Season for Scandal

by Theresa Romain

  Bonnets, bonnets, for everyone. “I know what you mean,” Jane said drily.

  “Oh, good. I was afraid I wasn’t explaining it well.” The countess turned a becoming shade of pink. “There are a few sentimental reasons for spending Christmas in the country, too. Clifton Hall is where we truly got acquainted, after all.”

  “You’re going to do unspeakable things in the library, aren’t you?” Jane grimaced. “No. Don’t answer me.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.” Louisa grinned. “Answering you, that is. But you are welcome to come with us if you would prefer not to remain in town.”

  The sugar bowl took on great fascination for the countess; she began stirring at the sweetness and letting it fall from the spoon. “However. If—not to speak of anyone in particular—one would rather stay in London to be near the person one loves, then one would be welcome to stay in this house.”

  “When I sort that sentence out,” Jane muttered, “I will let you know what one decides.”

  “I have faith that one will figure it out.” Louisa smiled.

  Jane considered the invitation to join her friend in the country; it did appeal, greatly. Yet if she went along to Xavier’s country seat in Surrey, she would be the unwanted extra. At best, a pest, just as she’d been for years. At worst—forgotten, as Xavier and Louisa darted around their estate being nauseatingly happy.

  “I’ll stay here at Xavier House while you’re gone,” she decided. “At least in London, I can enjoy a bit of scandal.”

  “Enjoy?” Louisa looked doubtful. “Do you think you would enjoy it? I found it rather dreadful, myself, when everyone talked about me.”

  “Well. You don’t like having people talk about you.”

  “I wouldn’t mind them gossiping about me if the subject was my charm and brilliance.”

  “Hmph.” Jane folded her arms. “What I’m saying is that you’ve never experienced what it’s like to be forgotten entirely.”

  “But I have, Jane.” Louisa crumbled a bit of biscuit and watched the dust fall to her saucer. “I was forgotten. Too shy to make an impression during my debut Season.” She gave a wry laugh. “As you say, anything seemed better than that—to go to London, and have the city be affected not at all by my presence. And so I jumped into an engagement of convenience.”

  Oh. Jane hadn’t recalled that Louisa had once been engaged, then jilted. “Well, someone had to propose to you in the first place for you to become engaged. So you couldn’t have been completely forgotten.”

  Jane knew she sounded petulant, and there was no reason for it. Why should she feel so hurt when she was the one who had decided to leave? Edmund should be the one whose heart had been bared and wounded.

  But she’d never found a way to reach his heart at all.

  There. That was why she was hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to her friend. “I shouldn’t have argued with you. I know you understand.”

  “I think I do.” Louisa set her saucer down. “But you and I are very different people, and the rules of society are different for unmarried ladies such as I was then and for the married baroness that you are now. The sort of tittle-tattle that bothered me might not shake you at all. Or you might be shaken by something else instead.”

  Jane waved a hand. “Society will soon forget about my disaster of a marriage. But if I’m lucky, this will be the making of me. Everyone will know my name, and no one will overlook me anymore.”

  Louisa fixed Jane with her dark eyes. “Whose notice do you truly want?”

  Jane gritted her teeth. “If one’s presence doesn’t matter to the people one cares for most,” she managed, “then one takes the attention one can get.”

  “Your use of the indefinite pronoun is most mysterious.” Louisa poured out more tea that neither of them seemed very interested in drinking. “I cannot imagine to whom you refer. However, if it makes any difference at all”—she set the teapot down with a clunk—“you matter to me and your cousin. Very much.”

  Jane turned her head away. Perhaps she could use more tea after all, for her throat felt closed and choked. “It makes a little difference.”

  A soft sigh broke the long silence that followed. “But it’s not the same, is it? The love of family and friends. It’s just not the same.”

  Jane shook her head, still looking carefully away. She would not permit herself any tears. Fixing her gaze on a painting of Clifton Hall—Xavier’s country house—under a golden summer sun, she said, “My marriage feels like . . . a house with no furniture in it.” She swallowed. “It’s enough to keep me safe. But it doesn’t feel like mine. It’s my marriage, but I don’t belong in it.”

  She stared at Clifton Hall without blinking, until her eyes blurred. Had she ever felt at home? Not in Mytchett. Not with Xavier. The only time she’d ever felt she belonged somewhere was when she set a Chinese vase on a drawing-room table.

  A hand pressed hers lightly, then lifted. Jane turned to see that Louisa had returned to her chair after the little gesture and was now shifting the tea things around into shapes. The saucers at the points of a diamond. A triangle with a tail. Then she stacked them up. “You have a home here for as long as you want it.”

  Louisa was wrong, though: this still wasn’t Jane’s home.

  But it didn’t have Edmund, tearing up her peace of mind. Wounding her with good intentions; with careful politeness and not a bit of trust.

  It didn’t have Edmund, and for now that was all Jane wanted.

  Chapter 17

  Concerning the Circumstances of the Baroness’s Departure

  “I cannot believe it,” Xavier said again that evening. “You shouted at Jane. It’s absolutely marvelous.”

  In the upstairs coffee room of White’s, the earl sat in a leather wing chair before a marble fireplace. Edmund, facing him from an identical chair, balanced a brandy snifter in his fingertips. Difficult to believe that he had introduced Jane to brandy only a few days before. Or that she’d left his home this morning.

  “I regret my loss of temper,” he said to his old friend.

  “I don’t.” Xavier chuckled, then drained his own snifter. “I’ve wanted to shout at Jane her whole life. And she certainly deserved it today.”

  “I thought so,” Edmund granted. “Though a bout of shouting in a friend’s morning room is not in keeping with the way a man ought to treat his wife.”

  “You were welcome to call. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have entirely believed Jane when she swore she hadn’t accidentally murdered you and stuffed you in a wardrobe.”

  “What a remarkably specific scene you describe.”

  Xavier set down his snifter with a clunk on a small side table. “Well, a wife oughtn’t to walk out on her husband without so much as a good-bye or a word of explanation. Even for Jane, it’s very odd behavior. It’s not as though you’ve treated her ill.”

  “No,” Edmund said doubtfully. “I didn’t think so.”

  Xavier raised his quizzing glass to one eye. “I beg your pardon. Did she think so?” His voice had gone sharp.

  “She communicated—with some verbal force—that she didn’t intend to return to my house because ours wasn’t a real marriage.”

  Xavier let the quizzing glass fall. “I probably don’t want to ask for an explanation of that comment.”

  “Don’t bother. I asked, and I got nowhere.” Brandy burned down his throat as he took a long swallow. It gnawed at his stomach for an instant, then spread in a blessed enervating warmth through his limbs. He shut his eyes and let his head fall back. “I tried to be kind to her. All the time. But she didn’t seem to like that.”

  “Jane is rather unaccountable. I believe she’d rather be insulted than given a false compliment. Lady Xavier is much the same way.” Xavier gave a small cough. “Though a sincere compliment is much to be preferred over other options.”

  “I tried that. Believe me. I don’t think she cares much for compliments, though. Or gifts. Nothing that’s easy to
give.”

  Xavier extended his boots toward the hearth. “No, very true. But if you want her back—ah, do you want her back?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then you’ll have to figure out what she does want. And you’ll have to decide if you can give it.”

  Edmund already knew the answer. Jane wanted the truth from him.

  Xavier picked up his snifter again, regarded its dregs with some disappointment, and added, “As her cousin, I ought to make some sort of threat. Something like, if you fail to make her happy, I’ll disembowel you, or take away all your books of poetry. But since no one on earth has ever been able to make Jane do what she doesn’t wish or stop doing something she does want to do, I can’t see why I should hold you to a higher standard.”

  “Because I’m her husband. I’m responsible for her.”

  Xavier shook his head. “Better you than I, dear fellow. Better you than I.”

  Edmund set down his own snifter on a small piecrust table at the side of his chair. The fire jumped and snapped, eager and well fed in the hearth, and he wondered if he could stay here all night. Being out in company felt entirely different, knowing that an empty house waited at home for one. It was how he’d spent all the years of his adulthood, but now that he’d chosen and lost a wife, solitude felt like a step backward.

  Well. That was why he wasn’t in solitude now. He was surrounded by men of leisure, men thoroughly convinced of their own worth. Billiard balls clacked; brandy snifters and coffee cups clinked. Cigar smoke drifted through the air, lazy as fog, pleasantly acrid to his nose.

  “Lord Kirkpatrick. What a pleasure.”

  Edmund squinted up at the speaker of this unexpected greeting. Lord Sheringbrook—gambler, card cheat, and erstwhile host to Jane’s ruinous game of vingt-et-un—smiled down at him. The viscount was tall, and dressed as always in beautifully tailored clothes. His dark hair was slicked back to reveal a pronounced widow’s peak.

  “Sheringbrook,” Edmund muttered by way of greeting. Bare courtesy was necessary: the viscount outranked him, and accusing the man of dishonesty would surely result in a duel.

  Besides, Edmund was not entirely sure that Xavier knew Jane’s entire dowry had gone to line Sheringbrook’s pockets. Or, more likely, gone to pay off the most violent and demanding of his creditors.

  “Lost your lady wife, did you?” Sheringbrook smiled. “Talk’s gone all over the town.”

  “She’s paying a visit to her cousin’s household.” Edmund nodded toward Xavier, who gave the viscount a lazy wave.

  “Nonsense. Not with all her worldly goods.” Sheringbrook tapped his chin with a long forefinger. “Tell me, has she been skinned again, Kirkpatrick? Did you boot her from the house, or did she flee you of her own accord?”

  Oh, Lord. Did they have to do this now? Edmund reached for his snifter and, without lifting it, twisted its stem. The amber liquid within began to slosh back and forth.

  “Ordinarily, Sheringbrook,” he said coolly, keeping his eyes fixed on the brandy, “I would be delighted to accept your judgment of the situation, since you are an expert on skinning those with whom you ought not to be gambling. But in this case, you don’t know damn-all about the matter. Women go to visit their friends sometimes, and—”

  “Pax, Kirkpatrick,” Xavier said mildly. “Sheringbrook doesn’t know anything about women. Leave him be.”

  “You’re right,” Edmund replied. “I shouldn’t have spoken to him like a sensible being.”

  Sheringbrook choked. “I could call you out for that.”

  Edmund feigned surprise. “Why, what on earth for? I merely said you didn’t know why my wife had chosen to visit a close friend of hers who happens to be married to her cousin.”

  He smiled, welcoming the chance to slip venom into his honeyed words, to hurt the man who had taken away Jane’s choices and who seemed now to want to hurt her again. “But there’s the reason, since you’re so concerned about her well-being. For which I thank you, by the way. I know you have long been interested in Lady Kirkpatrick’s behavior. What an ace you are.”

  Sheringbrook narrowed his eyes, but Edmund turned away. Enough. Enough discussion of aces and cards and what Jane had done to drive herself into Edmund’s arms. He certainly had not been able to keep her there.

  Enough about that, too.

  “You can’t keep it a secret,” Sheringbrook said coldly.

  Edmund heard his footsteps moving away across the plush carpet; not until the sound of footfalls vanished did he look back at Xavier. “Sorry about that. It seems Jane is making both our lives significantly less peaceful today.”

  “It’s not the first such day.” Xavier’s brows knit. “Look—Kirkpatrick, you needn’t worry about Sheringbrook. It’s only a matter of time before his membership here is dropped. He’s in money trouble again, and worse than ever.”

  “If rumor’s to be believed. He’s always managed to skate by before.”

  “Not this time. If, as you say, rumor’s to be believed. His mother’s heirloom pearls were stolen, and though he couldn’t have done the theft himself—”

  “His what?” Edmund wondered if his ears had simply given up on the day and ceased to operate correctly. “What has happened to Lady Sheringbrook’s pearls?”

  In a few sentences, Xavier sketched out the recent theft and Sheringbrook’s alibi. “To no one’s surprise, he was at a card table. Still, he probably had something to do with it. Rumor has it he’s turning to shady dealings to meet his urgent debts.”

  Edmund would have laughed, if he hadn’t felt a little ill. So the ten thousand pounds was gone, was it? Jane had pinned a future on it; years, even decades. Sheringbrook had thrown it away in a matter of weeks.

  “Speaking of rumor.” Xavier paused. “Sheringbrook’s right, though I hate to say it. Talk about Jane leaving your home is—well, it’s likely to spread quickly. There’s no reason for Jane to be staying under our roof when we’re only a few streets away from you. It would be different if she or Louisa were increasing, but . . .” Xavier shrugged. “My mother and Lady Xavier’s mother both died in childbed. I’m not eager for my wife to take the same risk.”

  Edmund said a quick prayer of thanks for the stout good health of Jane’s mother. “I don’t mind what people say about me. Many people think I’m a bit of a nodcock because I like poetry and giving compliments and making women smile.”

  “Nothing wrong with that.” Xavier looked as though he were struggling not to smile.

  “I know.” Edmund gave his snifter one more spin; brandy sloshed over the lip. “But that only makes it funnier—to some—that my wife has left me.”

  The earl went sober at once. “It’s not funny at all.”

  “I hope Jane isn’t the subject of mockery,” Edmund said. “That’s all I hope. She’s very dignified.”

  “Jane? Dignified?” Xavier spluttered again.

  “Well, yes.” Edmund frowned, thinking. “In a sort of prickly way. She wants nothing but the truth. No secrets. She wants to do everything correctly. She gives and takes no quarter.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it like that. You’re right.” Xavier gave Edmund an odd look. “I’ll try to send her back to you.”

  “You needn’t bother.” Edmund motioned for a waiter to refill his friend’s snifter. “Nothing will change her mind except her heart. And vice versa.”

  He would never bar his door to his wife—but why should she ever come back through it? He obviously possessed nothing she wanted anymore. Certainly not her heart.

  Edmund returned home a few hours later, more sober than he wished. His first effort to retrieve his wife from Xavier House had failed. There would be a second, even a third, if the situation required. He would not give up on her.

  But he had no notion what form the second attempt should take. His best tool was words, and words had failed. Sweet words, pleading words, words of anger. Jane was immune to all of them.

  He ought to shove her into a trunk and
kidnap her. That seemed like the sort of adventure she’d like.

  The smile that crossed his features was bleak.

  He moved through the quiet drawing room, where the servants had let the fire dwindle to coals. He lit a taper in a candlestick; the small flame caught the gloss of Jane’s Chinese vase, seated atop a table that seemed far too small to keep it steady. Yet steady it remained, though servants bustled by innumerable times per day to clean the carpet or build up the fire. The vase wouldn’t dare disobey Jane by letting itself be damaged.

  Edmund stepped closer to it; close enough for the candlelight to catch the gilded back of one of the dragon-shaped handles.

  He should send the vase to her at Xavier House.

  He’d be damned before he’d send the vase to her at Xavier House.

  He sighed, rubbing his free hand across eyes gone gritty from fatigue. His old feeling of guilt felt tender as a bruise. Dobhránta again. He’d been stupid without knowing how. He hadn’t tried hard enough, or he’d tried too hard, or . . .

  No. This time something pressed back.

  He had tried his best with Jane. His best made other women happy. It didn’t work with Jane: she’d left.

  In his old, sad bundle of guilt, he was the one who’d done wrong. Long ago, he had escaped a situation grown so rotten that he could no longer breathe its air. And now Jane had done the same to him, leaving his house, and—

  This wasn’t guilt he felt; it was anger. Because what he’d done to her had been nothing like what had happened to him.

  If being treated with respect and placed in comfortable circumstances was so terrible that she had to escape him, then damn her. There was no pleasing such a woman.

  Edmund, I love you.

  A wedding-night memory of her quiet voice—half a sob of passion—rang in his ears, cutting through the clamor of resentment.

  I love you. She had said it once, and never again. He hadn’t wanted her to say it again. He hadn’t even wanted her to feel it because it made his guilt all the worse.