Read Online The Defiant Lady Pencavel by Diane Scott Lewis - Free Book Online Page A

rakehell she had no interest in meeting up with.
    “I’m trying to mollify my niece, your grace,” Aunt Hedra whispered in the coach, though Melwyn heard her plainly. “She has foolish notions of grave digging, or some such rot, in foreign climes, and refuses to marry. My poor milquetoast of a brother wishes her safely married, and settled—as all good fathers would.”
    “Grave digging? How repulsive. You must nip that in the bud at the onset,” the fatuousduchess replied in shocked tones. “Is that where we uncover the ghost, in a grave? Then I have no wish to be a part of it.”
    Melwyn stifled a laugh as they neared the far corner of the park. Here, anyone, quality or no, could stand and expound on any subject they preferred.
    “We’ll have to make sure the gel never gets a passport,” Aunt Hedra said with a slap of her fan. “I don’t understand why she is so against accepting her lot in life as a female.”
    “My husband, the duke, insists that Bath is full of such uncultivated women, and he’s forbidden me from joining him there because of it; bad influences and all that entails,” the duchess prattled on in her safe ignorance as the coach stopped.
    “I’m certain your venerable spouse keeps busy reading religious tracts,” Aunt Hedra replied with an arched mouse skin-covered eyebrow. If she hadn’t shaved off her own, as was the past fashion, she wouldn’t need these bizarre replacements.
    The driver jumped from the box, let down the step, and Aunt Hedra alighted.
    “Isn’t your niece betrothed to that dashing rascal, Lord Lambrick?” the duchess asked as she squeezed her voluminous skirts from the coach with the driver’s assistance; her outmoded panniers rattled like the chains she’d rebuked. “Though she did seem interested in that young man I introduced her to at Almack’s.”
    “I doubt that lamentable boy will hold my niece’s attentions for half a second.” Aunt Hedra motioned to the driver, who now assisted Melwyn down from her mount in the middle of her struggles to dismount by herself. “She requires a decidedly stronger hand.”
    “I require no hand but my own,” Melwyn intoned. “Weren’t the Old Tyburn Gallows near here?” She brushed down the skirt of her lavender habit. “There must be many frightening ghouls lurking about, unfairly hanged over the centuries, anxious for revenge.”
    The duchess gasped and held a handkerchief to her nose as if the stinking corpses might rise from the earth at that instant. “Upon my word. Young ladies certainly have changed since I was at finishing school. I would have had no knowledge of hangings.” She pulled a small, silver vinaigrette box from her sleeve and opened the hinged lid. “I need my smelling salts.”
    Aunt Hedra dragged Melwyn close, painfully close. “You are incorrigible, my dear. Definitely inherited from your regrettable mother’s side of the family. Now, here is my friend, Mr. Fernworthy, the scientist.”
    A rotund man stood there, his belly protruding from under a tight waistcoat that strained at its buttons. His nankeen breeches seemed to barely contain his wide thighs. He pinched his pince-nez over a bulbous nose. “My dear Hedra, always so good to see you. Terrible thing about Penpol; liked the man, I truly did. But ashes to ashes and dust to dust, as is written.” He greeted and bowed to the duchess in turn.
    “That was five years ago I lost dear Penpol, Fernworthy. Do keep up.” Aunt Hedra sighed, her roughed lips in a twist. “Anyway, I asked you here to speak with my niece and show her the folly of her ways. She wants to go to digs.”
    At that moment, a tall man in a black cape ascended the block of stone, designating a speech was about to begin.
    “Excavations, to be correct, Auntie. I wish to be part of unearthing ancient treasures, and lost cities, Mr. Fernworthy.” Melwyn scrutinized the man on the block, at first thinking it was Lord Lambrick playing a trick on her. Her heart twinged.