One Scandalous Kiss by Christy Carlyle

nothing to do with that extraordinary kiss. Or at least that’s what he’d say to his aunt if she pressed him on the matter.
    Mrs. Briggs shot to her feet, and her tight-fitting, puffy-sleeved gown rustled with the effort.
    Lucius stood too. Etiquette demanded it despite his frustration with the woman’s husband.
    “My husband could not allow his bank to be associated with such a trollop! Sh-she humiliated you in front of everyone. One would think you might be pleased that Mr. Briggs acted in your interest, my lord. We all feel your embarrassment as one.” Her little speech started out on a strident note and then trailed off into an obsequious whine at the end.
    “Forgive me, Mrs. Briggs, but it seems your husband acted in his own interest, not mine.” When the woman’s lower lip began to tremble, Lucius bit back his irritation and tempered his tone. “I do appreciate that Mr. Briggs acted on his moral principles, but what of his compassion? No real injury was done to me. Certainly none that compares to what has now been done to this young woman.”
    If the bluestocking had humiliated him, he had yet to sense an inkling of it. Perhaps the pleasure he’d taken in the kiss was blinding him to the damage she’d done and he’d wake up in a week to find he was the laughingstock of London. At least he’d be in the countryside by then.
    Mrs. Briggs looked momentarily confused and then seemed to comprehend that regardless of his gentler tone, she was being chastised. She slumped back down onto his aunt’s damask-covered settee as if, with all her superiority gone, she had no strength left to hold her up.
    “No one should lose everything over one kiss.” Whatever the truth of his declaration, no one seemed to be listening. It was almost as if he’d said the words to an empty room. None of the ladies responded. Mrs. Ornish was busy fanning her sister, who seemed on the verge of tears, and Aunt Augusta looked down at her pugs with a tiny grin on her face.
    Lucius cleared his throat before standing and straightening his cuffs, settling each shirtsleeve button at precisely the same position on each wrist.
    “If you’ll excuse me, ladies. I’m returning to Berkshire and would like to make a start.”
    His aunt followed him to the foyer and spoke in hushed tones while the butler fetched his coat and hat.
    “You haven’t been in London for more than a week. And we’ve yet to discuss the list of eligible matches. Why such haste to return? Is it Maxim?”
    Lucius’s aunt was many things: clever, irreverent, and fiercely loyal. He was glad to be counted among her allies and shuddered at the thought of being her enemy. And she was loyal to no one as much as to her elder brother, Lucius’s father, Maxim Crawford, Earl of Dunthorpe.
    Lucius gave his aunt’s arm a reassuring squeeze. “No, I had a telegram yesterday from Higgins. Father is well. He’s in one of his melancholy moods.”
    “Are they more frequent? And what of his memory? I fear another spell.”
    Lucius’s father was ill, though it was a sickness of the mind more than the body. He’d always been a volatile man, but in recent years his memory had begun to fail. Names, incidents, even lifelong servants were at times as unknown to him as strangers. He had good days when he was lucid and as indignant as ever, but more often he halted in the middle of a conversation, uncertain of what he’d meant to say in the first place. On days when his memory didn’t fail him, his father’s emotions swung from energetic highs to lows when he was barely interested in rising from his bed.
    “His melancholia comes and goes and there’ve been no more spells like the last.” Lucius had grown used to his father calling him by his brother’s name or mistaking his nurse for the housekeeper, but several months before, the earl had a spell when he woke frightened and disoriented, unable to recognize those around him.
    “There are days when I’d swear he’s the same man