Page 1 of A Widow for the Earl (The Gentlemen’s Club #5)

CHAPTER ONE

“ N o one suspects it was actually me, Father,” Beatrice Johnson snapped, rolling her eyes.

“Would you have preferred it if I had allowed him to impose himself on that poor girl? I heard him say he meant to steal a kiss, and she was terrified! Indeed, if that had been me, in that girl’s position, would you not want someone to intervene? ”

No, of course you would not. You would not even notice my absence, or you would blame me, somehow. She held back the tirade, seeing no use in wasting the breath when her parents would not listen anyway.

“If you were where you were supposed to be, you would not have had to intervene,” her father, Henry Johnson, Viscount of Fetterton, replied.

Missing the point entirely. “Respectable ladies do not wander alone in gardens at night. If this girl you speak of was in the gardens, then perhaps she brought it on herself.”

Beatrice had been trying to enjoy a breakfast of soft-boiled eggs and thin slices of toast but, at that, she nearly hurled one of the eggs right at her father’s head.

“She did no such thing,” she rasped, glaring at him. “She was overwhelmed by the ball, she sought some peace and quiet where she thought no one would disturb her, and that wretch saw a wicked opportunity. He is a prowler, Father. Everyone knows that. That young lady is guilty of nothing.”

“She left her chaperone,” Beatrice’s mother, Unity Johnson, pointed out with a patronizing tut. “An unmarried lady should never leave her chaperone.”

Beatrice shot her mother a withering look. “But what if a lady’s chaperone is forever leaving her? If I went wherever my chaperone went, I would spend every ball snooping through other people’s manors and gossiping with a bottle of pilfered brandy in the refreshment room.”

“Do not be obtuse, dear,” Unity replied, a phrase she used when she was either not listening or did not care to answer her daughter.

Beatrice sat back in her chair, tempted to throw an egg apiece toward the foreheads of her parents. She had lost her appetite, anyway, and she hated to waste perfectly soft-boiled eggs.

“I do not understand why this is even a concern of yours, or why we are still discussing it,” she said instead, for it had been three days since the ball.

“There was no harm done. My name is not in any scandal sheets, no one believes it possible that I shoved Lord Albany into a pond and then outran him, no one is judging us unkindly. Indeed, it is very likely that I gained us some secret respect from the ladies, at least.”

It is not as if the two of you garner much respect. She bit the end off a piece of toast to prevent herself from saying that part out loud.

Still, she truly could not fathom why they were making such a fuss about what she had done at the Trowbridge Ball.

She had not hurt anyone, only dented a despicable man’s pride and social position.

Nor had she embarrassed the family name.

Yes, she had attracted everyone’s attention, and the scream she had made when she had hurtled into the ballroom, pursued by the drenched, dirtied, pond adorned Lord Albany had been somewhat startling. But it had all been for a good cause.

“Respect?” Henry scoffed. “You think you gained anyone’s respect at that ball?”

Beatrice shrugged. “I thought I managed rather well.”

“ This is why your antics are my concern, Beatrice,” her father shot back. “I am tired of you risking the reputation of our family with your wild japes and tricks.”

“They are not japes or tricks,” Beatrice interrupted sternly, for though she did not take much seriously, justice was one thing she took very seriously indeed.

“They are punishments for those who would otherwise get away with their antics. They are lessons that certain gentlemen would not have learned without my… creative intervention.”

Her father’s eyes flared as he took up his cup of weak coffee, gulped down a mouthful, and slammed the cup back down into its saucer.

“Look at you, sitting there as if you are some… some… righteous heroine!” he spat, shaking his head.

“You are a silly little girl, that is what you are, and it is high time that you grew up! You are twenty, and I will not tolerate your foolish games anymore. You have been ungrateful to us for far too long, and what you did at the ball has only confirmed what I have long suspected—we have spoiled you, and now I must remedy that conceit.”

The moment the snort came out of Beatrice’s nose, she wished she could stuff it back where it came from. The sardonic smirk and raised eyebrow likely did not help matters, either, but what else was she to do in the face of such a ridiculous statement?

“You see! Conceited!” Henry barked, waving his hand at her. “How brazen you must be, to laugh in the face of your father. A father who has done nothing but give you everything you ask for, who has taken care of you, who has ensured you wanted for nothing.”

It was all too much, stoking the flames of a temper that did not often rear its head. Beatrice much preferred to get even than get mad, but there were, on occasion, exceptions.

“I should like to meet this father,” she said, her voice icily calm.

“And yes, I might be twenty, but in those two decades, I cannot recall a single kind word from either of you. I cannot recall a single incident of being ‘spoiled’ by you, unless you mean ‘spoiled’ as in left out to rot. Last year alone, you spent one month in this household, and that is not a rarity. I do not even mind that now, but I assure you, when I was a child, I minded very much.”

Her mother scoffed, deigning to raise her head from the morning scandal sheets. “Were we supposed to take a child with us, to visit friends and on our journeys abroad? Come now, do not be so ridiculous. We tended to your every need. You had a governess and a nanny.”

“The nanny despised me, and the governess only came twice a week because you would not pay her more,” Beatrice argued. “I was alone for most of my childhood. Even when you were here, you ignored me.”

“One must ignore unruly children,” her father insisted, giving a nod as if he had just imparted a morsel of genius onto the breakfast table.

Unity did not respond, returning her attention to the scandal sheets.

She did not listen to her husband, any more than she listened to Beatrice.

Indeed, ordinarily, the married couple preferred not to be in the same room with each other, which was why it had been so strange to see them put on a united front of mutual fury after the events of the ball.

Beatrice trembled with rage, struggling to calm the rising ire.

“I was not unruly; I was lonely!” Her voice grew spikes, as she hurled her barbed words toward her impassive mother.

“And you cannot expect me not to wander where I please at balls when you brought me into society at fifteen, and left me by myself at every party, every gathering, every event. You refused to employ a chaperone, yet you refused to chaperone. That has not changed in five years.”

Her father narrowed his eyes at her. “Do not speak to your mother like that. I imagine you think you are saying something terribly important, but all you are doing is confirming that you are the spoiled creature you have shown yourself to be.” He shook his head with blatant distaste.

“Such an ungrateful girl. Countless ladies would be glad to have their debut so young, yet nothing is ever good enough for you, is it?”

She had achieved a great many things in her twenty years, becoming self-reliant, educating herself in business and the secret accumulation of wealth, learning how to read people and how to gather information discreetly, to use later.

But what she had never quite managed to learn was how not to feel her heart break when her father spoke to her as if she was dirt upon his shoe.

Even now, despite herself, despite everything, she would have savored even the smallest compliment or kind word from either of them.

“It was not a debut!” Beatrice protested.

“You could not think of anything else to do with me, and you would not be parted from your own entertainment, so you took me along with you. I was just thrown into it, expected to just stay silent in a corner until you were both ready to depart. Instead, I observed, and now you blame me for wanting to remedy some flaws in society? In the gentlemen, particularly. Not, I might add, that you have ever cared about my ‘japes’ before.”

“You had the meager decency to not do such things so publicly before,” her father shot back. “Well, you have played silly games for the last time, Beatrice. Your mother and I have decided that you will be married, and soon. Then, you shall be your husband’s concern.”

Beatrice laughed coldly. “You and Mother decided together? I find that hard to believe. For that, you would have to actually speak to one another.”

“Your father decided,” Unity spoke up, yawning. “I agreed. A husband will be good for you.”

“Yes, because it has been so good for you ,” Beatrice retorted, an unpleasant shudder beetling down her spine.

Unity shrugged, patting down an unruly curl at her temple. “Marriage has been very pleasant for me. I have barely noticed it.” A slight note of derision laced her voice as she added, “Perhaps, you will be luckier in producing an heir. Then, everyone will be happy.”

“I am not marrying anyone,” Beatrice said stiffly, wondering what it was about her that her mother disliked so much.

She could understand Unity feeling nothing but disdain for Henry, considering they had been a marriage of convenience, to tie two strong families together, but Beatrice had never understood why she received such indifference from her mother. Such cold disregard.

In her younger years, she had suspected it was because she was not a son and heir, but that reasoning had not quite fit.

Her father was the one who cared about that, not her mother.

In truth, Beatrice got the feeling that, even if she had been born a boy, Unity would still have been entirely indifferent.

Not maternal in the slightest, as if the mere fact of having a child had somehow ruined her fun.

How different things might be if I had just one parent who cared…

“You are getting married, Beatrice,” her father replied bluntly. “The gentleman has already been chosen, and it is to happen two weeks from now. Indeed, I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the match. Consider it my way of remedying a flaw.”

Beatrice sat rigid in her chair, her soft-boiled eggs now ruined completely, her appetite replaced with a roiling nausea. “Some honesty, at last,” she said quietly. “That is all I am to you. A flaw in your grand scheme. The mistake that stole away any chance of you having a son.”

“Do not be so petulant,” Henry chided, turning up his nose as if he had just smelled something foul. “You have your use, and it has just presented itself. And when you have an heir, I shall be content enough that I was cursed with a daughter. Everything will be righted, at last.”

Beatrice leveled a cold glare at her father, forcing a bitter smile. “There are no fewer than fifty ways of escaping this manor, Father. I know all of them.” She picked up her teacup and raised it to him, as if in celebration. “Enjoy the wedding, for I shall not be there.”

“You will, Beatrice,” Henry replied with a steady calm that unnerved her far more than any shouting could have done, as if he had already considered an escape. “You will because you are my daughter, and, for once, you shall do as you are told.”

Refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her afraid, she sipped her tea, granting herself a moment to gather herself. “I would not be too certain of that.”

Just then, the drum of hoofbeats perforated the stilted silence of the breakfast room.

Beatrice’s head whipped around, squinting into the morning sunlight that streaked through the diamond-hatched windows.

A group of eight riders were approaching, kicking up a cloud of dust as they charged down the bare trail that served as a driveway.

Even at a distance, some of the men were familiar: friends of her father that she had encountered intermittently throughout her life. Men who tended to pay her more attention than her parents, now that she was older, though of the unwelcome kind.

I am too late. The trap was already set before I came down to breakfast. She looked back at her father, a stone of dread sinking into the pit of her stomach.

“My insurance, Beatrice,” Henry said with a smirk. “You are not the only one with tricks up their sleeve.” He took a victorious sip of his weak coffee. “In two weeks’ time, you will be Lady Albany and, my dear, you will be grateful for it.”