The Scoundrel and I: A Novella by Katharine Ashe Page A

Gabrielle?” she whispered.
    He glanced out the window, impatience stamped on his features.
    “Couldn’t stand the idea of it, if you must know,” he said, then faced Elle. “Terribly sorry. Absolutely beastly of me,” he said, but it was as though he were reciting an apology rather than giving it freely. It was the first time she had ever heard him speak without sincerity, and it made her feel ill.
    “Well, then,” he said quickly, his voice a strange, discomposed growl, “I’m sure you don’t need me here.” He gestured to the cases displaying ladies’ gloves and reticules. “And, great guns, there’s Nik Acton on the street. Haven’t seen him in an age. Ladies.” Sketching a quick bow, he went out of the shop.
    “Elle, I beg your pardon,” Seraphina said. “He is not himself. Something preys upon him, more than George and Alice.”
    “You needn’t apologize.” Perhaps he truly was unhappy that she had never spoken to him of her grandmother. But that was preposterous. Why would such a man care about that? “I am not insulted. I understand that socializing at the ball was to a purpose. I do not expect you and the captain to introduce me to all of your friends now.”
    “But of course we will! Dear Elle, you have it the wrong way around. I suspect that Anthony hurried us away because he wished to spare
you
from knowing
them
.”
    Her eyes popped wide. “But, who were they?”
    Seraphina’s generous lips twisted. “Our eldest brother and his wife.”
    Elle had no siblings of her own, but Minnie and Adela were fond of theirs. Even Jo Junior and Charlie, for all that they were different sorts of men, shared a bond.
    “They were so . . .”
    “Cold? Snobbish? Rude?” Seraphina supplied.
    “Why did he—George—call you Mrs. Starling?”
    “It is my married name.”
    “Ah.”
Étoile
meant star, of course. “How wonderful that you have a pseudonym.”
    “Just as your friend Lady Justice.” Seraphina smiled and took her arm companionably to leave the shop.
    But Elle’s pleasure in the outing would not return so easily. “Alice ignored you.”
    “Alice always snubs me in public,” Seraphina said lightly. “She is practicing for when George succeeds to the baronetcy and she will cut me entirely. Their sense of superiority is enormous. All of them, not only George and Alice.”
    “On what grounds? Your father’s title?”
    “Oh, no.” She paused before a shop window full of trinkets. “Upon the grounds of their own intellectual eminence.”
    “Intellectual eminence?”
    “My half-siblings include a mathematician, two physicists, a master of ancient history, a theologian, and a patroness of a literary society. If you wonder how growing up as a cousin to those excessively superior individuals was, imagine growing up as their brother.”
    “But the captain seems to like everyone.”
    “He is unlike them, Elle. And they have always been unkind to him. Even now they poke fun at his profession, as though he is playing at toy soldiers.” She turned away from the window and her eyes lit. “Here he is returned.”
    He was not alone. With him now were a tall, slender woman hand-in-hand with a tiny blond girl, a man whose golden good looks were godly, and a girl just on the verge of womanhood. On the captain’s shoulders perched a miniature brunette, her palms spread over his eyes.
    “Is this her, Uncle Anthony?” the tiny blonde said, and all of their eyes came to Elle.
    He peeled one little hand from atop his eye and smiled so beautifully that Elle lost her breath.
    “Aye, Letty. This is her.
She
.” He lifted a brow. “Right?”
    “Correct,” she barely whispered.
    “Miss Flood,” he said, “may I make you known to her ladyship, the Countess of Bedwyr?”
    “Since you are a friend of Anthony’s, I beg you to call me Jacqueline,” the countess said. Her accent was foreign, soft, and almost shy. “This is my husband and his ward, Claire. And these are my daughters, Letitia and