Lady Whistledown Strikes Back Read online

  Enough talk of Lady Neeley’s ill-fated fete. As difficult as it is for much of the ton to believe, there are other subjects worthy of gossip…

  LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS, 31 MAY 1816

  Passionate glances, barely hidden desires, and secret midnight trysts—nothing escapes the pen of Society’s most revered snoop. Now, by popular demand, New York Times bestselling authors—JULIA QUINN, SUZANNE ENOCH, KAREN HAWKINS, and MIA RYAN—deliver four new, never-before-published Regency tales of seduction, scandal, and heart-soaring romance, all scrupulously observed and recorded by the inimitable Lady Whistledown!

  The earl was seen squiring the lady on White Horse Street. It appeared to be an accidental meeting, but as all Dear Readers know, no meeting between unmarried men and women is ever truly accidental.

  LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS, 5 JUNE 1816

  JULIA QUINN

  SUZANNE ENOCH

  KAREN HAWKINS

  MIA RYAN

  Lady Whistledown

  Strikes Back

  Contents

  Dear Reader

  Julia Quinn

  The First Kiss

  Mia Ryan

  The Last Temptation

  Suzanne Enoch

  The Best of Both Worlds

  Karen Hawkins

  The Only One for Me

  All Lady Whistledown columns written by Julia Quinn

  Don’t Miss

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  The First Kiss

  Julia Quinn

  For readers everywhere,

  who loved Lady W too much to let her go.

  And also for Paul,

  even though he took it as a personal victory

  that I managed to involve Star Wars

  in the title of this book.

  Chapter 1

  This week’s most coveted invitation appears to be Lady Neeley’s upcoming dinner party, to be held Tuesday evening. The guest list is not long, nor is it remarkably exclusive, but tales have spread of last year’s dinner party, or, to be more specific, of the menu, and all London (and most especially those of greater girth) are eager to partake.

  This Author was not gifted with an invitation and therefore must suffer at home with a jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and this column, but alas, do not feel pity, Dear Reader. Unlike those attending the upcoming gustatory spectacle, This Author does not have to listen to Lady Neeley!

  LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS, 27 MAY 1816

  Tillie Howard supposed that the night could get worse, but in all truth, she couldn’t imagine how.

  She hadn’t wanted to attend Lady Neeley’s dinner party, but her parents had insisted, and so here she was, trying to ignore the fact that her hostess—the occasionally-feared, occasionally-mocked Lady Neeley—had a voice rather like fingernails on slate.

  Tillie was also trying to ignore the rumblings of her stomach, which had expected nourishment at least an hour earlier. The invitation had said seven in the evening, and so Tillie and her parents, the Earl and Countess of Canby, had arrived promptly at half past the hour, with the expectation of being led into supper at eight. But here it was, almost nine, with no sign that Lady Neeley intended to forgo talking for eating anytime soon.

  But what Tillie was most trying to ignore, what she in fact would have fled the room to avoid, had she been able to figure out a way to do so without causing a scene, was the man standing next to her.

  “Jolly fellow, he was,” boomed Robert Dunlop, with that joviality that comes from having consumed just a hair more wine than one ought. “Always ready for a spot of fun.”

  Tillie smiled tightly. He was speaking of her brother Harry, who had died nearly one year earlier, on the battlefield at Waterloo. When she and Mr. Dunlop had been introduced, she’d been excited to meet him. She’d loved Harry desperately and missed him with a fierceness that sometimes took her breath away. And she’d thought that it would be wonderful to hear stories of his last days from one of his comrades in arms.

  Except Robert Dunlop was not telling her what she wanted to hear.

  “Talked about you all the time,” he continued, even though he’d already said as much ten minutes earlier. “’Cept…”

  Tillie did nothing but blink, not wanting to encourage further elucidation. This couldn’t end well.

  Mr. Dunlop squinted at her. “’Cept he always described you as all elbows and knees and with crooked braids.”

  Tillie gently touched her hand to her expertly coifed chignon. She couldn’t help it. “When Harry left for the Continent, I did have crooked braids,” she said, deciding that her elbows and knees needed no further discussion.

  “He loved you a great deal,” Mr. Dunlop said. His voice was surprisingly soft and thoughtful, enough to command Tillie’s full attention. Maybe she shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Robert Dunlop meant well. He was certainly good at heart, and rather handsome, cutting quite a dashing figure in his military uniform. Harry had always written of him with affection, and even now, Tillie was having trouble thinking of him as anything other than “Robbie.” Maybe there was a little more to him. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe…

  “Spoke of you glowingly. Glowingly,” Robbie repeated, presumably for extra emphasis.

  Tillie just nodded. She missed Harry, even if she was coming to realize that he had informed approximately one thousand men that she was a skinny gawk.

  Robbie nodded. “Said you were the best of females, if one could look beneath the freckles.”

  Tillie started scouting the exits, searching for an escape. Surely she could fake a torn hem, or a horrible chest cough.

  Robbie leaned in to look at her freckles.

  Or death. Her thespian demise would surely end up as the lead story in tomorrow’s Whistledown, but Tillie was just about ready to give it a go. It had to be better than this.

  “Told us all he despaired of you ever getting married,” Robbie said, nodding in a most friendly manner. “Always reminded us that you had a bang-up dowry.”

  That was it. Her brother had been using his time on the battlefield to beg men to marry her, using her dowry (as opposed to her looks, or heaven forbid, her heart) as the primary draw.

  It was just like Harry to go and die before she could kill him for this.

  “I need to go,” she blurted out.

  Robbie looked around. “Where?”

  Anywhere.

  “Out,” Tillie said, hoping that would be explanation enough.

  Robbie’s brow knit in a confused manner as he followed her gaze to the door. “Oh,” he said. “Well, I suppose…. There you are!”

  Tillie turned around to see who had managed to pull Robbie’s attention off of her. A tall gentleman wearing the same uniform as Robbie was walking toward them. Except, unlike Robbie, he looked…

  Dangerous.

  His hair was dark, honey blond, and his eyes were—well, she couldn’t possibly tell what color they were from three yards away, but it didn’t really matter because the rest of him was enough to make any young lady weak in the legs. His shoulders were broad, his posture was perfect, and his face looked as if it ought to be carved in marble.

  “Thompson,” Robbie said. “Dashed good to see you.”

  Thompson, Tillie thought, mentally nodding. It must be Peter Thompson, Harry’s closest friend. Harry had mentioned him in almost every missive, but clearly he’d never actually described him, or Tillie would have been prepared for this Greek god standing before her. Of course, if Harry had described him, he would have just shrugged and said something like, “Regular-looking fellow, I suppose.”

  Men never paid attention to details.

  “D’you know Lady M
athilda?” Robbie said to Peter.

  “Tillie,” he murmured, taking her proffered hand and kissing it. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t be so familiar, but Harry always called you such.”

  “It’s all right,” Tillie said, giving her head the tiniest of shakes. “It’s been rather difficult not to call Mr. Dunlop Robbie.”

  “Oh, you should,” Robbie said affably. “Everybody does.”

  “Harry wrote of us, then?” Peter inquired.

  “All the time.”

  “He was very fond of you,” Peter said. “He spoke of you often.”

  Tillie winced. “Yes, so Robbie has been telling me.”

  “Didn’t want her to think Harry hadn’t been thinking of her,” Robbie explained. “Oh, look, there’s my mother.”

  Both Tillie and Peter looked at him in surprise at the sudden change of subject.

  “I’d better hide,” he mumbled, then took up residence behind a potted plant.

  “She’ll find him,” Peter said, a wry smile glancing across his lips.

  “Mothers always do,” Tillie agreed.

  Silence fell across the conversation, and Tillie almost wished that Robbie would come back and fill the gap with his friendly, if slightly inane, chatter. She didn’t know what to say to Peter Thompson, what to do in his presence. And she couldn’t stop wondering—a pox on her brother’s surely laughing soul—if he was thinking of her dowry, and the size thereof, and of the many times Harry had trotted it out as her most shining attribute.

  But then he said something completely unexpected.

  “I recognized you the moment I walked in.”

  Tillie blinked in surprise. “You did?”

  His eyes, which she now realized were a mesmerizing shade of gray-blue, watched her with an intensity that made her want to squirm. “Harry described you well.”

  “No crooked braids,” she said, unable to keep the tinge of sarcasm out of her voice.

  Peter chuckled at that. “Robbie’s been telling tales, I see.”

  “Quite a few, actually.”

  “Don’t pay him any mind. We all talked about our sisters, and I’m quite certain we all described you as you were when you were twelve.”

  Tillie decided then and there that there was no reason to inform him that Harry’s description had fit her to a much later age. While all her friends had been growing and changing, and requiring new, more womanly clothing, Tillie’s shape had remained determinedly childish until her sixteenth year. Even now, she was boyishly slender, but she did have a few curves, and Tillie was thrilled with each and every one of them.

  She was nineteen now, almost twenty, and by God she was no longer “all elbows and knees.” And never would be again.

  “How did you recognize me?” Tillie ask.

  Peter smiled. “Can’t you guess?”

  The hair. The wretched Howard hair. It didn’t matter if her crooked braids had made way for a sleek chignon. She and Harry and their elder brother William all possessed the infamous red Howard hair. It wasn’t strawberry blond, and it wasn’t titian. It was red, or orange, really, a bright copper that Tillie was quite sure had caused more than one person to squint and look away in the sunlight. Somehow their father had escaped the curse, but it had returned with a vengeance on his children.

  “It’s more that that,” Peter said, not even needing her to say the words to know what she was thinking. “You look a great deal like him. Your mouth, I think. The shape of your face.”

  And he said it with such quiet intensity, with such a controlled swell of emotion, that Tillie knew that he had loved Harry, too, that he missed him almost as much as she did. And it made her want to cry.

  “I—” But she couldn’t get it out. Her voice broke, and to her horror, she felt herself sniffle and gasp. It wasn’t ladylike, and it wasn’t delicate; it was a desperate attempt to keep from sobbing in public.

  Peter saw it, too. He took her elbow and expertly maneuvered her so that her back was to the crowd, and then he pulled out his handkerchief and handed it to her.

  “Thank you,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

  Grief, he thought, but he didn’t say it. No need to state the obvious. They both missed Harry. Everyone did.

  “What brings you to Lady Neeley’s?” Peter asked, deciding that a change of subject was in order.

  She flashed him a grateful look. “My parents insisted upon it. My father says her chef is the best in London, and he wouldn’t allow us to decline. And you?”

  “My father knows her,” he said. “I suppose she took pity on me, so newly returned to town.”

  There were a lot of soldiers receiving the same sort of pity, Peter thought wryly. A lot of young men, done with the army, or about to be, at loose ends, wondering what it was they were supposed to do now that they weren’t holding rifles and galloping into battle.

  Some of his friends had decided to remain in the army. It was a respectable occupation for a man such as him, the younger son of a minor aristocrat. But Peter had had enough of military life, enough of the killing, enough death. His parents were encouraging him to enter the clergy, which was, in truth, the only other acceptable avenue for a gentleman of little means. His brother would inherit the small manor that went with the barony; there was nothing left over for Peter.

  But the clergy seemed somehow wrong. Some of his friends had emerged from the battlefield with renewed faith; for Peter it had been the opposite, and he felt supremely unqualified to lead any flock upon the path of righteousness.

  What he really wanted, when he allowed himself to dream of it, was to live quietly in the country. A gentleman farmer. It sounded so…peaceful. So completely unlike everything his life had represented during the past few years.

  But such a life required land, and land required money, which was something Peter had in short supply. He’d have a small sum once he sold his commission and officially retired from the army, but it wouldn’t be enough.

  Which explained his recent arrival in London. He needed a wife. One with a dowry. Nothing extravagant—no heiress would be allowed to marry the likes of him, anyway. No, he just needed a girl with a modest sum of money. Or better yet, a tract of land. He’d be willing to settle almost anywhere in England as long as it meant independence and peace.

  It didn’t seem an unattainable goal. There were plenty of men who’d be happy to marry their daughters to the son of a baron, and a decorated soldier to boot. The fathers of the real heiresses, of the girls with Lady or the Honorable in front of their names, would hold out for something better, but for the rest, he’d be considered quite a decent catch indeed.

  He looked over at Tillie Howard—Lady Mathilda, he reminded himself. She was exactly the sort he wouldn’t be marrying. Wealthy beyond imagination, the only daughter of an earl. He probably shouldn’t even be talking to her. People would call him a fortune hunter, and even though that’s exactly what he was, he didn’t want the label.

  But she was Harry’s sister, and he’d made a promise to Harry. And besides, standing there with Tillie…it was strange. It should have made him miss Harry more, since she looked so damned like him, right down to the leafy green eyes and the funny little angle at which they held their heads when they were listening.

  But instead, he just felt good. Relaxed, even, as if this was where he ought to be, if not with Harry, then with this girl.

  He smiled at her, and she smiled back, and something tightened within him, something odd and good and…

  “Here he is!” shrilled Lady Neeley.

  Peter turned around to see what had precipitated their hostess’s louder than normal screech. Tillie stepped to the right—he had been blocking her view—and then let out a little gasp of, “Oh.”

  A large, green parrot sat perched on Lady Neeley’s shoulder, and it was squawking, “Martin! Martin!”

  “Who’s Martin?” Peter asked Tillie.

  “Miss Martin,” she corrected. “Her
companion.”

  “Martin! Martin!”

  “I’d hide, were I her,” Peter murmured.

  “I don’t think she can,” Tillie said. “Lord Easterly was added to the guest list at the last minute, and Lady Neeley pressed Miss Martin into service to even up the numbers.” She looked up at him, a mischievous smile crossing her lips. “Unless you decide to flee before dinner, poor Miss Martin is stuck here for the duration.”

  Peter winced as he watched the parrot launch itself off Lady Neeley’s shoulder and flutter across the room to a thin, dark-haired woman who clearly wanted to be anywhere but where she was. She batted at the bird, but the creature would not leave her alone.

  “Poor thing,” Tillie said. “I hope it doesn’t peck her.”

  “No,” Peter said, watching the scene with amazement. “I think it fancies itself in love.”

  And sure enough, the parrot was nuzzling the poor woman, cooing, “Martin, Martin,” as if it had just entered the gates of heaven.

  “My lady,” Miss Martin pleaded, rubbing her increasingly bloodshot eyes.

  But Lady Neeley just laughed. “A hundred pounds I paid for that bird, and all he does is make love to Miss Martin.”

  Peter looked at Tillie, whose mouth was clamped into an angry line. “This is terrible,” she said. “That bird is making the poor woman sick, and Lady Neeley doesn’t give a fig about it.”

  Peter took this to mean that he was supposed to play the knight in shining armor and save Lady Neeley’s poor, beleaguered companion, but before he could take a step, Tillie had moved across the room. He followed with interest, watching as she held a finger out and encouraged the bird to leave Miss Martin’s shoulder.

  “Thank you,” Miss Martin said. “I don’t know why he’s acting this way. He’s never paid me any mind before.”

  “Lady Neeley should put him away,” Tillie said sternly.