Simply Scandalous (38 page)

At these magic words, Mrs. Spinner instantly directed him to a small room at the back of the house.
There he found Juliet struggling to hang Uncle
George's rapier back in place on the wall. It was but
the work of a moment for him to do this for her.

"Thank you," she said coolly, her patrician face
red with exertion. She tried to step around him
neatly, but Swale blocked her. "Your left eye is
swollen," she remarked.

"Your brother did a few strengthening exercises on
my face."

"You brute!" she exclaimed. "Did you hit him? I
swear, if you hit Cary-! Is he all right?"

"Is he all right?" Swale huffed. "What about me? And
no, I didn't hit him. Turns out he didn't want me to
carry him up to the house after all."

"You left him out there in the wilderness!"

"I tried to," he admitted, "but the cheeky fellow
chased me all the way to the house. I have only just
given him the slip."

She shook her head in disgust. "You ran away."

"He kept hitting me," Swale explained. "I have a
great deal of restraint, as you know, but it is a finite
amount. Sooner or later, I would have hit him back,
sore arm or no sore arm."

"Excuse me," she said coldly, "I must go to my
brother."

"Not so fast," he said, catching her by the arm. "I
have a straight question for you, Miss Juliet. And I
should like you to give me a straight answer."

"Oh yes?" she asked politely, letting her arm go slack
rather than struggle against his superior strength.

`Julie," he said, letting her go. "You know my feelings. You know the real reason I came to Surrey. Do
I have your permission to place an engagement notice
in the newspaper?"

If she had not been brown as a nut, Juliet's face
would have been quite white. "W-what?" she stammered. "Why ask me?"

"After everything that's happened between us, I
should look a bloody fool if I put my notice in twenty
minutes after Captain Horatio Cary puts his in, don't
you think, Julie?" He looked at her intently. "Or, is that
what you wanted all along, to make a bloody great fool
of me?"

Juliet took a deep, shuddering breath. "Is it so very
important to you that your notice is put in before his?"
she asked quietly.

"You know that it is!" he answered furiously. "It
means everything to me. It makes all the difference
in the world!"

"Then, by all means, make your preference for a
certain lady known to all the world just as soon as you
can, Ginger," she said with what she hoped was the
coolest, barest, most indifferent shrug in the world. "Put in as many notices as you like, my lord. Put a hundred in the Morning Post-no, a thousand. Have
monograms printed up on cream-colored, hot pressed
paper embossed with your coat of arms. While you are
about it, commission a few dozen commemorative
plates from Mr. Spode. Hire men to walk around
Hyde Park from dawn 'til dusk wearing giant sandwich
boards. Never let it be said that my Lord Swale does
things by halves."

By the end of this remarkable speech, her beautifully sculpted nose was red as fire, and her gray eyes
were bright with unshed tears. She gave him a fierce
shove and ran out of the room, slamming the door
behind her.

"Impetuous little madcap," he murmured fondly.

He particularly liked the idea about the sandwich
boards.

Swale was not present at tea, and when the ladies
went upstairs to dress for dinner, he still had not put
in an appearance. Juliet dressed automatically in the
last of her London gowns. It had been made for a ball
that she had never attended, having been forced out
of London before the end of the season. Beginning
with almost a white decollete, the fine silk gradually,
almost imperceptibly proceeded through a half dozen
deepening shades of blue until finally the hem
reached a rich ultramarine. She was brushing out her
glossy, walnut-brown hair when Mrs. Spinner tapped
at the door.

"Dear me! Don't you look fine, Miss Julie!"

Juliet was too depressed to entertain compliments.
"What is it, Mrs. Spinner?"

"No one seems to know whether or not his lordship
means to return for dinner," replied the housekeeper.
"Mr. Corcoran says he ordered his grays put into the
traces of his wee car-"

"His curricle?" Juliet guessed with a faint smile.

"Aye, and no one's seen him since. Master Cary said
he didn't know and didn't care where his nibs had gone ... and I do hate to bother Sir Benedict. I have
to tell the cook something-it's boeuf en croute and
sherry trifle for the sweet. Do you know if his lordship
means to return, Miss?"

"I believe he had urgent business in London," said
Juliet slowly, attempting a look of cool indifference.
"But I had not thought-I did not think he meant to
go immediately."

"He ought to have taken his leave of Sir Benedict
and Lady Elkins like a gentleman," said Mrs. Spinner
indignantly. "What am I to tell the poor cook?"

"That man," Juliet said crossly, setting down her
hairbrush, "has no conduct! He is the rudest man in
England! Go and see if he's left his things in Runnymede, Mrs. Spinner. Then we'll know absolutely if
he means to return for dinner."

Mrs. Spinner, who was all of fifty-two, with a lace cap
and a huge gold cross hanging from the edge of her
massive bosom, blushed like a girl. "Oh, I couldn't,
Miss Julie! "

Juliet sighed as she rose from her dressing table.
"I'll go."

"Oh! Do you think you should, Miss Julie?" cried
Mrs. Spinner.

"He can't eat me if he's not there," Juliet pointed
out dryly.

The first thing she saw when she entered Runnymede was a handsome pair of silver-backed brushes
on top of the chest of drawers. Red hair in the bristles left no doubt about their ownership. The sight of
them made her ache. She slipped her hand through
the strap of one of the brushes and picked it up.

How absurd that she had not recognized her feelings before! She should be engaged to Ginger, not
Serena, and she might have been so. The knowledge that she had behaved honorably in Hertfordshire
when she had declined to force him to marry her
hardly consoled her. Honor, she decided, was ridiculously overrated. Honor was going to trap Ginger in
a loveless, miserable marriage and herself in loathsome spinsterhood.

She slipped the second brush over her other hand
and clapped the two together violently, as though she
could crush honor between them.

"Hullo, Julie," said a friendly, familiar voice from
behind her.

She nearly jumped out of her skin and frantically
tried to shake his hairbrushes from her hands. One
fell to the floor, but the other clung stubbornly to
her hand.

Swale slipped it off easily and returned it with its
mate to the top of the bureau. If he was surprised to
find his hostess in his room handling his toiletries, he
didn't show it. He did, however, show a dark, puffy
ring around one eye where Cary had planted his fist
earlier. The black eye had not dampened his spirits,
however. "Don't have much use for those currycombs
anymore, thanks to Pickering," he said cheerfully.
"Nothing on my head left to curry."

"I'm so sorry," she stammered. "I never meant for
him to scalp you."

Now he was surprised. "Don't you like the crop?"

"I miss it," she admitted.

"So do I," he said. "Oh well. It'll grow back, I daresay. Did you wish to speak to me?"

He looked at her very directly with his clear green
eyes.

Cleopatra, she knew, had been given a moment like
this-or rather, she had taken it for herself when
she had rolled herself up in a carpet and had herself delivered to Caesar's chamber. Just a few minutes
alone with him, and the great Julius Caesar had abandoned his wife, his country, and his honor and had
made Cleopatra Queen of Egypt. History did not say
what exactly the Egyptian beauty had done to poor
Caesar to make him so compliant, butJuliet guessed
it was probably fairly naughty.

She was not Cleopatra, of course, but then, he was
not Caesar, and the fact that she had not spent the last
few hours rolled up in a carpet must be seen as an
advantage.

`Julie?"

"I beg your pardon, sir," she answered with a violent
shake of her head. "I thought you'd gone, or I should
never have presumed-"

"I'm just back now," he replied easily, taking off his
coat and flinging it onto the bed. "I have been in the
village, enriching the special messenger service."

"Oh," said Juliet. "I thought you might have gone
to London. I didn't know what to tell the cook. It's
boeuf en croute," she added lamely, "so the cook absolutely has to know how many she's feeding."

"Definitely put me down for the boeuf en croute,"he
said, patting his belly.

"Right," she said, knowing she ought to go at once.
She could not even begin to tally how many standards
of propriety she was violating merely by being alone
with a man in his bedroom, but her feet refused to
move. "You went for a drive?" she asked.

`Just to the village. I sent my instructions to my
father's man of business-urgent post. The announcement will appear in all the morning editions
with any luck."

Juliet stared at him, a huge hollow feeling opening
in her chest.

"Congratulations," she said, forcing a smile. "I'm
sorry if I was rude to you earlier ..."

He seemed surprised. "You, Julie? Why, you were
bursting with great ideas. Minerva never had a better
idea in her whole life than those sandwich boards.
That'll make 'em sit up and take notice. That ought
to convince certain people the marriage should take
place sooner rather than later."

Juliet's mouth fell open. "S-sandwich boards?"

"Yes-announcing our engagement. I don't think
it's ever been done before." The idea of being the first
man in history to announce his engagement via sandwich board held great appeal for him, she could tell.
The priceless ass!

She very much doubted that his betrothed would
share his enthusiasm. Serena would almost certainly
die of mortification. She might even reconsider her
decision to become Lady Swale. After all, any woman
would balk at having her name printed up on a sandwich board to be displayed in Hyde Park, and what
woman in her right mind would marry a man capable of such an absurdity, such an unforgivable lapse
in propriety? Perhaps not even a greedy, grasping,
long-in-the-tooth, ambitious schemer like Serena
Calverstock.

Juliet felt a ray of hope. If only .. .

Of course, no honorable gentleman would ever
break an engagement to a lady, but there was nothing
to prevent Serena from changing her mind. Her rival
was not unintelligent; she would be certain to realize
how insupportable it would be to marry an uncivilized
brute like Swale. And if Serena jilted Ginger ...
then Miss Wayborn could certainly console him!

"Indeed, my lord," Juliet said, now able to smile with genuine delight. "I hope this marriage brings you
great happiness."

"I believe it will make us both happy," he replied.
"When two people are such good friends and so wellmatched in spirit, the marriage is bound to be happy."

"I'm sure you're right," she agreed quickly. "I'd
better go finish dressing. I'll send Pickering to youwith a poultice for your eye."

"You look dressed to me," he said, holding the
door for her. "I'm a fair judge of when a lady is
dressed or not dressed. And you, Julie, are dressed.
Very clever the way it shifts color, that dress."

He was not looking at her dress at all, she could not
help but notice. He was looking deep into her eyes.
With his swollen eye, he looked more than ever like
a fantastic creature from a grotto. Why then did she
feel the strongest urge to take his face in her hands
and kiss him?

"It's called ombre," she told him in a faint voice.

"Ombre," he murmured. "That's French, isn't it?
Clever little buggers, the French. Always coming up
with natty new words and phrases. Bouillon-that's
gold, but also soup."

"Carte blanche," she suggested archly.

She saw him swallow hard. "Bon appetit," he said
huskily. "Cherchez la femme. "

"Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point."

"Good Lord," he breathed. "What in God's name
does that mean?"

"The heart," she translated, looking up at him
through her lashes, "has reasons of which Reason
knows nothing."

The effect on him was everything she could have
wished for. Abruptly, he closed the door, forced her
up against it, and kissed her, his hands buried in her thick hair. It was a fiery, undisciplined kiss, his tongue
leaping wildly as he discovered her openness. Juliet
welcomed it, her heart beating wildly as again and
again his mouth closed over hers. When he was finished, he reluctantly released her, but leaned his
hands against the door on either side of her head. He
was panting as he touched her forehead with his
own.