Love Practically Prologue
Love Practically
Prologue
A country house party
Staffordshire, England
May 1819
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single lady in possession of no fortune must long to marry a duke’s son.
Unfortunately, Miss Leah Penn-Leith feared she had inadvertently killed one instead.
She stared down at the unmoving form of Lieutenant Lord Dennis Battleton illuminated in the firelight. He lay slumped beside her bedroom door, eyes closed, head tilted toward the left shoulder of his red regimental coat, blood trickling from his nose.
What have I done? WhathaveIdone?!
Panic tasted acrid, drying her throat.
This might be her first time attending a house party, but even Leah knew an evening of whist and laughter did not typically end in homicide.
Clutching her night rail to her chest, Leah nudged Lord Dennis’s Hessian boot, jiggling the tassel.
“My lord?” she whispered.
Nothing.
Snick.
The door to her bedchamber opened.
Leah stifled a startled scream and jumped back, meeting the gaze of Mr. Fox Carnegie, Lord Dennis’s close friend.
Mr. Carnegie peered into the room, skimming over her surely terrified expression, before spotting Lord Dennis’s supine form beside the door jamb.
“Blast,” he muttered and mumbled a string of profanity that Leah supposed would make a gently-bred lady swoon.
As she was not quite a gently-bred lady, she withstood the swearing with equanimity.
After all, the situation quite merited it.
Mr. Carnegie stepped into her bedchamber, quietly closing the door behind himself. It was scandalous for him to be in her room, but then so was killing a duke’s son, so Leah figured the horse had already bolted from the barn.
“I-I didnae mean tae hurt him,” Leah stammered on a whisper, her Scottish brogue deepening in her distress. “I awoke as he was trying tae climb into my bed. I just . . . reacted.” She mimed a kicking motion.
It had been a terrifying few seconds.
First, waking to feel large hands on her hips, the smell of brandy, and murmured slurred words, “I sh-shink you’ve been waiting for me, love.”
Then, her instinctively violent reaction, balling her body and kicking the unknown man with both feet, much like a bucking horse. Her aim had been true.
The man had staggered back, his head and shoulders hitting the wall with a resounding thud that rattled her bedchamber door.
Leah had scrambled out of bed, finally getting a good look at her assailant, horrified to realize she had attacked a duke’s son—Lord Dennis Battleton.
Now she watched as Mr. Carnegie stooped and placed an ear to Lord Dennis’s chest.
“His heart is strong,” he said, voice low.
Leah nearly sobbed in relief.
Mr. Carnegie pulled back one of his friend’s eyelids, studying the pupils for a second, and inspected Lord Dennis’s head for more injuries.
“Why is he yet unconscious?” Leah whispered.
“I fear Lord Dennis was exceptionally deep in his cups tonight.” Mr. Carnegie pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the blood dripping from his friend’s nose. “The bump to the head simply sent him to sleep a mite sooner than the brandy.”
For his part, Mr. Carnegie did not appear inebriated, though the smell of alcohol lingered on him as well.
“I simply need to remove Dennis from your bedchamber with no one the wiser and leave you with my most abject apologies for this unwelcome intrusion.” He flashed her a grim smile, the world-weary expression at odds with his youthful face.
“We must ensure this mishap does not damage your reputation nor set gossiping tongues to wagg—”
A scuffle of footsteps in the hall outside had Mr. Carnegie turning his head and muttering another low oath.
Moving quickly, he straddled his friend, wrapped his arms around the man’s chest, and heaved him upright. Not unlike Leah’s father hefting a fat ewe for sheering.
In short, it was an impressive feat of physical strength.
Mr. Carnegie pivoted, spinning himself and Lord Dennis around, stopping just behind Leah’s bedchamber door as a knock sounded.
Leah didn’t know whether to be impressed by Mr. Carnegie’s quick reaction or appalled at the smooth, practiced nature of it. This was clearly not the first time Mr. Carnegie had lifted the leaden weight of a drunken friend.
Mr. Carnegie jerked his head toward the door, indicating she should answer it.
Nodding, Leah snatched a shawl from the foot of her bed, wrapping it around her shoulders. She cracked open the door.
Miss Smith and Miss Wells—two fellow guests—stood in the hallway wearing elegant London wrappers, night caps, and matching expressions of faux worry.
“Are you quite all right, Miss Penn-Leith?” Miss Smith asked, her blond braid gleaming even in the dim light.
“Yes,” Miss Wells added. “We heard a terrible thump.”
The ladies peered beyond Leah’s shoulders, searching the room as if they somehow knew there were two young gentlemen concealed behind Leah’s bedchamber door.
“I apologize if I gave anyone a fright.” Leah pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders and mentally grasped for a plausible lie. “I was up reading late—Miss Austen’s works are so captivating, ye ken—and I stumbled over my own muckle foot as I was getting into bed.”
As a falsehood, it wasn’t particularly good.
“Muckle?” Miss Smith wrinkled her dainty nose. “You Scots use the oddest words.”
Miss Wells giggled, standing on tiptoe, unabashedly craning her neck to see more of the bedchamber.
In Leah’s peripheral vision, Mr. Carnegie made a rolling motion with one hand. Get on with it.
“I thank ye both for your concern,” Leah began closing the door, “but all is well. I shall bid ye goodnight.”
The ladies murmured a reply, and Leah shut the door fully, throwing the lock.
Now what?
Turning back to Mr. Carnegie, she watched as he eased Lord Dennis back to the floor.
“Clever,” he whispered, chin gesturing toward the door. “You are a quick study.”
Leah blushed. The unexpected praise sent a jolt of pleasure through her still-racing heart. Until this moment, she had never considered that her good sense and quick thinking could be used to conceal an illicit assignation and attempted homicide.
She wasn’t sure whether to be proud or appalled.
Oblivious to the uproar he had caused, Lord Dennis emitted a blissful, sleepy snore.
Because . . . of course, he did.
Mr. Carnegie stepped past Leah, placing an ear to her bedroom door.
“They’re still nattering on,” he murmured. “We’ll have to wait.”
Miss Smith and Miss Well’s breathy giggles sounded outside as if to emphasize the point.
With a sigh, Mr. Carnegie sank down beside Lord Dennis, shoulders against the wall, wrists resting on the raised knees of his white breeches. Lord Dennis—dark-haired, stubble-cheeked, flush-nosed—snored again, snuffling in his sleep.
Leah stared down at them, unsure of the social mores when entertaining two gentlemen in her bedchamber.
Two gentlemen.
In. Her. Bedchamber.
Her mind stuttered. Surely this exemplified the sort of lascivious behavior Aunt Leith had warned her abounded in London.
Leah busied herself, stirring the fire to life and lighting a lamp on the wee writing desk. She rotated the desk chair—a worn wooden Windsor—to face Mr. Carnegie and sat gingerly, pulling her shawl tight around her shoulders and tucking her toes under the hem of her night rail.
Mr. Carnegie watched her, the lamplight flickering in his pale gaze and turning his blond hair into molten gold. His eyes were intensely blue, she noted. The color of Loch Muick on a cloudless day.
Unlike Lord Dennis, Mr. Carnegie no longer wore his coat.
Instead, he sat against the wall in the red waistcoat of a regimental officer, his white shirt sleeves cuffed to the elbow.
Swallowing, he tugged at his dark neckcloth, loosening and mussing it.
Leah tried (and failed) not to stare at the shadowy outline of lean muscle rippling under the fine linen of his shirt as he moved.
No wonder gentlemen were required to remain precisely dressed at all times. A disheveled man invited all sorts of salacious thoughts. At the moment, Leah was hard-pressed to concentrate on anything other than the marvelous flex and pull of tendons across his bare forearms.
But then, Mr. Fox Carnegie had been drawing her eyes all week.
Leah was attending the house party—hosted by an English cousin, Mrs. Gordon—as Aunt Leith’s companion.
It was all part of the campaign to lift Leah out of the ‘unfortunate circumstances of Isobel’s marriage.
’ That, of course, referred to Leah’s deceased mother, Isobel Leith, who had married John Penn, a Scottish gentleman farmer well below her aristocratic station.
This meant that while more refined young women were stitching samplers and perfecting their posture in a side-saddle, Leah had been darning her younger brothers’ socks and galloping across the Angus glens astride her favorite gelding, helping her father and his shepherds track lost sheep.
Unfortunately, sock-darning and sheep-wrangling were not activities that gentlemen appreciated in a well-bred young lady.
But that did not deter Aunt Leith. She ruthlessly polished Leah’s manners, intending to find her niece a more appropriate husband than ‘some half-drunk Scottish blacksmith.’ Though if Aunt Leith had actually met the blacksmith in Fettermill with his bulky muscles and charming wink, she would not so cavalierly dismiss the idea.
Regardless, at scarcely eighteen years old herself, Leah was at a loss as to what men did want in a bride. Well, aside from a large dowry and, perhaps, an equally out-sized bosom—facts she had gleaned from Miss Wells and Miss Smith as they sat giggling over luncheon.
Leah possessed none of those things—a dowry, large bosoms, or a preponderance of giggles.
But this obvious lack had not stopped her from noticing Mr. Fox Carnegie.