The courtships drew constant public attention and commentary, and the young ladies Talbot adored the scrutiny, each doing her best to tempt the scandal sheets—much to their mother’s dismay. The sisters flourished under Society’s censure, every tut behind a doyenne’s fan driving them to more outrageous behavior.
All the sisters but Sophie, that was. At twenty-one, Sophie had always been the daughter whom scandal had avoided. She’d always assumed it was because she cared little for Society and their dictates and opinions, and somehow, Society seemed to understand that.
But now that the Duke of Haven was doused in water from the fishpond, with several pieces of freshwater flora stuck to his previously impeccably turned out trousers, it seemed that Society was no longer interested in leaving Sophie Talbot—widely considered to be “the quiet one” of the Dangerous Daughters—alone.
Sophie’s cheeks blazed as she held her head high and exited the greenhouse, pausing in the doorway, eyes scanning the crowd. They were all there. Duchesses and marchionesses and countesses, staring from behind fluttering fans, their whispers like cicadas in the suddenly cloying summer air. It was not the ladies’ response to her actions that was shocking, however. She had witnessed ladies gossip and feed upon scandal for years.
It was the men.
In her experience, the gentlemen of London cared little for gossip—leaving it in the purview of their wives as they turned their thoughts to other, more manly diversions. But apparently that was not the case when one of their own was maligned. They stared as well—the earls and marquesses and dukes—each title more venerable than the last. And in their eyes, in the force of their multitude, Sophie saw more than censure.
Loathing was so often described as cold; today, it felt hot as the sun. She lifted her hand without thinking, as though she could block the glowering heat.
“Sophie!” Her mother came rushing forward, her smile broad, her voice loud enough to carry through the throngs of whispering partygoers. The countess wore a gown of deep scarlet, which would have been scandalous enough if it were not topped with a ridiculous construction in the same hue that towered above her petite face, dwarfing her beauty in what she had been assured was “the height of Chinese fashion.”
Right now, however, Lady Wight was not interested in her hat. Instead, she bore down on her youngest daughter, eyes filled with what could only be described as panic, Sophie’s three middle sisters following like extravagantly dressed ducklings.
“Sophie!” the countess said. “What a scene you’ve made!”
“One might even think you were one of us,” Sesily said dryly, her impressive décolletage threatening to burst from the seams of her outrageous gown—exceedingly tight and bordering on garish. Of course, Sesily had the temperament to wear such a thing and appear temptation herself. “Haven looked as though he wished to murder you.”
I shall destroy you.
“I think he would have if we weren’t so very public,” Sophie replied.
“So unfortunately public,” her mother hissed.
Sesily raised a brow and brushed an invisible speck from her bosom. “And if he weren’t so very wet.”
“You needn’t point out your breasts, Sesily. We all have them,” Seleste said dryly through a gossamer veil of gold thread, cascading down her face and neck from a crownlike contraption.
Seline snickered.
“Girls!” the countess hissed.
“It really was magnificent, Sophie,” Seline said. “Whoever thought you had it in you?”
Sophie turned a scathing gaze on her next oldest sister. “What does that mean?”
“This is not the time, girls,” their mother interjected. “Do you not see that this might ruin us all?”
“Nonsense,” Sesily said. “How many threats of ruination must we face before you see we’re like cats?”
“Even cats have a limit on their lives. We must repair this damage. Immediately,” the Countess of Wight said before remembering where they were, on full view in front of all of London, and said, loud enough for all of London to hear, “We all saw what happened! His Poor Grace!”
Sophie stilled, the words surprising her. “Poor?”
“Yes of course!” Impossibly, the countess’s voice rose an octave.
Sophie blinked.
“You’d better go along with it,” Seline said casually as they crowded around her like great, gilded cormorants, all flapping fans and swinging tassels, “Or Mother will go mad with fear of exile.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Seleste said. “It’s not as though any of them would really exile us. They can barely keep up with us.”
Sesily nodded. “Precisely. They adore our wicked scenes. What would they do with themselves if they did not have us?”
It was not untrue.
“And we shall rise farther than any of them. Look at Seraphina.”
“Except Seraphina is married to a proper ass,” Sophie pointed out.
“Sophie! Language!” Her mother sounded as though she might faint from panic.
Her sisters nodded.
“We shall have to avoid that bit,” Sesily said.
“It’s clear that he slipped and toppled into the pond!” the countess shouted quite desperately, her wide blue eyes growing wide enough for Sophie to wonder if it were possible for them to pop right out of their sockets. A vision flashed, of her mother groping around on the perfectly manicured grass for her eyeballs, odd hat toppling from her head, unable to bear its own weight.
What a scene.
It was her turn to snicker.
“Sophie!” the countess hissed through her teeth. “Don’t you dare!”
The snicker turned into a snort.
The Countess of Wight continued, hand to her chest. “Poor, poor Haven!”
It was all Sophie could take. The laugh never came, because it was so stifled by anger. Her family hadn’t been the same since the title had arrived, making her mother a countess and her sisters not simply exceedingly wealthy, but exceedingly wealthy ladies, giving Society no choice but to acknowledge their presence. And suddenly, these women, whom she’d never thought cared much for the trappings of name and money, had cared very much.
They had never seen the truth—that the Talbot family could marry into royalty, and they’d never be welcome in Society. That Society suffered their presence because they couldn’t risk losing the advice and intelligence of the new earl, or the funds that came with each of the daughters. Marriage was, after all, the most critical business in Britain.
Sophie’s family knew it better than anyone.
And they adored the game. Its machinations.
But Sophie wanted none of it. She never had. For the first decade of her young life, she’d lived in the idyll that came from money without title. She’d played in the green hills of Mossband. She’d learned to make pasties from her grandmother in the kitchens of the Talbot family home, because they were her father’s favorite luncheon treat. She’d ridden her horse to town to fetch beef from the butcher and cheese from the cheesemonger. She’d never dreamed of a titled husband. She’d planned for a sound, reasonable future, married to the baker’s son.
And then her father was made an earl. And everything changed. She hadn’t been to Mossband in ten years, when her mother had closed up the house and happily taken up residence in Mayfair. Her grandmother was gone, died not a year after they’d left the house. Pasties had been deemed too common for earls. The butcher and the cheesemonger now delivered their wares to the back entrance of their impressive Mayfair town house. And the baker’s son . . . he was a distant, foggy memory.
No one else in the family seemed to have any trouble at all adjusting to this world that Sophie had never wanted. For which she’d never asked.
No one else in the family seemed to care that Sophie hated it.
And so it was that there, in the gardens of the Liverpool estate, with all of London looking on, Sophie grew tired of pretending that she was one of these people. T
hat she belonged in this place. That she needed its acceptance.
She had money. And she had legs to carry her.
She looked to her sisters, each beautifully appointed, each certain that she would one day rule this world. And Sophie knew she’d never be them. She’d never enjoy the scandal. She’d never want this world and its trappings.
So why defer to it?
It wasn’t as though the ton would welcome her after today; why not take her scandal and speak the truth for once?
In for a penny, in for a pound, as her father always said.
She turned her gaze on the group of them. “Of course. It is a travesty that poor His Grace so degraded our sister that I had no choice but to play the hero and avenge her honor, as none of the rest of these so-called gentlemen have been willing to do so,” she said, loud enough for all of London to hear. “Poor His Grace, indeed, that he was raised in this world that has deluded both itself and him into thinking that a title makes anything close to a gentleman, when he—along with most of his brethren, if one is honest—is a boor. And something much worse. That rhymes with boor.”
Her mother’s eyes went wide. “Sophie! Ladies do not say such things!”
How many times had she been admonished for not being ladylike enough? How many times had she been molded into the perfect image of this aristocratic world that would never accept her? That would never accept any of them, if not for its need of their money? “I wouldn’t worry,” she replied in front of all of London. “It’s not as though they think us ladies as it is.”
Her sisters stilled.
“Sophie,” Seline said, the word filled with disbelief and not a small amount of respect.
“Well. That was unexpected,” Sesily said.
The countess lowered her voice to a barely-there whisper. “What have I told you about having opinions? You’ll destroy yourself! And your sisters with you! Do not do something that you will regret!”
Sophie did not lower her voice when she said, “My only regret is that the pool was not deeper. And filled with sharks.”
Sophie did not know what it was that she’d expected from the moment. Gasps, perhaps. Or whispers. Or high-pitched ladies’ cries. Or even loud, masculine harrumphs.
She wouldn’t have minded a swoon or two.
But she didn’t expect silence.
She didn’t expect cool, exacting disinterest, or the way the entire garden party simply turned from her and began again, as though she’d never spoken. As though she wasn’t there.
As though she’d never been there to begin with.
Which made it fairly easy to turn her own back, and walk away.
Chapter 2
EVERSLEY ESCAPES;
ILLICIT EXIT INFURIATES EARL
Sophie soon discovered that there was a flaw in turning one’s back on the aristocracy at a garden party in front of all the aristocracy.
Leaving aside the obvious—that is, the actual ruination—there was a much more immediate concern. That is, that once one had roundly rejected the attendees of said party, one could not linger. Indeed, one must find one’s way home, under one’s own steam, as hiding out in the family carriage would dampen the force of one’s exit, truth be told.
That, and she wasn’t certain her mother wouldn’t commit filicide if she came upon Sophie in the family carriage. She needed an escape route that did not involve Talbots. At least until she was ready to apologize.
If she was ever ready to apologize.
She hated this world, these people, and their snide references to the Talbot crassness, to the Talbot money, to her father’s purchased title, to her sister’s allegedly stolen one. She hated every one of their smug faces, the way they sneered at her family and the way they lived. The way they lived their lives as though the rest of the world revolved around them.
She hated them slightly more than she hated the fact that her family didn’t seem to mind any of it.
Indeed, they reveled in it.
No, she was not ready to apologize for telling the truth. And she was not ready for the gleeful defense of the aristocracy that came whenever she mentioned her concerns to her sisters.
So it was that Sophie was hiding out not in the family carriage, but on the far edge of Liverpool House, considering her next step, when she narrowly missed being hit on the head by a great, black boot.
She looked up with enough time to avoid the next Hessian projectile, and watched with surprise and not a small amount of wonder as a charcoal grey topcoat and a long linen cravat followed the footwear out of the second-story window, the latter of which became entangled in the rose climbing the trellis on the side of the house.
And all that was before the man made an appearance.
Sophie’s eyes widened as one long, trousered leg exited the house, a stockinged foot finding purchase on the trellis before the rest of the man appeared, clad in a linen shirt. He straddled the windowsill, and Sophie found herself gazing up at a classically formed thigh topped by the curved strength of something else that, though equally classically impressive, she knew she should not be noticing.
To be honest, however, when a man descended a rose trellis two stories above one’s head, it was best one notice. For one’s personal safety.
It was not her fault that the part of him she noticed was inappropriate for noticing.
And then a matching, equally well-formed leg was over the sill and the man was climbing down the trellis as though he were highly skilled at such a thing. Considering the look of him, Sophie imagined this was not the first time he’d traveled via rose trellis.
He dropped to the ground in front of her, back to her, and crouched to gather his discarded clothing as a second man popped his head over the windowsill. Sophie’s eyes widened as she stared up at the Earl of Newsom.
“You goddamn bastard! I shall have your head!”
“You shan’t and you know it,” the earthbound man said smartly, coming to his full, impressive height, clothes and one boot in hand, reaching up to extricate his cravat from the trellis. “But I suppose you had to say it anyway.”
The man above sputtered and spewed unintelligible noises before he disappeared.
“Coward,” Sophie’s now-companion muttered, shaking his head and turning his attention to the ground in a search for his second boot.
She beat him to it, leaning down to rescue the discarded item from its place at her feet. When she straightened, it was to find him facing her, his expression part curiosity, part amusement.
She inhaled sharply.
Of course, the man escaping the upper chambers of Liverpool House was the Marquess of Eversley. The man was not called the Royal Rogue for nothing, apparently.
Later, she would attribute her blunt “It’s you,” to the emotional turbulence of the day.
And she would attribute his wide grin, elaborate bow, and subsequent “So it is,” to his notorious, long-standing arrogance.
She clutched his boot closer to her chest. “What did you do?” She lifted her chin to the second floor of the house. “To deserve defenestration?”
His brows rose. “To deserve what?”
She sighed. “Defenestration. The tossing of an object from a window.”
He began to tie his cravat expertly, the long linen strips weaving to and fro. For a moment she was distracted by the fact that he did not seem to require a valet or a looking glass. And then he spoke. “First, I wasn’t tossed. I left of my own volition. And second, any woman who uses a word like defenestration is surely intelligent enough to divine what I was doing before I exited the building.”
He was everything he was purported to be. Scandalous. Sinful. An utter scoundrel. Everything Society vilified, even as it celebrated it. Just like her brother-in-law. And any number of other men and women of the British aristocracy. A fine example of the worst of this world into which he’d been born. And into which she’d been dragged.
She loathed him instantly.
He reached for the boot. She stepp
ed backward, out of reach. “So, what the gossip pages say about you is true.”
He tilted his head. “I make every effort not to read the gossip pages, but I guarantee that whatever they say about me is not true.”
“They say you revel in ruining marriages.”
He straightened his sleeves. “False. I don’t touch married women.”
At that moment, a lady’s coiffed head popped out of the window above. “He’s headed down!”
The warning that his opponent was coming to face him spurred the marquess to motion. “’Tis my cue.” He extended one hand to Sophie. “As lovely as this has been, my lady, I require my boot.”
Sophie clutched the boot closer to her chest, staring up at the lady. “That’s Marcella Latham.”
The Earl of Newsom’s fiancée—now former fiancée, Sophie would wager—waved happily. “Thank you, Eversley!”
He turned up and winked. “My pleasure, darling. Enjoy.”
“I hope you don’t mind my telling my friends?”
“I look forward to hearing from them.”
Lady Marcella disappeared into the window. Sophie thought the entire exchange rather bizarre and . . . collegial . . . for two people caught in a compromising situation by her rich, titled future husband.
“My lady,” the Marquess of Eversley prompted.
Sophie looked to him. “You ended their marriage.”
“Their engagement, really.” He extended his hand. “I require footwear, poppet. Please.”
She ignored the gesture. “So, you only touch betrothed women.”
“Precisely.”
“Very different, I suppose.” Was there not a single member of the aristocracy worthy of knowing? “You’re a scoundrel.”
“So I am told.”
“A rogue.”
“That’s what they say,” he said, watching over her shoulder intently.
“Unscrupulous in every way.”
An idea began to form.
He focused on her, seeming to notice her for the first time. His brows rose. “You look as though you’ve come nose to antennae with a large insect.”