Ballrooms and Blackmail by Regina Scott Page A

of each. “You know your sister must entertain
callers.”
    The first pouted, looking far more like her
older sister Acantha. “She’s always too busy for us.”
    “Her and her duke,” the other agreed in a
sniff. “And that Priscilla Tate person.” She glared at
Priscilla.
    Priscilla raised her brows, but Acantha
flushed red. “Children belong in the nursery.”
    That set them both to howling in protest,
but their mother marched them out of the room and shut the door
behind her.
    “They are impossible,” Acantha lamented,
collapsing back against her chair. “They pester me constantly,
demanding my attentions. They have no concept of the pressures of
the Season.”
    Or which bits of gossip to ignore. Priscilla
decided not to dwell on how many times her name might have been
raised in complaint that Acantha’s sisters knew and despised
it.
    “Wait until it’s their turn for a Season,”
Emily advised Acantha. “Now, quickly, before your mother returns,
where did you go the day before yesterday and who could have
slipped the note into your reticule?”
    Acantha gazed up at the coffered ceiling
where green ocean waves billowed from a painted sea. “I entertained
callers all morning: His Grace and his cousin, Mr. Cunningham, Mr.
Richmont, Lord Eustace, Miss Bigglethorpe, Priscilla, and her
mother. I was fitted for a new gown at two, and I went riding at
four. That evening I attended a ball at Lady Baminger’s. It wasn’t
until I was preparing for bed that I found the note.”
    Priscilla frowned. That made for entirely
too many people with opportunities to play the blackmailer.
    “And your reticule was with you the entire
time?” Emily pressed.
    “Not while I was riding, silly,” Acantha
said. “And I didn’t take it to the ball. It didn’t match my
gown.”
    How very nice to have such a choice.
Priscilla clutched her reticule closer.
    “So anyone who called might have given you
the note,” Emily surmised, “a servant could have slipped it in when
you were elsewhere, or someone at the seamstress’s shop could have
provided it.”
    Still too many choices. Acantha did not seem
to agree, for she waved a hand. “Our servants are entirely
trustworthy, and so is the staff at Madame Levasard’s.”
    Madame Levasard? Priscilla had had call to
patronize the famous dressmaker. On a commission from Aunt Sylvia,
paid before her fall from grace, the skilled designer had crafted
the gown Priscilla had worn to her come out ball. But Priscilla
hadn’t seen the woman in nearly two weeks.
    Emily was clearly of the same mind, for her
dark eyes narrowed. “Then it must have been one of your
callers.”
    Acantha shook her head, and a curl popped
free to hang along her ear. “Miss Bigglethorpe has been a dear
friend to me. Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Richmont, and Lord Eustace are
true gentlemen who would never pen such a note. That leaves . . .”
She turned to Priscilla, her eyes narrowing too. “You.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” Priscilla said. “I
didn’t give you that note.”
    “I don’t see why not,” Acantha insisted,
straightening away from the chair. “You’ve never been nice to me
until last night, and I know you’ve set your sights for
Rottenford.”
    “She didn’t send you that note,” Emily said
before Priscilla could do more than puff herself up to protest.
“She received one too.”
    “Emily!” Priscilla couldn’t help her cry.
Letting Acantha know about the other note was surely courting
disaster.
    Emily turned to her. “She must know, Pris.
It’s the only way we can compare circumstances and unearth the
culprit.”
    Acantha was staring at Priscilla. “Did you
really receive a note like mine?”
    No use denying it now. “Yes,” Priscilla
admitted. “Identical in word and misspelling.”
    “And you were both together that morning,”
Emily reminded them. “Are you certain no other caller had reason to
warn you away from the duke?”
    Priscilla met Acantha’s gaze and knew they
were