Scandal of the Summer (Flirty Rotten Scoundrels #1)

Chapter 1

On the day Ruby Ballimore ruined her own life, she had ink stains on her gloves and was dressed like a sugared pineapple.

The dinner party had not been going well.

The Marquess of Gravesmuir, having recently married off his eldest son to an American dry goods heiress, was trying very hard to pretend that he’d always had a great deal of money.

There were an astonishing number of guests in the drawing room, and Ruby was—unfortunately—the only one who seemed to glisten in the candlelight.

She looked at the whirling ladies on the dance floor and then down at her frock.

Her skirt was covered in tiny, diamond-shaped flounces, each of which was Pomona green and featured a mirrored spangle that shot sparks of light in all directions.

More green flounced up around her sleeves and neck in a design that had seemed quite regal in the illustrated plate but on Ruby looked rather a lot like tropical fronds.

The modiste on Albemarle Street had assured her that the gown was the height of fashion, and Ruby suspected that it probably was. Somewhere.

Unfortunately, that somewhere did not seem to be the Gravesmuir townhouse.

Generally, Ruby had an excellent eye for color and balance.

She’d been misled, she supposed, by her own unfortunate optimism as she’d looked down at the gilt-tipped fashion plate.

The dress was bold but not outré. Eye-catching but still tasteful.

Au courant but still somehow in conversation with classical design.

This was the gown that would mark Ruby’s conquest of society.

Finally. After four Seasons.

It did not seem to be working.

The dinner itself had not gone so badly.

There had been eleven French courses to contend with, but Ruby had kept hold of herself during most of them.

She’d lectured the industrialist on her left for a handful of minutes about the Egyptian greyhound design on the sideboard, but when she’d realized she was coming close to a discussion of cinerary urns, she’d managed to cut herself off.

He’d looked only slightly green, and that might well have been a reflection off the purée de pois.

But the dancing had been a disaster. She’d thought the Earl of Kilmornay was asking her to dance—which he wasn’t—and then she’d nearly trampled Isobel Crane in her haste to accept Kilmornay’s non-request. Isobel, one of the few debutantes even shorter than Ruby, had been a trifle squashed, and so Ruby had stopped and attempted to help her restore her hairpiece.

The hairpiece had looked rather like a Greco-Roman swan sculpture, a fact that Ruby had been cheerfully relating to Isobel when she realized that Kilmornay was there, trying to secure Isobel for the waltz, and she, Ruby, was grasping Isobel’s beaded swan pin with an enthusiasm that was preventing Isobel from escaping.

Also, her father had seen all of it.

False hope ought to be outlawed, Ruby thought, and morosely examined her gloves.

The ink thereupon had come from newsprint, now safely tucked in her reticule.

She knew better than to read the newspaper with her gloves on, but she’d seen the headline from across the room—PRINCESS SERAFINA’S CORNWALL VISIT CANCELED!

—and couldn’t quite stop herself from crossing to the sideboard to pick it up.

It seemed distantly possible that an apparent interest in the news would help disguise the fact that no one thus far had asked Ruby to dance.

Moreover, if she familiarized herself with the princess’s movements, she might have something to talk about with her father in the carriage on the way home.

Her father, the Earl of Hangleton, was ambassador to the princess’s home principality of Monfalcone, a tiny autonomous state just south of the kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia.

The earl had been thrilled by the English public’s avidity for gossip about the mysterious and glamorous princess.

He was delighted every time she appeared in the papers—and so Ruby was delighted by proxy.

Perhaps Ruby’s familiarity with Serafina’s schedule would demonstrate to her father that she was finally ready to assist him in his social duties, despite her dismal showing at the party.

Perhaps some particular knowledge of the princess would prove to her father that Ruby was trying.

She was so engrossed in the state of her gloves that she didn’t at first register that someone had said her name.

“There she is! Lady Ruby!”

She blinked. That was Gravesmuir’s bluff voice, plummy and slightly overloud in the hubbub of the party. He was, indubitably, headed toward her, backed by a small crowd that—oh God—included Ruby’s father.

She thrust her hands behind her back, though she feared her father had already noticed the state of her gloves. “Good evening . . . my lord?”

It sounded like a question—which, she supposed, it was. She would not have imagined that Gravesmuir could identify her.

“Lady Ruby,” Gravesmuir said again. “I have it on good authority that you are something of an expert on Greco-Roman antiquities. Vases, masks. Things of that sort.”

“Oh.” Ruby tried not to gape. “Why, yes.” Had her father told him that? Surely her father would have mentioned that her most recent academic paper had been on Egyptian masks, not Greco-Roman, though really she could be conversant on various classical styles . . .

But her father was not looking especially pleased. “Ruby does find ways to divert herself.”

Ruby swallowed. Evidently someone else had spoken of her interests to Gravesmuir. Not her father. She tried to force her mouth to curve.

“Oh, indeed!” Gravesmuir chuckled. “These modern young ladies and their accomplishments. Astonishing, how they have time for it all.” He held out his elbow to Ruby. “Come, my dear. Take a look at my most recent acquisitions. See if you recognize them.”

She winced a little, but her father was nodding at her. Behave yourself tonight, he’d told her in the carriage. This is an important dinner for me, Ruby. I can’t afford any blunders.

Any of her blunders, he’d meant.

She did not want to let her father down. She took Gravesmuir’s arm and pinned a smile to her face as the marquess led her around the circumference of the drawing room.

Inside a small sculpture gallery, more of the party guests milled and drank champagne.

It was a lovely room, freshly decorated, still smelling faintly of varnish and sawdust. Gravesmuir had had octagonal columns installed to frame the chandeliers, and Ruby suspected that whoever had designed them had been inspired by the peristyle of the Temple of Theseus in Athens.

A dozen midnight-blue draperies hung from a paler-blue ceiling, and each curtain framed a gleaming white statue centered upon a white marble plinth.

Ruby blinked.

“Well, my dear?” demanded Gravesmuir. “Tell me what you think of it.” He smiled at her and then at the assembled company. “I had the whole gallery designed for these sculptures, you know. Can’t let a treasure like this be hidden away in some dusty museum.”

“A treasure?” Ruby repeated blankly.

“Why yes, of course. I had the marbles brought over from Monastiraki just last month. Safer here than there, I always say.”

“From Monastiraki?” She couldn’t seem to stop echoing his words as she stared at the sculptures, spiderwebbed with cracks and bright, bright white against the drapes.

“Indeed. Have you heard of it?” He chuckled. “Of course you have, with your hobby. Tell your father here he ought to take you there next time he’s on the Continent. My friend who brought the statues over could no doubt fill you in on the region. A great man, Professor Quenby—an archaeologist—”

“I’ve been there,” Ruby got out. “But your statues have not.”

Gravesmuir stopped speaking, his face fixed in a half smile. “I beg your pardon?”

“These statues did not come from Greece.”

Gravesmuir laughed again. Too loud. A flush rose on his cheeks like a slow cloud. “Of course they did. Quenby brought them over himself.”

“He didn’t,” Ruby said. “No one did. They’re fakes.”

In all her four Seasons, Ruby had never before brought an entire room to a hush before. Something cold and terrible sank in her stomach like a stone.

“Ruby,” her father said. He was trying to make it a joke, a scrap of amusement, but even the noted diplomat couldn’t quite manage it. Her name in his mouth sounded like a warning.

Gravesmuir, meanwhile, had gone from red to white. “I paid a fortune in scaffolding—and the excavators—the firman—I assure you, child, the cost of the ship journey from Greece to Malta alone was—”

“These statues have never been to Greece,” Ruby said. “They’re all wrong. The color’s off. There’s no shading. There ought to be a crust on the marble—a patina. It shouldn’t be white like that. And the—the stone isn’t the right texture, it’s cracked—”

“That’s enough, Ruby,” hissed her father.

“That’s weathering,” Gravesmuir said. “Thousands of years of—”

“That’s not how stone weathers in Greece.

” Her voice sounded odd. Far away. Part of her was shouting, Stop talking, Ruby!

But just as she had in the dining room, and in the middle of the ballroom, and a thousand other times in her too-blunt, too-enthusiastic life, she couldn’t call the words to a halt.

“These sculptures look more like Coade stone, only perhaps not properly fired. Devon clay, I’d say. ”

Gravesmuir seemed half strangled by his own ire.

“And now we see why a little learning is a dangerous thing, don’t we, my dear?

” He turned back to the room at large. “Quenby? Come over here and tell Lady Ruby the story about bringing the statues through the Tyrrhenian Sea in a maelstrom. Sliding across the decks with ropes tied to the masts . . .”

His words trailed off.

At the side of the room, Ruby caught a glimpse of a well-built man of middle height—gray hair, stooped, spectacles—just as he slipped out the door.