Ripe for Scandal (33 page)

CHAPTER 47

T
he interior of the mail coach stank of unwashed bodies and garlic. Beau was crushed into a corner by an enormous curate who
took up far more of the seat than he had paid for. Her knees were fighting for space with those of a dour clerk. All in all,
she’d have preferred to be back on the roof.

When it had become evident that it was going to take weeks to fix their own coach, Gareth and Leo had put her on the first
mail coach to London with an available seat. Sadly, it had taken three days before there had been room for her. Three long,
frustrating days.

There had been no sign of Granby or Devere when they’d reached Hawick, and she didn’t expect to see or hear anything more
until after she reached London. If she made it that far without killing the curate… Every time he coughed—and he seemed to
do so incessantly—his bulk crushed her into the wall.

She fingered the tiny head of one of the pins holding her gown shut. She pulled it loose and crossed her arms,
the sharp tip pointed at her seatmate. It might not solve the problem, but it might make him at least a slight bit aware of
his encroachment. And if not, at least it would make her feel better.

He coughed again and then yelped and pulled back into his own corner as much as he could. Beau smiled to herself and lazed
back into the seat, relaxing her shoulders for the first time in hours.

At the next stop, the curate didn’t rejoin them, and Beau settled in with a sigh of relief. She had at least two more days
to go before she reached London, and if she’d had to share the coach with that man the entire way, she’d have been hanged
for murder long before she reached her destination.

It had been easy enough for Gareth to rent a hack and ride ahead with Leo in hopes of rejoining Devere, but there had, of
course, been no horse broken to sidesaddle. Renting a lady’s hack in London was one thing, but it simply wasn’t done in the
hinterlands.

Beau squirmed about, trying to get comfortable on the hard seat. If Devere had managed to stick with Granby, he might already
know where Jamie was. He and Leo might even have reclaimed him by the time she reached London.

Beau tamped down the swelling of hope. The odds were against them ever finding Jamie, whatever Gareth might say. She knew
it, and she knew that Gareth knew it. She could see it in his eyes. He wanted to find the boy, badly, if only because she
wanted to do so. But he didn’t truly believe they would and he was already preparing himself for her reaction to failure.

And even if they did find Jamie, there were still so
many issues to resolve. How did you make up for the loss of an earldom? Even if Jamie never knew what had been taken away
from him, the guilt was going to haunt her. And if she wasn’t careful, it was going to eat away at her marriage like a cancer.

Beau reached London in the middle of the night. The clatter of the wheels across the cobbles woke her. Gareth, as grim as
an executioner, was waiting for her when she disembarked. What little hope she’d been clinging to dwindled and died.

He gave her a fierce hug. “Missed you, brat.”

“Devere lost him?”

Gareth shook his head as Boaz materialized with her trunk slung over one shoulder. Together they followed him to the waiting
coach.

“No, Devere stuck to him like a tick all the way back to London. Granby doesn’t have Jamie. Not anymore.”

“What do you mean
not anymore
?” Panic pushed everything out to the margins.

“According to your Mr. Nowlin, who paid Lady Leonidas a very drunken call, they haven’t had him since the day they took him.
Granby didn’t want him in the first place. He wanted you, so they abandoned him.”

“Where?” She was going to be sick. Her stomach churned and knotted. How could they do such a thing? Jamie was practically
a baby still.

“Therein lies the conundrum,” Gareth said, his irritation with the situation evident. “Nowlin claims to have abandoned him
near a gypsy encampment. So, if we’re very lucky—”

“Jamie was taken in, and it might be possible to find him.”

“Might be,” Gareth emphasized. “Your brother’s ridden off to see if he can find any of the horse traders he knows and put
the word out, but at this time of year, there’s not a lot of movement. We might even have to wait until summer, when they
all turn up at the horse fair in Appleby.”

“But that’s months away, Gareth.
Months
.” They couldn’t wait months.
She
couldn’t wait months, not knowing if Jamie was safe.

He put an arm around her and pulled her close. Beau took a deep breath, letting the familiar scent of sandalwood and amber
drive away everything else, if only for a moment.

“I know, love,” he said, jerking her back into the moment. “I don’t like it either, but at least we have some notion of where
to begin looking.”

CHAPTER 48

G
areth awoke to his wife shaking him. There was shouting and the sound of someone pounding on a door.

“Gareth, open this door this instant!”

His father. Gareth grimaced and threw off the bedclothes. “Best get dressed, love,” he said. “I’m afraid we’re about to endure
a very trying morning.”

He climbed out of bed and pulled on his banyan, and then strode out of the room, leaving the door ajar behind him. “Coming,”
he shouted back as the earl continued his assault upon the door. He turned the lock and yanked the door open, nearly catching
a fist to the face as his father readied himself to knock again.

“Everyone in the building must have heard you by now,” Gareth said, taking in his father’s florid face and beetled brow with
a sigh. This was going to go nowhere good.

His father glared at him and shouldered him aside. “What do I care? If you had a proper home in town, it wouldn’t be a concern
in the first place.”

Gareth prayed for patience. Arguing with the old man wasn’t going to help. Pointing out that he didn’t have a
proper home
because the expense was out of the question wouldn’t help either. The earl was as angry as Gareth had ever seen him, and
he’d seen him livid and ranting on many an occasion.

“It’s madness,” his father said, his face betraying a hint of confusion. “Utter madness.”

“What is, sir?” Gareth asked, though he already knew the answer. It has to be Souttar. Nothing else would compel their father
to seek him out in such a way. Nothing else mattered so much to the earl.

“Some Scottish woman has sued Souttar for divorce,” the earl said. “Word of it reached your mother and me in Bath yesterday.
I’m sure Lady Olivia is having fits. When her father hears of this, there will be hell to pay. Your mother is prostrate and
is refusing to leave her bed. I had to leave her behind while I came to town to see what can be done. And Souttar, damn him,
has been playing least in sight like a damn whipped cur.”

Gareth nodded sympathetically. Hysterical women couldn’t be easy to deal with, especially when their hysteria was well justified.
And with no one else to badger, of course his father had turned up here.

“You knew, didn’t you, boy? Knew we were ruined. That your brother was going to drag our name through the mud and make us
the laughingstock of England.”

“Not precisely, Father. I’d hoped that I was mistaken in my conclusions, and that it might all be resolved without ever coming
to Lady Olivia’s notice.”

The earl’s normally devious gaze was shadowed, as
though he couldn’t quite grasp what was happening, or accept that he had no control over it. “Something’s got to be done,”
he said, as though simply saying it would make it so.

“Something is being done,” Gareth replied. “It’s just not a
something
you like.”

His father’s expression hardened, and Gareth knew that he’d gone too far. “Souttar’s got to be saved. This nonsense can’t
stand.”

“And I’m to be the one sacrificed in his place? Lady Boudicea to be ruined in Lady Olivia’s stead? I think not.”

“I think so, my boy,” the earl said, the threat implicit in his tone. “Souttar’s the heir. We can’t have this. The two of
you are like enough. You’ll go to Edinburgh, you’ll present yourself to the court and clear up this woman’s
mistake
.”

“I won’t, sir.” Gareth stared his father down. “I’ve helped as much as I can. I agreed to house Souttar’s son. I even agreed
to claim him as my own bastard, all to preserve Souttar’s marriage and prevent Lady Olivia’s ruin. But that was when I believed
Souttar’s first wife to be dead.”

“Souttar’s son?” The earl’s face mottled, turning an ugly shade of puce.

Gareth pinched the bridge of his nose. Damn his brother for not making a clean breast of it. “He’s still holding out on you,
sir. If that Scottish woman proves her claim, the boy will be Souttar’s heir.”

“Heir? Have you run mad as well? A child in the mix makes it all the more imperative that Souttar be relieved of responsibility.
A cutler’s grandson to be the eighth Earl of Roxwell? It’s preposterous.”

“No, my lord,” Beau said from the doorway between the two rooms. She’d pulled on just enough clothing to be decent. A frilled
wrapper tied securely over several layers of petticoat. “It’s a simple fact of law.”

“You stay out of this—”

“Because it has nothing to do with me?” She crossed the room until she was standing directly in front of the earl. Gareth
held his breath. His father had no idea what he was about to deal with. It was all that he could do to keep from grinning.
With her hair in a braid down her back and her feet bare, she looked much younger than she was, and thus more innocent and
more easily intimidated.

The earl made a dismissive, blustering sound, and Beau inhaled sharply. “It’s my marriage and reputation you’re proposing
to sacrifice on the altar of Souttar’s stupidity, and I won’t allow it.”

“You have no reputation,
my lady
,” the earl said with a vicious smile.

Beau smiled back, every bit as cold a predator as his father. His father’s smile faltered, and he glanced at Gareth, as though
he expected help.

Beau’s tongue darted out, wetting her lips. “You think the
duke
will take such an action lightly? It will be open war. And I swear to you, I’ll drag every dirty bit of the proceedings through
the gossip rags. Lady Worsley’s divorce will be nothing next to what I’ll give them. And I’ll enjoy doing it. Remember,” she
said, leaning in so that her voice was barely a whisper, “I’ll have nothing left to lose.”