Page 20 of Scoundrel for Sale
April 1818
Three Months Earlier
* * *
Abbie found the diary on a high shelf in the library, tucked so far back it was hidden from ground level.
She had recently undertaken a project: sorting through the decades of detritus left behind in the dower house by the Ladies Dulson who had come before her. It was a way to pass the time. Society considered it unseemly for widows to attend large parties and gatherings during their first year of mourning, so Abbie’s only option was to socialize quietly with her own relations. Unfortunately, this limited her circle to Uncle Edmond’s family and George’s cousin, Nigel, and it was difficult to say whose company held less appeal.
Most of what she found held little interest—old lists, rusty hairpins, and moth-eaten bonnets. But when she placed her hand upon the journal, a curious tingle ran down her arm. She was struck by a sudden feeling that at last, she had found something interesting, even before she pulled it from the shelf.
It proved to be a journal, handsomely bound in reddish-brown leather. When she opened it, she discovered that it had been written in Portuguese.
It happened that Abbie could read Portuguese. She’d always had an affinity for languages, and her French had been better than her brother’s when she was nine and he fifteen. When Hart decided to join the army, Abbie suggested they study Portuguese together, knowing that she could help him along. She continued her studies even after he departed for Portugal. It was a way for her to feel close to her brother even when they were leagues apart.
The journal had been written around sixty-five years ago by a woman named Carlotta de Noronha. Abbie was familiar enough with the family history to know that Carlotta had been the third Baroness Dulson, married briefly to George and Nigel’s great-uncle. Her husband died of a fever just a few months after their wedding. The union had not produced any children, so the barony had passed to George and Nigel’s grandfather.
Carlotta’s journal was a delight. She had a sardonic wit and a droll turn of phrase. Abbie quickly came to understand that Carlotta had found her own Lord Dulson about as stimulating as Abbie had found George—which was to say, not at all.
But that was where the similarities ended. After having lost her parents and brother in such quick succession, being forced to marry a man she didn’t love, and finding herself a widow by the age of twenty-four, perhaps it was understandable that Abbie felt beaten down and resigned to a quiet, dreary future.
Carlotta, on the other hand, regarded her widowhood as a new dawn. She immediately took a lover—one of the stable hands, an unimaginable scandal—ordered a more daring wardrobe, and began making plans to tour the Continent just as soon as her affairs on the English side of the channel could be brought in order.
It seemed that this process did not go the way Carlotta hoped. She wasn’t the most regular diarist, sometimes filling a dozen pages in one day, and sometimes recording nothing for weeks. But Abbie was able to glean through the gaps that there was some sort of dispute about Carlotta’s dowry, which included three hundred acres of prime wine country back in Portugal’s Douro Valley. Oftentimes marriage settlements were structured such that if the husband died without issue, the dowry assets would revert to the widow or her family. In this case, though, the judge ruled that the vineyards would remain part of the Dulson estate.
Carlotta had disagreed. Vehemently. She cursed the day she married Lord Dulson and decamped for the Continent, leaving her journal behind in her haste.
Having been part of the Davies family for five years, Abbie was aware of the family lore that Carlotta had spent the next fifty years crisscrossing Europe, always leaving scandals in her wake. Ironically, despite her efforts to bid them good riddance, Carlotta was buried in the Davies family plot, as she had died at the age of seventy-six in a moment that her travels had happened to bring her to London. As she was technically still Lady Dulson, someone had suggested her body be brought to Hampshire and interred in the family plot at St. Thomas’s Church, and although the Davies did not harbor any fondness for this particular Lady Dulson, denying her a somewhat-dignified burial would mean a loss of face they were not willing to countenance. So that was how Carlotta de Noronha came to be buried next to a man she despised in a place she had fled at the first opportunity.
After she started reading Carlotta’s journal, Abbie used to visit her grave sometimes. She honestly thought of Carlotta as a friend, just about the only one she had, truth be told. Abbie knew it was foolish, but she had been so lonely during her year of mourning, and it was difficult to understate the impact Carlotta’s journal had upon her. Reading it awakened something inside of her, something that had been lying dormant since her parents’ deaths. She didn’t feel lively, precisely. But, for the first time in six years, she could remember what it had felt like when she had been a carefree young girl. And she felt such a kinship with Carlotta, her fellow Lady Dulson, who had risen above the lot life had handed her and forged her own path, one full of adventure and passion.
Abbie was just starting to wonder if she could perhaps do the same when she found that fateful box in the attic of the dower house.
Having finished organizing the main rooms of the house, Abbie had moved on to the attic. The box in question looked ordinary enough, and upon opening it, Abbie had discovered a cache of papers belonging to Carlotta. Most of them were mundane—receipts from the haberdasher’s shop in Lymington, or recipes for Portuguese delicacies such as Bacalhau à Lagareiro, with a note scrawled in the margin in which Carlotta insisted that her cook use the full recommended amount of garlic, adding, What exactly are you afraid of, that it will taste good?
Some of the papers looked more official—legal documents, perhaps. Nothing as interesting as Carlotta’s diary, much to Abbie’s regret. She had to break off before she could inspect everything as she had received an invitation to dine with her uncle’s family at her former home, Pennington House, and it was time to dress for dinner.
Nigel Davies was also in attendance that evening. Abbie’s cousins dominated the conversation, chattering about the upcoming London Season—the dresses they would order, the balls they would attend, and the bonnets they had trimmed in preparation.
Nobody asked Abbie how she was faring. It was not until the dessert course when her cousins were tucking into their strawberry ices that Abbie found an opening in the conversation.
“I found something of interest when I was sorting through the attic today,” she announced.
“Oh?” Aunt Priscilla did not trouble to look up from her ice as she responded, nor did she infuse her voice with anything resembling interest.
“It was a box of papers,” Abbie continued, undeterred. She was used to this reception at her aunt and uncle’s home. “Most of them were just old receipts and recipes, but—”
“Are there any macarons?” her cousin Beatrice interrupted. “I’m so sick of ices. We’ve had them twice this week.”
“Ices are Lord Dulson’s favorite,” Aunt Priscilla said, offering Nigel a simpering smile. Abbie knew her aunt hoped to marry one of her five daughters off to the new baron, even though Nigel seemed to have inherited all of George’s bad qualities (drabness and lack of imagination), and none of his good ones (kindness and fundamental decency). They were welcome to him, as far as Abbie was concerned.
Beatrice gave a petulant huff, and silence resumed at the table. Abbie decided to try again. “So, the papers I mentioned—most of them were just household records. But I was excited to discover them because they belonged to the former Carlotta de Noronha.”
From across the table came the clang of a spoon hitting the floor. Abbie glanced up, startled, to see that Nigel had overturned the porcelain cup containing his strawberry ice.
Nigel righted the cup and accepted a new spoon from a footman. “Papers belonging to Carlotta de Noronha, you say?”
“Y-yes.” Although Abbie had never much liked Nigel, she’d always thought him harmless enough.
