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D amnation! How could he be such an idiot?

After a lifetime of keeping himself scrupulously in control, he’d allowed an innocent lady to become embroiled in a scandal.

If there was one thing his parents had impressed upon him, it was that—as the son of a duke—scandals would slide off him, but they would land with ten times the force upon those around him.

He could go blithely about his life, but there would be scores of ruined lives following in his wake.

He’d sworn on his father’s deathbed that he would be an honorable man, and for the most part, he’d achieved it. Until today. Until he’d let his guard down around a beautiful, feisty companion.

Ras paced the small confines of his morning parlor while Miss Petrelli sank onto the settee in shock.

Her charge hovered nearby, clearly miserable.

The child had no idea what to do. However, she could not look any more wretched than Nate, who had to have been the perpetrator of this particular crime.

Yet it seemed to come as a surprise to him too…

“Damn Mr. Pickleherring!” exclaimed Lady Zoe. “How could he print such lies?”

“That’s the problem,” Miss Petrelli said weakly. “It’s not a lie, is it? I did say those words. I did create a scene.”

“But not to seduce me!” Ras snapped. “If anything, your intent was to give me a thorough disgust of you.” It hadn’t worked.

He’d been more intrigued than ever. Her words might have been overwrought, but her logic had impressed him.

And he was not used to anyone, much less a female, taking him to task as she had. With logic instead of emotion.

“I merely wanted to explain,” she said.

“It’s not your fault,” he said as he sunk down to look at her wan face. “It’s that blasted Mr. Pickleherring.” He looked up at Nate. “What if he printed a retraction? Said he got it all wrong.”

The man shook his head. “First off, it won’t work. It will only add fuel to the gossip.”

True. “Then we need a newer story, a bigger one.”

Lady Zoe brightened. “Then everyone will talk about that one, yes? And this will be all forgotten.”

“No one forgets that fast,” Miss Petrelli said.

“I shall still be barred from parties. I won’t be able to act as your companion.

” Her eyes abruptly widened. “Your parents will have to sack me. For your own good, Zoe, they’ll have to get rid of me.

” She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Where will I go?”

“It won’t come to that!” Ras snapped. Though God alone knew how he was going to prevent it. Lady Zoe was fierce in her denial as well.

“You will not be tossed out in the cold! I won’t have anyone else but you.” She abruptly brightened. “We’ll go home now and stop them from reading the paper. They won’t ever know.”

Miss Petrelli looked up, her expression a combination of tragic and amused. “Your father reads the paper first thing.”

“But he’s probably still asleep—”

“And,” interrupted Nate, “your parents will likely be flooded with visitors today all wanting to hear the story of Miss Petrelli’s disgrace and how she was summarily removed from your household.” He looked at Ras. “I don’t understand how this happened. I truly don’t.”

Ras believed him. His friend would not have betrayed him this way and Nate’s horror was genuine. But it didn’t matter how it happened. Only that it had.

“She didn’t do anything wrong!” Lady Zoe wailed.

“That’s the problem with gossip columns,” Ras growled out.

Mostly because he didn’t want to say it was his fault for being an eligible duke.

As his mother was wont to say, scandal would dog him until he settled his nursery and became a boring adult.

And that scandal would hurt people—other people—so he’d best settle the matter immediately.

And look, the first casualty of the Season sat on his settee.

Meanwhile, Nate was gripping the winged edge of a chair with white knuckles. “That’s damned easy for you to say,” he snapped. “You’ve more money than the Crown. But that column could be the writer’s only source of income. The one thing keeping the blighter from starvation.”

Lady Zoe frowned. “Well, that can’t be true, could it? There are all sorts of other ways to make money, isn’t there?”

Young and na?ve. Both Nate and Ras knew the column was indeed the only thing keeping Nate from the duns.

Indeed, they’d both celebrated when Nate had gotten the steady money from the job.

Plus, he wasn’t trained in any other occupation.

He was a writer, and the column allowed him to keep up the appearance of his title while he searched for an heiress and his father tried to find a way to make their estate profitable.

All it cost Nate was some clever turns of phrases about people he socialized with every day.

“How could that have gotten in there?” Ras asked. He knew nothing of the inner workings of a newspaper.

Nate shrugged, his expression miserable. “No one knows who Mr. Pickleherring is. And there’s something else. I’ve heard that there are a dozen people between the writer and the printer. Any one of them could add a paragraph or two without the original writer’s knowledge.”

Miss Petrelli sighed. “It was the first Almack’s assembly of the Season, attended by the most exciting bachelor in England.

Of course, our interaction would be remarked upon.

Of course, it would end up in the paper.

I have created my own demise.” She dropped her head into her hands, and her slender shoulders tightened against the pain.

He wanted to accuse her of overreacting, but he could not. Gossip like this was disastrous to a woman looking for employment. No one would hire her now. And without a position, she would be cast to the streets.

“Do you not have a relation who can help you?”

Lady Zoe stomped her foot. “I am her only relation, and I say that we will not cast her out. I won’t allow it.”

Nate smiled as he turned to the girl. “And what will you say to all the busybodies who tell your parents that they have brought a viper into their home?”

“A viper!”

“That’s the nicest thing they will say.”

The girl lifted her chin. “I will say that they are wrong. That Kynthea has done nothing wrong.”

“They will call you a child who knows nothing of the real world. They will say you are an innocent who must be protected from grasping women.” He touched her hand.

“Will your mother stand firm against such attacks? Especially when your invitations disappear, and you have no opportunity to meet any eligible gentlemen.”

Miss Petrelli lifted her head. “She won’t keep me on, Zoe. She can’t. Your future is at stake.”

“No!” the girl cried, but no one heeded her. She was only voicing the same misery that they all felt.

And into this silence came an even greater disaster.

The door knocker sounded like a gong announcing the devil.

Everyone looked up, but none with more concern than Ras.

Then, sure enough, his fears were confirmed.

It wasn’t Satan at his door, but the devil’s handmaiden in the guise of his mother.

She burst through the threshold and demanded to see him.

Ras had the childish urge to refuse to see her, but knew that would only delay the inevitable. So he opened the parlor door and spoke in weary accents. “In here, mother.”

She began scolding him before she crossed the foyer.

“You had to create a scandal at Almack’s, of all places.

I warned you this would happen. Indeed, didn’t I say last night that Mr. Pickleherring would get wind of it?

It was the talk of the night. But you disagreed.

You thought that an altercation at Almack’s was too commonplace an occurrence for the blighter to notice. ”

“Mother—”

“And good God, what is she still doing here? Lady Zoe, for your own protection, you must release this creature immediately.”

“Mother!”

At his cold explosion, the dowager duchess turned to him with ponderous consequence. Her movements were slow, her brow was raised, and she looked as if he appeared before her like a dirty toddler in his nappies.

Ras would have none of it. “This is not Miss Petrelli’s fault.”

“And what does that have to do with anything?” she shot back.

She held up a broadsheet in her hand. Apparently Mr. Pickleherring was so popular that The Times had sought extra revenue by printing just his column on a broadsheet for everyone who didn’t want to buy the full paper.

“She’s ruined herself. Or you’ve ruined her.

You forget that I witnessed your abrupt departure from the assembly myself. ”

“Miss Petrelli was feeling overheated. She needed air, and I merely escorted her.”

“Well, yes. Everyone knows how overheated she was. It involved nakedness.”

“Mother! She is sitting right there! She is a guest in my home who is blameless for the current situation.”

“Blameless!” the woman sniffed. “She chose to make a scene with a duke. It is one thing to have free manners in the country, but this is the haut ton. ” She looked down on Miss Petrelli.

“It is unfortunate that you were not better trained on how to go on. But if you swim in these waters, then you must learn how to act or be eaten alive. And you, I’m afraid, have been devoured by a very large shark indeed.

Mr. Pickleherring has destroyed you, and now you must go back to wherever you came from.

Hopefully there is some country squire or some such who is too stupid to know or too desperate to care about your ruined reputation.

Either way, your time in society is done. ”

She spoke that last sentence like a judge pronouncing “Transportation!” at the end of a trial.

Meanwhile, Nate spoke up. His tone was hopeful though Ras knew he was clutching at straws. “What if Mr. Pickleherring were to write that he’d made a mistake? That Miss Petrelli was blameless?”