Lady Maggie's Secret Scandal (10 page)

She had such a lovely voice. Light, soft, lilting with a hint of something Gaelic or Celtic… exotic. The sound of her voice was so pretty, it almost disguised the ugliness of her words.

“How old were you?”

“Five, possibly six. It depends on whether I am truly Moreland’s by-blow or just a result of my mother’s schemes in his direction.”

Six years old and sold to a brothel? The food he’d eaten threatened to rebel.

“I’m… sorry.” For calling her a dollymop, for making her repeat this miserable tale, for what he was about to suggest.

She turned her head to regard him, the slight sheen in her eyes making him sorrier still. Sorrier than he could recall being about anything in a long, long time. Not just guilty and ashamed, but full of regret—for her.

The way he’d been full of regret for his sisters and powerless to do anything but support them in their solitary struggles. He shoved that thought aside, along with the odd notion that he should take Magdalene Windham’s hand in some laughable gesture of comfort.

He passed her his handkerchief instead. “This makes the stated purpose of my call somewhat awkward.”

“It makes just about everything somewhat awkward,” she said quietly. “Try a few years at finishing school when you’re the daughter of not just a courtesan—there are some of those, after all—but a courtesan who sells her offspring. I realized fairly early that my mother’s great failing was not a lack of virtue, but rather that she was greedy in her fall from grace.”

“She exploited a child,” Hazlit said. “That is an order of magnitude different from parlaying with an adult male in a transaction of mutual benefit.”

“Do you think so?” She laid his handkerchief out in her lap, her fingers running over his monogrammed initials. “Some might say she was protecting me, providing for me and holding the duke accountable for his youthful indiscretions.”

Despite her mild tone, Hazlit didn’t think Miss Windham would reach those conclusions. She might long to, but she wouldn’t. By the age of six a child usually had the measure of her caretakers.

And to think of Maggie Windham at six… big
innocent
green eyes, masses of red hair, perfect skin… in a brothel.

“I am going to suggest a notion for which you should probably slap me,” he said. Hell, he ought to slap himself. Call himself out, more like.

“I gather the topic has been changed.” She passed him back his unused hanky. “Say on. I have correspondence to attend to, and you need to be about your snooping.”

She did not, he noted, mention having calls to make.

“To facilitate our dealings over the next few weeks, I suggest you allow me to court you. To
appear
to court you.”

***

Mr. Hazlit had measured his words, neither hurrying through them nor dropping his voice, but making the careful distinction between courting her and
appearing
to court her.

She’d already cried, or nearly had, so Maggie concluded she ought possibly to laugh.

“
Appear
to court me. Explain yourself, Mr. Hazlit.”

“What do you know about your maid, Millie?”

She took her time answering, in part because she was mad at him—he’d necessitated that she disclose her origins, something she hadn’t felt the need to speak of in years—and in part because she wanted time to study his surprisingly handsome profile.

He was tall and broad-shouldered, like her brothers. He also had dark hair like them, but there the similarity ended. Hazlit’s eyes were not the much-vaunted Windham green, but rather a brown so dark as to appear black. Sitting next to him, Maggie could see golden flecks radiating around his pupils, but from across a room, his eyes were merely dark.

And slanted a little under swooping dark brows, giving him a piratical air.

Did she want to be courted—to appearances—by a man with such eyebrows?

His nose was no better recommendation, being on the generous side and a trifle hooked. There was nothing sweet or apologetic about that nose. It was probably a good nose for snooping.

His mouth, however… It was a severe mouth, all grim lines and clipped speech. A perverse part of her wondered if he even knew how to offer a genuine smile. And if he were to kiss her—courting involved kissing, of that she was certain—would his mouth be as cold and stern as it looked?

“Millie has been with me for two years. Her father was wounded on the Peninsula. She’s the oldest girl of seven; her family name is Carruthers.”

It was more than most employers would know about their tweeny, but as Maggie watched Hazlit’s eyebrows twitch down, she realized it wasn’t very much at all.

“She likes scones with sultanas,” Maggie added, “and she’s quite smitten with my head footman, though he’s old enough to be her father.”

The expression Mr. Hazlit turned on her held lurking I-told-you-so smugness. “She had motive, therefore, to betray you.”

“Betray me?”

“To sell your reticule or whatever was inside it that you do not want to discuss with me. To sell it to aid her hungry siblings.”

Studying him lost its appeal as Maggie decided it wasn’t condescension he was trying to mask, but possibly pity. “Millie is well fed, warm in winter, and given a full day off each week. Her wages are generous, and my housekeeper is a cheerful person to work for. Why should she betray me over a few coins?”

He crossed his legs at the knee like a Continental dandy, except there was nothing fussy about such a posture when he assumed it. “Her father can’t work and has what, seven other mouths to feed? They are her family; you are her employer. Her loyalty to you cannot be so great as her loyalty to them.”

“You place a great store in family loyalty, Mr. Hazlit.”

Though, damn him, he had a point.

“If I am seen to court you, then even before your staff we will have excuses to be whispering in corners and spending a great deal of time together. I make this suggestion to better effect your stated goal of retrieving the reticule, Miss Windham, not to prolong our association or in any way inconvenience you.”

That mouth of his was a flat, grim line, which was reassuring in a way. He didn’t like this idea any more than she did.

“What is involved in appearing to court me?”

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “You haven’t been courted before? What about the climbing cits and baronets’ sons? They never came up to scratch?”

“Many of them did.” She wondered what he’d look like if somebody were to shave off those piratical eyebrows. “They did not bother much with the other part of the business.”

“The wooing?”

“The nonsense.”

“We need the nonsense,” he said. “We need to drive out at the fashionable hour; we need to be seen arm in arm at the social events. I need to call upon you at the proper times with flowers in hand, to spend time with your menfolk when I creditably can. I’ll carry your purchases when you go shopping and be heard begging you to save your waltzes for me.”

“There’s a problem,” she said, curiously disappointed to see the flaw in his clever scheme. He was a wonderful dancer; that was just plain fact.

And she loved flowers, and loved the greenery and fresh air of Hyde Park.

She also liked to shop but generally contented herself with the occasional minor outing with her sisters.

And to hear him begging for her waltzes…

“What sort of problem can there possibly be? Couples are expected to court in spring. It’s the whole purpose behind the Season.”

“If you court me like that, Their Graces will get wind of it. They very likely already know you’ve called on me.”

“And this is a problem how?”

He wasn’t a patient man, or one apparently plagued with meddlesome parents.

“They will
start
, Mr. Hazlit. They will get their hopes up. They will sigh and hint and quiz my siblings, all in hopes that you will take me off their hands.”

“Then they will be disappointed. Parents expect to be disappointed. My sister was a governess, and she has explained this to me.”

He looked like he was winding up for a lecture before the Royal Society, so she put a hand on his arm. “I do not like to disappoint Their Graces,” she said quietly. “They have suffered much at the hands of their children.”

He blinked at her, his lips pursing as if her sentiments were incomprehensible.

“I won’t declare for you,” he said. “If they let their hopes be raised by a few silly gestures, then that is their problem. You have many siblings. Let them fret over the others.”

“It isn’t like that.” She cocked her head to study him. Hadn’t he had any parents at all? “I could have seventeen siblings, and Their Graces would still worry about me. You mentioned having sisters. Do you worry less about the one than the other?”

“I do not.” He didn’t seem at all pleased with this example. “I worry about them both, incessantly. Excessively, to hear them tell it, but they have no regard for my feelings, else they’d write more than just chatty little…”

“Yes?”

“Never mind.”

Some imp made her press for details. “What are their names?”

“Avis, who remains near the family seat in Cumbria, and Alexandra, who has recently given up governessing here in the South for the questionable charms of her husband.”

His expression had shifted, disgruntlement creasing his brow and banked fraternal frustration lurking in his eyes. He looked like a
brother
then, like a man who wanted to care for his sisters but didn’t know quite how to go about it.

Maggie knew that expression, had seen it on all of her brothers, particularly Devlin, the oldest and the only other one to bear the stigma of illegitimacy. Despite her general distaste for Hazlit, she had to approve of brothers who worried.

Within reason.

“You will court me—to appearances—but in a desultory fashion.”

“I am not a desultory man, and you are not a woman a sane man could approach in a desultory fashion.”

“Is that a compliment?” Because if it wasn’t a compliment, then she strongly suspected it was an insult.

“It is a statement of fact.” He glanced over at her, his gaze lighting on her hair, which was coiled tidily on her head. He frowned at her hair, then his lips turned up. “And it is a compliment. You are quite pretty, Miss Windham.”

“Gracious.” She rose, needing distance from him if he was going to spout nonsense and very nearly
smile
at her. “You need not dissemble when we are in private.”

“Oh, but I do—though that was the God’s honest truth.” He was on his feet, strolling along right beside her. “Unless I am absolutely certain we cannot be seen, heard, or detected by others, I will comport myself like a man smitten.”

“Smitten?” The notion was laughable. She could conceive of him allowing a discreet, calculated interest in some woman of impeccable breeding and tidy blonde hair, but nobody would believe him smitten with her.

“Smitten.” He nodded once, agreeing with his own word choice. “Perhaps cautiously so, but smitten.”

“This will require the thespian skills of Mr. Kean.” She eyed him curiously. What would it be like if he were smitten with her?

“I shall rise to the challenge easily enough.” He glanced around as they approached a greening rose vine winding over an arched trellis. “Allow me to demonstrate.”

He turned to face her under the trellis, bent his head, and kissed her.

Kissing Magdalene Windham had not been part of Hazlit’s plan. His plan had been to figure out what was disturbing her otherwise retiring life—he owed the Windham family that much—and to remove the problem in exchange for her coin.
That
was what prompted a need for proximity to her, not some silly reticule.

His plan had been to feign the polite interest of a man looking about for a potential match, a sensible match borne of the motivations of a sensible, reasonably wealthy man when looking to build his dynasty.

His plan had been to keep his senses sharp, not to swamp them with the scent, taste, and feel of a lovely woman on a spring day.

A lovely, somewhat reticent woman, whose height meant she fit him wonderfully, her hips cradling his pelvis, her breasts pressing intimately against his chest. Her mouth was soft and lush and hesitant against his, as if asking him how to go on.

He showed her—which was also not in his plan. He lingered over her jaw and brow, stealing a whiff of the mille fleurs and cinnamon scent of her hair. He nuzzled the curve of her ear and felt a little ripple of shock go through her body. When she curled into him on a sigh, he set his mouth to the corner of her lips, teasing her into turning her face to his.

And then
she
was showing
him
. Showing him how long it had been since a kiss had been more than a mandatory and perfunctory preliminary to equally perfunctory coitus. Showing him the pleasure of eagerness that sought to outmatch shyness, showing him he had something to give, even in such a thing as a feigned kiss.