How To School Your Scoundrel Read Free

all right.”
    The carriage lurched off. Through the windows, Luisa watched her two outriders jog solemnly alongside, wigs curled and gold braid glittering in all the right places. The autumn sun cast a watery glow on the bricks and stones of her beloved Holsteinton, the houses and shops she knew by heart, the stern Roman columns of the town hall, the elegant white marble facade of the new Grand Hotel Holstein . . .
    She straightened in her seat and craned her neck toward the window. On her lap, the trembling Quincy whined again, and let out a nervous yip. Her hand dropped to his head.
    The Grand Hotel Holstein was on the Badenstrasse.
    The Badenstrasse led away from Holstein Castle, not toward it.
    She rapped on the roof. “Hello! Hello!”
    There was no response.
    She rapped again.
    The coach was gaining speed. Outside the left window, the outrider had pushed his horse from a dignified jog into a canter, and for the first time Luisa noticed the rugged profile beneath his white wig and ceremonial hat.
    She did not recognize that face.
    “What’s happened, Quincy?” She looked down at his anxious face and back out the window.
    Quincy lifted himself to his feet in her lap and barked at the window.
    In one continuous motion, Luisa enclosed Quincy’s warm body with her one arm and reached for the door handle with the other, and as her fingers touched the smooth wood, the coach made a careering turn around a corner. They were headed for the outskirts now, toward the open highway and the broad forest of the Schweinwald, where her father and husband had been killed.
    Or so went her last thought, before the force of the turn sent her flying across the coach, and the back of her head struck an ornamental gold-leaf scroll carved into the ceiling.

ONE

    London
    November 1889
    T he Earl of Somerton leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers into an imaginary cathedral before his nose, and considered the white-faced man standing at the extreme edge of the antique kilim rug before the desk.
    Standing, of course. One never made one’s underlings too comfortable.
    He allowed the silence to take on a life of its own, a third presence in the room, a roiling thundercloud of anticipation.
    The man shifted his weight from one large booted foot to the other. A droplet of sweat trickled its lazy way along the thick vertical scar at the side of his face.
    “Are you warm, Mr. Norton? I confess, I find the room a trifle chilly, but you’re welcome to open a window if you like.”
    “No, thank you, sir.” Norton’s voice tilted queasily.
    “A glass of sherry, perhaps? To calm the nerves?”
    “The nerves, sir?”
    “Yes, Mr. Norton. The nerves.” Somerton smiled. “
Your
nerves, to be precise, for I can’t imagine that any man could walk into this study to report a failure so colossal as yours, without feeling just the slightest bit”—he sharpened his voice to a dagger point—“nervous.”
    The Adam’s apple jumped and fell in Mr. Norton’s throat. “Sir.”
    “Sir . . . yes? As in: Sir, you are correct, I am shaking in my incompetent boots? Or perhaps you mean: Sir, no, I am quite improbably ignorant of the fatal consequences of failure in this particular matter.” Another smile. “Enlighten me, if you will, Mr. Norton.”
    “Sir. Yes. I am . . . I am most abjectly sorry that I . . . that in the course of . . .”
    “That you allowed my wife, a woman, unschooled in the technical aspects of subterfuge—my
wife
, Mr. Norton, the Countess of Somerton—to somehow elude your diligent surveillance last night?” He leaned forward and placed his steepled fingers on the desk before him. “To escape you, Mr. Norton?”
    Norton snatched his handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his temples. His narrow and unremarkable face—so useful in his choice of profession—shone along every plane surface, like a plank of wood left out in the rain. “Sir, I . . . I . . . I most humbly suggest that Lady