The Dubious Miss Dalrymple

The Dubious Miss Dalrymple
Kasey Michaels

Forced to assume a false identity, "John Bates" journeyed to the new Earl of Hythe's home to uncover a murderous plot. There he found Elinor Dalrymple, sister to the newly ensconced earl and mistress of his seaside estate.At first glance, John dismissed her as merely a staid spinster. Yet once she let down her hair, sweet Elinor transformed into a beautiful butterfly–and a feisty damsel who was dubious of his devilish rogue persona. Suddenly John's carefully orchestrated masquerade was crumbling…under his own desire to reveal his true self to Miss Dalrymple!

UNCHAPERONED!

And then—directly in front of his eyes, like a lowly caterpillar shedding its cocoon—Elinor Dalrymple metamorphosed into the most glorious painted lady he had ever been privileged to see!

He could feel his body responding to the stimuli of Elly’s appearance, to the sweet violet scent of her hair as it billowed in the breeze off the Channel, to the moist sweetness of her mouth as she smiled up at him with all the guileless invitation of a first-time strumpet.

Her hands on her hips, her entire stance daring him to speak, he heard her say, “Well, John, do you still believe we are in no need of a chaperone?”

The little tart! She was baiting him, deliberately urging him to commit an action that could be seen as nothing less than a marriage-mandatory compromise of her reputation. He’d like to slap her silly. He’d like to grab her by the shoulders and—and kiss her until she begged for mercy!

Kasey Michaels is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than sixty books. She has won the Romance Writers of America RITA Award and the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for her historical romances set in the Regency era, and also writes contemporary romances for Silhouette and Harlequin Books.

The Dubious Miss Dalrymple

Kasey Michaels

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

“HAVE YOU HEARD the news?”

Lord Blakestone lowered his newspaper to glare overtop it at the excited young man who had dared to intrude on his peace. Heaven knew he got precious little of it these days. “I read the news when I require an infusion of knowledge, Hopwood,” he told the fellow in crushing tones meant to depress this increasing familiarity that was fast making Boodle’s coffee room too common for words. “If I wished the day’s happenings bellowed at me, I would sit in my own house and let my wife’s dear, beloved mother natter me to death.”

Hopwood was instantly cast down, but he was by no means to be counted out. He’d come directly from Bond Street, where tongues had been wagging nineteen to the dozen, and he’d be damned for a dolt if he was going to allow this chance to elevate his consequence here at Boodle’s—a club he had stumbled into because of his parentage, and not his own standing or even inclination—to be stomped on by a pompous blowfish like Blakestone. “But—but I just heard. It’s the most incredible thing! Lord Hythe is dead!”

Blakestone tossed his newspaper to the floor in an untidy heap, grumbling something about the servants being reminded to take better care when pressing the pages so that they would refold themselves automatically when the dratted thing was no longer required.

After venting his spleen on both the hapless newspaper and the overworked Boodle’s servants (who were undoubtedly at that moment boiling coins somewhere in the bowels of the club so that the members should not have to smudge themselves by handling dirty money), he looked up at Hopwood and inquired shortly: “I don’t believe it. Wythe? Wythe’s dead?”

Hopwood shook his head vigorously. As audiences went, Blakestone appeared to be a poor choice. “No, no. Not Wythe. Hythe.”

“Don’t correct your betters, you miserable scamp. I say, Freddie!” Lord Blakestone called to Lord Godfrey, who had just entered the coffee room. “Have you heard the latest? Dreadful news. Wythe is dead.”

“No!” Lord Godfrey ejaculated, pressing a hand to his chest, as if to be sure his own heart was still ticking along normally. He and Wythe were much of the same age. “How did it happen?”

Lord Blakestone waved an arm imperiously, summoning a servant and ordering another, freshly pressed, newspaper. “Damned if I know, old man. What do I look like, Freddie? A bleeding newsboy? Ask this puppy here. He seems to be hot to spread the gossip. Finally!” he groused, snapping the freshly pressed newspaper out of the servant’s hand. “Took you twelve seconds too long, my fine fellow. You’ll never get ahead in life lollygagging, y’know.”

Lord Godfrey turned to Hopwood, who was leaning against a heavy mahogany table and most probably wondering what he had done to deserve membership to a snake pit such as Boodle’s. “Corny says to ask you, whoever you are. So? Well, speak up, young man. What happened to Wythe? I saw him just last week at Tatt’s, full of piss and vinegar as ever. Dead, you say? How’d it happen? Apoplexy? He was getting on, wasn’t he—at least ten years my senior, I’m sure.”

“Five your junior,” Lord Blakestone corrected heartlessly, turning the page to check on the latest news of Napoleon Bonaparte’s bloodletting on the Continent. “You’re looking pale, Freddie. It’s all that running about you do with that warbler from Covent Garden. Not seemly in a man your age—nor smart, now that I think about it. Best sit down before you join Wythe below ground.”

Hopwood felt an almost overwhelming urge to pull at his hair and scream, or possibly even throw something—Lord Blakestone’s dusty wig was the first object that came to mind. “Not Wythe, sir—Hythe. He was young, in his prime. I was just taking the air on Bond Street when I heard the news. He was lost overboard from his yacht in a storm or something. Near Folkestone, I think.”

Lord Godfrey subsided into a burgundy leather wing chair, glaring impotently at Lord Blakestone, his agitated brain taking in information only as it pertained to him. “A yacht? I didn’t know Wythe could afford to keep a yacht.” As he couldn’t show any real anger toward Lord Blakestone, whose social connections were considerably powerful, he directed his fury at a man who could no longer hurt him. “Y’know what—bloody stingy, that’s what Wythe was. A yacht! Never took me up on the thing.”

Goaded, or so he felt, past all bearing, Hopwood opened his mouth and shouted—just as a half dozen worse-for-liquor gentlemen sitting in the dirty end of the room exploded in mirth over some joke or other: “Not Wythe, you feather-witted old nincompoops! Hythe! Hythe!”

While neither Lord Blakestone nor Lord Godfrey paid so much as a jot of attention to the red-faced young man bellowing ridiculousness within four feet of their ears, they were attracted to the sounds of merriment across the room, and immediately longed to join in the fun. Looking back and forth to each other across the table that separated their matching burgundy leather wing chairs, the two lords scrambled to their feet, knowing their gossip would be a sure entry to the group.

As they walked toward the small gathering of gentlemen, they called out in unison, “Have you heard? It’s all over town. It’s the strangest thing. Wythe’s dead!”

“Not Wythe, you paper-skulled asses. Hythe! Alastair Lowell, Fourteenth Earl of Hythe, and a damned fine gentleman.” Hopwood pushed the discarded newspaper to the floor and collapsed into Lord Blakestone’s abandoned chair, giving up the fight. “Oh, what does it matter anyway?” he soothed himself. “The fellow’s still dead, ain’t he?”

A MEMORIAL SERVICE was held three weeks later at Seashadow, the Hythe seat in Kent, with several of the late Earl’s friends making the trip down from London in the fine spring weather to pay their respects—although it was rather awkward that there was no body to neatly inter in the family mausoleum.

“His bright light lies asleep with the fishes,” the vicar had intoned gravely upon mounting the steps to the lectern, these depressing words heralding an hour-long sermon that went on to graphically describe the water fate of Alastair Lowell’s earthly remains until a none too discreet cough from Miss Elinor Dalrymple—sister of the new Earl—caused the man to reel in his tongue just as he was about to utter the words “putrid flesh” for a seventh time.

The number of fashionable young ladies of quality (as well as a colorful spattering of beautiful but not quite so eligible women) among the mourners would have cheered Alastair Lowell no end had he been privileged to see them—and so said his friends as they paid their respects to the new Earl and his solemn-faced sister before hastily departing the crepe-hung chapel for some decidedly more cheerful atmosphere.

“Made a muff of it,” Leslie Dalrymple, the new Earl, said tragically, watching from the portico as the last traveling coach pulled out of the yard, leaving him to deal with a dining room piled to the chandeliers with uneaten food. “Ain’t congenial, y’know. Never were.”

“Nonsense, darling,” Elinor Dalrymple consoled her brother, patting his thin cheek. “You were all that is gracious, and your eulogy, although understandably brief, as you had never met our cousin, was everything it could be. The late Earl, rest his soul, merely attracted those of his own, irresponsible ilk—considering that it is rumored our departed cousin was deep in his cups the night of his fatal accident. Doubtless they’re all off now to carouse far into the night, toasting their fallen friend and otherwise debauching themselves.”

Leslie shook his blonde, shaggy head, dismissing her assumption that he blamed himself for his guests’ hasty departure. “Not me, Elly. You. You’re the one routed them—what with your starchy ways. Scared them off, that’s what you did. Besides, black does not become you. Don’t understand it, as you’re blonde and all, but there it is. I do wish you wouldn’t persist in wearing such dark colors.”

Elinor looked up at her brother, who, although three years her junior, stood a full foot higher than she. “Thank you, Leslie,” she rejoined calmly, slipping her arm through his. “You have truly made my day. Now, would you be so kind as to join me in the dining room? I wouldn’t wish for all that food to go to waste.”

The pair entered the house to see that the Biggs family, clad in their Sunday finery, was lined up at attention in the enormous three-story-high hall, obviously in preparation of meeting the late Earl’s mourners.

Nine heads turned toward the doorway as Leslie and Elinor stepped across the threshold; nine necks craned forward to look past their masters for the horde of diners about to push their knees beneath the late Earl’s table and eat their heads off; nine pairs of sky-blue eyes widened as Elinor closed the door firmly on the spring sunshine, and nine mouths split into wide, anticipatory grins as their new mistress announced that the Biggses would just have to discover some way to dispose of the bound-to-be-ample remnants of the funeral feast.