Last Night's Scandal by Loretta Chase Page B

my very last chance for an adventure,” she said. “The family is sick to death of my carryings on, and Grandmama and Grandpapa Hargate are insisting I marry.
    When they start insisting, one might as well give up fighting. You know how they like to have everybody wed and settled. I shall have to settle on somebody and settle down and be a wife and mother. Settle, settle, settle. I shall never have a chance to do anything interesting, ever again.”
    He remembered how fearless she’d been, setting out on her own . . . climbing into wagons . . . luring a pair of grooms into a card game. He thought about her life now, one party after another, where the mildest departure from propriety set the scandalmongers whispering behind their fans.
    “Dammit, don’t do this to me, Olivia,” he said.
    “You know it’s true,” she said. “Women lead narrow lives. We’re somebody’s daughters, then somebody’s wives and somebody’s mothers. We never do anything, not as men do.” He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I will not let my parents coerce me.”
    “You don’t have a choice,” she said. “You’ve always been able to ignore them or get around them, but they’ve finally realized they have one powerful hold over you.”
    “And you’re playing into their hands,” he said. “Have you any idea what’s involved in rebuilding an old castle?”
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    “I have an excellent idea,” she said.
    “It could take years. Years! In Scotland . With the bagpipes! ” She smiled. “It won’t take years if I help you,” she said. “And it won’t hurt to let your parents think they’ve won one battle. If we play this game properly, you’ll be back in Egypt in
    —oh, by spring, very likely.”
    The smile was enough to make him yield. But the guardian voice that had kept him alive all these years said Wait. Think.
    It was very hard to think when the full power of those blue eyes was turned upon him, and things were stabbing at his heart.
    Yet he wasn’t altogether bewitched. He was still the stubborn boy who’d known her long ago, as well as the scholar, the detached observer who’d watched her in action recently. He knew she could make people, especially men, believe anything.
    “No,” he said as gently as he could. “If I let them control me this way, they’ll use it again and again. If I give in to this demand, they’ll make more.” Her smile didn’t falter. “Ah, well, if you won’t agree, you won’t,” she said cheerfully.
    “I knew you’d understand.”
    “Oh, I do . Absolutely.”
    “Good, because—”
    “You needn’t explain,” she said. “I understand completely. But I can’t stay. I’ve a great deal to do today.”
    She touched her crop to the brim of her hat and galloped away.
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    Chapter 4
    Atherton House
    Friday 7 October
    L isle should have realized.
    He should have been prepared.
    But of course that was out of the question in anything involving Olivia.
    Olivia. Suddenly. Unexpectedly .
    The three words engraved in his mind.
    He came down to breakfast, and there she was.
    Not only Olivia, either. She’d brought along the dowager Lady Hargate and two of the Harpies, Lady Cooper and Lady Withcote.
    Lisle hadn’t slept well. In the quiet of his club he’d come up with any number of schemes for dealing with his parents, but each proved fatally flawed. Then Lord Winterton turned up.
    Their paths had crossed in Egypt more than once, and they had a great deal to talk about.
    Winterton invited Lisle to his house to examine a fine set of papyri he’d brought back from his latest trip. The papyri were a welcome distraction from Lisle’s parents and Olivia, and the cool-headed Winterton made an agreeable antidote to all the emotional turmoil. Lisle accepted an invitation to dine, and time slipped away.
    As a result,