Free Lady Iona's Rebellion by Dorothy McFalls

Regent!”
    “Believe what you wish, my lady,” he said as he tried to skirt around her. “I have no intention of explaining myself to you. That explanation is reserved for the Duke.”
    Lillian gave a cry of alarm. She lunged for the door, slamming it closed before he could reach the handle and splayed herself, with her arms spread wide, across the expanse of the door. “Are you dicked in the nob? You will do no such thing!”
    “I am quite sane, thank you very much, and you shouldn’t be using such coarse language, Lady Lillian.” He tugged on his soggy waistcoat. A stream of water dripped on the flagstone pavers. “I am doing my duty to your sister. Now step aside.”
    “You are making a fuss for no purpose and will cause Iona a great deal more trouble than she has right now if you do not leave immediately.”
    From past experience, he had trouble taking Lillian’s sisterly concern seriously. The silly girl was rarely concerned about anything unless it benefited herself in some way. “Stand aside, my lady, or I will move you myself.”
    “No! I have the matter well in hand,” she said throwing her arms in the air. “Miss Amelia Harlow, a friend of mine and my summer houseguest, saw Iona leaving the ball with a gentleman—you, I suppose. She came straight to me and I went straight to Mama and told her that Iona went home with a headache.”
    “You did?” he could barely believe his—and Iona’s—luck, or Lillian’s seemingly altruistic behavior.
    “I’ve spent the last hour keeping my mother and father from sticking their concerned noses into Iona’s bedchamber while Miss Harlow sat at the parlor window and watched for Iona to return home.” She huffed. “You should have fetched her home sooner. I was beginning to worry that my fool sister had gotten herself abducted.”
    “And Lady Iona understands that she needn’t confess why she disappeared from the ball?” He wasn’t planning on going anywhere until he was confident that her reputation was indeed safe.
    “Of course she does.” Lillian rolled her pretty pale blue eyes. “Miss Harlow was busy explaining all of that to her as she bustled my sister up the back stairs to her bedchamber.”
    “Good.” The tight bands of tension pulling on his shoulders loosened considerably. He very properly tipped his beaver hat. “Then I will bid you a good evening, my lady.”
    “You still haven’t explained how you pressured Iona into creeping away with you into the Bath night. What manner of blackmail do you hold over her? What power could you possibly wield to sway an avowed prig as my sister to act so uncharacteristically?” she called after him.
    Nathan walked away, shaking his head. Lillian was asking the absolute wrong question. What power did he hold over Iona?
    Seemingly, very little.
    Despite the coil they had gotten themselves into, Iona had remained firm. She’d called him a friend. Nothing more than a friend. And because of their friendship, she’d abjectly refused to let him march through the front door and demand to pay his formal addresses to her father.
    Considering how Lillian had neatly covered up Iona’s failure to return to the ball, he was vastly relieved he hadn’t done just that. Doing so would have only further damaged his reputation, a reputation he specifically came to Bath to repair.
    How had he gotten himself into such a sticky situation in the first place?
    He glanced back at the Newbury townhouse and saw that the lights shining in the first floor windows were in the process of being doused as if this were a normal evening and nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
    Of course nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, except for the Duke’s virginal daughter’s late-night dip in the King’s Bath while dressed in nothing but a white chemise and a pair of pink stockings. He glanced down at his own ruined suit, water still dripping from the hem of his waistcoat, and chuckled. This had been a most uncommon evening.