Once Upon a Scandal (29 page)

Like them, she would not give up without a fight.

She launched herself at Sir Aldus, screaming like a Valkyrie, knowing a fleeting satisfaction when his hands dropped in surprise, leaving his face exposed. She slammed a rounded fist into one eye and beat the side of his head with the other, relishing his sharp grunt, even as pain shot through her arm. He was every loathsome thing personified.

He was also a man, though, stronger than she, and after his momentary shock, he quickly recovered, his hands biting into her arms, bruising as he pushed her back into the wall. Her shoulders scraped against the stone as he pinned her, his face red from the exertion but with a smile that terrified her. She screamed again, kicking at his knees, his thighs, any place her slippers could make contact. How could this happen, when hundreds of guests were on the other side of that wall?

Suddenly, though, they were no longer alone. Having heard her screams, perhaps, people had started streaming onto the patio, Benjamin at the forefront, every step towards them one of deadly intent.

“Let her go,” he said, “or I will kill you where you stand.”

Sir Aldus immediately stepped back, as gasps of outrage ran through the growing throng. “It’s not what it looks like,” he stammered. “She came out to meet me. She wanted this.”

Even she was caught off guard by the speed with which Benjamin struck, a single blow to Sir Aldus’s jaw, knocking him unconscious to the hard stone floor.

She would never forget the sight as footmen dragged Sir Aldus from the scene. Someone threw wine in his face to rouse him, and his eyes wobbled, one of them blackened, his jaw swollen and likely broken, as blood dribbled down his chin.

And the look in Benjamin’s eyes. So many emotions, warring with each other. Anguish. Regret. And above all else, a lethal fury, because she’d instinctively grabbed hold of his arm, making the bruises darkening her skin all too apparent. At the sight of them, he’d made a move towards Sir Aldus’s insensate body, nearly pulling her with him, but when she stiffened—her arms throbbing with the pain of the blows they’d inflicted—he stopped immediately, turning towards her with a long pause before he spoke. “I was nearly too late. I am so sorry, Jane.”

Shock fisted through her, because others had heard him as well, and a hundred eyes suddenly snapped to them. Benjamin paled uncharacteristically, his mouth a tight line, his face shuttered.

“Why does he call you Jane?” It was Caroline Melbourne, pushing her way through the crowd, looking like a cat cornering something small and furry and helpless.

But she was not helpless. “
Pauvre
monsieur
Marworth. I think my errant knight was trying once more to rescue the girl he lost to the Thames.”

She could hear sympathetic murmuring, but Lady Melbourne was undeterred. “You are very like Miss Fitzsimmons, aren’t you? Shockingly similar.”

“So I am told. Did you know my cousin well,
madame
?”

Caroline gave a tinny laugh. “We hardly ran in the same circles. Jane was … What is the word … ?” The woman looked directly at Jane then, eyes unblinking. “She was far too haughty for my tastes.”

The crowd shifted uncomfortably, but Jane lifted her chin and nodded. It had been a direct hit and very close to the truth. “That
is
unfortunate. I find I’m far more worried about my own flaws than the ones in others.”

Lady Melbourne paused, quietly assessing. “Then you are not so similar after all.” She spun on her heel then, returning to ballroom, people edging away, as if she were some sort of contagion. How well Jane knew the feeling.

The situations of men leave them open to a variety of temptations that lay out their road. Their passions are daily subject to be heated. How hard it is for them to avoid being importuned by excess.—
Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women

Yet another night with very little rest. Over and over, Benjamin had replayed his actions at the ball. How close he’d come to costing them the whole of it.

When he’d seen Rempley abusing Jane, though, something had snapped inside him. The last tethers of his restraint, perhaps, the bonds that had kept his persona in place for so long. In that moment, he’d wanted nothing more than to kill the man.

Which would have meant a complete loss of control. His misstep with Jane’s identity proved how close he was skating to the edges of it. In her presence, would he ever again be able to remain separate and apart, casually aloof? When all he wanted to do was keep her close to him and safe?

“Lord Marworth,” his butler said, interrupting his thoughts. “There’s an urgent note for you. A footman from Sir Aldus Rempley’s house is waiting for a reply.”

He stood and took hold of the missive, scanning it quickly. It was from Montford, requesting his presence at Rempley’s with all due haste. “Let the man know I’ll follow momentarily.”

He’d relish the opportunity to smash his fists into Rempley once more.

The house was near enough that a carriage wasn’t needed on a warm day. As soon as a horse could be saddled, he was off. Within a quarter hour, he was tossing a crown and the horse’s reins to a street lad and rushing up the stairs. Several knocks sounded before a harried butler answered the door.

“Lord Marworth to see Lord Fitzsimmons,” he said, proffering a card to the man, who stared at it dumbly. “Lord Fitzsimmons,” he prompted. “Or Sir Aldus? My presence was requested.”

“Of course, my lord. If you would give me but a moment to see who might be available.”

Long minutes passed before the butler reappeared, ashen-faced. “Lord Fitzsimmons will meet you in Sir Aldus’s study.”

It was just a short walk down the hall and then a turn towards an oak door hanging loosely on its hinges. Inside the room several things, all at once, assaulted his senses.

Montford huddled in front of a bare fireplace, a nearly empty bottle of claret in hand, eyes frenetic.

A plain, wooden chair, broken into pieces.

Tall French doors, shut fast on this steamy day, despite the dank, metallic odor in the air.

An imposing mahogany desk, centered in the room, topped with three pieces of paper, neatly ordered.

Puddled around one side of the desk, a dark substance dried onto the floor. A splatter of the same extended beyond it.

Every nerve was heightened now. He’d seen similar things in dark and violent places.

“What happened here?”

“Something unspeakable.” Montford’s voice was hollow, the claret shaking in his hand.

“Where is Sir Aldus?”

Montford’s head tilted towards the desk, so Benjamin took several steps forward, until he was close enough to peer over its edge. A pistol nestled in a lifeless hand. A wide pool of blood. And Sir Aldus Rempley, clearly dead.

“I came here not an hour ago to visit with him, as I try to do each week.” Montford’s words fell one past the next, careening and off-center. “I found the butler in a panic. He’d heard a gunshot, but the door to the study was barricaded. It took us several attempts to break it open. God in heaven, I’ll never recover from the sight.”

“Have you called for a runner?”

“I can’t involve Bow Street! They’ll see this for what it is. He’ll be buried at a crossroads, a stake through his heart. Charlotte won’t survive it.” Montford stood, his movements unsteady. “That’s why I asked for you. The servants will swear it was an accident, that he was cleaning his gun. And you are so well-connected. Will you help me spread the story? No one will doubt you.”

Benjamin looked over the scene, scrutinizing each detail. “A pistol makes quick work of things. Why did he need to barricade the door?”

“Who can know? Perhaps he didn’t want to be interrupted or dissuaded from his path. His humiliation last night must have proved unbearable … ”

“Did the butler say if anyone else saw Sir Aldus this morning?”

“A doctor came to see about his jaw, and a messenger came by with a note revoking a club membership. Charlotte meant to visit with me, but Violet isn’t well, so she stayed at home. Thank God.”

“Have you tried the French doors?” Framed by tall, velvet curtains, they opened onto a private courtyard, not far removed from the street. “Are they locked?”

“I went no farther than the desk.” Montford’s voice had lowered to a whisper now as he glanced over his shoulder towards the hall door, still slightly ajar. “When I saw him and the papers there, I panicked.”

Given the nature of his wound, Rempley would have died instantly. “Did he leave a note?”

“He left behind something even more damning.” Montford sloshed the remaining claret into his mouth, spilling it onto his loosened cravat. “Anyone can see they are documents of a sensitive nature. I wondered if you might know what’s to be done.”

Benjamin turned to the papers then, set one beside the next. The first two were decoded missives, the sort sent over from the War Office to keep Whitehall abreast of frontline developments. But several words immediately caught his attention.

The missing dossiers. Rempley had hidden them here all along? But why leave them on the desk for anyone finding his body to see, an admission of guilt and pointless scheming? After all, if he’d meant to destroy Fitzsimmons’s reputation, the job had already been done. Benjamin looked to the next piece of paper. The note, which bore no signature, was just a few short lines. He focused on the last.

The very note stolen from Grillion’s. He wanted to crush it in his hands, because Rempley, lying there in his own blood, had gotten off too lightly. He stared down at the body, grey and stiff. Could the man’s intent all along have been to so debase Jane’s prospects that she’d be forced to act his mistress? She’d already refused his proposals of marriage, the rejections no doubt humbling. Had that been sufficient motivation for a man who had stopped at nothing to get what he wanted?

“Do you think they could be the papers we searched for at Fitzsimmons House? Could Uncle Aldus have unfairly accused a friend? I had no idea what he was capable of.”

He didn’t answer Montford’s question. He was too caught up in a sudden whorl of gratitude. The papers were here; Lord Fitzsimmons had not been a traitor after all. Jane need never know her father had been the likely suspect.

And something else for which to be thankful, a relief darker and more perverse. She need never know the depths of his own involvement. Was it too great a weakness to be glad for that? That she would see him as a better man than he was?

“I will never understand this,” Montford said, shaking his head. “And I can’t tell Charlotte the truth. I just can’t.”

“You were right to send for me,” he said, collecting the papers and tucking them into his breast pocket. “Accidents occur with guns all the time. It’s terribly unfortunate Sir Aldus was not more careful.”

And he did feel it, a suddenly acute regret, not for Rempley’s passing but for the reality his death had revealed. With the return of the papers to Whitehall, there was no longer any need for Lillianne Fauchon.

Jane now had the rest of her life to lead. And Benjamin had no part in it.

An enlightened mind is seldom wrought up in ecstasy, and seldom overwhelmed by terror.—
Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women

“Can that really be the end of it?” Jane asked. After sending a note to the others at Whitehall, he’d driven straight to Lady Marchmain’s to share the news of Rempley’s death.

“It seems so,” he admitted. “He claimed the documents had been stolen, and yet they were found with his body. He’d taken the letter from Grillion’s as well.”

“To rifle through my mother’s things with such utter disregard,” she said, shaking her head. “Even so long after her death, he could not let her be.”

“Rempley was a predator, a man beyond redemption. In the end, at the center of a spiraling scandal, he took the coward’s way out.”

“So what does all of this mean?” She’d paled suddenly, making her eyes look enormous in contrast.

“That Madame Fauchon has served her purpose. That she lured the culprit out into the open, just as we’d always hoped.” He swallowed against a wave of remorse. “That you are free, when you wish, to begin anew. To find your place.”

“Oh,” she said softly. How he ached to sweep her into his arms. But he could not do it. People were wrong about a hunger. You didn’t feed it. You starved it.

“I’m not quite sure what to do next,” she said. “But I should be relieved, shouldn’t I? I’ve a whole new world that awaits me. New experiences. New friends.”

“Of course you do,” he said with false cheer. “Where will you go?”

“Perhaps the continent,” she said, her eyes sparking. “I shall hire myself a dependable guide and travel to the places I’ve read about, like Rome, and the water city of Venice. Or Switzerland and the towns along the Alps. I should love to see Greece, though that might be too much of an adventure. And of course Paris, when the wars are done.”

All he could see were the dangers in such a far-flung journey. “You can’t travel anywhere until I’ve hired guards to keep you safe. I shall interview them personally.”

She gave him an uneven smile. “Perhaps I’ll disguise myself as a man and hire a bear-leader to go with me. I’ll embark on my own version of the Grand Tour.”

Surely, she was joking. “Don’t let your success as Madame Fauchon turn your head.” He glanced furtively at her breasts, though hopefully, she hadn’t noticed. “No one will believe you are a man.”

With a sigh, she turned towards the window and the darkening sky. Rain threatened. “Perhaps Scotland, then. A house on the coast. I’ve not been since I was a child.”

How hollow he felt. If he shook himself and closed his eyes, could he pretend they were at the beginning of their time together instead of near the end?

“But I do have one great regret … ”

He had several. Each of them crushing. “I will change it if I can.”