Season for Scandal (6 page)

Love had not been part of their marriage bargain. In marrying her, he knew he was taking too much just by claiming her body; now her heart tipped the balance irrevocably askew.

He had no idea how to right matters. It was like being handed a chess piece and being told to strategize, when one had been expecting to batter one’s body in a rousing game of cricket.

It was like being handed a flower he knew he could not keep alive.

But somehow he must make this marriage work. The morning would be different; better and easier. In the breakfast parlor, they had all the armor of daylight and clothing and food with which to busy their hands and mouths. Surely they could chatter and be friendly, just as they had for years.

As they faced each other, standing near the doorway, he mucked about for something to say. “Did you sleep well, Jane?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You want to discuss sleep?”

“I just thought you—”

“I’m fine.” Her cheeks had gone a little pink. “The night passed tolerably well.”

“Tolerably?” He could not explain why this pale word stung.

“Yes. Don’t get huffy, Kirkpatrick. ‘Tolerably’ isn’t so bad.” With a fingertip, she scratched at the pin-striped wallpaper. “This room is pretty.”

He accepted the offered turn of subject. “It’s my favorite room in the house.”

She regarded the row of gleaming salvers on the sideboard. “So I see. I never took you for a glutton.”

A surprised laugh popped out. “Not because of the food. It’s—well. I like the feel of the room.”

Half an explanation, though in itself it was true. Cream-walled and high-windowed, the breakfast parlor managed to catch sunlight even on the smoky, dim mornings of late autumn and early winter.

But it was also the room in which he greeted each morning; the table at which he celebrated passing through another endless night.

Years ago, he had replaced the family portraits hanging here with some old flowery paintings that had been stored in the attics. The subsequent improvement in his mood was so great that he had proceeded to replace every portrait in the house with pictures of flowers, or dogs, or hunting scenes. Anything without a familiar face.

“A pity you like it so much.” Jane’s murmur broke into his thoughts. “I’d have liked to redecorate this room in the Egyptian style. Gold leaf and lacquer everywhere. Wouldn’t you prefer salvers with Sphinx heads, too?”

His expression must have betrayed his horror.

Jane rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Kirkpatrick, you have no sense of humor before breakfast. Eat up, you old maid.”

“There are so many things wrong with what you’ve just called me,” he murmured in her ear. She turned still pinker, but shrugged him away.

Good. Friendly, just as they’d always been. Maybe—maybe this would work.

He turned his attention to the salvers. On his own, Edmund usually ate no more than toast; the pain in his stomach made him eschew richer fare. But this morning, the kitchen had also provided beef and eggs, muffins and ham, tea and coffee and chocolate.

Edmund realized that his servants had no notion what their new mistress preferred. Nor did he.

“May I serve you a plate?” He offered Jane a friendly smile.

She shrugged that off, too. “No need. I’m used to doing for myself.” As she lifted each cover in turn, the sunlight through the east-facing windows caught the emerald in her wedding ring.

Edmund piled some of everything on his own plate, giving her implicit permission to take as much as she wanted. She settled on a boiled egg and a bit of ham, then seated herself at the foot of the small rectangular table. They could fit as many as eight around it; a man and wife and a healthy brood of children.

Pain gnawed at his insides with sharp teeth, and he nudged his plate away as he sat down.

A distraction, then. “You look lovely this morning,” he said. “That color suits you.”

Quick as a thought, she ducked beneath the table. “Does it? What color would you say it is?”

For a moment, he only blinked at the chair where his wife had been. “Um. Jane. Jane?” He tried to think how to tell her
baronesses don’t climb under the table
without the footman overhearing.

Her voice sounded muffled from beneath the tabletop. “I just wondered whether you noticed what color I was wearing when you said I looked lovely in it.”

“Most amusing,” he replied. “Ha. Give your breakfast a try.”

“You didn’t really notice my gown, did you? You just said something that you thought sounded pretty.”

He should have remembered this about her from the night he proposed: her intolerance of common compliments. Considering how willing she was to play a part, she ought to be more forgiving of such everyday deceit. Besides, what sort of woman questioned a compliment instead of accepting it?

Probably
, said a small voice in his head,
the sort of woman who doesn’t get many.

“Your gown is green,” he guessed.

Jane straightened up. Her light brown hair had become ruffled by her upside-down jaunt beneath the furniture; her expression was just as rumpled.

But her morning gown
was
green. A sort of pale apple-y color. “See? Lovely,” Edmund said, hiding his relief.

“A lucky guess,” she muttered.

He ignored this incisive comment; instead, he skimmed his eyes over her, looking for something pleasant to say that she would not be able to puncture or pick apart. The apple-green shade
did
suit her hair and skin, and the gown’s simple line flattered her slim form. Had her maid advised her on its choice? He remembered Jane nearly drowning in ruffles and bright colors in the past.

“Your gown is cut well,” he ventured.

It was more of a compliment to her modiste than herself, and perhaps that was why she accepted it. She lit up. “I know. I’m so glad to be free of those gowns my mother always chose for me. Wools in summer, and horrid glazed cotton. Enough ruffles to smother a horse.”

When he smiled, she looked disgruntled and turned to gaze out the window. “I could almost spy into the drawing room of the house next door. Your neighbors in London are very close, aren’t they?”

“
Our
neighbors,” Edmund corrected.

“That’s right. Our neighbors.”

Thus the topics of clothing, compliments, and the neighbors were dispensed with. He had already inquired after her night’s rest. And so a silence fell, broken by nothing but the busy clink of silverware on dishes. Edmund devoted intense attention to cutting his beef into small pieces. First cubes, an inch square. Then he halved them, then halved them again. This jolly family breakfast could take as long as one wished.

Why, they hadn’t talked about the weather yet. They could do that next. November weather always offered Londoners plenty of opportunity for abuse. If it wasn’t raining or sleeting, it was fog-choked. On dry days, coal smoke rose from the city like thunderclouds turned on their heads.

He opened his mouth, ready to say something about the chilly weather. The possibility of taking a drive later in his closed carriage.

When he looked at Jane, though, he had the sense that she’d just averted her eyes from him. And she continued Not Looking At Him so intently that the words took on capital letters; that the lack of attention became an intentional act.

It had to be. No one could devote so much time to cutting ham into little bites. Was she playing the shy bride? Was her silence meant to punish him for that thing he’d said about her gown? He had gotten the color right. Unaccountable woman.

Since Edmund’s mouth was still hanging uselessly open, he put a bite into it, not caring what it might be.

Beef. Damn it. Who could bear to eat meat in the mornings? His stomach grumbled, threatening a rebellion.

Wonderful. He could not even spend his time at the breakfast table actually, oh,
eating breakfast.
And as Jane continued Not Looking At Him, the silence didn’t feel mellow and friendly after all. This meal wasn’t like sitting down at table with a relative or enjoying a postcoital repast with a lover. In the former, love might be taken for granted on both sides; in the latter, lust usurped the role of love, and most welcome it was.

This breakfast was both, yet neither. A strange, boiled-up amalgam of feeling. And the silence grew all out of proportion to the small breakfast parlor, until it seemed heavy and pressing.

A lump the size of a fist blocked his throat, and he felt that he could not have spoken even if Lord Sheringbrook offered to return his ill-gotten ten thousand pounds in exchange for a syllable.

After a tiny eternity, Jane broke the silence. “Kirkpatrick. Some couples travel after their marriage.” She was still Not Looking At Him. With a spoon handle, she tapped at the shell of her boiled egg.

He gulped coffee until the lump in his throat dissolved. “That is correct.”

When she didn’t speak again, he realized that more was expected than an acknowledgment of a declarative sentence. “Some couples do,” he added cautiously. “And some don’t.”

Tap tap tap.
Jane frowned at the egg in its little silver cup. “Some couples go to Italy. Or France. France isn’t far.”

“You have pulverized that eggshell,” Edmund pointed out.

“Well, you’ve shaved that beef to a powder.”

Edmund looked at his plate. She was right; somehow, he had reduced his breakfast to a heap of stringy fibers.

He laid down his utensils. “Jane, might I assume you would like to travel, since you have introduced the subject?”

“I wouldn’t hate it.” At last, she met his eye.

“I’m sure I wouldn’t either. But . . .” Edmund traced the crests on his blunt-handled utensils. The barony of Kirkpatrick, stamped on every piece. “I have responsibilities that keep me in London right now.”

In truth, the idea of fleeing for the Continent right now was very appealing. Just to grab Jane’s hand and run for Italy or France, leaving behind all the letters and threats and responsibilities that lurked in the city.

But someday he would have to return to them—and the burden, once laid down, would be unbearable to pick up again. Or worse yet, it would come rolling and crashing after him, and yet another part of the world would be despoiled. Cornwall and London had already been ruined for him; he could not bear to blight the loveliness of a summer in southern France, or the sunlit warmth of Italian vineyards.

“Perhaps next year,” he said. “Next year, it might be different.”

“Why should it be?” Jane picked up a knife and sliced the egg in half vertically as it sat within its cup. Then again, quartering it. “If a man won’t turn his responsibilities over to his steward when he’s newly married, why should he do so later?”

Edmund reminded himself that he wasn’t the sort of man who poked his wife with a fork, no matter how annoying her questions.

“It’s not that I’m unwilling, Jane.” His voice came out too harsh; he paused, took a deep breath, and added more quietly, “I am unable. This is a matter none can handle but myself.”

She blinked at him. Waiting for more. He should have known she would not be put off by vagueness.

“It’s family business,” he added. “Some long-standing arrangements are maturing, and I must oversee the process.”

“Of course. You’re very busy. Indispensable.” She continued cutting, reducing the egg to a mass of crumbled yolk and shell before she spoke again. “But now I’m your family, too. The only member of it in London, unless I am mistaken.”

He took another sip of coffee, hoping a brilliant reply would occur to him. Alas, no. “You are correct. But—”

“Could I help you, then? If this matter of business requires”—she paused—“
ingenuity
, I might be able to move the process along.”

So we can have a honeymoon.

The unspoken words fit neatly into the silence that followed. But the suggestion? No, impossible. There was no room for Jane in this ancient tangle of betrayal. Especially not if she loved him—or thought she did. Which for now came to the same thing.

As his silence stretched out, Jane turned to look out the window again. Her profile was as neat as a coin, her jaw set. Her eyes, though; her eyes betrayed her. She was blinking far too often. Tears? Surely not. Jane Tindall—no, Jane Ware, Lady Kirkpatrick—was far too strong to cry.

“Jane,” he said softly.

Her jaw became still more set. “If you don’t want me involved, just say so, Kirkpatrick. I’m strong enough to bear such a small revelation.”

“I know you are.”

As always, his agreement seemed to surprise her. She turned to regard him. “You . . . What?”

“I don’t doubt your strength, Jane. Nor your ingenuity. This is simply . . .” He considered. “A confidential matter. I must respect the interests of others.”

Perfect. He’d just made his family’s sordid affairs sound like a treasure hunt for gold bullion. He must think of a way to describe this in the most boring fashion possible.

“You see,” he began, “certain people have entrusted their . . . er . . . trust to me. And I must fulfill that trust. And now is the time that the trust which they have entrusted—”

“Oh, stop,” Jane cut him off. “You’ll do yourself an injury if you try to end that sentence.”

Edmund blinked. “Ah. Well.”

“So you’re telling me it’s a secret and I can’t help you and we can’t travel anywhere until it’s all settled.”

“To put it briefly, yes.” She looked a little mutinous, so he added, “It’s not much of a secret. Business, you know. Family . . . things. Why, you’ve got a few secrets of your own, don’t you?”

She looked at him as though he’d served her a plate of horse droppings. “Not anymore.”

Edmund, I love you.

They both turned scarlet at once.

“Maybe,” he said in a rush, “we can do other things. Instead of traveling, I mean. Though this isn’t a good time to leave England, surely we can find amusements in London. A ball. Would you like to attend a ball? Or—or visit the Tower of London.”

Jane’s hot color ebbed. “The Tower of London? Weren’t people executed there?”

Edmund coughed. “Yes. Well. It was just a suggestion. I know it’s not very romantic.”