Almost a Scandal (47 page)

And it was.

Read on for an excerpt from the next book by

E
LIZABETH
E
SSEX

A BREATH OF SCANDAL

Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

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 at this particular moment, another silken slave market his mother had all but press-ganged him into attending.

Not that she would have characterized the evening’s entertainment in those words. No, his mama, the Countess Sanderson, had decreed Lady Barrington’s ball—held at her enormous country house for the purpose of launching off her protégé, a Miss Preston—a glittering affair, an event not to be missed, even though the London “season” had not yet started. The ballroom fairly glowed from the warm light of hundreds of candles, and the air was thick with the smell of beeswax and the heavy scent of too much French perfume.

William thought he would choke.

Ten years at sea in the exclusive company of men had left him feeling ill-prepared for the hidden agendas and managing matrons of even country ballrooms. His sister Claire, on whom he had thought he might depend for companionship and amusement, had disappeared after the second set with a bevy of friends. There had been that promising moment earlier—a bit of a set-to in the second dance—but it had been hushed up and passed over almost as soon as it had begun. 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.

Good God. This was 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 being passed out on trays. 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 the family had 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 one 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 to while away the time 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 was proving 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.

So William prowled down the dimly lit hallways looking for a more likely place to moor up. There had to be a suitably masculine room—one that contained a drinks tray—along one of these damned endless corridors. His long-legged stride took him around another corner, where the low, orange light shining from beneath a door led him to the perfect haven—a private library, its walls covered in bookshelves and its tall windows mercifully cracked open to the bracing, damp night air.

The room looked to be a wood-paneled sanctuary—a safe, snug harbor where he could while away the evening until he was called to escort his mother and sister home. If there were a just God, the room would house a decanter of brandy.

He shut the door behind him and made for the tray beside a couple of deep armchairs near the low-burning hearth, when a small noise—the faint clinking of glass—made him swivel toward the bookshelves.

William stopped as soon as he saw her. Damn his eyes—a female, looking like a cat at a dog fight, half-crouched behind a table, her eyes wide and dark and still in the firelight. For the longest moment they both just stood there, dead in the water, each hoping the other would be the first to blink.

So bloody much for sanctuary.

William recovered his gentlemanly instincts, and began to back toward the door. “I beg your pardon.”

She seemed to recover just as quickly from her start. “Oh,” she favored him with an almost imperceptible, dismissive toss of her head. “It’s you.”

“Is it?” William stopped to take a second look. God’s balls. Did he
know
her?

She made him no answer, but turned her back, and without another word, bent back down to peer into a cabinet.

Which treated William to an absolutely spectacular view of the young woman’s backside. In the current fashion-of-the-moment, she was clothed in a soft, high-waisted gown of some indeterminate, virginal color, which ought to have appeared demure, but which flowed over her body in a foamy, liquid wave. He tried not to stare, but her lean curves appeared very nice indeed, especially the way they seemed to dissolve into a pair of very long legs.

This was a sight for which the land seemed admirably suited, and one which he had not had the pleasure of viewing for quite some time.

William’s curiosity, as well as another, less cerebral part of his anatomy, was piqued.

It took him a moment to drag his brain, and his voice, back up into his throat. “Well, if it
must
be me, may I be of some assistance to you?” It seemed only polite to ask while he stood there perusing her lovely derrière.

“I doubt it.” She didn’t even spare him a second glance, but continued to rattle through the cabinets.

“What are you doing?” Not that he didn’t mind the view.

“Getting a decent drink,” she said with some asperity. With that she stood and turned, bottle in hand, having excavated one of Lord Barrington’s finer French cognacs from the dark recesses of the cabinet. In the low light, the strong architecture of her almost plain face was thrown into relief. She looked as ardent as a ship’s figurehead, long and slender in her flowing gown, with her chin tossed up, daring him to gainsay her.

It was
she
—the girl from the dance floor. The one who had knocked Gerry Stubbs-Haye down with a carronade of a right. In the half-dark of the firelight, she looked much less the brawny Amazon than she had standing over old Stubby’s prone form. At this distance, her chin, though tipped up defiantly, had a definite wobble.

And, if the dark, liquid shine in her eyes was any indication, she looked near tears.

Oh, fuck all. William had a definite weak spot for young women in distress. Half the whores on Gibraltar knew that all they had to do to earn a coin was gift him with a tear and a tale of woe. But if there were to be tears and tales of woe, a decent drink was an absolute necessity.

With that thirsty thought in mind, William said, “Well done,” and turned to cross the dark, patterned carpet to the tray, from which he produced two crystal glasses. “I hope you don’t mind if I join you?”

Her surprise was evident in the look she gave him—all chary, narrow suspicion, with her lips pressing together and her eyes creasing ever so slightly at the corners. But it forestalled the tears. “You’re not going to fuss?”

He shook his head even as he smiled. “No. Should I?”

One straight brow bowed up and away, telling him she knew just as well as he that young ladies ought not drink anything stronger than punch, or perhaps wine at dinner. And certainly not clandestine cognac. “Or tattle?”

As long as she didn’t cry, or giggle, he didn’t give a cold damn what she drank. But she certainly didn’t look like a giggler. She looked a bit plain, but somehow interesting in a very direct way. And she had the bottle.

Will raised his hand in solemn pledge. “I am an officer of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. I do not ‘tattle.’ I assure you, you can trust me.”

She made a sound that was very nearly a sneer. “Trust. I don’t trust anyone.”

“Then you are smart. And I like clever girls. I like girls who have cognac even better.”

“Do you?” Her eyes flicked over him, up and down—a quick appraisal.

He gave her his best version of a charming grin. “Yes. I consider your intention most refreshing.”

“Really?” She tried to look down her pert nose at him. “It was meant to be appalling.”

William could feel a laugh build in his chest. She certainly was a saucy little piece of brightwork, and just the sort of wayward girl he liked. Which was to say, she appeared to be unlike every other insipid miss lining the country’s ballrooms, with their simpers and mealy-mouthed smiles.

“You’ll have to do better than that, if you hope to appall me. Because you’re holding a bottle of very fine, aged French cognac, and I very much hope I can persuade you to share it.” He held out the glasses in supplication.

“Said the spider to the fly.” Her look was unflinchingly direct. “Don’t think I’m not watching you. Try anything and I’ll knock your daylights out, too.”

“How delightfully bloodthirsty of you to offer, but as fond as I am of a good mill, this evening I am in search only of a decent drink. I’m a sailor you see. We’re a notoriously thirsty lot.”

His ridiculous pronouncement took her sails aback, and knocked the last of the wobble out of her chin. “Who
are
you?” she breathed.

“Well, I thought you knew. You said, ‘It’s you,’ and I assumed we’d met.” William waited for her response before he said more. Who knew what sort of plan she might be engineering behind those innocuous, deep blue eyes? One mention of his family name and she might turn into one of the female fortune hunters.

But the light of avarice didn’t appear to be shining in her eyes. The bright sheen of wounded defiance was. It was a look he knew all too well. He’d been a defiant young midshipman once himself.

“No,” she admitted. “We haven’t been introduced. I only recognized you from the ballroom. You were the only one who—” She shrugged the rest of the sentence away, perhaps still trying to stave off those tears with an attitude of indifference.

“The only one who was impressed?” he offered cordially. “Surely not.”

Her eyes slid up to meet his, dubious but curious. “Were you? Impressed?”

“Yes. And amused. I’m Will Jellicoe. Formerly Commander William Jellicoe, of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, but at the moment I’m just another half-pay sailor with a powerful thirst.”

Her chary suspicion didn’t ease, but she nodded, as if she were storing that little piece of information away in her brain. “If you’re in the navy, why aren’t you in uniform?”

“Against the rules. Especially for relatively junior, half-pay officers. Especially when my mother commands me otherwise. And my brother, who is apparently an arbiter of male fashion, said it was too shoddy. In fact, he said the damn thing still reeked of tar and black powder. For myself, I hadn’t noticed.”

The girl looked at him for a long moment, her gaze holding steady with his, as if she were weighing him out. Deciding if he really was trustworthy. Then she slid a glance toward the door. “Did you lock it?”

Well, damn his eyes. Perhaps
she
was an heiress wary of fortune hunters. Or perhaps, she was something else entirely.

While that possibility was vastly intriguing, it was also dangerous. Will might have been the second son, but he was not on the market for a rich wife—nor any wife for that matter. And he had absolutely no intention of getting himself in an untenable position by locking himself in a room with a young miss. “No, I assure you, I have no intention of…”

But she was walking away from his disclaimer, crossing to the door to try the handle. Yet she didn’t open the door, as he had expected, and as propriety demanded. Instead, she dragged a chair up and jammed the back securely under the door handle so it couldn’t be depressed. “There,” she said as she stepped back. “Now you’re safe.”

He
was
safe
? Locked in a darkened room with a wayward, pugilistic young female who seemed quite experienced at jamming chairs under doors to prevent unannounced entry? Holy hell. His cravat hitched itself tighter. He’d felt safer at Trafalgar.

But damn his eyes, not half as intrigued.

And he was certainly intrigued now, as well as thirsty. And then the wayward girl cemented her appeal by returning directly to uncork the bottle, and pour him a very generous portion of Barrington’s finest, before she took the other glass from him, and retreated a safe distance to fill her own.

And while she did so, her surreptitious gaze took a long, meandering trip from the tip of his polished boots to the top of his sandy head.

William decided to sit back in the deep leather chair and let her look. He hadn’t any idea what game she was playing, but he was interested enough to see the hand out. She seemed prudently wary of him, keeping her distance, but there were ways around that—patience and charm.

He raised his glass in a toast. “To appalling acquaintances.”

And everything changed. She smiled, a slow, secret grin that spread full across her face, and made dimples appear deep in her cheeks. In the low glow of the firelight, the deliciously impish grin made her look pretty and devilishly sweet. The kind of sweet he wanted to taste.