Season for Scandal (7 page)

“It’s bloodthirsty. I like it.” She nodded. “But you’re right. Maybe not during our honeymoon.”

“I’m sorry about this. I’ll do my best to wrap up the . . . family matter . . . quickly. As soon as there’s a chance of travel”—
of escape
—“I will inform you, and you shall pick our destination.”

“Will it be done before Christmas?”

Christmas. Seven weeks away. Could he stand seven weeks of this cat-and-mouse game with Turner?

If it meant seven weeks of respectability, yes. Seven weeks of safety for Jane, yes. Seven weeks in which to beget a child, innocent of all wrongdoing . . . God, how he hoped. “I’m not certain.”

With a clatter, she shoved aside her egg cup. “But you
are
certain that it’s not something your man of business could attend to? After all, he settled your last debt.”

Sheringbrook’s payment, she meant. “Unfortunately, no. The timing is inopportune, but—”

“—you didn’t expect to get married this autumn. I understand.” A smile clicked into place, and Edmund had the odd feeling that she was humoring him.

“Just because it was unexpected does not mean I am not delighted.”

“No,” Jane said. “But it also doesn’t mean you
are
.”

She shoved her chair back from the table, almost smacking into the footman who rushed forward to aid her. As she and the servant dodged one another, startled, she caught a foot in the hem of her gown and stumbled.

Edmund rose, striding the length of the table and catching Jane’s arm. With a nod to the footman, he allowed the servant—still mumbling his apologies—to retreat. The man had only been doing his job; it was not his fault Jane didn’t react as expected.

Come to think of it, Edmund could say the same for himself.

She struggled to shake him off, but his fingertips cradled her elbow gently. “As you are now a baroness,” he murmured, “please do not cast aspersions on our marriage in front of the servants.”

“Why? Because it will cause a scandal?” She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t care about that.”

“No, it probably wouldn’t cause a scandal. But our servants work hard for us, and they will enjoy that work more if they think the household is harmonious.”

Her struggling ceased. “You ask for their sake, then. Out of kindness. How am I supposed to argue with that?”

“I rather hoped you wouldn’t.” His stomach twisted, and he added, “I’ve promised that I will do my utmost to make you happy. Won’t you allow me to try?”

Close enough to sense her every flicker of movement, to breathe in her clean scent, he waited for his wife’s reply. For the battle or truce to begin.

Her gaze found his. Those hazel depths held such disappointment, such sorrow, that he drew back from her.
She knows
. She knew the truth somehow: that he would betray her, just as he had everyone else.

He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the thought. When he looked at Jane again, her eyes were clear; no trace of that deep, dark emotion shadowed them.

“Yes,” Jane said, soft and low. “I trust you. And I’ll do my best to be the wife you deserve.”

Now, what sort of wife might that be?

“Thank you,” he replied, and her expression turned wry.

“Always so polite,” she said. “Well, then, husband. How shall you make me happy?”

He thought about this. Not the Tower of London, she had said. And she was no child, to be plied instead with sweets or a trip to the Royal Menagerie. She was a baroness. And she was ingenious.

Dumbly, he rooted about for ideas before seizing upon something that would please most young women. “Shall we attend a ball? Introduce Lady Kirkpatrick to polite society?”

Her smile was the brightest thing in the sunlit breakfast parlor. “Why, certainly. I’d love it above all things.”

Chapter 6

Concerning Preliminary Attempts at Happiness

It was an excellent plan, this truce of theirs. But not even Kirkpatrick could conjure a ball for Jane at a moment’s notice during the quiet of early November. London’s elite was only just beginning to trickle back into the city for a special session of Parliament, and the first ball to which they had received an invitation—hosted by that determined matron of the
ton
, the Countess of Alleyneham—wasn’t for another two weeks.

Two weeks for Jane to do—what? There was nothing but unaccustomed leisure. Kirkpatrick had kept every one of his promises to her.

She had a lady’s maid, Hill, who arranged Jane’s fine, sandy hair into elegant twists and somehow encouraged it to curl.

She had a set of emeralds, as well as beautiful gowns for every occasion. And when the weather turned cold and glum, there were fur-lined cloaks and warm capes and pelisses, as well as a carriage to shield her from the weather.

She had a mare, too; a bay with a white snip on the nose, kept in the mews stables behind Kirkpatrick’s house. Since Jane didn’t know how to ride, she visited the horse daily, but had a groom exercise Florence.

“One day,” she murmured to the mare, who huffed warm breath over Jane’s fingers. “One day we’ll ride together. And one day I’ll visit the city you’re named for.”

Florence bobbed her head, then took up a mouthful of hay. Jane smiled; the animal’s contentment was refreshing.

She could have told Kirkpatrick that she needed someone to teach her to ride a horse. But she wanted him to realize it on his own.

He had kept all the promises she’d tugged from him in the forgotten little side parlor at Lord Sheringbrook’s house. Jane realized now: Kirkpatrick would give her everything she asked for, and the best of it. But he would give her not an iota more.

When he’d made his proposal, she had not asked for time with him. She had not insisted that love be a condition of their marriage. And so these intangibles never came to pass. He had promised to try to make her happy—but what, after all, was trying? He hadn’t promised to succeed. And she hadn’t asked him to.

Perhaps she was not as ingenious as she had once thought.

After breakfast each day, Kirkpatrick disappeared into his study, a small room she had never yet entered. He had not said she couldn’t, but she didn’t try to cross the threshold. It would be too humiliating to be booted back.

So Jane spent the first days of her marriage without her husband. Instead of learning the corners of his heart or creating pet names for him, she acquainted herself with every corner of the house and every servant’s name. She created menus for course after course.

No one had much appetite. But the food looked impressive.

Day by day, she felt Lady Kirkpatrick enclosing her, molding her into something quieter and sleeker than she’d ever imagined being. It was not unwelcome; it was simply unfamiliar. As little like her unmarried self as lilac was like hay. This was part of the bargain she had struck with her husband, and if he fulfilled his end so punctiliously, she could do no less.

So passed her days.

But when the sun slid beneath the horizon, the silence of the house softened. Not a brittle thing, but peaceful and gauzy. The servants vanished into their rooms, and the careful mask of propriety could vanish for a time, too, if Kirkpatrick would allow it.

Every night, a tap came at the door between their bedchambers, and he entered the room. There was never much talking. Clothes were shed, skin was stroked.

Each time, Jane tried to undo the harm she’d caused on their wedding day. She wanted to be rough and bawdy, to prove that she didn’t mind that he couldn’t love her back, that this clashing of bodies was enough for her. She wanted to press him to the bed and use him hard, until blessed oblivion could claim them both.

But Kirkpatrick
didn’t
allow it. Night after night, he treated her with a politeness so complete that it became impersonal.

“Allow me,” he said, pressing her hands aside with gentle force. Not allowing her to grab at him, pull him close. It was like a script: first he brought her to orgasm with his hands. Then he held himself high above her body as he stroked in and out. When he shuddered his completion, he pulled away at once.

The sensations were delicious, yet Jane felt soiled afterward. As though she’d breached their marriage contract when she’d admitted her love for him, and now he could hardly bear to do business with someone so untrustworthy.

She almost wished she had never agreed to marry him; that she had never gambled and lost her independence at Lord Sheringbrook’s house.

Almost. For how could she lose an independence she’d never had, except as a dream? And how else was she to have Kirkpatrick—the deepest and sweetest and most painful of every dream she’d had?

Fool that she was, she still wanted him on any terms. Even these, which left her alone every night and every endless day.

Even these.

When the date of the ball arrived, Jane entered Alleyneham House on her husband’s arm. As they queued in the receiving line, she watched the women before her and did as they did. Resting her fingertips on Kirkpatrick’s sleeve with the correct featherlight pressure. Maintaining the perfect, proper distance between them so their expensive clothing would not be rumpled.

When it came their turn to greet their dithering hostess and stern-jawed host, she gave a careful nod to each. “Earl. Countess. How do you do?” To the angle and inch, it was a perfect copy of the greeting performed by the woman before her.

Except. From Lord Alleyneham’s startled cough and his lady’s wide-eyed flutter, she realized she had blundered.

Sweeping into a hurried bow, Kirkpatrick herded her on, his pressure at her elbow sudden and determined. A butler announced them to the room at large, and with more force than grace, they strode into the crowd, as though Kirkpatrick wanted to get them lost in the mill of guests.

When someone jostled Jane and a heavy boot ground down on her toes, she stopped walking. Kirkpatrick gave another tug at her arm; she tugged right back.

“Stop,” she said through gritted teeth. She glanced around and spotted an alcove at the side of the soaring candlelit room. It was currently occupied by a potted palm.

Jane gave the palm a bit of company. Kirkpatrick followed, looking a bit hunted. “What’s the problem, Jane? Don’t you want to join the dancers?”

I would if I knew how to dance.
But Lord Xavier’s impoverished country cousin had never learned such social graces. “Not just yet. Out with it, Kirkpatrick. What did I do wrong?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” He became fascinated with the fronds of the palm.

“In the receiving line. I did something that horrified our host and hostess. What was it?”

His eyes found Jane’s. “Ah. Well, nothing much. You gave a marchioness’s greeting to a countess. The nod of a superior. But—well, Lord and Lady Alleyneham are good sorts. They won’t mind it.”

“They certainly looked as if they minded it.”

“Mere surprise, that’s all. Can I fetch you some punch?” He smiled, but Jane was not to be led astray.

“I didn’t know,” she muttered. “I should have curtsied, shouldn’t I?”

It was a far simpler matter to ape her social superiors on the fringes of the
ton
, in places like Sheringbrook’s card room, than in the heart of the polite world. And her cousin Xavier’s country house party, which she had attended in past years, was a much different affair from a formal London ball.

In itself, this was neither good nor bad. It simply
was
. But not being ready for the new and next? Not even recognizing the boundaries of her own ignorance? That was bad indeed, and she thought she saw bright pity limning her husband’s smile.

“I don’t need any punch,” she decided. “Only find me another baroness in this crowd, Kirkpatrick, and I’ll copy her. I’ll make certain I get everything right next time.”

“That’s what you want to do at a ball? You want to follow a perfect stranger around and mimic her?”

He made the behavior sound so odd. “Well, I won’t let her
know.
She won’t even see me. I can be unobtrusive when I wish. See?”

When she took a step back, her gown of dark green silk blended into the palm’s fronds. Her ivory fan, snapped closed and held tight, was no more than a stick. And her hair could be anything, because on its own it was nothing. The dull shade of wood paneling or a dead frond.

Kirkpatrick’s eyes lit with humor. “Are you considering the fact that if anyone sees you in there, you will have to make a swift explanation? I would dearly love to hear it.”

Jane shrugged. “I’ll say I dropped my fan and someone kicked it aside. I was retrieving it. Honestly, Kirkpatrick, do you think anyone is more interested in my doings than his or her own?”

He folded his arms. “This ball is our outing together. Something for you to enjoy.”

“I realize that. But what I would really enjoy is not making another blunder.”

He looked down at her for a long moment. Despite knowing him for most of her life, she couldn’t read him as easily as she could most people. He was so carefully polite that it was impossible to tell what was flickering through his mind. Was he ashamed of her? Disappointed not to spend the whole evening together? Or relieved to extract himself from her company?

Finally he relented. “Very well, Jane. If that’s what would please you. Watch the lady in the rose-colored gown, next to the third column. That’s the Baroness Walling; she’s a friend to the Patronesses of Almack’s. Very proper.”

“Sounds a bit too lofty for me.”

Kirkpatrick reached out a hand. Jane thought for a dismayed moment that he was going to chuck her under the chin, but instead he traced her jawline with the pad of his thumb. “I don’t think she is. But that’s for you to decide, isn’t it?”

Bewildered, she waved him off. “Thank you. Now. Go—go find someone to dance with.” She didn’t have time to pant after him now. No matter how many nice little things he did with his thumb.

She shuddered off a heated memory of an extremely nice thing he had done with that thumb the night before. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter.