Secrets of a Scandalous Heiress Read Online Free PDF Page A

take a great deal of rest.
    Lady Tallant rarely did as ordered.
    Thus, when Augusta bade the servants close up the house for the night, then tiptoed up the stairs to her bedchamber— damn , she had forgotten that the third step creaked—she found the young countess stretched out on a settee, pretending to read.
    â€œLady Tallant. Emily.” Augusta stopped short, then glanced around to make certain she had entered the correct room of the rented house. Yes, this was her chamber: dark brown wallpaper printed with trellises, and an equally dark flowered carpet stretching across the floor. Emily’s room was done in shades of blue. “You ought to be asleep; you should not have waited up for me. Or did I wake you when I returned home?”
    â€œOf course you didn’t wake me.” Without even glancing at her book, the countess shut it and let it fall to the carpet with a muffled thump. “In London, this is practically midafternoon. I should be finishing my tea right now and thinking about which dress I’d like to wear for dinner.”
    Augusta said nothing. She simply raised an eyebrow, a trick she’d recently seen Joss Everett put to good use.
    â€œYou’re trying to intimidate me. It can’t be done, I’m sorry to tell you.” Emily subsided against the settee, clutching her peach-colored dressing gown more tightly around her form. The lamplight gilded her brown hair and hid the too-pale cast of her complexion, though there was no disguising the shadows under her eyes. “I’m a countess and an invalid, and therefore, I can do whatever I wish. Besides, this was your first Bath assembly and I must hear all about it.”
    â€œYou’ll go to bed right away afterward?”
    â€œI will if what you tell me is boring. If it’s extremely boring, maybe I’ll go to sleep right here.”
    Augusta relented with a smile and seated herself in a slipper chair facing Lady Tallant. About five years Augusta’s senior, the countess had befriended her in London the previous season. Their polite chatter at a ball had turned into an invitation to call, and another, and another. That had been around the same time Augusta had first met Josiah Everett. Joss. A man of nicknames and unreadable, dark eyes and acid humor.
    A man of kind hands and unexpected honor.
    Augusta cleared her throat. “The rooms were crowded. I joined in several country dances.”
    Emily faked a snore.
    â€œAnd,” Augusta added, “I met an acquaintance of ours.”
    Emily’s green eyes grew wide. “Indeed? Was it a handsome male bachelor sort of acquaintance?”
    â€œNot exactly.” The fire had been built high for Emily’s comfort; Augusta stretched her slippered feet toward it with feigned nonchalance. “I mean—yes, he was a bachelor male. And some might think him handsome, too. Mr. Josiah Everett.”
    â€œ Some might think him handsome? I suppose some might, at that. You offer no opinion on the matter, I note.” Emily’s lips pressed together with suspicious humor. “He has black hair, which is a point in his favor.”
    Emily’s husband, Lord Tallant, was also dark-haired. Their marriage was a happy one, though the earl and the couple’s two young sons had remained in London during Emily’s convalescence.
    Shrewd eyes met Augusta’s. “And did he have the good sense to dance with you?”
    â€œYes, but only because I forced him to. And that was only because he was at hand when I needed not to dance with someone else.”
    â€œSo neither of you wanted to dance together, yet you accomplished the matter all the same. Well done, my dear.” Emily beamed, and the shadows under her eyes seemed less dark for a moment. “Mr. Everett enjoys a bit of intellectual sparring, if I recall correctly.”
    â€œAbout that.” Augusta began tugging at the fingertips of her gloves. “I have a