Page 5 of Her Impeccable Scoundrel
After Archie’s death, she’d banned him from Risley Manor and Bluebelle Lodge, and even escaped for a time to Lady Wyndham’s Matron Manor, a haven for widowed ladies like herself. Upon her return to town, her servants had held him at bay, except on her at-home days.
Today, he’d wedged himself and his Pomona green waistcoat onto the settee next to her.
“The latest on dit,” Lord Vernon said, “is that the Swilling Duke has fled town.”
Laughter ensued, along with speculation about the duke’s destination. The silly young duke, who’d expelled his dinner on Lady Loughton’s daughter’s ball gown and passed out—dubbed the Swilling Duke by the wits—was only displaying publicly the least offensive behavior she’d seen in Archie and his friends privately.
She turned her gaze to the mantel clock, wondering how soon she could send all of them away and pay a promised call on Lady Loughton.
“Speaking of traveling peers,” Mrs. Netley trilled over the hubbub in the room, “when will the new Earl of Chilcombe arrive?”
Blythe steadied herself. She fielded this question at least once at every social event she attended, and yet every time, her insides quaked from the uncertainty. She aimed to be gone from Chilcombe House before the new earl swanned into London looking down his nose at her.
“Has he been found?” one pink of the town asked.
“Lord Chilcombe’s date of arrival is uncertain,” she said, “but I’m informed that we might expect it to be in a few months.” July, if the winds are favorable, the Foreign Office said.
“At which point you will be cast out?” Lord Vernon asked with a sly, sympathetic pout.
Mrs. Netley visibly perked.
Blythe uncurled her hands and drew in a breath, refusing to be baited. Chilcombe House had to be maintained anyway, and she would stay until she needed to move into lodgings an easy drive to Doctor’s Commons.
If only her own dear little son had lived, her one worry might be an unfriendly daughter-in-law years from now precipitously tossing her out of Chilcombe House.
“Dear Lord Vernon,” Blythe said blandly, “I am not living in the plot of one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels.”
The others laughed, as she meant them to do.
“I’ve heard that there’s to be a hot air balloon ascension next month in Sussex,” she said, “and if any one of you is au courant on all matters scientific, you must tell us everything you know about it.”
Delighted, one rattlepate clapped his hands and launched into a report, while Mrs. Netley settled back in disappointment, and Blythe eased in another breath to slow her racing heart.
Smiling and nodding at what must be all the right parts in the monologue about Mr. Graham’s balloon and the aeronaut accompanying him, she heard barely a word.
She was not anymore living the plot of one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels. Archie’s death had given her a reprieve from the gothic, sordid existence that he’d thought to impose, and that she’d refused to embrace. She hadn’t so much won the battle as simply outfoxed and outlasted him.
It had been an exhausting trial, one she wouldn’t willingly renew with any man. She might have to fight for Bluebelle Lodge and its lands, but Graeme Blatchfield wouldn’t cast her out of Chilcombe House because she wouldn’t give him the chance.
Though the despicable brat surely would attempt it.
She’d been a good steward, even before Archie died. She’d seen to the much-needed repairs on Chilcombe House, begun before Archie’s death. She’d stretched the budget allowed by the court to sweep out the stench and sordidness of the late Earl of Chilcombe and his friends, both here and at Risley Manor, the Chilcombes’ main seat. She hoped that by the time Graeme set foot in England, the old will would be proved, and she’d be residing permanently at Bluebelle Lodge.
Mrs. Netley was voicing her disgust at female aeronauts when the drawing room door opened and the Chilcombe butler, Adwick, white-faced under all his dignified aplomb, caught her eye. Before he could speak, another man stepped around him and surveyed the room.
A stranger to her, he was a man of perhaps thirty, starkly handsome with light brown hair. Not as handsome as Archie had been, not as tall nor golden-haired like her Adonis of a husband. Still, wide-shouldered and square-jawed under the start of an afternoon beard, he stirred a warmth in her that she hadn’t felt in years.
Along with the awareness rippling through her came a touch of apprehension. Despite the need for a shave and coats dusty from travel, he carried himself like a man in command, entitled and privileged, and signaling… disdain, perhaps.
His unsmiling gaze made a circuit of the room, noting Mrs. Netley and her daughter, moving over the dandies, fops, and pinks of the town, then flitting over her to Lord Vernon.
And then quickly returning to her. His study of her sent his lips into a thin line and then his eyes widened.
Her heart raced and stuttered, while around her the air shimmered and the floor threatened to open and take both herself and the lovely Queen Anne settee down into… into…
No. No, no, no. She would not faint. Would not. Would not.
Adwick cleared his throat and announced the arrival of the Earl of Chilcombe.
