A Matter of Scandal (13 page)

“Are you a rake, too?” Lizzy asked, squinting one eye against the dappled sunlight of the meadow.

He cleared his throat. “Excuse me, ladies. Blumton said he was going fishing at the duck pond this afternoon.” He began walking backward. “I think I’ll join him.”

As the viscount vanished into the trees, Elizabeth returned her attention to Wycliffe. “Is he a rake?”

“Not a very good one, I’m afraid.”

Hm. This was
not
going to become a treatise on the heroics of rakedom if Emma had anything to say about it. “I count that as a point in Lord Dare’s favor,” she said.

The servants cleared the remains of luncheon and retreated to the vehicles. Emma sat opposite Wycliffe so she could see his expression and be in good position to silence him if the need arose, as
per their agreement. Of course, it also meant that he could gaze at her for the entire length of the lesson and gauge exactly what effect his speech was having on her.

Emma took a deep, steadying breath. His little lesson would have no effect on her whatsoever. She wouldn’t allow it to.

“Everyone settled?” At the girls’ nods, Grey leaned forward, balancing his elbows on his knees. “All right. I suppose we should begin with the basics: do you all know the difference between males and females?”

“Your Grace!” Miss Perchase blurted, blushing.

He lifted an eyebrow. “Yes, Miss Perchase?”

Emma cleared her throat. Perhaps this hadn’t been such a wise idea, after all.

“I was not aware that this was going to become a discussion of…that sort of thing,” the Latin instructor stammered.

“What sort of thing?” Lizzy asked.

“Suffice it to say, Your Grace, that my students have all had
basic
anatomy,” Emma offered.

“Oh.” Elizabeth nodded sagely. “You mean breasts and man-parts.”

Wycliffe choked. With her eyes, Emma dared him to comment on Lizzy’s phraseology. She and Lizzy were definitely going to have to have a long talk about her youngest student’s bold, forward manner of speaking.

He cleared his throat. “I suppose that definition will suffice,” he said after a moment. “A rake, then, knows all about breasts and…man-parts, and how well they go together.”

“Is that why he likes to try to kiss ladies?”

“Lizzy, hush,” Jane said. “Let Grey explain.”

Emma was rather curious to hear his explanation, herself. “Yes, continue.”

“A rake…knows what women like. Part of what women like is being kissed. Women also like it when someone pays attention to them, and talks with them, and asks them to dance. Rakes just happen to be better at this than other men.”

Emma narrowed her eyes. He hadn’t asked her to dance, but he’d done everything else. And she’d liked it; all of it. Apparently, though, that was just because he was so good at it. Part of her wanted to know what else he was good at. The other part of her was afraid she would like what she found.

“So rakes like to play games with women’s emotions?” she asked, folding her hands in her lap.

A muscle in his lean cheek twitched. “Some do. Others are just naturally…charming.”

“How is it charming to fool someone into thinking you like them?” Henrietta asked.

“Are you saying,” Emma put in, “that a rake is a male with the position and wealth to act as he chooses despite Society’s strictures?”

Lizzy was nodding again. “It doesn’t sound very nice. Are you certain you’re a rake, Grey?”

Wycliffe blew out his breath. “I’m not that kind of rake.”

“Well,” Jane said, frowning, “what other kind of rake is there? And how do you tell if a man is a rake or not?”

Emma leaned forward. “Yes. Please tell us.”

“Well, for one thing, the good sort of rake’s flattery is genuine.” He sounded short. “Just because
someone says nice things doesn’t mean he isn’t sincere about it.”

“Sincere or not,” she said slowly, “it’s more than flattery that a rake has in mind, isn’t it? And what he has in mind could very well ruin a lady’s reputation.”

The duke glared at her. “Only if he gets caught.”

“Humph. Ladies, please know that a true gentleman will never ask a woman to engage in…activity that might be harmful to her reputation or her well-being. If you are asked to do something that you even hesitate about, it is probably something you shouldn’t be doing.” Grey opened his mouth, but she continued. “I have a very good friend, for instance, who allowed a man—a marquis—to escort her into a garden to apologize for some ill behavior. This man then kissed her in front of witnesses, and they were forced to marry.”

“The Vixen,” he muttered, his jaw beginning to clench.

“Yes.”

“You might note, though,” Grey put in, less humor in his voice, “that there are females who intentionally lure men into compromising
them
for the very reason that they want to be married.”

“Whoever allows that to happen, man or woman, is a fool.” Frank discussion or not, Wycliffe’s personal prejudice against women had no place in it.

“If you had ever actually been to London and experienced Society,” he shot back at her, “you might realize that walking a path isn’t nearly as
straightforward, or as black and white, as you seem to think.”

“I have been to London,” she burst out, standing, “and I found it sadly lacking in decency. And I find anyone who can defend the immorality of rakedom to a group of young girls to be precisely the same.”

Tears filled her eyes, blast it all. Through the blur she could see the girls staring at her in open-mouthed amazement. The look on Wycliffe’s face was much harder to read.

“Excuse me for a moment,” she managed, and strode off toward the trees.

If the duke followed her, she was absolutely going to scream. Her students already thought she’d gone mad; if he ran after her, they would think her odd behavior was because of him.

Yes, she was confused by his arrogance and his splendid kisses, and yes, she did feel flattered by his occasional compliments, even if they were only meant to distract her from winning the wager. Mostly, though, she was mad at herself for beginning to look at him fondly, when he was, after all, just another man who thought he knew everything, and that she couldn’t possibly be right about anything.

It was Jane who came after her. “Miss Emma?” she called. “Are you all right?”

Hurriedly Emma wiped the tears from her cheeks and emerged from behind the beech tree she’d been using for cover. “Jane? Heavens, you shouldn’t be out here by yourself.”

“We were worried about you. Grey said I should give you a few minutes to compose yourself, and then come find you.”

“And where is Wycliffe?” she asked, her voice sounding shrill.

“He left to go fishing with his friends.”

Emma froze. “He left you alone?”

“No. The barouche and Miss Perchase and the servants are still there. He said that you were angry and that he didn’t want you to hit him, so he would continue our lessons tomorrow.” Jane took her hand, squeezing her fingers.

“I wouldn’t have hit him,” she returned. “I definitely would have scolded him, though, for trying to teach you such dreadful lies.”

Lady Jane smiled, though her eyes remained serious. “I thought it was helpful. For one thing, I think Freddie Mayburne might be a rake. I’m not sure, but I shall certainly pay more attention from now on.”

“Jane, you know I just want you all to do well in your lives, wherever they may take you.”

“I know that. You should tell Lizzy, though. You know how she gets upset when someone else is upset, especially if it’s you. She forgets that you’re not just Miss Emma.”

Emma slowed, looking at the dark-haired beauty. “I’m not just Miss Emma?”

“No. You’re also Emma Grenville, a woman who owns her own business, tries her best to make successes out of silly young girls, and cares for everyone else’s happiness above her own.” Jane smiled at her. “She even takes on wagers with dukes so she can afford to help even more young girls.”

“My goodness.” Emma squeezed Jane’s hand tightly, tears pricking her eyes again. “I sometimes forget that you’re not fourteen any longer.
You’ve become a young lady—one I would be proud to call a friend.”

Jane kissed her on the cheek. “I just try to be like you.”

“Y
ou aren’t going to catch anything, flinging your hook into the water like that,” Charles Blumton said.

Grey ignored him, launching his fishing line through the air and watching the splash as the weighted end thunked into the pond.

“Now
I’m
not going to catch anything, either.”

“You weren’t catching anything anyway, Blumton,” Tristan said from his seat on the rocks. “All the fish suffered apoplexies and died when those schoolgirls fell into the water last week. We’d be as successful if we shot into the water with pistols.”

Charles chuckled. “I have a friend, Francis Henning, who tried that once. He told me he spent all day trying to catch the titan of all trouts
in a stream at his uncle’s estate, but it wouldn’t come out from under some boulder or other. So he got his pistol and tried to put a round into it.”

Tristan was biting the inside of his lip. “What happened?”

“The ball ricocheted off the boulder, back up out of the water, and went through his Grandmother Abigail’s hat. Said she walloped him in the head with her umbrella. Nearly killed him.”

“Seems only fair.”

Grey barely noted the conversation. Emma had run off crying, and it had been his fault. Women had certainly cried in his presence before, and it had merely annoyed him. They were all so damned
good
at it. But Emma’s tears had bothered him. They continued to bother him.

What she’d said bothered him even more. She’d been to London, and someone, some
man
, had hurt her. He wanted to know who it was. At the same time, he wanted to prove to her that not all men were like the damned puff-guts who had distressed her. Grey looked up as a phaeton bearing Alice and Lady Sylvia rolled up and stopped. He took a slow breath. Good God, this was getting confusing.

“Grey, you promised to teach me how to fish,” Alice said, hiking her skirts up as she trod through the grass and brush to his side.

He handed her the rod. “Here. Stick the line in the water until something tugs on it.”

She looked dismayed. “And then what?”

“And then we’ll all faint from surprise,” Tristan said, “since there obviously aren’t any fish in this pond.”

Sylvia sat on a rock, twitching her skirt out into
a graceful fall around her ankles. “Why are you all standing here, then? Waiting for mermaids, I suppose? Or schoolgirls?”

Grey would have handed her a setdown to shut her up, but Sylvia rebounded much more quickly than Alice, and he wasn’t in the mood to spar. Instead he abandoned Alice to the fishing pole and took a seat on the boulder beside Tristan.

“How did your lesson go?” the viscount asked. “On second thought, don’t tell me. I shudder just imagining how much damage you’ve done to our gender.”

“Do you recall Emma ever being in London?” Grey asked, keeping his voice pitched low.

“No. Why?”

“She said she’d been there. From her choice of vocabulary, I get the impression that the experience wasn’t a pleasant one.”

“Did she say when she was in town?”

“No.”

Tristan remained silent for a moment. “I don’t know, Grey. She wouldn’t exactly have traveled in our circle. She’s got highborn friends, but she would still have been an instructor at a girls’ school.”

“That’s the same conclusion I came to.” Grey tossed a pebble into the pond. If she’d been anywhere in the vicinity of London, though, he felt as if he should have, would have, sensed it.

“I take it she doesn’t approve of rakes? I hope you didn’t tell her I was one.”

“I said you weren’t a very good one.”

“Oh. Splendid.”

“What are you two conspiring about?” Sylvia cooed, lifting a perfect eyebrow.

“Probably about how they intend to leave us moldering in solitude for the rest of the summer.” Alice stalked over and handed her fishing pole to Charles. “I am not impressed with fishing.”

Blumton looked from the pole in his right hand to the one in his left. “It’s a man’s sport, Alice.”

“Yes,” Sylvia agreed. “Standing about waving your pole in the air and waiting for some poor creature to get tangled on it.”

“Sounds as though you’ve been caught and thrown back in,” Tristan said.

She faced the viscount, her blue eyes wide and innocent. “One can’t help but notice, Dare, that you don’t even have a pole.”

“That’s in
your
honor, my dear. I don’t want to risk you getting tangled with me again.”

Grey only half-listened to the argument. Frank and straightforward as she was, Emma would have been appalled at the entire exchange. It was demeaning to both sides—and a few weeks ago, it could just as easily have been he as Tristan who was speaking.

“I’m going to have my students join us for dinner at Haverly on Thursday,” he announced. “We will also have dancing.”

“What? You want to set a school full of little girls loose on us?” Blumton straightened so quickly, he nearly fell face-first into the pond.

“Not a school full,” Grey corrected. “Five girls. Plus Miss Emma, I would imagine, and whichever other chaperones she feels are appropriate.”

“Gads,” Blumton said, looking horrified. “You can’t mean for us to—”

Grey stood. “You and Dare will both be in at
tendance. I need gentlemen for my students to practice with. I’ll have Freddie Mayburne over, as well.” It was possible that he’d misjudged the lad and that he truly did care for Jane. If Mayburne had merely been acting the rake for his benefit, then he still deserved a chance. Blumton continued to look contentious, so Grey strolled to his side. “Look at it as your contribution to helping the correct side win the wager.”

The dandy cleared his throat. “In that case, it’s our duty to our gender.”

“Well, I think it shall be a complete bore,” Alice said, pouting.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Sylvia countered. “I for one am looking forward to a chance to chat with our dear Miss Emma.”

Damnation. If there was one thing he didn’t want, it was Emma being subjected to Lady Sylvia Kincaid’s cat scratches. He would have to devise something to keep Sylvia occupied. Grey glanced speculatively at Tristan.

No
, Dare mouthed, obviously reading his thoughts.

Hm. The idea had potential, anyway. There had to be something Tristan wanted. Anything but Emma, of course. Emma was his.

The strength of that thought startled him, and it kept him occupied for the rest of the day. Even while he sent off notes to Freddie and to a well-recommended string quartet located in Brighton, his mind was on Emma.

That certainly wasn’t unusual, because thoughts of her—mostly in her damp, transparent shift—already took up a great deal of his time. This, though, was different. It wasn’t just
sex—a surprise of titanic proportions, considering sex was the only reason any woman had ever interested him. No, he wanted to
talk
with her. He liked the sound of her voice, and he liked trying to decipher the way her mind worked.

All evening he found himself halfway to conjuring some reason he needed to see her at once. All evening he kept himself rammed into his chair by the drawing room window, and pretended to read Byron’s latest offering. The dark, sensual poetry did nothing for his mood, and twice he nearly flung the book across the room.

Even Alice seemed to sense how tightly he was drawn, for after her first attempt at thinly veiled flirtation met with only a glare, she subsided. When he finally shot to his feet and announced that he was going to bed, everyone else in the room looked relieved.

Halfway out of his coat, the answer came to him. He snatched the gray superfine out of his valet’s startled fingers and shrugged it on again. “I’m going riding.”

“But Your Grace, now? It’s past midnight.”

“I can tell time, Bundle. Don’t wait up for me.”

“Y—yes, Your Grace.”

It was simple, really, and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it earlier. He needed to invite Emma and his students to the Haverly soirée.

Emma was half asleep when she heard her office door open. Frowning, she pulled the blanket over her head and pretended not to hear. The books strewn around her on the bed shifted, and either her foot was asleep or a pencil was jabbing her in one toe, but she was too tired to care. Stu
dents did come to see her at odd hours from time to time, but it had to be nearly one o’clock in the morning, for heaven’s sake.

Something hit the floor in her office. “Blast,” she mumbled, sitting upright. She rubbed her eyes, yawning and then stretching. Oh, well. Peaceful sleep was fairly rare these days, anyway. When she did doze off, she always dreamed about the same thing: the Duke of Wycliffe.

Staggering into her robe, she shuffled to her bed chamber door and pushed it open the rest of the way. “Is everything all right?” she asked. Midnight visits only seemed to happen when something was amiss.

“I dropped your damned
History of Farm Animals
on my foot,” a low, masculine voice drawled.

Thankfully she recognized the voice even as she drew in a startled breath to scream. The sound caught in her throat, which was a good thing, or she would have roused the entire Academy with her shriek. “What—what in heaven’s name are you doing here?” she gasped.

The Duke of Wycliffe bent to pick up the fallen book. “Does it tell whether the chicken or the egg came first?” he asked, setting it back on her desk.

“I don’t know. I’m only…to goats.” It occurred to Emma that she might be dreaming, after all. Surreptitiously she pinched her thigh. “Ouch.”

He strode over to her. “Are you all right?”

Somehow he seemed even larger up this close and in the dark. “Yes, I’m fine. But you should go. Now.”

“Don’t you want to know why I’m here?” He reached out and straightened the collar of her
robe, tugging her a step closer to him in the process.

“Why…why
are
you here, then?”

“I came to invite you to a soirée at Haverly,” he said matter-of-factly. “On Thursday evening. I thought my class might benefit from an evening of dining and dancing with actual members of the
ton
.”

She fleetingly wondered whether he was drunk, but quickly dismissed the thought. He didn’t smell like liquor, and he spoke with his usual clarity. “Oh. You might have sent over a note to tell me that.”

For a long moment the duke looked down at her, though she didn’t know what he could see in the murky darkness of her office. “And I’m sorry if I upset you this afternoon,” he said finally. “I didn’t mean to.”

“We can discuss this tomorrow, Your Grace.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Which is no reason for you to break into the Academy and frighten me half to death.”

His teeth gleamed in the darkness as he smiled. “Then I owe you a second apology.”

“Will you please leave? I need to put in at least an hour of research in the morning, before breakfast.”

“I could help, you know. I submitted my final plans to your Sir John this afternoon.”

“And how would that look, if you helped me to beat you? As if you would. No thank you. I have all the information I need right here.” She gestured at her cluttered office and the stacks upon stacks of research books.

“A book, no matter how diverting, is no substi
tute for actual experience.” His fingers, still wrapped into her collar, pulled her another step closer, until they were practically touching.

Having a logical conversation in the dark with a tall, handsome rake was extremely difficult. Her mind wanted to wander off in all sorts of tantalizing directions. But he was probably counting on the fact that he turned females’ minds to mush merely by his virile presence. “I am sure you believe that, Your Grace. I find that books serve me quite well, thank you very much.”

“I don’t believe you.”

The low murmur started a warm, tingling sensation that traveled slowly up her legs. “And why is that?” she managed.

“I see all these books around you, covering every topic known to mankind, but how much do you know about actual life, Emma?”

“Just because I have chosen to devote myself to teaching and the gathering of knowledge doesn’t mean I’m some sort of hermit, closed off from the world.”

“It means exactly that you’re some sort of hermit, pretending you’re above feeling warmth and desire.”

She was feeling quite warm, at the moment. “I prefer to use my mind rather than my…” she gestured down the lean length of him,”…my
mentula
, like men do.” Even saying the word in Latin, she blushed profusely, and hoped he couldn’t see her discomfiture in the dark.

Grey lifted an eyebrow. “‘
Nihil est in intellectu quod non feurit in sensu
.’ John Locke.”

She should have known he would speak
Latin—which meant he knew precisely which part of his anatomy she’d referred to. Her own Latin was quite rusty, now that she had Miss Perchase teaching the class. “‘There is nothing in the mind…which exists apart’—no—‘separate from, the senses.’ Goodness. How long have you been saving that up?”

“Probably for as long as you’ve had
mentula
memorized.” His fingers caressed her cheek. “What’s a schoolgirl doing learning words like
mentula
, anyway? You didn’t learn it here—not where male anatomy is referred to as ‘man parts.’”

She couldn’t possibly blush more than she was doing now. “None of your business, Your Grace.”

He leaned against the bookshelf behind him, tugging her up against him in the process. She had to put her hands up against his chest to keep from pressing her body along his. “I’ll wager it was curiosity. You’re probably the brightest woman I’ve ever met. Why should you stop your learning at a certain point just because the books stop teaching?”

She
was
curious, and growing more so by the moment. The play of his muscles beneath her hands fascinated her, and the low rumble of his voice shivered down her spine. She wanted to explore every inch of him, and wrapped her fingers into his waistcoat to keep them securely in place. Just being alone with him made her feel hot and light-headed and very, very wicked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she stammered, her voice shaking.