Three Schemes and a Scandal (12 page)

He had searched high and low in London for the perfect warm bundle of soft brown fur, shiny black eyes and velvety floppy ears.

He had left it in a wicker basket with a lid in the west drawing room. He had shut the door. Or so he had thought.

And yet, now George Coney was hopping madly across the ballroom, leaving a swath of devastation in her wake.

Yes,
her
.

Only Charlotte would give her female rabbit a man’s name.

Women leapt aside, stumbling into each other as their legs tangled in their voluminous flounced skirts. Lady Talleyrand shrieked and jumped backward, effectively launching herself at Lady Inchbald, who staggered under the sudden onslaught of weight and crashed upon a footman bearing a tray of champagne flutes.

There was a terrific clatter as a dozen crystal glasses shattered upon the floor. It stole the crowd’s attention for just a second before all eyes once again returned to George Coney as she merrily hopped across the parquet floor.

For a second she paused. Her little black nose started twitching and sniffing at a vigorous pace. Her long and floppy ears were pressed back against her head. James could have sworn the rabbit’s eyes even widened, as if in alarm.

As if …

Oh bloody hell. The rabbit was definitely a bad idea.

P
enelope had not been invited to join the festivities, of course, and yet she had just strolled into the ballroom.

That’s when the screaming began.

It was just a
fox.
Just the sweetest, bushy-tailed, sly-eyed creature that ever stalked a rabbit in a ballroom. Honestly, the haute ton was simply awash with delicate constitutions. Out of the corner of her eye, Charlotte saw at least three women and one man swoon into the arms of their companions.

Penelope was in full huntress mode. She slinked around bodies as if they were nothing more than trees, and leapt over fainting bodies as if they were merely fallen logs.

“Who invited her?” James muttered.

“Penelope! Come here this instant,” Charlotte said.

The fox ignored her. Ignored everything except for the rabbit.

On the far side of the ballroom, the foolish rabbit stood frozen as lords and ladies bustled around it, attempting to flee the fox who was slowly, torturously stalking its prey.

Charlotte presumed that the fox had escaped—curses to her broken door!—and must have followed the scent of the rabbit. That begged the question:
Why was there a rabbit in the house?

“Come here, Penelope,” Charlotte implored. But the fox continued its hunt, oblivious to the swarms of people bumping and bustling and generally falling all over themselves in an effort to get back and who hampered Charlotte’s progress in the process.

Except for one: the despicable, previously pet-eating Lord Dudley.

While most of the guests had simply made every effort to avoid the wild animal in their midst, Lord Dudley removed a pistol from his jacket.

A hush fell over the ballroom.

“No,” Charlotte said in a strangled voice.

Dudley leveled the pistol at the fox, who seemed to sense the danger in the situation. Her eyes, large, glossy and black, found Charlotte, and settled there, imploring her mistress for protection. For love. For life.

C
harlotte stomped forward and placed herself directly between Lord Dudley’s pistol and her beloved pet fox.

“Charlotte!” At least seven different voices called her name in alarm, all from varying points in the ballroom. Well, she may be all kinds of trouble but she defended the defenseless! She protected the innocent! She loved fiercely and steadfastly.

“Lord Dudley, I’m quite sure it’s an egregious breach of etiquette to shoot the beloved pet of your hostess,” Charlotte declared loudly.

Lord Dudley burst out laughing.

Charlotte eyed his pistol, and considered lunging for it, and then bashing him over the head with it. Repeatedly.

He might laugh now …

“I don’t understand why you keep killing my pets, Lord Dudley,” Charlotte said, summoning tears. Quite a few gasps were heard round the ballroom. “After all, it’s a well known fact that true gentlemen are kind to animals.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about. You are mad, Charlotte.”

“
Lady
Charlotte. And I know you’ve been inconsolable since I refused your marriage proposal on the grounds of that humiliating report from your physician …”

Dudley paled.

Charlotte bit back a triumphant crow. It had been a calculated guess that such a vile creature harbored some disease. As unkind as it was, she hoped it was something slow, painful and incurable. It was also, for the record, a complete fabrication about the marriage proposal.

Color started to reemerge in Dudley’s face, from ashen to a faint orange, ripening into a crimson and then swiftly turning into something resembling mashed grapes. His eyes bulged and Charlotte detected a twitch at the corner of his mouth.

The man was enraged.

And the gun remained pointed at her, and her pet.

James, darling beloved utterly mad James, stepped into the fray. Not only that, he stepped between the despicable Dudley and herself.

It looked like she was going to be saved, or rescued, or tragically heartbroken.

She thought about swooning and decided against it.

This was too romantic to miss.

I
f there had been a doubt in James’s mind about marrying Charlotte, the sight of a pistol pointed at her lovely, mad self put the matter entirely to rest. His heart lodged in his throat and his life—their life together—flashed before his eyes, ending before it even began.

He gave her a moment in the spotlight to take her turn extracting revenge on Dudley because she would never forgive James for taking that from her. But he edged closer all the while for the inevitable moment when Charlotte was just a bit too … Charlotte.

That was when he stepped in between his future wife (not that she knew it yet) and his former friend.

“Dudley, put the gun down. It is the lady’s pet,” James said in the sort of voice that left no room for negotiation. Or so he had intended. Dudley had always been a selfish blockhead.

“Pet? Pet? That is clearly a wild, rabid animal and it is scaring the ladies,” Dudley replied which was laughable because Dudley was not known to demonstrate the slightest concern for the feelings of others, particularly of women.

“The matter is not negotiable, Dudley. Lower your damned pistol,” James said, this time his voice more tense, more angry. His hands clenched into fists. His jaw held firm.

“How cute. Defending the eccentric debutant and her mangy pet,” Dudley retorted.

Charlotte issued a garbled sound of rage.

And then Harriet …

Oh, Harriet.

She crept up toward Dudley from behind, bearing a curious weapon in her shaking hands. James noticed splashes of the liquid sloshing down the sides of the silver pitcher, undoubtedly smearing the essential message of
west drawing room
that had been inked there earlier.

Clearly Harriet had a trick up her sleeve. She stepped even closer to Dudley, who took no notice of the shy, retiring wallflower. She stepped just to the side of him—and still he was sneering and brandishing his pistol like a madman and carrying on about defending the guests from wild vermin scurrying about in their midst.

Harriet tossed the entire pitcher of lemonade in Dudley’s face.

James took that moment to lunge, knocking Dudley to the ground and delivering precisely six devastating blows to the man’s jaw and nose. One for George Coney the First, one for his threats against George Coney the Second, one for Penelope, two for Charlotte and one more just because the man was awful and deserved a lot worse.

James then fought to wrench the pistol from Dudley’s grasp. He grabbed the man by his wrist and slammed it onto the parquet floor, where just minutes before he’d been waltzing with a beautiful woman in his arms.

The pistol went off.

A bullet pierced the chandelier, shattering a few crystals and sending a flurry of glass shards to the ground.

Women screamed. Men screamed too.

Penelope terrorized everyone with one of those screaming barks and lunged for the rabbit, which recovered its wits and dashed out to the terrace and into the garden. The fox followed.

“Penelope!” Charlotte cried, rushing after her.

“Charlotte!” James yelled, running after her.

Brandon and a few others took care of disposing of Dudley, who was certainly ruined socially forever. It was the least he deserved.

And Charlotte … James dashed after her into the garden. Ahead, she picked up her skirts and hurried after Penelope, who at first stuck to the gravel path but then took to leaping over raised garden beds and low hedges, all in pursuit of that vexing rabbit.

Finally, the rabbit discovered a safe retreat in the hollow of a gnarly old oak tree and the fox barked and scratched and otherwise haunted the poor thing.

Charlotte leaned against the tree, gasping for breath.

“Are you all right?” James ventured as he approached Charlotte.

“All right?” Charlotte echoed. “All right?!”

C
harlotte’s thoughts were racing, her heart was racing, everything was racing like mad and it took a moment before she could do anything other than repeat what he had said.

“Oh, James, I’ve never been better,” she said breathlessly. “That was marvelous!”

Yet another ball interrupted. Dudley getting his comeuppance. A wild animal chase through a ballroom and at least seven people fainting. And now here she was in the garden, alone with James, on a moonlit night. Did life get any better than this?

“I’m so glad you think so,” he said. She thought he seemed relieved and grateful.

Charlotte smiled mysteriously at him.

“I wonder if it is a coincidence that there is a rabbit hopping through the ballroom on the same evening George Coney is reputed to be in attendance,” she remarked.

“I daresay you are the only one who would,” James replied,
still
not confessing to any sort of scheme. She had to admire him for that.

“You might also find it remarkable,” she suggested, speaking of their shared history of mischief.

“I might,” he agreed and she saw a grin tugging at his lips. God, his mouth was just … it gave a girl
thoughts,
mainly of kissing. And not just on the mouth.

“I wonder if this is part of a scheme,” she mused, smiling prettily at him.

“You would,” he muttered, laughingly.

“You wouldn’t?”

James leaned against the tree, and gave her a devastating smile.

“The question, Charlotte, is why?”

This caught her by surprise. She hadn’t ever stopped to wonder the
why
of the scheme. And now that he mentioned it,
why
had he brought a rabbit to the party and Lord only knew what else was in the works.

“Why?” she asked.

“Why would a man go to all the trouble of arranging a rumored reading of a book that doesn’t exist, by an author who definitely does not exist—at least not in human form. Why would a man bring such a gift with such a special meaning, known only to us …”

“And arrange for a fox chase, fisticuffs and the vanquishment of my mortal enemy …” Charlotte added dreamily.

“Well that part wasn’t planned, though I really should have thought of it,” James concurred. And then he said, urgently, “But, Charlotte, I have to tell you something.”

“I knew it,” she whispered.

He grinned, in that didn’t-want-to-but-couldn’t-help-it way. She knew the expression well.

What he said took her breath away and set her heart afluttering like never before.

“I love you, Char. I love how clever and imaginative and courageous you are. How kindhearted, loyal and caring you are. And God, you are beautiful. Ever since our afternoon in the folly, I’ve thought of little else other than you, and wanting to discover you more.

The tears in her eyes were not summoned at will. They were happy tears, glistening on their own accord because this man knew her. He understood her. He loved her. And he was telling her so in a rather romantic speech in the garden on a moonlit night.

Charlotte never thought this moment would happen for her, the vexing, eccentric girl. It was all the more sweet that the man she loved should feel the same.

“I am speechless,” she whispered. Because she had not anticipated this moment, she had not planned a response.

“A first. I am thrilled,” he murmured, clasping her hands and drawing her close.

“I love you, too, you know,” she murmured when her lips were just inches from him. A kiss … that kiss she so ached for was just within reach.

And then Penelope barked (surely one of the least romantic sounds), still fixated on that rabbit. With just a glance, James and Charlotte paused to collect the animals.

“Let’s return these to the house. Follow me,” she said. Then they crept through the dark garden, taking the more secluded paths. Charlotte led them to the servants’ entrance and together they snuck into the house and up to the third floor, where the family kept their bedchambers. The fox was stowed in a room across the hall—with a door that locked properly—and the rabbit was given refuge in Charlotte’s dressing closet.

Suddenly, she was alone in her bedroom with a man.

James Beauchamp. Notorious rake. Who loved her.

Her heart started to pound.

“Now where were we?” James asked in a sultry voice that sent shivers tingling up and down her spine. It was also the sultry sort of voice that left no mystery to why he was considered such a seductive rogue, such a catch.

“You were declaring your undying love and listing all my marvelous attributes,” Charlotte replied coyly. Slightly breathlessly. She felt marvelously out of sorts.

James slowly slid his hand around her waist. Her heart thudded heavily.

“Yes, that may take a while …” James said softly with a sweet grin.

She leaned into him, resting her palm on his chest just above his heart.

“And I said I loved you,” Charlotte whispered.