Page 1 of A Duchess Worth Stealing (Saved by Scandal #2)
Chapter One
“ A re… are you dead?” Cordelia asked, quite breathless, as she inched closer to the prone figure stretched rather ungracefully across the library chaise. “Because I do feel that would be most inconvenient for everyone involved… especially me.”
There was, most unhelpfully, no response.
She hovered in the doorway, still clutching the brass poker that had so recently made contact with what she was now terribly afraid might be the Earl of Nettlebridge’s skull.
The weight of it felt unnatural in her hand. In fact, it was far too light. Because, if one had really committed manslaughter with it, shouldn’t it feel heavier? More… consequential?
“Well,” she huffed, pacing cautiously about the room, her slippers silent upon the Turkish rug. “If you did not wish to be struck, you should not have done what you did.”
The figure remained motionless.
Cordelia bit her lower lip, which trembled most inappropriately. She had always suspected that her life would end in scandal, but never once had she envisioned that scandal beginning with a corpse and ending with a frantic burial behind the rose garden.
“Truly, it was your fault,” she snapped though her voice cracked with guilt.
“You emerged from the shadow like a villain in one of those dreadful gothic novels. Your face was so utterly… wicked! And it seemed as if you weren’t looking at me but at someone else entirely.
And I, being of sound instinct and considerable nerve, did what any proper lady would do… I defended myself!”
Her fingers tightened around the poker as she edged closer.
Lord Vernon was lying on his back, one arm flung across his chest, the other dangling off the edge of the chaise in the particular fashion of those with either great poetic sensibility or no pulse.
She was fairly certain this was what her mother had once called female hysteria though her mother had used the term to describe any emotion more intense than passive smiling.
She looked about, wondering if there was a place she could… hide the body for the time being. She dropped the poker which clattered far too loudly on the hearth. She slid her hands underneath his armpits in a futile effort to lift him up.
“Ugh!” she exhaled without having moved the body a single inch.
She tried going around him, and pushing him off of the chaise lounge, but that didn’t work either.
“Oh, my father would most certainly disapprove of this,” she huffed nervously then she slapped the man’s hand angrily.
“Shame on you! My father didn’t leave me in your care, so you could have your free rein over me!
You were supposed to be my second father, and you were supposed to protect me from all this, and now, look at us! ”
She started to pace, nervously shaking her head as she did so.
“I ought to flee. Yes, escape! I shall claim ignorance or madness or mistaken identity… though I daresay the poker-shaped bruise upon your forehead may weaken that claim.” Her eyes darted to the chaise.
“I cannot possibly drag you anywhere. You’re rather large and heavy. That is most inconvenient for me.”
She twisted a lock of black hair around her finger in frantic rhythm. Her cheeks were flushed because the rising panic made her feel absurdly hot then chilled then hot again as a new, more dreadful thought struck her.
“I have committed murder,” she whispered, sinking onto a footstool as despair crashed in like a wave. “I have broken all expectations for a lady of good breeding. I shall never be received at tea again—not that I was often invited, but the principle remains.”
She looked up, pale blue eyes wild. “I cannot possibly go to prison. The living conditions there are deplorable. And I should not fare well in a cell; I am told I talk in my sleep and that I require at least three pillows or I wake most irritable.”
She groaned aloud and buried her face in her hands. Her skin felt clammy, her thoughts spinning like a top wound too tight. This was not her house. This was not her library. And that was not her chaise to stain with blood, should the situation deteriorate further.
But before she could formulate the next desperate step in what was fast becoming a tragic farce, the sound of a door creaking open sent fresh horror rattling down her spine.
She turned sharply and found a dark figure standing in the doorway.
“Oh!” she exclaimed at a pitch most unbecoming. “Oh no.”
The man paused, framed by the light of the corridor behind him. He was broad-shouldered, far too tall for comfort, and unmistakably well-bred. Cordelia’s breath hitched—mostly from alarm but a small, treacherous part of her from something else entirely.
He stepped inside, the firelight catching reddish-brown hair and sharp cheekbones, and Cordelia realized, with the slow-mounting horror of a woman in a very bad play, that she did not recognize him at all.
“Miss,” he said smoothly in a voice as rich as midnight brandy, “you appear… flushed. Is something amiss?”
“No,” she rushed to supply, but when his eyes hardened in suspicion, she changed her approach.
“I mean, yes,” she replied too quickly. “Yes, I was, uhm… faint. A touch of lightheadedness. It was all too much, you know—too many syllables in the morning paper. One does one’s best to keep up, but the editor is terribly fond of compound words, and I simply collapsed. ”
He raised a brow but said nothing.
Darn it, she cursed to herself. Make more sense, Cordelia!
Cordelia stepped in front of the chaise, arms spreading casually like a poorly trained valet attempting to hide an unsightly spill on the upholstery.
“If you’ve come for a book, I should recommend Practical Horticulture for Cautious Households ,” she continued in a tone too bright to be believable. “Lots of diagrams and no risk of fainting at all. Unless you are especially sensitive to radish illustrations.”
The stranger did not so much as glance toward the bookshelf. He was looking at her. More precisely into her with an intensity that made her knees wobble slightly. His amber eyes had the audacity to gleam, and the corner of his mouth curved in what could only be described as a knowing smirk.
“I see,” he said finally, “but if I may add, you appeared in perfect health not ten minutes ago, laughing, drinking punch and striking fear into the heart of an unsuspecting young gentleman whose only crime was asking you for a dance.”
“Well… he asked me to dance,” she replied with a shrug.
“Shocking.”
“I thought so.”
“Barely,” she replied, knowing that the longer she kept him entertained by pointless banter, the higher rose the chances of him not finding out what had transpired here. “Had he stayed another moment, I might have been forced to spill punch on him. Accidentally, of course.”
He inclined his head as though she’d offered a toast. “You are mercy itself.”
“And you are…?”
“Astonished,” he replied, “that someone of your keen observation has not yet deduced it.”
Cordelia narrowed her eyes. She was quite good at placing people, but that was, of course, when she wasn’t focused on killing them.
“A second son of something minor? You have the look of someone who doesn’t need to marry for money.”
In fact, he had the good looks of someone who could have any woman he desired as his wife, but she would rather die than admit such a thing right now.
He, on the other hand, looked genuinely wounded. “Only a second son? You cut me deeply.”
“Then… perhaps a clergyman with delusions of charm?”
“Miss, you strike with precision.” He seemed amused, and that, in turn, made her even more flustered for some reason, and that reason had nothing to do with the dead Lord Vernon.
She tilted her head in an effort to catch some flicker of recognition. He was familiar and yet not. He was like a face glimpsed in a dream and then misplaced in waking hours.
“You are not Lord Galbraith, are you? He smirks in such a manner.”
“No,” he grinned devilishly. “Though I suppose I’ll spend the rest of the Season wondering whether that’s a compliment.”
“Well then.” She crossed her hands. “Who are you?”
The man gave her an appraising look, one that lingered just enough to make her spine straighten.
“Oh, but a confirmed spinster like you wouldn’t know,” he told her in a voice entirely pleased with itself. “You’ve been out of circulation for too long.”
Her lips parted, but she refused to allow him to see the shock on her face.
“And yet here you are,” she said overly sweetly, “lingering in conversation with such a relic. One wonders if you suffer a taste for antiques.”
“Perhaps I do,” he said, stepping nearer. “They tend to be far more interesting… less eager to please, and more likely to say what they mean.”
Cordelia hated the way her pulse picked up.
She hated, even more than that, the way his grin deepened as though he’d heard it.
He was goading her; there was no question of that.
Most men saw her as a cautionary tale. This man looked at her like she was a puzzle box he fully intended to open.
All of that made her forget the dead man still on the chaise lounge.
Focus, Cordelia, she reminded herself, realizing that she was enjoying this far too much.
“A woman only becomes a spinster if she has the misfortune of being born clever and unmarried. If I’d been dimmer, I would have secured a husband by nineteen.”
“You give men far too much credit, Miss,” he murmured, not taking his eyes off of her for a single second. “We don’t notice intelligence unless it threatens us.”
“And do I threaten you?”
He considered her with his head cocked to the side. “Not at all.”
A thread of disappointment wove itself through her chest before she could stop it.
“Terrify, perhaps,” he added, “but not threaten.”
She almost laughed at that. She would have under much different circumstances. “And you still won’t tell me who you are?”
He sighed, acquiescing. “I am a second son of something minor.”