The Scandalous Ladies of London: The Countess

Book 1: The Scandalous Ladies of London

by Sophie Jordan

Genres: Regency Romance; Historical Romance

Synopsis

New York Times bestselling author Sophie Jordan kicks off her amazing new high concept series, The Scandalous Ladies of London, which chronicles the lives of a group of affluent ladies reigning over glittering, Regency-era London, vying for position in the hierarchy of the ton. They are the young wives, widows, and daughters of London’s wealthiest families. The drama is big, the money runs deep, and the shade is real. Life is different in the ton.

“My husband is a good man… just ask all the women he has bedded.”

Wealthy society maven Lady Gertrude knows how the world works. If her husband is less than faithful, it’s an acceptable price to pay for her coveted position at the apex of London’s most fashionable set. No exclusive soirée or lavish ball is complete without her and her group of decadent, well-connected friends. And this Season promises more excitement than usual: Tru is launching her daughter into Society, helping her navigate the cutthroat Marriage Mart, complete with fortune hunters, jealous debutantes, and malicious gossips.

As skilled as Tru is at playing the high-stakes games of the ton, she never expects to meet her match—until Jasper Thorne begins to court her daughter. Jasper needs a titled bride, but when he meets Tru, all his carefully laid plans go up in smoke. The attraction between Tru and Jasper is undeniable…and unacceptable. To indulge in an affair with her daughter’s suitor would be ruinous. If it becomes public, she’ll never survive the scandal. Especially as it becomes clear that he wants more than one night…he wants the impossible. He wants forever.

A sizzling story of scandalous ladies, irresistible temptation, and the dangers—and joys—of being true to yourself. 

 

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Release date: March 28, 2023

Publisher: Avon

Print pages: 394

Sample

Chapter 1

A lady rarely chooses her husband, but she may choose her friends. Is it any wonder she prefers her friends’ company?

—Gertrude, the Countess of Chatham

Grosvenor Square

London, England

Gertrude set the scandal rag down with a contented little sigh, fully aware that this might have been the first time she had ever touched the wretched paper with anything other than contempt in her heart. As much as she loathed scandal rags for all the damage they could do—and did—this one was positively delightful. None of its usual swill, to be sure.

Good things were happening for Delia, and this signaled it. She would have choices. Her pick of suitors. A fate of her own design. All things Tru had vowed her daughter would have. It was all coming together quite nicely.

She reached for her nearby cup of tea.

“You look very pleased with yourself,” Hilda said as she fluttered about the bedchamber, tidying the space and gathering things to ready Tru for the day.

“Oh, I am.”

“And it has to do with that?” Hilda pointed a discarded slipper at the newspaper in dubious fashion.

“Indeed. Delia has found herself a subject of high praise in the Tittle Tattle today.” Chatham himself might have been delivered a subtle slap, but no insult had been done to Delia. There was that. And that was everything.

“Oh.” Her maid’s eyebrows winged high. “Has she now?” Hilda gently draped Tru’s freshly pressed day dress upon the chaise. “Then Lady Delia should be pleased.”

“Indeed.” Tru nodded, her smile less than certain. She hoped so. This portended great things. Things her daughter was too young and inexperienced to appreciate, but Tru did.

Tru wholly understood.

Hilda angled her head thoughtfully. “What do you think, my lady? Your pearls? Or perhaps the sapphire brooch is best?”

Tru considered the sunny yellow frock she was to wear that day. “Sapphires feel more suitable for spring, I think.”

Nodding agreeably, her maid helped her dress for the day, cinching her tightly into her corset.

“Not too tight,” Tru instructed. Gone were the days of a minuscule waist. She cared for Cook’s crumpets far too much. “I’d like to breathe.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Tru studied her wild-haired reflection in her cheval mirror. She’d suffered a restless night fretting over Delia’s first season, and her hair bore testament to that. It would take Hilda some time to tame the riotous tumble into something presentable.

She sighed. People always said life was short, but it was interminably long when miserable—when unhappily matched. The days dragged then, plodding unhurriedly along like the slow, gentle drip of water from an eave.

Days turned to weeks, turned to months, turned to years with no reprieve. Delia would be spared that.

And yet, even as Tru entertained that comforting thought, there was a niggling worry. A dark little suspicion worming through her mind that could have been prescience if she was one to believe in such foolishness, which she most definitely was not.

There was only the happiness (or unhappiness) one made and claimed in this life.

She would see to it that her daughter was given every chance to claim that happiness for herself.

 

Jasper Thorne read the paper and then read it again before lowering it to his chest. He had yet to rise from his bed. Steam wafted from the cup of coffee his valet had poured for him and left on a tray on his night table, welcoming him to the day. In the distance, he could hear the servants stirring in the bowels of the building.

The scandal rags weren’t his usual proclivity, but life had a way of changing, surprising even him, and that meant he found himself not only waited upon by a valet but reading the Society pages and gossip columns as though he were a blue-blooded gentleman who cared for such things. How else was he to learn about the world he wished to infiltrate?

The belle of the season has arrived . . .

“Lady Cordelia Chatham,” he murmured, testing out the sound of her name on his tongue.

Lady Cordelia.

She sounded precisely like what he was looking for—whom he was looking for. He flicked the back of his fingers against the paper in satisfaction. Those wishing for a titled and well-positioned bride need look no further. Indeed.

 

The Earl of Chatham shot straight up in bed, fisting the paper in his hand in astonishment, a curse bursting from his lips. He read again, distrusting his eyes.

Lady Cordelia Chatham. His daughter. How old was the girl? His mind raced, quickly doing the math. The chit . . . was out.

He could not recall the last time he had seen her. He certainly had not thought of her in . . . well, perhaps ever. Not beyond the day of her birth when the midwife had emerged to inform him he had a daughter. A girl. A useless girl. Not a son.

He looked again at the paper. Perhaps not so useless after all.

In his mind she still wore plaits and spent her days in the nursery doing whatever it was female children did. Somehow she had moved past that though. She was grown and his wife had missed apprising him of that fact. Of course. Gertie was a priggish cow, not wont to do anything to satisfy him.

The woman sleeping next to him stirred, but she did not move from the warm nest of his bed. With her eyes still closed, she reached for the bedding and pulled it up over the naked curve of her enticing hip.

Since the moment he had married Gertie she had been an acute disappointment, a yoke about his neck, his one great regret, but there was no undoing it. Unfortunately, his wife was hale and hearty and would likely outlive him. He was stuck with her. “Stupi

id woman,” he muttered.

The sound of his voice startled his bedmate. She lifted her head with an inarticulate mutter, followed by “What is happening?”

“Nothing to concern yourself with. Go back to sleep,” he commanded.

“Then stop talking, would you?”

He glared down at the prime piece curled up beside him. She was a saucy bit of baggage, but he had spent substantial time and money wooing and winning her, so he would not begrudge her the impudence. He would endure her saucy mouth if it meant he got to have that mouth whenever and wherever he wanted it.

“It’s my daughter,” he grumbled.

Fatima opened a bleary eye. “Your daughter? Didn’t know you had one.”

“Apparently she’s taken her curtsey and I missed it.”

“How’s that?” Fatima propped herself up on her elbow, looking delicious in her sleep-mussed state as she squinted at the paper in his hand.

“My wife failed to mention it.”

“Your wife? You have one of those, too?”

“Of course I do,” he sneered.

“And you don’t live together.”

“Good God, no.” He’d gotten his own place shortly after their wedding. A lifetime ago.

“Then how would she inform you?”

He scowled at her reasoning. “Are you siding with her? The Countess of Chatham might be admired by the ton, but I know her to be a—”

“Oh. The Countess of Chatham? I spotted a letter from her on your desk in your study. Quite pretty penmanship, I remember thinking.”

“There is? When did it arrive?”

She shrugged one delectable shoulder. “I don’t know. Weeks ago.”

“Weeks ago? Why did you not tell me, you daft woman?”

Her expression clouded. “I am not your secretary. It is on your desk. It is not my fault you chose to ignore it. It has been there with all the rest of the correspondence you’ve been neglecting for some time.”

He compressed his lips. It was on his desk. Unopened alongside countless unattended bills from the finest merchants in London. The draper. The haberdasher. His club. They were all a pesky lot. Bloody impertinent nuisances daring to beleaguer him as though he were of no account and not an earl of the realm.

In truth, he had probably seen the letter and ignored it. A letter from his wife would have been viewed as something bothersome, equal to

that of a bill. He would have pushed it to the side and forgotten it—much as he had done with her.

No matter now.

Now he knew. Now he could take control.

His daughter was of marriageable age. Suddenly she was of use. And he intended to use her to full advantage.

 

The Duchess of Dedham let out a whoop of triumph over her eggs and kippers and surged to her feet.

The footman dozing near the door to the dining room jolted awake, blinking wildly. “Is anything amiss, Your Grace?”

Valencia crushed the paper in her hand and waved it aloft. “Nothing is wrong at all! Indeed, everything is quite right.”

At least for dear Delia. She had just become the toast of the season. Tru must be thrilled. Navigating her sweet daughter through the choppy waters of the Marriage Mart had just become a less challenging prospect.

Still grinning, Valencia sank back into her seat at the table. Her smile slipped. She stared around her at the empty chairs surrounding the length and blew out a breath. It was a lonely sight. As it was every morning. She had thought her husband and children would occupy these seats by now. Except there were no children, and her husband was not the husband she had married. When she’d married Dedham she had envisioned a great many things.

She had not, however, imagined her mornings spent in such lonely solitude, but here she was. This was her life. Her lot. If not for her friends, it would be an abject misery.

At least Delia would have the chance for something different. Something better.

 

“What has you so engrossed, wife?”

The Marchioness of Sutton looked up from the paper she was reading, snug in her favorite chair before the fire.

Her husband stood in the threshold, leaning heavily on his gold-knobbed and gem-studded cane. Hazel was, as he said, quite engrossed. For no other reason could she not have heard him as he made his way toward the drawing room doors. His thudding cane always alerted of his advance.

“Oh, the Tittle Tattle is full of delicious material this morning.”

“As long as it is not about us. We’ve spent enough time featured in those pages.”

The marquess was correct on that score. Fortunately things had been quiet lately. Peaceful. Her name had not been mentioned in the scandal sheets in quite some time. It was almost as though Society had accepted Hazel’s presence.

“No, this is about Lady Cordelia, Chatham’s daughter. Apparently she is favored as this season’s darling.”

“Indeed? Well, her mother was always a handsome woman.”

“Yes, Tru is quite p

retty.”

Her husband advanced the rest of the way into the room and sank down on a settee near the fire with a slow groan and popping joints. They had been married five years now and his mobility had diminished greatly in that time. She suspected he would soon be entirely immobile and bedridden. That was what came of marrying a man well into his twilight years.

With good fortune and strategy and her mother’s careful guidance, such would not become Lady Cordelia’s fate. The Countess of Chatham was a wise woman. She would do right by her daughter and see her well matched. Perhaps even entrenched in a love match.

Not living the life of a young woman bound to an old man. Never that.

That was only Hazel’s fate.

 

Lady Cordelia flung the paper across the room.

“Something amiss, my lady?”

“That . . . that infernal rag!”

Her maid’s gaze followed the paper as it dropped and landed in a crumpled pile on the floor. “I thought you would be pleased?”

“Pleased? Pleased?” She recognized that her voice had reached shrill proportions, but she could not help herself.

“Your mother is pleased.”

“Mama?” Delia scowled. “How do you know that?”

Stella smiled enigmatically. “The staff knows everything.”

Delia nodded distractedly. Yes. Of course. Mama had instilled that truth into her . . . along with countless other dogmas. Always mind your words. Servants might blend into the background, but they were always there. Watching. Listening.

“Quarry,” she growled. “I’ve been reduced to quarry. I am merely prey.”

Stella’s eyes widened. “Would you rather not be remarked upon at all? Or worse—remarked upon and found lacking somehow.”

“Please do not try to be reasonable with me, Stella. I am upset and I wish to remain so.”

Her maid nodded good-naturedly and moved to pick up the paper from where Delia had tossed it. “How long do you plan to be, ah, er . . . upset?”

“I don’t know,” Delia grumbled, falling back on her bed and glaring reproachfully up at the canopy.

“The rest of the day?” Stella gently inquired.

“Perhaps.” She reached for a pillow and hugged it to her chest. “Well, for twenty minutes, at least.”

“You take your twenty minutes, my lady.” Stella patted her arm with a chuckle. “Gather your mettle. I am certain you will have callers after your resounding success.” She gave the crumpled paper a shake for verification. “You shall want to rest and be re

freshed.”

The wash of white canopy fabric swam above her until she felt dizzy. “So I can be my charming and beautiful self,” she muttered.

“Indeed,” Stella agreed.

“And if I can’t?”

“Can’t . . . what?”

“What happens if . . .” She paused, moistening her lips. “What happens when I can’t be? When they all find out that I’m merely a girl and not that very special?” Not special at all? What happened then?

What happened when they found her to be a fraud?

Chapter 2

It is a strange fate that a lady should be valued only for her looks and ability to produce offspring—two qualities that are quite beyond her ability to control.

—Gertrude, the Countess of Chatham

It was a rare occasion when the Countess of Chatham’s husband visited.

Tru was alerted immediately of his presence when Mrs. Fitzgibbon met her at the door of the house upon her return home. Her stomach sank, immediately understanding the implication of her housekeeper’s grim expression as she crossed the threshold in a whisper of starched skirts. There was only one reason for such a dark countenance. She did not need to say the words. Tru knew.

The earl was here.

She moistened her lips and swallowed. “When did he arrive, Mrs. Fitzgibbon?”

“Over an hour ago, my lady,” she answered as she efficiently untied the ribbons of Tru’s cloak and lifted it from her shoulders.

Over an hour ago.

Chatham would not be happy to be kept waiting that long. Nothing extraordinary in that regard though. She could not recall a time when the earl was happy. At least not in her company.

Mrs. Fitzgibbon anxiously motioned for a maid to come forward and fetch the parcels the footmen carried in behind Tru and her companions.

“Fret not,” Mrs. Fitzgibbon assured her, no doubt reading the dread in her expression. “I’ve been plying him with food and that French brandy he is so fond of. He is content.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Fitzgibbon.” She released a relieved breath, even if she did not fully believe the words herself.

Her husband content? Such a thing was impossible. He was always full of complaints. The food, the drink, the very temperature of a room, the company—her—could always be better. Especially her. Nothing was ever good enough for the man.

In all the years of their marriage, Tru doubted she had ever spent a full uninterrupted month in her husband’s company. Known simply in her mind as “The Earl” or “Chatham” (he had never invited her to call him anything else), the gentleman had been in her presence just enough to sire their two children.

Procreation, she had learned, did not require an extended period of time together. In fact, Tru knew firsthand that the begetting of offspring took only a few moments. If not for the arrival of babies several months later, she would scarcely know Chatham had been in her bedchamber—or bed—at all.

“He awaits you in the drawing room.” Mrs. Fitzgibbon motioned to the double doors. They were closed, but Tru imagined him on the other side, eating and drinking what the housekeeper had generously supplied.

Tru had spotted him a fortnight past at the Marsten ball. It had been a cursory glimpse as he made his way to the card room, where the gentlemen indulged in cigars, whist, and hazard. Of course, he had not greeted her. The card room was his destination. She and Cordelia were not his reason for attending. He was there for only himself.

She slipped off her gloves and dropped them into Mrs. Fitzgibbon’s waiting hands. “Then I won’t keep him any longer.” She turned back around to where her companions of the d

ay watched with wide eyes. Rosalind and Valencia were equally aware that the earl’s visit was quite the singular event.

“My apologies, but I must rescind the invitation for refreshments.”

They had spent the afternoon shopping and Tru had suggested they adjourn to her house for tea.

“We can stay with you,” Valencia suggested, her dark eyes kind with concern.

“Yes. Let us join you.” Rosalind nodded emphatically. “I would be happy to say hello to my brother-in-law.”

Tru grimaced, imagining that scenario.

Her sister had never pretended to like Chatham, and the sentiment was mutual between them, to be sure. Whenever they were thrust together, their conversation quickly escalated into barbs and thinly veiled insults. That did not help matters. In those moments it made Chatham even more difficult to manage, and managing her feckless husband had never been Tru’s strong suit.

“I do not think so, Ros. Go home. I will apprise you tomorrow.”

“If you are certain?” Valencia still looked unconvinced. Her distrust was understandable. She knew something of profligate husbands.

“Thank you for your concern, but I am certain.”

Her sister and friend stepped forward to press a kiss to her cheek. “We shall see you tomorrow.”

She murmured in agreement, but she had already moved ahead in her thoughts to the man waiting for her on the other side of those doors.

At her stoic nod, a liveried footman standing nearby opened the drawing room doors for her. Tru stepped inside. The soft snick of the door shutting behind her rang as resoundingly as a bell.

She found her husband much as she expected: boots kicked off, stocking-clad feet propped on a footstool as he heartily drank and ate from the full service spread before him. Mrs. Fitzgibbon had supplied him a veritable feast.

Even though he did not call often, he was the Earl of Chatham and the kitchen staff was acquainted with all his preferences. They knew better than to leave him less than satisfied. He might not reside at their Grosvenor Square address, but he was lord and master. He was in control of their livelihoods. Unfortunate but true . . . and that was never forgotten.

Tru had married at eighteen, which had not felt so very young at the time. Not when all her friends were also marrying. It was the thing to do—the thing being done. Thinking back to who she was then, she had been absolutely puerile in her naive hopes and unrealistic expectations.

She had thought she was living a fairy tale, and Chatham the prince of that story. It was an easy mistake for a young girl to make—a mis

take for which she was still paying. Some mistakes were like that . . . with far-reaching consequences that still stung.

Only six years older, Chatham had been remarkably handsome in those days—the catch of the season with his boyish good looks. She had been the envy of all her friends. Not that he was hideous now. He was passably attractive for a man of his years, even if his once-lush hair was gone. Sparse, pale brown strands stretched across the crown of his head. He bore a slight paunch, which he presently seemed intent on feeding, based on the manner in which he voraciously consumed a rack of lamb.

She wished she could go back and warn herself not to be lulled by appearances or superficial charm. She wished she had learned the manner of man he was on the inside before she spoke those iron-clad vows. She wished she had resisted her parents’ insistence that she accept his proposal.

She wished . . .

She wished for a great many things, but she did not permit regret to consume her. It would be for naught as there was no undoing the past. If the past could be rewritten, then she would not have Delia and Charles.

“Chatham,” she greeted as he had yet to look up and note her arrival in the room.

His gaze slid to her. He continued to chew as he surveyed her indolently. “Hallo there, wife. Nice of you to finally join me.”

“I did not know you would be paying a call today or I would have been here to greet you.” She knew her duty.

He ignored the excuse. “Out shopping?”

“Bond Street, yes.”

He dropped a bone, picked clean of meat. “You are ever talented at spending my money.”

My money.

The gall of the man. Everything within her ignited at the unfairness of that remark. She inhaled thinly, resisting the hot rejoinders that burned on her tongue. It was in these moments that she could scarcely reconcile him to the man she had first met, the man she had wed.

Chatham did not have two coins to rub together when she had married him. He had been penniless and on the hunt for an heiress, and she had been every inch of that. One of the shining heiresses of the season, pursued by Chatham and a score of others.

Tru had been the answer to Chatham’s prayers. Assuming he prayed, and that was unlikely. Her husband was not the devout sort. He prayed at the altar of loose women, gaming hells, and his current favorite horse at Tattersalls.

And yet he’d had something to offer. Something that made her parents overlook his insolvency. He possessed an old and venerable title, and two homes—one in Town and a sprawling, ancient mausoleum in the Lake District with bones that creaked louder than old King George in winter. Both houses were fa

lling down around his ears, but they were still impressive and valuable commodities. It had been more than enough to dazzle her parents, so she had become the Countess of Chatham.

For years they had lived off her very generous bridal portion. When those funds dwindled low Chatham returned to her parents for more. Her mother made her painfully aware of that—each and every time. Not that it stopped Mama from handing over money. Appearances mattered. They were everything to Mama. She could not have her daughter, the Countess of Chatham, going about impoverished.

His accusation that she carelessly spent Chatham’s money irked considering her parents supported them and he brazenly outspent her.

Chatham treated himself to only the finest things. After their wedding, he renovated his country seat and bought a third house for himself to live in—away from her and the children. A lavish house in Gresham Square where he was free to entertain and keep whatever women he chose to warm his bed.

He knew nothing of restraint. Whilst he maintained multiple homes, dressed in the height of fashion, spent copious time (and money) in gambling dens, took lavish trips (with lavish women), she lived a demure and unremarked-upon existence with the children.

“To what do I owe this visit, my lord?”

“Hm. Yes.” He reached for a wedge of cheese and took a hearty bite. “Our daughter.”

She tensed. Never in eighteen years had he approached her about their daughter. It was not a subject he broached. He had been uninterested in her upbringing. Tru had made all the decisions pertaining to Cordelia and she felt a stab of unwelcome fear at his sudden interest.

“What about her?”

“She is eighteen now.”

“I am wholly aware.” If her tone possessed an edge, he did not seem alert to the fact. He dipped another rib into the mint jelly and swirled it around the dish. “It’s time she weds.”

Breathe.

So that was it. The reason for his visit.

She knew this day would come. It was inevitable. Obviously he would take an interest in their daughter’s marital prospects. Delia had become quite the darling of the ton this season. Especially since the publication of the Tittle Tattle column a week ago. He must have heard that she was well favored and decided to do something about it.

Tru had been navigating Delia about Society prudently, mindful that her daughter always knew she had choices, that she needn’t rush into matrimony, that she could—should—take her time and become well acquainted with her future husband. Tru would n

ot have Delia repeat her mistakes. She would not have her feel pressured the way Tru had felt at the age of eighteen.

“Delia has been honored with a great many prospects, ...