A Matter of Scandal Read online

  “Greydon!”

  Dennis Hawthorne, the Earl of Haverly, strode around the side of the house. His round face bore a wide grin, and he clapped his hands as he approached. Yet even as he was smiling, lines of worry creased his forehead, and his eyes seemed disturbingly somber. Grey went forward to meet him, revising his earlier assessment. Something was definitely wrong.

  “Uncle Dennis,” he said, allowing the shorter man to pull him into a sound embrace. “You look well.”

  “As do you, my boy. Introduce me to your friends. I know Dare, of course.”

  Tristan stuck out his hand. “Thank you for the invitation, Haverly. His Grace was wasting away in London.”

  “Eh?” Dennis looked up at his nephew, his brow furrowed. “Not taken ill, are you, lad?”

  Only Uncle Dennis called him “lad” any longer. “Hardly,” he said dryly, sending Tristan a warning glance. “Just getting older. Uncle, allow me to present Lady Sylvia Kincaid and Miss Boswell. And the mud hen is Sylvia’s cousin, Lord Charles Blumton.”

  “Welcome to all of you,” the earl said, bowing and shaking hands. “I hope you don’t find Hampshire too rustic. We’re not London, but we do have our diversions.”

  “Like what?” Alice asked, eyeing Greydon from beneath her lashes.

  “Well, Haverly is host to a picnic, almost a fair, every August. And Thursday, the Academy will be presenting Romeo and Juliet.”

  Charles’s expression brightened. “Academy? Which Academy?”

  Greydon scowled as he realized he’d landed squarely in the middle of enemy territory. “Good God. The damned Academy. I’d nearly forgotten about that blight on the landscape.”

  “That’s hardly fair,” his uncle returned, gesturing them toward the front entry. “Miss Grenville’s Academy is a finishing school for young ladies of breeding, Lord Charles. It stands on Haverly land.”

  “A girls’ school?” Charles looked as though he’d swallowed something bitter. “I take it then, Wycliffe, that you also disapprove of the education of females?”

  Grey sidestepped his muddy companion and strolled into the manor. “I have no problem with the education of women,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ve just never seen it done properly.”

  “Don’t be a beast, Wycliffe,” Lady Sylvia cooed. “I attended a finishing school.”

  “And what did you learn?” he asked, scowling as Dare mumbled a curse. They should have known better than to bring it up. “Oh, yes. You learned to say whatever I want to hear. And to follow the tradition of becoming clinging, helpless—”

  “So I suppose we’re not going to be attending the performance?” Tristan interrupted, following him inside.

  “Only if you kill me first and drag my rotting carcass along with you.”

  Chapter 2

  Aunt Regina took charge of assigning the guests their various bed chambers and of having a bath drawn for Blumton. If she had any suspicions regarding Alice or Sylvia’s presence, she didn’t voice them. The entire family was familiar with his late father’s proclivity for carting mistresses about with him, so she probably expected it of his son, as well.

  But Greydon had more significant things to worry about than his aunt’s reaction to his companions. He dropped into Dennis’s padded desk chair, noting that the stitching was beginning to come loose on one side. “All right. What is it, Uncle?”

  Dennis Hawthorne circled the small room a few times and ended up leaning on the back of the opposite chair. “You might at least do me the courtesy of thinking we—I—invited you to Haverly because I haven’t seen you in four years.”

  “Has it been that long?”

  “Yes, it has been. And I do miss you, lad. I’m glad you brought friends along. I presume that means you intend to stay awhile this time?”

  “That depends on you, I suppose.” And on how long he could hide out from the London hounds. “Why am I here?”

  With a heavy sigh, the earl sat. “Money.”

  Sometimes, it would be pleasant to be wrong, Grey thought. “How much?”

  Dennis gestured at the tattered ledger book beneath Grey’s left elbow. “It’s…not good. I should have sent for assistance sooner, but until the spring crop came in, I thought…well, you’d best take a look.”

  Unpaid invoices marked the page of the most recent entries. Grey owned and managed several sizable properties and the two town houses in London, and it took only a moment of perusal to realize that Uncle Dennis was correct. “Good God,” he muttered. “It’s a wonder you haven’t been dragged off to Old Bailey for unpaid debts.”

  “I know, I know. I didn’t—”

  “How could you let this happen?”

  Dennis’s ruddy cheeks darkened further. “It didn’t happen overnight, you know. It just seemed to…creep up on me. Prentiss—you know him—took ill last year. Rather than replace the old fellow, I started doing the books myself. That’s when I began to realize that my manager might not have been entirely…diligent in apprising me about the state of things.”

  “Prentiss should be shot for negligence,” Grey snarled, flipping backward through the pages. “And so should you be, for trusting that doddering old—”

  “That’s enough of that, boy.”

  Grey looked up at him. “I am four and thirty, Uncle. Please do not call me ‘boy.’”

  “Seems to me by that age you might have learned to spare a body’s feelings.”

  With a sigh of his own, Grey closed the ledger. “I don’t suffer fools gladly, if that’s what you mean.”

  “You can’t help being your father’s son, I suppose.”

  Anger began curling up Grey’s spine. “I’ve been hearing that a lot, lately. I’ll take it as a compliment, since I’m sure that’s how you meant it. Now. Once again, why am I here?”

  Dennis cleared his throat. “Right. Best not to annoy the lion when you’re about to stick your hand in its jaws, I suppose.”

  Grey sat looking at him.

  “Oh, all right. I know you could afford to buy Haverly, or to pay off every debt I have hanging over my head.”

  “Yes, I cou—”

  “But I don’t want you to do that. I’ve owned this estate for thirty years, and it’s been in the Hawthorne family for the last three hundred. I’ve only had trouble over the last season or two.”

  “At least,” Grey muttered.

  “Help me get Haverly back on its feet. I need a plan.”

  “You need a miracle.”

  “Greydon!”

  Taking a deep breath, Grey stifled his annoyance at the shoddy accounting and carelessness which had led up to the present disaster, and at the realization that his escape from his responsibilities was going to be mired in invoices and numbers and too damned much time behind a desk. “I’ll need to look at everything.”

  His uncle relaxed a little. “Of course. I must have the final say, but I shall put Haverly into your capable hands.” He stood and began pacing again. “I’m sorry to drag you out of London, but I really didn’t know what else to do.”

  “That’s all right.” He shifted in the chair, hearing it squeak in protest. “London was becoming a bit crowded for me, anyway.”

  Dennis grinned for the first time since they’d begun their meeting. “Your mother, eh?”

  “Among other things.” Mostly of the female persuasion. “How did you manage to grow up with her and avoid having her marry you off?”

  “Believe me, she tried. Practically had me engaged to the local parson’s daughter when I was eight. I daresay if I hadn’t offered for Regina when I did, Frederica would have set the hounds on me.”

  “Well, my heels are chewed bloody this Season.” His uncle’s expression grew curious, but Grey had no intention of providing any further details. He opened the accounts book again. “Are these your current tenants?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where are the rental amounts you charge?”

  Dennis pointed at the notations. “Right there.”
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  Grey blinked, not certain he was seeing straight. “These are the rents you’re charging now. Today.” At his uncle’s nod, he looked at them again. “When was the last time you raised the rent? At the turn of the century?”

  “I thought Haverly was in good condition, remember?” the earl answered, his tone defensive.

  “The first thing you’re going to do is dismiss Prentiss.”

  “But—”

  “Provide him with a pension if you want, but he is not to set foot on Haverly land again. And the second thing you’re going to do is raise the damned rents.”

  “The tenants won’t like it.”

  “And you won’t like debtors’ prison, Uncle Dennis. Raise the rent.”

  “But it’s tradition!”

  “Jane, if we went by tradition, all the roles would be played by men.” Emma Grenville folded her hands in her lap, torn between pulling out her hair and laughing. “Being that this is a girls’ school, that would leave the stage rather bare of performers.”

  “But I don’t want to kiss Mary Mawgry! She giggles!”

  Emma glanced at the group of young ladies standing at the far end of the stage, practicing their swordplay and wisely keeping their distance from Lady Jane Wydon’s rare bout of foul temper. “Then perhaps we should find you a part that doesn’t require kissing,” she said in the cool, logical tone all of her students had quickly learned to dread.

  “Jane could play the fat old nurse,” Elizabeth Newcombe, the youngest of her pupils, suggested from the edge of the crowd. “Nurse doesn’t have to kiss anybody.”

  “Lizzy Newcombe, you be quiet! I am not—”

  “I am playing the fat old nurse,” Emma interrupted, stifling a grin, “so none of you will have to do it.”

  “But I know Freddie Mayburne would do a bang-up job as Romeo,” Jane persisted.

  That didn’t bode well. Emma hoped Jane didn’t speak from firsthand experience, or she was going to have to start double-locking the front gate and posting guards at each entrance. “First of all, Lady Jane Wydon,” Emma said in her firmest tone, “we do not use slang or vulgarisms at the Academy. You know that. Please revise your statement.”

  Jane flushed to the roots of her raven black hair, even her blush becoming. “Freddie Mayburne would be splendid as Romeo,” she amended.

  “Yes, I’m sure he would be. But this school is for young ladies, not for Freddie Mayburne. And my task with this play is to teach you poise, confidence, and diction. Not him.”

  “Besides,” Elizabeth chimed in again, “Mary Mawgry’s been practicing for weeks, and so have I. And I don’t want to play Mercutio if Freddie Mayburne is going to be Romeo. He smells funny.”

  “He does not! It’s a very fashionable French cologne.”

  They all seemed far too familiar with Freddie Mayburne. Clapping her hands together for attention, Emma rose. “No one is changing roles. Jane, if you wish to earn Mr. Mayburne’s—or anyone else’s—admiration, you would best do so by excelling at the task at hand.”

  Jane’s shoulders sagged. “Yes, Miss Emma.”

  “All right. Why don’t we go through the Capulet party, Act 1, Scene V, once more, and then we’ll go to luncheon.”

  “At least I don’t have to kiss Mary in that scene,” Jane muttered, and with a flounce of her skirts, she returned to the stage.

  Emma seated herself in the second pew of the old monastery’s church. Once they’d removed the rather oppressive-looking apostles lining one wall, the large room had converted quite nicely into a lecture hall and theater.

  The girls not attending the Capulet ball took seats around her. “Begin,” she called, gesturing at Miss Perchase, who was in charge of the stage curtains, as well as Latin and crochet.

  “Miss Emma,” Elizabeth Newcombe whispered, turning around on the front pew to face her, “tell us about the carriages.”

  “Not during a rehearsal. Face front, bottom on the seat, miss. Show courtesy and respect for your fellow students, and they will do the same for you.”

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes, but complied. “You’ll never tell us anything, anyway,” she muttered.

  “Proper ladies don’t gossip,” Emma returned.

  “At least tell us if they were handsome,” Julia Potwin urged from the seat behind her.

  Cynical green eyes glittered in her mind. “I didn’t notice,” she hedged. “And what is more important than outward appearance, anyway?”

  “Money,” Henrietta Brendale said, eliciting a chorus of hushed giggles.

  “Henrietta.”

  The pretty brunette sighed and resumed playing with a strand of her long hair. “Inward integrity.”

  “But isn’t—”

  “No, Mary,” Emma called toward the stage, standing. “It’s ‘as a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear’—not an ‘antelope’s ear.’”

  “‘Antelope’ sounds more poetical.”

  “Yes, my dear, but Mr. Shakespeare decided to use ‘Ethiop.’”

  “All right.”

  Mary repeated the line correctly, and Emma sat again. Since yesterday, those green eyes had taken up a preposterous amount of time better spent on rehearsals and budgets and organizing summer curriculums. No one in the area had heard a whisper about Haverly’s guests, or about the golden lion in particular, and she hadn’t been successful in conjuring a reason to go visit Lord and Lady Haverly and find out about them. It was too silly, anyway—she’d never indulged in such delicious, shivery daydreams even as a young girl. Hopefully she wasn’t going to become soft-headed before she turned twenty-six.

  A tap on her shoulder made her jump. “Yes, Molly?” she asked, turning in her seat.

  The maid handed her a note. “Tobias said Lord Haverly sent this.”

  Emma took the paper, that same ridiculous feeling of anticipation running through her again. Trying not to appear as though she was hurrying, she opened the missive and read it—and her heart began thumping even faster. “Hm. It seems Lord Haverly would like to see me as soon as possible.”

  “Ooh! Maybe you’re to meet his guests!” Elizabeth popped up over the back of the seat again.

  “Lord Haverly and I often converse on various matters concerning the Academy. I shan’t speculate.” She rose again. “Miss Perchase?”

  “Yes, Miss Emma?” The Latin instructor poked her head around the edge of the curtains.

  “Please take Nurse’s lines for me, through the end of the Act.”

  “Me?”

  Emma made her way to the back of the small auditorium. “Yes. I need to call on Haverly. Molly, have Tobias saddle Pimpernel.”

  “Yes, Miss Emma.”

  As she went upstairs to change into her riding habit, Emma’s heady excitement continued to grow, and she tried to combat the giddiness with logic. He—they—probably wouldn’t even be at the manor house. On a day this fine, she certainly wouldn’t stay cooped up inside if duty didn’t require it.

  Out in the yard, Tobias Foster, the Academy’s stable hand and jack-of-all-trades, handed her up into the saddle. With a cluck to the sorrel mare, Emma set off down the road toward Haverly.

  Even before the earl’s visitors had arrived, she’d intended to call at Haverly. The Academy’s stable roof needed mending, and so did the ivy-covered wall bordering the north end of the property. The school could afford the repairs, but she would rather use the funds elsewhere. As landlord, Lord Haverly had offered to help her with such costs in the past, and she wanted to ask if he would at least stable the school’s five horses until the roof work could be completed.

  When she reached the manor she left Pimpernel with a groom and went around the front of the house, climbing the shallow steps of the main entry. The butler opened the door before she reached it, and she smiled at him.

  “How do you do that, Hobbes?”

  He stepped aside so she could enter the cool, high-ceilinged foyer. “I have very sharp hearing, Miss Emma.”

  “I see.”

  His ster
n face cracked into a half smile. “And you were expected.”

  Except for a few servants passing through the hallway, Haverly seemed quiet and deserted. A small, guilty twinge of disappointment soured Emma’s mood as she followed Hobbes to the earl’s small office. She always enjoyed chatting with both Lord and Lady Haverly, she reminded herself. The guests and their whereabouts didn’t matter. While the butler went to find the earl, she wandered over to the window.

  The white pieces of the chess set on the table there had advanced by one, and after a moment’s study she shifted her black bishop. She and the earl had been playing the same game for almost two months, another indication that she needed to visit more often.

  “Emma.”

  She turned as the earl hurried into the room to take her hand. His color seemed high, and she abruptly wondered why he had needed to see her so urgently. “My lord. I hope all is well with you and Lady Haverly?”

  “Oh, yes. Fine, fine. I didn’t mean to take you away from your students.”

  “We were rehearsing Romeo and Juliet. I don’t think anyone will miss me.”

  His smile, before always warm and open, seemed to have developed a tic. “I find that difficult to believe. But take a seat, if you please. I…need to discuss something with you.”

  Emma seated herself before the desk and folded her hands in her lap. “I was glad you sent for me, actually. It’s been too long since we’ve chatted, and I wanted your opinion on something.”

  The earl cleared his throat. “Well. Ladies first, then.”

  Something was definitely going on. As she’d taught her students, though, one didn’t pry. “All right. You know my aunt began restoration and repairs on the various parts of the Academy that were beginning to show their age. In the two years since Aunt Penelope passed away, though, I’m afraid I haven’t kept up the project as I should have.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for that. I know how busy you’ve been, my dear. Taking on the running of the Academy at the age of three and twenty wasn’t easy on you, and you can’t convince me otherwise.”