. When a mother hen wish
es to have chicks, she and the rooster must…er…perhaps chickens aren’t the best example to explain the situation.”

  Lady India Haversham, eldest daughter of the Marquis Rosse, tapped her fingers on the table at her side and glared at her father. “You said you were going to explain the unpleasantness! George says I’m not going to die despite the fact that I’m bleeding, and that it’s a very special time for girls, although I do not see what’s special about having pains in my stomach, and you said you’d tell me and now you’re talking about bees and flowers, and chickens, and fish in the river. What do they have to do with me?”

  No, Harry decided as he looked at the earnest, if stormy, eyes of his oldest child, death was distinctly preferable to having to explain the whys and hows of reproduction—particularly the female’s role in reproduction, with a specific emphasis on their monthly indispositions—to India. He decided that although he had been three times commended by the prime minister for bravery, he was at heart a coward, because he simply could not stand the torture any longer.

  “Ask Gertie. She’ll explain it all to you,” he said hastily as he jumped up from a narrow pink chair and fled the sunny room given over to his children, shamelessly ignoring the cries of “Papa! You said you’d tell me!”

  “You haven’t seen me,” Harry said as he raced through a small, windowless room that served as an antechamber to his estate office. “You haven’t seen me, you don’t know where I am, in fact, you might just decry knowledge of me altogether. It’s safer that way. Throw the bolt on the door, would you, Temple? And perhaps you should put a chair in front of it. Or the desk. I wouldn’t put it past the little devils to find a way in with only the door bolted.”