Three Schemes and a Scandal Read Online Free PDF Page B

lifted her high enough so that she could swing one leg over the ledge. And then another. She held on, then let go, sliding down the stone wall and landing with a thud on her bottom.
    The sound of chattering party guests reached her, and in a flash she was unlatching the door and stepping inside—holding the door open, wide open, of course, and taking great care to keep it thus.
    Even as she swiftly donned her dress and James made short work of the buttons and smoothed some of the wrinkles in her gown.
    “My hair,” she whispered, tentatively raising one hand to the incriminating mess it had become.
    “The wind. It’s incredibly windy today,” James lectured. Indeed. Now if only wind could explain the telltale signs she’d been on her knees.
    “You should go immediately to make your speech. Don’t worry about me,” she told him.
    “I should worry about you. But oddly enough, I fear more for whoever encounters you,” he said. She smiled, because she knew it was a compliment.
    She cast a wary eye over his appearance. His hair was also disheveled. His cravat had gone limp. Dust and dirt flecked his jacket. And his breeches … stained at the knees and ripped quite nearly up to his backside.
    Charlotte brushed off his jacket. It was the least she could do.
    “Well, it has been …” she started, her voice trailing off.
    “… a pleasure,” James said firmly. Her heart beat hard with happiness. She had missed him. And she did not want to miss him again.
    Charlotte’s last glimpse of the garden party—as she was swiftly and discretely hustled out by her brother and sister-in-law—was James standing before the guests delivering his speech. The wind blew, ruffling his hair and lifting the tails of his coat, exposing the unseemly rip in his breeches. Lord Hastings was horrified. The guests were aghast. Any words he said were lost in the wind.
    They would say that he looked disgraceful. Charlotte thought he looked utterly dashing.
Brooke’s Gentleman’s Club
Later that night
    “Well that went badly,” James remarked to his old friend, Nathanson. There was not enough brandy. Or whiskey. Or wine. James’s heart was still racing from all the narrowly averted disasters of the afternoon.
    “I’m dying to know what the devil happened to you, James. And do not repeat that hogwash about saving the kitten from the tree,” Nathanson implored.
    In spite of himself, James grinned. When he found himself a disheveled unsightly mess standing before two hundred guests expecting a speech on architecture and the achievements of his father, James’s mind went blank.
    Save for one thought: What would Charlotte do?
    Because he knew her, he knew that she would brazen through. She would concoct a story just shy of utterly unbelievable. And she would defend it until her dying breath. So he did just that.
    First, he started off by offering the services of his valet and offered his present attire as recommendation. A few people in the crowd laughed.
    Next, he mentioned having saved a kitten from a tree as an explanation for his disheveled appearance. After all, who could find fault with the rescue of a kitten?
    Never mind that there was no kitten.
    James then began speaking of his father’s interest and dedication to his study. He was presently surprised to find that all those things he’d read about had somehow lodged in his brain and were available to him in his hour of need. James spoke of the folly’s features and praised it for its beauty and security (that was for Charlotte).
    All in all, he did not do a terrible job.
    But all anyone seemed to notice was the massive hole in the backside of his breeches, revealed with every gust of wind.
    It had been an unusually windy day.
    “You know, I can’t decide which was my favorite part,” Nathanson remarked, grinning. “The gasp of the crowd when you stepped up to speak, looking as if you had lost a wrestling match with a rabid wild boar, or your father’s grim expression when he