Every Scandalous Secret (3 page)

“So I heard. Something about its being destined for a private French collection?”

“The public wasn’t supposed to have seen it,” she whispered, experiencing again the fear of being discovered that had overwhelmed her that night.

“You took a grave risk, Susanna. You trusted the artist.”

“He is my friend.” She heard herself defending Roger Eastfield even now.

“Your ‘friend’ needed money more than your friendship.”

How could she answer that? It was true. But right now she had to be so careful with her words, remaining faithful to the story she, Rebecca, and Elizabeth had settled on.

Mr. Wade was too close to her, in full view of everyone from curious gardeners to Lord Bramfield.

“Mr. Wade, this is not the time to—”

“If it were up to you, you’d never make the time, Susanna. But unless you want to flee this cozy artistic scene you’ve created, you’re forced to stand here and talk to me. Do you care what they think? You’ve already proven how little you regard Society. You posed nude for a portrait—or so you claim.”

Chapter 3

A
little voice inside Leo’s head had been halfheartedly urging him to stop, to save this confrontation for a more private moment. Susanna stared up at him, her generous mouth slightly parted, her breath coming a bit too fast.

He could be driving her away—but he didn’t think so. She wasn’t immune to men, as so many had long assured him. Perhaps that assumption was easier for such men to imagine than trying to court a prickly woman with interests so unlike other ladies’.

She wasn’t what any man expected—she wasn’t the kind of uncomplicated woman Leo someday wanted in his life.

But for right now, due to circumstances she’d begun, they would be together for the next three weeks—the deadline for the end of the wager.

Her lips pressed together. “Mentioning the portrait in public will not help your cause.”

“You won’t let me mention it in private. I should have come to your rooms last night.”

She tensed but didn’t back down—and he was once again finding himself surprised by her.

“You would not dare enter a lady’s rooms.”

He gave her his slow, intimate grin.

Her pale skin blushed, and the glow made her quite striking, lightening her brown eyes.

“You would not dare enter
my
rooms,” she amended.

“Why not? According to you, you are a woman who removed her clothing and posed very scandalously for a painting.”

She balled her hands into fists, openly facing him now. He knew he should stop provoking her, that if anyone was still watching, they made a strange tableau.

“What do you mean, according to me?” she asked softly. “I
am
the model.”

He rubbed his chin and frowned. “Strangely, your sister and your cousin claim the same thing. How touching that you all support each other so completely that you’d risk scandal and the ruin of your very pristine reputations.”

Was
she the model? That was the central question, of course. Julian, Peter, and he had been drunk enough to make a wager out of it. They’d each chosen the woman they most believed it of, then wagered that they could find proof, all within a month. And if the month passed, and none of them could produce actual evidence, the women won the right to the painting. The men were supposed to buy it for them and hand it over.

But it wouldn’t come to that, Leo knew. Someone would prove one of the women was wild enough to risk—everything.

At first he’d chosen Susanna as a lark—she’d been prissy and uptight from the moment he’d seen her that night, questioning his intelligence at every turn. Deflating her high opinion of herself had appealed to him. She was not the sort of woman he spent much time with—bluestockings bored him.

But Susanna was different on so many counts. She’d intrigued him and amused him from the first. He’d stared at that painting on the club wall over her head, examining it for anything he could use against her. And he’d seen it, a small mole high on the model’s thigh. If she were the model, as she claimed, he would need to see her thighs—and there was only one way to do that, he thought with rare eagerness.

They heard the lighter sound of feminine voices leaving the drawing room behind them.

He glanced at all the easels. “Plan to sketch a half dozen different scenes all at once?”

Susanna opened her mouth, then glanced back toward the house. The first ladies were arriving with their sketchbooks. Miss Randolph and Miss Norton paused noticeably to blush in Leo’s presence, while Caroline strolled forward with her usual confidence.

“Mr. Wade,” Caroline said, a smile in her voice, “joining us today, are you?”

“Perhaps I shall if you tell me what I’ll be joining.”

Susanna only arched a brow as the ladies began to prepare their easels.

“A painting session,” Leo said at last. “Miss Leland, I should have known by your practical gown.”

He watched her blink down in confusion at the green gown she wore. How could she not see that she dressed so plainly compared to the other women, with their ribbons and lace? Though he allowed for the fact that painting could be quite messy, he didn’t understand why her clothing was of so little importance to her.

Perhaps that’s why she’d taken them all off.

He stepped away from the lesson but did not leave the terrace immediately. He wanted to watch her in her element, having heard something about her artistic skills. Every young lady was urged to such a path, of course. And the result was usually watercolors where he wasn’t certain if the rendition included people or animals.

He leaned back against the cold stone of the house and studied Susanna. She was all business now, discussing the importance of shadows and shading, and how they’d only be using pencils at first. Her voice was brisk with knowledge, but in no way did she come off sounding superior. He simply heard her love of the subject, her enthusiasm to bring the other ladies along with her on an artistic journey these next few days.

They seemed captured, too, some of them watching her with a new interest. Lady Caroline stole glances at her other guests, looking pleased that her suggestion to have Susanna teach was having a successful start. As they began to work, Susanna removed her spectacles from her pocket and donned them to look closely at her students’ work.

Leo felt . . . strangely uneasy. He tended to avoid this side of the young ladies he flirted with, and for the first time, he wondered why he felt so. He encouraged their chattering about hobbies or fashion or gossip—but hearing about a lifelong pursuit, something intellectual and beyond a mere hobby, always made him long to escape.

And he did so now, turning his back, knowing he would have to find another time to get Susanna Leland alone.

S
usanna moved through the rest of the day in a happy glow. Her art was the one commonality she had with other ladies, and it gave her great pleasure to discuss it in such depth. She saw their respect for her growing, and much as she usually didn’t care about such things, today it felt . . . good.

And it could only help her if others were speaking about her in a complimentary way to the men.

Mr. Wade stayed out of her way, at least until dinner. The rain had begun in the late afternoon, and by the evening, the house felt warm and muggy, with all the doors and windows closed. The ladies fanned themselves after dinner, and more than one man tugged at his cravat.

Usually, Susanna would have sat by herself with a book, earning her mother’s disapproving frown. It was simply . . . easier, for she never knew what to say—especially to men. But that had to change. Marshaling her courage to speak to the bachelors, she started off with Mr. Evans, increasing her pace to reach him just as Mr. Wade came toward her.

Mr. Evans’s eyes widened as she skidded to a stop beside him. “Good evening, Miss Leland,” he said.

She thought he was hiding a smile at her behavior; but if he believed her eager to converse with him, it could only help. “Good evening, Mr. Evans. I was so pleased to see you here when I arrived. It seems we seldom have a moment together at Madingley Court.”

Mr. Wade began a circuit about the room, watching her, even as he was called over by various guests.

“I have not attended festivities as much as I used to,” Mr. Evans was saying. “My estate has required most of my attention.”

She wondered if that also had something to do with embarrassment because he’d courted her brother Matthew’s widow only to discover Matthew wasn’t really dead.

“That is very dedicated of you, Mr. Evans,” she said, telling herself she could admire such a man.

A strained silence fell between them. She hated talking about the weather—the most mundane but somehow obligatory of topics—but would resort to it if necessary, especially since Mr. Wade seemed to be laughing at her.

She turned her back on him. “What do your fields produce, Mr. Evans?”

He seemed relieved to launch into the details of grain and drought, and she listened with an interest she didn’t have to feign. She
liked
hearing about people’s passions, even if they weren’t her own. It was simply that most of Society preferred to discuss—Society: gossip, balls, and who was at whose dinner. She didn’t care about those things, and her lack of suitable response always sent people hurrying away as quickly as they could.

When his words at last trailed off, she expected him to reciprocate, to ask something about her, but instead, he glanced at his watch on its chain absently.

She was boring him, and she’d barely said a word. But she’d always been told a man
liked
talking about himself.

And there was Mr. Wade, arms spread on the back of a sofa, Lady May and Miss Randolph sitting on either side of him as if tucked beneath his wings. They looked at him with an awe that their hovering parents didn’t appreciate if the frowns exchanged between husbands and wives were any indication.

Mr. Evans tugged at his cravat.

“It’s a bit warm tonight,” Susanna said, cursing herself for falling back on the weather. “But I imagine your crops will appreciate the rain.”

“Yes.”

Perhaps he thought he knew everything about her—perhaps every man did. She was different, removed from the ordinary, little caring about gossip. And she’d always liked it that way.

Until her brother had made her see that even though she’d always have a place to live, she’d be forever on the outside of his small family, or Rebecca’s, once they all started having children.

“Do you like children, Mr. Evans?” The words came out of her without intention, sounding too wistful—too desperate.

He cleared his throat. “ ’Course I do.”

She smiled nervously. “I do, too.”

He was polite enough not to flee immediately, but he soon claimed a farmer’s early bedtime and retired for the night.

And Mr. Wade was watching, an eyebrow raised.

That was enough humiliation for one night, she thought, thanking her hostess for the lovely evening and taking a candle from a footman in the hall to find her way to her bed.

But in the entrance hall, she could still hear the wind and rain lashing at the windows, at the front door of the mansion. And she wasn’t tired. Instead of ascending one side of the curved double staircase, she went straight, through the long central corridor of the house, to the two-story conservatory that framed the back of the house in iron and glass. Globe lamps hung along several of the paths, illuminating trees that touched the very top of the glass ceiling and disappeared as if into the darkness of night. Walking forward, feeling the wetness of fern leaves brushing her arms, she could see the rain running in rivulets down the glass, but nothing beyond, with the world in darkness.

“Do you like storms?”

She whirled about, almost dropping her candle. Mr. Wade blocked her path. His dark clothing seemed to fade into the background, leaving his face and hair lit with the golden glow of light. His eyes, ever amused, studied her.

“It is impolite to sneak up on a woman,” she scolded, trying to hide the way he’d set her heart pounding.

“I was not sneaking. I could even hear the shells crunch under my feet along the path.”

“Well, I could only hear the storm. And what if someone saw you following me?”

“They didn’t.”

“I am alone—you should not be here.” But oh the excitement of it surprised her, called to her.

“Other girls have female relatives at these house parties, to make sure they’re tucked in safe each night. But not you.”

“That is how I’m different—I’m not a young girl. I’m far too mature—”

“And on the shelf?”

“—to be held to such strict standards,” she finished, trying not to smile. “There are enough married and widowed ladies about to see to any chaperoning necessary.”

“But none of them are here right now,” he murmured, taking another step toward her.

The candlelight gleamed in his hair, shadowed his cheekbones. He looked teasing and dangerous all at once—it played with her nerves, setting off a tremble deep in her stomach as if he fingered the strings of a violin. She’d never experienced the like of it before.

“We didn’t finish our conversation,” Mr. Wade said.

“There is nothing left to talk about,” she answered calmly. “I posed for a painting, but you cannot prove it to your friends.”

“Not yet,” he agreed pleasantly. “But I will. Until then, we can talk.”

She knew he would attempt to use her words against her, but she doubted he could. Let him try to confuse her with the pretty phrases he used on gullible, green girls fresh from the schoolroom. She had asked about him before leaving London—he was not a gifted scholar, lacked even the will to be interested in his finances. But he always had plenty of coin. Did his brother give him an allowance?

In a low voice, he said, “When I first saw the painting, I came to a complete stop, unable to move.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His words and the gravelly timbre of his voice had an unsettling effect on her in the shadowy dampness of the conservatory.