The Regency Season: Ruined Reputations: The Rake's Ruined Lady / Tarnished, Tempted and Tamed

‘Are you questioning our dear mama’s virtue?’ Toby guffawed. ‘She’ll not thank you for hearing that repeated. Perhaps I might tell her.’

He eyed his sibling calculatingly, feeling confident that Hugh would relent rather than risk upsetting their widowed mother. The dowager was approaching sixty-five and would be distraught to know her elder son risked a spell in the Fleet because his debts were out of control.

‘I’ve had enough of you...take yourself off...’ Hugh snapped in exasperation, turning for the door.

‘What’s wrong? No money left? Sent too much out to India, have you? Toby’s voice was low and sly and he concealed a smirk at the look of intense hatred he’d brought to his brother’s face.

‘I’ll arrange for a bank draft later in the day,’ Hugh said, just before quitting the room. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I need to be elsewhere...’

Toby strutted after him, looking exceedingly pleased with himself.

‘If you come again demanding me to bail you out of gambling debts you’ll be wasting your time. I won’t care what you say...’

‘Won’t you, now...?’ Toby drawled provocatively. ‘Gambling debts?’ He smoothly changed the subject. ‘It’s nothing so vulgar, my dear fellow. Serena has expensive tastes in jewellery, if you must have the details...’

Toby wasn’t referring to his prospective fiancée’s taste but to that of his mistress. Hugh knew his brother had set up Serena Worthing in a smart apartment, and even with a marriage contract under discussion it seemed Toby had no intention of putting her off to concentrate on his future wife.

‘Well, whatever it is...whoring, drinking, gambling...you’ll pay for it yourself in future.’

‘If ever our positions return to what they were...what they should be...I’ll remember this conversation and all those others where you’ve had the damnable cheek to moralise.’ Toby pointed a stout finger at his brother. ‘Before you got rich and Blackthorne got married the two of you were constant petticoat-chasers. Blackthorne might have eased off now, but you’re worse than ever since you got back from India.’ Toby thrust his face close to Hugh’s jaw. ‘Tell me...what it is about an exotic beauty that fires a man’s blood so...?’

‘You sound jealous of my popularity with the ladies.’ Hugh shoved his brother away and strode on along the corridor. ‘Show yourself out.’

Chapter Three (#uf1865651-26c4-5264-befc-4525a57dd051)

‘I’m sorry Papa worried you enough to bring you racing to Hertfordshire yesterday. I had no idea he’d summoned you home just because the wedding is off.’ Beatrice bounced her baby nephew on her knee. ‘Of course it is wonderful to have you visit, Elise, and this little chap has grown so big since I last saw him.’

Elise had been pouring tea into bone china, but on hearing the quaver in her sister’s voice she put down the pot and crouched down by the side of Bea’s armchair. ‘You don’t need to be brave with me, my dear. I know how dreadfully hurt you are.’ She pressed Bea’s fingers in comfort.

Beatrice avoided Elise’s astute gaze, blinking rapidly at the window to one side of her. ‘It is all right...really it is...it has been nearly a week now since...’ She tried to name the person who’d caused her heartbreak but found his name stuck to her tongue.

As her nephew gurgled, giving her a gummy smile, Bea fondled his soft pink cheek with a forefinger.

‘Another few days and I will be right as rain—won’t I, Master Adam?’

‘Well, I know I would not be, if it were me who’d been so cruelly jilted,’ Elise announced pithily. She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I’d never have imagined Dr Burnett to be a callous or a fickle fellow.’

‘I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who mistook his character.’ Beatrice sighed. ‘I can’t forgive him for abandoning me in favour of family duty, yet since I’ve had time to calm down I understand why he did so.’

‘Then I think you exceedingly over-obliging!’ Elise exclaimed. ‘Love should override all else in my book.’

‘In a perfect world...perhaps...’ Beatrice returned philosophically. ‘I think matrimony and Beatrice Dewey are destined to remain strangers.’

‘Never say so! There is a husband for you...he just has not shown himself yet.’ Elise attempted to draw her sister from her glums with a provocative comment. ‘As I recall, there was nobody more determined to be a wife and mother than you.’

Beatrice chuckled wryly at that reminder. Indeed, there had been a time when she’d driven her poor sister to distraction, so keen had she been to settle down with a nice fellow and raise a little family of her own. After several false starts she’d met Colin and finally thought her ambition was within her grasp. Now, for some reason, she felt tired of struggling towards that particular dream...

‘You girls are up early.’ Walter Dewey entered the sunny front parlour, supported by his stick. He gave his daughters an affectionate smile, thinking it nice to have them both together again at home, and with the added bonus of his handsome little grandson.

In Walter’s opinion the child was a perfect blend of his parents: he had the viscount’s brown eyes and sturdy build and his mother’s sharp chin and fair hair.

‘Did you sleep well?’ he asked Elise. ‘I heard young Adam having a grizzle just before dawn broke.’

‘He was wet so I changed his nappy,’ Viscountess Blackthorne said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to tend to her baby herself rather than give Adam to his nurse.

Following their parents’ acrimonious divorce, Elise and Bea had been reared by their papa in straitened circumstances, so were accustomed to being useful and practical in mundane matters. Both young women were quite happy to dress themselves and knew how to cook and clean. When younger, the sisters had taken to painting their bedrooms and made a capable job of it, much to their papa’s surprise and delight.

‘Don’t look at me like that, miss,’ Walter mildly reproved, having caught Beatrice frowning at him. ‘I know you believe I’m at fault because your sister has better things to do than commiserate with us that you’ve been put back on the shelf—’

‘I certainly do not!’ Elise cut across her father. ‘There’s nothing more important to me than being here with you, although the reason for it is upsetting.’ She gave her sister’s cheek an affectionate stroke. ‘Bea is certainly not on the shelf, Papa! How can she be when she is so pretty and looks not a day over eighteen...?’

‘Oh...Elise!’ Beatrice choked. ‘A very nice compliment but it really is too much.’

‘Perhaps I exaggerated just a little. You could pass easily for twenty-one and that is certainly not over-egging it.’ Elise cocked her head to assess her sister’s countenance. Beatrice was still one of the loveliest young women of her acquaintance, and in the haut monde Viscountess Blackthorne certainly came into contact with some vaunted beauties.

For the first time in days Beatrice chuckled with genuine amusement. ‘Papa’s right: I might be on the shelf...’ she pulled a little face ‘...but I’m not sure it worries me; at present I’m fed up with gentlemen and romance.’

‘That will pass.’ Walter flapped a hand. ‘Every young lady craves her own home and family.’

‘Are you trying to get rid of me, Papa?’ Beatrice teased her father.

‘You know I am not! You may stay with your old papa for as long as you wish...but to tell the truth I was looking forward to walking you down the aisle before these old legs finally give out on me.’

‘And so you shall, Papa,’ Elise reassured him, getting up from her place by her sister’s chair. Having tested the tea that she’d abandoned in the pot, Elise found it now unpalatably lukewarm.

‘Your Aunt Dolly will be very sad to have this news,’ Walter muttered, sinking into a seat.

‘She loves a wedding,’ Elise reflected, settling by her papa on the sofa.

‘She travelled here to attend your nuptials uninvited, as I recall.’ Walter dredged up a chuckle at the memory of his widowed sister turning up out of the blue on the eve of the wedding, expecting to be housed and fed.

‘And Mrs Vickers accompanied her,’ Elise chipped in, fondly dwelling on her countryside wedding at the local church. It had been a quiet, yet wonderful occasion, with just her family about her. She glanced at her sister, wondering if Bea was musing sadly on the fact that Colin Burnett had acted as Alex’s groomsman that fine afternoon.

‘I rather liked Edith Vickers,’ Beatrice remarked brightly. She had indeed been thinking of Colin’s role in her sister’s happy day and pounced on the first thing that came into her head to chase memories of him from her mind. ‘How is Mrs Vickers? Do you ever see her?’

‘Oh...of course...you would not know for I’ve not had a reason to mention it.’ Elise frowned. ‘Sadly, Mrs Vickers passed away.’ She leaned forward to impart an exciting titbit. ‘There was quite a brouhaha when it came to light that she had not been as hard up as she’d believed herself to be. When Edith’s husband died his creditors pounced and left her in very reduced circumstances. But they left alone the deeds to a strip of land in India because it was deemed to be barren. Mrs Vickers bequeathed it to her nephew, Hugh.’

‘Hugh Kendrick?’ Walter snarled.

He recalled that name. When Beatrice had gone with her sister to London several years ago Mrs Vickers’s nephew had shown undue interest in Beatrice, raising her hopes that he might propose. Walter had been enraged to know the fellow hadn’t the wherewithal to take on a wife so must fortune-hunt for a bride. He’d been angry at himself, too, knowing that if only he had put by a dowry for his daughters his elder child might have been settled before the younger, as was the proper way of things.

‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear of her passing.’ Beatrice wiped dribble from her nephew’s mouth with her hanky. ‘I expect Aunt Dolly misses Edith. They were good friends, weren’t they?’

‘So...the land was not worthless?’ Walter guessed, returning to the crux of the matter.

‘It was not,’ Elise confirmed, clapping her hands in glee. ‘Alex was delighted for his friend when he found out about his good fortune. Of course there were many green-eyed people not so pleased at the turn of events, and Sir Toby Kendrick led the pack—’

‘What happened?’ Walter butted in impatiently, his gnarled hand clutching tightly at his stick, turning the knuckles white. Walter loved a good tale of Lady Luck turning up unexpectedly. Many a time over the years he had wished that elusive minx would smile on him when his marriage and his business had crumbled, leaving him desolate with two teenage girls to bring up alone.