After the Scandal (4 page)

Her face turned up toward him, and she looked at him now with the same sort of strange fascination as she had in the boathouse—as if she could not quite allow herself to believe him. “Would you? Would you really?”

“Yes.” Tanner heard his voice come out of his mouth, firm and secure. Sure. As if he really could teach an immaculate, innocent young woman like Lady Claire Jellicoe how to defend herself like a brawling, barely civilized street rat. As if he did it every day of the week. “I
could
teach you to take care of yourself. To notice things—the important things—so you’re never put in a position like you were with Rosing again.”

“Never again,” she echoed. And then her face cleared, and she looked once again like his immaculate angel. “I’d like that. I’d like that above all things.”

Tanner felt a smile soften the harsh planes of his face. “Good. We can start this moment. Close your eyes.”

The directive brought the clouded look back to her face. Then her eyes opened wide, staring and searching in the moonlight for a keener glimpse of him, and her hand strayed toward the sleek gun at her side, her fingertips seeking it out in the dark. “Why?” Her voice was quiet and tight.

“Because I want you to understand how to take in all the information from your surroundings. I want you to understand that you already know things you don’t realize you already know.” And because she did not answer, but continued to look at him with her doubt all but written across her face, he added, “I promise you no harm. And I am a man of my word.”

Lady Claire Jellicoe weighed the merit of his assertion for a long time before she finally said, “Yes, I suppose you are, aren’t you? All right.” And she did slowly close her eyes.

But, he noticed, she took surreptitious possession of the gun. Clever girl.

He rewarded her for it. “Excellent. And you’ve already done the first thing to make yourself safer, taking hold of the gun. But the way you’re holding it, I can see that you are unfamiliar with firearms. Actually—open your eyes.” He shipped the oars and took the gun from her hands. “We’ll start with this.”

It was both remarkable and, from his point of view, rather criminal that her father, or one of her surplus of brothers had never taught her even the rudiments of shooting. If he did nothing else, he would remedy that.

“This is a Royal Navy, sea service–style flintlock pistol, with flat stepped locks with half-cock safeties, waterproof pans, roller frizzens, and reinforced cocks. Take hold of it firmly—point it away. The gun is loaded. Always point it away from a person—or an animal for that matter—unless you mean to aim it at them. Never aim your gun at anyone or anything which you are not prepared to shoot. And kill. Do you understand?”

“You must have a good deal of experience with guns.”

“Yes.” He did, in fact, have rather a lot of experience of guns, among other weapons. He had learned how to handle and fire pistols in his short stint in the navy as a boy, and he had fired hunting pieces as part of his later training in the gentlemanly art of shooting. But gentlemen generally didn’t carry firearms the likes of his pistol. Or the long knife in his boot.

But he was no gentleman.

And being a lady had only served Lady Claire Jellicoe ill this night.

“It’s at half cock, and the frizzen is closed. Which means that it’s been loaded and primed. Powder is in the pan, under the pan cover, which is this part of the frizzen, here.” He pointed to the striking plate. “That lock mechanism there, the hammer, when toggled back thusly”—he put the weapon into her hand, and closed his own larger fingers around hers, helping her to thumb the cock fully back—“means you’re ready to fire.”

He would have raised her arm up beneath his, in order to show her how to steady her arm and take aim. But his brain—the intricate, organized, resourceful brain that had seen him through nearly thirty astonishingly full years of use—refused to do his bidding.

Because beneath his palm, her skin was soft. So astonishingly, exceedingly, innocently soft. Softer than morning air. Softer than wonder.

And he could only wonder at how small and delicate and nearly fragile the bones beneath her extraordinary skin felt under the crude, dexterous strength of his hand.

He had never touched her, never been so close to her before. So close the damp, liquid smell of the river faded away, and there was nothing but her. Nothing but orange blossom and lily and rose, and something beyond mere perfume. Something that confused and unhinged and liberated him all at once.

He could have recited the scientific nomenclature for the oxidized alcohols and esters and compounds that gave her orange blossom fragrance the subtle welcoming hint of nutmeg, but he had no words, no knowledge, to combat what the scent of her did to his brain, and how it made him want to do more than cover her hand.

How it made him want to cover her entire body with his own, and feel every delicate bone and sweet muscle within her. How he wanted to explore every elegant sinew, and hold the fey weight of her in his arms, as if he could subsume her into himself. How he wanted to do so with a sudden swiftness that shocked him to his core. And how he knew he would no longer be able to merely worship her from afar.

And so he slid closer to her, down on his knees in front of the stern seat, lifting his elbow over her head so he could line his right arm up with hers, and show her how to sight.

All along the length of his arm, where the linen of his shirtsleeve lay over the material of his own coat covering her, he felt the heat and slight, fine-boned tension of her beneath fanning across his skin.

“And then?”

He felt, more than heard, her quiet question hum into his chest. She was looking up at him, so close the moonlight poured into her eyes, and lit her like a beacon. And he thought he really ought to kiss her.

And then she turned her head sharply away.

God’s balls. It was as if he had forgotten what had happened only half of an hour ago. And that there was a gun in his hands. A loaded, primed, and cocked gun, ready to fire.

He was a cad. An armed, dangerous, guileful cad, who was not worthy of her. And he proved it by shutting down all sensation but the feel of her finger under his on the trigger. He squeezed.

Within a second, the slick sound of the flint hitting spark was drowned out in the echoing roar of the deafening explosion as the gun spat its bullet over the still surface of the water, and sped into the dark, silent wood behind the bank.

Her arm gave way immediately—she would have dropped the weapon if he had not held her there, buoyed by his strength and by his resolve to stay there, close to her, as long as possible. As long as she would allow.

But her arm, and indeed her whole body, began to tremble, and he made himself slide away from her, and take up his oars, and let her be.

“There’s more to it of course—the need to have a good, well-made lock, and keep a sharp flint, and a well-tempered frizzen, as well as proper loading, priming, and a proper touchhole.” He was blathering—something he never did. Or had never done before.

But he had never been so close to Lady Claire Jellicoe before.

Her nearness unhinged him, opening some heretofore-leashed part of his character. She made him a stranger to himself.

She lowered the gun to the seat beside her, and looked at it for a long moment, and he, who saw people think just as clearly as if he were reading a broadsheet, had absolutely no idea of her thoughts.

And so he—who never babbled—babbled on. “Even though the charge is now spent, you can still use the pistol as a weapon, if you take hold of the barrel with a backward grip, so you can backhand the butt of the gun across your attacker’s face at a moment’s notice if they make the mistake of thinking to act like Rosing.”

Which was exactly the wrong thing to say.

She folded herself back into the sanctuary of his coat and turned to look over the water in the direction the gun had fired. “I hope to God I didn’t hit anyone, or anything.”

They were passing the along the unpopulated expanse of the Old Deer Park, the acres of former Royal hunting grounds that had originally made Richmond a retreat for the nobility.

“Only people in this wood this time of night are poachers.” Who might be expected to have earned whatever stray bullets came their way.

Of course, he was contrary enough to have a rather brotherly feeling for the poachers, despite being a duke. Honor among thieves, and all that.

“Thank you for the lesson in shooting.” Despite her discomfort, she was nothing if not unfailingly polite.

“I can teach you more.” He hoped his offer didn’t sound as salacious aloud as did in the depths of his mind.

It must not have, because she brightened a little—a star coming out from behind the night clouds—and said, “What else?”

“Just listen.” With another quick glance over his shoulder, he steered the skiff toward the quieter seclusion of the trailing boughs of a tall willow tree that marked the boundary of the Old Deer Park, where the river turned toward the vast Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

Which meant that they had already come much farther than he had planned. Which also meant that the tide had begun its ebb, flowing downstream toward the city of London. But the woods were soft and quiet and peaceful. And she was not ready to go back.

So he plied them along the south bank where an industrious river vole was dragging a green reed into his hole beneath the willow’s roots. The trees overhead were full of drowsy insect sounds. “What do you hear?”

In the cathedral-like quiet of the willow trees’ sanctuary, the river quieted until to a low gurgle.

“The water,” she said. “The river, with the water lapping against the bank. And the night wind, rustling low through the trees.”

“Yes. Very good. All information you can use.”

“But it sounds the same as when I went out with Rosing. Were the bush crickets supposed to warn me as I went down the lawn? Did I fail to heed their warning?”

“No.” He could hear her self-remonstrance and frustration, and understand how little it seemed to make sense to her. “But there were other clues in Rosing’s behavior. In his look.”

She had opened her eyes and was staring at him now, her eyes wide and velvet dark with something stronger than frustration. “I should have read his intent in his look?”

“Yes.” There was no kinder way to say it.

He half-expected her to dissolve into sloppy tears—innumerable women had at his blunt assertions. But even that might be for the good. Many women seemed to believe quite strongly in the efficacy of what they called a good cry.

But she surprised him with her depth of character. “You mean I should have given him greater scrutiny of my own before I accepted his—or rather his father’s—invitation to dance, and especially to walk in the garden. I should not have trusted that just because he’s the Marquess of Hadleigh’s heir he wouldn’t be a bloody bounder.”

He would have smiled at her cursing if he hadn’t been so instantly furious. At Rosing. And at himself. “Yes. Exactly.”

Because the truth was that every man was a bounder—himself included. And refined, polite young women were easy targets. It was all the confining codes of ladylike behavior—of always having to be civil and passively polite—that got immaculate, refined young women into such monstrous trouble.

This was one of the twisted coils of his obsession with her—the innocence he adored in her was what had made her unsafe.

Perhaps she was thinking the same, for she pleated her forehead into an angelic frown. “I should have paid attention to his hands. They were clenched into fists, I think, opening and closing in … anticipation before he took my arm. I thought perhaps he was nervous around me. Men often are.”

That fucking, fucking bastard. Tanner should have killed him when he had the chance. Planning, all the time he had this exquisite young woman in his arms on the dance floor, to defile her. “Excellent observation.”

“And now that I think on it, his breathing was strange. Exercised. I think I thought him out of breath from the dance. But I wasn’t out of breath—it was an easy country dance. And you’re not breathing hard, even though you are exercising. You’re breathing evenly, in and out, even as you do all the work to ply the oars.”

Tanner tried to muffle the deep sound of satisfaction her observation startled out of him. She wasn’t meant to notice him—no one ever noticed him. He was the one who was meant to notice others. He was the one who was meant to pass unseen. She had certainly never
seen
him before. If her eyes had ever alit upon him, it was only in mistake, for she would look past him, or turn away, or step so that some piece of architecture, or the voluminous plumage of a matron’s turban blocked her vision.

But now Lady Claire Jellicoe was noticing him, and it made him feel the need to draw air deep, deep into his lungs. It made the muscles of his arms sing with awareness, and made the skin of his palms itch against the smooth handles of the oars.

Tanner took a hard stroke to exercise such demons, and turn the skiff. It was time he took them back. Past time.

They had been away more than long enough to effectively compromise her. And long enough for her to start to trust him, so that when his offer was made, she would at least consider it in a favorable light.

And he would also need to get back to deal with Rosing before anyone else found him.

Lady Claire gripped the rail of the skiff as they turned. “Are we going back to— Oh!”

They both had to grapple for balance as the skiff rammed into something. Something large that floated out from a small side eddy of flotsam, mixed with toppled branches, and made a small dam of sorts.

“What on earth was that?” Lady Claire’s breathless query sounded as if it were from far away.

Because Tanner had turned on his thwart to peer hard over his shoulder, and identify the obstruction. And he saw the one thing he had not prepared himself for this evening.

A sodden tangle of clothing.

Floating facedown in the river.

A body.

Quite, quite dead.