The Scandal of the Season

by Aydra Richards

  Serena wondered if he could feel the rapid flutter of her pulse beneath his fingers. “Why?” she asked.

  His lips twisted in a self-deprecating smile. “Because I cannot ask you to dance.”

  ∞∞∞

  Andover could make his move at any moment, Grey knew, but the probability increased as they moved further from the safety of the house. The man would want to make a clean getaway, after all. He wished he had the means to reassure Mouse of her safety—but if Andover lurked nearby, it would give away the game. Still, this was the first time Grey had seen her in weeks, the opportunity he’d sought to speak with her once again, and he could not squander it. But if she felt anything at all, her face revealed nothing—neither apprehension over their carefully-orchestrated scheme, nor any lingering emotion toward him.

  He would have offered her the support of his arm, but he suspected she would not take it. She did not require his support, not in any way—not any longer. There had been a part of him that had hoped she would be merciful, that she would show him that inimitable grace once again and just…forgive him. As she had so many times before, even though he had never asked for it.

  But his prior transgressions had been as nothing to this last one—this offense had not simply bent her, it had broken her. And though she had rebuilt herself as she always did, this time she would not place herself in a position to either bend or break again. If anyone were to bend, it would have to be him.

  Strange that he had always conflated bending with weakness—because if the end result of it was that she might be induced to extend herself in forgiveness one last time, he would count it the most formidable weapon in his arsenal.

  A gentle breeze stirred a tiny cluster of artful curls that dangled near her ear, and he resisted the temptation to brush them back. Instead he withdrew his hand from his pocket to reveal the strand of pearls held in it.

  Her lips parted, her eyes widening minutely. “Are—are those—”

  “Your mother’s. I recovered them after your brother gambled them away.”

  “Why?” Her mouth pinched in as if she regretted the question.

  “Because they were meant to be yours.” He made a small gesture with his finger. “Turn.”

  “They won’t complement my gown.” But she turned anyway, her hands fisting in the skirts of her gown.

  “No,” he said, stripping off his gloves to cram them into his pocket. “But they will complement you.” The pearls glowed against her throat, silver and moonlight compressed into beads, and his fingers brushed her cool skin as he worked the latch. Goosebumps chased across her nape at the touch of his fingers, and the moment he released the necklace she stepped away. Somewhere in the hedges alongside them, something rustled, and they both tensed.

  But the moment passed without incident, and her hand went to the strand of pearls clasped about her neck, gloved fingertips sliding over the beads as if she might feel in them the memory of the woman who had once worn them, as though it might connect them across the barriers of time and death.

  She seemed to have acquired an unassailable dignity that sat uncomfortably upon her, like a mantle she had shrouded herself within for her own protection. Gone was the wild child who had lived within his house all too briefly; instead she had been replaced by an elegant, untouchable lady, and it did not suit her. Or at least, it did not suit the Mouse that he had known. Every bit of her was contrived; only artifice, armor to shield her from censure, from society…from him.

  In his mind’s eye he could see her as she once had been, overlaying the lady she had become. Her passive, expressionless face again alive with mischief, lips quirking into a grin or a pout or moue of displeasure. Her fair hair left down and free, or plaited into a crown, or coiled around his fingers. Her eyes glowing like quicksilver instead of that flinty, steely grey that condemned with the smallest glance.

  “I had wondered why,” she said, and her voice was crisp, even, and tightly controlled, “you never insisted upon taking me to a ball. There were ball gowns in my dressing room, so you must have considered it. It would have been a perfect way to humiliate my father.”

  True enough, he supposed, and early on he had considered it—but that first outing to the park had changed something in him. “I could have,” he said. “But more than I wanted to humiliate Andover, I did not want to humiliate you.” He shoved his hands in his pockets once more. “You were more important than revenge, Mouse, and I never told you.”

  “Hm,” she said, noncommittally. “An easy claim to make, given that you received your revenge anyway.” She presented him with her back, gliding a few steps away to skim her fingertips along the lush petals of a white rose. They had reached the heart of the garden now, and beyond the yew hedges that bordered the roses, Hugh would be waiting with the constable. Now it was just a matter of time, waiting for Andover to make his move.

  “I never apologized either,” he said. “I thought, what would be the use? It was already done. There was no giving you back your reputation, nor setting to right what I’d turned wrong. I had stolen so much from you—what good could an apology accomplish?” He breached the distance between them carefully, gratified when she did not again step away. “But I was lying to myself, even then. The truth was that what I had done to you was unforgivable, and I could not give you that sort of power over me.”

  “The truth is,” she said, firmly, “that an apology is not given in anticipation of forgiveness. It is offered in a spirit of contrition without expectation.” Her gaze remained elsewhere, steadfastly averted.

  “I am sorry, Mouse,” he said, though he was well aware that the likelihood of attaining her forgiveness was slight, given the circumstances in which he had positioned them. “I treated you like a pawn, like a weapon to wield against your father. It was wrong of me to use you.”

  Her expression flickered for a moment, a brief flash of surprise crossing her face, as if she had not truly expected an apology from him. Grey supposed she’d received few enough of them in her life that perhaps she did not know how to receive one, and it rested like an unfamiliar object in her hand, awkward and daunting.

  Benevolently, she said at last, “I suppose you had your reasons.”

  Grey shook his head, his shoulders shifting with a world-weary sigh. “Do you want to know the worst of it?” he asked. “I’d like to say that I wish I could take it all back and do it over again properly. That I could have simply seen you from across crowded ballroom and had a proper courtship and all that rubbish—”

  At that she lifted her head and speared him with a glare, but he could not say whether or not it was because he had called it all rubbish or if she had thought his use of the word ‘courtship’ highly presumptuous. Likely a bit of both.

  “The truth is, Mouse, that I am not a particularly good man. The truth is that, had I been a better one, I would never have given you a second glance. I had to come to know you, to appreciate you—and if I hadn’t already contrived to ruin you, I would have discounted you immediately simply upon the basis of who your father was.” He eased closer still, so close he could see the sliver of the moon reflected in her eyes. But she had taken herself somewhere far away, locked herself behind so many doors, leaving only the barest hints of the woman he had known to walk the garden with him. “I am sorry for what I have done. But I’m not sorry for the result, because I would not give up having known you for anything.”

  She blinked, her lashes shading her eyes. “As apologies go, I’ve heard better.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not very skilled at it,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I have had to make one.”

  Mouse gave a mirthless laugh. “Somehow I doubt that. You’ve just said you’re not a good man.”

  “Yes,” he said. “But I am a powerful one. I’ve done many things which would merit an apology, but I haven’t been in a position in which I could be compelled to make one in many years.”

  “And now you are compelled?” she inquired doubtfully.
“By what, exactly? I did not seek you out, nor have I made demands of you.”

  “Not you. My conscience.” He lifted his hand, traced the backs of her fingers through her glove. “My heart.” And he could not even manage to summon so much as a shred of embarrassment, even knowing that his confession had no doubt been overheard.

  Mouse scoffed as she withdrew her hand, and Grey felt his stomach clench in uncertainty. Was this how she had felt that day in his office? As if all hope had gone skittering off into the darkness, forever lost? As if something precious and fragile had been broken beyond repair?

  His hands clenched into fists, resisting the urge to reach out to her, to see if he could shake her free of her terrible remoteness. “I have never humbled myself before another,” he said. “But I would humble myself before you. I made a mistake, Mouse, that last day. It took all of a few hours for me to regret it, but when I came home you had already gone.”

  She shrugged, for all appearances nonchalant about it. “There was no reason for me to stay. You had clearly invested a great deal of time and thought into being rid of me. And I—” She broke off, her gaze flitting to the hedges once more as if she had only just recalled that they had an unseen audience. Grey saw the flex of her jaw, the resolute set of her chin. “I have decided to put all of it behind me. Life goes on.”

  The words sounded hollow, for all that she had endeavored to speak them decisively. He suspected it had been not so much a decision she had reached but a necessity. She had to look forward, because looking back had proved too painful.

  Briskly, she continued, “I am grateful to you, my lord. I have a future now that I would never have had before.” She gave a little laugh. “Do you know, I’ve never forgotten that once you called me useless—and you were right.”

  “I wasn’t,” he said. “Mouse—”

  “You were,” she insisted. “But I needn’t be any longer. And now that I have my own funds, my own livelihood, I can do whatever I like.” She turned her face upward to the moonlight, and a satisfied smile lingered on her lips. “I plan to open a school. I find I’m not terribly skilled at washing linens or beating rugs—but I suspect that soon there will be more and more noblemen who might find themselves seeking wives outside of the aristocracy. There will be women seeking to improve their circumstances. I could teach them the things they might need to know to move about society with ease, to improve their stations.” Her lips pressed together, flattened into a severe line. “Some people, perhaps, would not approve. But to those who want to learn, I would be useful.”

  Tread carefully, Grey thought. By the challenging set of her chin, she expected condemnation, criticism. She had received little in the way of genuine support from anyone, and he had given her no reason to expect otherwise of him.

  “You could expand your clientele,” he said, “if you accepted men as well.”

  For a moment she said nothing; only stood still as a statue, considering. Then the rigid set of her chin relaxed, and she said, “Oh?”

  He shrugged, attempted to look speculative rather than shrewd. “I suppose there must also be gentlemen of means who might find it useful to know such things. Gentlemen who seek to marry a lady, or whom themselves have been”—through fair means or foul—“recently ennobled. You could teach them, too, the intricacies of the Ton, the things they would never have had occasion to learn.”

  She said, “Hm. I suppose I had not considered that there might be men seeking such tutelage as well.” But she looked pleased by the idea, and he wondered if perhaps she had cast her suggestion at him to gauge his reaction. To see if he would find it silly, or offensive, or if he might attempt to dissuade her from it. Perhaps she had wondered whether he would find her aspirations less worthy than his own.

  But she was a woman with a fortune of her own now, and though she could afford a great many things, what she could not afford was to misjudge a man, any man. When she married—if she married—her fortune would become her husband’s, for better or worse. And he—well, he certainly had not inspired her confidence.

  A stray curl drifted in the breeze and slid across her cheek, and he tucked it back into place—a gesture she did not shy from. “I am in a unique position to advise you there, should you have need of it. I could help you revise your curriculum. Give you my experience, tell what I wish I had had occasion to learn.”

  “Generous of you,” Mouse said. “I suppose you’ll be wanting a portion of my profits?”

  “I don’t want your money, Mouse. I’d settle for a space in your class.” Anything to be near her for just a little longer. To have a space, however small, within her life once more. To perhaps earn the right to hope that one day she might be moved to forgiveness.

  Her placid expression fractured; tears glimmered in her eyes. “Oh, Grey—”

  “Please, Mouse.” He could not stop his hands from reaching for her, from cradling her face and swiping away the tears that beaded on her lashes. And he pitched his voice low, for this belonged to her alone. “I have made so many mistakes. I haven’t yet earned the right to ask for your forgiveness. But I promise you that I will, if you could only grant me the opportunity to prove myself.” He heard her breath hitch in her throat, felt her tremble, and pressed a kiss to her temple. “I don’t deserve you, but I love you all the same.”

  For a few moments, she wavered—she took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and curled into him. But she stiffened when his arms came around her and braced her palms on his chest to push away, and he realized his hopes were to be disappointed.

  “I need time to think,” she whispered as she withdrew. Just a few steps, but to Grey it felt like a vast gulf had opened between them.

  And he—he could not fault her for her caution. Perhaps he had not laid the foundation of it, but he had contributed to the structure built upon it. Time was a reasonable and entirely prudent request. Once she would have given him her love freely, but he had scorned it. Even if he was certain that love still existed, the trust he had fractured between them precluded an admission of it.

  “As much as you need,” Grey said, his voice strained. “I won’t rush you to a decision. Only send word to me when you have decided if I might call upon you. Or write to you—or dance with you. Whatever you will permit.” If she would see him only in public, then he would bend to her wishes. Too often what she wished had been deemed unimportant.

  She gave a startled flutter of laughter, swiping at her cheeks. “How would you dance with me if you cannot dance?”

  “To dance with you, I would learn.” He ducked his head, feeling powerless, impotent, for the first time in years. “You could teach me, when you open your school.”

  A tentative smile flirted with her lips. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose I could.”

  Though she had not asked for it, he found within himself a humility he had not known he possessed. “You won, Mouse. You destroyed me—and I am the better for it,” he said.

  That warm glow kindled in her eyes once more, a beautiful spark that he would protect for the remainder of his life, did she let him. He was not so foolish as to imagine that everything had been resolved, but for the first time since she had left, he felt a flicker of hope. That there remained the shred of a possibility of mending what he had broken, of finding happiness at last.

  She cleared her throat delicately, but there was a teasing inflection in her voice when she asked, “Will you tell me your surname at last, then?”

  Grey chuckled, opened his mouth to reply—

  Of course it was that moment which Andover chose to make his move; it was as if the bastard were compelled to seek out joy and crush it beneath the heel of his boot.

  “How charming.” Andover’s voice came from behind him, and there was a sneer caught within its cadence, malice twisting the syllables into something ugly and raw.

  And Grey found Mouse to be a better actress than he had ever expected, for she jerked in mock-surprise, her hand going to her throat as she gasped, “Father!�
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  Chapter Thirty Four

  “I would not, were I you,” Andover said in warning, as Grey took a single step toward Mouse. “A bullet travels far faster.” It was a quiet threat, delivered so evenly, so absent of emotion that he might as well have been discussing the weather.

  It was not often that Grey made mistakes in judgment, but now, with Mouse standing still as a statue beneath the threat of the double-barreled flintlock pistol held in Andover’s steady hand, he could say without doubt that underestimating Andover had been the biggest mistake of his life.

  For years he’d assumed Andover guilty of only selfishness, greed, and a surfeit of pride. He’d judged the man egotistical, vain, and hypocritical, but these were faults that most men possessed, and though Andover had seemed almost a caricature of those failings—possessed of them to an outrageously amplified degree—still Grey had not seen the truth of what they had masked until it had very nearly been too late.

  Evil. A malice so severe and pervasive that he could hold his own daughter at gunpoint without batting an eye. And Grey had allowed his generalized disdain for the nobility to blind him to the truth of it—that if there lurked a heart within Andover’s chest or a soul within his body, both were profoundly tainted, twisted into something uniquely horrifying.

  Andover’s face revealed only boredom. Boredom, while he held a weapon in his hand and threatened his daughter’s life. That singular ennui that Grey had come to expect of men of his stamp, offensive by its very presence.

  “You know,” Andover said, his voice bland, “this is really your fault, Granbury. She has got to die, and it shall be on your head.”

  Though it scalded Grey to hear it, he fisted his hands at his sides and swallowed down his fury. “I’m not the one holding the gun,” he said. “Do you really think you can kill your daughter—your own child—without consequence?”