One Night of Scandal (Avon Historical Romance)

by Teresa Medeiros

As Lottie collapsed against the piano, shaken to the core, Justine gazed down at her, her knowing eyes sparkling with amusement.

  Lottie huddled in her bed that night, her every nerve tingling with tension. A peaceful hush had fallen over the sleeping house, but perversely enough, the quiet only deepened her growing sense of unease. Even one of Allegra’s tantrums would have been a welcome distraction. She briefly considered wandering across the hall, but the last time she’d peeked in on Harriet, her friend had been sleeping like a lamb.

  She threw herself to her side, kicking away both her blankets and a startled Mr. Wiggles. She grabbed for the cat, but it was too late. He’d already jumped down from the bed in a feline huff, his tail jutting straight into the air. He nudged open the door and trotted from the bedchamber, obviously in search of better company.

  Lottie flopped back among the pillows. “It seems I can’t make anyone happy these days,” she muttered to Mirabella, who was curled up on the pillow beside her. “Especially not anyone of the male persuasion.”

  She closed her eyes, then quickly opened them again. In truth, she was more afraid of sleep than wakefulness. For with sleep would come dreams. And in those dreams, she just might find herself back on the edge of that windswept cliff in a stranger’s arms. A stranger whose kiss tasted exactly like her husband’s.

  She gazed up at the shadows flickering across the ceiling. Perhaps she should add a new scene to her novel. A scene where her feisty heroine fights off the carnal advances of the blackguard who has tricked her into marriage. A scene where she haughtily informs him that she’d rather die than suffer his kiss. For surely a noble death would be preferable to enduring the indignities of his hard, hungry mouth on hers, the dark and delicious thrust of his tongue, the caress of his fingertips against her throat as he coaxed her to open wider, take him deeper…

  Biting her bottom lip to stifle its treacherous tingling, Lottie flung herself to her stomach. She’d nearly drifted into a fitful doze when, without so much as a plaintive wail to herald it, the first notes of piano music came drifting to her ears.

  Lottie’s eyes flew open. Her first instinct was to dive beneath the blankets. But all she could do was hold her breath and listen.

  The distant music was at once both beautiful and terrible—an uncontrollable deluge of passion, its every note shadowed by madness.

  “Justine,” she whispered. Seeing the woman’s portrait had somehow made it impossible to think of her as simply “the ghost.”

  What force could be powerful enough to drag a woman back from the grave? Was Justine trying to frighten her away because she believed her to be a rival for Hayden’s affections? Or was she trying to warn Lottie not to make the same mistake she had, not to trust her heart or her life into Hayden’s hands?

  Lottie dragged her pillow over her head and pressed it to her ears. But there was no escaping the music’s relentless fury. It could not and would not be ignored.

  As the piece reached a fiery crescendo, she tossed aside the pillow. Rising, she strode to her dressing table and pawed through the tangled snarl of ribbons and garters until she found what she was looking for—a long and particularly lethal-looking silver hatpin.

  She held it up to the firelight, admiring its gleam. Apparently, Justine had forgotten one thing. Lottie now possessed the keys to the kingdom. And if that kingdom turned out to be hell, then running into the devil himself was a chance she’d have to take.

  Hayden was in the very devil of a temper. He wandered the lonely corridors of the manor, cursing himself for being such a fool. He might have sought to punish Lottie with his kiss, but he had succeeded only in punishing himself. Even his bed had become an instrument of torture, its icy embrace a bitter contrast to the beguiling warmth of Lottie’s arms.

  She had released these demons herself when she had dared to throw open the door of the music room. It was almost as if some part of him had been entombed in that room right along with Justine’s memory. But Lottie hadn’t been content to let him rot there in the shadows with the rest of the ghosts. She had marched in with her silly songs and giddy laughter and dragged him into the light.

  Even Justine had fled before her bold determination. In that moment when they’d kissed, there had been only Lottie—her mouth a living flame beneath his—hot and sweet and irresistible. When her small hands had clutched at the front of his coat, urging him closer instead of pushing him away, he’d felt dangerous stirrings of life, not just in his body, but deep in his soul.

  Even more damning than their kiss had been that moment when he had confessed that he wanted Allegra to be like her. That he admired her courage, her cleverness, and her unwillingness to abide by the stifling rules of society. He might have just as well blurted out that he was falling in love with her.

  Hayden stopped in his tracks, the notion more horrifying than any wailing specter from the past. The last time he’d lost his heart, he’d nearly lost his mind right along with it.

  As if to remind him of the cost of such folly, a wild torrent of piano music came rushing down the corridor toward him, its raw power derived from both its beauty and its madness.

  Hayden moved inexorably toward the sound, fearing Lottie had unwittingly unleashed a force that could destroy them both.

  Lottie strode through the darkened manor, the skirt of her nightdress billowing out behind her. Knowing the servants would all be cowering in their beds by now, she hadn’t even taken the time to don her dressing gown. The music swelled with each step that brought her closer to the west wing. But she refused to be dissuaded from her mission. She was no longer driven by courage or curiosity, but by a fierce desire to confront the woman who refused to relinquish her claim on Hayden’s heart.

  In truth, Lottie was more terrified than she’d ever been in her life. By the time she reached that long, lonely corridor, not even the surging music could completely drown out the chattering of her teeth. As she approached the doors at the end of the hall, she half expected them to swing open all on their own, a trap disguised as an invitation.

  Her numb fingers failed to budge the knob. The doors were locked, just as she and Allegra had found them earlier. Lottie’s hands were sweating so badly that she dropped the hatpin twice before finally managing to pick the lock.

  Still she hesitated. If she threw open the doors without warning, would she find some malevolent vapor hovering over the piano? Or would the keys simply play themselves, guided by an unseen hand?

  Utterly unnerved by that image, she slowly turned the knob, halfway hoping the music would cease as abruptly as it had her first night at the manor. But as she eased open the door, it swept over her in such a thundering wave that Lottie could feel her very heart take up its rhythm.

  Shadows draped the spacious room. The rain had ceased hours ago, but clouds still scudded across the circle of sky visible through the skylight, veiling the alabaster face of the moon and casting Justine’s portrait in shadow.

  The lid of the piano was up, shielding its keys from her view.

  Lottie slowly circled the instrument, promising herself she would not scream no matter who—or what—she found on the other side. The heady fragrance of night-blooming jasmine swept over her, making her feel dizzy and slightly drunk.

  She rounded the piano to find a woman garbed all in gauzy white, her long, dark hair rippling down her back.

  Justine.

  Lottie could not have screamed if she had wanted to. Her throat was paralyzed with fright.

  A gust of wind scattered the clouds. Moonlight came streaming through the skylight to reveal not a woman, but a child wrapped in a nightdress twice her size.

  Allegra.

  Awestruck by the beauty and power of the child’s playing, Lottie had to grip the edge of the piano to keep from staggering.

  Allegra’s small fingers flew over the piano keys, pouring out a litany of fury and heartbreak no child her age should ever have to know. Tears streamed down her pale cheeks as she played, yet her fierce concent
ration never wavered from the sheet of music before her, not even when Lottie came drifting into her view, unable to stop herself from creeping closer to the source of that astonishing music.

  Allegra’s hands pounded the keys, bringing the nocturne to a close with a crashing flourish.

  “How?” Lottie whispered into the ringing silence that followed.

  Allegra curled her hands in her lap. They were suddenly the hands of a child again, clumsy and unsure of themselves. “There’s a secret passage behind the mantel that leads up to the second floor. Mama and I used to play hide-and-seek there all the time. Papa”—she stumbled, but quickly recovered— “Father could never find us when we hid there.”

  “I meant how did you learn to play the piano?” Lottie gestured toward the keys, shock robbing her of all eloquence. “Like that?”

  “Mama was teaching me when she died.” The girl shrugged her slender shoulders. “It was never hard for me the way it is for some people.”

  Lottie shook her head. The child was a prodigy and she didn’t even realize it. “I thought you didn’t remember your mother.”

  “Oh, I remember her!” Allegra’s gaze grew fierce again. “He doesn’t want me to, but I do. She was kind and funny, always laughing and singing. She would spend hours just sitting on the floor with me, drawing pictures or teaching me a new song. She would let me wear all of her hats and we would serve tea to my dolls together.”

  Lottie smiled wistfully, wishing she had such memories of her own mother. “You must miss her very much.”

  Allegra rose from the piano bench. She paced back and forth across the parquet floor, bunching up handfuls of the fine linen to keep from tripping over the hem of the oversized nightdress. “I never meant to become a ghost, you know. Whenever Father would go away, I would sneak in here and play the piano. I didn’t even realize the servants could hear me until one morning when I overheard Meggie and Martha whispering about the manor being haunted.”

  “But you didn’t stop.”

  “No,” Allegra admitted, her gaze openly defiant. “I didn’t. After a while, I even started playing when Father was home. He was in Yorkshire on business when I first found the trunk in the attic where he kept Mama’s things locked away. I put on her nightdress because it smelled like her.”

  Lottie nodded. That must explain the jasmine, although oddly enough, the fragrance seemed much weaker than it had only a few minutes ago.

  Allegra turned pleading eyes to Lottie. “I didn’t have anything of hers, you see. He’d hidden it all away. And he refused to speak of her at all. It was as if she had never existed, and I couldn’t bear it!” The girl’s voice broke as fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “Oh, I hate him! I hate him with all my heart!”

  Lottie didn’t even realize she’d opened her arms until Allegra ran into them. The girl flung her arms around Lottie’s waist, sobbing as if her heart was breaking anew. As she stroked Allegra’s soft, thick hair, Lottie lifted her head to find Hayden standing in the doorway of the music room, his face ashen in the moonlight. Before she could reach out a hand to him, he had vanished back into the shadows.

  Lottie drew a blanket over the sleeping child. Although Allegra’s face was still stained with tears, she slept with the open-mouthed abandon of the very young. She probably wouldn’t awaken until morning. Even so, Lottie was reluctant to leave her all alone. She glanced around the child’s bedchamber until she spotted her old doll perched on the windowsill, smirking affably at them both. Lottie gently tucked the doll in the crook of Allegra’s arm, then drew the bedchamber door shut behind her, leaving the lamp burning.

  She found Hayden exactly where she thought she would—standing in the middle of the music room, gazing up at Justine’s portrait. The moon had shifted in the sky, bathing the portrait in a luminous glow.

  “Why shouldn’t my daughter hate me?” he asked bitterly as he heard Lottie’s hesitant footfall behind him. “After all, I took her mother away from her.”

  For just an instant, Lottie would have sworn her heart stopped.

  “Look around this house,” he continued. “Outside of this room, there are no portraits of her, no samplers she stitched, no watercolors she painted— not even the smallest remembrance that she ever walked these corridors. Allegra was so young when her mother died. I suppose I thought it would be better if she could just…forget.”

  Lottie’s heart started beating again, if unevenly. She sank down on the edge of the divan, her knees betraying her. “How could you expect Allegra to forget? You obviously haven’t.”

  Turning away from the portrait, Hayden moved to the piano. Using only one finger, he picked out the first few notes of the second movement of Beethoven’s “Pathetique.” “I even denied her the piano after her mother died. I suppose I always believed that somehow the music and the madness went hand in hand, that she couldn’t have one without the other. Justine was brilliant. Had she been a man, she would have been invited to play for the king. She adored music.”

  “And you adored her.” Lottie refused to insult either of them by pretending it was a question.

  Hayden’s finger hit the wrong note. He withdrew his hand from the keys. “We were very young when we wed. I wasn’t yet twenty-one and she was seventeen. At first I thought her mercurial moods were just part of her charm. She was French, after all, and much less reserved than the women I was accustomed to. One minute she’d be laughing, the next sulking over some imagined slight, the next goading you into a shouting match. But then she’d cry and beg you to forgive her so prettily.” He shook his head wryly. “It was impossible to stay angry at her for more than a few minutes.”

  Lottie stole another look at the portrait, then almost wished she hadn’t.

  Hayden straddled the piano bench, facing her. “It wasn’t until after Allegra was born that Justine’s moods took a darker turn. She would go for days without sleeping, then take to her bed for weeks at a time.”

  “It must have been very difficult for you.”

  He shook his head, refusing her pity. “There were dark days, but there were good days, too. When Justine was well, we were all happy. She adored Allegra. Being a mother gave her so much joy. Although she would sometimes turn her wrath against me, I never once saw her lift a hand to our baby.” His face darkened so dramatically that Lottie glanced at the skylight to see if a cloud had passed over the moon. “When Allegra was six, Justine lapsed back into one of her black moods. I thought perhaps a Season in London would lift her spirits. We married so young that I’d always felt a little guilty for depriving her of the social whirl she loved.” Abitter smile twisted his lips. “My dear friends Ned and Phillipe had both courted her before we married. At our wedding, they laughed and swore they’d never forgive me for stealing away their treasure.”

  A tarnished treasure indeed, Lottie thought, but she managed to hold her tongue.

  Hayden rose from the bench and began to pace the floor much as his daughter had done earlier. “At first London seemed to be the answer to all of my prayers. For over a fortnight, Justine was the toast of the town, the belle of every ball. Then things started to go wrong. I knew the signs only too well. She stopped sleeping. Her eyes grew too bright, her laugh too shrill. She would pick quarrels with me over anything—or nothing at all. We started having terrible rows. We both said things that were…unforgivable. She began staying out until the wee hours of morning, wearing too much powder and rouge, flirting shamelessly with other men in my presence.”

  “What did you do?” Lottie asked, fighting the urge to reach out and grab his hand as he passed.

  “What could I do?” He spun around to face her. “When one of my sympathetic friends sent over his private physician—a most reputable fellow who had treated our former king during some of his darkest days—the man simply shook his head and suggested I send her to Bedlam. Bedlam!” Hayden dropped to one knee, closing his hands over Lottie’s shoulders. His eyes searched her face, their dark-fringed depths fierce with anguish. �
��Do you know what they do to the inmates at Bethlem Hospital, Lottie? They chain them to the walls in tiny cells. The attendants charge the public a fee to come and gawk at them. Why, Justine wouldn’t have survived the night!”

  Now Lottie couldn’t bear to look at him or the portrait. Couldn’t bear to imagine that vibrant young creature chained to a wall like a feral animal while spectators paraded past, laughing and pointing. She didn’t realize she was crying until Hayden gently brushed a tear from her cheek with the pad of his thumb.

  “After the physician left, I informed Justine that we’d be returning to Cornwall in the morning.” He fingered the scar beneath his left ear, managing a rueful smile. “She did not take the news well. I was afraid she might do some mischief to herself so I gave her a generous dose of laudanum. Her physician from home had sent a bottle with me, just as a precaution. Before long she was sleeping like a babe.

  “There were arrangements to make. Friends to bid farewell to. So I left her there in the care of a servant.”

  Hayden rose to his feet. Once Lottie might have begged to hear the end of such a story. But suddenly she wanted to press her fingertips to his lips, wanted to implore him not to utter another word about that night.

  When he spoke again, all the passion had drained from his voice, leaving it as remote as the moon. “When I returned, I found her with Phillipe.” His uncompromising gaze pinned Lottie to the divan. “Do you want to know what the worst of it was?”

  “No,” she whispered. But it was too late. They both knew it.

  “He let her believe it was me. She was sick and drugged and confused and she thought I’d returned so we could make up our quarrel. If she hadn’t been watching, half out of her mind, when I dragged him off of her, I wouldn’t have waited for the duel. I would have killed him with my bare hands.” He flexed those hands now, reminding Lottie of their power.

  “If you had, you’d be rotting away in Newgate right now and Allegra would be without a father.” But would she still be without a mother? It was the one question Lottie couldn’t bring herself to ask.