Page 1 of A Lady’s Dangerous Secret (Scandalous Secrets #1)
CHAPTER ONE
I don’t want to be here.
I need a husband.
I don’t want to be here.
I need a husband.
Lady Charlotte Tipton, daughter of the Earl of Pulverbatch, braced herself for what she must do. She was at one of the premiere balls of the London Season, because she had a secret.
A terrible secret.
No, a dangerous secret.
Her blue eyes swept over the tableau before her.
Hundreds of candles illuminated a gilded ballroom filled with the crème de la crème of Society.
Bejeweled ladies in their finest gowns batted their eyelashes at preening gentlemen in perfectly tied cravats.
Musicians tuned their strings in preparation for a night of dancing.
Many would call this scene idyllic. Except Charlotte. All she saw was a means to an end.
She had made haste to travel to London only three weeks prior, due to the Incident.
Charlotte’s entrance into the ton had been an abstract thought until now.
Her current presence at the Markham Ball and her debut at Almack’s Assembly Rooms several nights earlier solidified her fate.
She would need to play the role of an innocent debutante in search of a husband, as if her life depended on it.
Because it did.
So much had changed in such a short time.
If Charlotte had still been at home, she would have ridden her dappled gray mare astride through the hills of Shropshire with a cool wind whipping across her face.
Instead, only hours ago, her lithe body had been forcefully maneuvered into stays that had been tightened without remorse.
Then she had been poured into a ball gown consisting of a white satin slip and a silver net overlay embroidered with beaded flowers.
Her chestnut hair had been wrangled into a chignon, which offered her the gift of throbbing pain behind her temples.
Finally, she had been anointed with a borrowed sapphire parure that was meant to be her pièce de résistance , but the jewels only weighed her down.
Despite these tribulations, Charlotte was determined to persevere and secure a titled husband as quickly as possible.
She was off to a tepid start thus far. She had been paraded about Almack’s as if she were a piece of prized horseflesh, while whispers of her generous dowry spread throughout the crowd.
The next day, she had received plenty of flowers from potential suitors, though an air of desperation permeated their notes.
She understood desperation all too well, but she did not have much time to spare.
Settling for a debt-ridden popinjay would be a last resort.
The distinct pressure of a hand on her upper arm caught her attention. A pair of chocolate-brown eyes bore into her. It was none other than her inimitable and social-climbing aunt, Lady Frances Howe, Marchioness of Hardwicke.
“Damn.”
“I heard that, Charlotte.” Her aunt’s fingers further tightened on her arm. “I did not present you to the Queen to hear you swear like a sailor. Act like a lady.”
Charlotte attempted to lift the edges of her mouth into a smile, though all she felt was a grimace.
Her aunt did not take note, and with Charlotte in tow, charged into the crowd like a general marching into battle.
They approached a group with their heads dipped in polite conversation.
Her aunt’s face lit up. “Lady Carrington, it has been too long!”
A graceful woman with amber eyes and blonde hair curtsied. “Lady Hardwicke. We’re delighted to see you. You remember my daughter, Bridget?”
The young woman, a spitting image of Lady Carrington, stepped away from her mother with downcast eyes and gave a deep curtsy to Aunt Frances, who said, “Of course, this must be your first Season. This is my niece, Charlotte.”
The two matrons proceeded to dive into the latest on-dits of High Society, while Charlotte and Lady Bridget hovered near their elbows, with Lady Bridget still silent and eyes downcast.
The supposed scandals of the ton did not interest Charlotte one bit.
Her gaze drifted to two gentlemen engaged in a tête-à-tête nearby.
These men were oblivious to the women but posed a potential escape from her aunt’s idle chatter.
Charlotte stared at the men in hopes they would feel her eyes upon them and turn around.
Alas, after what felt like minutes of trying, their heads remained bowed deep in conversation, creating an immovable obstacle; meanwhile, guests shuffled around them with jostling elbows and swishing skirts.
One of these skirts belonged to a woman with a hawklike nose, curly red hair, and hazel eyes, who stepped toward them. “Lady Hardwicke, Lady Carrington.” She dipped into a curtsy.
Charlotte’s aunt looked down her nose at the intrusion and said, “Lady Booth.”
Once the social nicety of introductions was over, Lady Booth took over the conversation.
“Lady Hardwicke, I’m so glad to meet your niece.
I heard she is a diamond of the first water .
” Lady Booth’s calculating eyes assessed Charlotte from her chignon to her slippers.
“You are a pretty thing,” she muttered. “I understand this is your first Season. But why have you not come out sooner?” Lady Booth smirked while awaiting a response.
Charlotte’s aunt was unperturbed. “Why my niece is the sweetest young woman and could not bear to leave her dear mother alone in Shropshire. You know how the countess prefers the country.”
Her aunt referenced a touchy subject for Charlotte, whose “dear mother” was not so dear at all. Charlotte doubted ‘her mother, the countess’ had even noticed that her only daughter had suddenly departed for London.
But that was nothing new.
“Luckily,” her aunt continued. “Lady Charlotte had no pressure to snag a wealthy husband the moment she left the schoolroom. How are your darling daughters?”
Charlotte flinched. Her aunt ’ s counterattack was commendable.
Lady Booth flushed and pretended to scan the crowd. “Oh! I must be off. There is my dear friend whom I have not seen in ages.” She turned on her heel and scurried away.
Aunt Frances let out a harrumph and turned back to Lady Carrington to continue their gossip.
Given that she had no immediate escape, Charlotte merely stood there and plastered a smile on her face.
At the ripe age of twenty-one, she had thought she would spend her life in Shropshire as a contented spinster, removed from Society.
Instead, here she was as an unexpected debutante with a scandalous secret, navigating the treacherous waters of the ton in search of a husband to save her life.
And she was traveling without a soul in whom to confide and utterly alone.
I don’t belong here.
I need to find her.
I don’t belong here.
I need to find her.
Captain James Theodore Adolphus Hughes took a cursory sweep of the Markham ballroom and wished he were any place but there.
He could not believe the circumstances that had compelled him to be at this ball.
He hated the ton . More accurately, he despised them.
His blood boiled as he looked at the snobbish, lazy members of the supposed elite who never truly worked a day of their lives for their privileged existence.
They sat in their clubs and their parlors, wasting their fortunes in idle pursuits, all the while slandering each other to pass the time.
Yet now, he was among them, while accompanying the only person in the ton he could tolerate.
His friend, Gabriel Lockhart, Earl of Carrington, tilted his golden head and looked at James with amber eyes.
Gabe was explaining his strategy for surviving the first part of the evening, before they could slip away to the card room and not be hounded by the marriage-minded mothers of debutantes.
But James could not pay attention to any of the words his friend was saying.
He had to find her .
James knew he could not blame his entire fiasco on her , but that did not prevent him from wanting to shift all culpability onto the mystery woman.
She was not the reason the ship carrying the shipment of Irish flax to Holyhead had sunk.
She was not the reason he had to placate the textile factory owner for the lost flax shipment with his own money.
She was not the reason he had to stop in Birmingham to tell his childhood friend, Jack Doherty, that he would not be receiving payment for the flax.
But s he was the reason he was trapped in London waiting for his insurance brokerage to release repayment of his money for the lost shipment.
And she was the reason James found himself in a stifling ballroom.
After he had left the insurance brokerage in the kind of rage he had not experienced in some time, he made his way to Gabe’s town house and regaled him with his deplorable situation.
Gabe offered an exchange. He would use his connections to Bow Street to help investigate the case.
In return, James would keep him company at the Season’s events, while Gabe did his duty and maneuvered the marriage market for his younger sister, the Lady Bridget.
“Does that sound like a plan?” Gabe asked.
James dragged his hand through his sable hair. “Definitely.”
“You didn’t hear a word I said.”
“Was it that obvious?”
Gabe eyed James seriously. “I will still get my man in Bow Street to look into your problem, even if you don’t want to attend these events.”
James’s mind kept drifting off. His friend was going out of his way to help him, but all James could think about was the lost shipment and how an unidentified woman had ruined the foreseeable future. He needed to focus on Gabe.
“I gave my word. Plus, I know how much you’ve been dreading marrying off your sister,” James replied.
Gabe’s mouth curved into a half smile.
James could see why women threw themselves at his friend.
“You have gotten me out of enough scrapes. This is the least I can do.” Gabe planted a jovial slap on James’s back.
A piercing woman’s voice caught his attention.
He turned to locate its source. The shrill sound permeated his ears once more, and led him to a raven-haired matron, Lady Hardwicke, who was speaking to Gabe’s mother and sister, Lady Carrington and Lady Bridget.
Lady Hardwicke had a chestnut-haired young woman in tow, who stood there looking awkward and out of place.
She wore the virginal white dress and glittering jewels of every other debutante, but her expression and carriage perplexed him.
She was not all false smiles and youthful hopefulness.
Instead, the corners of her mouth deflected downward, and her hands were clasped in front of her, drawing her shoulders forward.
A flicker of fear crossed her face, but she schooled her features back into her unhappy expression.
She should be happy. The Season was the highlight of any well-bred woman’s life. James could not understand what could possibly bother a spoiled Society miss.
A torn hem?
An empty dance card?
Whatever it was, it was unimportant. The ton did not interest James one bit.