It Started with a Scandal (18 page)

“The weather hasn’t cooperated with those kinds of activities, unfortunately. Perhaps I am restless, now that I am feeling more myself. It will be a pleasure to be in my own home again, or to be on my own ship. I have never been comfortable in limbo.”

“I understand,” she soothed. “One does like to have one’s own things about, and men do not abide well when trapped in little country houses, like pets. And you’ve grown so accustomed to having dangerous men leap out at you.”

“The squirrels do a fair amount of leaping. Other than that, my reflexes remain unchallenged.”

“And the options for servants are so limited here in the country that service is wanting, and how do you say,
avoir le mal du pays
. One feels more at home in the hands of servants who were trained, who come from a lineage of servants, like my dear butler Francois. I do think a talent for serving your betters is inbred, don’t you? Instead, you must settle for that common woman running your current household.”

He paused then.

“That . . . common woman?” he repeated mildly.

The words echoed with a peculiar dissonance. Never in a million years would he ascribe “common” to Elise.

The back of his neck prickled a warning.

“Yes. Though she seems competent enough in her present role.” Alexandra waved a gloved arm about to indicate the general success of the festivities. “You look well fed, and the house hasn’t yet burned down. I suppose it is all one can hope for from the staff one can find here in the country.”

“Forgive me, but your tone of insinuation puzzles me. Do you have a prior acquaintance with my housekeeper?”

She tilted her head to study him there in the cloud-filtered moonlight, then made a little moue and gave him a sympathetic little tap with her fan.

“Ah, forgive me, Philippe. It hadn’t occurred to me that you hadn’t heard. I thought perhaps you had simply settled for the lesser of all the evils presented to you when hiring a housekeeper. But then, one wouldn’t expect you to indulge in local, provincial gossip. A very few people do know and have been all that is discreet about it, so it should not reflect upon you or
your
character. I assumed when you hired that woman you knew why she was removed from her position at the school and had made your decision accordingly.”

“Her name is Mrs. Fountain.”

He said it almost silkily.

If Alexandra called her “that woman” again, he was afraid he’d do something rash.

Only the Earl of Ardmay would have been able to tell just how utterly furious Philippe was now.

And Elise, perhaps.

“Of course it is.
Mrs.
. . . Fountain.” Alexandra gave an unpleasant little laugh.

Philippe’s patience expired. “It is unlike you, Alexa, to be coy. Mrs. Fountain’s character was represented to me as unassailable by the Redmond family, which was sufficient for me to hire her, and I have thus far found no fault in her ability to run the house. She has in fact made me quite . . .” There was, in fact, no single word that encompassed just exactly what she’d done to and for him. “. . . comfortable.”

What a ridiculously inadequate word. Nearly a lie. He almost laughed. He’d felt a good many things in Elise’s presence, but comfortable, lately, wasn’t one of them.

“It is clear she cannot be faulted for the way she has managed your establishment,” Alexandra allowed magnanimously. “And she’s doubtless certainly more than qualified to be a housekeeper, of all things. She was raised gently enough and was apparently hired to teach young ladies a number of subjects at Miss Marietta Endicott’s esteemed academy. It’s just that her character doesn’t
belong
in an academy for young ladies. Below stairs is just the place, among those of like temperaments. I just don’t believe women who possess, shall we say . . .” She lowered her voice discreetly, though they were entirely alone. “. . .
low impulses . . .
ought to be teaching young girls, especially those troublesome enough to be admitted to the academy. Though I maintain the girls are merely high spirited, not, as popularly assumed, recalcitrant.”

He knew Alexandra’s youngest sister had been admitted to the academy.

“Low impulses?” he repeated, incredulously.

“Yes.”

Alexandra was serious.

Suddenly he thought of Elise’s laughter, the rise and fall of it, so like music, so like a reward that he thought he would do nearly anything to earn it. The songs that careened off melody but were impressively well rhymed.

The apple tarts.

The look on her face when she watched her son—a look that tightened his throat.

The little sound she’d made in her throat when he’d kissed her.

The soft, God, the soft, generous yield of her lips.

His
impulses seemed to originate from a place lower on his body.

Hers seemed to emanate from some inner grace. Some innate warmth.

A variety of emotions, now stretched him on some sort of internal rack, each fighting for supremacy.

The one that prevailed was a very nonspecific, cold fury.

Listening to Alexandra, he suddenly understood the rabble’s
low impulse
to divest aristocrats of their heads.

“I’m sure you’ll understand when I ask you to expound, given that she is an employee of my home,” he said smoothly.

“Oh, I’m certain she’s harmless enough, and her ability to perform her current duties seems unquestionable, but her past . . . well, I fear it’s rather . . .
unsavory
.”

She whispered that last word.

He was tempted to do something shockingly violent, like reach out with both hands and vigorously muss Alexandra’s hair. He could imagine the shrieking.

“Rest assured, my dear Alexandra, that I am impossible to shock. Providing your delicate sensibilities can withstand revisiting the occasion upon which you learned about Mrs. Fountain’s . . . low impulses . . . would you be so kind as to elaborate?”

She blinked at his tone, which, granted, was rather more militant than usual. Then she drew in a long breath, clearly enjoying the notion that her sensibilities were delicate, and lowered her voice and spoke in a rapid hush.

“His name was Mr. Edward Blaylock. He was the son of a solicitor, training to be a solicitor in London, and he came to see his young sister settled in the school. I’m told he was quite handsome—he was the talk of the teachers. But his attention settled upon Mrs. Fountain. They walked out together, he came to call evenings . . . well, let us just say that apparently the courtship wasn’t a secret. And then one day he was gone. And nine months later her son was born, though it was somehow kept very sub-rosa, you see, and very few people knew, and she continued on in her position there. And . . . well, as you know, her name isn’t Mrs.
Blaylock
. For a reason.”

The sensation seemed to leave his limbs. He recognized it as quite similar to that infinitesimal moment between the time the sword goes in and the time the pain starts.

Suddenly the beautiful starry sky seemed terrifyingly infinite and impersonal.

What must it have looked like to Elise when she’d learned she was pregnant?

Jack’s father is gone,
she’d said.

Jack’s “quite handsome” father was gone.

“Philippe?”

Apparently he hadn’t said anything for quite some time.

“From whom did you learn this, Alexandra?”

His voice was even and steady, but he heard it as if from a distance. He still felt peculiarly empty, waiting for the right emotion to pour in. He wasn’t certain how he felt.

There was an interesting pause.

“One of the servants at the school shared the information.”

He remained silent.

Which seemed to puzzle Alexandra, and she expounded in a rush.

“The academy apparently conspired to allow her to keep her job for some time despite her moral transgression, which seems very risky, don’t you think, since they depend upon the contributions and tuition fees of wealthy benefactors?”

“I imagine they had an excellent reason to keep her on.”

“And an excellent reason to finally remove her,” Alexandra said tartly.

It was the strangest sensation, these words strung together to tell a story about a woman who had become more real to him than any other. He wanted to claw at them as if they’d been a net that had dropped down over both him and Elise.

Where had she made love to Edward Blaylock?

His hand slowly curled into a fist.

Where the hell was Edward Blaylock?

“Imagine a woman and a man making love. How very shocking,” he said.

Alexandra completely missed the bite in his words.

“I suppose it’s what men and women
do
,” she said lightly. She laid her fan gently on his arm, as if claiming future rights to doing just that with him. “But it certainly speaks poorly of her judgment. Or at the very least her control.
Poor
thing,” she added, with a great and unconvincing show of compassion. “How could a woman be so careless, when in truth it is really all someone like her has to offer a man?”

He turned slowly and stared at Alexandra.

“Someone like her?” he repeated, as if she’d just said something in a confounding language, like Turkish. “I confess I have never known anyone like her.”

Tension was coiling ever more tightly in him.

“Good heavens! Nor have I,” Alexandra said emphatically, as if reassuring him, with a little shudder. Alexandra, who not only presumably had her beautiful self and her virginity to offer a man but also a vast, life-saving, dynasty-saving fortune. “But at least she has found a place here, for now. I suppose we all find our place, eventually.”

“ ‘We all find our place eventually,’ ” he quoted on a drawl, with great irony. “What a surprise to discover that you’re profound as well as beautiful, Alexandra.”

As his tone didn’t quite match his compliment, she turned to him, her head tilted quizzically.

She parted her mouth. Then closed it.

“You’re too kind,” she said, her breeding providing him with the benefit of the doubt. The sort of thing she’d never allow Mrs. Fountain.

He had the grace to feel abashed.

He looked at Alexandra then, her exquisite little face so familiar, her responses and opinions predictable, and all of it was
almost
comforting. There was beauty in tradition and duty, in rhythm and expectation. When one’s life had been comprised of cutthroats lurking around corners and pirates creeping onto the decks of ships under cover of morning mist, when relatives lost their heads, when his fortunes these days often depended on the turn of the dice or whether a ship sank before its cargo could be sold . . . he couldn’t deny that predictability could be soothing.

Perhaps his emotions weren’t meant to be contorted or stretched like the muscles in his injured hand. Perhaps it was better this way. Perhaps it was unnatural for a woman’s laugh or kiss to flay him open, revealing raw, new layers to his being he never dreamed existed, each of them exquisitely, painfully sensitive.

As if such feeling could be legislated.

“The night sky is beautiful everywhere, even in dull places like Pennyroyal Green,” Alexandra said softly.

He gave a start. He’d been looking up at the stars again. He usually glibly steered a given conversation. He’d been utterly silent.

He did need to leave Pennyroyal Green. This was not his habitat. No wonder he had lost his way. He had no rudder here; it was like a foundering ship.

“And what fitter setting for the Lady Prideux, jewel of Paris, than a sky full of diamonds,” he said reflexively.

This was the Philippe she’d always known. She smiled whimsically, her teeth bright in the dark, and he lifted her white-gloved hand to kiss the air above her knuckles.

It was all a bit like reciting lines from a play.

But if she’d hoped he’d surrender to his low impulses and try to kiss her on those blossomlike lips, she was destined for disappointment this evening.

“I’ll return to Paris inside a month, Philippe,” she said softly. “And I’m returning with Lord and Lady Archembault to London in a fortnight. I do hope you’ll return with—that is, return, too.”

It was as much a warning as a hint. It wasn’t as though Alexandra would go wanting for suitors if Philippe didn’t make a formal offer.

“I shouldn’t like you to catch a chill, Alexandra. Shall I escort you to the house again? I haven’t had nearly enough to drink yet, and I believe I’ve more dancing to do.”

Chapter 19

T
HE
EVENING HAD SEEMED
interminable, but as Elise leaned again out her window, listening to the last of the carriages rolling away amid shouted farewells, she knew a surge of pride—for herself and for Philippe—that it had been a success. She thought she’d heard someone retching somewhere outside in the shrubbery. She saw a cluster of men farther up the road staggering along, singing “The Ballad of Colin Eversea.”

Two men behind them were having a fervent exchange.

“Have I told you I love you, Jones? I do, ol’ man. You’re the
besht
friend. The very besht.”

“No,
you’re
the besht.”

“I swear to God man she was a unicorn. A unicorn! A very pretty unicorn!”

“I saw it, too, old man, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Elise laughed softly, then lowered the window all the way, like closing a curtain on a play. And on, perhaps, a chapter of her life.

And then she scrambled downstairs to give final instructions to the staff, who were likely exhausted.

She found them all in the kitchen.

“It can wait for tomorrow. Please do go on up to bed, and thank you for your help. You all did a wonderful job this evening, and I know Lord Lavay appreciated it.”

They all beamed at her, weary and pleased, and she beamed back at them, suddenly unutterably touched by their hard work and support and their kindness, all in all, that she’d helped uncover.

“Mrs. Fountain, Lady Merriweather was so pleased with my help with her coiffure she inquired as to whether I’d had training as a lady’s maid,” Kitty confided on a hush.

“Cor!” Mary exclaimed. “Lady Lumly said the same thing to me!”

They squealed, and Elise gave a delighted clap for them.

Just then Elise’s bell jangled, and they all gave a start.

They all eyed it wonderingly. Nobody moved.

“You’d think his lordship would be drunk by now and want to sleep,” James yawned.

“He just wants a nice cup of tea, I suspect,” Elise said smoothly. Her heart was ahead of her, already flying up the steps to the room. “Off to bed with all of you! Our day starts in but a few hours.”

And just in case he did want a cup of tea, she put the water on to boil.

Let him ring twice, if he wanted her that much.

S
HE FOUND HIM
in his study, lounging on the settee, arms flung over the back of it.

“Good evening, Lord Lavay.” She settled the tray down on the little table next to him. “I anticipated you might enjoy a cup of tea.”

He didn’t even look at it.

“Thank you, my dear Mrs. Fountain. You kept me waiting. That isn’t like you.”

His voice was odd. A bit ironic. A bit abstracted.

He’d flung off his coat and left it draped across a chair, and his cravat was nowhere to be seen. He was in shirtsleeves, and he’d rolled them up and unbuttoned two buttons.

All of which was quite uncivilized for Lord Lavay.

He’d never looked more thoroughly enticing.

She turned to leave so abruptly that she was nearly fleeing.

“Will you come and sit beside me for a moment, Mrs. Fountain?” He all but drawled it.

She turned back again.

He gave the settee a pat.

He said it so companionably, so softly, and made it sound like such a reasonable request, that saying no seemed churlish.

She settled in and pressed herself against the corner of the settee, as far opposite him as possible, curling her feet up beneath her.

He was silent. Studying her. There was a different quality to his silence, however.

She was concerned it was the silence of a cat about to toy with its prey.

“How did you enjoy the assembly?” she ventured.

“It was a triumph.”

His tone was so grim that she laughed softly in surprise. “I thought you enjoyed balls and soirees.”

“Oh, I excel at them, this is for certain. I spread my charm about, like so.” He made a strewing motion, as if he were feeding chickens in a barnyard. “I am considered delightful, I am told. I danced with countless women. All beautiful. All as delightful as me.”

He’d gotten awfully voluble and French, and she was both amused and dangerously enchanted.

And more than a little wary. Because there was an edge to his tone.

His face was flushed. His hair had fallen rakishly over one eye, while the other was peering at her speculatively.

“Are you bragging or complaining, Lord Lavay?”

“Merely reporting,” he said. “I did not shame myself with clumsy waltzing, thank you.”

Perhaps the memory of one little kiss had dissolved amidst the sea of beautiful women with whom he could make new memories.

She doubted it.

Head thrown back against the chair, he stared across at her and studied her through slitted eyes. She wondered if he was about to doze off.

“I’ve always wondered what it would be like to attend a grand ball,” she said, when it seemed he would never speak.

“I’ve always wondered what your hair looks like unpinned and spread out all over a pillow,” he replied.

Her jaw dropped as if the hinges had snapped.

She managed to clap her mouth shut before he could look closely at her tonsils.

“It does not
want
to stay pinned, you know.” He said this crossly, as if she’d been inflicting tyranny upon it against his objections, and he was arguing the case before a magistrate. “Look, even now!” He leaned slowly forward, and she was as mesmerized as if she were a snake and he a charmer. He reached up and drew a curl out between his fingers, straightening it then letting it go. “It bounces! Like a spring! Do you see? Why do you even try?”

She was too astounded to do anything but laugh. But it emerged breathlessly. He was so close she could feel the heat of his body, but she’d gone breathless.

There was no mistaking the fact that her heart was beating a rapid, futile warning.

Leave. Leave. Leave. Leave.

“You’re a little drunk, aren’t you, Lord Lavay?”

“You are as astute as always, Mrs. Fountain. I am, indeed,
un peu
foxed. Your hair is very soft.”

There ensued a silence, a soft one, perhaps as soft as her hair.

“Thank you,” she said cautiously.

He gave a short, ironic laugh.

“So many thoughts in your head now, I would wager, my dear Mrs. Fountain, but the words you say are ‘thank you.’ We are so careful with each other. Or rather, you are so careful, always.”

Now she was irritated. “What else would you have me be? I am your housekeeper. A servant.”

“I would have you be Yourself,” he said instantly.

“Which is?” she demanded, forgetting to be careful.

“Tart, like a persimmon, yet sweet, like a lovely, warm . . .
pêche
. A peach.” He hefted his hand and cupped it to illustrate. “So very, very kind. Clever and witty. Annoying. Delightful. Beautiful.” He again said all of these astounding things irritably, as if she’d asked him something she ought to have known. Something he’d said to her over and over.

She gaped at him and resisted the temptation to bring her hand up to touch her face.

The man knew how to conjure a blush.

He watched the blush intently, with a good deal of pleasure, as if it were a sunset. He smiled crookedly. “Ah, you see, I know you, and I know how to make you turn red. You would look magnificent dressed in red. The things I know, Mrs. Fountain. The things I know.”

“You certainly
have
had a good deal to drink” was all she said.

He shrugged with one shoulder. “Some women might say thank you, others might comment on my state of inebriation. Such is the world.”

She laughed, astonished. Utterly at a loss.

He didn’t laugh. He didn’t smile. He merely studied her through hooded eyes. “And honest,” he purred. “I should like you to be honest.”

Ah. And here it was.

She suspected he’d been disarming her for a reason.

She pressed herself more deeply into the corner, and they perused each other from opposite ends. It might as well have been a metaphor for their social spectrum.

“I have never lied to you. And . . . I haven’t the luxury of being anything other than careful, as you say, Lord Lavay.”

His brow furrowed faintly, then cleared.

“You have not— Ah. I see. You were once carefree, and someone has been careless with you, Mrs. Fountain. And now you no longer trust. This person was Jack’s father, perhaps. And now you think I will do the same to you.”

He suggested this almost lightly.

As usual, he’d leaped right to the crux of the issue with startling swiftness.

Her head rang as if he’d dropped her suddenly, hard, from a great height.

She said absolutely nothing.

“Jack’s father . . . this man . . . did he take advantage of you?”

“No.”

Alas, that answer, she realized, was only going to result in myriad questions.

“Did he seduce you, then?” asked the man who likely knew precisely how to seduce anyone, and could, in fact, do it with one hand tied behind his back. Might be, in fact, doing it now.

She drew in a long fortifying breath, then let it go.

“In the spirit of honesty, Lord Lavay, and in the hope that you’ll forget by morning what I’m about to say: No. If seduction implied strategy was needed to overcome my maidenly protestations, then no. I fear it was quite mutual. I wanted him. Only him. It was unexpected and of course inadvisable, but I was caught up in the moment, I did not say no, and I enjoyed it. And lest you think I distribute my favors about, like so”—she mimicked his strewing motion—“it wasn’t as though I had a slew of suitors. It was the very first time I lost my heart, and I daresay could be the last. And I would dare you to say ‘slew of suitors,’ Lord Lavay, but I think you’re too foxed to do it.”

She watched the play of emotion over his face—shock and admiration and something like anger, swift and subtle, none of them settling in long enough for her to read them.

“My parents disowned me when I told them the news, and I haven’t seen them in six years, either. And in case you wondered, divulging the foregoing was an example of me being something other than careful.”

She’d just deliberately indicted herself. She was tired of being sorry, and she wasn’t certain she was anymore, because in the end there was Jack. And she supposed this honesty was her way of seeking protection. Because if Lavay was so repulsed by the thought of her cavorting with a man outside of matrimony, perhaps he’d remove the threat to her heart and peace of mind that was his beautiful self.

He was quite still.

When the questions came, they were quick and abrupt. As though he were pulling shrapnel from his skin as quickly as possible.

“Where is he now?”

“God only knows.”

“Did you care for him?”

“Yes. Very much.”

And as she spoke, she watched Lavay’s face go harder and harder, colder, more remote.

“Did he care for you?”

It was getting more difficult to answer his questions.

“I thought he did.”

A hesitation at last.

“Do you still care for him?”

She heard the studied nonchalance in this question.

“I fear there is no simple answer.”

He mulled this. The silence stretched.

“I have never been in love.” He said this almost defiantly.

“I don’t recommend it,” she said.

He gave a crooked half smile, very ironic, very bittersweet.

Silence.

“Do you think he’s still alive?”

This he drawled, sounding thoughtful and cheerfully, faintly sinister. As if he’d be only too happy to run him through, and it would be an easy enough thing to do.

“He’s certainly resourceful enough. If I were required to wager on it, I would wager yes.”

And on the last word her voice finally broke.

She’d managed to give all of her answers a glib lilt, but it was like taking one too many steps on a wound that hadn’t quite healed and might never completely. A man she cared about and trusted had made love to her and then abandoned her whilst pregnant. She, who was so, so clever, and so, so proud, hadn’t been able to discern a good man from a feckless, faithless one.

And now she was presented with a
truly
good man she could never have.

The pain caught up to her, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe.

She held very still, as if everything inside her was broken and should not be jostled.

Lavay’s eyes were glittery and remote, and his regard was merciless. She feared reading his verdict about her character or lack thereof on his face. And yet perhaps it would be a relief.

At last, he leaned back hard against the settee.

He sighed a breath he’d seemed to be holding.

He lifted his hand and held it briefly over his eyes. As if to shield himself from the glare of all that appalling truth. And then dropped it again, and gave his head a slow shake.

“I don’t know how . . .” he began. “It’s just . . .” His voice was low and scraped raw.

He seemed unable to meet her eyes.

They were aimed at his untouched tea.

And then he turned his head very deliberately to look at her, and the very act of seeing her seemed to pain him.

Her heart did a slow plummet, and she seemed to feel its jagged edges all the way down.

He leaned toward her, hands on his knees. “I just don’t know how
anyone
could ever leave you, Elise.”

He said it slowly, deliberately, wonderingly, as if handing down a verdict.

And then he gave a short rueful laugh.

As if it was both a realization and a confession and he wasn’t quite certain how he felt about it.

Their gazes collided, and a rush of joy roared through her bleakness. He began to smile.

She shook her head, as if she could settle all the old fear and shame that had been stirred into its undisturbed place again, but it was no use. She dashed her hand roughly at her eyes, but a few tears escaped and clung to her eyelashes anyway. She could feel the consequences of everything that came before pulling at her.