The Trouble with His Lordship’s Trousers Read online

  But really, the culprit thought to herself, it was only a little fun. A girl, if she had any brain at all, ought to have some naughty fun or else her world would be a very dull place indeed.

  Besides, how much trouble could His Lordship's Trousers possibly get her into?

  Chapter Three

  Years later, whenever Georgiana told the story of what happened next at that disastrous garden party— and it was a tale demanded of her often by a certain group of avid listeners— she did so with a great deal of gravity, building suspense for the benefit of her audience.

  "It began," she would say, looking around at their young, eager faces, "as these things generally do, with a murder." Then, once their attention was fixed, she would continue in a hushed tone, "To be exact, the assassination of Lady Bramley's cosseted, prize-worthy marrow. But the marrow was nothing more than the unfortunate casualty of a larger crime."

  And so, the story went.

  "When my friend, Miss Melinda Goodheart, wildly misaimed the ambitious thrust of her racquet and sent a shuttlecock over the six-foot-tall privet hedge, nobody thought anything unusual of it. The robust young lady was known to be competitive at the expense of grace and decorum, so from Melinda, a returning volley of passion and violence, capable of blacking an eye, was nothing new. The spectators could have no idea that this was the first wicked step decided upon some hours before, when the entire plot to requisition Lady Bramley's magical stuffed owl was carefully laid out. By yours truly."

  However, the existence of a glass hothouse on the other side of that tall hedge came as a surprise to the young ladies at the root of this plot. While Melinda was merely supposed to send the shuttlecock out of immediate reach, providing a temporary distraction and requiring the others to search for it over the hedge, a loud shattering of glass proved that worse damage was afoot. A broken pane in Lady Bramley's hothouse had descended upon her most cherished, pampered gourd, and thus a far greater disturbance than the one Georgiana had anticipated was begun.

  As the luncheon party turned away from their lemonade and scones to determine the source of that awful splintering, crashing sound, another accomplice, Miss Emma Chance— a small, harmless-looking creature— approached a large pen at the other end of the garden. There, by lifting a wooden latch, she was supposed to set free just one bird to run across the lawn. But instead the timid young lady found herself overcome by a noisy, clattering flock of guinea fowl. They pushed their way excitedly through the gap before she could close it again, and then ran across the grass, scattering all in their path.

  Invaded by these chortling beasts, the ladies on the lawn did not know what to do. Adding to the confusion, anyone still left inside the manor house came out to join the panic, for they would not want to miss it. Among them came Lady Bramley's staff, called upon to corral the escaped birds.

  Meanwhile, Georgiana— overlooked in all the furor— crept upstairs inside the now silent, unguarded house, and tiptoed along the corridors to find her target. There did seem to be rather more chaos proceeding outside than she had planned, but this was no time to hesitate. She could not return without that stuffed owl, for her name was drawn out of a bonnet that day, putting this mission into her hands, and she would never let it be said that anybody could best her at Reckless Dares. When Georgiana Hathaway was granted a challenge, she set about it with all determination.

  The stuffed owl, you see, told fortunes, and because of this fascinating ability it was an object of almost mythological significance at the school. For years it had been tradition — something of a rite of passage—that every senior class make an attempt to "rescue" the stuffed creature from her ladyship's custody. After all, what young woman of their age didn't want to know the delights, or horrors, that Fate held in store for her future? Even if, like Georgiana, they had plans to make their own success, the mystical lure of an all-seeing fortune teller was irresistible.

  Finally locating Lady Bramley's chamber, she looked around for the stuffed owl and found it staring out at her through a large glass dome, which was — to her relief and surprise—easily lifted. With her prize tucked under one arm, our adventuress was poised to make her merry escape, when a factor previously not considered suddenly appeared. Lady Bramley's ill-tempered spaniel, busily chewing a shoe under the bed, spied the intruder's ankles and scrambled out to attack them with tremendous spirit. Clutching the owl under one arm, Georgiana made a run for it, the angry little dog lusting after her heels as if they were pork chops, its scrabbling paws gaining ground for the length of the portrait gallery.

  And then the sweeping staircase loomed into view. She knew of only one way to descend speedily and with her ankles out of the spaniel's reach. Murmuring a hasty prayer, she turned and launched herself tail first, down the shiny, polished banister. Fortunately, she had some experience of riding banisters, although she had rather more weight to her at nineteen than she once had at thirteen and, thanks to the laws of gravity, she hurtled to the ground much faster than anticipated. Indeed, the slick speed with which she slid down this polished rail could have earned applause, if there was anyone to see it.

  Anyone, that is, other than the unsuspecting gentleman standing at the foot of the stairs, apparently avoiding the party on the lawn and studying a large landscape painting. Alarmed by the barking dog, he turned and suddenly encountered Georgiana's backside in a fast trajectory heading directly at him. Before he could protect himself from the indignity, the fellow was struck forcefully by her muslin-wrapped posterior as it shot forth from the end of the banister, hit him square in the chest, and sent him into a backward sprawl across her ladyship's Italian marble hall tiles.

  Georgiana lost her grip on the stuffed bird and her earnest, four-footed pursuer seized upon it without delay. The little dog jauntily dragged his prize out of the house, down the terrace and proudly onto the lawn to show his mistress.

  "Well, that was invigorating," said the man, picking himself up off the floor and offering his hand to help her do the same.

  Her instinctive response, of course, was to accept his assistance, but in doing so she immediately felt her heart trip over its own thumping pace. Staring in alarm at their joined hands, she realized she had just committed yet another impropriety, and quite unintentionally this time.

  Because their hands were naked.

  He wore no gloves, and Georgiana had removed her own earlier after accidentally staining them with lemonade. She had planned to put them back on before anybody important noticed their absence, but for now they were drying in the sun outside and she had no choice but to accept his indecently bare hand with her own, equally undressed fingers.

  Rough skin to soft. Large to small. Man to woman.

  It took her breath away so that she felt lightheaded.

  His grip crushed her fingers, not at all hesitant. As if he was unaware of his own strength, and cared naught for propriety. Even less than she did.

  If her sister Maria were there to witness the faux pas, she probably would have fainted, only to recover swiftly and give Georgiana a severe chastising, for naturally it would all, somehow, be her fault.

  Recovering her tongue, she quickly began to apologize, but he cut her off. "Don't worry about me, madam. I always say it's not a party unless somebody ends up on the floor." His eyes darkened until she, looking up into them, felt quite overheated. Blood raced up and down her body, not knowing where it was most needed. And then he added in his deep, gruff voice, "Or a wig goes up in flames."

  Thus, Georgiana learned that she had reintroduced herself to Commander Sir Henry Thrasher. How odd that he had recognized her, she thought. Unfortunate too, for she, feeling wretchedly small and stupid in his presence, had caused yet another ruckus. Here before her was a legend— a man knighted for bravery, and much admired for his valor and steel-spine fortitude. She had eagerly devoured the Commander's heroic Naval exploits in her father's paper, where it was written that even bloodthirsty, lawless pirates held "Dead Harry" in high regard.


  The man was a national institution, and she had just felled him with her inconsequential and shamefully airborne buttocks.

  For once in her life Georgiana genuinely wished she might have been behaving with decorum, standing in cool, unruffled elegance amid the chaos that somebody else had caused. If this was a Grand Romance, she would be wearing scarlet silk under black lace and with a string of pearls around her neck. That is how they should have met. Then she would have extended her hand in a long white glove to let him kiss her languid, discretely-covered fingers, leaving him with a memory of her perfume and a strong urge to write poems about her shoulders.

  Instead she had cemented herself in his opinion as a complete and utter ninny.

  He had just glanced at her chewed fingernails— exposed in all their guilty awfulness for his perusal. Now his eyes were laughing at her, even if he held his lips in better control.

  Her first attempt at tugging her hand free was fruitless, but on the second he relented and his grip released her, but only slowly. The pad of his thumb slid reluctantly over her index finger as she withdrew it.

  "Sir..." She pointed with that same finger. "Is that...is that marmalade...in your hair?"

  "I believe it's quince jam," he replied, seemingly neither surprised nor concerned about it.

  "Shall I help you get it out?" It was the least she could do, she thought.

  His lips bent in a sly smile that was quickly curbed, perhaps prevented from progressing further into a full-blown chuckle. "No, that's quite all right. You seem rather busy." He bowed and gestured with the sweep of one arm toward the door through which the dog had scampered. "I would not want to get in your way a second time."

  With her heart pounding like muffled hammers against taut piano strings, she slipped out onto the lawn just as Lady Bramley saw the diminutive beast approaching her with something feathery in its jaws. The astonished hostess promptly tripped over her own feet and tumbled to a wicker chaise, taking with her one corner of a tablecloth, a strawberry tart and a jelly molded in the shape of the Roman goddess Britannia.

  "All in all, a Good Afternoon's Work," Melinda exclaimed with her usual dry wit, casually resting a racquet over one shoulder as Georgiana arrived, breathless, to stand beside her. Together they watched as Lady Bramley's usually-stoic butler attempted to separate that stuffed owl from the mighty little dog's jaws, cursing like a dock hand throughout. Even Georgiana blushed at the words coloring the air, as did Lady Bramley, who began beating the poor butler around the shoulders with a closed parasol.

  Meanwhile, Emma Chance emerged from the nodding sunflowers and joined the other two. "Oh, no!" cried she. "What have we done?"

  "Never mind," Georgiana replied. "At least they shan't know it was us."

  But of course they would and, really, she did not know why she said otherwise, except perhaps to bolster her own hopes. Or because her mind was still as unsettled as her pulse after recognizing Dead Harry again and feeling that strange rush of warm familiarity. It was, she mused, like being caught in the surprise treat of a sudden summer shower, with an old friend who shared one's delight in the rain.

  The Commander had a rather distant, contemplative look in his eyes. As if he was still lost at sea and had yet to get his land legs back. No doubt being knocked off his feet just now had not helped, she thought, chagrinned.

  At that moment, the gentleman himself came out of the house and, while exchanging words with their bedraggled hostess, glanced over at Georgiana.

  "That must be her nephew, the mysterious Dead Harry," Melinda exclaimed. "He is rarely seen in public these days. They say those years alone on a deserted island quite altered his mind."

  "No doubt it would," said Emma, adding pensively, "But he is strangely handsome."

  Georgiana, for once, said nothing, although there was a great deal going on inside her head. She was afraid of what might come out if she opened her mouth, and although that gamble did not often bother her— she was a firm believer in "better out than in"— today it did.

  Lady Bramley now followed the direction of her nephew's gaze, which had lingered rather noticeably beyond the original glance. Everyone else followed suit, and thrusting its way to the forefront of the crowd, there came one face in particular. With a pair of fiercely narrowed eyes in a flushed, quivering visage.

  Mrs. Julia Lightbody, their esteemed headmistress.

  * * * *

  In general, the students at Mrs. Lightbody's Particular Establishment for the Advantage of Respectable Ladies— or "The Pearl", as some of its wittier residents referred to it— gave the redoubtable proprietress little trouble. Most boarders at this worthy academy were terrified enough to leave her to the enjoyment of her gin flask, a fly smasher and the Histoire et Vie de L'Aretin secreted inside a book of sermons. Mrs. Lightbody, in return, saw her pupils graduate through her front door at eighteen and nineteen in much the same intellectual state as they came into it as younger girls. In some cases with an even emptier head, incapable of having a thought or an opinion unless it was put there by her.

  The academy was required to provide only a very basic education for thirty guineas a year, and nothing more than an ability to attract husbands was ever expected of those who survived the experience. After all, as Mrs. Lightbody was known to grunt despondently, "There is not much to be done with girls, except teach them sewing, dancing, a little French, and How to Get a Husband."

  Although Mrs. Lightbody— probably by mistake— had come into possession of certain educational tools, they were mentioned only in passing, almost as an afterthought, in advertisements placed in periodicals and newspapers such as La Belle Assemblee, The Gentleman's Weekly and The Chronicle. Within those pages she touted for pupils by relying on three main selling-points: "a separate bed for every lady; brisk, outdoor walks daylly in all whethers, and two compleat, modern globes on the premises".

  That advertisement was sufficient assurance to lure in all manner of parent— the lackadaisical wealthy, the ambitious social-climber, and the plain desperate. Glad to escape the responsibility of raising girls and launching them into the world, fathers left their daughters to the care of Julia Lightbody and waited for miracles.

  Of course, Georgiana and her two best friends— the young ladies who caused calamity at Lady Bramley's garden party— were not counted among the number of good, undisruptive pupils. They were the troublesome minority, the dissatisfied and unsatisfactory. They would never feature in the annual pamphlet produced by Mrs. Lightbody to announce the engagements and marriages of her former, obedient followers.

  Not if these three had their way.

  "You addle-pated creatures," the headmistress told them as they stood before her that evening, "will amount to nothing. Her ladyship had to be helped to her bed by a physician and leeches were applied for her headache. We're extremely lucky that she hasn't yet withdrawn her patronage! She is inconsolable over the loss of her great marrow."

  "Cut off in its prime," Melinda whispered. "Oh, the tragedy!"

  Georgiana made an effort to swallow a chuckle, which only resulted in an unfortunate snort that drew more wrath in her direction.

  "Buffoons you are, the lot of you!" Mrs. Lightbody's teeth rattled. "I'm ashamed to have you in this school. At your age you should set an example to the younger ones."

  "Yes, Ma'am."

  "And you, Chance! I would have expected better from you, considering the years of charity I've shown to you!"

  Emma colored up and lowered her eyelashes. "I'm sure the marrow might still be eaten and enjoyed, once the glass is removed, madam."

  "Eaten? Eaten? It wasn't meant to be eaten, witless girl! It was meant to be looked at, polished and admired."

  "But, it's a vegetable," said Melinda flatly, "not the Mona Lisa."

  "Oh, so there was another girl involved, was there? I might have known you'd try to place the blame elsewhere, madam."

  All three young women wheezed helplessly as they tried to restrain their amusement.


  The school's proprietress, completely ignorant of her mistake, fanned herself rapidly with a shaking hand and stared through small, hard eyes, her cheeks vibrating slightly with the anger still pulsing through her.

  "How do you suppose this behavior reflects upon me?" she bellowed, pausing to swat ineffectually at a fly as it passed her line of sight. "Of all my pupils you three are the very worst. A bad lot. Destined to go down in infamy."

  "Well, if one must go down in something," said Georgiana, "it may as well be infamy."

  "Of course, you are unrepentant, wicked girl."

  But Georgiana was extremely sorry for the massacre of Lady Bramley's marrow and the damage to her stuffed owl. She simply did not see any reason in apologizing to Mrs. Lightbody, when she would rather express her remorse to the lady who suffered these losses. She was not, however, afraid to confess. "I readily admit it was all my fault," she exclaimed. "My friends had no hand in any of it."

  "As if I'd believe that for even a moment." Mrs. Lightbody drummed all ten fingers on her desk, itching to reach for that china shepherdess, no doubt. "Wherever you wander, Miss Sharp-Mouth Hathaway, the other two are never far behind. You are three of my most troublesome, unworthy charges and a blot on the reputation of this school." Raising one limp hand she flicked it dismissively in their direction. "One sickly, mousy foundling left to my care and promptly forgotten about; one clumsy, awkward offspring of a scoundrel so-called baronet, who hasn't paid a bill in two years, and then you," here she pointed at Georgiana, turning her lip up in a spiteful sneer, "a sly, scheming madam who thinks she can get away with anything, just because her father doesn't pay any attention, and has got himself some new daughters he likes better. Not an accomplishment or talent among you. Not for anything but mischief, that is."