The Scandalous Widow
Author
Elizabeth Rolls
Reads
19.6K
Chapters
24
Be tantalized by Elizabeth Rolls's scandalous Regency romance! She's determined never to marry again… Is he the gentleman to change her mind? Left penniless by her late husband and disowned by her family, widow Lady Althea withdrew from polite society, and became infamous for indulging in not-so-secret liaisons with gentlemen of the ton. These days, Althea lives quietly with her beloved dog, Puck, and secretly pens salacious novels instead! Then handsome solicitor Hugo Guthrie arrives, with her orphaned nieces in tow, and turns her life upside down. For the girls need a home, and working with Hugo is making every emotion Althea thought she could live without come crashing back to life!
Prologue
Althea Hartleigh held the letter her manservant had handed her between thumb and forefinger and considered it carefully. Yes, that was her name and style, set out correctly in a neat, businesslike script. On the reverse—no need to look again, it was engraved on her memory—was the name, style and address of her brother’s solicitor. No postmark.
‘This was hand-delivered, John?’
She hadn’t meant to sound snappish. The whiskery nose of her small scruffy terrier emerged from under her desk in hopes of a walk, but retreated immediately.
‘Yes, ma’am. Chap’s waiting in case you wish to send a reply.’
She hardly ever lost her temper now. There was so rarely anyone with whom to lose it. For the past several years she had deliberately lived her life free of familial entanglements and obligations. Who the hell needed them?
But now memory rose up, flooding through her in a scalding torrent—memories she preferred to forget. Everything she had lost, and decided she no longer needed or wanted, spilled over in a fury of hurt. Her fingers opened, and the letter fluttered into the fire. Satisfaction burned darkly as the letter flared. No doubt Frederick’s solicitor, the hapless Mr Hugh Guthrie, was really a very nice old man. She knew he had delivered Frederick’s last communiqué some years ago under duress, and she had felt sorry for his obvious discomfort, but if Frederick wished to speak to her, he could find the intestinal fortitude to face her.
‘Ma’am? Is that your reply?’
She stared at the merrily burning letter a moment longer. The wax of the unbroken seal went up with a hiss. She clenched her fists, then forced them to relax, and reached for calm.
‘You could say that.’ Poor Mr Guthrie didn’t deserve her venom. ‘Please inform the messenger that, while I have no personal animus towards his master, my brother Frederick may burn in hell along with all his works for all I care.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
As the door closed behind him, Althea reflected that she must have shocked John to his boots for him to fall back on calling her my lady. For a moment she wondered if burning the letter unread had been the best decision she could have made. She dismissed that. It was done now. Time to gather her thoughts. She sat back at her untidy desk, picked up her pen and dipped it in the ink. Back to work. This letter was important.
Ten minutes later she was still staring at a blank page, the thoughts she actually wanted ungathered. The ink upon the quill went dry as thoughts she very definitely didn’t want churned through her.
Damn.
Words eluded her. She wished her thoughts would do likewise. Had she done the right thing?
‘Too late if I haven’t, Puck.’
A tail, attached to the dog beneath her desk, thumped.
‘Damn.’ Saying it aloud didn’t help either.
She looked under the desk, met hopeful brown eyes. ‘We’ll walk down to the bookshop.’
She bent down and changed into her outdoor shoes, conveniently located under her desk.
The tail increased its activity and Puck, correctly interpreting the shoe change and the word walk, trotted over to the door where his leash hung. Althea rose. One of the many nice things about living alone was that no one cared if your bonnet and cloak hung on the back of the parlour door with the dog’s leash, or that your outdoor shoes lived under your desk. It wasn’t slovenly. It was convenient. Your shoes and cloak were exactly where you needed them if you decided on impulse to go out, and no one cared or fussed at you over it. She retrieved a pair of gloves from her desk drawer and drew them on. Her house, her home, her life and her choices. No one told you that, no, you might not have a dog under any circumstances. Having a dog and keeping a pair of gloves in the drawer of your desk might not be very important choices, but they were her choices.
Her finished library books were already on the hall table. Selbourne’s Antiquarian Books a few streets away had a circulating library attached. By rights she should finish her letter before going for a walk. Instead she’d change her books and take some fresh air—well, as fresh as London air ever got—and settle her mind. She could negotiate better afterwards.
Her stomach was still knotted twenty minutes later when she pushed open the door of Selbourne’s, despite the brisk walk. Why should she feel guilty about burning a letter from Frederick’s solicitor? Whatever social crimes her not-so-beloved brother was laying at her door now, she didn’t need to see them set out in his solicitor’s elegant script.
Smiling at the proprietress as she rose from her desk, Althea asked, ‘Have you anything suitable for mentally consigning uncongenial relatives to a place of great heat?’
Miss Selbourne, a lady some years older than herself, raised her brows as she took a dog biscuit from some fastness in her desk. ‘I believe I can accommodate you with a nice translation of The Divine Comedy. Puck?’
The dog sat immediately, and Miss Selbourne tossed the biscuit to him. He snatched it from the air, trotted to the fireplace where Miss Selbourne’s much larger, if equally scruffy dog opened a tolerant eye in greeting, and then Puck settled down to enjoy it.
Althea smiled, some of her restless irritation melting away. She liked this shop, and she liked its owner. She had no idea how Miss Selbourne, whose married name was Lady Martin Lacy, managed to balance marriage, family and owning a business in practical terms, let alone the legal quagmire for a married woman running a business. Sometimes she wanted to ask, but that would require a greater intimacy than she was prepared to accept. Relationships, most of them, were too wretchedly complicated.
Hugo Guthrie spent as little time as possible hanging around inn yards. Especially on cold March days, and extra-especially the Bolt-in-Tun on Fleet Street. In his admittedly theoretical experience, inn yards were an excellent place to have your pockets picked whatever the weather. They were also excellent places to find a whore for the night. Often you could have both for the price of one, with your choice of whore slipping a little something extra into your drink and making off with your possessions. Including your clothes.
Or so he had been told. He was not interested in learning such things from his own experience.
The Bolt had a particularly well-earned reputation for drunken sprees and otherwise riotous gatherings. Again, this was second-hand knowledge.
With these dubious delights in mind, he kept close to the wall of the inn, making sure his wallet was secure along with his watch. For good measure he added a forbidding frown for any suspect female who thought to approach him.
It wouldn’t do his reputation in the legal fraternity any good if his partner had to rescue him naked from some stew near the Bolt. He glanced at his watch for the umpteenth time—the stagecoach was now officially late.
Probably not unusual. Indeed, when he’d come down a couple of days ago, to ask the landlord what time the coach was due in from Hastings, he’d been told as much. But he hadn’t dared risk being late. Not for this particular coach. So he’d arrived early, whiling away the first hour in the tap with a quiet pint of ale.
The pint a pleasant memory, he’d decided to wait in the yard despite the light drizzle. He stiffened as a respectable looking female sauntered in. It was possible she was as completely respectable as her garb implied. That she’d merely come to meet a relative off the stage...or it was possible that she was a brothelkeeper, looking not for clients, but for new girls. And, if the latter—he noted her speak briefly to a much younger, prettily dressed female—it was also likely she was keeping an eye on the current girls.
Men and horses came and went through the narrow tunnel leading out to Fleet Street. Two young bucks rode in a hired gig with a dappled cob between the shafts. Errand boys scurried in and out, doubtless with a sprinkling of pickpockets amongst them. A stray dog nosed about, but made off when an ostler threatened it with a broom. All sorts made their living around an inn.
He idly wondered, if he took all due precautions, it might be interesting to spend more time in places like this, watching the bustle from a safe distance. With his back firmly to the wall.
A small ginger cat strutted across the yard, a large rat dangling from its jaws, and disappeared into the stables. From the plush state of the cat’s fur, Hugo surmised that the creature more than earned its keep. He pulled his cloak a little closer against the rain and the wind that whipped against it even in the sheltered yard. He’d wear his muffler if he did this again.
‘Here she comes!’
The yell from a man by the gate heralded a clatter of hooves and rumble of wheels, magnified by the confines of the tunnel, as the stagecoach lumbered in.
Hugo stepped forward as soon as the vehicle drew to a halt, taking care to stay out of the way of the ostlers managing the four sturdy, sweating horses who looked as though they needed a feed and a rest.
The doors opened and passengers alighted. None of them, he saw at a glance, were the pair he was supposed to meet. Worry gnawed in his belly. What if they’d got off too early? What if—
‘Sorry, guv. ’Scuse me.’
He turned, moving aside for the ostler. ‘My apologies.’
‘No problem. Just got to help this little lass down.’
Little lass? Down?
Hugo looked up at the dark-haired child, no more than eight, which the guard was helping down from the roof. Another girl, several years older, started to scramble after her. Her hood tumbled back to reveal a pale face and honey-gold curls.
‘Now, hold on, missy.’ The ostler set the little girl down and held up his hand for the older girl, who clutched a valise. As soon as she was down the girl hurried to the smaller child who clung to her hand.
Hugo didn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it. The bastard hadn’t even paid for inside seats?
He swallowed. What the devil did he know of young girls? What was he supposed to say to them? Sometimes the obvious was best.
He cleared his throat. ‘Miss Price? Miss Sarah Price?’ He wondered at the croaky sound of his own voice.
The girl, her knuckles white on the valise, looked at him. The little girl, eyes reddened and swollen, shrank against her. Hugo’s stomach knotted.
‘Yes. Who...who are you?’
The defiance in her voice and lifted chin told him everything he didn’t want to know. And everything Sarah Price didn’t want him to know—that she was terrified.
‘I’m Mr Guthrie, Mr Hugh Guthrie. Your father’s lawyer. I’m here to meet you and your sister.’ He smiled at the little girl, who practically disappeared into her sister’s shadow. ‘Did no one accompany you?’
Why was he even asking? The man who had refused to look after these children, had put them on the stagecoach in outside seats, wasn’t going to waste a return fare on a servant to accompany them.
The older girl shook her head. Suspicious green eyes looked him up and down. ‘How do we know you’re who you say you are?’
Hugo took out the letter he’d been sent. It was the last thing he wanted to show the poor child, but he couldn’t expect her to trust him without question. ‘This was sent to me by your cousin, Mr Price-Babbington. Asking me to meet you today.’
Still the child hesitated. Beside her the smaller girl began to shiver.
‘Sarah?’ The voice was a mere whisper, as though the poor little scrap scarcely dared speak. ‘Did he know Papa?’
Hugo tried again. ‘Sarah, your sister—Kate, isn’t it?—is cold. Why don’t you come into the inn with me? I... I can secure a private parlour. Perhaps some dinner.’
The little girl looked hopeful. ‘Dinner? Really? The driver shared his food with us, but we didn’t have enough money at the last stage for anything.’
The rage Hugo had been tamping down since receiving Price-Babbington’s instructions for these girls flared up all over again. Damn the bastard to hell and back. No. Not back. Price-Babbington could stay in hell where he belonged.
‘Dinner, then.’
Sarah Price’s expression still spat defiance. ‘Are you taking us to the orphanage after that?’
He clenched his fists. ‘No.’
He’d spent the last week tracking down as many members of their family as he possibly could. While he didn’t hold out any hope for their father’s estranged—not to mention impecunious and disgraced—sister, Lady Hartleigh, to take them in—apparently she hadn’t even bothered to read his letter—there were plenty of other relatives who could. He’d hoped that by now one of those relatives would have replied in the affirmative.
The next words out of his mouth burned every bridge there had ever been. ‘There won’t be any orphanage.’
He’d write to the entire family again. They couldn’t not respond, surely. Meanwhile, Hugo contemplated the wreck of his own neatly ordered world while he waited for them to do so.
