The Scandal of the Season

by Aydra Richards

  Sarah gave a little start, and she shook her head as if to clear it. “Nothing that ought to concern you,” she said briskly. “Have you had enough? I can summon one of the laundry maids to finish it up.”

  “No! I’m going to do it. I am going to do something useful,” Serena insisted, jerking the bat through the shroud of sheets swimming in the tub, “if it kills me.”

  Unfortunately, she had the sinking feeling that it actually might.

  Two hours later, she had finished washing a single set of sheets, and if it had been an undignified, painful experience, at least it had been rewarding in its way. Perhaps washing a set of sheets did not a useful person make, but for the first time she did not feel like an ornament whose only purpose was to be set upon a shelf and admired. She had accomplished something, meager as that accomplishment had been.

  If she was unrespectable in the eyes of society, she could at least learn to respect herself. To learn to value herself by a different set of standards than those to which she had once been accustomed.

  Lady Serena Tyndall had died that day in the Earl of Andover’s library, and Mouse had risen in her place. Who Mouse was, precisely, it was impossible to say—but a world of possibilities stretched before her, and she intended to explore them.

  Chapter Nine

  Grey had intended to spend his afternoon poring over possible investment opportunities in an effort to alleviate the regrettable stirrings of guilt that Mouse had somehow burdened him with. Unfortunately, the neatly aggregated documents that his office manager had prepared for him had, naturally, been left at his business office. He’d been forced to send Simpson round in his carriage to retrieve them.

  A waste of valuable time, really, when he should have gone to retrieve them himself. No—that was just as bad. He should have simply kept to his usual routine and gone to his office. He was not the sort of man who would allow a woman to derail his plans.

  Or at least, he had not been that sort of man. Until Mouse had come into his life.

  It was only that he could not trust his judgment of her, and thus she had retained her strange allure. People, by and large, tended toward predictability in their patterns. Their behaviors were no mystery to him; an inveterate gambler would remain an inveterate gambler, moving through the paces of his life toward that singular goal until he lacked the means to reach it any longer. A drunkard, similarly, would be seeking the bottom of a bottle in whatever way he could manage.

  But Mouse had subverted his expectations of her. He had had relatively few of them, and they had all been concocted from what he had grown to expect from her sort of woman. There ought to have been a multitude of tears and pleading, fearful entreaties, impassioned tantrums perhaps. Another lady would likely have taken to her bed for days on end, wailing and sobbing.

  Perhaps Mouse had been afraid, but she had also been brave. Brave enough to hold her head high as her world shattered to pieces around her. Brave enough to snatch a knife from a table and make a valiant, if ill-fated, attempt at stabbing him. Brave enough to declare her intentions to have her revenge, and then make use of his resources to enact it in the best way she knew how.

  Grey had mistaken her too easily for one of those other ladies, simply because she had looked like them, spoken like them, moved like them. She had been just another common flower in a garden already too ripe with them. His mistake had lain in assuming that she had already blossomed, when in fact she was simply a little bud, petals furled tightly and hiding in plain sight, her potential not yet realized.

  She might become anything—anything at all—and there was far more promise in her than he had ever anticipated.

  His gaze strayed to the tray that Mrs. Hathaway had left for him; a light meal of some soup or another and a number of tiny, crustless sandwiches. He could not guess how such a meal was meant to satiate any substantial appetite, but it didn’t matter, because he did not particularly have one at the moment.

  The tray had, however, arrived with a spoon, and it was that he took into his hand and let the metal warm between his fingers.

  If he had a mind to do it, he could train Mouse up. She could become a hothouse rose of his own creation, blooming in the direction he gave her. He could trim away anything unnecessary in her, mold her into the perfect—

  No. She wouldn’t be Mouse, then. It was just another kind of pressure, bending by another name. If he told her what she ought to be, she would lose everything that had made her so interesting, so unpredictable. He had taken enough from her already. To take her very will would be to kill her in pieces, to strip away her potential.

  It was only when the thin sides of the spoon began to cut into his fingers that he realized he’d bent its neck without even intending to do so. It felt like a heavy-handed metaphor there in his fist—a lesson that it was possible to ruin something precious without meaning to. To tread carefully, lest his actions or his words carry a consequence that he had not expected.

  Rule three, he thought, and damned himself for a fool. Mouse bends to no one. Not even to me.

  ∞∞∞

  When Simpson returned a half an hour later, he clutched a stack of papers to his chest and looked as if he’d come out the losing side of a tavern brawl. His hair was mussed beyond recognition, his cravat was askew, and there were several tiny lacerations throughout his coat that sported fraying threads.

  “Good lord,” Grey said, rising from his chair. “What the devil happened to you?”

  “There was an incident,” Simpson said, his voice rising and falling in an odd, warbling inflection.

  “An incident?”

  “Someone shot at me,” he said, and gave a shallow, humorless laugh. “Well—someone shot at the carriage,” he said. “But I don’t think it was me, precisely, that they had intended to kill.”

  Grey felt his face freeze in realization. “Of course not. The carriage is mine.”

  “Indeed, sir,” said Simpson. “I’m afraid your carriage is in need of repair. The ball struck the window and lodged somewhere in the seat.”

  Grey supposed that the lacerations on the man’s coat must have been caused by shards of flying glass. “Sit down, Simpson, you look a mess. Whiskey?”

  “I know I ought not, sir, but I’d be grateful.” Simpson took a seat on the other side of the desk, and his hands trembled as he extended the stack of papers toward the desk and dropped them upon a corner. “You seem remarkably untroubled, sir.”

  “It’s hardly the first time someone’s tried to do away with me, Simpson, and I doubt it will be the last.” But it did present a problem, for it had been more than a year since the last such attempt, and the timing seemed…too convenient. “Did you see the shooter?”

  “I did not, sir. I’m afraid I was a touch distracted.” Simpson’s hand clenched around the glass of whiskey that Grey had offered him, and he downed it in a single swallow. “I believe the villain used the chaos of the moment to escape into St. James’ Park.”

  It might have been a crime of opportunity, Grey supposed, but he knew that Andover and his sons each held memberships at a gentleman's club nearby. He had not thought that they were the sort to dirty their hands personally, but it wouldn’t be the first time a member of that family had pulled the wool over his eyes. And if one of them had shot into his carriage so carelessly, it spoke to a disquieting lack of concern over Mouse’s continued health and well-being. For all anyone had known, she could have been within it, and just as easily injured or killed as he.

  Of course, Andover was hardly the only lord with reason to want him dead. Likely half of London would have breathed a sigh of relief at his passing. But it wouldn’t hurt to keep tabs on the man, just to relieve his mind.

  “I’m going to require a new carriage,” he said to Simpson. “Unmarked, and outwardly unremarkable. Money is no object—acquire one commissioned for someone else if you must.” Something that would be hard to track or follow, something that would fail to draw attention on the street. “And I’ll have s
ome letters for you to deliver shortly—hire out a courier for them. I intend to tighten Andover’s purse strings a bit and let it be known to any of their more unsavory associates that Andover and his sons are not good for their debts.”

  “Sir?”

  “If they have had anything to do with today’s incident, I want them hobbled of their means to do so again,” Grey said. “It’s a trifle difficult to buy the services of an assassin without the money to pay him.”

  Simpson gave a short nod. “I think I ought to notify the staff,” he said, “that they are to keep watch for anything suspicious and report immediately. Rather a lot of windows in the house, sir, and a dedicated burglar could enter easily.”

  “Good,” Grey said. “Good. Do that.” And in the meantime, he would request a thorough accounting of Andover’s finances from the man’s solicitor, with a few judiciously rendered threats. It would keep the lot of them on a short leash. Nobility tended not to deal in ready cash, but in promise of repayment. They purchased on credit and then had their men of business settle accounts later on. With Grey’s stranglehold over his finances, what funds Andover possesed would soon be depleted, and the man would be forced to come to him for access to more—and Grey would know exactly what Andover was spending.

  A small price to pay for a possible attempted murder, but one that Grey found infinitely satisfying. Andover, reduced to begging. Grey would make certain it was on his knees.

  Chapter Ten

  “No infants on the menu tonight, either,” Grey tossed out casually, as Mouse at last appeared in the dining room. “I do hope you’re not too disappointed.”

  This time, she had kept him waiting, and he had found himself put out about it. Probably he should have gone to his club, or else taken a tray in his office—anywhere but placing himself in the position of awaiting her. It smacked of a sort of dependency, and a consideration he certainly he did not owe her.

  Blast. At least he ought to have had the dinner service proceed without her. Instead he waved to the footmen as she took her place at the opposite end of the table, suppressing a smile as she politely declined a glass of wine.

  “I believe I neglected to inquire earlier,” he said. “Difficult morning, Mouse?” He wasn’t certain why he was needling her—just that it was satisfying to see the purse of her lips, the spark of irritation that glowed in her eyes.

  “No more so than usual,” she muttered, but it had the tenor of a lie. A filet of beef appeared on the plate before her, and the fragrant tang of pepper and rosemary scented the air. She curled her fingers around her fork and knife and carved a dainty bite of beef.

  She’d neglected to leave off her gloves for dinner. It could have been a deliberate oversight, but Grey didn’t think so. Probably she had come prepared for battle, dressed to the nines, in what for a lady might approximate armor.

  “I find that hard to believe, given that you were three sheets to the wind when I found you early this morning,” he said.

  For just a moment she froze entirely, a sliver of asparagus suspended on her fork halfway to her mouth. But the moment passed, and she chewed and swallowed, patting her mouth with her napkin before responding, “If you did not wish for your guests to make free with your spirits, perhaps you ought to keep them out of the public rooms.”

  “Oh, I think not,” he said. “Not when the results are so very amusing.”

  And now she was once again offended, gripping the snowy white fabric of her napkin in one hand as if she were imagining throttling him instead and gritting out, “Must you always be such an ass?”

  “Nearly always, I expect.” She was getting more proficient at swearing, he thought. The first time she had cast it at him, her lips had trembled over it, as if the unfamiliar word had tasted unpleasant on her tongue. Even her brief flirtation with foul language during her drunken evening had sounded awkward and stilted. But now she sounded as if she relished it, savored it like the fine wine she had elected not to enjoy with her dinner.

  Perhaps he had already succeeded in corrupting her, just a little. Drinking and swearing—two activities he very much doubted had been among those in her repertoire before a few days ago—and what would be next? Gambling, he supposed. He had several gaming hells amongst his business interests, places that typically did not admit women players but could be prevailed upon to make an exception for him if he requested it.

  By the strain evident in the line of her jaw, he suspected that the day had worn hard on her, and he had likely not improved its pattern with his little jabs. Or perhaps she simply resented that he had witnessed her brother declining to speak with her in public. Or even her vulnerability in the library thereafter. Damn—because it was Mouse, he could not guess. She resisted all attempts to divine her motivations.

  A grimace had settled on her lips and etched itself between her brows as she speared a chunk of roasted potato, concentrating fiercely upon her dinner as if it required the entirety of her attention—to the exclusion of anything else.

  “If you find my presence so objectionable, you are welcome to take your meals in your room,” Grey said, striving to keep his voice light and modulated, as if her clear antipathy made no difference to him at all.

  But Mouse only sniffed her disdain. “If I had wished to do so, I would have done.”

  “Then you might attempt to make polite conversation,” Grey suggested. “As one typically does at the dinner table.”

  “As I have thus far seen no evidence that you are even remotely aware of what might constitute polite conversation, you will forgive me if I decline to do so,” she snapped in return, and a footman lingering behind her covered his swiftly indrawn breath with a clearing of his throat.

  Smoothing a hand over his jaw to smother an inconvenient chuckle, Grey inquired, “Well, then, why did you come down to dinner?”

  “Because I am not a coward.” She grimaced again, letting her fork fall from her hand as she flexed her fingers. “Nor am I useless,” she muttered.

  For the first time, Grey began to suspect that the gloves had been neither an oversight nor a carefully selected costume. “Is there something wrong?”

  “No,” she said. “Just a few blisters.” She managed another bite, holding her fork delicately.

  What the hell had she been doing that she had acquired blisters? Perhaps another massacre of furniture, or some attempt at redecoration by hammering out a wall or two. But no—the house had been silent for most of the day. If she’d done something of that outrageous nature, it would have caused a racket. Still, she was inventive—she’d proved it with the escritoire incident. He supposed she could have gotten up to any number of activities while he’d been ensconced in his office.

  “If you acquired them wrecking my house, you can hardly expect my sympathy,” he said.

  That earned him a pointed glare, her chin tilted at just the perfect angle to suggest that she would never have accused him of even possessing sympathy, much less have expected to receive it from him. “As it happens,” she said, in the effortlessly supercilious tones of a consummate lady, “I acquired them doing laundry.”

  “You don’t do laundry.” It was a flat statement, devoid of inflection, as if the very concept of what she had suggested was ludicrous.

  “I did today.” Satisfaction oozed through Mouse’s voice, seeping through every syllable. The angle of her chin challenged him, the tip of her nose a smug little point.

  “You don’t do laundry.” This time it was a command, and her face faltered for just a moment as his chair scraped back from the table. “Give me your hands.”

  “I will not!” Her hands fell into her lap and she stared back in contemptuous rebellion.

  Either Grey’s most forbidding expression had ceased to be quite as scornful and fear-instilling as it once had been, or Mouse was simply…not afraid. But perhaps she simply didn’t know she was meant to be afraid. Ladies might catch whispers or hear rumors, but they were by and large insulated from the worst of life, protecte
d by the men charged with their care from all unpleasantness.

  At least they ought to have been—she ought to have been.

  One cant of his head sent the servants filing out of the room. There were several long steps separating them, and he let her hear each one of them in the click of his boots upon the floor. Still, she neither cringed nor cowered.

  His palm flattened on the table beside her place setting. “Mouse, I do not take you for a stupid woman. You must know that you would not be here at this moment if I were incapable of delivering upon every threat I make. So I know you will believe me when I say that if I wish for you to hop on one foot for a full week, you will do it. If I wish for you to speak nothing but Latin for the duration of your stay, you will do it. And if I wish for you to give me your goddamned hands, you will do it.” He had not, precisely, shouted the words—but they snapped with command in a way that had never failed to make others flinch away from him. He had learned to speak with all the force of a gunshot, and just a harsh word could make other men bleed.

  Mouse tilted her head, unimpressed. “Are you quite finished?”

  “What the hell do you mean, am I quite finished?” The words emerged a gritty growl, rife with menace.

  “I mean,” she said slowly, giving the impression of selecting her words with care because she suspected him of being something less than intelligent, “have you concluded your tantrum?”

  “My tantrum?” He parroted the word back to her with all due derision. “I don’t have tantrums.”

  “Really?” She drew the word out in a mocking show of disbelief. “Then what would you call all of this, then?” She waved an indifferent hand, encompassing him as he loomed over her in that careless gesture.

  “Laying down the law.”

  And she said, “Hmph.” Just a haughty little sniff, apathetic and unmoved.

  To his complete and utter surprise, a laugh rumbled in his chest. And then it slid up his throat, unclenched his jaw, and sailed out of his mouth. It sounded strange and unpracticed, as if it had been rusting in his stomach for a decade or better. Dusty, raw, and out of tune—but genuine. As nothing in his life had been genuine before.