Free Scandals of an Innocent by Nicola Cornick

out laughing. “Lady Membury must have loved you,” Lydia added. “You would have been a great comfort to her, Alice. I imagine she was very lonely and saw you as the daughter she had lost.”
    “Perhaps she did,” Alice said. There was a lump in her throat. “We used to talk about all manner of things,”she said, thinking back, “and go driving together, and drink bohea tea and gin, and play cards together.”
    “And I suppose you let her win,” Lydia said.
    “Well, of course,” Alice said. “She was my employer—and she had a fortune of eighty thousand pounds!”
    They both burst out laughing again but then Alice sobered. “All the same, Lydia,” she said, “I sometimes wish that she had never left me her money. It can be a curse as well as a blessing.” She stopped, finding that she was on the verge of blurting out the truth of Miles’s blackmail to her friend. “I’m sorry,” she said, with a little constraint. “That sounds most appallingly ungrateful when my life is materially so much easier now than it was a few years ago.”
    “Being an heiress is not always a fortunate thing,” Lydia said bitterly. “Look at the depths of greed it has driven Sir Montague to, with his ghastly plans to fleece us all with the Dames’ Tax and all his other medieval laws! And then there is Tom…” Her voice faltered a little, and Alice saw her knuckles whiten as she pressed her hands together in her lap. “I do not think he would have paid me the slightest attention had I been penniless. I think he knew that as he is a rackety younger son, Mama and Papa would never countenance his attentions to me. He deliberately sought to get me pregnant so that I would be obliged to marry him. The plan only went wrong when his criminal actions were exposed and he was arrested.”
    “Oh, Lydia!” Alice was appalled at the heartless tale her friend was outlining. The same thoughts had occurred to her but she had hoped that Lydia had kept at least a few of her illusions. “I am sure that Tom caredfor you—” she began, knowing that she did not believe it but wanting only to give comfort.
    “Oh, pish!” Lydia said. “Tom cared for no one but himself. Which is why you should be careful of Miles Vickery, Alice.” Her gaze sought Alice’s and there was anxiety in the depths. “I know he is different in that he is a marquis, even if an impoverished one, and so has a title to trade for your money, but in terms of character I think him even more of a rake than Tom, more ruthless, more dangerous.”
    “How right you are,” Alice said with feeling.
    Both girls looked around as there was a clatter in the hall outside. Lizzie had evidently arrived back from her ride with Nat Waterhouse, for she could be heard chattering and laughing with Marigold, and then Alice heard her mother’s voice rising with excitement as she gave Lizzie the news.
    “And the Marquis of Drummond called and I have every expectation of an engagement being announced shortly between him and Alice…”
    The drawing room door crashed open. “Your mama tells me that you are going to marry Miles Vickery, Alice,” Lizzie announced as she rushed in. She pulled off her riding gloves and dropped them carelessly on the table. “Am I to congratulate you?”
    “That would be premature,” Alice said.
    “Ha! I thought so!” Lizzie said, flinging herself down on the window seat. “I told her you should be clapped in Bedlam if you were even considering it!”
    “Well,” Alice began weakly, thinking that perhaps she should take the opportunity to start preparing the ground, but then she realized that Lizzie was not attending, anyway.
    “You will not believe what has happened!” Lizzie said, sitting bolt upright and fixing her friends with a furious glare. “Nat Waterhouse is to marry that pea brain Flora Minchin!”
    “Good gracious!” Alice said, startled. She remembered Miles’s lazy observation that Lizzie was in love with Nat even though she had