A Scandalous Creature

By Deborah L. Fruchey

Lady Katherine Helleston, a spirited red-haired widow, is disgusted by her Trustee, who is mismanaging her estates, and alarmed by her niece, who dislikes anything safe or respectable. The solution to both is a husband - who will free her from her Trustee, and protect her ward Miss Beecham from rakes and scoundrels. She chooses an old playfellow from her past, but Jonathan, Lord Rotherham, is not so simple a playfellow any more, and the latest rake and scoundrel is not quite what he seems...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Deborah L. Fruchey
• Release date: Oct 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370148684

Deborah L. Fruchey

Deborah Fruchey was born in California over 50 years ago. Her first novel, The Unwilling Heiress, was chosen as a Best Book by the American Bookseller's Association in 1987. She has attended several colleges just for fun, never earning a degree, and has worked at everything from international banking to selling light bulbs over the phone.In 2005 Deborah married musician Robert Hamaker, and settled in as a full time author. She occasionally does vocals for her husband's meditation music. She also speaks for the National Alliance of Mental Illness in their In Our Own Voice program, as a result of her own experience with Bipolar Disorder.Deborah no longer understands why she ever bothered with anything besides writing.

Book preview

A SCANDALOUS CREATURE

by

Deborah Fruchey

dedicated to Georgette Heyer, for decades of fun & inspiration

Copyright 2011 by Deborah Lynn Fruchey

Smashwords Edition

Published by Last Laugh Productions

Library of Congress Control Number 2011904065

Cover Art: The Card Player, late 19th Century, unknown artist of the English School.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook 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 favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Chapter One

Which treats of Milady’s Helleston's Suitors in Most Improper Terms

Lud, Letty, what a dreadful subject at breakfast! Lady Helleston buried her nose defensively in the morning paper.

Her ward, Miss Beecham, poked cheerily at a mountain of sausages. Well, why should you not be married? she persisted.

And why, child? Kate asked calmly, directing a level gaze at Miss Beecham over the rim of her coffee cup. You must know I've seen too much of it.

Miss Letitia Beecham could not but think it a waste. Her Aunt's waving red-gold tresses were softly dappled, then burnished, by the early sunlight through the interweaving branches in their garden breakfast nook. The small enclosure was a mass of delicate vertical bloom. Letty, who was inclined to hero-worship her Aunt, took vicarious pleasure in this: six weeks ago it had been a damp, unpleasant wilderness. Kate had whirled into town and done all of the planning, and much of the work, herself.

Lady Helleston was rich, titled, accomplished, and had worn rather well, actually (or so Letitia expressed it to herself from the merciless vantage of seventeen years). Even at the advanced age of twenty-and-nine, a rich widow of her style was a very different pair of shoes from an impoverished spinster. Aunt must not be allowed to be squeamish.

Besides which, Lady Helleston was so droll (Letty went on large-mindedly to herself), she could surely still lead some nabob a merry dance, in his declining years.

I will not allow Uncle Sylvester to be a fair trial of the breed, she proclaimed. Almost anyone in London would be a great improvement over him. Why, he hadn't the slightest sense of humor! Besides which, he looked like a crow! Letty paused in darkling memory: Abominable Uncle! Always taking snuff at something. He might at least (she remarked to herself quite bitterly and for the hundredth time) have admitted that his favorite sow had looked quite charmingly in her old blue nightgown and embroidered slippers. Instead of sending her to her room for a week!

There are probably any number of gentleman, she added kindly, who would not think you at all old.

Kate gave a little choke of laughter into her coffee and quickly set it down. Thank you, she said meekly, with an underlying tremor in her voice. I fancy I am not old-cattish yet!

Lounging in her chair in the most casual fashion imaginable, all lace and laughing eyes and muslin, Katie Helleston was a beauty by any standards. Her face had the classic oval shape and perfectly chiseled cheekbones that women spent fretful hours trying to approximate. Her lips, full and well-shaped, were the shade of burnt sienna. The loose-piled autumnal hair, from which one gently waving tendril escaped down her nape and shoulders, was quite natural. But most endearing, to the male mind, were her artless flaws.

Such a determined little jaw - not at all the chin of a lady! And then the nose: too small, tiptilted, and dusted with a curse of light golden freckles (carefully, but for the most part vainly, brushed with powder for social occasions). Her eyes were her best feature, set under a pair of winged brows, whose high, fine arch lent her an air of permanent amusement. Her irises, green touched with gold, were lit with alert intelligence. Tiny laughlines attested to a touch of unholy mischief. Add to this her willowy figure, the truly shocking fortune she'd inherited from both her father and her late husband, and a generous, forthright smile.

No, Lady Kate was hardly old-cattish.

Kate rested her famous dimpled chin on her knuckles and looked across at Letitia with a faint, repressed smile. Letty, a ripe 17, was possessed of plentiful black curls, blue eyes, and a figure as pleasingly rounded as a partridge’s. She was also without the sense god gave the average duck, and usually into some deviltry. Let's-find-Auntie-a-husband was a new ploy, and therefore suspicious.

Very well, I'll play. Who was it you had in mind for me to marry? Kate said amiably.

Letty suggested, Sir Henry Crakins? He is so prodigious elegant...and here nearly every day! Do you not think him devoted?

Oh, yes, to my coffers, Kate answered cheerfully. He used to cost his mother £2,000 a year, and his Trustees are crab-fisted. Poor Henry's been all to pieces anytime these ten months. I would be deeply shocked if he were not devoted to me!

Letty made a face. Very well - but they cannot all be basket-scramblers!

Such language, Kate murmured mendaciously.

Yes, is it not deplorable? You ought never to have taught it me! But come. I am not a gaby, and I know you have a raft of admirers. Whom do you prefer? Do you think Count Vitello handsome?

Oh, yes, said Kate cheerily. I cannot bring myself to believe, however, that he is in truth either a Count or an Italian. Nor do I believe, she added with a twinkle, that matrimony was quite what he had in mind! No, no, my dear, I am being quite kind enough by swallowing his great plumpers. I am sure I am the only one in the ton who bothers to do so!

Letty sat with wide eyes and parted lips. He didn't propose that - you never - Lud, Aunt, you take it very calmly! She was genuinely shocked.

Kate pinched her ward's wrist playfully. It happens to the best of us, dear. Even to fusty old antidotes. It's a compliment, I suppose - but not to one's intelligence, she finished dryly.

Letty made a great chore of buttering her scone. Hardly! she murmured, her cheeks very warm.

I am all of a flutter. Tell me, who else? This becomes amusing.

Oh, fiddle! You may laugh at me, but I mean to find you some respectable gentleman! Letty shook her fork in mock threat.

I am all compliance. Come, who's the lucky groom?

Lord Ponsonby, Miss Beecham said. He wouldn't bounce about saying disgusting things to a lady.

Oh, wouldn't he just! said Kate with a snort of laughter. Only yesterday he likened my eyes to 'a school of fish on Triton's sacred pond'. And if that is not disgusting, then I have no opinion of your taste.

Crack-brained! exclaimed the girl. Imagine saying such stuff to a lady: 'I love you because you make me think of fish'!

Yes, and he never told me whether he meant minnows or eels...most uncivil.

I withdraw Lord Ponsonby from the lists, Letty sighed. Is Dargis also off his head?

Oh no, Lord Dargis is quite an ordinary man, really. He wishes me to cut my dresses up to my chin, retire to Yorkshire for the better part of the year, and agree to obey him in all things. He thinks, she added succinctly, that we shall deal extremely.

Letty made an impolite noise and dropped a piece of her toast for a hovering bird. Cawker! she muttered darkly. Then louder, Why must you have an answer for everything?

I did warn you, Kate replied apologetically. There’s nothing up to my weight in the stables, m'dear.

If you are truly so immovable a female, how did you come to wed my Uncle?

Sylvester... was an accident.

Letty opened her eyes at this.

Just that. A stupid accident, Kate repeated softly. Absently, she stopped pouring the cream, and stared pensively at the wall.

The old memories rustled by her again, with their threadbare enticements. Kate thought of the strange, silent house where she had been birthed; where her mother, upon that same instant, had expired. Her father, the bluff red-haired Baron of Stavely, had been more than enough of a substitute. He was a jolly and surprisingly deft diplomat, much in demand during the years of Napoleon, and often abroad. But his presence had caused the house to vibrate with laughter and movement and a clean strong feel like the wind. And in his absence, he wrote wonderful, thick letters, and made provision for tutelage of every kind for his beloved only daughter. The Baron had radical notions of child-raising; but he erred always on the side of generosity, to everyone, so even the staid local gentry had to somewhat forgive him. She had learned everything that pleased her agile mind, from flower-arranging to mathematics, from fencing and archery and agriculture, to waltzing, piano, and five separate languages. As she grew older, the Baron left more and more command of the estate's affairs to her; so that by fifteen, she was full, acknowledged master. And when she fell desperately, permanently in love with pure architecture, he found a retired practitioner of the art to apprentice her. The architect was old and ill; but he had been well respected in his time, and was grateful to teach what he loved to anyone, never mind that it was a woman.

More than all this, her father had taught her to respect herself, body and mind; to take joy of life in a manner that few women of her generation could remotely begin to understand. The young Kate Stavely was a fully-formed personality from the age of 13, and a keen judge of character.

This attribute had failed her only once, in the most spectacular of ways.

Her father's sudden death had shattered Kate. For the first time in her life, she found herself spiritually alone. Beloved servants were not enough. She needed friends, and at this of all moments there were none, or so it seemed. She 'took it well', of course, everyone said so - which meant nothing more than that, not understanding the dangers inherent in suppressing her grief, she was easy prey to the first type of succor that offered.

Her marriage to Sylvester Helleston was a nine-days' wonder. She was still in her blacks, and he was not well known in the district. She felt she had found in him the things she missed from her father: direct, unswerving integrity, self-confidence and strength. She looked for comfort in his uprightness and fixedness of character. But this dream was not to survive the wedding night.

In him she found nothing of comfort. Kate soon realized that she had been sold a bill of goods. Lord Helleston was stiff as a whalebone corset, and just as hollow.

She had thought herself lonely before. Over the next eight years she found the truth of it. Sit up straight, Katherine. Be quiet, Katherine. I find this forward behaviour most displeasing. I have a right, I believe, to expect a little decorum from my wife, Katherine. Those hues are by far too loud - try for a little propriety, Katherine. As your behavior shows you unfit for polite society, you may remain in Sussex again this Season, Katherine. I have no room in my train, madam, for one who offers me the comforts of neither a helpmeet nor an heir.

She never complained of his many character flaws, however; and grew to be grateful, in the end, for his overweening pride. This latter was responsible for his lordship's taking a regular rasper during his final hunt, far beyond his waning skill, causing what everyone but Lady Helleston referred to as His Untimely Death. The 'vicious brute' deemed responsible had become the particular animal most favored in her stables. Far from doing her harm, this even enhanced her reputation. Old retainers clucked their tongues over the poor young mistress, wrestling with the demons of her grief, riding out day after day on her departed lord's last mount.

She brought herself back to the table with an easy shrug. I shan't make the same mistake twice, and so I warn you! You have taken me on a tour of every idiot of our acquaintance - tell me, why did you never mention Barnaby Horton?

That little mooncalf? I dare swear he's the worst of the lot! Give me credit for a bit of sense, Aunt.

Kate lifted a playful eyebrow. Oh? I was persuaded that you should like him best! For he is young, and well-looking in a milky sort of vein, and has money of his own, could one but bring him out of the clouds for long enough to own it.

But he writes verse - then reads it aloud on morning calls! Letty objected plaintively.

Quite unexceptionable, Kate remarked, showing her gleaming teeth in a hard smile. What lady of my years could mislike such praise from a suckling of twenty-odd? Then she proceeded to recite, to Letty's revulsion:

'The gleaming portals of her teeth,

through which

no cruelty nor calumny may pass'.

I vow, she went on dreamily, I shall like being wed to someone who even likes my teeth. Only think, I may not have them much longer!

Stop, stop! cried Letty, giggling behind one childish hand.

My dear, do you frown on the nuptials? But how perverse in you. I am quite settled on the scheme. After all, she went on in her normal voice, "He is bound to suffer a desperate spasm the first time he hears me dressing down one of the servants - and I shall be a widow again in a trice. Since I find marriage a great bore, that is just what I shall like.

So do let us drop this tedious subject, and leave me to look at the paper, child, I beg! My sausage has gone quite cold and horrid. Think of the digestion of an old, failing, woman, why can't you?

Letty wrinkled her nose. Well, I will. But don't think you've sent me to grass, for you haven't! All that slum about your delicate digestion! You haven't got a nerve in your entire blue-blooded body. You forget, I was there when you shot that highwayman on the heath last month.

Well, what else was I to do with him? said Kate vaguely from behind her paper. He was very much in the way, you know. And you needn't be grateful, she added, suppressing a yawn behind one well-kept hand. For I reserve to myself the right to shoot you personally should I ever need to do so.

Oh, that makes it all right, then, Letty responded.

Kate snorted faintly without looking up and sunk back into the doings of Parliament. Letty left her alone for moments only; she was long convinced of the value of a determined course of relentless nagging.

The Honorable Miss Letitia Beecham had been under the protection of her Aunt-by-marriage for something under a year. Her mother and only surviving parent had been Sylvester's sister; having stuck her spoon in the wall within weeks of her sibling, Lady Beecham had perforce left the care of Miss Letitia to her sister in law. It was a dwindling family, and there was no other suitable female.

They were the fondest of companions now, but it had not always been so.

Letty was a short and lively damsel, clever rather than intelligent, with a taste for fun and grig which, never allowed any scope, had degraded into a genius for scandal. By nature and inclination, Letty was a born social butterfly. But by virtue of her birth into the stern Helleston-Beecham clan, she had been condemned instead to a constrained life of rigid propriety, moldering year round in the dreary shires. The nearly concurrent death of her mother and Uncle had been her only stroke of luck. Augusta Sybchester Beecham, as she styled herself, would never have purposely consigned her only daughter to the care of 'that flibbertigibbet Stavely chit'. But, Letty was certain in her own mind that any wife of her Uncle’s was bound to be a fubsy-faced old stick.

It was a very sullen child, just rising 16, who had first appeared in Kate's drawing room. On top of her live burial in the rural wilds, the prospect of double mourning in Uncle Sylvester's shaggy old fright of a mansion had turned the girl into a smoldering heap of trouble, quick to ignite. Within the first week she had set the house on its ear - walking unattended, driving the late Master's bays without permission, putting some sleek, unspeakable marsh creature into Milady's syllabub, and - the crowning folly - setting up a flirt with one of the under-footman. It was this last start that finally dragged the as-yet-unknown Lady Helleston from out her chambers where (it was presumed) she had remained prostrate with grief.

The two had confronted each other in Sylvester's depressingly ornate library. The interview had not, precisely, gone according to either's expectations.

Truth to tell, Kate had been enjoying her freedom and was loath to meet yet another dynastic, stiff-necked relative of her husband’s. She found the prospect of forced guardianship quite as distasteful as Letty could have wished. That her pranks had amused her hostess, Letty had no notion. The sleek marsh beastie, poking out of her pudding, had made Kate laugh till she cried.

It took only one sight of Miss Beecham's sullen, woebegone face. Lady Kate recognized her own unsized and frisky self, and after that she could not turn away. There was in her an unsated need for children, for all that she'd prayed every night of her marriage not to conceive.

As for Letty, she was overawed by Kate's daringly modish mourning garb, by her fiery beauty and air of perfect self-possession. Far from appearing laid down by grief, this diamond swam into the room and turned on her errant ward a speaking glance, freighted more heavily with humor than reproof.

Letty was entirely daunted. There were no acknowledgements or apologies – none of the glacial civilities from which Miss Beecham had hoped to take dramatic verbal flight. There was only this tolerant silence, while Letty's great blows for justice and freedom shrank into pranks, and pretty poor stuff at that. The wild and stirring speeches Letty had planned cleaved to her tongue; they would not do; and she too was silent, cowed, waiting for the widow's first words.

These were surprising enough.

So, child - your blacks chafe you, do they? One can hardly wonder at it. Mourning for Augusta, I imagine, is quite tedious enough. How inconsiderate of your Uncle to add to the tally! But quite like him, she added, tilting her head a little over a smile.

Lady Helleston's voice was low: musical and pleasing. What Letty could not decide was whether it was meant for kindness, or mockery. Thrown into sullen confusion, she murmured resentfully, I hope I know how to value my Uncle as I ought...

Why, of course you do! Kate broke in with a trill of laughter. However could you not? He was always at such pains to give everyone sufficient idea of his consequence!

There was no mistaking her chuckle for anything but the genuine article. Letty could not help but join in. On that dusty couch they laughed together over many more things than they ever admitted, and tacitly agreed to become fast friends.

That first interview soon evolved into a strategy session. Kate made it quite clear that, while she had no mind to play the dragon, neither would she let her ward be ruined over trifles. After all, she confided wickedly, there are so much more interesting things to be ruined over!

But there are so many things that ladies must not do, groaned Letty. I despair of ever remembering all of them, much less which are the trifles!

And there are more strictures for ladies in their blacks than for any other kind, said Kate sympathetically. Odious. But come, I will show my system of categories for every occasion. You may like to adopt it.

And with such sure strokes that Letty never guessed the idea had been born on the instant, Lady Helleston began to write.

THERE ARE SOME THINGS A LADY MUST NOT DO - UNLESS:

1. She's exceedingly pretty

2. She's amazingly rich

3. She has just come from Paris

4. She has relatives in the Royal Family

5. She's engaged to someone Very Stuffy

6. She can pass it off as a Very Good Joke

(see rule 4)

SPECIAL COROLLARIES

a. There are some things a lady must not do under any circumstance. Period.

Letty groaned. There's no hope for me!

Never trouble yourself, said Kate cheerily. I am just coming to the important one."

THERE ARE SOME THINGS A LADY MUST NOT DO

IF ANYONE IS LOOKING

Now that, as Letty expressed, was really something like! Kate assured the girl that there would be opportunity aplenty. As it happens, she said wisely, banishing Letty's last objection, Sussex is the best possible place for us to try our paces. My dear, who in the world is there to see us here?

This plan, then and now, had appealed strongly to Letty. She soon found herself deferring to her elegant guardian in all matters of taste and decorum, confident that nothing truly harmless (proper or no) would be denied to her. So they had remained in Sussex, and had a surprisingly good time without setting the county by its ear.

Kate, by these very questionable means, had managed to keep her young firebrand well-behaved on the lightest of reins. Then even half-mourning ended. There was no longer any just excuse for keeping Letty from her first London Season.

Kate gave it much thought before she decided to go. She was aware that her charge, despite a naturally loving disposition, was surfeited with restraints from the cradle, and no longer found it possible to discern any true sense of fitness. Only by dint of alertness, by keeping a mood of sisterly confidence between them, and by allowing the occasional minor infraction, was Kate able to prevent, month after month, a major disaster.

It was a tricky business. It was with some anxiety and some daring that Kate had at last allowed her methods to meet their test. So far, in the flurried excitement of First Balls and First Bouquets, learning to join the Grand Strut in the park and throw a provocative shaft with her eyes, Letty had evinced no desire for other forms of play. But now with this 'marriage for Aunt' ploy, Kate found herself uneasy.

Some minutes went by in silence, while Lady Helleston calmly flipped the pages of her journal and Letty pensively regarded the leaves that drifted onto her empty plate. Kate grew a slight furrow between her fine brows.

Whatever gave you the idea, she asked casually, that I needed to be married off? Surely it is your own wedding you should be planning, not mine?

Oh! exclaimed Letty, coloring. I don't think it my duty, precisely. But it occurred to me that it might be entertaining, you see...

Kate looked up carefully under her lashes.

Why, well, you know how it is... Letty floundered. Invitations, and a Promise Ball, and choosing a veil to fill half the aisle of the largest church... her voice regained its enthusiasm. And setting up for a Bridal Trip! Only think how exciting, choosing between Greece and Italy!

My dear child, you can't have thought, she said lazily, keeping her eyes on Letty. How much of a spanking time should you have, while I was jauntering across the continents? I could hardly take you with me, you know. My husband would be sure to object - quite nonsensically, I'm sure, for what would one want with privacy on a bridal trip? But so it is. You would have to stay with your Great Aunt Cornelia. Brighton. Backgammon, every day. Trust me, you would be bored beyond permission!

Letty's face fell briefly at this dismal disclosure. Then it brightened again. I daresay you wouldn't like to take a very long bridal trip, she said hopefully, for after all, you have had one already. And I shouldn't be so poor-spirited as to grudge you one small treat without me. I should have enough treats before that, I'm sure. At this, Letty dropped her head and made finger-patterns on the table.

For I suppose, she went on with labored indifference, that as an engaged woman, you shouldn't mind it if your fiancee were to escort us to all manner of places while you are courting. That is, places to which you now scruple to go, since we haven't the proper protection, as two females alone.

What sort of places, Letty? I hadn't thought myself so strict. Her voice was a masterpiece of innocent hurt.

Oh, only a few places, Letty hastened to assure her. Just the ones you like to call 'rackety'. Vauxhall, for instance, or the Brighton Pavilion when the Prince is there, or--

-- or Sir Ducton's masque, finished Kate, enlightened.

Well... the thought has crossed my mind, Letty turned big, wide-open puppy-eyes on her guardian.

Kates' eyes lit appreciatively. "You are cow-handed, Letty, but I admire your stamina! How many times have we discussed this? I make the total five, I believe. I have offered you instead - if I can remember them all - such replacement delights as Astley's Amphitheatre, the Tower of London, a presentation at court, and even (most improper) a scheme of driving - heavily veiled, in course - down St. James' Street. I had never thought to see you refuse that one! But nothing will make you fly from the scent!

But now, if I am to believe my ears, her eyes were merry golden slits, you would have me provide myself with a husband of almost any sort, just so you may have the use of his escort to this wretched masque! She broke into open laughter then, settling back in her chair and wiping her eyes. Letty, Letty, you are the most repellent brat in London - a scandalous little masterpiece! My child, I drink to you! On this gusty note, she drained and refilled her coffee cup.

Letty closely regarded her guardian's rosy face, not without hope. Does that mean I may go, then? Perhaps you will reconsider, dearest Aunt?

Kate became instantly serious. No, she replied firmly. Nothing will induce me to do so. Do not bring it up again!

Letty eyed her at length, seeing no signs of softening. This must, she decided, be one those things A Lady Must Not Be Seen To Do. It was hard