Ballrooms and Blackmail Read Free

Acantha Dalrymple knows?”
    Priscilla felt as if the tea she’d drank
earlier might bubble its way back up. “Yes,” she managed in a
whisper. “Oh, Emily, all is lost!”
    “Not necessarily,” Emily said.
    That was the problem with Emily. As the
daughter of a duke, she was used to people treating her family with
a certain sense of awe. No one would dare repeat secrets about the
mighty Duke of Emerson.
    But then again, perhaps the duke didn’t live
in terror that the worst moment of his life would be revealed.
    Priscilla stalked about the chamber, past
Mr. Cropper’s portrait for the window. “Then pray tell me why I
should not run screaming from London, if you please.” She felt as
if eyes were even now staring at her in accusation. Certainly Mr.
Kent has looked at her askance. She grabbed the brocaded curtains
and snapped them shut.
    “Because Acantha Dalrymple didn’t send
this,” Emily said.
    Priscilla turned. With the sunlight snuffed
out, the room was lit only by the crimson glow of coal in the
grate. Emily, dressed in the dark blue she preferred, was a shadowy
figure across the room, her voice echoing with the confidence of an
ancient pagan priestess.
    “How can you be so sure?” Priscilla
begged.
    “If Acantha Dalrymple knew your secret, do
you think she’d be content merely to frighten you?”
    There was that. They both knew Acantha
thrived on gossip. “And what makes you think she isn’t shouting it
from the rooftops this very minute?”
    “Because,” Emily said, reaching calmly for a
cloth to drape her painting, “she’d want to tell you first, just to
see you cringe.”
    She was right. That was one of the things
Priscilla loved about Emily. Emily was seldom wrong. But much as
Priscilla wanted to believe that evil Acantha didn’t know the
truth, she could not be easy. Someone knew.
    She crossed her arms over her chest. “So who
put that note in my pocket?”
    “That would be easier to determine if you
hadn’t closed the draperies.”
    Oh, of course. Priscilla hurried to open them once
more. Sunlight flooded in, anointing the elegant poster bed against
the far wall, the two gilt chairs near the carved wood fireplace,
and Emily standing at her easel by the silk-draped wall. Priscilla
blinked against the brightness as she crossed to Emily’s side.
    Her friend was rubbing the sheet of
parchment between her fingers. “It has a nice feel to it. I’d say
it’s costly stuff.”
    “So someone wealthy,” Priscilla
surmised.
    Emily nodded. “Someone wealthy bought it.
But see the torn edge? It was ripped off a larger piece. Perhaps
someone found it in the rubbish and decided to use this scrap.” She
lifted the parchment to her nose and sniffed. “Though it smells
more like lemon than rubbish.”
    “You,” Priscilla said with a smile, “have
been spending entirely too much time with Mr. Cropper.”
    Emily blushed and lowered the paper. “Well,
he is a crack investigator you know. I find his work fascinating.
Do you know he recently captured an embezzler?”
    Priscilla didn’t particularly care if he’d
caught the prime minister making off with the Crown Jewels. She’d
thought it bad enough that Acantha Dalrymple might know the Dreaded
Family Secret, but what would a complete stranger do with the
knowledge? A tremor shot through her, and she wrapped one arm about
her waist.
    “I’m sure Mr. Cropper is brilliant,” she
told Emily, “but I can’t very well involve him in this. My entire
future is at stake! I cannot allow the Duke of Rottenford to learn
the truth. He’ll never propose!”
    Emily eyed her. “Are you expecting a
proposal any moment?”
    Priscilla hung her head. “Well, no. First I
must get him to invite me to his masquerade.”
    “On May Day,” Emily said with a nod.
    Priscilla’s head came up. “You’ve been
invited too?”
    Emily grimaced. “Yes, days ago. But I’m
certain it’s all because of Father.”
    Not for the first time did Priscilla wish
she had a