Season for Scandal

by Theresa Romain

  Wrong. Though she might end by taking no pleasure in it, she was determined to tug him beyond his careful boundaries. “What about me?”

  Leaning back against the unyielding cane and silk of the sofa, he shut his eyes. “My limits are different with you.”

  “In what way?”

  “In every way.” His hand fumbled for hers; she let him take it, but she didn’t close her fingers around his.

  “You’re offended.” Before she could reply, he sat up, making a noise of impatience. “I knew I shouldn’t have talked about this. I told you, Jane, it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

  How entirely he missed the point. But she was done with explaining; done with hoping, even if not with wanting. “Pleasure does not?” A polite expression was pasted onto her features.

  “That’s not what I meant, though I’m not sure that it does. We married out of good sense. And pleasure hasn’t gone all that well for us, has it?”

  “If you except our first encounter,” Jane said primly, “then it’s been all right.”

  “‘All right.’” If another man made the ensuing sound, Jane would have called it a snort. Never had she known Edmund to do anything so impatient or cynical as snort.

  “Yes,” she repeated. “‘All right.’ I don’t know another description. I have no other experiences to compare it with.”

  “I rather hoped for ‘marvelous’ or ‘earth-moving.’”

  “How astronomical of you.” She fixed her eyes on her vase. Over its antique glazed surface, the river flowed purple and winding. “Have you given me your best, then? Leaving as you do each time?”

  The silence before he spoke was long and hollow as an echo. “I give you the best I can.”

  “And I say that it’s all right.”

  He touched the point of her chin, then turned her face to him. “Jane. I asked if I might come to you tonight. I’m offering you something different this time. Just sleep, and I won’t leave until morning.”

  The offer was intoxicating in a way even the brandy had not been. Where he touched her chin, her skin tingled, tempting her to relent. “I am very tired.”

  His finger traced the line of her jaw. “I am, too. Shall we?”

  A swell of sharp-sweet hunger made her catch her breath. “Yes.” She slipped her loosened shoe back on and stood.

  As they walked up the stairs to their connecting bedchambers, her heart thudded as it hadn’t since her wedding day. He didn’t intend to touch her in a sexual way. Yet the idea of sleeping together seemed more intimate than sex, and in a way, more pleasurable.

  I won’t leave, he had said. He had chosen her, only her, all night.

  Not just over another woman, or all the women of his past, but over the responsibilities that split him from her during the day. The sense of obligation that drove him toward, then away from, her bed. He might not desire her, yet he gave her this piece of himself: this time, this closeness, that he had never before shared.

  She wasn’t lying about being tired, though as she undressed and pulled on her nightclothes, the fatigue was limned with nervousness. Did he mean it? Would he really join her, and stay all night?

  The door opened with a quiet sound that seemed loud. Lying beneath the coverlet, Jane’s breathing seemed loud, too. Edmund’s footfalls on the carpeted floor marched toward her like drumbeats, and when his hand tugged back the covers, the rustling fabric sounded like a howling wind.

  He pressed his body behind hers, full-length, and encircled her waist with an arm. “Good night, Jane.”

  “Good night.” Her voice was oddly bright.

  For a minute, he held her tight, then his arm loosened to curve gently over her waist. “Sleep well.”

  “You, too.” That stupid bright voice again. She couldn’t help it. She was nervous about this new, odd intimacy, even as he still kept his thoughts locked away.

  But that was that: two short sentences apiece. He didn’t speak to her again, and within a few minutes, the soft, slow sound of breathing told her he had fallen asleep—or he was better at pretending than she was.

  After some minutes or some hours, when the sky was black outside and the world had gone quiet, Jane fell asleep, too. When the sun reached through the bedchamber window at dawn, she was still within the circle of his arm.

  But when Jane stretched out and turned over an hour later, she was alone but for an indentation in the soft mattress.

  Darling Edmund. Damned Edmund. Once again, he had fulfilled his promise, and nothing more.

  Chapter 14

  Concerning the Proper Steps

  All things considered, Edmund thought that whole business of sleeping with his wife had gone rather well. When the sun rose, he had awoken, refreshed as he rarely was after a night alone.

  Maybe because, holding Jane within his arms, he knew he kept her safe. Maybe because the lithe warmth of her body was a balm to him, too. At last, he felt he’d done something right, and the following morning, he couldn’t resist prolonging the pleasant sensation.

  He located her in the breakfast parlor, where she was crunching through a heap of toast and sweetening a cup of coffee.

  “Jane, I have a wonderful idea for this morn—how much sugar are you putting in that coffee?”

  She lifted her brows. “Enough to make it taste good. I think it’s been scorched.” Watery sunlight painted her face, gilding the tips of her lashes. Her eyes looked woodsy-green this morning, reflecting the shade of her gown.

  Long familiarity had led him to take her appearance for granted, but now that he looked her over again—why, she was lovely, wasn’t she? It was more than just her form and features; it was her vitality. She was curious and lively, bringing him out of himself with her teasing ways.

  “You look pretty,” Edmund blurted. “This morning. You—you know. Look pretty. Did you sleep well?”

  She set down her slice of toast. “For a while.” She frowned, as though his words made no sense to her.

  “You look pretty,” Edmund said again. It seemed important that she understand this.

  “Why?”

  “Why do you look pretty? It’s hard to explain. Something about your expression.”

  She kept frowning.

  “You still look pretty when you frown,” he added. “It’s just the way you’re made.”

  Her frown quivered and changed direction.

  “And when you try not to smile, you’re even prettier.”

  “There’s the blarney from your Irish blood.” She picked up her toast again. “Stop it. You’re being ridiculous.”

  He drew out a chair and sat at her left. The pile of toast looked rather good. “May I?” When she nodded, he grabbed a slice.

  “So,” he said between bites, “what am I to say when I think you look pretty, if not that you look pretty?”

  “Just stop saying it.” She looked puzzled. “You don’t have to say anything. I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “Because?”

  She crumbled the crust of her toast to powder. “Because it sounds like exactly the sort of thing you say to everyone else. So it doesn’t mean anything.”

  So simply stated. So well aimed; so dreadful. Their brutally honest conversation yesterday had cracked something that lay between them. He had thought that something a wall that separated them, coming down. But maybe she saw those little truths as betrayals, breaking her trust in him.

  Some reassurance, then, that he was all hers now. Edmund pasted a rakish grin on his face. “If I can’t talk about the way you look, am I at least permitted a few impure thoughts?”

  A tiny smile crossed her features. “I can’t possibly control your thoughts.”

  “Nor can I.”

  “Edmund, when you came into this room, were you going to tell me something?” Abandoning her scorched coffee and toast, she stood.

  He followed suit, brushing crumbs from his fingertips. “Yes. Well—no, I was going to suggest something. So it was actually more of a question than a
statement. Or more of a suggestion than a question. An offering of—”

  “Oh, stop, and just tell me what it is.” With a smile, she slid her hand into the crook of his arm.

  “I have a free morning, and I thought we could use it to practice dancing.”

  She went still. “Dancing.”

  “Do you dislike the idea?” The few bites of toast in his stomach became lead.

  “No. I just didn’t expect that you’d really teach me.”

  He caught her under the chin, tilted her face up to look him in the eye. “I said I would, and I will. Jane. I always keep my promises to you.”

  “I know,” she sighed, patting his hand where it touched her jaw. “I know you do.”

  This didn’t precisely sound like the yipping delight he had hoped for. Still, he led her into the drawing room, in which a pleasant coal fire glowed. To clear a space for dancing, he pushed aside a small table on which her recently purchased Chinese vase teetered, and Jane heaved a striped ottoman out of the way.

  “We’ll try a waltz,” he decided. “That’s the only dance I can think to teach you without the help of others. A quadrille or a reel have such complicated figures that we’d need a whole dancing school to sort them out.”

  “A waltz?” She quit shoving at the ottoman and marched to stand before him. “I know how that works, sort of. I slap my hands all over you and we twirl around to the count of three.”

  “Yes, that’s right. And I slap my hands all over you, too.”

  Jane held up her hands. “Where do they go?”

  “My dear, they can go wherever you like.” At Jane’s snort, he added, “But for the sake of a waltz, your left hand can go on my shoulder. Your right hand holds my left.”

  “And yours?”

  “Mine goes here.” He laid his right hand on the curve of her waist.

  Hardly an intimate touch for a husband who had seen and stroked all of his wife’s body. He could scarcely feel the shape of her form beneath gown and stays and chemise, so many layers of fabric separating them. Her hand on his shoulder felt featherlight atop the woolen bulk of his coat, the spiderweb of linen shirt. Yet such touch was forbidden in the cold stare of public view, unless it came in the course of a dance.

  “Now we’re settled,” he said lightly. “I’ll count for us and spin, and you let yourself be pushed about backward.”

  “How delightful,” Jane grumbled. “Pushed about backward like a broom. I can’t imagine why I haven’t learned this before—oh.”

  For with a quick one-two-three, Edmund had swept her in a wide circle, and when she stumbled, she pressed against the full length of his body. Her hair smelled so good, soapy-clean and smooth in its simple twist, that he dropped a kiss on top of her head.

  She shivered, an enticing frisson against his chest, and his hands rearranged themselves into a position decidedly unsuited for waltzing in public.

  “I am quite sure,” came her muffled voice against his chest, “that is not where you said you’d be grabbing at me.”

  “Well, if you’re to tumble against me, I owe it to you to steady you. At all bendy bits of your form.”

  She slid free from his embrace and stepped back, cheeks pink. “My bottom is not bendy.”

  “Correct. Not if I have my hands on it.”

  “Not at any time. Edmund, why did you . . .” She trailed off, looking around the room as though her words had scampered away and hidden under the ottoman.

  From experience, he knew I thought you’d like it was the wrong answer. “Because I wanted to put my hands on you,” he said firmly. Truthfully.

  They looked at one another with some surprise.

  “I did,” he said. “And I’d like to do it some more.”

  “I believe you.” She looked still more surprised, but pleased, too.

  He hoped.

  He hoped for many things, though. Her happiness. A return to her bed.

  He hoped for too much. He’d no right; there were walls between them that he could never tear down.

  “Here’s what else I want,” he interrupted his own thoughts. “To take you to a masquerade. Lord Weatherwax is hosting one on the first of December. His masquerades are notorious and usually lead to a scandal or two.”

  “Scandal? Are you flirting with me?”

  “If I know you at all, you wish to flirt with scandal. I am merely stating the enticing truth. So practice your waltzing, Lady Kirkpatrick. And come up with a costume. And be ready”—he patted her rear—“to have a handsome man put his hands all over you. Within the context of a waltz, of course.”

  “This is what you want,” she mused.

  “Yes,” he said. “Especially the bit about putting my hands on you. Because, by the way, I’m the handsome man I mentioned.”

  “Yes, I figured that part out.” She smiled. “All right, my lord. I’ll come up with something very grabbable. In case there are dark paths to wander down.”

  “There will be. It wouldn’t be a proper masquerade otherwise.”

  One step brought him near her; now only a few inches separated them. He traced the slope of her nose, then feathered a touch over her cheekbone.

  She drew back at once. “What? Do I have a smut on my face?”

  “No. You look fine.” He settled for a kiss on the forehead, less like a husband or a lover than a proud tutor.

  Not that he had really taught her anything.

  “You look fine, too,” she muttered, sounding as though she meant exactly the opposite.

  “Wait until you see me in my costume.”

  Just for one night, they could sink into the darkness of a masquerade. And in masking themselves, maybe they could lose themselves; leave their unspoken wounds behind. Maybe their troubles wouldn’t find them.

  Just for one night.

  The first of December was always an odd day for Edmund. When he was a boy, his mother told him that she’d named him for a long-ago martyred priest, Edmund Campion, who had lost his life in a horrible way on this date. Why the baroness had named her son for a man whose secret ministry led to his execution for treason, Edmund had no idea.

  Well, once his mother’s relationship with Turner became more clear, Edmund had a little idea. Still, knowing that his mother associated him with betrayal was hardly the sort of comfort he sought when inquiring after the history of his name. He had often wondered what it would be like to live a life free of secrets and shame. But such musings were idle, like wondering what it would be like to be Russian. Or to breathe underwater. Unimaginable, such realities.

  Edmund was glad for the distraction of tonight’s masquerade, a lavish wintry affair to be held at the mansion of Lord Weatherwax. The cheerful inebriate was sure to provide ciders and ports and mulled wine aplenty, and after a long week of Parliamentary debate, London’s lords were ready to escape into other selves beneath the silver of a full moon.

  He dressed with the help of his manservant, Withey, in a costume chosen to appeal to Jane. A makeshift uniform aping that of a naval officer, it was a see-the-world costume. A man dressed as he was—cream-colored knee breeches and white stockings; polished black shoes and a deep blue cutaway tailcoat—ordered his life around exploration. Curiosity. Knowledge.

  A man like this could capture the notice of Lady Kirkpatrick.

  It wasn’t a perfect simulacrum. The buckram hat was a too-plain cousin to the great cockaded semicircles worn by England’s naval heroes. But then, Edmund was no hero. He was just a man in a costume, hoping to make his wife smile when she saw him.

  When she twirled into the entry hall of their house, he caught sight of her costume for the first time. And he was the one who smiled.

  And looked, and looked, and looked.

  Under his gaze, she grinned back. “I look a right jade, don’t I?”

  She had dressed as the sort of serving wench one might have found at a wayside taproom in a bygone era. Over a full-sleeved chemise, she wore a kirtle, tight beneath her breasts and, oh, so low
and loose over them. Her skirts nipped at her ankles, shorter than fashion decreed today. What did fashion know?

  Her kirtle and skirts were a respectable brown, yet just the burnished shade to brighten her hair: a study in gold and copper and wood-dark brown, all rag-bagged together. Yet she was no precious metal, to be hammered into a delicate form. She was vivid and strong, like earth itself, and her mouth had been painted the red of sin.

  He had a sudden, vivid urge to tip her over a table, tumble up those skirts, and drive into her from behind.

  He shut his eyes. When he opened them again, she was looking at him with much curiosity.

  “I wonder,” she said, “what on earth was on your mind just now. You got the most interesting look on your face.”

  “Perhaps you’ll find out later,” he said in a hoarse voice.

  “Oh, so it’s like that?” She grinned, saucy as any serving wench, and he had to remind himself rather aggressively that she was a baroness, and he was a baron, and they were in the entrance of their house with a footman standing by.

  He held out a black demi-mask. “Put this on, please.”

  “I will when we get there. Until then, I want to see your face.” She slipped her hand into his. “In case you get an interesting look on it again.”

  “The punch is notoriously strong,” Edmund murmured in Jane’s ear. “I think more people are waiting for refreshments than are dancing.”

  In a glance, he took in Lord Weatherwax’s ballroom, all Georgian splendor in its gilt trim and glistening rose-dark porphyry columns. Every inch of the ceiling was painted with lush figures from mythology, and the marble floor gleamed. Though a small orchestra played on a dais festooned with evergreen garland, most of the masked and costumed figures were lurking around the refreshment table rather than the dance floor.

  “I wonder if those couples learned to waltz the same way I did,” Jane whispered back. “In another instant, will they be grabbing at each other’s—”