The Trouble With Being Wicked

The Trouble

with Being

Wicked

The Naughty Girls

Book One

EMMA LOCKE

For Erica, Darcy and Janice.

Without you, there would be no story.

Chapter One

March, 1814

Brixcombe-on-the-Bay, Devon

Celeste Gray could think of three reasons the dilapidated cottage reminded her of a man: It didn’t meet her expectations. She couldn’t imagine spending the rest of her life with it. And it had cost her far more than it was worth.

A wry smile tugged her lips. And, just as with a man, despite the many ways it had disappointed her, she still felt giddy to see it.

“Where shall I put your baggage, miss?” Tom, a wavy-haired footman she’d hired on in Exeter, cast a worried glance at the moldering roof of her new home. Unfortunately, the gapped thatching wasn’t the only cause for concern. As they’d pulled into the drive, she’d seen an alarming crack in the northern wall, too.

He indicated her dusty carriage laden with hatboxes and trunks. “That is to say, I wonder if you mean to wait for the second carriage. The staff will have this place to rights in a trice, I’ll wager, and less chance of your pretty things getting wet.”

“Likely not!” Elizabeth Spencer crowded into the doorway beside Celeste. As usual she was heedless of her pregnant belly, which bumped into Celeste’s elbow hard enough to jostle her onto the step. “The house needs to be opened properly,” Elizabeth continued, seemingly unaware of the exasperated look Celeste cast her, “aired and washed, or perhaps burnt down. For goodness sakes, there are
sparrows
in the rafters.”

Celeste’s lips twitched with amusement. While Elizabeth had been raised in Shropshire, Celeste had lived her entire life in London. A few nesting birds sounded like a diverting facet of country life.

Too, it would be a simple thing to make a jest about birds of paradise vying for a nest. But Elizabeth had little tolerance for silliness these days, and a glance at their new footman proved he was listening. Celeste would have to mind her tongue, if all were to go as planned.

She settled for saying, “I’m sure they’re just as outraged by your presence as you are by theirs.”

“I’m sure they’re
not
.” Elizabeth moved further into the doorway until she almost joined Celeste on the step. She offered their footman a brilliant smile. “Nevertheless, Tom will have the rafters clear soon enough. He looks to be a good, strong lad with a steady pair of hands. You’re just
waiting
for an opportunity to please us, aren’t you, Tom?”

Celeste’s humor faded. “Elizabeth!” Even heavy with child, Elizabeth could stop a man at ten paces. She’d always been the more striking of them, but she glowed now. Her brown curls shone, and the daring cut of her carriage dress enhanced the effects of pregnancy on her already-fine bosom. Yet she would never sink to dally with a man in her employ, which made any flirtation with their besotted footman rather cruel. Perhaps more important than his feelings, however, her banter was unseemly. They must care about that now.

She trailed a slim hand through the air like a French courtesan, waving off Celeste’s sharply uttered warning. Strong-willed and wealthy in her own right, she rarely gave a fig for Celeste’s attempts to counsel her. “I fear ‘tis not just birds we must contend with. You
must
cry foul, Miss Smythe. That man, Lord Whatever His Name Is, has fobbed one off on you. Mark my words, he’s counting his guineas and laughing himself silly this very moment.”

“I’m sure he’s not thinking of me at all,” Celeste replied, partly because Lord Trestin could have no idea he’d conducted business with a woman, let alone her, and partly because viscounts surely had better things to do than cackle over dishonest transactions.

A disquieting memory niggled at her, as though she ought to be able to place his name.
Lord Trestin.
As though she needed to.

When she turned to ask Elizabeth if she knew of him, her friend released a long-suffering sigh. “No, indeed not. Most men spare us no thought unless we’re directly under them.”

Tom’s eyes widened. Celeste placed a staying hand on Elizabeth’s arm and pushed her toward the door. “Tom, please check the straps on our baggage. After I have another look about, we’ll take rooms in the village until the cottage can be made habitable.”

With that, she pressed Elizabeth into the darkened house and pulled the door closed. “Mind your tongue! We can’t have our staff thinking us vulgar, for that is precisely why we hired new domestics in the first place.”

It was impossible to see her expression, but Celeste imagined Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. She’d always preferred impetuousness to caution. “I said nothing untrue.”

Celeste expelled a frustrated breath. “That doesn’t give you license to behave shockingly. We must break ourselves of the habit of being—”

“Ourselves?”

Celeste pressed her lips together. “Precisely.”

Elizabeth made a satisfied
hmph
.

Celeste forced herself to calm, for Elizabeth easily became intractable. They’d been friends since girlhood, when neither had seen a way to evade the future that awaited them, and Celeste couldn’t regret their attachment. Sometimes, she even fancied they were sisters, of a sort.

At other times, she could easily scream. When she had control of herself, she explained—and not for the first time—”If we become pariahs here, too, your baby will never escape the stigma of her birth. Is that what you wish?”

“I think I know what is best for my
son
. Really, Celeste.”

Celeste kept silent. Elizabeth had a good heart, and she was good fun, but she could be impulsive and selfish. Celeste had naïvely hoped Elizabeth’s free nature would steady as she increased with child. Instead, Celeste was the one making arrangements. A turn of events she hadn’t accustomed herself to, for she’d never imagined being in the position of having to care for another person, let alone an infant.

Elizabeth folded her arms over her protruding stomach. “I can see you won’t believe I’m committed to this endeavor without proof. Very well, for
once
I shall pretend to be interested in domestic matters. This house is a shambles. No amount of effort can make it habitable. I strongly suggest we cry off.”

“It’s not as bad as that.” But even as the protest passed Celeste’s lips, a strong chill swept from the front parlor into the hall. Both women shivered.

“You see? We’ll freeze to our deaths. And what of the baby?” Elizabeth patted her rounded belly with just enough maternal concern to look convincing. Given her tendency to behave as though she wasn’t increasing, Celeste found it a manipulative attempt to sway the argument. But she could hardly accuse Elizabeth of using her confinement as an excuse to return to London, for Celeste had lectured her so often on the need to consider her unborn child that discounting a drafty, leaking cottage now would ring false.

Yet she hated to give up when they were so close. The long drive through Devon had taken her breath away. The gently rolling landscape sectioned by neat hedgerows positively sparkled with promise. All that remained was for them to successfully introduce themselves to the local gentry and they would be free to start over, as though the last twenty years hadn’t affected them at all.

 
“Once we have a warm fire going in the grate,” she said, “and a few men hired to make repairs, I’m sure we’ll be comfortable here. A week or two is all we need to settle ourselves in.” She was surprised to hear wistfulness in her voice, as if she were speaking her deepest wish aloud. Devon could become their home, if only Elizabeth would give it a chance.

Elizabeth, too, seemed deep in thought. When she spoke, her voice sounded just as soft. “What if we don’t have a week?”

Emboldened by this unexpected show of fragility from her friend, Celeste rested her hand over Elizabeth’s. A solid kick thumped hard enough for her to feel it, too, and a thrill fluttered beneath her breast. She’d never imagined herself with a child of her own. She feared repeating her mother’s mistakes. Nevertheless, she marveled at the new life stirring beneath her hand.

“The midwife said you had perhaps a month,” she reminded Elizabeth, trying to sound reassuring. “You’ll begin your confinement at the Hound and Hen while I settle us here. There is nothing to worry yourself over.” She kept her own worry private. This was where she’d failed. Elizabeth was frighteningly close to term. She hadn’t wanted to leave London and so had put off retiring until the last possible moment. When she’d finally capitulated, they’d left as quickly as Celeste could have their things packed into the carriages lest Elizabeth change her mind. They’d brought only Celeste’s trusted housekeeper, and a few domestics they’d hired along the way.

They hadn’t encountered an available nursemaid. Though Celeste had known better than to have allowed putting off the hiring of a nurse in London, where an agency would have vetted their letters of recommendation, she’d pressed so many other issues that she’d relented on this. Now it was too late for regrets. But what did she know about babies? What did either of them know?

“I’m scared,” Elizabeth whispered. Perhaps the cottage’s dark hallway allowed her to voice her fears.

In spite of the gravity of Elizabeth’s admission and the true danger present in childbirth, Celeste felt a touch of relief. How uncomfortable the last few months had been, with Elizabeth acting as though she wasn’t expecting, as though everything would go on as it had. As if it could. Surely it was better for her to be wary than complacent. So much could go wrong in childbirth, and then there was the baby to raise after that.

Celeste gave her hand a squeeze. “I won’t leave you alone. Now, let’s make our way back to the village before the sun sets. I’ve no desire to wander an unfamiliar area in the dark.”

Elizabeth nodded. Her mind seemed to have traveled elsewhere.

Celeste turned to open the door. She glimpsed a hazy beam of light breaking through the darkness of the parlor and paused. “Do you see the sunlight, Elizabeth? I think the chill is entering there.” She pointed to a weak ray squeezing through the thatched roof. “If we can plug the gap before we leave, it shouldn’t be as cold when we return.”

“I suppose it’s the least we can do,” Elizabeth said with a touch of resignation. “But I vow there is much more to be done than that.”

Celeste ignored Elizabeth’s disparagement and carefully picked through the shadows to navigate around the shrouded furniture. “Goodness,” she said as frigid air raised gooseflesh on her arms, “I suppose this must be it.”

“There’s a sewing basket over here.” Elizabeth recovered the basket and rifled through its contents. She turned up a handkerchief and held it toward Celeste. “You must be the one to do it, as I cannot possibly climb onto anything in my condition.”

Celeste accepted the rag, careful not to betray her burgeoning hope at Elizabeth’s second show of concern for her welfare in as many minutes. After months of pleading with her friend, it gratified her to think she might have done some good at last.

If she had, it was only the beginning. Perhaps she
had
been duped into buying a horrid house. If this cottage stirred even an iota of maternal feeling in Elizabeth, however, it was worth the effort of restoring it.