A Springtime Scandal Read online

  A Springtime Scandal

  A Lord For All Seasons

  Book 1

  Nadine Millard

  © Copyright 2022 by Nadine Millard

  Text by Nadine Millard

  Cover by Dar Albert

  Dragonblade Publishing, Inc. is an imprint of Kathryn Le Veque Novels, Inc.

  P.O. Box 23

  Moreno Valley, CA 92556

  [email protected]

  Produced in the United States of America

  First Edition February 2022

  Kindle Edition

  Reproduction of any kind except where it pertains to short quotes in relation to advertising or promotion is strictly prohibited.

  All Rights Reserved.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  License Notes:

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook, once purchased, may not be re-sold. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or borrow it, or it was not purchased for you and given as a gift for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. If this book was purchased on an unauthorized platform, then it is a pirated and/or unauthorized copy and violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Do not purchase or accept pirated copies. Thank you for respecting the author’s hard work. For subsidiary rights, contact Dragonblade Publishing, Inc.

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Publisher’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Prologue

  “Mrs. Templeworth, I cannot tell you how helpful Elodie has been during our preparations for the ball. Truly, she is grace and kindness itself.”

  Mrs. Templeworth smiled at Mrs. Bell before her eyes moved to her eldest daughter.

  Even now, Elodie was conferring with Reverend Bell about some detail or other.

  The reverend’s wife was hosting her annual ball at the Assembly Rooms in aid of the local orphans’ home, and Elodie was, as usual, giving everything she had to the cause.

  Elodie had always been kind.

  From the time she was in short skirts, she was the one who’d brought home stray animals, helped Cook in the kitchen, and as her younger siblings came along, acted like a mother hen clucking over her baby chicks.

  Sometimes Mrs. Templeworth worried that Elodie was too good. She worried that her daughter could be easily taken advantage of. But, in their particular part of Surrey, at least, the people cared for and respected Elodie and didn’t abuse her generous nature.

  And Mrs. Templeworth didn’t think that Elodie would venture far from their little corner of England. Though she had yet to have her Come Out, it was doubtful that Elodie would enjoy a Season. Town wouldn’t appeal with the noise, the smells, the bustle, or the crowds.

  Hope, Elodie’s younger sister, would be enamored of it all. Even Francesca. And Lord only knew what Sophia would be like as a young debutante since she was a veritable hoyden of a child.

  A screech from outside the Assembly Rooms rent the air, and Elodie looked up, her deep brown eyes widening in concern.

  She rushed to the window, Mrs. Templeworth only seconds behind her.

  In the yard, Francesca and Sophia chased each other around, Francesca hitching her skirts and running in a way that Mrs. Templeworth was sure would turn her hair white.

  Sophia, at least, was still a girl of twelve. Francesca, at fourteen years old, should know better.

  And where was Hope, who should have been watching her younger siblings?

  Mrs. Templeworth ran her gaze around the yard until she spotted sixteen-year-old Hope.

  Judging from Elodie’s gasp of dismay, she, too, had seen Hope leaning against the carriage, batting her eyelashes at a young stablehand.

  “Is anything the matter?”

  Elodie and Mrs. Templeworth both spun around at the sound of Mrs. Bell’s voice.

  “No!” Elodie exclaimed, her laugh strained, her cheeks flushed. “No, nothing at all. Um—I think—I think that we ought to be heading home.”

  She looked desperately at Mrs. Templeworth, who immediately nodded her agreement.

  “Yes, plenty to be done to get the girls ready. Hope is so excited about attending her first event,” Elodie said weakly.

  They bid a swift farewell to Reverend and Mrs. Bell before they hurried outside, Elodie flying ahead of her mother.

  Once they were out in the bright spring sunshine, Elodie rushed over to Hope.

  She dismissed the stablehand, who walked unsteadily away, looking a little dazed from his encounter with Hope.

  As soon as the yard was clear, Elodie glared at her sister.

  “What do you think you are doing?” she hissed.

  Hope rolled her chocolate-brown eyes, the exact shade of her sister’s.

  “Having fun, Elodie,” she drawled. “A concept that is alien to you, I know.”

  Mrs. Templeworth left them to their arguing and hurried to round up the other two.

  She wondered if they’d been hasty in letting Miss Simmons, the girls’ governess, visit her sister for a week. Fewer hands meant more trouble, after all. At least when it came to the younger Templeworth girls.

  “You cannot flirt outrageously with stableboys in full view of the vicar and his wife, Hope. That is not the type of ‘fun’ young ladies should be partaking of.”

  “And how would you know?” Hope bit back as Mrs. Templeworth corralled Francesca and Sophia into the carriage. “You wouldn’t know what fun was if it jumped up and bit you.”

  All the way home, the girls bickered.

  Francesca sulked about not being allowed to attend the ball that night.

  Sophia was squalling because she hadn’t been allowed to bring home the snail she’d found in the grass.

  And Elodie was still begging Hope to behave herself that evening.

  “Hope, our family’s reputation is at stake,” she said now. “If you get yourself involved in a scandal, any sort of scandal, the rest of us will be quite ruined. Don’t you understand that?”

  The carriage pulled up in front of the large, redbrick house, and the girls tumbled out, only Elodie and Mrs. Templeworth exiting with any sort of decorum.

  “Of course I understand, Elodie,” Hope sighed while she removed her straw bonnet. “I would never bring any sort of disgrace to the family name. But none of us can be the paragon that you are. And none of us has any wish to be.”

  Elodie opened her mouth, no doubt to argue, but Hope continued, not letting her sister speak.

  “You continue being Miss Perfect, never putting so much as a fingernail wrong. And I’ll concentrate on enjoying myself.”

  Hope swept walked one way, Elodie stomped another, whilst Francesca and Sophia dashed off to the kitchen to coax Cook into parting with some of her famous apple tartlets.

  Mrs. Templeworth stood still in the abrupt quiet, relishing the silence, despairing of the ringing in her ears.

  She worried about her girls. Despite the best efforts of she and Miss Simmons, the younger three had a wildness about them that she feared was irrepressible.

  Elodie would never dishonor the Templeworth name. Elodie was their great hope.

  She would conduct herself in a way above reproach, attract a respectable husband, and h
opefully set them all down a path of good marriages and good reputations.

  If anyone could do it, Elodie could.

  Chapter One

  Two Years Later…

  Elodie Templeworth tried her very best to ignore the fact that Hope was standing extremely close to George Foster, the magistrate’s son with a bit of a reputation, and that Francesca was drinking a third glass of champagne.

  Keeping in mind that she’d been forbidden from drinking any champagne at all, three was actually a compromise when it came to Francesca. And Elodie had to remind herself of that, lest she run over there and draw attention to the situation by forcibly removing the flute from Cheska’s hand.

  She tried to ignore the knot of anxiety in her stomach as she carefully scrutinized the faces of those around her, checking to see if they noticed her sisters’ less than decorous behavior.

  And, of course, then came the inevitable flare of annoyance at herself for thinking this way.

  Elodie couldn’t say why she was so obsequious. So desperate for the approval of others. She always had been.

  Sometimes she envied her younger sisters their freedom of thought and action.

  Hope was flighty and flirtatious, and much as Elodie worried about the disgrace that would befall them all, thus far, there hadn’t been a whiff of scandal around her younger sister.

  But then, Hope was on the verge of her first Season in London. And whilst people in their village might tolerate Hope’s frivolity, London, Elodie knew, was sure to be a different matter entirely.

  This would be Elodie’s second Season. And she knew in a way her sister didn’t, that there were gentlemen in London who would think nothing of destroying a lady’s reputation and then leaving her to rot. Not that Elodie had any first-hand experience of such a thing. She’d stayed firmly on the sidelines watching young lady after young lady be taken in by blackguards. Elodie would never allow herself to be in such a situation. But Hope?

  At that moment, Hope looked up and caught Elodie’s stare. She rolled her eyes and pointedly turned her back, her caramel-colored curls bouncing as she swung away from Elodie’s attention.

  Deciding that, at least for the moment, Hope was relatively safe, Elodie turned her attention to Francesca.

  Lord, was that a fourth glass?

  That certainly needed intercepting.

  Elodie moved gracefully and unhurriedly to the other side of the Assembly Room, where Cheska was giggling, her cheeks more flushed than usual.

  If she hurried, people might be alerted to the situation.

  As she went, people called their greetings and congratulations on another successful charity ball.

  She’d been helping the reverend for years, not only to organize these events but in the orphanage itself.

  And people knew that as time went on, Elodie’s involvement became more and more important as the reverend and his wife grew older and less able.

  Elodie smiled and gently pried herself from attempts at conversation.

  At last, she reached the place where Cheska now stood with a gathering of like-minded revelers.

  “Cheska.”

  The group turned at the sound of her voice, and the gentlemen all bowed deferentially.

  She’d known these men all her life, and whilst she knew that most of them were relatively harmless, there were some whom she absolutely didn’t want foxed around her little sister.

  Elodie could tell by Cheska’s expression that she was disappointed at Elodie’s appearance, and she tried not to feel stung by that.

  Just as she tried not to be too severe upon her sister. This was Cheska’s first real event. Just like two years ago at Hope’s first ball, Cheska had been giddy with excitement for weeks.

  Elodie didn’t remember ever feeling particularly giddy in her life, but surely, she had been before her first ball?

  “I wasn’t doing anything, Elodie,” Cheska said mutinously before Elodie spoke even a word.

  And Elodie felt hurt all over again.

  “I know,” she said. “I just—I wondered if—”

  Before she could finish what she was going to say, the dance master announced a reel, and Cheska was whisked away in a flurry of white skirts and golden curls. Her hair was a brighter shade than Hope’s toffee-colored tresses, but her eyes weren’t brown like her older sister’s.

  “M-miss Templeworth. I believe this set is mine?”

  Elodie sent one last concerned look after her sister before turning to smile patiently at Phillip Harrison.

  He was a kind and mannerly gentleman farmer, and Elodie was as fond of him as she was of all her childhood acquaintances.

  Lately, however, she’d grown concerned that Philip might be forming some sort of attachment to her. And whilst she liked him, she had no romantic interest in him.

  Another knot of anxiety twisted her stomach as she took his arm and followed the other dancers.

  If her suspicions were right, and Philip ended up proposing, how would she let him down without hurting him?

  “You look quite the thing this evening, Miss Templeworth. If I may be so bold.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Harrison,” she said as evenly as she could.

  Frankly, she didn’t want him to be so bold. But she couldn’t very well tell him that.

  “Are you enjoying the dance?” she asked now, steering the conversation to safe waters.

  “Indeed. You have done a wonderful job as usual,” he said affably. “Even my cousin thinks so, and he is quite the man about town, so he isn’t usually impressed by quiet, country life.”

  “Oh? I didn’t know you had a cousin visiting with you,” she said conversationally.

  The dance took them away from each other and the opportunity to speak, and Elodie cast her eyes around the occupants of the room whilst she awaited her turn to move down the row of dancers.

  She hadn’t noticed any new faces earlier, but that signified nothing. The place was packed, and—

  Elodie’s thoughts came to a screeching halt as her gaze landed upon a stranger. A very tall, very imposing stranger.

  And he was staring right at her.

  Elodie’s eyes widened as she took in the man who stood head and shoulders above everyone around him.

  Surely this was Mr. Harrison’s cousin. There was no way he’d been in the village before, and she hadn’t spotted him.

  Why, all around him, ladies were whispering behind their fans and batting their lashes, so he was clearly new to them, too.

  And if Hope had known about him, she’d have eaten him alive by now.

  But he wasn’t looking at Hope or the bevy of ladies around him.

  He was looking at her.

  Elodie felt her heart pick up speed in the most peculiar way.

  She felt as though she couldn’t drag her eyes from the man and, as she watched, his lips quirked in the most devilish smile she’d ever seen.

  Oh, he was trouble. The very embodiment of it.

  Her cheeks grew warm, and she could only imagine that they were flushed now, making obvious the effect the man had on her.

  This would simply not to.

  The fear of drawing attention to herself broke whatever spell the stranger was weaving, and Elodie was able to turn her nose up piously and turn away.

  She promenaded with Philip, danced the rest of the dance, making only polite chitchat, and when the dance ended, allowed him to escort her to where Hope now stood mercifully alone.

  “Thank you, Mr. Harrison,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t linger.

  He didn’t, and as soon as he’d taken his leave, Hope gripped Elodie’s arm.

  “Good heavens, Elle, have you seen that man?”

  Elodie’s stomach flipped, though she couldn’t have said why exactly.

  “What man?” she asked, pleased that her voice sounded far steadier than her insides felt.

  “Um, the delicious, tall, brooding stranger in the corner, Elodie,” Hope said, rolling her eyes. “Honestly, you wouldn’t notice a man standing stark naked in front of you.”

  “Hope!” Elodie admonished, darting her gaze around to ensure nobody heard her incorrigible sister. “Really. How many times have I told you it is completely inappropriate to speak in such a fashion?”

  “Oh, do calm yourself, Elodie. Nobody heard me.”

  Hope shook her head in her usual nonchalant fashion.

  “Nobody is paying attention to us because everyone’s eyes are on him!”