Desperately Seeking Scandal

  DESPERATELY SEEKING SCANDAL

  Lady Ada Ellis has two great talents: managing the accounts of her horse-mad brother’s dukedom, and hiding in Berkshire from London society. Several years ago, a scandal rag published family secrets—and Ada was jilted as a result.

  She has no use for the press or for her onetime fiancé, but fate delivers both into her hands at once. At the same time her former betrothed visits Berkshire with his new bride, charming reporter Colin Goddard seeks Ada’s help for a career-making series of articles on how to snare a wealthy spouse.

  Ada agrees to assist Colin—if he acts as her devoted suitor before the man who once spurned her. What was intended as a humorous exploit turns seductive, as she and Colin challenge each other to a battle of wits, wills, and hearts. But Colin is keeping secrets of his own, and if he and Ada fall in love, one of them will lose everything…

  DESPERATELY SEEKING SCANDAL

  A Novella

  Theresa Romain

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  About Theresa Romain

  Books by Theresa Romain

  Chapter One

  If a gentleman wishes to catch a lady of good fortune, he will need good fortune himself. There is no creature so suspicious as a wealthy woman, especially if she is not beautiful. Any male attention is regarded as suspect.

  And rightly so.

  Vir Virilem, Ways to Wed for Wealth

  Rushworth Green, Berkshire

  She was certain now. The man was following her.

  Ada had suspected it when the fair-haired gentleman regarded the milliner’s shop window far longer than a man normally would. Now that he was waiting for her outside of the confectioner’s, pretending to hold a conversation with Ada’s groom, she was certain of his ulterior motives.

  When one was the sister of a duke who had recently wed in scandal, alas, one constantly encountered people with ulterior motives. When she’d been the sister of an unwed duke, it had been the same. Four years ago, when she’d had a London Season and was known to have a substantial dowry—ditto, ditto.

  Her brother Philippe’s recent marriage to Harriet Talbot, the daughter of the estate’s former horse master, had only reminded the ton that Lady Ada Ellis existed. That she had been jilted four years before. And that her thirty thousand pounds were yet unclaimed.

  To avoid gossip, she now ducked into shops that she didn’t need to visit. She eyed each stranger warily. Unsettling though such preoccupations were, she almost welcomed the break. She’d already spent hours today poring over accounts. Numbers that had always added up before, this time refused to obey. She had to have them in perfect order before her brother returned from his honeymoon trip, so he’d keep her on as steward.

  “Been shopping today, my lady?” said the confectioner.

  “I…have.” She looked at her empty hands. She didn’t need a thing in the world, but there had to be some reason for her to come to Rushworth Green. “I’m looking on behalf of my brother and his wife. When they return from their honeymoon travels, Her Grace will want to change the house to suit her tastes.”

  Until the words came out of her mouth, she hadn’t realized they might be true. But the notion made sense. Every Duchess of Lavelle for hundreds of years had added on to or altered Theale Hall, while every duke oversaw the land and the tenants.

  And the dukes’ spinster sisters… what became of them?

  Ada wrenched her mind away from that question. “Mr. Porter, do you recognize that man speaking to my groom?”

  “To your horse, rather? He’s staying at the White Hare, my lady, with his younger brother. Gave his name as Goddard.”

  “Goddard?” She didn’t recognize the name, though reporters at scandal rags adopted outlandish pseudonyms. There was no way to know a Jones from a Finkleworth.

  She turned away from the shop window toward the counter. “Thank you, Mr. Porter. A dozen caramels, please.” She stripped off her gloves and tucked them away. If one had to be trapped in a shop by a man who was almost certainly a London reporter, that shop might as well be one that offered sweets.

  Porter’s round, ruddy face settled into its familiar smile lines as he counted out the paper-wrapped candies. He had known Ada almost since her birth, and he had never discouraged her fondness for confections.

  Once she paid, she took the folded paper sack from the confectioner, opening it at once. Butter! Sugar! The smell alone was heaven.

  The mysterious man was still outside. Ha! He met her eye through the shop window as Ada peered at him. Then he had to look away and act innocent, holding forth about halters or the horse’s conformation or whatever it was. Her groom Fowler looked bored, good man.

  Oh, never mind this. Ada could stay in the shop forever and eat caramel candy, or she could exit the shop and still eat caramel candy and also find out who this strange person was. Folding over the top of the sack again, she bade good-bye to Porter and marched out of the shop, candies in hand and skirts in a whirl of blue-striped muslin.

  Walking up to her bay gelding, Equinox, she greeted Fowler as he held the horse’s bridle and that of his own mount.

  “You have been making a friend,” she said to her groom.

  Fowler, a thin and grizzled man of middle age, looked uncomfortable. “An acquaintance, my lady.”

  “Indeed. And who might this acquaintance be?” She lifted her brows, looking down her nose at the stranger.

  “Colin Goddard, my lady.” The man in question swept a bow. He was handsome, annoyingly so, with the sort of waving gilt hair that gentlemen disordered and arranged for maximum appeal.

  “Colin Goddard, what business have you with my groom?”

  “None at all. I was just admiring your horses.”

  Fowler made an indescribable noise. Equinox snorted, bobbing his head. The gelding was an impatient fellow who didn’t like to be kept standing. The gray cob, Fitzhugh, looked up the high street with a mild and curious eye.

  “I see,” said Ada. “And now that you’ve admired them, do you plan to make your way through the village and look into more shop windows? Or would you like to have a caramel candy”—she shook the paper bag—“and tell me for which periodical you write?”

  “I certainly wouldn’t decline a candy.” The man dared grin, the sort of smile that said, I’m charming and I know it. “I hadn’t better do anything more, for the sake of my reputation.”

  “Nonsense. It’s my brother’s reputation you have in mind.”

  “Lady Ada, I—”

  “There, see? If you were merely smitten by my horses, you wouldn’t know my name.”

  “Curses. You are too sly for me.” He shrugged, taking a candy from the bag. In its little paper twist, it looked like a fat butterfly.

  “Fowler, you have one too.” Ada held out the bag. When the gelding stretched his neck, she rubbed his velvety muzzle. “None for you, Equinox, though you shall have an apple once you’re back in your stall.” He was as fond of sweets as Ada, but she had seen his teeth stuck together with treacle once before, and she wouldn’t repeat that experience for anything.

  Ada unwrapped a candy for herself, tossing the twist of paper back into the sack. Burnt sugar, smooth stickiness, rich butter coated her tongue. Porter was a wizard.

  A light autumn breeze tickled her cheeks; dry leaves scudded by along the packed-dirt road. For a moment, Ada sucked at the sweet, considering. “All right. Mr. Goddard—is that truly your name?”

  At his lazy nod, she added, “Very well, then. Mr. Goddard. Te
ll me why you’re here and what you hope to gain.”

  “I’d not hoped to benefit from such frankness.”

  She ignored the curious glances of the villagers passing by along the sleepy high street. “I’m twenty-four years old, wealthy, plain, and cynical. Frankness is my finest attribute.”

  “I should never call you plain.”

  “No. You never should. It would be rude.”

  She was plain, though, and his candied words didn’t change that. Long face, dark brows. Light brown hair and the family’s gray eyes. Wide mouth, rangy figure, small feet. She seemed put together from pieces of entirely different women. It had been amusing, in her only London Season, to watch the portraitist try to turn her into a conventional beauty. In the end, he had slapped laurels on her head and draped her in a toga, declaring her far too rare to have a more usual sort of portrait.

  “I’m a reporter, as you guessed,” he said. “But I’m not seeking a story about your brother.”

  So. He was hungry for more pieces of her family, was he? Since scandal writers had made a meal of her eldest brother’s death, scraps of privacy were all that remained. She could spare no more.

  “Fowler,” she said, “will you walk Equinox and Fitzhugh up the high street and back? They appear impatient.”

  Fowler shot a pitying look at Goddard. “Yes, my lady.”

  As soon as they had retreated a few steps, Ada rounded on Goddard. “So.” She made her voice heavy with disbelief. “You’re not interested in the Duke of Lavelle’s marriage.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Not even though it was to the daughter of our former horse master.” Harriet was a gentleman’s daughter, but that was not how her background had been reported in the press.

  “A matter of complete indifference to me, I assure you.”

  “You came all the way to Berkshire—”

  “It’s not that far. Only a few hours in a mail coach.”

  “—for what, then? To eat candies given you by a stranger?”

  “Unwise of me,” Goddard granted. “I ought to have asked if you’d done something horrible to it.”

  “I didn’t. So what’s the reason you’re following me about?”

  He eyed her. His was the sort of assessing attention that a man might give a horse for sale, not the sort a man gave a woman he found attractive. “It might be for a story about you.”

  The candy caught in her throat. Her stomach rolled. Could he know about Lord Wrotham’s visit to the area? She had only just got the letter two days ago. “I could thwart you, then, simply by leaving your presence.”

  “I’d stay in the inn and haunt you every time you came into Rushworth Green.”

  Ada tapped at her chin, considering. “That would be annoying. I suppose I could bribe you to leave.”

  “What would keep me from returning for another payment?” He grinned. “Not that I would. I’m just mentioning it as a flaw in your plan.”

  He reached for another caramel. She batted his hand away. “I could,” he drawled, “speak to the people in the village. Or the dukedom’s tenants.”

  She looked at him coolly. The Lavelle-gray eyes were a formidable weapon when employed properly. “Is that a threat?”

  “Only if you are threatened by having people talk about you.” He smiled disarmingly. “Look. Lady Ada. I don’t need your help with this, but it would be easier for us both—and more pleasant—if I had it.”

  “And what is ‘this’?”

  “The sort of story that will make my career. And it just might make you happy too.”

  He looked so pleased with himself, but not in a way that raised her hackles. It was a sort of excited surprise, like the contents of his own mind were an unexpected delight.

  By this time, the groom had returned with the two horses. Behind Goddard, Equinox investigated the man’s hat with curious nibbles.

  Fowler coughed. “My lady, would you like me to get the constable?”

  “No need,” Ada decided. “Mr. Goddard hasn’t done anything wrong. Yet.”

  “I would never!” Goddard managed to look wounded. “I’m an honorable man.”

  Tucking the little paper sack under one arm, Ada took out her gloves and pulled them back on. “Because following a woman around is exactly what a gentleman would do?”

  “It is if he intends to write a story about that woman.”

  “Also not what a gentleman would do.” She checked the fit of her gloves, not wanting to look at the reporter again quite yet.

  Goddard traveled with a brother, Porter had mentioned. And Goddard said—though it could be a lie—that he didn’t care about her brother’s marriage. Certainly it was true that he didn’t adopt the sly nudge-wink manner that men often did when the subject of Lord Wrotham, that jilt, came up around Ada.

  She might be able to make use of this visitor, just as he hoped to make use of her.

  Her curiosity was piqued.

  She turned away, letting Fowler hand her into the sidesaddle on Equinox’s back. She took up the reins in one hand, regarded the little sack of candies dubiously—then tossed them down to Colin Goddard.

  “Don’t regard that as a posy or anything of the sort,” she informed him. “I am at home to callers tomorrow from two o’clock to three. You may call then and explain to me what you have in mind.”

  “Thank you, my lady.” When he bowed again, he swept off his hat with all the swagger of a Royalist Cavalier.

  Reporters. She rolled her eyes. “And if I don’t like it, I will call the constable.”

  That brought him up short. “But I haven’t done—”

  “Mr. Goddard. Do you really believe the family of a duke needs a reason to have someone removed from their presence?”

  It was a good parting line. As Ada wheeled Equinox about and set him on the road back to the ducal seat, followed by Fowler on his cob, she wondered if Goddard was watching her ride off.

  She decided she didn’t mind if he was. For the past four years, Lady Ada Ellis had been buffeted by one loss after another.

  Now she just might have a chance to strike back.

  * * *

  Colin wasn’t about to miss the chance to speak with Lady Ada Ellis in a situation other than a few stolen, tense moments in front of a confectioner’s shop. At half one the following day, he left the room he had rented for himself and Samuel at the White Hare, bidding his brother ring for whatever he might need.

  He made his way to Theale Hall on foot, sixty percent to save the hire of a horse and forty percent to survey the grounds of the stately home. One approached the ducal seat by way of the stables, a practical touch that he approved. Of course, these were no mere stables: They were great long rows of ruddy-gold stone with large windows. The frames and muntins were painted a crisp white, as if they belonged to houses. Likely, the Lavelle dukedom’s horses lived better than many Londoners.

  A circular drive connected the stables to the great house itself, a decorative rectangle of the same red-gold stone topped with a city of gables and slates and chimney pots. Unlike a London mansion, though, to which one often had to skip up a flight of marble steps before deigning to knock at the door, this one had a subdued entrance. No steps, just a jut of stone into which a set of rich brown double doors were set. From behind the edge of Theale Hall, a dower house peeked its smaller stone face.

  At five minutes of two, Colin stood before the front door of Theale Hall. He had brushed his hat, donned his best clothing. When the butler opened the door to him, he doffed his hat.

  “Lady Ada is expecting me,” he said with more certainty than he felt. The lady had been prickly the day before, but not, he hoped, completely set against him.

  The butler showed him not into some frothy parlor all done up in flowers and silks, but into a study. A masculine room, all wooden shelves and ancient oils and beautifully bound volumes. The air was scented with leather and lamp oil and the faint, musty smell of old paper.

  “Lady Ada.” The duke
’s sister was seated behind a desk half the size of Colin’s room at the White Hare. “This is where you welcome your social callers?”

  She pulled off a pair of gold spectacles and blinked up at him. “This is where I spend most of the hours I pass indoors.” Blotting a page in a large ledger, she slid it to one side of the desk. “Thank you, Chalmers. We won’t require any refreshment.”

  “We won’t? Are you sure?” Colin asked. “I think I might require something.”

  She leveled at him the sort of look a barmaid offered when her arse had been pinched one time too many.

  “Fine,” he sighed. As the butler left them alone, he dropped into a chair across the desk from her. As he leaned against the back, he groaned a little. Sturdy leather, supple as cloth, with upholstery as comfortable as an embrace. It was a good life, being a duke’s sister. Or simply visiting her for a while.

  She steepled her hands. “I learned a bit more about you, Mr. Goddard. You truly are a writer for hire. And at present, you work for… The Gentleman’s Periodical.” She spoke the words slowly. They were weighty to her, though he didn’t know why.

  “A tone of surprise, Lady Ada? I would not dare lie to someone so formidable.”

  “Formidable? Honestly.” She took up a quill and penknife. “You might as well call me plain and frightening and be done with it.”

  Why she called herself plain, he had no idea. She wasn’t beautiful in the way of painted portraits and marble-carved statues. But she looked like no one else he’d ever seen in the world, and that was surely the opposite of plain.

  “Frightening, I will grant you,” he said with mock sincerity. It didn’t fool her for a second, for she shook her head.

  “An attempt at flattery? How transparent.” Thumb against the end of the quill, she shaved a perfect sliver from its nib. “Do tell me about your work.”

  It saved my life, he could have said. He’d been born to gentry, but his father was too fond of the bottle and the dice. The family lost their land, then their money—and when the influenza swept England in 1803, his parents lost their lives as well. Colin had been fifteen then, his younger brother only ten and troubled by a condition that kept him out of the public eye.