Page 16 of A Duchess Worth Stealing (Saved by Scandal #2)

Chapter Fourteen

“ H azel, if you scold me one more time about posture, I shall faint right here in the middle of the roses, and then where will you be?” Matilda asked playfully.

“Unbothered and victorious,” Hazel replied primly, sipping her tea. “And I would let you stay down until your spine realigned.”

Laughter broke out among the small gathering of women in the sun-drenched garden. Cordelia sat beneath the shade of the wide oak, her skirts spread around her like spilled silk and a hand pressed to her mouth to stifle another giggle.

“I feel personally attacked,” Matilda added with mock indignation, adjusting her bonnet with unnecessary precision. “I’m perfectly upright.”

“You’re sitting like a terrified governess awaiting a performance review,” Hazel shot back, and Matilda gave her a scandalized little gasp.

“I was not?—”

“ Ladies, ” Cordelia interrupted in a warm and melodic tone of voice, “if this is how you behave in society, I fear I’ve doomed Caroline by association.”

The group turned to look at Isabelle, who had been bestowed with the name Caroline Langley. She sat among them with a delighted smile and cheeks tinged with color from laughing too hard. Her hands were wrapped delicately around her teacup, and a half-eaten lemon tart rested forgotten on her plate.

“I have never had this much fun while being insulted,” she said brightly.

Hazel lifted her brow. “That’s because you’ve never met us before.”

“Clearly, my social education was lacking,” Isabelle returned, and the table erupted in another round of good-humored laughter.

This moment… it was perfect.

Cordelia leaned back on her hands, feeling the warmth of the sun on her face.

The garden felt like a dream painted in soft greens and pale pinks, a place just slightly removed from the real world, and at the same time, a space made for women like them, who had lived too long under expectation and silence.

Just as Cordelia had expected, Isabelle fit and effortlessly so.

She had spoken little at first, but now, she laughed just as freely, teased just as boldly, her words quick and clever and gentle.

When Matilda had mentioned her own small greenhouse, Isabelle had lit up, offering to trade recipes for rosewater and balm.

Hazel, predictably, had asked after her family, and when Isabelle said she had three children, the elder two of whom were a bit too fascinated by the compost heap, Hazel had declared her excellent mother material and that had been that. She was accepted.

Cordelia watched them with her heart aching in that strange, lovely way that joy always did when it wasn’t quite stable inside her. She hadn’t known how much she needed this, how much they all had.

“Cordelia,” Matilda said suddenly, leaning closer and placing her teacup down with a purposeful clink, “your face has gone far too thoughtful for such a sunny afternoon. What are you scheming now?”

“I’m not scheming,” Cordelia said innocently though she didn’t quite meet her friend’s eyes.

“Then what’s the faraway sighing for?” Hazel asked. “Is it the Duke?”

Cordelia flushed instantly. “No.”

“Oh, it’s definitely the Duke,” Matilda said under her breath, hiding a smirk behind her fan.

Cordelia shook her head, cheeks warm. “It’s not him, truly. I just…” She looked at Isabelle then, and her voice gentled. “I was thinking how glad I am you all came today.”

Isabelle blinked, startled, and then smiled the kind of smile that bloomed slowly and then stayed.

“I am, too,” she said.

The wind stirred through the garden, brushing against the linen tablecloth and tugging playfully at the corners of napkins. Bees rested lazily on the petunias. In the distance, the manor’s bell tolled softly, signaling mid-afternoon.

The tea had been mostly drunk, the pastries all but devoured, and the sun had dipped into its golden afternoon glow when Matilda clapped her hands once, far too excitedly.

“Games,” she announced. “It’s far too beautiful a day not to play something entirely silly.”

Hazel rolled her eyes with great theatricality. “Only if it does not involve running or blindfolds.”

“You are no fun,” Matilda declared. “We could do charades! Or questions and consequences?”

“I loathe consequences,” Hazel muttered, rolling her eyes.

“We always do Matilda’s interpretation of charades,” Cordelia added, grinning. “Which is to say, the rules shift halfway through, and suddenly, someone is a squirrel reciting Shakespeare.”

“Well, I don’t force you to be the squirrel,” Matilda said with mock wounded pride. “That was your own interpretation of Macbeth , I’ll have you remember.”

There was more laughter, and Cordelia glanced at Isabelle, who dabbed at the corners of her eyes.

“What about a storytelling game?” Isabelle offered. “We each take turns telling a bit of a story, but no one’s allowed to plan, just instinct.”

“Ooh,” Cordelia said, already charmed. “That could be?—”

“No, wait,” Isabelle cut in suddenly, a flicker of inspiration lighting her eyes. “I have one better.”

Hazel and Matilda leaned in, mock conspiratorial.

Isabelle continued. “It’s a game my brother and I invented once when we were so dreadfully bored with our cousins on a rainy summer in Dorset.

One person begins a dramatic tale, but each other person must interrupt at random with a word or action the storyteller must then include without breaking the tone. It gets very absurd, very quickly.”

“That sounds delightful,” Cordelia clapped her hands.

Isabelle quickly counted them. “There’s four of us. We always played as a group of five, but four should be more than enough.”

“Good,” Matilda exclaimed excitedly. “I’m ready to launch into a masterpiece about a time-traveling governess.”

“Why, that sounds absolutely marvelous,” a voice rang out from somewhere behind them, rich, smooth and unmistakably amused.

Cordelia’s entire spine straightened while heat bloomed in her cheeks before she even turned fully.

The Duke stood just beyond the lilacs, all dusk-toned elegance in a charcoal waistcoat and gloves he hadn’t yet removed.

But his amber eyes were the focus of Cordelia’s attention as they were gleaming with restrained mischief.

“Your Grace,” Cordelia said quickly, rising before she could think better of it. Her hands fidgeted with her skirts as she cleared her throat, willing her blush to retreat. “You are welcome to join us.”

He strode forward with the easy confidence that never failed to make her feel unsteady. “I couldn’t help overhearing there was a shortage of chaos.”

“You’re always welcome to supply it,” Hazel said dryly, offering him a cool nod.

Mason inclined his head in greeting. “Lady Hazel. Lady Matilda. And this must be…”

“Miss Caroline Langley,” Cordelia supplied the necessary information.

Isabelle remained serious as she stood up and bowed before her brother. Mason gave a slight, elegant bow to each of them. “Ladies, it is a pleasure to have you here.”

Isabelle curtsied with a small smile. “The pleasure is mine, Your Grace.”

Cordelia watched the exchange carefully. It was done just right: perfectly casual and perfectly unremarkable. Mason caught her eyes then, only for a heartbeat, and she had to look away first.

Damn him for being able to read me so well.

“Well,” he said, clapping his gloved hands together once. “A game, then?”

Matilda grinned. “I hope you’re ready to be interrupted mid-monologue, Your Grace.”

“I do nothing but prepare for interruptions,” he said smoothly. “I was raised in a house full of women.”

Laughter erupted again, and Mason simply smiled, a clever smile this time, the kind that made her forget what she was doing.

“I believe, as the one who suggested the game,” Cordelia said, folding her hands with a mock-regal air, “it is only fitting that Isabelle begins.”

“Oh, no, no,” Isabelle shook her head. “I prefer to allow other people to start, and then I ruin it for them.”

There was another bout of laughter before Hazel pointed out. “If she does start first, we’ll be in Ancient Babylon wiuth talking pigeons by the third sentence.”

“I make no promises,” Cordelia replied sweetly. “Now, do interrupt me at will the moment inspiration strikes. That’s the point, right?”

She cleared her throat theatrically and launched into a deep, melodramatic tone:

“In the year of our Lord 1802, in a crumbling manor surrounded by fog and scandal, there lived a?—”

“Porcupine!” Matilda blurted.

Cordelia didn’t miss a beat. “—a porcupine. A noble porcupine, the last of his line, who wore only the finest waistcoats and hosted extravagant dinners for?—”

“Ghosts,” said Isabelle with her eyes alight with mischief.

“—for ghosts of course. Finicky guests but terribly well-read.”

Laughter rang around the garden. Cordelia’s voice rose with absurd theatricality, her hands gesturing wildly as she spun the tale. Mason stood just beside her, leaning one arm lazily on the back of her chair, half-crouched and watching her with amused scrutiny.

“A dinner was underway,” she continued, “with three particularly snobbish specters?—”

“Potatoes,” Mason said casually.

Cordelia paused, eyes narrowing. “Pardon?”

“Potatoes,” he said again, looking far too pleased with himself.

“Fine,” she acquiesced, resisting the urge to chuckle. “Ghosts who demanded only to be served raw potatoes, the kind that shrieked if peeled too quickly. The noble porcupine, of course, had to?—”

“Propose marriage!” Hazel called out.

“To the potatoes?” Cordelia asked, horrified.

“Obviously,” Hazel said with a shrug.

“I hate all of you,” Cordelia muttered under her breath, drawing fresh laughter from the group.

“Courage, Cordelia,” Mason said, mouth quirking. “Surely a woman of your creativity can handle a betrothed vegetable.”

“Oh, I’ll handle it,” she shot back, twisting to glare up at him, but she was smiling. “I’ve tamed worse things.”

“I’m flattered,” he murmured, just low enough that only she could hear.

Cordelia’s heart thumped wildly. She turned back to the others quickly, with her face still warm, and attempted to continue though her thoughts had suddenly become very unhelpfully focused on the warmth of Mason’s hand brushing the back of her chair.

The story spiraled into ridiculousness, including poisonous soup, musical candleholders, and a dance duel with a poltergeist, but no one seemed to care about the plot. They were laughing too hard, tossing words at each other like playful weapons.

Mason, to Cordelia’s unending surprise, was ridiculously good at the game.

He was witty, fast, and unapologetically dramatic.

At one point, when Matilda insisted he play a lovesick villain named Lord Slipperbottom who turned into a goose, he actually stood up, flared an invisible cape, and delivered a full monologue that ended with him honking his grief to the sky.

Cordelia laughed so hard she nearly fell off her seat. She didn’t recognize this man.

Or perhaps, she finally had.

There was mischief in him but not only that. There was also a sharp, clever playfulness that had nothing to do with courtly manners or duty or the haunted look she sometimes caught in his eyes. It was… freedom, pure and brilliant and infuriatingly attractive.

And somewhere between the porcupine’s wedding and Hazel’s impromptu operatic finale, Cordelia felt something catch inside her chest. She was madly, completely, devastatingly attracted to him.

Not just his face, which was rather unfair in its symmetry, or the baritone voice or the smile that had at least five different meanings, but this, as he was now.

Because it would be so easy to fall in love with someone like that.

So easy… and so very, very dangerous.