Do You Want to Start a Scandal

“We’ll announce our engagement tonight, and depart immediately thereafter. I’ve made all the arrangements.”

“Yes. I recall. A license and announcement and everything.” She looked up at him. “What did you mean, the contracts are signed? I didn’t sign any contracts.”

“Your mother signed them.”

“My mother?”

“You’re not yet one-and-twenty. She’s still your guardian.”

She let the bracelet drop. “I can’t believe you did that. Do I need to appear at the church and recite my vows, or have you seen to that, too?”

He took a step toward her. “Charlotte, you must understand.”

“I’m trying. Perhaps you can explain why you intend to trust me with your homes and your children, but you couldn’t trust me to sign my own betrothal contracts.”

He spread his arms, gesturing at the destruction around them. “Look at this. I am removing you from this madhouse and taking you to my home. Where I will know you are safe.”

“You are just as excitable as Edmund.” She shook her head. “This fire was my fault. The monkshood was an accident. Delia closed my window that night. No one is trying to MUR-DER me.”

“Perhaps they are, perhaps they aren’t. Considering that achieving certainty on the matter would involve a chance of you ending up dead, I’m not interested in performing any experiments.” His eyes flashed. “I’m not going to risk coming upon your lifeless form in the corridor.”

Charlotte winced in regret. She ought to be more understanding, less churlish. It wasn’t as though he’d planned it this way. She’d gone to his room. If not for the fire, they wouldn’t have been caught together. He wouldn’t have made a dramatic announcement in the garden.

Once again, she had no one to blame but herself.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you mean well, and I don’t wish to argue. The important thing is, we are all safe, and there was no irreparable damage.” She only wished she could say the same for her friendship and reputation. “Everything in this room can be replaced.”

Everything except . . .

“Oh, no. My bit of flannel.” She rushed to the head of bed, pushed aside the singed, damp bed hangings and began tossing back the pillows and smoky quilts. “It should still be here somewhere. I keep it under my pillow at night.”

But it wasn’t there. She searched the bedding, but she couldn’t find it.

“Where could it be? If the pillows weren’t touched by the fire, how could it have burned?”

Piers came to her side and put his hands on her arms. “Don’t worry. You’re fatigued and overwrought. Go downstairs to rest, and I’ll search for it.”

“I’m not going to rest. I can’t rest until I’ve found it.”

She went to the chest and began opening the drawers to rifle through them. Had she put it away somewhere else? When that search yielded nothing, she rushed to the closet and thrust her hand into the pockets of her capes and cloaks.

Nothing.

The fatigue and fear of the night’s ordeal began to catch up with her. She felt a weight of despair settling on her shoulders.

She would not cry, she told herself. Considering what could have happened last night, she was fortunate to have escaped with her health, and her mother’s, and the Parkhursts’, and Piers’s. It was only a bit of fabric and ribbon.

“It’s here.”

She turned around. Piers was at the hearth, withdrawing her scrap of flannel from the wrought-iron tinderbox on the mantel.

“You are an angel.” Charlotte ran to seize it, running her fingers over the familiar, comforting softness. She lifted it to her nose. It didn’t even smell of smoke. “How did it get in the tinderbox, of all places?”

“Does it matter?”

“I suppose not.” She clasped it to her breast. “I’m just glad it’s undamaged. So strange, though. I know I wouldn’t have placed it there, and yet that was the safest place for it to be. Almost as though someone knew that . . .”

Her voice trailed off. A knot twisted in her chest.

There was only one person who could have possessed both the ability to set a fire in Charlotte’s bedchamber and the knowledge to secure her most prized possession first.

She looked up at Piers. “You set the fire. You did this.”

Piers didn’t attempt to deny it. She might as well know.

“You came here while I was asleep in your bed,” she said, blinking as she looked about the room. “You heaped my belongings on the floor and set them afire.”

“I was careful to contain it. It was all smolder, little flame. It never would have spread beyond this room.”

“Why would you do such a thing?”

“You’re a clever woman. You don’t need me to tell you.”

She stared at him. “You wanted us to be discovered. You knew I wanted a long engagement. And you decided to force my hand.”

His silence served as his confession.

“You bastard.” She flung her arm toward the window. “I stood in that garden last night, terrified. Not knowing if I’d ever see you alive again. I prayed to God for you.”

“Then you wasted your time. In the future, you would do well to save your prayers for someone else.”

“Why would you do this? Why lie to me?”

“Come now, Charlotte. I’ve been lying to you since the night we met.”

“If you’re referring to your career . . .”

“There’s so much more than that.” He walked to the opposite side of the room, giving them both space. “The mystery tuppers, to begin. It was Parkhurst, that night in the library.”

She frowned. “Lady Parkhurst? But . . . but I had clues. She doesn’t fit them.”

“Not Lady Parkhurst. Sir Vernon. He was the tupper. I’m still not certain of the tuppee.”

“Sir Vernon? But it hardly seems like him. He’s so traditional, and his only passion is sporting. He doesn’t seem at all the sort of man to toss a mistress on the desk and . . . grunt on her.”

“He’s the reason I’m here. He’s been bleeding money. Taking mysterious, unannounced trips from Town. A mistress or natural child was the most likely explanation, but I needed to rule out blackmail.”