A Marquess, a Miss and a Mystery by Annie Burrows

Author:Annie Burrows
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2019-05-06T17:28:07+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Horatia was rather surprised, when she got back to her room, to see Lady Elizabeth there, pacing up and down before the sitting-room window.

‘Is something wrong?’

‘I was just about to ask the same thing. What has happened to your gown?’

‘I broke a vase,’ Horatia said, making for her bedroom.

‘I will ring for Connie,’ said Lady Elizabeth.

‘No need. I can soon dry my feet and change my stockings.’

‘It must have been a big vase, to have soaked you so thoroughly,’ said Lady Elizabeth with a puzzled frown.

‘And that wasn’t the worst of it,’ said Horatia, reaching for a towel. ‘I am now in bad odour with both the Duke and his chaplain.’

‘How come?’

‘Well,’ said Horatia, sitting on the edge of her bed to toe off her damp shoes and unroll her stockings, ‘I’m not sure about the chaplain. But when the Duke strolled along, I felt so guilty about smashing the horrid vase that I tried to hide. And made Lord Devizes try to hide, as well. And the Duke thought we were...’

Lady Elizabeth chuckled. ‘Oh, my word. I can just imagine what Theakstone thought. It is what anyone would think if they saw Lord Devizes and a woman trying to hide. Um...where, precisely were you trying to hide?’

‘In an alcove about three inches deep,’ she admitted, shaking her head. ‘I think the Duke believed my version of events in the end. Because there was the vase and the roses all over the carpet. And my dress and shoes were wet.’

‘And what of the chaplain?’ Lady Elizabeth went to sit on the window seat. ‘What did he think?’

‘Well, it was all rather puzzling. First of all he started calling me wanton. But I wasn’t in the alcove with Lord Devizes then, I was kneeling on the carpet trying to pick up the bits of smashed pottery. It was when Lord Devizes said something about having similar tastes that Dr Grimes went very red in the face and sort of...gobbled like a turkey.’

‘What else?’

‘Oh, something about a cleric coercing an innocent female into some act that was out of place at a respectable house party...’

Lady Elizabeth burst out laughing.

‘What? What is so funny?’

‘Um... Well, single ladies—respectable ones, anyway—are not supposed to know about such things. But some men enjoy...’ She lowered her voice and looked from left to right as though checking nobody could overhear, although only the two of them were in the room. ‘Having a female...um...put her mouth, that is, putting their...er...private parts into a female mouth.’

Horatia thought about where she’d been kneeling. And how close the chaplain had been standing over her, so that she’d almost bumped her forehead against his thighs.

‘Oh,’ she said, placing her hand on her stomach, which had sort of clenched up. ‘That is positively disgusting. And the chaplain...he...’ she said. ‘He is supposed to be a man of God. And he’s so...old.’

Lady Elizabeth was giggling so much now that she was beyond saying anything to the point for a few moments. Which gave Horatia time to put on fresh shoes and stockings, and get a clean gown from her wardrobe.

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