Lady Guinevere and the Rogue with a Brogue - Julie Johnstone
Chapter One
Kensington, England
1837
Never wear white to ruin a rogue.
It was a lesson Guinevere would not soon forget after tonight. Standing in her mud-soiled gown, she studied the ancient elm in front of her bedchamber window. Thick, sturdy branches reached to her balcony. She could make the jump. She’d done it before, though never in a ballgown. Anticipation and unease fluttered in her belly as she considered her choices once more.
Climb the tree to her bedchamber, or try to enter her home and make her way to her room without being seen?
Music suddenly drifted out from the ballroom. Another dance had started. Perhaps she could enter the house after all. A few steps backward offered a better view of the ballroom, the front entrance to her home, and the pleasure gardens, but her hope was snuffed out quicker than a cheroot under a Hessian.
Drat her mother. By the multitude of carriages lining the path to their home and the throngs of formally attired men and women spilling from the terrace and littering the moonlit gardens, it appeared that every last member of Society who had been invited to the ball had come. There was absolutely no chance she would make it into her house and to the privacy of her bedchamber unseen. As a member of the Society of Ladies Against Rogues, it would hardly do for her to be ruined when their whole mission was to prevent women from having their reputations and futures shredded to bits by heartless rogues. She knew a thing or two about that herself.
She smoothed agitated hands over the front of her white silk gown, stopping with a jerk when her fingertips grazed the still-wet mud that the rogue Lord Pratmore had splashed on her when she’d shoved him backward into that murky puddle. She didn’t regret the push. The man was a scoundrel and deserved to be in the muck where he belonged. She’d barely made it to the east garden in time to stop his ruining poor featherbrained Lady Fanny.
Guinevere glanced down at the large rip in the hem of her gown, proof of how recklessly she had run to intervene. If she had gotten wind of Lord Pratmore’s nefarious plan a few seconds later, Lady Fanny’s future could have been lost. Or she could have ended up being this Season’s on-dit. Having survived the latter once herself, Guinevere would not wish it on her worst enemy. A bitter smile turned up the corners of her lips. But she would wholeheartedly wish gossip and a nasty case of typhus or perhaps smallpox on Asher. Of course, he had not broken her heart and caused her enormous shame alone, but Elizabeth was now deceased, and it had to be the worst sort of sin to hold a grudge against the dead, even if she had proven to be no sort of true friend.
A light, cool, rose-scented breeze blew by Guinevere as she squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her fingertips to her throbbing temples. She hated that she’d been thinking about Asher and Elizabeth so much lately. Surely it was natural, given the news that Asher’s father had died, making Asher the new Duke of Carrington. She couldn’t seem to stop her mind from wondering how the past five years might have changed him. Was his brogue even more pronounced from his time back in Scotland where he’d grown up? Would he return to England now that his father was dead? She hoped he would not. In fact, she hoped he choked on his new title.
“Back ye go, ghosties,” she muttered under her breath in her best imitation of Asher.
Opening her eyes, she gave the tree one last assessment, then bent over to grasp her skirts. She struggled with the silk of her gown and its many underlayers, but once she had a firm grip, she tied the material in two large knots that would send her lady’s maid into fits. With the heaps of material settled on her thighs, she righted herself, the breeze now seeping through her thin stockings and making gooseflesh rise on her legs and arms.
If Mama happened upon her now, Guinevere would never hear the end of it. It had taken a full year after Asher had publicly humiliated her and wed Elizabeth for her mother to cease wailing every morning about Guinevere’s “doubtful future.”
No doubt her mother was currently snug inside Hawkford House’s ballroom with a glass of ratafia in one hand and a fan in the other as