The Scandal of the Season

by Aydra Richards

  Serena sniffled, tossing Sarah a mutinous glare. “My heart is broken. Haven’t you even a bit of sympathy for me?”

  Tugging a handkerchief from her pocket, Sarah pressed it into Serena’s hand. “Enough for this at least,” she said. “But that’s more a gift for the laundry maids than for you. Nobody wants to scrub mucus from pillowcases if they can at all avoid it.” She slid her hands beneath Cassandra’s squirming body and lifted the puppy away. “You may feel sorry for yourself for precisely a quarter of an hour. And after that, you will pick yourself up and you will do what every other woman does after she had had her heart broken.”

  “And what is that?” Serena inquired sourly, though she pushed aside the pillow and blew her nose in the handkerchief instead.

  “Move on,” Sarah said. “Else life will go on without you.” She sashayed out the door with the puppy tucked in her arms, and the snap of the door behind her felt like a punctuating sound, underscoring the importance of her statement.

  “I would have liked to be Mouse just a little while longer,” Serena said to the empty room, as if it made any difference at all. But the words sounded pitiful to her ears, gloomy and plaintive.

  Of course she knew that her life had not ended in Grey’s office when he had made it clear that he was through with her. And she suspected that if Sarah had comforted her and cosseted her, she might’ve been content to wallow in her misery for…oh, perhaps forever.

  She might very well have become useless in truth—just spending her hours in sullen silence, steeped in pain. She would have surrendered everything she had worked for, walked back every forward stride she had made since her life had been upended. And for what? The pain of abandonment caused by yet another feckless, unreliable man?

  Her hand clenched around the handkerchief. Sarah was right. There was no sense in wailing, no sense in bemoaning her fate, because her fate would be what she made of it, and not what anyone else had heaped upon her. She was beholden to no one, dependent upon no one. She could thumb her nose at all of society and do precisely as she wished, and she would not let their approval—or lack thereof—affect her at all.

  She had been given freedom. Not many women possessed property—or money—of their own, in their own right. In her present circumstances, she owned more of both than either of her brothers, and likely more than her father ever had possessed.

  Though it was considered bad Ton to discuss finances publicly, given the dizzying amount she’d seen written down in neat, precise script as having been put into an account in her name, she had quite likely become one of the richest women in London. Perhaps in all of England. The prime target for this Season’s impoverished noblemen was a lady who had a dowry of some thirty thousand pounds, and even that was a pittance in comparison.

  Serena’s recently acquired fortune would be more than enough for almost any man in need of funds to overlook the comparatively minor problem of her lack of virtue. At least, long enough to secure her agreement and her funds, and then shunt her off to an obscure country estate, as one did with unwanted and problematic wives.

  She shuddered, supposing that might explain, at least in part, the huge, hulking bruiser of a butler that Grey had hired. His name was Arthur Davis, and she had never in her life seen a man who looked less like a butler—or more equipped to unceremoniously eject an unwanted caller. And now that she reflected upon it, her footmen had also seemed to be on the burlier side, likely selected for their physical prowess more than anything else.

  Once, she had been little more than a doll, a decorative object. She had filled the role her father had set for her, though it had left her unfulfilled, because she had had no opportunity for anything else. But now…now she could be a woman of power and influence. Currencies beyond mere wealth.

  Provided she could maintain an iron grip on those things. They were assets that she would have to guard jealously, lest someone attempt to coerce her into surrendering them. But she had let fall the guise of the passive, meek woman she had once worn the moment she had been cast from her home to the dubious mercies of a man with a vendetta against her father. And she would not assume it again.

  It was time to pick herself up and make her own choices, lest anyone attempt to wrest them from her hands once again.

  ∞∞∞

  Grey drummed his fingertips on the siding of his carriage as it rattled down the street toward Mouse’s new residence. It had been a nasty shock to find that she had removed herself from his own—but then, he hadn’t given her much of a choice.

  He might as well have packed her into a hack himself. He’d already had her gowns transported, after all. She had had very little tying her to his home, and every reason to leave it. He had given her every reason to leave it—all wrapped up neatly in a folio, as if a fortune could be any compensation for a heart he’d broken.

  Now he found himself in the regrettable position of groveling. In his entire adult life he had never once been put into a position where he had been compelled to humble himself before another. Before Mouse, he would never have considered giving a member of her class the satisfaction of it. He had become accustomed to being the one holding all the cards, the one pulling the strings—and he had never once hesitated to use that power.

  But in doing so, he had stripped Mouse of her own. And now he would have to give it back to her, take whatever lecture she chose to dole out to him, and promise to be better than he had been. It was bound to be unpleasant—but he could stomach a bit of unpleasantness, so long as Mouse could forgive him his foolishness. Surely she could understand that even extremely intelligent men were capable of dire mistakes. An uncanny memory did not exempt him from occasional stupidity.

  Though the residence he had purchased for her was only a few blocks from his own, the drive had felt like hours, and by the time the carriage finally began to slow, Grey was already impatient to escape it. Before it had fully stopped, he had cast the door open and flung himself out, stumbling a little in his stride for the front door.

  The door opened before he could reach for the brass knocker, and the butler stood between Grey and the foyer, effectively blocking the space.

  “Ah, Davis,” Grey said, relieved that the man seemed to be functioning well in his role. “I’ve come to see Mou—er, Lady Serena. Would you kindly send her down? I’ll wait in the foyer.” But as he eased toward the door, under the assumption that Davis would shift aside to accommodate him, he found himself rudely nudged back.

  “You’ll wait here, my lord,” Davis said, with a disapproving frown. “If you’ve a card, I will present it to my lady and admit you if she so permits.”

  Taken aback, Grey scowled. “I hired you,” he said. “You work for me.”

  “I work for Lady Serena Tyndall,” Davis said, his chin thrust pugnaciously forward. “You hired me, my lord, but you do not employ me. Your card?”

  Gritting his teeth, Grey snapped, “For the love of God, just let me in. She’ll see me.”

  “That remains to be seen. Without a card, my lord, I’m afraid I can do nothing more for you.” With a crisp bow that looked ridiculous when performed by so large and imposing a man, Davis stepped back and in one smooth motion snapped the door shut—directly in Grey’s face.

  For perhaps ten seconds, Grey stood in silence, dumbfounded. Then a dull flush of fury descended upon him, and it required a monumental effort to resist the urge to pound his fist upon the door and bellow. Instead he clenched his fists at his sides and struggled to shove aside his wrath.

  This was, after all, the precise reason he had hired the man. So that Mouse would be secure in her own home, confident in the fact that no unwanted visitors could get past her gigantic brute of a butler without her express permission.

  He simply hadn’t expected it to be used to his disadvantage. Of course, he hadn’t expected himself to have come calling, metaphorical hat in hand, begging admittance. How had he been so bloody blind?

  Setting his shoulders, Grey drew a deep breath and r
eleased the last of his anger on a sigh. Then he lifted his hand, grasped the knocker in his fist, and rapped it smartly against the door.

  The door cracked open just a sliver, and Davis peered out through it. “Your card, my lord?”

  Retrieving his card case from his pocket, Grey drew out an embossed calling card and beat back the childish impulse to roll his eyes as he slipped it through the cracked door into Davis’ waiting fingers.

  “I shall ascertain whether or not my lady is receiving,” David said, and the door snapped shut once more—and this time, it was followed by the sharp snick of the lock catching, presumably to circumvent the possibility that Grey might decide to advance his welcome and proceed into the house without permission.

  So he waited. And waited, as interminable minutes passed in silence, with only the rapid shift of his thoughts for company, and he found that they made poor company indeed. It had been years since they had been so disjointed, his mind so rattled, so very nearly chaotic.

  It was not a state he enjoyed, and one he hoped to rectify immediately.

  Just as soon as Mouse let him in the damned door.

  Beyond the solid door, he heard footsteps approaching, then the turn of the lock. “Finally,” he snapped. “Show me where—”

  “My apologies, my lord,” Davis interrupted from the scant crack he’d made. “But my lady is not at home.”

  “Not at home?” Grey parroted the words, uncomprehending. “She’s not at home?”

  “Indeed, my lord,” Davis said.

  As if to taunt him with the lie of it, through the door drifted a wild, reckless melody, doubtless from the pianoforte in the drawing room, and Grey knew of no one that could—or would—play quite like Mouse. He’d been honest in his praise of her playing, for he had never had the knack of putting emotion to music. His skill was purely in repetition, but Mouse…she played with her heart more than her fingers. It was all there—her pain, her anger, her grief.

  Her music crashed over him, and the force of it felt like she’d boxed his ears and delivered a stunning blow to his solar plexus.

  “She’s not at home to me,” he said at last. It had escaped him for a moment, that tedious bit of Ton gentility in which she had been raised and he had not—that a polite refusal was often couched in nonsense. She was not out. She had refused him.

  Mouse had refused him?

  “Just so, my lord,” Davis said. The door once again snapped shut in his face, and her music haunted him all the way back to his carriage.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  It hadn’t taken long for word to get around that she had taken up a new residence, Serena reflected glumly. Now that she had been released from her former situation and was no longer residing in a bachelor household, more than a few of her former friends—and others—had come calling to appease their rampant curiosity.

  She could have turned them all away, but she feared that would simply create more of a stir and result in a larger degree of interest. Instead she had received very nearly everyone and contrived to make herself as boring as possible until whatever fascination the Ton had acquired of her had at last faded into insignificance.

  It was only now that she found herself forced back into some semblance, however minor, of the life she had cast off that she realized just how tedious it had all been. She loathed sipping endless cups of tea, seated upon elegant but uncomfortable sofas, as the ladies who had once been her contemporaries engaged in idle small talk about who had worn what gown to whose event, or who had allowed such-and-such a gentleman to call upon them, or which lady had danced with which gentleman more than once at a ball.

  So she merely sat beside Sarah and gave a bland smile, neatly evading any near-indelicate questions regarding where she had last been lodging. As far as she was concerned, that part of her life had ended, and there was absolutely no sense in revisiting it, and she would say nothing of it beyond careful deflections until the offending party grew tired of verbally chasing her without hope of receiving a concrete answer.

  And gradually, her callers had withered away. There had been twenty in the first week, and then twelve in the second, and only five so far in the current week.

  She did not count Grey, who had called every day, because she had never received him and had no intention of ever doing so. It would have been a kind of torture to sit across from him and pretend that he had not crushed her heart in his fist.

  But she had admitted the Duke of Davenport today, and that had been a mistake, because now he sat across from her—nose healed, bruises mostly gone—and chided her for her refusal to see Grey.

  “I think he’d like to apologize,” the duke said, a delicate china tea cup held in his hand. “I’m given to understand the two of you parted on less than amiable terms.”

  That was certainly one way of putting it, though Serena could not see why the duke had felt it necessary to involve himself. “I confess I am not certain why he feels he ought to apologize,” Serena said, striving to keep her tone neutral. “There isn’t any need for it.”

  The duke narrowed his eyes at her, as if attempting to gauge her sincerity. “Isn’t there?” he inquired. “The poor sod is miserable. He’d like to make amends, to put this unpleasantness behind him.”

  Unpleasantness? What a fine word for it. Sarah gave an exaggerated cough into her palm, and Serena realized she’d been gripping her own tea cup so hard she was surprised it had not shattered in her hand. She loosened her grip and took her time selecting an additional lump of sugar, stirring it into her swiftly-cooling tea as she composed herself.

  “I suppose he sent you to plead his case,” she suggested dryly.

  “Well, yes,” the duke admitted, and when she speared him with a glare, his eyes widened. “No,” he amended. “No, not at all. I mean to say, he might have mentioned that you had refused to see him—”

  “Which is entirely my right to do,” Serena said.

  “Of course, of course,” Davenport acknowledged. “But I really think—blast it, Lady Serena. The man loves you.”

  That shocked a laugh out of her, and she smothered it with one hand. “No,” she said. “He most certainly does not.”

  “I beg to differ,” Davenport replied. “He’s been out of sorts for weeks. He misses you.”

  “Then allow me to disabuse you of the notion,” she said sweetly. “I asked to stay. He sent me away.”

  Davenport winced. “A fact which is doubtless now his foremost regret.”

  But it didn’t matter, really, whether or not Grey regretted sending her away, because she did not wish for herself that kind of love—the kind that could turn at a moment’s notice and declare itself inviolable—because there was every chance for it to flee in the next moment. How useful it must be to turn one’s heart with such ease; if she possessed a similar skill it would have saved her a great deal of heartache.

  She took a bracing sip of tea and mulled over her response carefully. “Your Grace,” she said, “are you aware that your mother, the duchess, has also called upon me?”

  His brows drew together, tawny slashes of confusion. “What has that got to do with anything?”

  She allowed a small, fierce smile to slide across her face. “She thinks you and I would suit each other,” she said. “She wants grandchildren—a new duchess to take up the mantle of social obligations in her stead.”

  Davenport swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in distress. “Oh?”

  “So I think it only fair to warn you,” Serena said, “that should you come again in the service of the marquess, I will gladly tell her we would suit each other. Do you take my meaning?”

  By the abrupt pallor of his face, she could see that he did—and that he would not come calling again.

  ∞∞∞

  “Well?” Grey snapped as Davenport—Alex, as he preferred amongst his friends, which had by some bizarre circumstance somehow grown to include Grey—strode into his foyer. “How is she?”

  “Dreadful,” Alex ret
orted, casting himself onto the sofa and reaching for a decanter of liquor with no small amount of desperation. “I’m not sure I’ve met a more manipulative, vicious—oh, you mean how is she,” he concluded, and flapped a hand dismissively as he took a slug of whiskey. “Well enough, I suppose.”

  “What the devil do you mean by manipulative?” Grey asked. “Mouse hasn’t got a manipulative bone in her body.” And vicious? She posed about as much of a threat as her newly-acquired puppy.

  “Your precious little Mouse,” Alex began, jabbing an accusing finger in Grey’s direction, “is appallingly misnamed. She ought to be called Shark. Or anything, really, so long as it is a predatory animal with far too many teeth.” He gave a dramatic shudder and clutched at the decanter as if it alone possessed the means to stabilize his shaken nerves. “She threatened to marry me.”

  She had what? Grey felt his hands curling into fists. “She didn’t.”

  “Oh, not in so many words, but she heavily implied she’d set my mother on me if I ever darkened her door on your behalf again.” He pulled a face and took another drink. “You’re on your own, I’m afraid. I’m not inclined to find myself badgered into marrying your lady if you happen to be unsuccessful in wooing her.” Absently he rubbed the bridge of his nose, as if to remind himself of the potential consequences.

  As a rule, Grey did not like ifs. If had the stench of uncertainty, of an unknown, unquantifiable risk. He dealt in facts and figures, in probabilities that he could calculate and predict. While there would always be risk, it was foreseeable and conventional—but if could not be refined into a percentage or rounded to the nearest decimal, to be examined and weighed. If was a worthless pile of nothing, dependent upon things far beyond Grey’s control.

  As were so many other things lately.

  His dedication to staying several steps ahead of his opponents, to deftly handling even the minutia of any given situation had been turned against him—inadvertently, he had given Mouse a fortress to use against him and a fortune with which to fortify her defenses. It was his own shortsightedness that had rendered these into weapons, of course, and the purpose had always been to keep her well-protected from anyone who might seek to use her for their own ends.