Free Three Schemes and a Scandal by Maya Rodale Page B

Motif,” Dudley said coolly. “But the door had been locked.”
    “Just stepped in the room myself,” James said. “But I heard it was over here, in this far corner. But of an even greater interest to you might be Lord Capulet’s Ming vase. I have heard that it is made of an unbreakable porcelain.”
    “Unbreakable you say?” one of the chattering guests queried.
    “It’s an ancient, secret technology. His lordship gave me leave to demonstrate it,” James said, picking up the delicate vase, which featured a design of roaring blue dragons against a white background. “Gather round, everyone.”
    Charlotte dared to peek through the velvet curtains.
    James had drawn everyone’s attention to the far corner, deliberately positioning them so that their backs were to her.
    She recognized the gesture as one of a true nobleman or a distressed damsel’s hero. He was manipulating the situation so that she might escape with her virtue intact (or what was left of it). With the crowd’s attention riveted elsewhere, she would be able to escape the alcove and join the group as if nothing had happened.
    As if she hadn’t been quite nearly thoroughly ravished.
    As if her heart hadn’t changed so that what she felt for James was so new to her. He had made her, the dangerously clever girl who deferred to no one, beg “oh please” in a voice breathless with passion, just like Lady Layton. And she had liked it.
    Charlotte had always known he was the one man in London who wasn’t utterly dull. She just didn’t know how stimulating he could be.
    James raised the Ming Vase of Unbreakable Porcelain high above his head. Every gaze was riveted.
    Would he truly drop it?!
    Charlotte slipped out from behind the curtain, seizing the discrete opportunity to rejoin the group that James was providing.
    James let the vase drop. With force. Onto the parquet floor. It promptly shattered.
    Charlotte gasped with all the rest. It was the most romantic thing she had ever witnessed. James had destroyed a priceless heirloom to protect her reputation.
    As the crowd burst into a froth of exclamations and chatter, Charlotte caught James’s gaze. He winked.
    She fell in love.
    Then she was promptly distracted by the arrival of Sophie.
    “Ah, there you are Charlotte! I have been looking for you. Harriet thought you might have fainted somewhere.”
    “I was feeling dizzy when I came in to see the Eversham Motif. All the crowds, you see. I did faint, and luckily Lady Layton and Lord Beaverbrook stayed with me until I recovered myself,” Charlotte explained, knowing they would never contradict the alibi she had just created for them.
    “That is too kind of them. We must find them and thank them,” Sophie said.
    “Indeed. Although perhaps another time. I am feeling not quite myself,” Charlotte said. Wasn’t that the truth! She had just discovered the most outrageous pleasure she had ever known and fallen in love. Somebody fetch the smelling salts.
Hamilton House
The Drawing Room
    When James called upon Charlotte the following day, he was not surprised at how swiftly and deviously she engineered a moment alone.
    After a moment of polite chatter with her and Sophie, her sister-in-law and chaperone, Charlotte gasped, dramatically, apropos of nothing.
    “What is it?” Sophie asked suspiciously.
    “I forgot to tell you,” Charlotte answered meekly with an adorably sheepish shrug of her shoulders.
    “Tell me what?” Sophie asked, warily.
    “The nanny wished to speak to you about the baby. I was supposed to tell you at breakfast, but it just slipped my mind. I do hope it wasn’t an urgent matter,” Charlotte said sounding so apologetic that James almost believed it. Almost.
    “Excuse me, please,” Sophie said, rushing out of the room. She paused at the doorway to admonish Charlotte to “stay out of trouble” and then she dashed off.
    “There was no message from the nanny was there?” he asked.
    “Of course not,” she replied, sipping her