One Night of Scandal (Avon Historical Romance)

by Teresa Medeiros

  Hayden was studying the document in his hand and looking every inch the Gothic villain in his buff-colored trousers, open-throated ivory shirt, and scuffed boots. The restless fingers of the wind tossed his dark hair. As Lottie studied the terse line of his mouth, she marveled that it could be the same mouth that had curved into a tender smile before brushing her lips with a kiss, the same mouth that had given her such exquisite pleasure only a few hours before.

  Feeling heat rush from her cheeks to other even more traitorous regions of her body, she said, “You had no right to go through my things.”

  Hayden lifted his head to meet her challenging gaze. They both knew she was bluffing. According to the laws of England, she had no things. Everything she owned belonged to her husband. Including her body.

  “You’re absolutely correct,” he admitted, startling her. “I’m quite ashamed of myself. But you really should consider my ill manners a tribute to your literary skills. I stumbled upon the first page of your little masterpiece by accident, but once I started reading, I became so engrossed in the adventures of the ‘Deadly Duke’ and his fearless young bride that I couldn’t bring myself to stop.”

  He withdrew an entire stack of pages from a cleft in the rock. With a sinking feeling, Lottie recognized her own handwriting. Oddly enough, she felt more naked before him now than she had last night. Then she had felt cherished and protected. Now she felt raw and exposed, as if Hayden was peering into the darkest, most cobweb-infested recesses of her soul with a quizzing glass. It was all she could do not to snatch up the pages and hide them behind her back.

  She nodded toward the edge of the cliff. “I’m surprised you haven’t scattered them to the wind.”

  “And deprive the world of such a burgeoning talent? I think not.” Hayden tapped the manuscript with one finger. “Oh, you’re given to the occasional lapse into melodrama, such as the chapter where your intrepid heroine discovers the feeble-witted daughter her dastardly husband keeps locked in the attic, but overall, it’s a fine effort. You should be quite pleased with yourself.”

  Then why did she feel so wretched? “There’s always some unfortunate soul locked in the attic in these books,” she tried to explain. “Especially if the house has no dungeon.”

  “Perhaps I should consider having one built,” he murmured, the glint in his eye making him look every bit as devilish as Lottie’s duke.

  Weary of being toyed with, she snapped, “You know, this never would have happened if you had just carried me back to your bed.”

  He gave her a reproachful look. “But how could you have rested comfortably knowing that at any minute I might have strangled you in your sleep?” Despite his mocking good cheer, he rather looked as if he’d like to strangle her now. “So tell me, have you found a publisher yet?”

  “Of course not!”

  “But you had every intention of finding one.” It was not a question.

  “No. Yes. I don’t know!” Lottie shook her head, desperate to make him understand. “Perhaps I did, but that was before.”

  Tucking the manuscript back into the cleft, Hayden rose, an admiring gleam in his eye. “And to think I accused you of spying for the scandal sheets. You had a much loftier goal in mind, didn’t you? This way, you won’t have to share any of your profit or your glory. ‘Lady Oakleigh’ should be quite the literary toast of London.”

  Lottie gaped at him, incredulous. “Is that what you believe? That I planned this from the start? That I trapped you into marriage for the sole purpose of using your life as inspiration for some ridiculous novel?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.” He stroked the backs of his fingers down her cheek, his touch sending a frisson of heat dancing over her skin. His voice deepened to a silky murmur. “Did you find last night to be an inspiration as well? Was it a way for you to find out just how the ‘hands of a murderer would feel against your flesh?’ ”

  Lottie closed her eyes briefly, unprepared for the shock of having him use both her words and his caress as a weapon against her. But when she opened them again, it was to meet his smoldering gaze with one of her own.

  “I suppose there’s no help for it, is there?” she said flatly, pushing his hand away. “I’ve been found out. If you must know the truth, I came peeping into your window that night just hoping I’d be mistaken for a common doxy and accosted in front of my family and most of London. Then, with my reputation in ruins, I hoped to be dragged away from the loving bosom of everyone I held dear and delivered to some drafty old mansion on the edge of creation where I could be treated as little more than a servant by some brooding nobleman and his bratty daughter. After determining that the brooding nobleman was still in love with his dead wife, who has a reputation for popping out of the grave whenever something doesn’t suit her, I planned to entice him into making mad, passionate love to me on top of a piano.” Lottie’s voice rose. “And just as you suspected, this was all part of my diabolical scheme to further my literary ambitions!”

  Hayden gazed down at her for a long moment, a muscle twitching in his cheek. “Would the clavichord have done or did it have to be the piano?”

  Without a word, Lottie snatched the manuscript from the rock and strode to the edge of the cliff. The wind tugged her curls from her topknot and whipped them across her face, nearly blinding her.

  “Don’t!” Hayden barked just as she prepared to feed the pages to the sea. His hands closed over her shoulders, drawing her away from the brink of the cliff. “Don’t,” he said more gently. “The literary world might survive such a loss, but I’m not sure either one of us would.”

  Hugging the manuscript to her chest, Lottie turned to face him. “I started writing the first night I heard the ghost,” she confessed. “After you informed me that ours was to be a marriage in name only.”

  Hayden retreated a few steps, almost as if he didn’t trust himself to remain near her. “I would have thought such a revelation would have been a relief, especially given that the ‘icy touch’ of my hand was enough to provoke ‘shudders of dread in any innocent.’ ”

  Lottie gave him an annoyed look. “Did you memorize the entire manuscript?”

  “Only select passages,” he assured her, folding his arms over his chest. “Mostly those dealing with my ‘utter moral depravity’ and the ‘compelling grimness’ of my ‘sardonic countenance.’ ”

  Lottie moaned. “Not your countenance, the duke’s countenance. It’s just a silly bit of fiction, you know, not a biography.”

  “So any resemblance between the ‘Murderous Marquess’ and your ‘Deadly Duke’ is purely happenstance?” he asked, the skeptical arch of one eyebrow making him look quite sardonic.

  She swallowed, trying not to squirm. “Well, I might have borrowed a few elements of your life to enrich the story, but I’m reasonably sure you’ve never sold your soul to the devil in exchange for immunity for all your crimes.”

  “There might be some who would disagree with you,” he said softly, all traces of mockery disappearing from his face.

  As Lottie gazed at him, a thread of hope wound its way through her remorse. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to atone for her own crimes.

  Still shielding her heart with the half-finished manuscript, she took a step toward him. “Then why don’t you let me prove them wrong?”

  Hayden raked a lock of hair from his narrowed eyes. “Just what are you asking of me?”

  Lottie drew in a deep breath, wishing she were half as fearless as her heroine. “I’m asking you to let me tell society your story—the one the scandal sheets will never print.”

  The look Hayden gave her was almost pitying. “It’s a bit late in the tale to reform the Deadly Duke, don’t you think?”

  “It’s never too late,” she said, taking another step toward him. “Not if he has someone to believe in him.”

  Hayden stiffened. “I accused you of being given to melodrama, my lady, not maudlin sentimentality.”

  Lottie felt a pang of loss. So she was back to
being “my lady” instead of “lovely Lottie” or “sweeting,” was she? But it was the prospect of losing something even more precious that emboldened her. “I’m not talking about redeeming the Frankenstein monster. I’m talking about vindicating a man who’s been wrongly accused of killing the woman he loved more than life itself.”

  Although Lottie managed to say the words without flinching, they slid like a blade through her tender heart.

  Swearing beneath his breath, Hayden strode to the edge of the cliff a few feet away from her. He stood gazing out over the white-capped waves, his profile as stark as the sky.

  Lottie drifted toward him. “All I need to clear your name is the truth about how Justine died. You told the authorities it was an accident. Was she drunk on laudanum? Did she wander away from the house and lose her way in the mist? Did she trip over a loose rock or the hem of her gown? All you have to do is tell me what happened that night on the cliffs. Let me give you the happy ending you deserve!”

  She reached for his arm, somehow believing that if she could touch him, she might be able to reach him. After last night, she refused to believe that hands capable of such mesmerizing tenderness could also be capable of shoving a defenseless woman to her death.

  As her fingertips brushed his sleeve, he wheeled around and caught her by the shoulders, his hands hard and ruthless as he backed her toward the edge of the cliff. “You say you want the truth, my lady, but what if the truth won’t give either one of us a happy ending? What then?”

  As her heels fought for purchase on the loose rocks, sending several of them tumbling into the abyss behind her, Lottie shrank from her husband, frightened by the darkness in his eyes. She regretted it immediately, but it was too late. That all too familiar mask of wariness had already descended over his face.

  Swinging her away from the cliff, Hayden released her, smoothing away the fingerprints his grip had left on her sleeves. “Go back to London with Ned, Lottie, and finish your story,” he said gruffly. “Give your duke the nasty comeuppance he deserves. Rescue your foolhardy heroine from his clutches and give her a hero worthy of her regard. But please don’t ask me to give you something I bloody well can’t.”

  With those words, Hayden turned and went striding toward the house, leaving Lottie clutching the crumpled pages of her manuscript.

  The day Lottie left Oakwylde Manor was much like the day she had arrived. A leaden bank of clouds brooded over the moor while a chill wind churned the sea into swirling whitecaps. If not for the tender haze of green veiling every hill and tree, Lottie might have believed that spring had been nothing more than a dream, as beautiful and fleeting as the night she’d spent in Hayden’s arms.

  Although the servants had gathered in the drive to bid her farewell, there was no sign of Hayden or Allegra. While Meggie dabbed at her eyes with her apron, Giles stood at rigid attention, his cravat starched, but his mouth drooping mournfully. When Martha started sniffing, Mrs. Cavendish whipped a handkerchief from her pocket and handed it to her, her mouth pressed into a thin line, but her eyes suspiciously bright.

  Ned escorted Harriet and Lottie to his waiting carriage, but even he couldn’t come up with a suitable quip to lighten the mood. He was handing Harriet into the carriage when Allegra came sprinting around the corner of the house, Miss Terwilliger hobbling along behind her. Much to Lottie’s relief, the crusty old governess had elected to stay on at the manor, realizing that her young charge would need her now more than ever.

  Allegra stumbled to a halt in front of Lottie, clutching Lottie’s doll. “Here,” she said, thrusting the doll into Lottie’s arms. “You take her.” The girl’s slender throat hitched, betraying how hard she was struggling not to cry. “I don’t want you to be all alone.”

  Lottie tenderly smoothed down a scorched wisp of the doll’s hair before handing her back to Allegra. “She never cared much for London. She always said it was too stuffy and civilized for a pirate queen. I’d rather you look after her until I get back.” Drawing the child into a fierce embrace, Lottie whispered into her ear, “And I will be back. I promise.”

  Lottie straightened, giving Allegra into Miss Terwilliger’s gnarled but capable hands. Handing her cane to a footman, the old woman rested those hands on Allegra’s shoulders, urging her to stand straight and tall.

  Ned held out a gloved hand, his expression somber. Lottie took it and climbed into the carriage, sinking into the seat next to her basket of cats while Ned settled himself next to Harriet. When she had arrived at Oakwylde Manor all those weeks ago, her heart had still been longing for home. Now she was going home, yet leaving her heart behind.

  As the carriage lurched into motion, she leaned out the window and gave the manor one last look. Although the mullioned windows reflected little but the cloudswept sky, she could feel Hayden there—watching, waiting. He’d given her no choice for now but to leave him to his ghosts.

  “If you ever truly loved him, Justine,” she whispered fiercely, pressing her eyes shut, “then set him free.”

  The sound that came drifting back to her ears might have been the cry of a kittiwake wheeling over the breakers or a woman’s laughter rippling on the wind.

  Chapter 19

  Perhaps it wasn’t too late to trade my soul for his…

  “AUNT LOTTIE’S COME HOME! AUNT LOTTIE’S come home!”

  As Lottie descended from the carriage in front of Devonbrooke House, her niece’s jubilant cry greeted her from an upstairs window. The front door of the house flew open and her family came spilling out, all laughing and chattering at once.

  For a few minutes, all was chaos as they enveloped her in a bruising round of hugs and kisses. Laura beamed as Sterling swung Lottie around in a wide circle, lifting her clean off her feet. Uncle Thane and Aunt Diana had been invited for supper, so their twins and their spaniels added to the noisy confusion by frolicking beneath everyone’s feet. When Lottie heard a sharp yelp, she quickly moved her foot, unsure if she had stepped on a dog or a toddler.

  George thumped her on the back, grinning like a drunkard. “I never thought I’d miss your prattling, sis, but I must say it’s been deadly dull around here ever since you left.”

  “That’s not what I heard,” Lottie retorted, nodding toward her traveling companion, who was helping Harriet down from the carriage. “Sir Ned tells me that you’ve been courting a certain red-haired opera dancer for the past fortnight.”

  Scowling at Ned, George blushed to the roots of his sandy hair. “Balderdash! It’s more like she’s been courting me.”

  “Aunt Lottie! Aunt Lottie!” Eight-year-old Nicholas tugged at the sleeve of her spencer. “Is it true what they say about Cornwall? Do they have fearsome giants there who clean their teeth with children’s bones?”

  “I should say not, Nicky.” Lottie raked a lock of wavy dark hair out of her nephew’s brown eyes. “The giants in Cornwall eat the bones as well. You can hear them crunching in the middle of the night when you’re trying to sleep.”

  As he squealed in delight, his nine-year-old sister rolled her eyes. “Boys are so silly. Everyone knows that there are no such things as giants in Cornwall. Or anywhere else, for that matter.”

  “You’re right, Ellie,” Lottie said, keeping her expression utterly serious. “But that’s only because the sea monsters ate them all.”

  “See!” Nicholas shouted. “I told you there were sea monsters in Cornwall!” Hooting with triumph, he gave one of his sister’s golden curls a sharp yank. As he went dancing out of her reach, Uncle Thane scooped both a spaniel and a twin out of harm’s way.

  “Why, you wretched little—” Abandoning all pretense of sophistication, Ellie took off after her brother, chasing him down the tree-shaded block.

  As Lottie gazed after them, Laura slipped an arm around her waist. “Why so wistful? You can’t tell me you’ve missed their constant bickering.”

  “I was just thinking about how much I’d love to introduce them to someone I know.”

  “Your dau
ghter?”

  Realizing that she had never thought of Allegra that way until that very moment, Lottie felt her throat tighten. “Yes,” she said softly. “My daughter.”

  Sterling gave the carriage a puzzled look. “So where is that doting husband of yours? If he’s cowering in the carriage, afraid I’ll shoot him, you should let him know that Addison has my pistols locked safely away.”

  Lottie took as deep a breath as her corset would allow. This was the moment she’d been dreading. Pasting on a cheery smile, she turned to her brother-in-law. “I’m afraid Hayden wasn’t able to accompany me on this trip. He’s quite busy with estate business this time of year. But he insisted that I come anyway. He knows how much I’ve missed you all and he didn’t want to deprive me of your company.”

  Sterling chuckled. “From what I gathered from your letters, he’s quite besotted with his beautiful young bride. I’m surprised the two of you can bear to be separated for more than a day.”

  George snickered. “Or an hour.”

  “George,” Laura said softly, placing a warning hand on her brother’s arm as she studied Lottie’s face.

  Lottie could feel her smile faltering. She hadn’t shed a single tear since leaving Oakwylde, but a dangerous prickling was starting to build behind her eyelids. Painfully aware of Sir Ned’s sympathetic gaze, she said, “Of course it’s a terrible burden for us to be apart from each other for any length of time. I’m sure he’ll be as lost without me as I will be without him.”

  Oblivious to his sister’s mounting distress, George patted her on the shoulder. “So now that you have the poor fellow under your paw, how long is he going to let you stay with us?”

  “Forever, I’m afraid,” Lottie blurted out, bursting into tears and throwing herself into Laura’s arms.