A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (5 page)

He went down hard. Felled like a tree, crashing to the ground in a tangle of flailing arms and quivering, satin-breeched limbs.

Mr. Stubbs-Haye, it would seem, had a glass jaw.

And as she stood over him, panting with the pain in her hand and not a little satisfaction, everything else stopped.

The music faded to a scratchy end, and all eyes turned to her.

No one spoke. No one came forward to offer her any kind of assistance or support. No one so much as moved a muscle. For the longest moment, the crowded room was so quiet Antigone fancied they could all hear the pant of her breath and the low creak of her heart turning over in her chest. In reality there was only the pathetic and decidedly unmanly moans of Mr. Stubbs-Haye.

Oh, Lord help her. She had certainly stepped in it this time.

The abominable heat within her, which had begun as an unflattering mixture of effrontery and anger, began to boil its way down to mortification. Because the eyes which she had supposed would look at her with sympathy, or at the very least satisfaction at Mr. Stubbs-Haye’s comeuppance, were instead turned upon her in avidly astonished accusation. The gaze of the assembly bore down upon her like a hot iron, pressing her flat with its smoldering weight. Its smirking satisfaction that there had been such a scene to witness.

All but one. The windswept-looking blond man from the dance floor, a seafaring fellow perhaps, now that she could clearly see the tan of his skin and the old-fashioned queue of long hair falling over the collar of his coat, stood head and shoulders above the rest of the guests. His grin spread across his open mouth as if he were about to laugh out loud, and while she stood there, feeling the rest of the room’s censure, he stepped resolutely forward, and very kindly came to her rescue.

“Bravo,” he said when he reached her side. “Handsomely done.”

Antigone felt her own answering smile blossom across her face. “Thank you.”

Yet no one else was so amused.

“You wretched girl! What have you done?” A beturbaned matron prostrated herself dramatically alongside Mr. Stubbs-Haye, like an overwrought soprano dying in an opera. “Oh, my darling boy, what has she done to you?”

“Taught him some manners,” was Antigone’s instinctive reply.

Instinctive, but perhaps more than a trifle imprudent.

“Manners?” the prima donna echoed. “Why you vicious little.… hoyden!” From her tone, and from others’ gasping reactions, she might as well have said “harlot.” The matron was obviously Mr. Stubbs-Haye’s mother, and judging from the icicles of diamonds dripping from the great eaves of her bosom, a woman of considerable fortune. And no doubt, influence.

Although her windswept knight errant was thoughtfully motioning to the footmen to come and help him haul the insensate Mr. Stubbs-Haye away, Antigone was going to need more reinforcements.

She turned to see her mother rise from her seat, her hand clutched dramatically to her throat, and step forward, at the same time that Lord Aldridge, poised at the edge of the dance floor some yards away, stepped back and then turned completely away.

Well. That was interesting. No knight in ancient armor he.

If nothing else, Antigone seemed to have found an efficient, if undesirably public way of making sure that Lord Aldridge stopped putting it about that she was his
type.
And as she was standing over Mr. Stubbs-Hay’s prone form, rubbing the ferocious sting out of her knuckles, the gossips were already at work, battering and tattering her reputation down to a single, dangling shred. Even Hampshire’s country society had so perfected the art of the accelerated innuendo, that in less time than it took to complete the single country dance, Antigone was suffering a complete and total transformation of her reputation. Half a minute before she had been just another lively young thing in her best muslin gown, taking her place upon the dance floor among the silks and satins of country aristocracy, and in the next, she seemed to have become, to use the popular parlance, mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

And enormously satisfied.

If only for a moment. The gritty euphoria of teaching the Honorable Gerald Stubbs-Haye to keep his wandering hands to his own damned self, and cooling Lord Aldridge’s acquisitive ardor was already fading as her own mother bore down upon her, not like a rescuing archangel Antigone might have expected, but rather more like a Gorgon straight from Greek myth—
grim of aspect and glaring terribly.

“Mama, I can explain.”

Her mother cut her off with a sharp gesture of her hand. “Do not speak, you abominable girl,” she hissed under her breath. “I have never been so ashamed.”

“Mama, you must understand, he touched me—”

A look as black and unforgiving as poison stopped Antigone from saying any more. “Of course he touched you. It is a dance, Antigone. That is how it’s done.” Her mother caught hard hold of her upper arm, and began to tow her away, leaving the dance floor and her only defender, her lovely windswept knight, behind.

“Surely that is not how it’s done.” Had they all lost their sense? Had no one else in this place eyes in their head?

“Enough.” Her mother was having none of her ironical humor. “Do not speak. Not one more word,” she commanded in a voice low with tension as she prodded Antigone toward Lady Barrington.

That lady stood, and gave Antigone a look as chilly and unwelcome as winter sleet, before she turned and led the way out of the ballroom with all the ponderous grace of the bow of a ship cutting through still water. There was simply nothing for Antigone to do, short of creating another scandalous scene, but to go with them, and be doused in the shame they continued to pour over her.

But Antigone felt herself growing as impervious as a duck. It was bad enough that she had been named for a character out of Greek tragedy—her poor, deceased, scholarly father had rather a lot to answer for—but it was another thing entirely to find herself caught up in one. “Really. This is quite preposterous. Mr. Stubbs-Haye was the one who pawed me.”

“Keep your voice down. Do you want the whole world to hear you?” Mama continued to tow her out of the ballroom and into a corridor, away from curious ears.

Antigone hauled herself to a stop, and rounded her elbow from her mother’s grip. “I don’t care who hears me. I am not ashamed of defending myself. Would you have me suffer his rude attentions without doing so?”

“Yes,” her mother insisted. “No proper lady—”

“He grabbed my ars—” Antigone thought better of using a vulgarity. She took a hopefully calming breath, and tried again. “He groped my bottom, Mama.”

“It does not matter what
he
did,” Lady Barrington intoned. “No young lady of good
ton
would act in such a manner, no matter the provocation.”

The very threat of being thought bad
ton
made Mama look faint. “Oh no, my lady,” she whispered. “Surely not?”

Lady Barrington nodded her head in confirmation. “Mr. Stubbs-Haye is a gentleman of a well-respected family, and his mother is cousin to one of the patronesses of Almack’s in Town—”

“Oh, ma’am, it is too much!” Antigone interrupted. “He may be from a well-respected family, but he is no gentleman, I assure you. He—”

“His family have been at Hayebank Manor for hundreds of years. They are an old, well-established, well-respected family,” the lady countered. “A family with influence.”

“And influence is supposed to make up for his utter inability to keep his hands to himself, or behave in a gentlemanly fashion?”

“Antigone,” her mother cautioned. “Control yourself.”

“I am in perfect control of my faculties, Mama. Which is exactly how Mr. Stubbs-Haye found himself pitched so precipitously upon the parquet.”

“Young lady.” Lady Barrington’s mouth was pinched white with distaste. “I have heard quite enough from you.” She turned to look down her long nose at Mama, her tone nothing short of glacial. “You would do well to heed my words, Mrs. Preston, if you hope to salvage anything of your daughters’ reputations out of that miserable ruinous display.”

“Oh, my lady.” Mama was everything contrite that Antigone was not. She shot a panicked look back down the hallway. “What of Cassandra?”

“With my help and influence, Miss Preston will weather this storm. You may leave Mrs. Stubbs-Haye to me. We will proceed with the ball as if nothing had happened, but…” Lady Barrington turned back for a longer, more thoroughly narrowed-eyed perusal of Antigone’s person. “Perhaps without Miss Antigone, for a time at least. Certainly not by her sister’s side. A strategic interval to calm the wagging tongues.”

“That will suit me just fine, thank you.”

“Antigone!” her mother hissed. “What will her ladyship think of you?”

Lady Barrington would think it her duty to convince her brother to stay well clear of such an undisciplined, reckless hoyden, and urge him to end all association with Miss Antigone Preston. Again, that suited Antigone just fine.

But Lady Barrington was already making her stately way down the corridor, which left Mama free to express herself without restraint. “I should have known I couldn’t trust you. You’ve ruined it. Ruined everything. Months and months of preparation. How could you?” Mama continued to fume. “You have no shame, no control. No sense of what is right. You know how important this evening is to your sister. To all of us.”

“I have a perfect sense of what is right, Mama. Which is why I acted as I did. And I won’t be made to feel as if I’m the one in the wrong. I’m sorry if you feel I’ve embarrassed Cassandra—”

“Sorry?” Mama’s anger was bubbling out of her now. “Let me tell you one thing, Miss Antigone Preston. If so much as one breath of scandal touches your sister, I will wash my hands of you.”

“
Will
wash? What do you call entering into this whole ruinous arrangement with Lord Aldridge to begin with? You’ve fed me like a lamb to the wolf.”

Antigone knew she wasn’t being fair. She knew she ought to think of the money and the plans and Cassandra and Mama. But her mother and Lady Barrington weren’t being fair to her. She really wasn’t to blame. And so she let the hot tide of her anger and resentment spill over the top. “If you think this little contretemps will blow a breath of scandal, you’d best lash down your stays, Mama, and prepare yourself for a howling gale.”

Chapter Four

Commander William Arthur Jellicoe missed the sea. He missed the clean salt tang of the air, he missed the steady rise and fall of the deck beneath his feet, and most of all, he missed the deep sense of purpose in fulfilling his duty. As far as he could tell, the land offered nothing but inactivity, pretense, and until a few moments ago, death by boredom.

He had almost been saved from such an ignominious end by the timely intervention of an avenging angel in the earthly form of a marvelous slip of a girl, who had dispatched Gerry Stubbs-Haye in front of his very eyes, with all the aplomb of a twenty-year bos’un. It had been brilliantly done.

But the matrons were hauling her away like a merciless press-gang before he could do anything more than speak to her. Before he had even gotten her name.

Damn. The room glowed from the warm light of hundreds of candles, and the air was thick with the smell of beeswax, the heavy scent of too much French perfume, and the heady opiate of fresh scandal. Will thought he would choke.

“Antigone Preston.” The gossips were already pronouncing her name with hungry, spiteful delight, like sharks circling in the water, ready to strike at the smell of blood.

The rigors of battle frightened him not a whit, but ten years at sea in the exclusive company of men had left him feeling ill-prepared for the damnable hidden agendas of the rumormongering matrons of even country ballrooms. He had been there less than an hour and was already contemplating something neither he nor any of his previous naval commanders had ever considered—a hasty retreat.

God’s balls. This is what he had come to—uselessly propping up the walls of country drawing rooms.

He needed a drink.

A real drink, not the lukewarm champagne footmen were passing out on trays as a diversion from the set-to on the dance floor. The damned starched cravat was strangling him, and the form-fitting evening coat he had been made to borrow from his slightly smaller older brother felt as hot and tight as a shroud. Why he could not have been allowed to appear in his own comfortable, albeit worn uniform, was beyond him, but so were most of society’s strictures. Like the strictures that said a crowded ball was a worthwhile way to pass one’s evenings. If it were already this bad his first week back on land, before his family repaired to London for the Season, the coming months would be nothing short of torture.

William shoved himself away from his post against the wall, and ducked down a corridor, steadfastly avoiding the eyes of any female, whom it seemed, always wanted to dance. He had agreed only to escort his mother and sister—he drew the line at dancing with every wallflower in the place. Young ladies’ minds were full of desperate agility—they made the mental jump from dance partner to wife in once graceful leap.

And William was not in the market for a wife. Definitely not. That was his older brother’s job, to get himself a wife, an heir, and a spare. But without active employment, Will was adrift, out of his element, restless and dissatisfied, having been turned ashore at the prime age of two and twenty, but he was determined that the little time he had allotted himself ashore would be spent as pleasantly as possible until a ship should come ready and he might be called back into service.

Yet, with Napoleon exiled to the island of Elba, it looked to be a long, thirsty wait. And not one he wanted to pass in the company of giggling, marriage-minded chits and their managing mamas. Or his own managing mama.

He thought of the card room, but while he was in the mood for something to pass the interminable time, his brother had thoughtfully warned him that Lord Barrington’s guests played notoriously deep, and he wasn’t about to waste his hard-earned fortune, or use up his luck on something so foolish as card games.