Nicola Cornick: Scandals of an Innocent

The Fortune’s Folly Social Bulletin for January 1810

Issued by Mr Argyle, Master of Ceremonies,The Pump Rooms, Granby Hotel,Fortune’s Folly, Yorkshire.

The winter season has seen relatively few new visitors come to town, a relief for those ladies who have complained that Sir Montague Fortune’s revival of the Dames Tax has turned Fortune’s Folly into the marriage mart of England and attracted all manner of penniless rakes and adventurers. Perhaps the ardour of these gentlemen has been dampened by the harsh weather in the north of England. If so, they are evidently too feeble to be worthy of our ladies anyway.

Amongst those who have returned after Christmas are Stephen, Lord Armitage, who is to wed Miss Mary Wheeler in a few weeks’ time, and Miles, Lord Vickery, who has unexpectedly inherited the title of Marquis of Drummond on the untimely death of his cousin. We wish his lordship every felicitation in his new role despite the family curse that is said to afflict all the Marquises of Drummond and lead them to an early grave.

We hear that Mr and Mrs Dexter Anstruther are already anticipating an addition to their family and extend our congratulations to them. Mr and Mrs Anstruther have been wed a very short time indeed , but the clear air of Fortune’s Folly is said to be most intoxicating and can go to the head with marvellous effects. Sir Montague Fortune has departed Fortune’s Folly for a few months’ sojourn in London. He will not be missed. There will be a ball every second Tuesday at the Granby Hotel.

I look forward to welcoming you there.

www.mirabooks.co.uk

NICOLA CORNICKfirst became fascinated by history when she was young. She studied history at university and wrote her Master’s thesis on heroes. Nicola also works as a historian for the National Trust in a seventeenth-century manor house. She can be contacted via her website at www.nicolacornick.co.uk

Titles in the Brides of Fortune series

CONFESSIONS OF A DUCHESS

SCANDALS OF AN INNOCENT

UNDOING OF A LADY

Browse www.nicolacornick.co.uk for Nicola’s full backlist

To the memory of William Craven, man of action, soldier of great fortune

“Love, like other arts, requires experience…”

—Lady Caroline Lamb

The Village of Fortune’s FollyYorkshire, February 1810

ALICE LISTER WAS NOT CUT OUT for a life of crime.

She had not even committed the robbery yet and already her palms were damp with anxiety and her heart was beating light and fast.

This, Alice thought, as she tried to calm her breath, is a very big mistake.

There was no going back. That was the coward’s way. Bravely she raised her lantern to illuminate the interior of the darkened gown shop. She had broken into the workroom at the back of the premises. There was a long table with piles of fabric heaped up on one end. A half-finished gown was draped across a stool, the pale silk glimmering in the light. Paper patterns rustled and fluttered in the draft from the open window. Ribbons uncurled on the floor. Sprays of artificial flowers wilted in a corner. Lace trimmings wafted their ghostly fingers against Alice’s cheek, making her jump. The whole place with its unnatural silence and its darkness made her think of a sinister fairy story in which the gowns would come to life and dance in front of her—and she would run screaming from the shop straight into the arms of the night watch. Yes indeed, burgling Madame Claudine’s gown shop was not for the fainthearted.

Not that this was theft, precisely. Alice reminded herself that the wedding gown she was hunting had been bought and paid for. It would have been delivered in the normal manner had Madame Claudine not gone out of business so abruptly and shut up her shop in the face of all inquiries from her anxious clientele. The modiste had disappeared one night, leaving nothing but a pile of debts and bitter words for those of her aristocratic customers who lived on credit. The contents of Madame Claudine’s gown shop had been declared the property of the moneylenders, and all the stock impounded. This was particularly unfair to Alice’s friend Mary Wheeler, for Mary’s father had paid the bill already with the same promptness he had paid a gentleman to marry Mary. Sir James Wheeler had been one of many to take advantage of the Dames’ Tax, the wholly outrageous edict leveled the previous year by the squire of Fortune’s Folly, Sir Montague Fortune. Sir Monty had discovered an ancient tax that had entitled him to half the dowry of every unmarried woman who lived in the village of Fortune’s Folly—unless they wed within a twelvemonth. Sir James Wheeler had been only one of many fathers who had seen this as an opportunity to get his daughter off the shelf and off his hands, parceled away to the first fortune hunter who asked.

Mary Wheeler had been distraught to hear of the gown shop’s closure. In the months of her betrothal she had managed to persuade herself that hers was a love match despite the fact that her ghastly fiancé, Lord Armitage, had returned to London and was carousing in much the same way as he had before their betrothal. With the wedding date only a matter of weeks away, Mary had taken the whole thing as a bad omen. And to be fair, Alice thought, marrying Lord Armitage was a poor enough proposition without getting off on the wrong foot.…

“Alice? Have you found it yet?” The urgent whisper brought Alice back to the present and she raised the lantern again, scanning the piles of clothing hopelessly, for there were so many gowns and they were as tumbled as though a wintry gale had blown through the shop.

“Not yet, Lizzie.” Alice tiptoed across to the open window where her coconspirator, Lady Elizabeth Scarlet, was keeping watch in the passage at the side of the shop. This whole venture had been Elizabeth’s idea, of course. It was she who had thought it the most marvelous scheme to go to Madame Claudine’s shop and simply take Mary’s wedding gown. After all, Lizzie had reasoned, the gown belonged to Mary and she had set her heart on wearing it at the wedding, and even if they had to break in to take it, no one would know and right was on their side.

It had been another of Lady Elizabeth’s astoundingly bad ideas. Alice shook her head to have been so easily led. Naturally, once they had reached the shop it became apparent that Lizzie was too tall to squeeze through the window and it was Alice who was the one who had to break in.

“What is keeping you?” Lizzie sounded decidedly testy, and Alice felt her temper prick in response.

“I’m doing my best,” she whispered crossly. “There is a mountain of gowns in here.”

“You are looking for one in white silk with silver lace and silver ribbons,” Lizzie reminded her. “Surely it cannot be so hard to find? How many gowns are there, anyway?”

“Only about two hundred. This is a gown shop, Lizzie. The clue is in the name.…”

Sighing, Alice grabbed the next pile of dresses and hurriedly sorted through them. Silver with pink trimmings. White with green embroidery…golden gauze…that was pretty…white and silver with silver ribbons—Alice snatched up the wedding gown even as Lizzie’s agonized whisper floated up to her.

“Alice! Quick! Someone is coming!”

With a muttered and very unladylike curse, Alice ran for the window, squeezed through the gap at the bottom of the sash and struggled to climb out and down into the street. It was only a drop of about four feet, and she was wearing boy’s britches, borrowed from the wardrobe of her brother, Lowell, which made movement a great deal freer and easier. But as she tried to ease her leg over the sill the britches caught on something and stuck fast.