The Scandal Before Christmas (13 page)

The viscount immediately grew tired of trying to intimidate her, and turned back to vex his son. “Am I going to be kept in the corridor all day, or has that doddering old fool of a servant prepared a proper breakfast?”

Ian stepped aside, and swept out his arm in a mocking imitation of a courtly gesture. “Don’t let us keep you from breaking your fast. I’m sure there are kippers and eggs aplenty for you to complain about.”

The two were barely civil to one another.

“You’ll starve if you hope to dine on your wit, boy.” The viscount gave as good as he got, before he stalked down the hall.

Ian turned back to her, his eyes full of that self-deprecating, bittersweet regret. “Forgive me. I hate to inflict such a man upon you.”

“It cannot be helped.”

“No, it can’t. Have you eaten? Are you hungry? You hardly ate much last night. I fear Pinky would be insulted if he did not see you eat a good breakfast. He will take it as a mark of your disfavor.”

“Oh, no. There is no disfavor on either side. He brought me a pot of chocolate earlier. It was divine.”

“I’ll make sure he knows so. Unfortunately, I am ravenous this morning—or rather this afternoon, so I shall have to brave the breakfast room.”

“I won’t make you face it alone.”

“Thank you, Anne.”

But when they got to the breakfast room, they found it occupied with not one, but two fathers. Her father had already taken a seat, but now stood greeting the viscount.

“Colonel Oliver Lesley.” Her father brought himself to attention, his back ramrod straight and his gaze level before he made a bow. Though he wore no uniform his bearing declared him every inch a military man. “At your service.”

“I take it you’re the father?”

If her father was aware of the slight in Rainesford’s voice, he hid it well. “I am, sir. I take it you are Worth’s good sire?”

Whatever the viscount might have made in reply was forestalled by Ian, who reached across the table to shake her father’s hand in greeting, in an attempt to draw him away. “Good morning, sir. I trust you slept well? Can I get you some coffee? Come. Let me refresh your cup.”

“No, no. I thank you.” Her father waved Ian’s assistance away. “I am quite fine. Anne.”

Her father held out her chair, so Anne took the opportunity to brush close to him, and whisper, “Say nothing of the marriage, please. I beg you.”

“Anne? I beg your pardon? I could not hear.”

“So you approved of this marriage, did you?” The viscount turned his probing stare on her father. “Of course you did, thinking to ally yourself with a viscount’s son.”

This time, her father did take note of the barely veiled insult, but he maintained an admirable calm. “I thought to ally myself with a shipmate. A colleague and a man whose worth and character, in times of peril and times of peace, were well known to me.”

The viscount snorted. “Ian, do you mean?”

“Of course.” Her father shot a glance at Ian, standing by the sideboard, to see what he thought of such a remarkably derisive attitude from the young man’s own father.

“Who knew? You were on one of his ships then, were you? I didn’t know if you were just some colonel of the local militia.”

“I was until quite recently a colonel of His Majesty’s Royal Marines.”

“And how long ago did you two cook up this marriage between these two? Did he have to come a-begging you for your daughter?”

“No, sir.” The denial was out of Anne’s mouth before she had even had time to gather her courage. “I am the one he begged.”

The wide sash of Ian’s smile was all the reward she needed for being so bold.

Her father looked back and forth between her and Ian, and then between Ian and his father, before he answered. “I met young Worth on his first cruise as a young gentleman of the navy—as we call midshipmen—and took a liking to him then.”

“So how much did she bring him?” The viscount turned the full cutting power of his disdain on Anne. “I can only assume you dowered her well, as she’s not much to look at. I told
him
I’ll want to see the settlements.” He shot an equally derisive look at Ian. “Not that anything can be changed. It’s too late now that the deed is done.”

Again, her father looked from father to Ian and back. “What do you mean, too late?”

“Father…” Anne began at the same time that Ian spoke.

“Speaking of settlement, colonel, sir, I have that … If you’d come along then, sir, I’ll have the…”

Viscount Rainesford slowly sat up from his slouch, like a canny fox scenting up the wind. “What goes on here? How much did she bring?”

Anne knew enough to answer swiftly, “A thousand pounds.”

The viscount subsided into his usual, curling sneer. “Is that all you could afford?”

“He did not ask for more, sir.” Her father returned his own canine smile—the cagey dog guarding the henhouse, who knew the fox will always come to him.

The viscount smiled back, though it was clear he did not think it amusing. “No, he wouldn’t have. I would.”

“Ah.” Her father leaned back into his own chair, and steepled his fingers across his wide chest. “I begin to see why you are here. You think to make the bargaining tougher. Well, do your worst.”

Viscount Rainesford’s answer was deceptively casual. “Are the settlements not done?”

Her father answered before either she or Ian could keep him from responding. “Not even begun.”

“Sir—” Ian tried.

The viscount was as quick as he was tenacious. “Then how is it that you allowed the chit to marry?”

Her father looked first to Ian in his confusion, and Anne leapt to try and avert the coming disaster. “It was a love match, sir. My father wants me to be happy.”

“Yes, of course,” her father added in loyal support. But he was frowning at her, and looking back and forth between her and Ian.

And Anne could not stop herself from looking to the viscount. Who saw it all. And understood.

“I knew it. They’re
not
married. I knew it.” He slapped his palm against the table and pushed to his feet, staring at her, his fierce dark eyes—so unlike his son— boring into her. “This is all some sort of elaborate, godforsaken sham.”

She could not keep the sweep of mortifying heat from blazing across her face, and he saw and understood. Her face proclaimed her guilt as clearly as if she had spoken.

“Jesus God.” The viscount spat the curse at his son. “You fool. You stupid impetuous fool. Thank God I came when I did. There’s time enough to stop this unless—” He narrowed his gaze upon her. “Christ Almighty. You were practically buttering her parsnips in the corridor—”

Another scorching swath of humiliation burned across her face and neck.

“Enough,” Ian snarled in a voice gone low and quiet with anger. “I’ve already asked you to keep a civil tongue in your head, but I should have known that even that is beyond you.”

His father paid no mind to his lethal tone. “But have you had her, boy? That’s the question.”

“It is none of your business.”

“It is my business to find out if you are married or not!” Viscount Rainesford shot back.

Ian looked at her then, and she saw the same bittersweet apology in his eyes, almost as if he were asking her permission.

It would have been easiest to continue the lie. It would have been better for them both if he did. But it would have been wrong. “We are not,” he said.

“Jesus God,” the viscount swore again. “You’re nothing but a walking scandal.”

“There will be no scandal unless
you
make it one. The only people who know are in this house, and are trapped here by the snow. If word gets out, if a scandal is created, then it will have been you who created it. Is that what you want?”

His father had his answer at the ready. “What I want, is for once in your miserable life, you will do as you are told, and come back to Ciren Castle immediately, and marry the wife I have chosen for you. And mark my words, I will use whatever means I have to, including turning you into a scandal, if that is what it takes to make you obey.”

Ian advanced on the table. His eyes blazed with the commanding authority he must have used on his ships. “I am not a chess piece for you to move about your board at whim. I am an officer of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. I have a duty and a career—the career you picked out for me—to fulfill. And I will do so, no matter what you threaten. My duty and honor compel it.”

“Duty. Honor.” The viscount hammered out the words as if he were pounding them on an anvil. “You trot your duty and honor out whenever you don’t want to do as you are told, like guard dogs for your will.”

Ian leaned forward onto the table, and smiled like a pirate, armed to the teeth with elegant menace. “Mark
my
words. I will do whatever it will take to convince you that I am not your puppet. Nor is Ross.”

“Ross? He is not
anything
anymore.”

“He is alive, and he is your son, and my brother.” Ian spoke as if his grief and anger were burning his mouth. “And if you cannot have some pity and compassion for him, then you are no father to me either.” And with that final salvo, Ian threw himself from the room.

Anne immediately went to go to Ian, but her father followed her into the corridor so they might speak privately. “Anne? What goes on here?”

There was nothing to say but the truth. “The lieutenant told his father we were already married. I think he feared the viscount’s interference.”

“With good reason it seems.” Her father rubbed his hand along his jaw. “They go at each other hammer and claw—two sides of the same tool.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “And I fear they will injure us all.”

“Never you fear. Worth will see this out. He’s a good lad, Anne. A good lad. That’s more than I can say for most. I’ll put my faith in Worth.”

Chapter Thirteen

She found Ian, gone to cover in the kitchens, where Pinky—dressed in an outlandish getup—was handing him a mug of steaming coffee.

He raked his free hand through his hair in a now-familiar gesture of rumpled frustration. “I’m sorry that you had to witness that, Anne. I’m used to my father’s vile demeanor, but I dread inflicting him upon others.”

“It cannot be helped. As you said, you cannot order the weather.”

“More’s the pity.” He took several scalding gulps, and turned his keen blue eyes on Pinky. The old cherub was wearing layer upon layer of clothing—woolen coat over a knitted jumper, with several scarves swathed around his neck, and topped off by a bright crocheted scarf that he had knotted on top of his head. Anne had never seen the like of it in her life.

But Ian did not bat an eye. “Now where do you go in such a sartorially resplendent, top-man’s getup, Pinky? Is the well frozen over?”

“No, cap’n, sir. Not a’tall. The well is in fine shape, it is. I’m bound for the wood, to fetch in a yule log. I’ve my eye on a good one, I have. I just hope I’ve the strength for it. I’m not so young as I once was, you know,” he said in a confidential aside, as if it were fresh news. “But I suppose I can rouse those lazy coachmen from their naps if the snow proves to be too deep.”

A low chuckle rumbled out of Ian. “You needn’t try to cozen me with your mock innocent looks, Pinky. I’m on to you. I know when I’m being bamboozled into doing something. And God knows I could use some air after being in the same room as my father. Just let me get my sea boots and coat, and I’ll be ready presently.”

“Oh, aye, sir! I could certainly do with your good strong help. That I could,” Pinky said with great satisfaction, before he turned his hopeful cherubic charm upon her. “And you, mistress? I could do with your eye as well. Perhaps gathering some holly and ivy to put along the mantelpieces? It would make the old place powerful pretty for the yule.”

Ian’s smile was an even more powerful charm. “What say you, Anne? Would you like to bundle yourself up for an afternoon in the snow? We’ve nothing else to do but avoid my father.”

Relief and pleasure made her nearly giddy. “Yes, please.” She would have begged him to include her, had he not asked. Because another plan—an alternative set of words—was wheeling and swooping about her brain. “I should very much like that.”

*   *   *

It was no more than a few hundred yards to the wood. Ian led the way, trudging a path through the deep snow for Anne to follow, but it felt good to be out and moving, doing. He could think better when he was out in the bracing air.

And he could look at the revelation that was Anne. Out-of-doors she was an entirely different creature than even the shyly happy girl of the corridor in her wine-punch gown. Though she was dressed for the cold with her thick country cloak over a nondescript wool redingote that could only be considered the last stare of fashion, she glowed.

The cold painted her skin a luminous milky white, and her cheeks a delicious rosy pink. The light reflected from the snow illuminated her hair beneath the hood, gilding the brown with warm shades of cinnamon and amber spice. But it was her voice that brought him to a standstill in the snow.

Once in the wood, they had wandered slightly apart—Ian to hewing Pinky’s chosen log down to a size to fit into the hearth, and Anne and Pinky to strip ivy from the trunks and trailing branches of trees. And Pinky, being Pinky and some sort of aged guardian angel, had started singing. At first it was only a throaty version of “God rest ye merry, gentlemen,” that Ian was sure could only end in a chorus of nautical yo-ho’s.

But once they set to their assigned tasks, the sentimental old tar slipped into a quiet little rendition of “The Holly and the Ivy.”

And in another moment or two, Anne’s voice joined his. And Ian was nearly struck dumb. He had heard her in the glasshouse, but she had stopped so quickly, muting herself within his hearing. But today she did not hold back.

Pinky encouraged her, pitching his warm tenor to harmonize, and let her carry the melody. And as he raised his volume, so too did she.

Oh, the holly and the ivy,

When they are both full grown,

Of all the trees that are in the wood,

The holly bears the crown.