The Scandal of the Season

by Aydra Richards

  Andover paled considerably, the flush of anger draining from his cheeks until he looked like nothing so much as a cadaver a fortnight past its prime. “I’ve done nothing to you,” he said, and his voice trembled over the syllables.

  “Have you destroyed so many lives, then, that you can’t recall them?” The words were light and even, as if they had been discussing the weather rather than Andover’s eminent destruction.

  Andover swallowed heavily, and Grey watched him cast his mind back into the past, searching for the deed that had merited such animosity. Twenty years was quite a way back, but Grey waited—and waited. And then, at last, Andover found it. The minute widening of the eyes, the unholy terror that seeped into them.

  “Ah,” said Grey. “There it is.”

  “You—you—” Andover struggled to formulate a response, his fingers tugging at the elegant knot of his cravat. “No—you can’t be. Your father—”

  “Oh, long dead, I assure you,” Grey said. “He lived for perhaps two months after you stole the profits that ought to have been his out from under him. But there were bills to pay that he couldn’t manage without his livelihood, and he shot himself. It’s a messy sort of death, you know.” Grey flicked an imaginary bit of lint from his sleeve. “No child wants to be the one to find his father’s brains scattered across the dining room floor. And that is the fate that you gave to me.”

  “But how did you—”

  “Survive? Not easily, I can tell you.” That had been the point, really. It had always been his father’s word against an earl’s, and the word of a commoner held precisely no substance when weighed against a peer’s. There had been no money left to mount a suit—not that it would have been won, regardless, for lords were rarely successfully prosecuted in matters civil. One couldn’t even compel a peer to make an appearance in court for anything less than a criminal trial, and according to the letter of the law, no crime had taken place. Once Grey’s father had killed himself, there had been little left to them except to watch creditors take everything. He and his mother had been helpless but to see ruin stretching out before them. Grey had been just ten years old—old enough to understand what had happened to them, but too young to prevent it. Too young to take any action which might have saved his family.

  No. He would not be drawn into the past, to the coppery tang of blood or the horror of finding his father’s corpse sprawled across the floor. He climbed up past bloodstained wood floors, through leering creditors suggesting that there might be another way his mother could pay down his father’s debts. He clawed his way back to the present, back into Andover’s study—the place he had worked so hard to get.

  “I am a better businessman than ever my father was,” Grey said, and his voice was the same smooth, emotionless tenor it had always been. “I have risen higher than he could ever have dreamed. And I always collect upon that which is due to me.”

  Andover swallowed again, the sound deafening in the otherwise silent room. “What do you want?” he asked again, and this time there was no heat to the words, no anger or righteous indignation. Andover could afford only fear, because Grey had taken everything else.

  Grey allowed the words to hang between them for a moment, to truly enjoy the gravity of the situation. Like a worm on a hook, Andover squirmed, and it was delightful.

  “Everything,” he said at last. “But for the moment, I’ll settle for your daughter.”

  Chapter Two

  “My lady, your presence is requested in the library.”

  Serena looked up from her embroidery, grateful for the excuse to abandon the pointless project. The upstairs maid, Maggie, stood in the doorway, her fists clenched in the stiff white fabric of her apron. Something was wrong, then—but something was always wrong in the house, and Serena had no illusions over the fact that her father would somehow find a way to cast the blame at her feet.

  “Thank you, Maggie.” She set aside her embroidery—a mess of inattentive stitches and clashing colors—and rose to her feet, smoothing at the wrinkles that had pleated themselves into the skirt of her morning dress. “I’ll go immediately.” Anything less would provoke yet another lecture on the role of a daughter in a noble household, the unquestioning obedience that she owed to her father. It was easiest, safest, simply to bow her head and murmur her assent.

  Maggie stood stiffly, the odd set of her shoulders an ominous warning.

  “Is something amiss?” Serena inquired.

  At first Maggie shook her head, as if to deny the truth even to herself. But at last she nodded and admitted in a whisper, “It’s the Demon Marquess, my lady. He’s in the library with his lordship.” She darted a wary glance over her shoulder as if she suspected that merely whispering the moniker would summon the man forth. Speak of the devil, and he appears.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Maggie. He’s not a demon; he’s only—” What, Serena? Only what? She spoke as if she knew the man, when she’d never even met him. Of course, everyone knew of him, the man who had forced his way into the aristocracy through bribery, blackmail, or worse. To the best of her knowledge, most did whatever they could to avoid catching his notice.

  “He is,” Maggie breathed, her fingers flexing as if she had only just managed to resist the urge to make the sign of the cross. “He is. Servants talk, my lady. He’s made some bargain with Old Nick himself that lets him be as he is, do as he likes. How else to explain it? My sister—who works in Lady Chatwin’s house—said she heard straight from his neighbor’s footman that he eats helpless little babies for his supper.”

  And how is his neighbor’s footman to know such a thing? Has he been invited to dine?

  Serena let the inclination to loose the sardonic words pass and sighed her exasperation. “Maggie, I think it’s far more likely that the footman was telling your sister tales. I can’t imagine where his lordship would even go about acquiring an infant for his supper—much less that his cook would agree to serve one. And wouldn’t you weary of the same fare served to you each and every day? Surely his lordship must require some variety. Maidens, perhaps.”

  Maggie drew in a horrified breath, one hand fisted over her heart.

  “A joke, Maggie.” But Serena could see by the faintly green tinge to the maid’s face that it had been a poor one. She cleared her throat. “I’m certain his lordship does not have cannibalistic inclinations.” Mostly certain, anyway.

  Maggie dipped a curtsey, but looked unconvinced. “If you say so, my lady.”

  “I do.” Serena took a moment to check her appearance in the cheval glass, brushing at a few flyaway wisps of hair that had come loose from their pins. “Do you know what Father wants?”

  “No, my lady.” But Maggie’s gaze had drifted away and down, and the guilty look set a skirl of alarm streaking through Serena’s stomach.

  The last time the earl had received an unmarried gentleman in his library, it had been to entertain an offer for her hand—which the earl had refused. She hadn’t even known of it until weeks later, but had not been particularly put out by it. She and the lord in question had danced together only twice, and he was near to her father’s age and looking for a woman of rank to mother the children his first wife had left behind when she had died.

  But she hadn’t even been summoned to give her own answer then—her father had made the rejection for her out of hand. So why had she been summoned now? It wasn’t as if she was the lady most likely to win the admiration of a marquess, even one so recently ennobled. They had never even been introduced. She couldn’t have picked the man out of a crowd.

  Portsmouth, the butler, hovered outside the closed door of the library, his face set in grim lines. Of course Portsmouth was generally a grim sort of man, but this was—this was an unusual grimness. The sort of gravitas reserved for funerals.

  Hers?

  She shook the macabre thought aside and strove for a placid smile as Portsmouth scratched at the door to announce her, then stood aside to let her enter. Neither the earl nor the marquess
rose as she entered; an egregious breach of etiquette. But then, she had long since accepted that any sort of respect would not be forthcoming from her father, who seemed mostly content to forget her existence—which she appreciated, considering that when she did merit his notice, it was only to castigate her for some imagined offense.

  “Serena.” The earl’s voice was just as sharp as ever, but there was something odd about it. A strangled sort of sound, a tightness that suggested that just forcing out her name had slashed his throat to ribbons.

  “Father. You wished to see me?” What a ridiculous question. He never wished to see her. Her presence was merely tolerated, and the less frequently they encountered one another, the better. She had long suspected it was because she had done little to encourage any potential suitors, and thus she remained beneath his roof, unwed at three and twenty, swiftly becoming a burden.

  But then why had he refused the few gentlemen who had offered for her?

  The earl did not meet her eyes. Instead he gestured to a chair across from him, the twin of the one that was already occupied. She could see only the back of the marquess’ head, his thick, dark hair disheveled as if wind-swept.

  Why her father had suggested she ought to sit beside the marquess, she could not guess. But she nonetheless did as he had ordered and moved to take the indicated seat, risking a tiny peek at the mysterious man as she did so.

  She nearly missed the chair. Him. Him! The gentleman that she had caught staring at her from across the ballroom evening last!

  Well, he didn’t look like the sort of gentleman that might be predisposed to regularly consuming infants—or even irregularly consuming them.

  Mortified by the bent of her thoughts, she averted her face and hoped neither man would notice that her cheeks burned as if she’d spent hours baking in the sun. Her hands settled in her lap, folded properly, even as her heart hammered in her chest.

  “Are you satisfied?” the earl ground out, but it was directed at the marquess, and Serena felt her brows draw together in confusion. Satisfied? With what?

  “That remains to be seen,” the marquess replied. “Does she have any skills beyond watercolors and embroidery?”

  “She sings well enough. Plays the pianoforte. Dances agreeably.” The earl scowled into his glass of liquor.

  Serena’s confusion fled as she realized abruptly that they were speaking of her—discussing her skills, as if she were not present. For what purpose?

  “Bah,” the marquess said, and the scathing sound sent a chill down her spine. “So she’s useless, then.”

  “I beg your pardon.” The words escaped before she could think better of them, cracking out with the force of a gunshot. The earl narrowed his eyes at her, daring her to continue.

  “As well you should,” the marquess said. He cast her a scornful glance, colder than brown eyes had any right to be. “You’ll be expensive to keep, I’m certain. More so than you likely deserve.”

  To keep? So this was a proposal, then, if a ham-fisted one. He had decided to take a noblewoman for a wife, regardless of whether or not he even liked her. But why had her father entertained it? He looked as if his dignity had been besmirched simply by sharing the same room as the marquess.

  She flattened her hands in her lap to quell the urge to clench them into fists instead and took a deep breath to recover the sweet tone of voice she had perfected over the years. “My lord,” she said, when she could trust herself to do so, “I understand that the strictures of polite society may be new to you, but even you must know that a lady is unlikely to accept the suit of a gentleman who insults her.”

  The earl made a strangled sound in his throat, threw back the remainder of his liquor and then reached for the decanter anew.

  The marquess merely laughed. Not a full-throated laugh of amusement, but a snide, silky snicker that sounded like poison to the ears. And for just a moment, she could imagine that he was exactly the sort of man who would demand to dine upon infants, every single night.

  Somewhere, she had made a critical error. But she could not understand what it was.

  “You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that I have come seeking a wife,” he said, and every facet of frost lived within his voice, sparkling and cold. “How very presumptuous of you.”

  Serena could not meet that frigid gaze. She wanted to recoil from its icy hold, but the back of the chair was too solid to prevent it. Instead she reflexively sought the earl’s reassurance—foolish, considering she couldn’t recall the last time he had had even a single kind word for her.

  “Father?” she inquired, and winced to hear the tremulous inflection of her voice.

  “Yes, Andover,” the marquess said, the sibilance in his voice sliding down Serena’s spine. “You be the one to tell her. I think I would enjoy that.”

  For a long moment there was an oppressive silence that assailed her with the weight of words unspoken. The clock on the mantel ticked away each second in severe, percussive clicks.

  Finally the marquess broke the silence. “Andover,” he snapped. And the earl flinched as if he had been struck.

  Her father had cringed away from this man, this marquess whom some thought to be a demon.

  “We’ve come to an agreement,” the earl said at last. “An arrangement, if you will.” He kept his gaze carefully averted, and his voice was flat and stoic, resolute. No, not resolute—resigned, in a way she’d never heard it.

  “An arrangement?” she heard herself parrot feebly.

  “Come now, Andover. You make it sound as if it were by mutual agreement. Surely you think better of your daughter than that.” The marquess shifted in his seat, lounging as if he were enjoying the palpable discomfort. “Or has your good opinion waned, now that you know what she will become? The fate to which you have consigned her?”

  There was still a word unspoken, trembling in the air between the three of them. Serena was suddenly very certain she knew precisely what it was, but she could not bring herself to believe it. It was unthinkable, unconscionable.

  “Father,” she said, and her voice was just a breath, a ghost of a sound. “I don’t understand. You cannot mean—”

  The tightly-leashed anger that the earl would not risk showing to the marquess instead exploded upon her. “You will do as you are told, damn you! There is no choice. Perhaps if you had married years ago when you were young enough to catch a husband, you would not find yourself in this situation now.”

  And there it was, the censure she had expected, but that somehow always managed to surprise her. She ought to have become inured to it by now, but the lash of it still caught her off-guard, forced her to work once more for the placid mien she had long since perfected. Perhaps a half-second of vulnerability visible on her face, but still it was more than enough to humiliate her to the depths of her soul.

  “There is no choice,” the earl repeated, but his voice had gone rough and ragged, and he looked older than she’d ever seen him. He cast his gaze away as if he could not bear to look upon her, as if she were already a sullied, filthy thing beneath his notice.

  “I’m disappointed, Andover.”

  The marquess’ voice surprised her, and quite against her will she found her eyes drawn to him once again. She might have expected enjoyment, pleasure, or satisfaction—but instead the smooth planes of his face were set in condemnation.

  “Even if you cannot be honest with yourself, you damn well owe your daughter your honesty. You did this to her, Andover. You sold her from the cradle, and she’ll pay for your sins with her body. You owe her your gratitude, Andover, because she is all that stands between your family and ruin.”

  Someone would be ruined either way. She would be ruined either way. That unspoken word was mistress, and it was every bit as ugly as Serena had imagined. Her father might deserve the consequences of ruin, but Hugh did not. William and his fiancée did not.

  She did not, but that was hardly relevant. If she refused, they would all suffer. She could not
be certain that refusal was even an option. If the earl had given his consent, then it stood to reason that he would not protect her. Her future had been bargained away already—hers for theirs. And wasn’t that always the way of it?

  Her father, who turned away from her as if he had already removed her from his thoughts, had agreed to a devil’s bargain and ruined her in the process.

  “Go,” the earl rasped to the marquess. “You have what you’ve come for. Take her and get out of my house.” He shoved himself out of his chair and quit the room without another word. Without a single glance. Without even the barest of indications that he had felt the smallest smidgeon of guilt.

  And whatever tiny, insignificant part of her that had nurtured the fragile hope that one day her father might find something within her to admire withered and died, alongside every dream she had ever cherished.

  Chapter Three

  The bewilderment scrawled across the Tyndall chit’s face ought to have been gratifying. Instead it was unsettling to see—unpleasant, in its way. Grey wasn’t certain exactly what he’d expected of her, but it certainly hadn’t been the swiftness with which she had leapt to his command to rise.

  She moved like a sleepwalker, dodging furniture and servants on instinct alone, following him through the house like a puppy at his heels. He suspected she had retreated somewhere inside herself, as if she could process the ruins of her life only from that crucial, safe distance, where nothing could touch her.

  From the moment she crossed the threshold, she would be ruined. And it was there she stumbled, blinking in the afternoon sunlight like a newborn fawn as she drew first one shocked breath and then another. He thought she might cry, might wring her hands and plead prettily for some shred of mercy, but if the thought had even crossed her mind, it had been immediately discarded.