Scandalous Brides Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Scandal in Venice

  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

  The Spanisk Bride

  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

  Epilogue

  Praise for Scandal in Venice

  “A lively, delicious Regency.”

  —Karen Harbaugh, author of Midnight Surrender

  “Amanda McCabe writes an excitingly sensuous yet darkly haunting tale of love and human frailty that is sure to engage readers’ full emotions.”

  —Romantic Times

  “An unusual heroine and a nicely done and different setting ... a most promising debut novel.”

  —The Romance Reader

  Praise for The Spanish Bride

  “An unusual plot, interesting characters, and an intriguing mystery make for a delightful Regency read.”

  —June Calvin, author of The Ruby Ghost

  “The Spanish Bride, by the immensely talented Amanda McCabe, brings us the bittersweet tale of two people who believe that all of their chances at love have died in the ashes of war, only to find that the warmth of true love can thaw even the coldest of angers.”

  —Romantic Times

  “[Amanda McCabe] re-creates the world of Regency society with a sure hand ... [and] provides a sweet and moving romance. I heartily recommend The Spanish Bride.”

  —The Romance Reader

  Praise for the Other Romances of Amanda McCabe

  “Flawlessly crafted historical romance.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “An enthralling spell of tender romance with a hint of danger, set against the glittering backdrop of Regency London.”

  —Diane Farr, author of Once Upon a Christmas

  “[A] terrific book that kept me engrossed the entire time! A real winner.”

  —Huntress Book Reviews

  “Amanda McCabe has been delighting readers since her debut, and this sweetly engaging tale doesn’t disappoint. She has a talent for bringing ordinary characters into soft focus and making us want the best for them.”

  —Romantic Times

  “An extremely talented new voice.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “McCabe is a welcome addition to the ranks of Regency authors.”

  —The Romance Reader

  SIGNET ECLIPSE

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  Published by Signet Eclipse, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Scandal in Venice and The Spanish Bride were previously published in Signet editions.

  First Signet Eclipse Printing, March 2010

  Scandal in Venice copyright © Ammanda McCabe, 2001

  The Spanish Bride copyright © Ammanda McCabe, 2001

  All rights reserved

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  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-18556-8

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  Author’s Note

  I am so excited about this reissue of Scandal in Venice and The Spanish Bride and having the chance to catch up with these characters! These were the second and third books I ever wrote, and my first Regencies. I had been addicted to the Regency period ever since I was nine years old and came across some books by Georgette Heyer, Joan Smith, and Marian Chesney in a dusty box at my grandmother’s house. Even though I’ve since branched out with some stories with Renaissance settings, the Regency will always be my first love and I think I will always return to it. It has endless facets to explore—and I’m sure I have more scandalous characters to unearth!

  I hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as I enjoyed writing them. And be sure to visit my Web site for some research tidbits and resources I used for these books.

  Scandal in Venice

  To my very dear friends

  Anne Wright Backus and Laura Kay Gauldin,

  for putting up with me for all these years.

  What would I have done without you?

  Prologue

  England, 1814

  He was dead. Really, deeply, profoundly dead.

  And she had killed him.

  Lady Elizabeth Everdean nudged cautiously at the prone body of her affianced bridegroom with the toe of her slipper, moving one massive, flaccid arm all of two inches. He did not appear to be moving at all
, and the stream of crimson that flowed from the back of his bald head was a very bad sign indeed.

  Still, she wasn’t absolutely certain. It seemed entirely impossible that someone who had caused such violence, such terror only an instant before should suddenly be so ... still. Choking back a terrified sob, she clutched her torn chemise around her naked breasts and knelt beside him.

  Slowly, slowly she leaned forward, half afraid the closed eyes would suddenly fly open and the cold hands would reach for her again. She stretched out one finger and touched the pulse point on his wrinkled neck.

  Nothing. Not a movement, not a breath. The ancient Duke of Leonard would never, could never, hurt her again. Not in this world. Elizabeth almost murmured a prayer of thanksgiving, before she realized that she was now in serious trouble.

  She stumbled to her feet and fell back onto the rumpled bed, shaking with sobs. Right next to the murder weapon itself. With a small shriek, she shoved the bloodstained chamberpot onto the floor and buried her head in a pillow.

  “Damn you to the furthest reaches of Hades, Peter!” she choked out, consigning her stepbrother to flames of torment with a furious swipe of her fist. “This is all your doing. Yours ... and mine.”

  She peered at the unmoving body of her “betrothed” through the tangled curtain of her black hair. And to think, when Peter had told her he had arranged a marriage for her she had been happy. Happy! As darkly comical as that seemed now, she had seen marriage as a way to leave Peter’s household, a way to escape from the cold stranger he had become since his return from the Peninsula, a way to escape from their quarrels and icy silences—so different from the laughter of her childhood. She had dreamed of a handsome young gallant, who would take her to London where she could become the portrait painter to the ton, the Toast of the Town.

  Ha! Had there ever been a more naive chit than she had been? Those dreams had died a hard death when she had come downstairs for their dinner party that very night and seen the duke waiting for her, ancient and portly and drooling. She would have run away right then and there, barricaded herself in her room, if Peter’s iron grip on her satin-covered arm had not prevented her. She had had no choice but to bow her head and allow the duke to take her hand in his scaly palm.

  She had thought she knew the worst life had to offer when she sat beside him at dinner, watching him down champagne and lobster patties as if they were nearing extinction. What very little she knew. What had happened after she retired, and the duke paid her a little “call,” had been inestimably worse.

  It had been, in fact, like a painting she had once seen of the Last Judgment. Elizabeth now knew what those poor, doomed souls, flayed alive and shrieking, had felt when they were thrown to torment. Those snakelike hands had shoved her to the bed, the bed her mother and stepfather had once shared, and reached for her hem.

  “You are mine now,” he had panted in her face, his breath hot and reeking of garlic. “Your brother thinks he has the better of me, but he can think again, my pretty little whore.” And he had latched his teeth onto her earlobe.

  Elizabeth screamed then, screamed in mindless terror. Not even his slaps could silence her—she did not even feel them. As he turned to reach for a discarded petticoat to shove into her mouth, her desperate fingers had groped across the slippery sheets for something, anything, she could use in her own defense. She had only one thought now, desperate as a wounded animal, that she would surely die if this terrible assault went on.

  Then she felt the cool, heavy porcelain of the chamberpot.

  Thankfully, it was an empty chamberpot.

  She had not meant to actually kill him. Just stop him from touching her.

  Her own loud sobs, and a timid knocking at the door, jolted her into the present.

  “Lady Elizabeth!” Daisy, Elizabeth’s young maid, pecked at the door again. “Was that you screaming, Lady Elizabeth?”

  They knew! They knew what she had done, that she was a murderess, and now she would be dragged off and hanged, and Peter would laugh. All because of a pig like the duke. She was only eighteen—she did not want to die!

  Life was so very unfair.

  Daisy knocked at the door again, louder. “Lady Elizabeth, please! Is something amiss?”

  They did not know! Of course they did not. Not at the moment, anyway. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she called, “I am quite all right, Daisy.”

  “Truly, my lady?” Daisy’s voice was uncertain.

  “Truly. I ... I had a bad dream, that is all.” Elizabeth shut her eyes tightly. If only that were true. “You ... you may go. I will ring for you in the morning.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  Elizabeth listened as Daisy’s footsteps faded, then she ran across the room, tripping over her tattered hem, to where her armoire stood open. She scattered ball gowns, tea frocks, parasols, slippers, and bonnets onto the floor carelessly, pushing a change of clothes into a valise along with her mother’s jewel case and a packet of letters from an old schoolfriend, the famous artist Georgina Beaumont. Georgie was in Italy now, far away from England, and she had always urged Elizabeth to join her.

  Elizabeth felt that now would be an auspicious time to accept that offer.

  On top of the clothes, she placed a carefully wrapped bundle of sketchbooks, pencils, and pigments.

  “I have to leave,” she whispered as she wriggled out of the ruined chemise. “There is no other way.”

  As she turned to snatch up clean undergarments, she caught a glimpse of herself in the gilt-framed mirror above her dressing table. Purple bruises darkened her pale shoulders and small breasts; blood had caked at the corner of her mouth. She was suddenly disgusted, nauseous, at such vivid proof of what had happened this horrible night. She grabbed up the lethal chamberpot and deposited the meager contents of her stomach.

  When the illness had passed, Elizabeth knelt there on the floor, naked and trembling, unable to cry or think or do anything.

  She swore, then and there, that no man would have such power over her again. Her father, her stepfather, her brother, the duke—all the men in her life had caused her naught but sorrow. From then on, she would not be Lady Elizabeth, pampered daughter and helpless pawn. She was simply Elizabeth, and she would be fine on her own.

  Chapter One

  London, Two Years Later

  “By the gods, it is Old Nick.”

  Nicholas Hollingsworth, now Sir Nicholas Hollingsworth, late of His Majesty’s Army and with a knighthood for valor on the battlefield, raised his dark gaze from the cards in his hand. He squinted through the haze of cigar smoke and brandy fumes until he met a pair of cold blue eyes he had never thought to see again this side of hell.

  “Peter Everdean.” His voice was steady, low, despite the turmoil in his brain, in his soul. “Is it you? Alive?”

  “Sorry are you, Nick?” The golden-haired man smiled sweetly, Mephisto disguised as Gabriel.

  Around them, the tumult of the gaming hell went on, men laughing and shouting, bottles shattering, smoke billowing, fortunes won and lost, lives changing on the turn of a card. But to Nicholas, as he folded the cards carefully in his long fingers and laid them on the table, none of the London decadence existed any longer.

  He was back on a scorching Spanish battlefield, and the smoke was now cannon fire, the smell acrid in his nostrils, the dirt under his worn boots slippery with blood. He felt again the sharp pain in his leg, the wet, sticky warmth of his own blood, the numb sensation of falling, falling....

  A pair of blue eyes above him, a voice telling him they would soon reach the field hospital, not letting him fall any further. Not letting him die.

  Nicholas shook his head fiercely. He rose to his feet, perfectly steady despite the quantity of brandy he had consumed that night, his knuckles white on the silver head of his walking stick. He moved carefully toward the elegant figure who waited in the smoke, not entirely sure he wasn’t more drunk than he had thought. Or dreaming.

  “I thought you were dea
d,” he breathed.

  “Certainly not.” Peter’s voice was as cool, as controlled as ever. “I am far too wicked to die. As, I see, are you, Old Nick.” He gestured toward Nicholas with his quizzing glass, taking in the long scar on his tanned cheek, the walking stick that was more than a mere fashionable accessory.

  “Quite. Just a bit the worse for wear.” Nicholas ran his hand through his thick black curls, uncharacteristically bemused. Here he was, standing in a noisy London hell, conversing calmly with the “late” Peter Everdean, as if four long years had been nothing. Peter was still the golden Apollo to Nick’s Hephaestus ; slender, charming, graceful, still able to gain every girl’s eye, be she duchess or Spanish peasant.

  And still as cold as a witch’s ...

  Hmm.

  Nicholas had seen the truth of Peter long ago, when they had lodged together in Spain. Peter was a man with some secret torment, some demon that rode him. He was charming, yes, an excellent companion, but unpredictable.

  Entirely the wrong companion for wild Old Nick Hollingsworth, bastard son of the Earl of Ainsley, whose father had bought him a commission in the hopes he would stick his spoon in the wall in Spain and cause the Ainsleys no more trouble with his escapades. Together, Nick and Peter had been the terrors of the army.

  And Peter had saved his life, practically carried him miles to a field hospital. Then disappeared. A physician had told Nicholas, when he awoke from his delirium, that his rescuer had died later that day.

  Now here he was, alive, whole, the same Peter. With the same flashing, secret torment in his eyes. And Nick owed him so very much. Owed him his very life.

  Now Peter smiled at him coolly, swinging the quizzing glass by its long ribbon. “You know, my friend,” he said. “You may be just the man who can help me.”