Secrets of a Scandalous Heiress (22 page)

“I will see the plants destroyed,” Lady Sutcliffe decided. “But it will not be enough to right matters. Too much else has already been destroyed in their stead.”

“It won't be enough,” Joss agreed. “But it might help. And Lord Sutcliffe is a positive fount of ideas. Perhaps he can think of other ways to make amends.”

The baron sat up straighter. “Do you want to look through my spyglass, Celia?”

She frowned. “I sincerely hope that is not a euphemism.”

“What?” The baron burst into laughter. “By God, Celia. You're a funny woman. I have missed you very much.”

Her frown wavered. “I am glad you say so, even if you do not mean it. But I won't, you know. I won't touch your…spyglass. Not after you've been poking it in places it doesn't belong.”

“What do you mean? A spyglass doesn't belong anywhere. Except in my hand, maybe.”

The frown melted a bit more. “Then we shall let your hand tend to your spyglass for the foreseeable future.”

Joss cleared his throat. “I should be getting back to my lodging. It seems the two of you have much to discuss.”

The baron's thin face fell. “Will you be back?”

“Yes. I'll return later.”
Much
later
. “I'll help you find a good man of business to replace me. Perhaps Lord Chatfield could recommend someone, since he knows everyone else in the world.”

“You'll stay,” Sutcliffe decided. “You would miss me if you left my service. I'm the only family you have.”

This was unfair to the baroness and her children, or to Sutcliffe's six sisters who lived in Lancashire. But Joss understood his meaning. “You're the only family I know well. But that won't be true for long, I hope. I have plans to learn about my Indian forebears.”

Something about India had been so lovely to his grandfather that the late baron could not leave it behind entirely. Something about the language, the sun, the marvelous distance from England—Joss wanted to learn it all.

It would be, as Augusta had once said, an addition to the list of things he knew about himself. And the journey would begin—of all places—in the seaside town of Brighton.

Lady Sutcliffe's eyes were troubled blue pools as she looked up at him. “I ought to wish you godspeed, Everett, but indeed I shall miss you. I live with three small children and a husband who acts like a fourth. Your sanity has been a blessing.”

Before Joss could offer her thanks, a servant entered bearing the tea tray. When it was deposited on a table, Sutcliffe looked over the offerings and smacked the table with the flat of his hand. “Where's my hot water?”

“Do try some tea instead,” said the baroness with polite formality. “And a sandwich or two, husband. How long has it been since you ate?”

“What?”

And with that, Joss bowed from the room. He had said all he could for today.

Mere words would not convince Sutcliffe to value his wife. Perhaps the blackmail attempt would, eventually, have a beneficial effect. Or the destruction of the conservatory. Sutcliffe was led by his purse and his
somalata
pouch; perhaps one day he could be led back to his family.

And for Joss, what now? An empty afternoon stretched before him as he descended the carpeted treads of the main staircase. If he returned to his rented room, the scent of sandalwood would make him light-headed. When the bottle broke, the golden oil sank into the wood planks of the floor.

For the first morning since reaching adulthood, he'd had none to daub on himself. He didn't mind leaving the tradition behind. It was a reminder of who he was, of the family that had built him, but he carried that knowledge far deeper than the surface of his skin.

Maybe he would return there after all. Or maybe he would take a walk in Sydney Gardens.

Slam.
He collided with a smaller figure.

Or maybe he'd walk right into someone as he exited the house.

Taking a step backward to correct his balance, Joss found himself face to face with a maid, now rubbing at her forehead. She was a scrubby creature, with curly dark hair beneath her mobcap and avaricious light eyes.

This was the same maid who had delivered the last desperate letter from Lady Sutcliffe, then taken coin after coin to keep and break her silence.

So. Lady Tallant's maid was racing toward Lord Sutcliffe's house. Interesting.

But politeness first. “Are you quite all right, miss?”

Her eyes opened wide, and she dropped a crooked curtsy. “Yes, sir.”

“Very good. If Lady Tallant should release you from her service after today's events, do let me know, and I shall give you Lord Chatfield's direction. The marquess would appreciate a servant with your sort of acumen.”

He made to pass by, but she plucked at his sleeve. “Mr. Everett. It's you as I've come for. Mrs. Flowers—that is, Miss Meredith—is awake, and she's asking for you.”

A soar, a plummet. How could he feel both at once? Joss paused halfway down the stone steps. “Is she, now? I suppose you are looking for a response other than ‘Thank you for the information'?”

“Indeed, sir. I'm to fetch you at once.”

What did Augusta intend to extract from him now? He would not be able to deny her again.

Or maybe he would. He had just shaken free of Sutcliffe, neither knowing or caring whether he would receive the promised hundred pounds at the month's end. Once he had pinned his future on the promise of that sum. But he didn't need it. He'd be fine.

And he'd be fine when he saw Augusta, too. Somehow. “Then lead on.”

“The
only
reason I shall allow you in her bedchamber,” said Lady Tallant when Joss entered the house next door, “is because she struck her head and cannot leave the room at present.”

After extracting himself from the presence of the Sutcliffes, Joss was in no mood for further games. “How does that prevent her from leaving the room? Did she strike her head so hard that she forgot how to operate a door?”

“What a wit you are, Mr. Everett. But as it is for the sake of her health, I did not think you would be so cavalier,” Lady Tallant tossed back as she preceded Joss up the stairs. To the drawing room, past it, to a story of the house he had never yet visited. It was familiar, though; a virtual twin to the one next door. All glossy wood and neatly papered walls, with soft carpets underfoot that must be a dreadful chore to take up and beat clean.

“Madam,” Joss sighed. “I am deeply relieved that Miss Meredith is not seriously injured. But her recovery can have nothing to do with me. We have nothing more to say to one another.”

“Perhaps you have nothing to say to her. But she has a great deal to tell you.”

Having reached the corridor containing the main bedchambers, the countess knocked at a nearly shut door. Mentally counting off rooms in each direction, Joss recognized this as the equivalent to Lord Sutcliffe's spying room. The realization brought a thin smile to his face.

When Lady Tallant poked her head into the room, a murmured conversation ensued. Then the countess reemerged, rubbing her hands together. “You may enter now, Mr. Everett.
Don't
close the door. I shall be…well, I shan't be watching you, because I will return to the drawing room now. But—ah, you receive my meaning. Please treat her with respect.”

This, he could answer quite honestly. “I would not dream of doing otherwise, my lady.”

With that, the countess took her leave in a cloud of yellow muslin and self-satisfaction. And there was nothing left for Joss to do but open the door.

The first thing he noticed was how
brown
the room was. Nothing like the appearance of Sutcliffe's spying room at all, this had a dark trellised paper on the wall, a dark patterned carpet underfoot, and heavy drapes at the windows. In the bed—still dressed in her morning frock, but with a piratical bandage around her head—sat Augusta, half-hidden beneath a damask coverlet.

Brown, of course.

Yet a fire waved at him from the grate, and the drapes had been pulled back to greet the midday sun. “This seems a pleasant space to recover one's wits,” Joss said.

Augusta was folding up some papers as he entered; when he spoke, she looked up with a smile. “That is exactly what I feel has happened. Do sit, won't you? On the settee, or maybe in the chair by the fire.”

He perched in a feminine-looking chair near the fire, across the room from the bed. It squeaked as he rested his weight on its spindly legs, and Augusta's smile unsuccessfully tried to hide. For the sake of his dignity, Joss ignored this. “Shall I have the fire built up? You must be cold.”

She shook her head. “I'm quite warm, actually.” She blinked, then held up a hand as though checking whether it had grown its own glove. “How odd. I'm—not cold right now.”

A reverie caught her up for a moment, and Joss waited it out until he could stand it no longer. “You wished to speak with me, Miss Meredith. What do you need to tell me?”

She sat up straighter against the mass of pillows behind her back. “I have decided to embrace my vulgarity.”

“I am sure your vulgarity will be delighted, especially if you press it against your dockyard.”

“Who wouldn't be?” she said with a little waggle of her shoulders. “It's my best feature.”

No, it's not
. But as he didn't want to begin with the giving of unwanted compliments, he only said, “I regret to admit it, but I find myself at a loss. To what do you refer, and what has it to do with me?”

She waved her handful of papers at him. “By now, all of Bath knows that Mrs. Flowers is really that red-haired cosmetic heiress Augusta Meredith. And your papers—thank you for the papers, by the way—gave me an idea for how to turn my deception to advantage.”

He shifted his weight against the chair's groan of protest. “Specifically?”

“I shall never be welcomed to the heart of the
ton
. My money allows me passage to its edges, but my birth shall never allow me to proceed further. Because…”

“The nobility expects you to be vulgar?”

“Precisely.” She grinned. “And what could be more vulgar than taking on a false identity only to advertise a new product?”

Joss considered. “Very little could be more vulgar than that.”

Dropping the papers, she spread her hands as though laying out an advertisement. “‘Try Meredith Beauty's complexion-brightening soap: a soap as transparent as your beauty.' Or maybe ‘
Shikakai
hair cleansing powder: the secrets of the Orient, now yours in England.' The copy needs a bit of work—”

“Rather.”

“—but imagine: a new line of scents for men and women alike, priced exorbitantly to appeal to the elite. Sandalwood for men. The honeysuckle scent I use in my own soap; it could be manufactured in quantity. Maybe jasmine as well.”

“You will slay every man in the
ton.
You want to unleash a whole ballroom full of women who smell like you?”

“Correct. And men who smell like you.”

Joss groaned. “I've no doubt you will rule the polite world. But how is the embrace of vulgarity to help with this?”

“The pretense of being Mrs. Flowers was the vulgarity. The challenge now is to make people feel as though they were in on the charade, rather than the butt of a joke. With Lady Tallant's help, I hope to spread enough judicious gossip to convince the Bath-ites—”

“Bathonians.”

“—that they knew I was deceiving them all along. That, in fact, they were really part of the deception, and that it was an excellent fiction which they enjoyed. That will bring them into the inner circle, so to speak. I mean, really; how could a name like ‘Mrs. Flowers' be anything but an advertisement for soap?”

He pondered this. “What will the stuffy trustees of your fortune think of this scheme?”

“They will think I am being a silly woman again, no doubt. It has never occurred to them to attribute the steadiness of the company's profits to my silliness. Now that I am twenty-five, though, the terms of my father's will and the labyrinthine constructs of business would permit me to divorce my fortune from their care. And perhaps I shall. Or perhaps I shall do something else instead.”

The look she cast him was so searching that he felt stripped by it, and he did not know what she meant by it. “If anyone can convince an entire city,” he said, “I am sure it will be the combination of your determination and Lady Tallant's charm.”

“I'm so enamored of this idea, I will not even point out that you just implied I have no charm.”

“Or did I imply that Lady Tallant has no determination?”

“Surely not that.” When she smiled at him, he could almost forget the number of ways in which they had rejected one another the night before. “Emily has agreed to drop a few blithe hints during her remaining days in Bath. I have taxed her goodwill much of late, but she has a generous supply. If she'll stand as my friend, I care not for the rest of the
ton
. An heiress with a powerful and kind friend can get away with much—especially if that heiress no longer cares whether a duke asks her to dance or whether Lady Stickler invites her to a ball.”

Not for the first time, Joss wondered whether society's reluctance to deal with her—and with him—stemmed from their birth or from their behavior. These were the warp and weft of life's fabric: the family into which one was born, the choices one made ever after. Augusta's reputation could not be separated from her upbringing in trade, and perhaps the one could benefit the other. After this interlude as Mrs. Flowers, she could never again pretend to be anyone other than herself.

He hoped she would not want to.

But it could have nothing to do with him. For which reasons had they denied each other? He, because of the wounds of his birth; she, because of the choices that had hardened her heart.

There was no way around the chasm between them, and no way through.

Joss stood, the chair's old wooden frame letting out another groan as his weight left it. “My dear former fake widow, it sounds as though you have a marvelous plan in place. I do hope the information on the papers will be of great use to you. My best wishes for your future success.”

“Wait, Joss. That's not all.” She shoved back the coverlet; her ivory muslin gown was crumpled, her feet bare of shoes and stockings. He had not thought to see any part of her bared again—a sight so surprising, so intimate, that he had to look away to summon a mantle of calm.

“Oh?” He studied the elaborate carving of the chimneypiece. Acanthus leaves and putti.

“Lord Chatfield told me you did not plan to enter his service. So I thought—well, if he's helped you, which he certainly seemed to think he had, then he will be wanting help in return. In the form of information, for that's how he operates. And so I've written a letter to him to tell him of my plans for Meredith Beauty. He'll be the first to know, besides you and Emily.”

“Fine.”

“More than fine, you stubborn man. Don't you see? That's your payment taken care of.”

Again, the gulf between them. It seemed to yawn before Joss, and he swayed, correcting his balance by grabbing the face of a marble putto on the chimneypiece. The smug little cherub. Lifting his hand, he turned on his heel to face Augusta again. “I'm sure you mean well, but it is not necessary for you to give me charity.”

She snorted. “Charity? I've never met anyone who would stand for that less than you. I'd sooner try to…to sword fight with the prince regent than give you charity.”

“You might win that sword fight. But what do you mean by this, if it's not charity?”

“Was it charity when you helped Lord Sutcliffe? When you took on a debt of honor to sort out his difficulties?”

“No. It was my job, and it was also the right thing to d—oh, are you making some sort of analogy? Damnation.”

“Quite right.” As she sat atop the bed, she folded her legs next to her. The bandage about her head slipped down, revealing an ugly bruise. When it covered her eyes…

…it reminded him of the cravat with which he'd covered her eyes, the ecstasy to which he'd coaxed her. It was all she wanted to take from him, but so much less than he wanted to give. “You don't owe me anything.”

“I know.” She tugged at the bandage, pulling it free over her mare's nest of still-pinned hair. “I don't owe you a thing. Which means anything I choose to give you is a gift, not a payment. And certainly not charity.”

“What's the difference between charity and a gift?” Somehow his feet had crossed the room, and he stood beside the bed looking down on her.

“The difference is all in the intention. If I feel that I am better than you? That's charity. But if I feel that…” She drew in a deep breath, shuddering. “That you're the finest gentleman I know? Then it's a gift. Joss. I mean it as a gift.”

His whole body seemed to vibrate, a tuning fork to the chime of her voice. “Then I thank you for the gift. I was not certain how I would pay my debt to the marquess, so—I—thank you.”

“You're quite welcome.” Even barefoot and messy-haired and bruised, she appeared gracious and dignified. “I'm sorry, Joss, that I ever belittled the size of your dream. It was yours, and therefore it is perfect for you. What do you intend to do after you leave Lord Sutcliffe?”

He sat on the bed next to her. It would not be improper, surely, because he would keep his boots planted firmly on the floor.

Right. And there was nothing improper in feeling the sway of the mattress beneath his weight or inhaling her faint, sweet smell of honeysuckle.

Or wondering why, now, at last, she was warm.

“Actually,” he managed to reply, “I have a new dream. I intend to go to Brighton, where an Indian man by the name of Dean Mahomet has built a popular bathhouse.”

Her brow puckered. “Dean Mahomet? I'm fairly certain that was the name of the man who operated the curry restaurant in London. The one I visited with my father. Can it be the same person?”

“Probably. Can there be more than one Indian man named Dean Mahomet in England?”

“Most likely not.” She nibbled on her bottom lip, then nodded. “You wish to meet him, then? Do you want to seek employment from him?”

“In any capacity needed, yes. He cannot require more variety of me than Lord Sutcliffe did. And I will bring along my grandmother's book and ask him for help translating the notes written in the Hindustani language. I have ignored the Indian part of myself, and I should like to learn more about it.”

Her hand slipped into his; sweet tension hummed in his fingers.

Maybe there was no chasm beneath his feet, after all. Maybe it was only unsteady ground, over which they would both have to pick their way.

“In the book,” Joss added gruffly, “Dean Mahomet might find reference to some plants or receipts that would be useful in his health treatments. I intend that ours will be a business arrangement; I shall not ask him for favors.”

“No, you would never do that.” More tightly, she laced her fingers through his. “Do you not wish to offer him your grandmother's notes on
shikakai
, then?”

“No,” Joss said. “Those are a gift. To you.”

“Oh.” The syllable came out as a sigh. “Then—I thank you. But there's one more thing I want to ask you.”