The Scandal of the Season

by Aydra Richards

  No one—except for Mouse, of course—cared to challenge him. As the staff hauled the groaning man from the hazard table and dragged him toward the back of house, the patrons that had been goggling at the scene slowly resettled themselves and turned their attention back to the gaming.

  “Grey,” Mouse said, in what he assumed was meant to be a placating tone. “There was no harm done. You ought to send him on his way.”

  “Oh, I will,” he grunted, steering her toward the rear of the room once more, back toward the offices. “Just as soon as I beat a proper apology out of him.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  It took precisely two seconds after entering the manager’s office, Mouse in tow, for Grey to realize that he had made a terrible mistake.

  “You bastard!” Hugh Tyndall snarled, just before he launched himself at Grey.

  “Hugh!” Mouse cried in distress, flinging herself at her brother in an attempt to pry him away.

  “Good God,” groaned the possible-duke from where he slouched on a sofa, as he pressed a starched white handkerchief gingerly to his face in an effort to stanch the blood trickling from his nose. “You’re all mad. My head aches abominably; I think you might’ve ruptured my eardrums with that screech. I don’t suppose you’d consider keeping it down?”

  “I’ll kill you!” Hugh shouted, his fingers curling into talons as he went for Grey’s throat.

  The potential duke hung his head, his shoulders slumping in disappointment. “I thought not.”

  Grey wrenched himself free of Mouse’s brother’s clawing hands, seizing the man by his cravat and twisting the fabric in his fist until Hugh went purple in the face and wobbly about the knees.

  “Let him go!” Mouse said, thumping her fists on Grey’s shoulder, having switched allegiances the moment Grey regained the upper hand. “You’ll kill him!”

  “He was trying to kill me,” Grey snapped, but in deference to her alarm, he thrust Hugh away from himself and sent him sprawling to the floor, where he lay, panting and making a whimpering noise in his throat that Grey suspected to be greatly exaggerated.

  “He’s my brother!” Mouse screeched—a refrain of which Grey was swiftly tiring.

  From his position on the sofa, the possible-duke lifted his head in interest. “Family squabble?” he inquired.

  Grey threw up his hands in aggravation. “You stay out of this,” he snarled. “Unless it’s to tender your most sincere apologies for laying hands on Mouse.”

  “Who the devil is Mouse?” Hugh and His Potential Grace asked in unison.

  “That would be me,” Mouse offered.

  Hugh levered himself up from his sprawl, thrusting his elbows beneath him to level a fierce glare at the man on the sofa. “You laid hands on my sister?” he growled as he began to shove himself to his feet.

  Affecting a shamefaced expression, the potential duke whined through his bloodied handkerchief, “I thought she was a whore!”

  Grey and Hugh lunged for him together, throwing elbows at one another in a battle for the dubious honor of strangling the possible-duke first.

  “She’s my sister!” Hugh snarled.

  And Mouse began to laugh.

  The fracas ceased as abruptly as it had begun, each man turning incredulously upon her.

  “It’s not really funny,” she said, attempting to clear her throat of the amusement that kept burbling up in hysterical fits of giggles. “It’s just—it’s only that—it’s so absurd.” And she laughed again, and smothered it with the hand that had been denuded of its glove.

  Conscious of the two men who had just attempted to beat him to a pulp—and might still be moved to further violence if provoked, the man on the sofa said, wisely, “Yes, well—I can see now that I was very much mistaken. My sincerest apologies, Miss Mouse.”

  “It’s Lady Serena,” Hugh hissed, his hands clenching into fists. “Whatever he calls her, her name is Lady Serena.” As if the very act of speaking her name forced him to recall that he had yet to address her directly, he said, “Serena—” He broke off abruptly, and his brows drew together as he looked her over. “You look horrid in yellow,” he finished.

  Mouse pursed her lips together and ground out, “I know.”

  The potential duke’s eyes widened. “Lady Serena? Lady Serena Tyndall?” he asked, and his gaze jerked to Grey. “Then I suppose you must be Granbury.”

  Grey grunted his assent. “And you would be?”

  “Alexander Dryden,” the man said. “The Duke of Davenport, at your service. I’d bow,” he offered, “but I’m none too steady on my feet at the moment.” He crammed his hand in his pocket and withdrew a signet ring that displayed a family crest. Grey was not familiar with it, but as Mouse had made a little squeak of dismay, he assumed it to be legitimate.

  “What the hell is a duke doing in a gaming hell like this?” Grey inquired sourly.

  “Oh, well,” the duke shrugged, with a little flutter of his fingers. “Had to be somewhere nobody would think to look, didn’t I? Only duke available this Season. Mother’s bad enough, yammering on about my duty to the ducal line of succession—and if you think the matchmaking mamas are bad, you ought to see the papas. I can hardly set foot in my club without someone or other extolling the virtues of their precious little darlings.” He gave a huff of exasperation. “I’m only twenty-eight,” he said. “Bloody vultures. You’d think they’d give a man until at least thirty until he is obliged to resign himself to wedded bliss.” He winced as he pulled the handkerchief away from his face. “Still bleeding?”

  “Rather terribly,” Mouse said, her voice tinged with sympathy. “Grey, have you any ice for His Grace? It looks as if it might bruise.”

  “Nobody’s getting any damned ice,” Grey snapped. “And you,” he said, jabbing a finger at Hugh. “What the hell were you thinking? You let your father bargain your sister away, and you throw yourself immediately back into peril? Have you no shame?”

  Hugh’s face flushed an angry red. “I was going to win back the money!” he shouted. “I was going to save her from you!”

  “By putting up your mother’s pearls as collateral? The funds from which you promptly lost?” Grey shouted back.

  “Oh, Hugh,” Mouse sighed, her disappointment palpable. But that short statement was all it had taken to yank the wind from Hugh’s sails. His sister’s displeasure had flayed him worse than a whip could have, and he hunched his shoulders, looking mortified.

  “I was going to buy them back,” he offered morosely. “When I won.”

  Mouse drew in a deep breath, steadying herself for some unpleasantness to come. She laid a small hand on her brother’s shoulder. “You cannot save me,” she said softly. “You must accept that. I have.”

  Grey felt himself flinch—though there had been no censure in her voice, it stabbed him nonetheless, that inconvenient conscience with which she had burdened him.

  “I beg your pardon,” the duke said, addressing Mouse. “But what is going on? Your father bargained you?”

  Mouse gave a little start, as if she’d quite forgotten the duke was still present. “Your Grace, it’s really nothing with which you ought to concern yourself,” she said. “A family squabble. As you said.” Her eyes drifted to Grey, and he experienced a queer sense of shock as he realized that, given the opportunity to vilify him before the duke, she’d elected not to do so. As if she were protecting him.

  “No, I think I’d really like to know.” His Grace pinched the handkerchief to his nose once more, speaking in a nasally whine. “Sounds fascinating.”

  “Your Grace—” Mouse tried again.

  Hugh spoke over her. “Father turned her over to Granbury for his mistress,” he said bitterly. “He said she ran off with him and ruined herself, but it’s a lie. He sold her to buy a bit more time to pay his debts.” And then he ducked his head and admitted tonelessly, “Our debts.”

  “How…medieval,” His Grace offered, his eyes wide in horror. “And you went along with this, Granbur
y?”

  Speaking over Mouse’s protestations, Grey gritted out, “I insisted upon it.” Probably a fool thing to admit, since he had nothing on Davenport—he’d never seen the man out and about in society, he’d heard no whispers of perversions or intrigues. He had no pressure point to exploit, nothing to hold over the duke’s head. But damned if he would let Mouse blithely excuse his actions to what might be her own detriment.

  “Hm,” the duke grunted. “Lady Serena, are you well?”

  Grey did not mistake it for a general polite inquiry; it was a probing question, practically an offer of rescue should she have need of it. If she wished to escape his household, here was her opportunity—despite her damaged reputation, she could have a duke for a champion if she so chose.

  “Quite well, Your Grace,” she said cheerfully. “I can have no complaints. His lordship has been very kind to me, all things considered.”

  “And it does not distress you?” the duke inquired. “Your lost reputation?”

  Mouse hesitated. “I suppose anyone would resent being made so…notorious without due cause,” she said. “I have learned that without my reputation, I have few friends indeed. But I have also learned how very small my world once was, how shallow those connections. Even so, I cannot regret my situation. I find I prefer my life as it is now, despite my changed place in the world.”

  Again, that uncomfortable stab of guilt, somewhere in the vicinity of Grey’s heart. It might as well have been a death knell for a man like him; a man who had once thought he had neither mercy nor pity—a man unaware that he had even been in possession of a heart before it had begun to ache like the devil.

  Grey rasped, “She’ll be well-compensated for her pains when our association is through. She’ll want for nothing, I assure you.” Though the thought didn’t make him feel any better, and he didn’t know why he was bothering to explain himself to the duke, besides.

  “Except for respectability,” the duke grumbled.

  “Well, there is that,” Mouse acknowledged, with an awkward little laugh, as if she were striving to cut the mounting tension.

  Hugh made a pitiful sound in his throat, rubbing at his bleary eyes. “You’ll never have a husband,” he said, with a little hiccough. “You could have—you could have been a duchess.”

  Horrified, Mouse’s eyes cut to the duke, who himself looked cagey and uncomfortable. “Well, really,” she said. “My prospects were never so great as that, and the only duke available seems to prefer gaming hells to musicales, so I doubt we would suit.” But there was a sliver of regret in her voice, as if this was the one thing she truly would mourn—her chance for a family of her own.

  Blast it. Grey was going to have to buy her a husband eventually.

  The duke sighed his relief to have avoided the dreaded position of matrimonial prospect, and said at last, “Do you know, Lady Serena, that my mother is quite an incurable gossip?”

  Mouse cleared her throat uncomfortably. “I—I’m sure I don’t—”

  The duke gave an insouciant shrug. “It’s common knowledge. You won’t offend me with agreement.” He pulled the handkerchief away from his face, judged the blood to have sufficiently slowed, and tucked it away in his pocket. “She’s also a veritable leader of the Ton. I suspect that with very little effort she could—well, perhaps not restore, but at least polish up your reputation a bit. Certainly enough that you need not dread being snubbed.” His expression darkened. “I think she would not much like the thought of a father bargaining away his daughter’s virtue.”

  Mouse colored brilliantly in embarrassment. “That’s very kind of you, Your Grace, but you need not go to such trouble on my behalf.”

  “No trouble at all,” the duke said. “Truly. I need only tell mother the truth of your situation, and she will do the work for me. She does so dearly love to talk—and I assure you that where my mother leads, others follow.” He pinched the bridge of his nose lightly between his fingers, wincing. “I suppose one might say I owe you some manner of recompense, given my—er, spurious assumption.”

  “I would think the state of your face is recompense enough for that,” Mouse said.

  The duke’s gaze drifted to Grey. “No,” he said slowly, noting the tension that had arisen in him once again at the allusion to the incident that had resulted in the injury to his face. “I don’t think it was, quite.”

  Grey bit off a foul word beneath his breath, forcing his hands to unclench, to remind himself that tearing a duke limb from limb would hardly suit his purposes, even if said duke had placed his hands—well, hand, anyway—upon Mouse. Just the very memory of it was enough to provoke a searing rage, and so he turned his attention to Hugh, who had edged toward the door, likely in an effort to escape further notice.

  “You,” Grey seethed. “I had thought that having your club membership revoked would be enough to keep you out of trouble, but I can see that I was mistaken. You will cure yourself of your predilection for gambling, since it can only come at your sister’s expense. Henceforth you will find yourself barred from every gaming hell in London, and I can promise you that you will not find a membership made available to you at any of the clubs to which you might once have gained admittance.”

  Beside him, Mouse heaved a sigh of relief—even as Hugh squawked his indignation.

  “My God, man,” Grey snapped. “Can you not see what your senseless actions are doing to your sister? She worries for you like a mother! Your younger sister—whose precarious position you are in no small part responsible for!” All that latent rage swelled up within him, carrying him across the floor, where he seized Hugh once more by his cravat. “You should damn well have called me out!”

  “Wh-what good would that have done?” Hugh squeaked, cringing away.

  None, of course. None whatsoever. Mouse’s reputation had already been in tatters, and a duel on top of it would only have added fuel to the fire. But it seemed somehow incomprehensible to Grey that Mouse had had no one—not one bloody person—willing to defend her. No one to champion her, to see to her interests rather than safeguarding their own.

  “She’s your damned sister,” he hissed. “You ought to have done something.” Something aside from gambling, aside from digging his hole deeper, from rendering Mouse’s sacrifice yet more useless.

  Terror sparked in Hugh’s eyes; he wrenched madly in a futile effort to escape Grey’s hold.

  “Grey,” Mouse said softly, placing her hand on his shoulder. “Please.” Just that. Please. As if she knew he was moments from striking a blow for the second time that evening, and would not see any further violence done. Somehow he doubted that Mouse was accustomed to having anyone listen to her, to give any weight at all to her wishes—and it was for that reason alone that he uncurled his fist and let Hugh go.

  “Good God,” Hugh rasped, stumbling toward the door. “You’re every bit as mad as they say.” And yet despite that judgment, he left his sister in Grey’s care as he fled the room as if the tails of his coat were on fire, and Grey could only give an aggrieved sigh.

  “Well,” said the duke, “as elucidating as this has been, I really ought to be going.” But when he tried to heft himself up from the sofa, he groaned and sank back down immediately. “Never mind, then,” he said. “I’m still three sheets to the wind and I don’t care to cast up my accounts in my carriage.” He settled himself back, pressing his hand over his eyes, careful to avoid the bridge of his nose, which was beginning to purple. “I daresay your reputation will still be in shreds tomorrow, dear lady. Lovely to make your acquaintance, and all that.” He gave a careless gesture with his free hand, an elegant flip of the wrist made no less so by his apparent inebriation.

  And within moments, he’d nodded off into oblivion, snoring through his ostensibly broken nose.

  Mouse clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle an incredulous flutter of laughter. “I hope you won’t be offended,” she said to Grey, “but I think if I never set foot in another gaming hell for the rest of my l
ife, it will be too soon.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Have you not an ounce of sense in your head?” Sarah groused as she worked the buttons of Serena’s gown, peeling the tight bodice away from her back. “You look like a strumpet—your hair’s coming down around your ears, and your gown’s wrinkled to hell and back.”

  Wrinkling her nose in distaste, Serena said, “Surely it’s not as bad as all that.”

  “Oh, yes, it is,” Sarah snorted. “What in the world have you been up to? Have you any idea what time it is? I thought for certain you’d run off! And how ought I have explained that to his lordship, I ask you?” She helped Serena shimmy from the clinging fabric of her gown, then cast the discarded dress over the back of a chair and pulled a nightgown from the dresser.

  Serena fought against a smile, which would have been ill-advised, given Sarah’s current pique. Just occasionally, when Sarah was particularly flustered, her voice had the tendency to slip into a crisp, refined intonation, her syllables as clipped and precise as any lady Serena had ever known. Sometimes, she suspected there was more to Sarah than met the eye.

  “Well, I stowed away in his lordship’s carriage, so I was never in any danger. But I am sorry, Sarah. I ought to have told you.” Serena pulled off her glove and realized that it was mateless—the other one had been lost somewhere in the gaming hell. Well, she certainly would not be going back for it.

  The nightgown went on over Serena’s head, the delicate lawn snagging on the pins coming loose from her hair. She twitched the nightgown into place as Sarah began to pluck the pins free of her disheveled hair, wincing as a few stuck and pulled, having embedded themselves into knots and tangles.

  Sarah made disapproving sounds in her throat as she began to brush the snarls from Serena’s hair. “I was going to tell you, but you went missing before I could—I did it.”

  Confused, Serena turned. The flicking firelight cast ominous shadows over Sarah’s face, giving her grin a hellish cast—sharp and full of fangs. “Did what?” Serena inquired.