One Scandalous Kiss (26 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I
F THE M
AN
hadn’t come to Hartwell to spoil each and every one of Lucius’s plans and force his daughter into a marriage she didn’t desire, Lucius might have found Seymour Sedgwick amusing. He smiled a great deal, a broad toothy expression that he managed to infuse with merriment and charm. And though he was a man of small stature, he seemed to command the room. Like his daughter, he exuded a kind of palpable energy and spoke each word as if he equated communicating with convincing. He would have made a fine actor on any stage.

“May is my only child, you see.” He turned toward May, mouth quivering, gaze earnest, but May didn’t return one of her sunny expressions. Her full mouth remained immobile, and Lucius noted faint shadows under her eyes and a few tears still tangled in her lashes. She looked young, and it struck him that the girl was a dozen years his junior and half that number of years younger than Jessamin. Her confidence and charm seemed excessive for one so young, and yet none of it seemed to have any effect on the man she’d clearly inherited it from.

“Her happiness, the prospect of seeing her settled. Well, nothing is more important to me than that, Lord Grimsby.”

And nothing is more important to me than getting you out of my home.

Though Sedgwick had indicated a chair for Lucius to take a seat, seemingly oblivious to the outrageous rudeness of the gesture, Lucius continued to stand, and at a distance from Sedgwick. There was such intensity around the man, it seemed as if he might burst into flames if he moved too quickly or scraped against anything, and Lucius wanted him away from Jessamin and the rest of his family.

“I hope Miss Sedgwick knows that I wish her all the happiness she can bear.”

Lucius met May’s gaze when he repeated her words to him. Her quick nod seemed indication that she’d meant what she’d said and this unexpected visit came at her father’s instigation, not hers.

“I’m glad to hear it, Grimsby. Then perhaps we should discuss dates, May’s dowry, and your future as man and wife.”

Perhaps it was one of the strategies the man employed in business—the impervious wall, unchanging and immovable, regardless of his adversary’s responses or denials. And it was clear they were adversaries, no matter how wide Sedgwick’s grins.

“Mr. Sedgwick, May and I cannot marry. And I am only content to say that in her presence because she assured me—”

“She was mistaken.”

May turned away to look out the window as her father continued.

“Whatever she said to you before she departed for London, put it out of your mind, Grimsby. She now tells me she was overwrought and has had quite a change of heart. Women are such changeable creatures, are they not?”

It was the first moment Sedgwick let the mask slip, and as his glamorous outer shine faltered, Lucius glimpsed fury, resentment, bitterness, every ugly impulse that could twist a man. He’d seen it in his father’s eyes.

Sedgwick’s smile suddenly seemed reptilian.

And he continued smiling, impervious even to interruptions, after a maid knocked at the drawing room door and requested Lucius’s presence in the hall. He excused himself, relieved to close the door behind him.

“He wants you to marry her.” Augusta stood just beyond the threshold, looking as distraught as when they’d found his injured father after the storm.

Lucius kept his voice low. “Yes. Are you coming in? Perhaps he’ll listen to you.” He wasn’t sure anything he’d say would make its way past Sedgwick’s impenetrable wall of confidence, and with each breath he wasted, the temptation rose to simply throw the man out bodily.

“How’s Jessamin?” She’d looked heartbreakingly uncertain when he’d left her in the breakfast room, and he wanted to see her, touch her, reassure her. If not for Sedgwick storming in, he might have already spoken to his father and been planning how to ask her to marry him.

“I asked her to see Kitty off.”

His stomach writhed at the mention of Kitty Adderly. She’d offered Jessamin a means to leave Hartwell and rebuild her life in London. He wouldn’t keep her from that choice, but he could no longer imagine his future without her.

When Lucius turned to enter the study, expecting Augusta to follow, she reached for his arm.

“I knew Seymour Sedgwick many years ago.”

His aunt had as sharp a mind as anyone he’d ever known, yet he couldn’t help frowning at her admission. It was a story she’d mentioned to him on more than one occasion.

“I refused him, Lucius. He asked me to marry him and I refused him.”

“Pardon?”

She rushed through her explanation in a panicked whisper.

“My father wanted to marry me to an ogre, a truly dreadful man. Sedgwick was the most audacious of my suitors, forever asking me to elope.” She drew in a deep breath and raced through the rest. “I agreed, but even as I said the words I knew I couldn’t go through with it. The shame, the scandal, and I know now I was already half in love with my Edward.”

Augusta glanced nervously at the study door as if Sedgwick might materialize from the other side, but Lucius stood stunned a moment, letting the whole of it sink in.

“I fear it may color his treatment of you and his determination that May not be refused.”

“She refused me.” Surely May would affirm her conviction that she did not wish for a blatantly practical marriage.

“He’s a very difficult man to convince.”

Lucius had sensed it after a few seconds in the man’s presence, but it didn’t signify. He only intended to marry one woman, and it wouldn’t be May Sedgwick.

U
NABLE TO KEEP
still and listen to the ticking of the mantel clock a second longer, Jess stood a few paces outside the drawing room door arguing with herself about whether to stick her nose in or head back to her rooms.

As she approached, loud voices emanated from the room.

She and Lucius belonged to each other now. Could she really let him face this trouble alone?

Then she heard him shout, his low bass rattling the wall. “What if I do marry your daughter? What then?”

A wave of nausea swept through her and she gripped her stomach, closed her eyes, and willed it away. Drawing near the door, Jess lowered her head to listen.

“Am I to forget your threats?” Lucius made a tsking sound of disgust. “A breach of promise suit? Try to make that ship sail when no promise was ever made.”

“That ship sailed, Lord Grimsby, when my daughter left New York harbor.” Mr. Sedgwick’s voice cut like a knife, crisp and sharp, his American accent much more careful and precise than his daughter’s.

“Father . . .” In one word, Jess heard May’s distress and fury. Her father spoke over her, and Jess imagined his dismissal incensed her more.

Swallowing hard, Jess reached out to knock on the door’s top panel. Nervousness made her legs shudder, but she couldn’t spend her life with Lucius listening at keyholes, forever on the wrong side of the wall.

After a moment, the door swung open mere inches, and Lady Stamford stood in the gap, her face drawn, eyes stricken and distressed.

“I’m not sure you should be here now, my dear.”

May’s voice carried from inside the room. “Let her come. Father, this is Lady Stamford’s companion.”

When Jess stepped into the room, she swiveled her head for a look at Lucius. He sat at his desk, arms clasped across his chest, and his mouth as firm and tight as the first time she’d seen him in the Mayfair gallery. He looked more ill-tempered than he had that night, but his gaze, a little release of tension in his shoulders, indicated her presence was not wholly unwelcome.

Mr. Sedgwick, a dark-haired and immaculately dressed man, sat straight and tall in the chair in front of Lucius’s desk. He barely grazed her with his gaze before turning his attention back to Lucius.

Jess approached May, who sat on a settee along the back wall, and May stunned her by lifting a hand to touch her. She clasped Jess’s hand and tugged her to take the space on the settee next to her.

Once Jess was seated, May leaned in to whisper. “He’s truly not as fearsome as he seems. He thinks he’s defending me, and doing so always gets his back up.”

“Marry her, Grimsby, and you can enjoy life within the walls of your lavishly restored home. And please your father, and keep your promise to my daughter.”

“There was never any promise.” May’s voice sounded small, childlike, almost plaintive, but her father spoke again as if she hadn’t said a word.

“In addition to May’s substantial dowry, I would like to offer that sum again as a wedding gift. Come, Grimsby, you must prefer that to breaking up your family’s estate.”

“My nephew’s heart is engaged elsewhere.” Lady Stamford spoke with the same tremor Jess heard in May’s voice. Jess didn’t look her way, but her declaration made Jess hold her breath.

Then a bark, a sound Jess thought might be one of the dogs, rattled through the room. When it split the air again, she realized it was Mr. Sedgwick’s strangled laughter.

“You dare speak to me about love, Augusta? I don’t think I’ll hear you on that count. You, a woman who never kept her own promises.”

“Sedgwick . . .” Lucius’s ominous tone, a more serious version of the mocking one he often used with Mr. Wellesley, set off goose bumps on Jess’s skin.

“Yes, yes. My daughter mentioned a woman who kissed you in a far too public display.”

May didn’t react to her father’s pronouncement, and it struck Jess that May might still be unaware she was the woman who kissed Lucius in Mayfair. What a muck-up it had all become. One kiss, one scandalous, wonderful kiss had turned all their lives upside down.

“It would be a shame to see that woman named in the lawsuit. You’d both be outcasts.”

He thought her a woman concerned with her place in society, one who worried about her reputation and status. As a woman who’d presume to marry a viscount should be.

But Jess wasn’t that sort of woman. She didn’t move in his society. Hers was much more circumspect. Who would cast her out? Ousted from the Women’s Union would be a blow, but she doubted the ladies of the group would be so quick to cast judgment.

“That sounds delightful. We can live out our lives in the countryside in peace and quiet.”

Lucius glanced at her as he said it, one touch of his gaze on her face. Jess had never heard such wistfulness from him, and it made her ache to hold him.

“You are an astoundingly selfish man. Scorn my daughter, ruin another woman, and then turn exile with her here in your moldering heap.” That sound shot from the man again—a short burst of barking laughter.

“Exile doesn’t frighten me. I’ve been exiled before.”

“Yes, a sojourn in Scotland. Yet all the Scots I know are quite practical men. Carnegie is as solid as his steel. Didn’t you learn any of that Scottish practicality, Grimsby?”

Jess clenched her free hand into a fist against her thigh. She’d never been tempted to strike another human being in her life, but she suspected Mr. Sedgwick had inspired the urge in many.

“If you care nothing for your reputation or this woman’s, what would become of any children you might have?”

Children.
Jess rarely imagined that blessing for herself. In her future as bookshop owner, motherhood seemed an unlikely fate. But she’d read enough books to know that she and Lucius might have started on that path last night.

Would their children carry the stigma of scandal? Rejection, solitude, loneliness—she couldn’t relegate a child to that. She couldn’t consign Lucius to it either. Would he become an outcast for choosing her as his wife?

If she loved him—and she did, with all her heart—she had to spare him that.

Standing and pulling away from May, she stepped close to Lady Stamford.

“Perhaps you’re right,” she whispered, “I shouldn’t be here.”

“Of course, my dear.” Lady Stamford cupped her cheek, a comforting gesture her mother had used to soothe her a thousand times. “Go up and have some tea. We’ll sort this out.”

Mr. Sedgwick continued talking, May was still beseeching, and for all she knew Lucius remained at his desk, inert and angry. Jess couldn’t look at him. If she did, she wouldn’t have the strength to go. So she kept her eyes on the door, made her way through, and forced herself to take the stairs back to her room. She was tempted to look back at path she’d taken. Surely all the blood was being drained from her body. She grew colder, emptier, with every step.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“W
HAT THE BLAZES
are you doing?”

Jess reached back into the depths of the tall oak wardrobe in her guest room and had just skimmed her fingers across the beveled face of her father’s pocket watch when she heard Robert Wellesley’s voice. Grasping the cold metal disk, she pulled the watch out and emerged to look at him.

“I thought I’d lost my father’s watch.”

She had none of her own clothes and didn’t mind leaving without any other possessions. Only the watch seemed essential. After cupping it in her palm a moment, she dropped it into the small travel bag Lady Stamford had given her.

“You’re packing. Where on earth are you going?”

“Back to London.” Jess carefully folded papers containing Alice’s upcoming speech and placed them inside one of the books she’d brought with her from the shop before adding it to the bag.

“Why? What are you thinking?”

Miserable thoughts with no easy resolution, no happy ending whichever way she turned the matter.

“That I’m not meant for this, nor prepared for it. I’m not what Lucius needs.” Jess sank onto the edge of the bed, pointing at herself. She’d read in one of Lady Stamford’s etiquette books that it was terribly indelicate for a lady to do so. “How can I be a viscountess? I’m a bookshop owner’s daughter and a writer of speeches and political articles. I’m a suffragette and  . . .” That was the end of the list. What were her other accomplishments? “Nothing more than that.”

“You’re the woman he loves.”

Jess narrowed her eyes at Wellesley. His confidence filled the room. No wonder Lucius found him such an irritant.

“Sometimes duty is the right choice, Mr. Wellesley. I chose it most of my life, and I did it well. Duty seems the right path.”

Wellesley leaned a hip against the door frame, crossed his arms, and smirked at her as if all the words that had just taken so much effort to speak were the most absurd he’d ever heard in his life.

Making him understand felt as necessary as convincing herself. She’d need that conviction to force her legs to carry her out the door.

“Lucius was willing to do his duty before he met me. Maybe I’ve set him on the wrong path. I shouldn’t have kissed him. I shouldn’t have taken that money. None of this should have happened.” Placing her hands on her hips, she nearly screamed in frustration. Her mind had gone sluggish and slow. “We’re like two planetary bodies that spun into a strange orbit and should never have crossed paths.”

Wellesley seemed truly confounded by her analogy, and he mimicked her stance, lifting his hands to hips.

“I don’t know a damn thing about astronomy. I admit it. But I do know Lucius, and he’s been changed by you. For the better. The man loves you, completely. Being a viscountess, it’s . . . Trust me, Jess, you can carry it off. It mustn’t be difficult. You should meet some of my aunts and uncles with titles. Fools, bloody fools.”

“Are you saying I’m a fool?”

“You’re a fool if you get on a train and leave him.” Wellesley rushed forward and grasped her upper arms, his gaze earnest and intense. But the fire in his expression didn’t warm her. She wasn’t certain she’d ever truly feel warm again.

“I told you that you’d need mettle, and that you would need to fight. I never thought this would be easy.”

His admonition didn’t bolster Jess as he’d intended. It cut her, drained her, and she sensed herself falling, all the air escaping, like an aeronaut’s balloon crashing to the ground. Wellesley held her up and led her to a chair, but she refused to sit. This was no time to faint and fade. This was when she most needed strength, if only to admit her weakness.

“I don’t think I have it in me.” He shook his head, unable to hide his disappointment. “I’m afraid I’m not the heroine you think I am, Mr. Wellesley.”

He lifted his head, gaze fixing on hers, and broke into one his charming grins.

“Oh, you are, Miss Wright. You have
heroine
written all over you. I’ve seen it from the day I met you.”

He was dogged, indefatigable, and Jess couldn’t detect a trace of sarcasm in his tone. But she couldn’t believe his claim either.

“I’m not the woman you imagine me to be.”

His shoulders sagged and for a moment he looked as deflated as Jess felt.

“No, Miss Wright, you must take your own measure. Choose who you wish to be. If you choose to be Lucius’s wife, and for his sake, I hope you do, you’ll be glorious at it.” He held his hands out, measuring an invisible object in one and then the other. Perhaps he was teasing her for the astronomical analogy. “Because you love him and he loves you.”

From Mr. Wellesley, it all sounded terribly simple. The man seemed to see the world as velvet lined, gilded, every trouble easily resolved. But Jess knew difficulties came by the dozen and not all could be tucked away and decorated with a pretty bow.

“And it will cost him his father’s love, his father’s approval. It will cost him the destruction of his home.”

Wellesley had the temerity to chuckle. “This old pile won’t be fall to pieces. Lucius has a plan. He’s going to sell off part of the estate and—”

“No! He shouldn’t have to do that.”

“Of course he should.” Wellesley raised his voice to match her tone and Jess stepped away from him.

After a gusty sigh and a few moments ruffling his bronze hair, Wellesley approached her again.

“We are careening toward the twentieth century. Times have changed, Jess, and we must change with them. Wheat and barley will no longer support a house like this. Lucius wishes to invest in manufacturing and it seems a brilliant idea, though I admit to as much knowledge about investing as astronomy.”

He shrugged and sighed again. “You should trust Lucius. I’ve known the man all my life. He can be a bit of an overbearing bastard at times, but he’s a good man. And he’s never wanted anything as much as he wants you. Anyone can see that.”

Jess chewed on her thumbnail—another unladylike habit that even her mother had tried to break her of—and shook her head in denial.

“Sometimes what we want isn’t what we need.”

Wellesley spun on his heel, turning his back on her, and Jess thought he might walk away and leave. Instead, he whirled around with a desolate expression on his face, as if she’d smashed his illusions as effectively as she’d shattered her own.

“If you must go back to London, Miss Wright, if you miss your city and friends, your Women’s Union—that I can understand. But don’t leave him. You should come back for him. Fight for him.”

Her father had implored her with the same look she saw now in Mr. Wellesley’s eyes. He’d besieged her with assurances, promises of future glory, and guarantees that the tide was just a hairsbreadth from turning.
Our luck will change.
But it never did.

“Lucius is a fighter. Look, I still have a scar here.” Wellesley lifted his head to indicate a faded white inch-long scar at the under edge of his chin. “He’ll fight for you. Problem is, he’s never known what he wanted until now. He’s been told what he must do, should do, and now he knows what’s possible. That he must make his own choices.”

Choice. Perhaps she and Lucius had too few of them in their lives, but that only meant it was essential they make the right ones now.

“I want him to be happy, but I’m not sure I can make him happy.”

Wellesley reached for her hand and Jess reluctantly allowed him to take it.

“You already have.”

She pulled away from his grasp. “I don’t mean for today or tomorrow. I am looking ahead to the rest of his life.” Looking ahead to children born under the cloud of scandal, to a day when Lucius might gaze at her not with love but with resentment.

Like a clear bit of sky breaking through and sweeping away the clouds on the horizon, Wellesley lowered his head with a frown but looked up at her with a beaming smile.

“I can see your mind is set on going, but allow me to hope you’ll come back. Are you going to leave a note for him? Or for Lady Stamford?”

Jess shook her head. She’d tried, but her own hand betrayed her, shaking furiously every time she put pen to paper until she’d scratched out and splattered, finally crushing two sheets of precious paper and tossing them in the bin. She’d always trusted words, loved them, memorized them, but they’d failed her today. None seemed sufficient to describe her reasons and rationales. Those were all about emotion, feeling, and all the feeling words seemed pale, too feeble to explain her agonizing choice.

“Rob?” It seemed so long ago, that first night they’d met at Hartwell, when he’d asked her to call him by the diminutive. “Would you tell him that I love him?”

Tears slid down her cheeks as her voice broke, and a slashing pain ripped her, not just an ache in her heart but an agony so complete it seemed to wind its way into her arms, her legs, into every fiber of her form.

As she lifted her bag and turned to leave the room, Wellesley moved as if to stop her.

“I must go now.” Now or she’d falter, now or she’d forget all her reasons and rush downstairs to find Lucius, and let duty and dowries be damned.

“What if the carriage hasn’t returned from delivering Miss Adderly to the station?”

Jess moved around him. “Then I’ll walk.”

“It’s nearly six miles.”

Jess took one step over the threshold. “That’s nothing to me. I’m a Londoner, Mr. Wellesley. I’ll walk.”

And she did, mechanically forcing her feet into motion. Behind her, she heard Wellesley mutter.

“That’s just the sort of thing a heroine would say.”