Lady Maggie's Secret Scandal (36 page)

“The man has five daughters. My sympathy for him grows by the day.”

Her smile died a quick and miserable death. “Six daughters. I won’t have him bothered, you know, by Cecily. And this mustn’t reach Her Grace. They’ve weathered scandal and heartache both on account of their children.”

“If His Grace is Bridget’s father, then he will take responsibility for his actions.”

“
I
took responsibility for his actions,” Maggie said, chin coming up. “She’s my sister, and after all Their Graces have done for me, it’s my duty to provide—”

He stopped this righteous little tirade by the simple expedient of kissing her.

“She’s your sister, but she’s
his
daughter—perhaps—and if you knew your father better, you’d understand that Bridget is her father’s responsibility.”

“I do understand him, and I understand that his primary motivation in this life is to treasure his duchess. By-blows bookending his legitimate offspring would cost Her Grace all of her consequence, and more to the point, it would
break
her
heart
to think her Percy had been untrue. I cannot have that on my conscience, Benjamin. Papa doesn’t deserve to support his daughter if he was so selfish and stupid as to sneak about with the likes of Cecily.”

“He doesn’t deserve—?”

Ben did not account himself brilliant by any lights, but he was bright enough to comprehend that tangling with Maggie’s female logic would curdle his wits. Nothing and no one relieved a man of the right and duty to support his offspring, much less a man with a title and means to do so. That Maggie had been raised in the ducal household was proof that His Grace understood this basic tenet of honor even if Maggie did not.

“Have another crème cake, my dear. I’m going to fetch the coach.”

She looked like she wanted to argue further, but Ben’s grasp of tactics was sufficient that he knew when to get up, leave the room to scare up a footman, and stay away from Maggie long enough that she was dozing on the sofa when he returned.

***

“I haven’t more than a few pounds saved,” Adele said, drawing the brush through Bridget’s hair. “You’re welcome to them.”

More French—they almost always spoke French when they were alone these days. “Where would I go?”

Adele gave Bridget a despairing look, and Bridget knew what wasn’t being said. In two days, Bridget would be fifteen, and her sole accomplishment in life—besides an increasing command of French—was that she was pretty. Alarmingly so.

When her body had started bulging and curving in odd places, Bridget had consoled herself that she was going to look like Maggie, who was beautiful indeed.

Except she wasn’t quite as tall as Maggie, she hadn’t Maggie’s gorgeous green eyes, and while Maggie’s height looked stately on her, on Bridget it still looked gangly and ungainly.

And now this awkward, inconvenient beauty was going to mean Mama could get money for allowing strange men to do shocking, intimate things to Bridget. From her reading, from the things Mama muttered to the dregs of the dinner wine, from the way the men leered in the park, Bridget had deduced her looming fate.

She had also figured out her own mother had gone willingly to the same fate when she was the age Bridget now approached.

“You could go to Maggie.”

“I’ve asked Maggie for help, and she hasn’t replied.” To say such a thing aloud made the anxiety gnawing at Bridget’s insides coil more tightly.

“She’ll help. I had your letter delivered directly to her hand. Maggie has always helped in the past.”

“Maggie is
good
. She’s no match for Mama.” Maggie was generous. She slipped Bridget pin money on those rare occasions when they visited, and she sent along little gifts—the bottle of scent, an inlaid comb, pretty hair ribbons. Bridget liked the scent best, because it bore Maggie’s own, comforting fragrance.

But in hurried whispers just a few months past, Maggie had explained that Cecily had legal and physical custody of her minor children, unlike a married woman whose children were in her husband’s keeping. If Maggie were to take Bridget under her own roof, Cecily would be able to summon the authorities to snatch Bridget away from her sister’s care.

And Cecily would do it, too, on the merest whim.

“Maggie loves you. She’ll not stand by while your mother ruins your life.” Adele spoke bravely, but Bridget looked at the painted, powdered, barely decent creature in her vanity mirror.

“If Maggie is going to do something, she’d better do it soon.”

***

Maggie decided the lassitude dogging her ever since she’d collapsed into Benjamin’s arms on Lady Dandridge’s stoop had to be relief at having confided her situation to someone who would keep her secrets—or sheer emotional exhaustion.

“I should be doing something,” she muttered as Benjamin ran a warmer over her sheets. “I should be snatching Bridget away from Cecily’s clutches and whisking my sister onto a packet bound for some foreign shore. I should at least be finding out where Cecily is biding these days. I should be notifying Tom and Ted, because they might know something—”

Benjamin put a finger to her lips. “
We
will manage all of that.
You
will go to bed.”

Maggie stood by the bed and folded her arms across her middle. “How does
my
going to bed accomplish anything?”

“It lets
me
be about the business of gathering information without having to worry that
you’re
out wandering around in a pouring rain, ruining your bonnet, your health, and
my
nerves. Get in bed.”

He thrived on giving orders, did the Earl of Hazelton. What was harder to admit was that Maggie was almost glad he did.

“You are not to go climbing into any windows but mine, Benjamin.” She spoke just as sternly as he had, lest he get ideas about who was fit to give orders to whom.

“I’m going to my club, if you must know. I’m going to bury my nose in a newspaper and listen for all the latest gossip while appearing to be the soul of indifference. I’m going to send notes to Bath and a few other places, and I am
not
going to book passage for anybody thinking to skulk off to foreign shores.”

And amid all their other differences, that was the one Maggie was least willing to brace him on.

“We can deal with that when Bridget is safe from Cecily’s schemes.”

He loomed over her, his eyes dark, his expression implacable. “You are wearing
my
ring, Maggie Windham.”

“I am wearing your ring because you were hen-witted enough to sneak it onto my night table when I was too overset to notice, and I did not want to lose it, and leaving expensive jewelry around where any maid might misplace—”

But now the handsome wretch was smiling down at her. “Hen-witted, Maggie? I kiss your cheek in parting, slip a ring onto your night table, and you say I’m the one who’s rendered hen-witted?”

“It’s one of Her Grace’s words. When she uses it on the boys, they positively reel with abused dignity.”

“Reel into bed, Maggie, and expect me to call on you quite early tomorrow.”

It was a concession, that he’d let her know to expect him in the morning. It both relieved her worry that he might climb into her window that very night and assured her he wasn’t going to call anybody out, or worse—drag His Grace into a mess Maggie had spent half her life trying to keep her father and his family free of.

She sank onto the bed, fatigue abruptly weighing on her in body, mind, and spirit.

“I’m scared, Benjamin.” She hadn’t meant to say that. Hadn’t meant to say anything except “Good night.” When he sat beside her, his presence—his patience with her—was a genuine comfort. He put an arm around her waist.

“You have been scared for some time, I think.”

That was a hard, miserable truth, so Maggie didn’t argue. “What does it make me, that I hate my own mother?”

“A mother worth the name would never court your hatred, much less exploit her own children for purely selfish ends.”

He stayed there for a moment while Maggie tried to come up with a reply, but her mind would not put words together into sentences. That Benjamin was taking on this difficulty of hers justified her faith in him, even as it rendered any dreams of being his countess into so many ashes.

***

“Just sitting here in a corner, perusing the papers in all innocence, you have the ability to render an entire room of otherwise brave fellows nervous.” Deene took the chair beside Ben’s and lowered his lanky frame to the cushion. “One envies you this.”

Ben put aside the paper, grateful that somebody had taken the bait after only twenty minutes of staring at the society pages. “Are you hiding from the debutantes, Deene, or studying my methods?”

“Perhaps both.” Deene helped himself to a glass of wine and took a leisurely sip. “Haven’t seen you out and about with Lady Maggie since your much-vaunted engagement.”

“We’ve been too busy gazing longingly into each other’s eyes, billing and cooing.”

“Oh, quite.” Deene took another sip of wine, giving Ben the impression the marquis had something specific on his mind. “When did you take to reading the society pages?”

“I’m marrying into a ducal family, and thus the society pages become relevant.”

“You’re keeping informed regarding the beau monde because that’s what you do.” The bantering note in Deene’s voice vanished with this observation. “And because you do remain informed, and you are supposedly marrying a Windham, there’s something you should know.”

Down to business, and thank Christ it hadn’t taken half the damned bottle. “I’m listening, Deene.”

And while Ben listened, he made a convincing show of boredom—shooting his cuffs, examining the crease of his trousers, even taking out his watch and flipping it open.

“A rumor has reached me,” Deene said very softly. “It’s generally known my mistresses have all been red-haired, and so at first I didn’t think much of it when somebody mentioned a new offering coming available, a young Venus with red hair and innocent airs.”

Ben’s insides went still as Deene set down his wine glass. “Coming available when?”

“There’s to be a soiree two nights hence. The girl’s proprietress is firing her off and has gone so far as to invite a dozen titled, single young fellows with plenty of blunt to come look over the goods.”

“And why are you telling me this when I am soon to partake of wedded bliss?” He hoped.

“Because the girl is said to bear a close resemblance to Lady Maggie Windham. Make of that what you will, but the speculation is that Lady Maggie, like her sire before her, began her parenting ventures with a by-blow of her own.”

“She has not.” Ben’s jaw clenched as he spoke, and he realized he’d balled up the paper in his hand.

“Thought not.” Deene poured Ben another half glass of wine and did not even glance at the ruined newspaper. “I couldn’t exactly approach old Moreland with this tale but felt somebody ought to pass it along.”

“Because?”

“Because Moreland, bless his cussed, autocratic hide, takes the welfare of his womenfolk very seriously, and if somebody dishonored Lady Maggie when she was not even out of the schoolroom, then that somebody had best be deciding between pistols and swords, hadn’t he?”

Deene’s blue-eyed gaze settled on Ben for just a moment, the intensity therein taking Ben just a bit aback.

“Are you pining for my intended, Deene?”

“I am not. I served with her brothers; I stand up with her sisters. Moreland has been more than helpful sorting out my late father’s tangled affairs. I consider myself a friend of the family and thus a friend to Maggie Windham’s interests—and perhaps to yours, if a friend would be useful.”

It wasn’t at all what Ben had been expecting. “That’s good to know.”

Deene crossed his arms and slouched down into his chair. “And now I am going to doze in peace. Be a good fellow and have the waiter bring me a fresh bottle before you go.”

Ben made a pretense of studying the paper for a few more minutes, then got up and ordered Deene the best vintage the cellar had to offer.

***

Benjamin Portmaine had a decent nature lurking beneath all his high-handedness, passionate kisses, and subtle maneuvers. It was the part of him that meant he carried half of Mayfair’s dirty little secrets without ever breathing a word of what he knew.

It was the part of him Maggie found the most trustworthy, also the part of him that had allowed her a passably good night’s sleep before he engaged her in an out-and-out donnybrook at breakfast.

“What do you propose, then?” He sat back in his chair and glared at her over buttered toast and Spanish oranges. “We simply whisk your sister off to Halifax, not a word to His Grace, no one the wiser?”

“I propose that
I
whisk her off to Rome, at least—my brother Valentine has connections there. I’ve sent a note around to Mr. Kettering to gather my ready coin to make sure we travel swiftly and in comfort.”