Free Last Night's Scandal by Loretta Chase Page A

Lisle strode into the vestibule. He heard the door close behind him as he continued to the great entrance hall.
    There stood the Dowager Countess of Hargate, leaning on her cane. She was dressed in an elaborately ruffled and laced silken robe of a style already long out of fashion when the Parisian mob stormed the Bastille.
    She eyed him up and she eyed him down. “Looks like someone ruffled your feathers,” she said.
    She might be a thousand years old, and everyone in the family, including him, might be afraid of her, but the art of saying what he didn’t mean didn’t come naturally to him. At the moment, he had no patience with mannerly niceties.
    “You’ve let her go,” he said. “You must be completely besotted with that awful girl to let her do this.”
    She cackled, the wicked witch.
    “When did she leave?” he said.
    “At the stroke of midnight,” she said. “You know Olivia. Loves her dramatic entrances and exits.”
    Midnight had struck more than an hour ago.
    “This is mad,” he said. “I cannot believe you let her set out for Scotland on her own. In the dead of night, no less.”
    “Hardly the dead of night,” said her ladyship. “The parties are only starting. And she’s hardly on her own. She’s got Agatha and Millicent with her, not to mention a brace of Page 40
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    servants. I’ll admit that the butler is a featherweight, but her cook weighs sixteen stone. She’
    s taken half a dozen sturdy housemaids and another half dozen footmen with her as well, and you know I like big, good-looking fellows about me. Not that I can do much these days but admire the view.”
    Lisle’s mind started down the path of wondering what she’d done to or with footmen before old age got the better of her. He hauled it back to Olivia. “A motley assortment of servants,” he said. “Two eccentric old ladies. I know you dote on her and indulge her in everything, but this is beyond outrageous.”
    “Olivia can take care of herself,” said her ladyship. “Everyone underestimates her, especially men.”
    “I don’t.”
    “Don’t you?”
    He refused to let the unwavering hazel gaze disconcert him. “She’s the wickedest girl who ever lived,” he said. “She did this on purpose.”
    She knew he’d feel guilty and responsible, even though she was clearly in the wrong. She knew he couldn’t tell his parents she’d gone to Gorewood without him, and he was staying home.
    Staying home.
    Possibly forever.
    Home. Without Olivia to make it bearable, though she could be unbearable herself at times.
    Curse her!
    “I can’t believe that there isn’t one person in this family who can control her,” he said.
    “Now I must turn my life upside down, drop everything, and race after her—in the middle of the night, no less—”
    “No hurry,” said the dowager. “Remember, she’s got those two beldams with her. She’ll be lucky to reach Hertfordshire before dawn.”
    Meanwhile on the Old North Road
    Olivia had known that, traveling with an entourage, one couldn’t match the speed of the Royal Mail. Still, when the dowager had said it would take a fortnight to reach Edinburgh, Olivia had thought she was joking, or referring to the last century.
    She was revising her thinking.
    She’d known they’d stop to change horses about every ten miles, and at shorter intervals during uphill stretches. While the best hostlers could change a team in two minutes, to accommodate the strict schedules of mail and stage, that didn’t apply to her and her retinue.
    Now it dawned on her that elderly ladies would require longer pauses at the posting inns.
    They’d disembark more often than mail or stagecoach travelers were allowed to do and spend more time, visiting the privy or walking about to stretch their legs or fortifying themselves with food and drink. Especially drink.
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