Otters and Obstacles (The Scandalous Avondales #2)

Chapter 1

As Georgiana Morland slid open the stable door, she could hear the horses neighing softly to each other, the jingle of tack being polished, the scraping of shovels as stableboys cleaned the stalls… but she could not hear her otters.

They knew the sound of the door, and the sound of her footsteps. On any other day, she would hear their excited squeaks and trills over the rest of the noises as she approached the stall where her cousin had caged them after banishing them from the house.

She could not hear them today.

Her steps quickening, she strode to the door of the stall, only to find it standing ajar.

Empty.

Even the straw inside and the tub that held their water was gone, the floor swept clean.

“Looking for something?”

Georgie whirled to see her cousin John standing behind her. Could his face form any expression other than a sneer when he looked at her?

She glared at him. “Where are they?”

“That’s none of your concern. They—like everything else on this estate—belong to me now. And since they were my property, I disposed of them.”

The world went gray, and Georgie grabbed for the stall door as she swayed.

She only vaguely heard the clang as the bucket in her hand fell to the ground, spilling the meat and fish scraps she had brought from the kitchen across the floor.

Cursing, her cousin leaped backward to prevent the flood from getting on his polished Hessians.

“There’s no need for such emotion, cousin,” he sneered. “This is why no man in the county is willing to marry you. Even leaving your mixed blood aside, they all know your damned otters mean more to you than any man ever could.”

Georgie could barely hear his cutting words through the whirling in her head.

Her father’s death and her cousin’s inheritance of the estate had taken everything she loved from her.

Even her beloved pets, raised by her as orphaned pups after they had been given to her father by the Prince Regent himself four years ago, were not to be spared from her cousin’s ravages.

A hand came under her elbow, and she turned her head to see the head groom steadying her. She took a deep, horse-scented breath to steady herself and then straightened with a nod of thanks.

She had no time to faint.

“You’re a fool, cousin,” she said. “What will you tell the keeper of the Royal Menagerie when he next writes to ask about their health?”

John shrugged. “They are exotic animals living in England. I’m sure he’s accustomed to having the Regent’s specimens die unexpectedly. Besides, I merely sold them to someone else. Your father’s friend Mr. Sloane.”

The name echoed in Georgie’s head, but she could not recall what it was about Mr. Sloane that would make him a suitable recipient for the otters, even in her cousin’s devious mind. Something nagged at her, but John was still speaking.

“Now that you will not be wasting your time on those animals, and I will not be wasting money on their upkeep, you will be able to concentrate on your duties in the schoolroom. The children are eager to continue their lessons with you.”

Georgie kept her face impassive. John had brought four children with him when he inherited the estate, all of them equally as selfish and spiteful as he and his wife.

He had dispensed with their governess within the first week and declared Georgie would earn her keep by taking her place.

Six months of that had already left Georgie with bruises from the unruly children and a sick sense of depression knowing this was to be her life from now on.

Despite Georgie being well past her legal majority at the age of twenty-three, her cousin refused to release her inheritance to her.

She had little recourse to force it from him as she could not hire a solicitor when she had no more than a few pounds of ready money, and no idea how to contact one even if she had the money.

Knowing she still had her otters to care for, something she could love that loved her in return, had kept her going. Until now.

“Go back to the house, cousin,” John said. “Your pupils await.”

Georgie spun on her heel and stalked back to her room, her mind turning the name of the otters’ recipient over and over in her head.

The name was familiar to her from her father’s correspondence.

She knew it, and knew she knew it, but could not remember why until she closed her bedroom door behind herself.

Mr. Sloane was an elderly clergyman close to her father’s age who lived in rural Yorkshire. She had only met him once or twice at most, though she had read his letters to her father. He shared many of her father’s interests in exotic animals. Only…

Only…

He was even more fascinated with the new practice of taxidermy.

Georgie’s stomach rebelled, and she barely retrieved the chamber pot from beneath her bed before she was thoroughly sick.

Still shaking, she sat next to the bed, knees drawn up so she could rest her forehead on them.

She and her father had hand-raised Bonny, Betsey, and Buttercup from sickly pups to mischievous adults, their care proving a welcome distraction from their grief after Mama and Freddy had died.

The constant upheaval of the household had kept them on their toes, and observing the animals had provided fodder for many a letter to the Linnean Society in London, letters her father had been compiling into a book when he died.

Papa had even promised that Georgie’s scientific illustrations of the otters would be part of the book, which was simultaneously thrilling and disconcerting.

In the wake of her father’s unexpected death, she had not thought to look for the manuscript until well after John had arrived to take possession of the house and its contents.

She feared it and her illustrations had been consigned to the same bonfire where her cousin had burned her father’s scientific notebooks, which he found to be useless.

Anything of her family’s that John could not sell for ready cash or use immediately had been deemed useless.

She ought to have known her cousin would be able to devise a torture for her worse than merely killing her pets.

He probably planned to have the clergyman send them back once he was done so she would have to look at them on the mantlepiece, dead and posed into a hideous semblance of life.

Sloane wouldn’t even know the proper placement of Bonny, the matriarch.

No. She could not allow it to happen.

Georgie set her jaw. She would rescue her otters rather than stay here and accept their fate.

Even if she arrived in Yorkshire to discover she was…

was too late, she would never willingly return to her cousin’s house.

There was nothing for her here but drudgery and cruelty.

There certainly was no loving family remaining for her.

Traveling alone as a young woman would leave her open to insult, or worse. And it would limit her options when it came to retrieving her otters. No gentleman would be willing to turn valuable animals over to a strange woman who arrived on his doorstep.

But if a young man arrived, and had impeccable proof of being the owner of said otters …

It was time to cut her hair.

It had required three precious days to prepare her escape.

Freddy’s trunk was easily retrieved from the attic where she had packed and placed it after his death.

He had been tall for his age, only just beginning to sprout up into adolescence and overtake his elder sister in height.

His clothes fit her with only a few additional stitches, and wearing clearly secondhand clothes made her disguise more convincing.

As she contemplated her image in the mirror, dark braid pulled over her shoulder for easier cutting, the red thread bracelet on her right wrist caught her eye.

Freddy had been meant to leave for Harrow to begin the Michaelmas term the year he turned thirteen, so Georgie and her mother had worked together to make a rakhi—a red thread bracelet—to ease Freddy’s homesickness while he was away as a symbol of the unbreakable bond between a brother and sister.

It lay half-completed on her wrist, the second half of it merely string.

The day they had buried Freddy and Mama, Georgie had tied it to her own wrist in its unfinished state.

Now faded to a dark pink, she still could not bring herself to break the last tie between herself and her younger brother.

She rubbed one finger over it in remembrance.

She ran the thick braid through her hand one last time.

She had her mother’s hair, black and glossy as the Indian night.

She remembered her mother brushing it for her when she was a child, listening to Georgie’s chatter with an indulgent smile as her loving fingers braided it for the night.

Even when Georgie had her first and only season in Bath, they had continued the ritual so they could gossip about the parties and gentlemen.

Until the fever had taken her mother and Freddy both, within days of each other.

Stop delaying. Do it.

Taking a deep breath, Georgie raised her scissors and began sawing through the braid as high up as she could so she could clip the remaining locks into a reasonable facsimile of a young man’s short hair.

She would leave the braid behind for her cousin. One last thing for him to sell.

Her only fear was that she would arrive too late to save her otters, but she had to try. There was nothing left for her here anyway. She would decide her next step once the otters were back in her care.

She could only pray she would arrive before Sloane had the opportunity to execute her pets.