A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal

by Meredith Duran

  And if that made him like old Rushden, so be it. He was not letting her go.

  That night, Nell woke to the sound of piano music—some soft, delicate melody so muffled by the walls that at first she thought she was still dreaming. Fairy music, she thought muzzily. Achingly sad, like the dirges old sailors sang when remembering the sea.

  She lay adrift on it for minutes, grief seeping through her, until she had to know. To see his face as he played. She slipped off the bed and into the hallway.

  Through the window at the end of the corridor she saw the full moon against a sky mottled with midnight clouds. Down the wall, the stone profiles of busts froze in three-quarters profile, their bony noses and sculpted wigs casting strange shadows along the carpet.

  The strains of music flitted down the hall like ghosts, drawing her toward the atrium.

  In the eyes of the law, she was the mistress of this household. Tonight, it made no difference. She felt as though she were stealing through someone else’s home, breathless, terrified. Every shape in the dark caused her to flinch.

  Nearly to the broad balcony, at the very last door, she found the music. Peering around the doorjamb, she saw Simon seated at the piano, his hands, pale in the moonlight, moving fluidly over the keys.

  His back was to her. He hadn’t lit lamps or the candlestand at his elbow. She couldn’t see his face. But his posture as he played bespoke a man lost in music sad enough to poison a soul.

  She’d never heard this piece before.

  It made the other etude sound like a lullaby.

  She lingered there a long minute, speared by the notes, riven by impulses she couldn’t obey: to walk over and touch him. To curl up and weep.

  The music explained something to her that she didn’t wish to know. Deeper than the level of words, it told her of his pain. If he was lost in it, then he must be hurting as much as she.

  What was she to do with such knowledge? It could not help her. It only made her ache more sharply. She’d come so near to giving him everything in her; to trusting him as she’d never trusted anybody—maybe not even herself. And all of it had been based on a promise that was false. He’d always known he could leave her if plans didn’t go as predicted. He’d even planned for it.

  Now he said he wouldn’t leave her, but why not? Katherine’s enmity had made plain that they couldn’t count on an easy road to reclaiming her birthright. She might never have what was owed to Cornelia—in which case, nobody would blame Simon St. Maur for ridding himself of a penniless, gutter-bred wife.

  The thoughts laid bare a hollow inside her blacker than any hunger she’d ever endured.

  I deserve your faith, he’d said.

  But she was the one with everything to lose.

  To stand here and long for him … to keep hoping for him when he’d already laid plans to arrange for her loss … It might truly kill her.

  When the first tear fell, she took a long breath and gathered her skirts for the lonely walk back down the hall.

  The next morning, Nell woke with a headache that only sharpened as the light grew stronger. She ordered her breakfast to be brought to her room, then picked at it listlessly as the clock in the hallway counted out the painfully slow march onward into the day.

  Sylvie offered to accompany her for a walk. But the thought of being chased by journalists did not appeal. She did not want company at all. She felt too inclined to burst into tears.

  Finally she took herself down to the library in search of distraction—braced, at every turn, to run into Simon. But the hallways were empty and so, too, the library. Inside, in the murky light shed by the cloudy sky without, the still air smelled of paper and old leather. She walked along the shelves, through a silence that seemed to thicken with every footstep. She grew strangely conscious of the accumulated words in the volumes all around her, the restless thoughts of men long dead, each soundlessly begging for attention.

  “Any of them will do.”

  She gasped and turned. Simon sat in a wing chair in the far corner, the white cravat at his throat catching what little light the room retained, cutting a precise and ghostly shape in the shadows.

  Her mouth went dry. She made herself attend to his remark. “Am I disturbing you?”

  He placed a bookmark in the volume in his lap and retrieved a glass from the table beside him. Some quality in his movement—a cold, unhurried efficiency—set her heart to drumming. “My wife asks if she disturbs me,” he murmured. “How remarkable.”

  “Is it?” When he spoke so coolly, it felt like talking to a stranger—a glossy, handsome stranger with no use for her. “I thought it was polite.”

  “Oh, it is. Very proper, I assure you. We husbands and wives of the aristocracy must ensure that we never speak in an unmannerly fashion to our spouses.”

  Something dark was edging into his voice—sharp and soft and more cutting than simple irony. Abruptly she decided to come back later, once he’d left.

  But as she turned away, a book on the long reading table caught her eye: very old, she could tell at first glance. She brushed the cover with her fingers, feeling how worn and soft the leather was. There were two categories of old things, she’d gathered: for the poor, old meant worn-out, useless. For the rich, a thing just got more valuable the more it aged, because that meant that somebody with enough money to buy a new one had kept the old one for a reason. She’d gathered this logic from the mere fact that so many carpets in this place were worn to threads. “From the seventeenth century,” Polly had told her of one of them—although a sensible person might take that as a good reason to buy a new rug already.

  At any rate, this book clearly belonged to the rich and worn-out category. But when she opened it, she realized she was wrong to compare it to a threadbare carpet.

  It was gorgeous. Illustrations of saints’ martyrdoms in vivid, shocking colors. As she turned the page, Simon spoke.

  “It was your mother’s.”

  She stiffened. “I thought they all got sold.”

  He shrugged and took a sip of his drink.

  “Did you buy this back?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She absorbed this silently as she flipped a page. “Any others?”

  “All of them, if I can.”

  Her hand stilled. She felt a sting at that admission, a sting that spread out into a broad ache and made her entire body throb like a bruise.

  He’d told her enough of his own history for her to gather that the countess’s kindness must have been very important to him. Rare and precious. Now he was repaying it by buying back her mother’s books from the hands of strangers.

  The thought caused something to untwist inside her. He knew what it meant to be hurt, just as she did. His family had cast him out, turned him over to an unfeeling stranger. She’d been lost to her family, and then shoved away when she found them. They’d both lost something a person shouldn’t have to lose. They both had been marked by it.

  “You may take it, if you like,” he said.

  She clutched the book to her chest and walked quickly out of the room, back down the hall and up the stairs. Once in the safety of her apartments, she threw herself into a chair and stared at the book.

  He’d hunted this down because it had been her mother’s. Reclaiming it could not have profited him. But he’d done it anyway, because he’d loved the countess.

  She took a choking breath. The thought seemed very important. He’d loved her mother and he’d kept loving her even after she died. He hadn’t let go of love when it had become more convenient to do so.

  She tried to push the idea away. But when she set herself to reading, the words blurred, and her hand shook as she turned the pages.

  Yesterday, her rage had been clear and strong and insulating. But in the night, the sound of that piano had cracked the shield that protected her from the murky turmoil of these other feelings for him. These longings, this desperate need for him, now felt as strong as her anger.

  She told he
rself that she couldn’t trust her judgment of him. But perhaps she had it wrong. Perhaps her fears kept her from trusting her judgment.

  Maybe he was right, and she was a coward.

  When the door opened, the leaping of her heart—her anticipation of seeing him—brought her to her feet.

  But it was Polly who was bobbing a curtsy in the doorway. “Lady Katherine Aubyn to see you, milady. Shall I say you’re at home?”

  Her mind went blank. “What—what does his lordship say?”

  “His lordship just stepped out,” Polly replied. “But Lady Katherine, she asked after you, ma’am.”

  Lady Katherine waited in the rose drawing room, staring out the window into the damp street. As Nell entered, she jumped and pivoted as if fearing to be caught at some mischief. Her gloved hands locked tightly at her waist. “Good morning,” she said stiffly. She wore a dark blue walking dress and a matching hat with a narrow brim, atop which two little stuffed quails lifted their wings at a very unlikely, vertical angle.

  Had it not been for Mrs. Hemple’s so-thorough instruction, Nell wouldn’t have caught the insult in Katherine’s decision to keep her gloves on. This call wouldn’t be social, and it wasn’t intended to last long.

  Nell took a breath and closed the door. “Good morning,” she said.

  Katherine moved toward a brocade chair, then appeared to think better of her presumption and decided to hover beside it. “I … had hoped to speak with you,” she said.

  A passive way of telling Nell to sit down so she could do the same. For a moment longer, Nell held on to the doorknob, the darkest corner of her heart tempting her to turn around and leave.

  But returning upstairs would mean returning to this terrible inner battle over thoughts of Simon. She was glad to be supplied a distraction from it. And now that she’d laid eyes on Katherine, her curiosity was stirring. Katherine was shifting her weight like a nervous schoolgirl, and the pallor of her face suggested that the situation already was costing her something. Why was she here?

  Nell told herself to stay wary. She let go of the door and took a seat.

  “This is awkward,” Lady Katherine acknowledged as she sat down opposite. “I had thought perhaps to run into you at a social event—but you’ve made no appearances since the Allentons’ rout.”

  Nell shrugged. “You’re here now,” she said, “and I’m listening.”

  “Yes.” Katherine took a visible breath. “Sir Grimston met with Rushden’s solicitors this morning. Some matter of new evidence? At any rate, he tells me that he has decided not to challenge your claim. He will recognize you as my sister, he says.”

  Nell nodded slowly. They weren’t entirely identical, she observed. Katherine was built on a slightly larger scale—taller by an inch and a bit broader through the shoulders and hips. Her slimness had disguised that at first. “And you? Will you recognize me?”

  The other woman glanced down to her hands, which had been twisting in her lap but now fell still. “I am led by my guardian.”

  That string-thin man who snapped and barked? “From what I’ve seen, that looks like an unpleasant position for you.”

  Katherine gave her a startled look. After a brief pause, the girl said, “He is only concerned with my best interests.”

  How convenient that those interests also put money into his pocket. Nell contented herself with another shrug. It wasn’t her business, after all.

  Katherine cleared her throat. “More to the point: I was … wrong … to speak to you so coldly, before. You must understand how shocked I was—I fear my emotions got the better of me.”

  “I understand.” But Katherine had them under a tight control now. Maybe she still thought Nell a fraud and only felt bullied by the circumstances into hiding her doubts.

  “Well—that is kind of you. Generous.” Katherine’s lips rolled inward, making a flat line of her mouth. No, she didn’t believe it. The christening spoon hadn’t made a whit of difference to her. But now Nell’s claim looked ripe to be accepted, she had no choice but to put a polite face on her anger.

  Not a happy girl, Lady Katherine, not at all pleased to speak her next words: “Nevertheless, I feel compelled to make amends. I wonder if … if you would do me the kindness of joining me for a drive in the park?”

  Nell stared at her. “Why?”

  “Why … it’s a fine day,” she said, making an awkward little wave toward the window.

  Nell followed that gesture and lifted her brows. The window showed a cloudy sky and leaves still damp with drizzle.

  Katherine gave a little laugh. “All right, it’s a dreadful day. But—well—there will always be people in the park at this hour. And I—I might as well be honest with you. If we’re to share social circles, I think we might as well make a public appearance together as soon as possible. It would be terribly uncomfortable, don’t you think, to have the whole world speculating on our opinion of each other—watching us and whispering behind our backs? But if they see us together, behaving in a cordial fashion, the question of our feelings might be laid to rest. I cannot wish to be the subject of wagging tongues, you know. Nor can you, of course,” she added hastily.

  Nell smiled despite herself. “I don’t seem to have much choice in it. I don’t suppose you missed the flock of reporters on the pavement.”

  “No,” Katherine murmured. “Perhaps we could—have my driver meet us in the mews?”

  Nell hesitated. The memory of their last meeting recommended against this invitation. But maybe … forgiveness wasn’t always unwise. In difficult situations, people could make mistakes, could act to protect themselves without thinking through the consequences.

  Simon hadn’t known her when he’d plotted the grounds for an annulment.

  Katherine hadn’t been prepared to meet a long-lost sister that night at Lady Allenton’s.

  Nell lifted her eyes to her sister’s face—this face so like her own. Of course she wanted to know the woman behind it. Katherine must feel the same.

  “All right,” she said. Perhaps this could be a new beginning for them.

  Inside the safety of the coach, they sat in silence as the driver navigated slowly onto the road. The clop of the horses’ hooves was nearly drowned out by the yelling from outside:

  “Lady Rushden—just one question—”

  “Is it true what Mr. Norton says, that you worked as a common hand in his factory in Bethnal Green—”

  “Is she your sister, Lady Katherine? Do you confirm it?”

  Katherine reached up to give a dainty pat to her ridiculous hat—taking care, Nell noted, to avoid poking the hapless quails. “One of them was pointing his camera through the railing,” she said with a grimace. “I believe they photographed me.”

  “You look well,” Nell said without thinking, as if this were Hannah or somebody she felt able to reassure, instead of a girl who looked hard-pressed to sit across from her without spitting. “The hat’s on straight.”

  Katherine eyed her. “The toque is not meant to sit straight. At a slight angle, in fact, over the brow.”

  “Oh.” Hannah would have known that. “Well, um—should I—just—” She leaned forward and gave the hat a slight tug, tipping it down a bit to shadow Katherine’s forehead.

  Katherine did not move or protest, but when Nell sat back, she found the girl staring at her, wide-eyed, looking stricken.

  Nell found herself caught in that look, returning it with a rising sense of helplessness, of confusion—that dizzying sensation of looking into herself. “Do you really not believe it?” she asked softly.

  Katherine took a sharp breath and looked away. The coach was picking up speed, beginning to rattle and thump properly now. “It must be safe now,” she muttered, and reached for the shade, drawing it up with jerky, staccato yanks.

  “I’m sorry I don’t remember,” Nell whispered. “I wish I did.”

  A brief glance was all she got in reply. Katherine seemed determined not to look at her too long.

&nb
sp; Nell bit down hard on her cheek. It was her natural instinct, or perhaps a habit formed through hard practice over long years, not to offer more than she was offered in turn.

  But she owed it to herself now to try. She wanted to know her sister. “I was … gutted,” she said, “after I saw you at the Allentons’.”

  Katherine spoke in a choked voice: “Don’t. Just—please, don’t.”

  “Why not?” Frustration pulled Nell forward in her seat. “That’s what you came for, isn’t it? To speak to me? To settle this question in your mind? This is a closed coach, Katherine. If you wanted to show us off at the park, you’d have come in a barouche.” Simon had made a joke of it, one day when they’d driven in Rotten Row: a brougham was for business; a barouche was for seeing and being seen.

  Katherine shook her head. She was biting her lip, a frown cramping her brow. All at once she twisted to knock on the back window. “You’re right,” she said rapidly, “this weather is wretched. Hardly an opportune occasion.” When the footman popped his head down, she spoke quickly: “Return us to Rushden House at once.”

  A lump hardened in Nell’s throat. She spoke around it, hoarsely. “You’re taking back the invitation, then?”

  “It was wrong to ask you. I would not wish to discomfort you. You are not ready to make a public appearance—your husband did not grant permission—”

  “I don’t need his permission. If Grimston makes you take his, then he’s not a guardian so much as a jailer!”

  Katherine squinted at her, as though looking into a light too bright to be viewed comfortably. “You understand nothing. You—” Her voice broke. She wet her lips, leaning forward a little, and the urgency in her expression, the white-knuckled tension in her hands gripping the edge of the bench, communicated an alarm that suddenly became contagious: Nell found herself holding her breath. “In the future,” Katherine said, “please, please don’t leave the house without your husband.”

  The carriage slowed. Rocked to a halt. They looked out the window as one. “Stopped too soon,” Nell muttered, just as a rattling came at the door.