Free Last Night's Scandal by Loretta Chase

panel. She leaned out and looked back, but the night was dark. She could see only the occasional faint glow of streetlamps and a bit more of a glow in the great houses where balls would continue for hours yet. The moon would not rise until after dawn, when it would be of no use at all, even if it hadn’t been only a degree past new, the thinnest of sickles.
    She raised the panel again, hooked it into place, and sank into her seat.
    “Any sign of him?” said Lady Cooper.
    “Oh, no, it’s far too soon,” Olivia said. “We’ll be well upon our way by the time he catches up. Too far to turn back.”
    “It would be dreadful to have to turn back,” said Lady Withcote.
    “This is the most exciting thing we’ve done in ages.”
    “So dull, these modern times.”
    “Not like the old days.”
    “Oh, that was a time, my dear,” said Lady Cooper. “I wish you could have known what it was like.”
    “The men dressed so beautifully,” said Lady Withcote.
    “Peacocks, they were, truly.”
    “But for all their fine silks and lace, they were wilder and rougher than the present generation.”
    Lisle excepted , Olivia thought. But then, he’d grown up among the Carsington men, and they weren’t tame, even the civilized ones.
    “Remember when Eugenia quarreled with Lord Drayhew?” said Lady Cooper.
    Lady Withcote nodded. “How could I forget? I was a newlywed then, and she was the most dashing of widows. He’d become too dictatorial, she said, and she wouldn’t tolerate it.
    She bolted.”
    “He hunted her down ,” said Lady Cooper. “She’d gone to Lord Morden in Dorset. What a row there was when Drayhew found them!”
    “The men fought a duel. It went on for an age.”
    “It was swords in those days.”
    “ Real fighting. None of this twenty paces and shooting off a pistol. All that wants is aim.”
    “But a sword, now: That wants skill.”
    “The trouble was, the two gentlemen were equally deadly with the blades. They scratched each other well, but neither could finish the other and neither would yield.”
    “They finally collapsed, the two of them. Couldn’t fight to the death but they fought to exhaustion.”
    “Those were the days.” Lady Withcote let out a nostalgic sigh.
    “Oh, they were, my dear. Men were men.” Lady Cooper sighed, too.
    Men would always be men, Olivia thought. The outer trappings changed, but their brains didn’t.
    “Never fear,” she said. “We don’t need men for excitement. With or without them, I know we’ll have a great adventure.”
    Page 39
    ABC Amber ePub Converter Trial vers ion, http://www.processtext.com/abcepub.html
    Meanwhile in London
    Lisle arrived at Ormont House as a carriage heaped with luggage and servants was making its way up the street.
    With any luck, that would be the advance carriage, not the last one.
    He didn’t count on having any luck.
    He paid the hackney driver, ran up the steps, and slammed the door knocker.
    The dowager’s butler, Dudley, opened the door. As his gaze took in Lisle, his blank expression soured into annoyance. Undoubtedly he was on the brink of summoning a footman to throw the intruder into the street.
    Though the Earl of Lisle’s other scrapes and bruises were fading quickly, his black eye had grown more colorful: green and red and purple and yellow. In his wild haste, he’d left his hat and gloves at the club. Nichols would never have let him out of the house in this condition, but Nichols had not been about to tend to him.
    Wise and experienced butlers, however, did not leap to hasty conclusions. Dudley took a moment to better scrutinize the deranged male standing on the doorstep at an hour when drunkards, vagabonds, and housebreakers began their rounds.
    The butler’s face smoothed into the usual blank, and he said, “Good evening, Lord Lisle.”
    “Here already, is he?” came a cracked but clearly audible voice from behind the servant.
    “Send him in, send him in.”
    The butler bowed and stepped to one side.