A Matter of Scandal (22 page)

Her alabaster cheeks paled beneath their carefully applied rouge. “Oh, dear, has someone given us away?” She put a hand to her heart, much better at feigning innocence than Alice was. “I hope you don’t think it was I who wrote Her Grace or Lady Georgiana, because I assure you that I didn’t.”

Grey stopped, facing her. He kept silent, watching her as she looked from him to the pond almost at their feet and back again, her expression of innocence warring with one of horrified realization.

“Grey…”

“Hm?”

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m deciding what my third question should be.” He folded his arms across his chest. “The one that first comes to mind is, ‘can you swim?’”

Sylvia took a step backward. “You can’t be serious.”

“What leads you to believe that I’m not?”

“This is preposterous. Anyone would have done the same thing. I just happened to think of it first—not that Alice has the wits of a hedgehog. A woman has to stand up for her own best interests.”

Emma had told him the same thing, but for a completely different set of reasons. And satisfying as tossing Sylvia into the pond would be, he would have a hard time justifying it to the headmistress or himself. “Lady Sylvia, pack your bags. One of my coaches will take you back to London within the hour. If I set eyes on you again, I won’t bother asking first whether you can swim. Get out of my sight.”

She opened her mouth, looked at the water again, and quickly turned back up toward the manor house. Grey watched her go inside, then he returned to the house. One other guest at Haverly needed to return to London before he attempted to talk to Emma again.

Alice sat at the pianoforte playing something glum by Bach. Subtlety had never been her strong suit, though initially he had found that refreshing. “Alice?”

She looked up, the last notes trailing into discord. “Sylvia was just here. You’re sending me away as well, I suppose?”

A few short weeks ago, he would simply have said “yes” and showed her the door. Now he hesitated, looking for a diplomatic way to word his response. After all, she had fulfilled her part of their relationship. She was what she was; any dissatisfaction on his part was his fault. Emma Grenville was a better teacher than he’d expected,
if she could make him consider Alice Boswell’s feelings.

He shrugged. “We both know you’d be happier in London. And I have no doubt you’ll easily find a more pleasant…friend than I’ve been to you.”

“Don’t be nice now,” she sniffed, gathering her skirts and standing. “I wouldn’t stay even if you asked me to.”

“Then why did you come to Hampshire with me in the first place?”

“I like your money. And I expect a nice gift when you return to London. Something sparkly.”

“Something sparkly it is.”

“Good.”

As Alice went upstairs to summon her maid and pack, Grey headed for the stable. Emma would still be angry and hurt, but he needed to do some explaining.

Emma watched as the phaeton left the Academy grounds and Tobias pushed the gates closed. As it vanished, she plunked herself down on the top step, sinking her head into her folded arms.

“Emma, what’s happened?” Isabelle hurried down out the front door.

“Oh, Isabelle, what a morning you’ve missed.”

The French instructor sat beside her. “Tell me.”

“Wycliffe’s students escaped, and they wouldn’t tell me why they’d gone to see His Grace, so I went to Haverly to ask him myself.”

“But of course.”

“When I arrived there, though, the Duchess of
Wycliffe and her entourage had already arrived, straight from London.”

“
Mon dieu!
The…rumors?”

“Apparently,” Emma said, her spirits sinking even further at the memory. “Anyway, I decided, as the ambassador of the Academy, to take the opportunity to make a good showing.” She fell silent, her mind and heart not quite ready to face exactly what had transpired in Lord Haverly’s office. She really couldn’t blame herself for fainting. To hear the duchess say such things…It had been nearly as bad as being turned out into the streets of London more than twelve years ago.

“Go on,” Isabelle prompted in the silence. “You are the Academy’s ambassador to Haverly.”

Emma lifted her head, saw the curiosity and concern on her friend’s face, and bent down again. “The ambassador fainted.”

Silence. “Fainted, you said?”

“Yes. When I opened my eyes I was in the duke’s bed chamber, with the duchess holding smelling salts under my nose. Could anything be worse than it already is?” Emma wailed, her voice muffled in her folded arms. “Could I possibly destroy the Academy any more efficiently?”

“That remains to be seen,” Isabelle said cryptically.

Emma straightened, to see her friend’s gaze aimed toward the front gates. She looked, as well, and her heart jolted. Grey sat on his big bay, Cornwall, arguing with Tobias. The gatekeeper obviously didn’t want to let him in, and the duke just as clearly wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

She wanted him to come in, so she could yell at him for not telling her how awful the rumors had become, when he obviously knew. What had his damned plan been, to humiliate her even farther?

Tobias looked over his shoulder at her, his expression pleading, and with a small sigh she nodded. The poor handyman shouldn’t have to bear the burden of her stupid naivete. With an impatient flick of the reins, Grey sent Cornwall forward as soon as the gates opened.

“Isabelle,” Emma said, rising, “I require a private word with His Grace.”

“Are you cert—”

“Yes, I’m certain.”

Grey reached her just as Isabelle closed the Academy’s heavy double doors behind her. Emma liked being on the steps, because as Wycliffe dismounted and strode up to her, they were practically the same height.

“Emma, you can’t think I meant to—”

“Just a moment, Your Grace,” she said, the cool steadiness of her voice surprising her. “I don’t expect you to think of me or look upon me any differently than any other woman you’ve known. It would have been nice, though, if you had bothered to tell me that even your mother—”

“I was going to tell you,” he interrupted, scowling. “And I have no intention of allowing you to be hurt like that by anyone else. Ever.”

“And how do you propose to stop it?”

Her choice of words made him swallow nervously. She didn’t look receptive to
any
proposal he might offer—and in light of her arguments, it almost seemed the coward’s way out. It shortcutted actually setting things right by blanketing her
with the protection of his name. He owed her more than that.

“Emma, we still have time to fix this.”

“
You
still have time,” she countered. “No one cares if you’ve been misbehaving.” She straightened her skirt. “None of this is helpful, and to be honest, your being here isn’t helping anything, either. Please go.”

For a long moment he looked at her, eye to eye. Then with a slight nod he turned and mounted Cornwall. “Very well, Emma.” The horse sidestepped, and with a wrench he brought the bay back under control. “But whether you’ve given up or not, I haven’t.”

She didn’t answer, and he turned toward the gate. At the same moment the door flew open, and Elizabeth Newcombe came hurtling down the steps.

“Gr—Your Grace!”

He stopped, looking over his shoulder. “Miss Elizabeth?”

Emma watched as the Academy’s youngest student marched up to the big bay horse and presented Grey with a folded piece of paper. “We wanted to clarify our position,” she said, so perfectly that she must have memorized the statement.

Grey took the paper and stuffed it into his pocket. Before he could say anything, Lizzy returned to the steps and grabbed Emma’s hand.

Touching his hat, the duke kicked Cornwall into a canter. Tobias shut the gate behind him with a loud clank that rang like the clap of doom.

“We should have some tea,” Lizzy said, looking up at her, “except that I can’t leave my room.”

Emma wiped a tear from her cheek. “We’ll have tea tomorrow,” she said. If her heart didn’t give up beating and stop by then. At the moment, she wasn’t willing to wager on her chances of survival.

F
emales.

Grey liked it better when he’d been able to dismiss them all as dim, cloying, perfumed mantraps of a foreign species. He’d obviously made a grave mistake, and now he was paying for it.

In the space of one morning he’d informed the family matriarch that he had absolutely no intention of ever marrying. Then the woman he was beginning to think he’d like to spend the rest of his life with had turned him down before he could even propose. To top it all off, his students dismissed him, taking away any chance he might have had to lose the wager with any sort of dignity.

He’d figured that being the Duke of Wycliffe would ensure that the mess with the Academy would work itself out. A few choice words from
him, and like magic the problems would vanish. The loose ends of his arrogance had slapped him right in the face. Even worse, he’d made things worse for Emma with his blundering. She was the most compassionate, kind-hearted, forgiving female he’d ever known, and at the moment she could barely stand to look at him.

Grey swore. Getting what he wanted had always been so easy that half the time it hadn’t seemed worth the effort. Now, though, he couldn’t even breathe when he thought of never seeing Emma again. Now that getting what he wanted wasn’t question of pride or comfort, but of his continued ability to live, he had no idea what to do.

He nearly rode right past the black gelding grazing in the shade near the duck pond. Tristan leaned against a beech tree, his arms crossed over his chest and a cheroot clamped between his teeth.

Grey wasn’t in the mood to chat, and with a stiff nod he urged Cornwall forward. Before he rounded the turn out of sight, Tristan bent down and lifted a bottle resting at his feet.

“I have whiskey,” he said, amidst a puff of cigar smoke.

A minute later, seated on one of the boulders bordering the pond and a cigar in hand, Grey tilted a long swallow of whiskey down his throat. “Thank God for you, Tris.”

“I grabbed the bottle the moment I set eyes on your cousin,” the viscount muttered around his cigar. “Your family absolutely loathes me, don’t they?”

“When Georgiana discovered you were with me, she probably volunteered to come along.”

“I doubt that.” Accepting the bottle back, Tristan took a swallow. “All jesting aside, what in damnation is wrong with you?”

Being criticized was also a new experience, and one he only found tolerable when Emma was doing it. “Why?”

Tristan shrugged. “If I had what you have, I wouldn’t be sitting here drinking with the likes of me.”

Grey eyed him as he took the bottle back. “What is it that I have, exactly? We all know I’ve been a complete ass, and now I’m paying for it.”

“Glad to hear you admitting to it, anyway. You didn’t happen to receive any correspondence over the past few hours, did you?”

With a frown, Grey dug into his coat pocket and pulled out Lizzy’s note. Half his attention and all his suspicions on Dare, he unfolded it.

“Anything interesting?”

Grey read the brief message once, and then a second time. In Jane’s neat, rounded hand, it said only, “We want to help you lose.” He lifted his head. “You had something to do with this, I presume?”

“I might have clarified a few things.” Finishing off the whiskey, Tristan stood. “You did this to her, Grey. Make it right.”

“I’m attempting to,” he growled. “And I don’t need you to tell me what I’ve done.”

“Well, if you decide you do need me for anything, I’m available.” The viscount swung up into the saddle. “Consider me your able second.”

The cigar and the whiskey seemed to help clarify his thoughts. His main task was obviously to save the Academy. The wager had become a secondary concern; Emma’s winning or losing it wouldn’t make any difference since she had already been judged and condemned by half of London.

A proposal from him—and her acceptance of it—would protect her. And he
would
marry Emma Grenville; the how and the when would come later. But he had no idea how the Academy parents would view their union. He didn’t see any possible way the Academy would survive this. He’d set out to close it, and now that he’d changed his mind, he looked likely to succeed.

He returned to his uncle’s office to write a quick reply to his students, thanking them for their generosity and cooperation and suggesting a meeting first thing in the morning. Including them would be tricky, since he couldn’t risk exposing them to further scandal, but he didn’t want them angry at him, either—and he could use the help. Besides, he didn’t have much time left.

“No! Absolutely not!” Emma’s tiny office was bursting at the seams with arguing students.

“Miss Emma, we
promised
,” Lizzy said, her expression earnest.

“He told me that you dismissed him. You don’t need to see him again. Enough damage has already been done.”

“Too much,” Jane said. “And now we’re going to fix it.”

“The problem isn’t yours to fix. It’s mine.”
Much as she appreciated the gesture, she was responsible for their futures.

Elizabeth stepped around the newly-repaired desk. “I have nowhere else to go,” she said quietly. “I want to stay here. You have to let us help.”

A tear ran down Emma’s cheek. Oh, she’d ruined everything—especially for young Lizzy. “Elizabeth, you can’t fix every—”

“A promise is a promise,” a calm voice said from the doorway.

Emma jumped. “Alexandra,” she breathed, pure relief filling her at the sight of the tall, blonde-haired woman standing in the doorway. “Ladies, please excuse us for a moment.”

“But we’re supposed to meet him
this morning
,” Lizzy insisted.

“A five-minute delay isn’t considered rude,” she said, shooing them toward the door.

“Could you please have someone tell Tobias to allow Lucien onto the grounds?” Alexandra asked, nodding as the girls passed her, curtsying.

“Lizzy, Jane, have Tobias let Lord Kilcairn in, and show him to my office.”

“Yes, Miss Emma.”

As soon as Henrietta pulled the door closed behind her, Emma rushed forward and threw her arms around the countess. “You look so well, Lex,” she managed, tears overflowing her eyes.

“I feel very ungainly,” Alexandra replied, rubbing her rounded stomach when Emma could finally bear to relinquish her tight hug.

Now that support had arrived, Emma wasn’t quite certain how to go about explaining everything—probably because she had no logical
reason for anything she’d done since Wycliffe’s arrival. “You made good time.”

“We’d already packed, as soon as I heard the rumors. We nearly crossed your letter on the way out of London. Vix and Sin should be here by noon.” Lady Kilcairn pulled off her shawl, folding it over the back of one of the chairs. “Emma, I don’t know how much you’ve heard, but—”

“I’ve heard enough,” she answered, her gloom returning.

“How could this have happened?” Alexandra seated herself cautiously in one of the stiff office chairs. “No one who knows you could possibly think—”

“Please don’t, Lex. I just…I don’t know what to do.”

Alexandra looked at her. “I’ve never heard you say that before.”

“I’ve been saying it a great deal over the past few days. I don’t know what’s come over me, and I have no explanation.”

Someone knocked at the door, and she stepped over to open it. Lizzy and Jane, their eyes wide, stood on either side of a tall, lean man dressed all in black. His lips twitching, he nodded at her. “Your guards are practically Amazonian.”

“My lord.” Emma stepped aside to allow the Earl of Kilcairn Abbey into her office. “Thank you, ladies. Do not leave the grounds without me.”

“Oh, faddle,” Elizabeth grumbled, backing out and shutting the door.

Kilcairn strolled past his wife to look out the office window. “After all the rumors and your damned Charis the gatekeeper, I expected more of a boudoir-like interior here.”

“Lucien,” Alexandra said, lifting an eyebrow. “Be helpful.”

“I might be, if someone tells me exactly what’s been going on.” He sank down in the deep window sill. “And you might want to have someone tell Charis to expect Althorpe. I doubt he’ll be in as good a mood as I am when they arrive.”

“I will.” Emma opened the door again to find half the student body lurking in the hallway, if fifty curious young ladies could be said to lurk. She gave instructions to Henrietta and Julia to alert Tobias, ordered the girls to disperse, and ducked back into the office. Then she looked from Alexandra to Lucien. “Would you be more comfortable in one of the sitting rooms?”

“Actually, since we left the inn this morning I’ve been obsessed with those old chairs your aunt used to keep in the downstairs sitting room. Are they still there?”

“Of course they are. I never should have had you come all the way up here.” Another tear ran down Emma’s cheek. Aunt Patricia would never have allowed this mess to happen.

“Hm,” Lucien mused with a dark glance in the direction of Haverly. “It appears I’ll be shooting Wycliffe, after all.”

“Not until we’ve heard everything Emma has to say, Lucien.” Alexandra patted him on the shoulder.

The Academy came first, Emma reminded herself; the students and the Academy. Her own embarrassment didn’t matter. Her own happiness didn’t matter. Sometimes, though, since she’d met Grey, she wished that it did matter.

They headed downstairs to the nearest sitting
room. With a sigh, Alexandra sank into the softest, oldest chair in the room. Chuckling, Lucien fetched her an extra pillow and sat on the arm of the chair beside her, twining his fingers with hers. Knowing his reputation as a dark and dangerous man, Emma found the change in him surprising. Love seemed able to work miracles for everyone but her, she noted glumly.

“All right, I am as comfortable as I will be for the next month,” Alexandra announced. “Tell us what’s happened.”

Sighing, Emma told them, starting with Wycliffe’s damaged coach and ending with the note he’d sent the girls. She left out only the bits which involved kissing and naked bodies. Those things mattered only to her, and for her it was too late. She’d asked for help in saving the Academy—not her tattered dreams of self-respect and of Greydon Brakenridge.

“And from that the gossips decided you were Delilah and Jezebel, all in one? Something’s missing,” the earl said when she finished.

“What do you mean?” she asked, trying not to blush and knowing she was failing miserably.

The sitting room door opened, admitting a black-haired swirl of violet that engulfed Emma in a tight hug. “Where is that damned Wycliffe? I’ll shoot him myself.”

The duke was in more trouble than he realized. A dark-haired man two or three years younger than Kilcairn, and of much the same build, strolled into the room next. “Emma, that gatekeeper of yours is even more rabid than I remember,” he said, shifting the bundle of blankets he carried in his arms.

“Lord Althorpe,” she returned, curtsying as well as she could with Vixen still attached to her. “And that would be Thomas, I presume?”

The marquis grinned, instantly altering his demeanor from dangerous to affable. “It would be.”

He held out the bundle, and Lady Althorpe released Emma to take it into her own arms. “Thomas,” she said, smiling, “meet your other godmother.”

Emma peeked into the bundle to see large brown eyes blinking at her sleepily. Young Thomas Grafton, the infant Viscount Dartingham, yawned and stretched his tiny fists into the air. “My goodness, Victoria,” she whispered. “He’s perfect.”

“Until he gets hungry, anyway,” the marquis returned with an indulgent smile. “His caterwauling can rattle windows.”

Vixen chuckled. “It’s indescribable.” Then her violet gaze grew serious. “I suppose we’ve missed all the details of your story, but a wager with Wycliffe began all this mess?”

Emma sighed. For two minutes she’d been able to forget everything but how good it was to see her friends again. Even while she gazed at baby Thomas, though, in the back of her mind she’d wondered what a child of hers and Grey’s would look like. “The wager, and someone’s…interpretation of our subsequent dealings together,” she admitted, shaking herself free of such ridiculous daydreams.

“Would you care to summarize the major points?” Victoria handed her son back to Sinclair so she could hug Emma again. “I can’t bear to see you look so forlorn.”

“I want to hear it again, too,” the earl said, standing. “Over luncheon, perhaps?”

“Luncheon?” Emma blinked. “Is it so late?”

“I’m famished,” Alexandra said, “though I nearly always am, these d—”

“Oh, no.” She’d told the girls she would give them an answer in five minutes. That had been long ago. “I’ll be right back.”

“Emma?”

“Just a moment.”

She dashed into the abandoned hallway and checked the classroom where they held their London social graces lessons in Wycliffe’s absence, but the girls weren’t there. Her panic growing, she raced to the front door. Blast it all, if they’d ventured again, unescorted, to Haverly, no one would believe the school was anything but a refuge for hoydens and lightskirts, and she the worst of them all.

Outside, she stopped.

A cluster of students stood at the gate talking with someone on its far side. Tobias stood close by, scowling.

“Ladies,” she said sharply, approaching at a fast walk, “what are you doing out here?”

“We’re having our meeting,” Lizzy stated. “We haven’t done anything you said we shouldn’t.”

She needed to start being more specific in her instructions, obviously. “When I said you weren’t to leave the Academy grounds, I thought that would have implied that I didn’t want you conversing with anyone outside them, either.”

“Emma, they’re trying to help,” a low, masculine voice said from beyond the gate.

Attempting to ignore the tingle of awareness curling down her spine, Emma frowned. “The last we spoke, Your Grace, your intention was to lose this wager.”

“It still is.” Grey leaned against the gate, his light green eyes following her every move as she paced.

“I’ve been thinking about that. With the rumors concerning my…propriety, I cannot allow my students to perform poorly or to look ridiculous, and I certainly won’t allow them to lie. The disservice to them would far outweigh any benefit to the Academy.”