Do You Want to Start a Scandal by Tessa Dare

Author:Tessa Dare
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Charlotte was going cross-eyed.

Debrett’s Peerage was a book of nearly nine hundred pages, all of them printed in minuscule type. Despite the free time afforded by another rainy day, she still had more than two hundred of them to search.

The ladies had assembled in the drawing room, just as they had for the past two days of foul weather. Mama was nibbling squares of shortbread and leafing through a ladies’ periodical. Delia sketched, Frances worked at a bit of embroidery, and Lady Parkhurst played solitaire at the card table.

Charlotte sat alone by the rain-streaked window.

“I’m so glad you are finally taking an interest in that book,” Mama remarked.

“Is this a recent development?” Frances asked. “I would have wagered you had your own copy memorized. If not annotated.”

Charlotte ignored the baiting comment. Frances would not distract her from the task at hand.

It would have been much easier if she knew the C corresponded to a surname or title. But it was just as likely to correspond to a Christian name, which necessitated scanning each page and, when she located a C, flipping back to the peer with whom she was associated and checking the location to see if the lady might reside anywhere nearby.

And of course, if the woman in the library was not somehow related to a peer, baronet, or knight, the entire exercise would have been a waste of time.

Weaver, Lady Catherine . . . Lincolnshire.

Westwood, Hon. Cora . . . Devon.

And then . . .

Then!

White, Hon. Cornelia . . . Nottinghamshire.

The name White was familiar to her. She thought she remembered seeing it on Lady Parkhurst’s guests—but then it was such a common name, she might be imagining it.

“Lady Parkhurst, was there a Mrs. White at the ball last week?”

“Nellie White?” Lady Parkhurst looked up from her cards. “Oh, yes.”

Nellie. Short for Cornelia. She must be the one.

Charlotte tried to rein in her excitement. It might come to nothing, after all.

But all the signs were there. Mrs. Cornelia White had been at Parkhurst Manor. She had the right initial. Did she have dark hair?

“I’m trying to picture her in my mind. Was she the one with the . . .” Charlotte gestured toward her head.

“Dreadful yellow turban?” Lady Parkhurst sighed. “Yes. I have tried to talk the dear thing out of it, but she won’t be moved.”

Drat.

Though Charlotte was encouraged by the indication that the lady preferred bright colors.

“I don’t suppose we could pay her a call,” she said to Delia.

Delia made a face. “Why we would do that?”

“Well . . . we had a brief discussion of books. She mentioned a novel that sounded so interesting, but I’ve forgotten the title. I’d like to ask her.”

“She lives all the way over toward Yorkshire,” Delia said. “Much too far away for a morning call, I’m afraid. Perhaps you could write to her.”

Oh, yes. Charlotte could write to the woman she’d never actually met, inquire after a book that didn’t exist, and ask her to kindly enclose a lock of her hair with the reply.

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