The Lady Traveller's Guide To Deception With An Unlikely Earl. Victoria Alexander

activity. Why, the entire venture would be fraught with the suggestion of scandal.” Effie shook her head in a regretful manner. “As much as your paper seems to delight in laying out all the juicy details of whatever scandal comes along, I wouldn’t think you would want the Daily Messenger itself exposed to that sort of thing.”

      “No.” He glared. “I suppose I wouldn’t.”

      “Chaperones will eliminate any hint of impropriety. Furthermore...” She ticked the points off on her fingers. “The other ladies and myself are all the widows of men who each spent a good deal of time in Egypt. They were, as well, honored members of the Explorers Club. Which means that we have a certain amount of credibility as observers. In addition, Sidney will need assistance, support if you will, to carry off this ruse successfully. I daresay we don’t want anyone else discovering the truth.”

      “No, we do not.” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “I assume you expect me to finance your trip as well.”

      “It does seem to me we are doing you a very great favor by accompanying Miss Honeywell.” Effie smiled, a triumphant gleam in her eye.

      “It seems to me the word blackmail is more appropriate than favor.”

      “Semantics, Mr. Cadwallender.” Effie waved off the comment. “One word is often just as good as another as long as the end result is the same.”

      “As long as it’s the result you want?”

      Effie smiled pleasantly.

      Mr. Cadwallender heaved a sigh of resignation. “Very well, then.” He turned to Sidney. “How soon can you be ready to leave?”

      Sidney thought for a moment. She had nothing to attend to. Nothing keeping her in London. Indeed, she could have her bags packed and be ready to go within a day or so. “As soon as the arrangements can be made, I would think.”

      “Excellent.” He rose to his feet behind his desk, Aunt Effie and Sidney following suit. “I have no doubt this will be an extremely successful venture for you—for all of us, Miss Honeywell.”

      “Thank you, Mr. Cadwallender.”

      He opened the door and Aunt Effie swept out of his office, Sidney a step behind. They made their way through the sea of desks, frenzied gentlemen with ink-stained fingers and organized confusion, to the front lobby. Sidney barely noticed any of it.

      “That went nicely, I think,” Aunt Effie said with a satisfied nod after they’d requested a cab.

      “I daresay Mr. Cadwallender has never faced the widow of a colonel before.” Sidney grinned.

      “Fighting for what you want has as much to do with knowing who you are and, of course, knowing what you want.” Effie’s lips curved in a satisfied smile. “Being the wife of a colonel is simply the icing on the cake.”

      Sidney hesitated. “Are you certain you and the others are up to this?”

      “Because we are no longer in the prime of youth?”

      “Well, yes.”

      “I assure you, Sidney, we are quite spry.” She paused. “There are two kinds of women in this world, my dear. Those who wave goodbye to others starting on grand adventures and those waving back from the window of a train or the deck of a ship.” Effie raised her chin. “It’s past time that Gwen, Poppy and I became the latter. We too need to seize the day. Besides, this may well be our last chance.”

      “And perhaps my only chance.”

      “Then we shall have to make the most of it.” Effie grinned. “As Mr. Cadwallender is paying for it, we should make certain he gets his money’s worth.”

      Sidney laughed. Good Lord! Thanks to a stuffy, arrogant, rude beast of a lord and his nephew she was finally going to Egypt. Certainly, given the amount of deception involved, it was not going to be easy. But it was past time to stop dreaming about what she wanted. Her very future was now at stake. In many ways, it seemed her life—her story—was just beginning.

      And she could hardly wait to turn the page.

       CHAPTER TWO

      “THIS MRS. GORDON is a fraud, I tell you.” Harold Armstrong, the new Earl of Brenton, paced the impressive width of the private parlor his predecessors had used as an office in the grand Mayfair house that was now his. Harry was not prone to pacing, or at least he never had been, but everything about his life had changed in recent months and he had a great deal on his mind. In addition, the events of today failed to provide the satisfaction he had expected which cast an unfamiliar sense of doubt over his actions. Harold Armstrong was not used to doubt. “And I intend to expose her for the complete and utter fake she is.”

      “Try not to restrain yourself, Harry.” Lord Benjamin Deane, who had been Harry’s friend since their days at Cambridge, lounged in one of the wingback chairs positioned in front of the fireplace. “Tell me what you really think about her.”

      Harry paused. “This is not the least bit humorous, Ben.”

      “On the contrary, Harry old boy, it may well be the funniest thing I’ve run into in a long time.”

      “Exactly what do you find so amusing?”

      “First and foremost the fact that you can’t see the humor in it is in itself most amusing. You do seem to be wound tighter than a watch spring these days.”

      “Nonsense.”

      “But I suppose when one has abruptly become an earl—an eligible and eminently marriageable earl—without realizing it was even a remote possibility, one does tend to lose one’s sense of humor.”

      “Rubbish, I haven’t lost anything.” Harry denied it but he was indeed more serious of late. Although, as he’d never been particularly serious about anything in his life until recently, it was perhaps past time. “Indeed, I find the convoluted manner in which I came into this title to be damn amusing.”

      And completely unexpected. Harry had always known the man he considered his father, Sir Arthur Armstrong, was his mother’s second husband and a distant cousin of his natural father, who had died before Harry was born. Harry had heard the story any number of times growing up of how Arthur had fallen head over heels for Harry’s mother the moment he met the lovely young widow. Unfortunately, they had only a few years together before she succumbed to influenza. Harry scarcely remembered her and had long suspected the stories of his mother Arthur told were meant to keep her close to both Harry and Arthur.

      Both men were aware that they each shared an ancestral link to the tenth Earl of Brenton although it had never seemed of particular importance. Arthur was a scholar of history and long-dead civilizations and a highly regarded expert on ancient Egypt and its artifacts, knighted several years ago in acknowledgment of his scholarly work as well as his efforts in furthering the reputation and collections of the British Museum. He had not raised Harry as a man who would one day be an earl but rather as the son of a man with his nose perpetually in a book and his head more often than not in a long past century. It was only due to fate, death and the fact that there were more females than males in the earl’s direct lineage that Harry became the fourteenth Earl of Brenton some eleven months ago.

      “And—” Harry flashed his friend an unrepentant grin and, for a moment, felt like the Harry Armstrong of old “—the money doesn’t hurt.”

      “A definite benefit.” Ben laughed. As the youngest son of a wealthy marquess, Ben had never been without funds and had in fact financed their first excursion to Egypt nearly twenty years ago.

      Arthur had a respectable family fortune of his own although finances had never been particularly important to him, and Harry had grown up in modest surroundings. Now, in addition to the country estate that accompanied Harry’s title, he had inherited a large London mansion and had, after much debate, convinced