The scandal of a perfect.., p.1
The Scandal of a Perfect Kiss, page 1
The Scandal of a Perfect Kiss
Merry Farmer
THE SCANDAL OF A PERFECT KISS
Copyright ©2019 by Merry Farmer
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your digital retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Erin Dameron-Hill (the miracle-worker)
ASIN: B07VSTVHMX
Paperback ISBN: 9781700340634
Click here for a complete list of other works by Merry Farmer.
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Created with Vellum
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Morwell Manor, Devon – April 1886
Henrietta Hopewell, Marchioness of Tavistock, was one of the most powerful women in London. That fact had been undisputed for years, even before her husband died at a tragically young age, leaving her the sole guardian of young Lord Richard Tavistock, the current marquess. And while she commanded vast political resources in the capital, frequently attended sessions of Parliament during some of its bitterest debates over issues like Irish Home Rule, and was constantly showered with invitations to every important social event, in the country, she couldn’t keep her boy from dashing wildly across the back garden with his friends, screaming at the top of his lungs and firing his cork pop-gun at the distinguished guests, Henrietta’s friends, who were there to attend his fifth birthday party.
“Ricky, do try not to murder those who have come to celebrate another year of your life,” she called to her son as he and his friends, including Harry Howsden, son of Lord Reese Howsden, Marquess of Howsden, one of Henrietta’s closest friends, who was Ricky’s same age.
“But Mama, we’re cowboys, like Harry’s Uncle Henry in Wyoming,” Ricky argued as though it were the most obvious thing in history. “We must fight the Indians.”
His words were underscored by the pop of Harry’s cork bullet flying out of the barrel of his gun in his father’s direction. Reese feigned being shot in the chest. He staggered back, bumping into the wheelchair where Lord Fergus O’Shea sat. Fergus reached out to stop Reese from tumbling over, his perpetual frown in place. The two boys laughed uproariously, then charged on, gripping their hobby horses between their legs and the pop-guns in their hands.
“Really, Reese,” Henrietta laughed. “You’re as bad as the children.”
“You shouldn’t encourage them,” Freddy, Henrietta’s brother, added, though he was smiling as widely as Reese was.
“Children should always be encouraged to play,” Reese said, straightening and watching his son charging around after the other children in attendance, pure love in his smile. That smile faltered slightly as he added, “I was never encouraged to play.”
Henrietta sent him a sympathetic look, then glanced to Fergus, a thread of worry weaving through her joy. “And what about you?” she asked, forcing his attention away from where it had wandered back to the group of their friends who were playing a one-sided, mock game of cricket at the far end of the lawn. “Were you encouraged to play as a child?” She inched close enough to Fergus’s wheelchair to rest a hand on its back.
“Certainly not,” Fergus replied, still watching the cricketers with an unmistakable hint of jealousy in his eyes. “Father was dead-set against me and my sisters enjoying ourselves in any way.” He glanced up at Henrietta at last, and his expression softened into a rakish grin. “So, of course, we slipped away and played on our own whenever we could.”
Fergus’s shift to a smile felt like a fresh breeze blowing in off the sea and clearing her anxiety. It was good to see him in a cheery mood, particularly as he had smiled so seldomly in the last year, since the attack. Good cheer became him, lending a rakish, almost wicked glint to his one remaining eye. Between his black eyepatch and his bright ginger hair, Fergus with a smile looked more like a notorious pirate than an Irish gentleman of the Ascendency. The very idea sent shivers of carnal excitement straight through Henrietta—shivers that she had no qualms at all about entertaining. She was a young, rich, and powerful widow, after all. Society’s rules about how women should and shouldn’t behave had long since stopped mattering to her. She had a long tradition of post-marital wickedness to uphold.
“No doubt you were in league with all those Irish fairies,” she said, leaning closer so that she could whisper in his ear. “I’m certain you still know all of their secrets.”
Fergus turned his head to regard her, his grin as devilish as ever. Henrietta’s mouth tilted up in a grin of her own, and she arched one eyebrow. It wasn’t the first time they’d flirted shamelessly. In fact, before the attack, she’d been convinced they were a hair’s breadth away from becoming lovers. Now, their lips were inches apart. She breathed in the woodsy scent of his shaving soap. All it would take was a touch of daring or a stiff breeze and their lips would meet. But when Henrietta rested her free hand on the arm of Fergus’s chair, his gaze focused on that instead of her eyes.
He cleared his throat and backed away from her, staring out at the cricketers once more. “I’ve forgotten all those fairy secrets,” he said, his smile disappearing. “They’ve been beaten out of me.” His gaze lowered to his legs, resting uselessly in the chair and its footrest.
Disappointment and a far deeper sort of regret pulsed through Henrietta. She straightened, standing so close to the edge of Fergus’s chair that she could have sat on the arm. All the power she held couldn’t prevent him from being miserable. “That’s a shame,” she said.
She raised a hand, intending to comb her fingers through Fergus’s hair, but stopped herself. It would make him uncomfortable, even though her aim was to produce an entirely different set of emotions. The very fact that she could look down on the top of his head to begin with was a sore point for Fergus that not even all the hard work he’d been putting into recovery with Dr. Townsend’s help could dispel.
“What are the lot of you doing standing around like shrubs?” Rupert Marlowe called to them, jogging toward them from the edge of the makeshift cricket pitch. “You should be down here with us.”
“I’m watching my son,” Reese called out his excuse.
“And I’m watching Reese,” Freddy joked, though Henrietta knew well enough it wasn’t as much of a joke as all that.
“Come on, Fergus.” Rupert kept his face perfectly jovial as he came to a breathless stop in front of the group. “You can play wicketkeeper.”
Fergus’s good cheer became a distant memory as he glared at Rupert. “You know very well I can’t,” he growled. “Not with these useless things.” He picked at the leg of his trousers then squirmed in his chair.
Rupert appeared outwardly unflustered, but Henrietta was sure she detected strain and regret around his eyes. “Nonsense,” he said. “We’ll just wheel you up behind the wicket and give you a glove and you’ll be stumping us all in no time.”
“No,” Fergus said, unequivocally.
An awkward pause followed. Henrietta exchanged a look with Rupert, then glanced to Reese and Freddy. Her heart ached with the sadness and frustration she could feel pouring off of Fergus. She was fairly certain that he would have given everything he had to be able to play one more game of cricket. God damn Charles Denbigh for initiating the attack that had robbed him of his eye and his ability to walk.
As if he could read Henrietta’s thoughts, Fergus said, “I’ll consider giving it a go once Denbigh has been brought to justice for what he did to me.”
“Any further word on that?” Reese asked with a pained expression.
Rupert let out a sigh and lowered his shoulders. “Nothing new. Jack is still hard at work, though. He thinks a break in the case will come any day now.” Rupert paused, glancing over his shoulder to the cricketers. “You could ask him yourself.”
“Yes,” Henrietta said, catching hold of the subtle suggestion in Rupert’s words and running with it. “Let’s go ask him ourselves.”
“I’m perfectly fine staying—”
Henrietta cut off Fergus’s protest by grasping the handles of his chair, releasing the brake, and pushing him across the yard.
“Dammit, woman,” Fergus growled. “Stop pushing me around to places I don’t want to go.”
Henrietta shrugged, glanci ng quickly to Rupert, who walked with them. “If you don’t like it, stop me.”
Fergus huffed a breath and slumped in his chair. “Mark my words. One of these days, I’ll surprise you all by leaping out of this chair and throttling you within an inch of your lives.”
“So Dr. Townsend’s therapy is working, then?” Rupert asked.
Fergus was silent for a painfully long time before muttering, “No. Not really.”
Henrietta’s heart squeezed hard in her chest. Fergus had been working hard with the esteemed Dr. Townsend, but he’d made little progress. He could maneuver his wheelchair with expert precision now and had constructed a delightful number of devices to help him accomplish daily tasks, but he still couldn’t do more than stand with a great deal of assistance, and only for seconds at a time.
Silence fell over them until they reached the edge of the makeshift cricket pitch. As soon as Fergus was noticed, the other men, including Jack Craig—police investigator by trade, Baron Clerkenwell by force, thanks to a trick that enabled him to marry Lady Bianca Marlowe—stopped what they were doing and jogged over to meet them.
“Did Rupert convince you to join us at last?” Lord John Darrow, Viscount Whitlock, another member of their circle of friends, asked with a bright smile.
“No,” Fergus said, sitting straighter in his chair but looking wildly uncomfortable as he did. “I’ve been wheeled over here against my will to see if Jack has any new information about Denbigh.”
Jack approached, tucking his cricket bat under his arm. “There’s nothing new since the last time we spoke,” he said plainly, glancing sideways at Rupert, as though he, too, knew the whole conversation was just a ruse to get Fergus to join in with the cricket. Jack wasn’t the sort to play along with those sorts of games. “The only men who could have connected Denbigh to the crime directly have been killed or vanished. I’ve got men all over London, all over the country, tracking the missing ones down.”
“There,” Fergus said, glancing up at Henrietta as if he’d scored points in an argument. “You see? There’s nothing new. You’ve exerted yourself getting me down here for nothing.”
“It’s never for nothing,” Henrietta told him. “It’s a rare, nice day. You’ve been locked away in London all winter. I’m simply taking you out for air now.”
“I’d rather go back to London,” he said, giving Henrietta the impression he was being deliberately difficult to vex her. Certain members of her May Flowers group stooped to the same tactics, though she doubted Fergus would take kindly to being compared to the likes of Lady Claudia Denbigh and Lady Jane Hocksley. She didn’t mind Fergus’s wheedling and gruffness as long as he was still talking to her, still letting her be a part of his life. “Especially since Gladstone is set to introduce his Irish Home Rule bill any day now.”
Those words changed the mood of the company in an instant, as Henrietta suspected Fergus knew they would. Rupert and John hummed and nodded. Lord Harrison Manfred, another friend of theirs, and the other men who had been playing cricket, reacted as well.
“I don’t blame you for wanting to be on hand for that,” Harrison said.
“A bill like that only happens once in a generation,” Rupert agreed. “It’s going to change everything.”
“Only if it passes,” Fergus said. “Only if the Irish are allowed to govern themselves at last.”
“I doubt it will pass,” John sighed, running a hand through his hair. “The Conservatives are dead against it, and now half the Liberal Party is too. It’s splitting us right down the middle.”
“It’s a bloody shame.” Rupert shook his head. “And I fear it’s a hopeless cause in Lords.”
“Lords,” Jack snorted in derision, gaining a few sideways looks. No one protested outright, though. They knew the story of how he’d had his title forced on him.
“The debate is likely to be fierce,” John went on.
Henrietta’s attention faltered as the men launched into the same, circular debate about the issue that she’d heard a thousand times before and that she had taken part in herself while running May Flowers meetings. She peeked at Fergus, strangely satisfied when she saw the wry grin he was trying to hide. He’d deliberately set his friends off on an endless debate to push attention away from himself and the cricket.
“Clever boy,” she mumbled, touching his shoulder lightly.
He glanced up at her, mischief in his eye, though he still tried to hide his grin. The expression made Henrietta’s heart flutter. The exchange between them was private and loaded. It hinted at the sort of flirting they’d engaged in before the attack and the rapport that Henrietta had been trying desperately to reestablish between them in the year since then. She’d given her heart away to Fergus ages ago, and she thought he’d fallen for her as well, but attempting to ascertain his feelings for her now was like being in a ship tossed on stormy seas. One moment, such as the one they were in, he was all saucy looks and heat, the next, he was as cold and distant as rocks hidden beneath the waves that could destroy her if she wasn’t careful.
“Isn’t that what your May Flowers event in a few weeks is about?” John asked at last, dragging her attention out of the sea of her feelings for Fergus and back to the matter at hand.
Henrietta smiled and blinked rapidly for a moment, fighting to catch up to the conversation. She prided herself on being in the know on all political matters and hated being caught without a clue what was going on. It had been happening more and more as her thoughts had become increasingly filled with Fergus, his situation, his recovery, and his emotions, and less with her own responsibilities.
“The May Flowers are hosting a charity concert in two weeks to benefit Lady Bianca’s organization in Clerkenwell, yes,” she said, glancing up the lawn to where a decidedly pregnant Bianca was sitting and laughing with Lady Cecelia Marlowe, Lady Diana Pickwick, and Lady Beatrice Lichfield. “It promises to be quite the spectacle with Bianca involved.”
Anything involving Bianca Craig was bound to be a spectacle. She’d been a loose cannon before her marriage, but ever since defying her parents to marry a man beneath her in class—though above them all in every other way Henrietta considered important—nothing had been able to stop her from doing precisely what she wanted to do. Including flaunting her advanced pregnancy in public and setting up a foundation to help working-class women, particularly prostitutes.
“Actually, I was referring to the Hocksley ball,” John said with a slightly sheepish look.
Henrietta’s face flared hot at her mistake. She cursed herself inwardly for not paying closer attention. She must have tightened her grip on Fergus’s shoulder as well. He raised his hand to pat hers in sympathy. It was a gesture that would have been heartwarming at any other time but merely knocked her even further off balance in that moment.
“I’m not certain I would consider the Hocksley ball strictly a May Flowers event,” she said, sounding far more peevish than she intended to. “Lady Jane Hocksley is a member of Claudia Denbigh’s contingent.”
“Are they even part of the May Flowers anymore?” Fergus asked. Henrietta was certain he already knew the answer, but similarly to how he’d steered the conversation away from his disabilities, he was steering it away from her slip.
“They are as much a part of the May Flowers as the Liberal Unionists are still part of the Liberal Party,” Henrietta sighed.
The men chuckled wryly. “So, in name only,” Rupert said.
“Precisely,” Henrietta said. “They’ve taken to wearing their own distinguishing flower, which is invariably different than the agreed upon one.”
One of the marks that a woman was a member of The May Flowers was the weekly bloom that each member wore pinned to her bodice while in London. Henrietta chose the bloom on Sundays, and a notice was sent out early Monday morning, informing members of the week’s flower, along with a bloom to start the week out with. Claudia Denbigh’s rogue cabal had taken to choosing a different bloom for the week. If the official bloom was a white rose, they would choose a red carnation. If it was a yellow orchid, they would wear a purple dahlia, and so on. Henrietta couldn’t help but take it as a personal slight.
