Season for Scandal

by Theresa Romain

  “Why—is that?” She changed her question to a milder one. Why don’t you go back, was what she’d wanted to ask. What happened to all of you?

  “We haven’t been a family for a long time. Were we ever? It took a painter to bring us together, and even then, only on canvas.”

  This time he did let the painting’s cover fall over the image. “It’s no wonder I made a muck of our marriage, is it? If we learn by example, I’ve had very little to go on.”

  “What rubbish. We cannot possibly learn everything by example.” She folded her arms against the cold that leaked in around the window frame. “If we did, I’d still be living in a poky little cottage like my mother. Probably with my mother. Seeing the same people every day, living my life in the same tiny rounds.” She took a deep breath. “Sometimes people don’t belong in the family they’re born into. And it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. Or they are.”

  “But you do belong in your family. With Xavier, I mean. Your cousin. You’re so much alike, in your stubbornness and daring.”

  Yes, she thought so, too. And she knew herself to be lucky now. “One reprobate can always manage to locate another.”

  He gave her a dutiful smile. “What I mean is, at your cousin’s estate, you found a place you felt at home. In that, I envy you.”

  “Because you never have?”

  The silence that followed was like a fine crystal: leaden and fragile. Jane fumbled to fill it, but everything seemed the wrong shape for her mind, her throat, her tongue.

  Without a single word, he’d let her know how utterly their marriage had failed to take root. He’d let her know that there had never been anything for it to grow in. He regarded himself as too ignorant, too parched, to nurture any sort of relationship.

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “You are so, so wrong.”

  “I wish I were.” His anger, coming so rarely in quick flashes, would be far better than this. Now he seemed not wistful, but resigned. “Come downstairs, won’t you? I think we’ve both seen enough up here.”

  “No.” Before she could think better of it, she’d drawn closer to him and twitched back the canvas covering over the old portrait. “You’re wrong, Edmund. And maybe I was, too. Sometimes people shape us by showing us what we don’t want to be like. I didn’t want a small life. And you don’t want to be like this. A fake family, putting on a show in public.”

  “No, but that’s hardly meaningful. Who would choose such a thing?”

  A harsh laugh broke from Jane’s throat. “I’ve lived among the ton for a far shorter time than you, yet I’d guess many people do.”

  “Not you, though.”

  She looked at the painted face of the boy, already handsome, already shoved aside. “No, not me. I’m too—what was it? Stubborn and daring?”

  “Real disdain is better than a fake love.”

  It wasn’t fake, you idiot. “Well.” She made herself smile. “I hardly feel disdain for you.”

  “But we still have . . . nothing.” His brows knit, and he, too, studied the faces. “You once said you loved me, but I didn’t know what to do about it. So I lost you.”

  Still, always, he thought it was his doing when the people around him acted dreadful. What unutterable arrogance; what an unbearable burden. “You’re not responsible for the way I feel, Edmund. I’ve told you that before.”

  He shook his head, and this time when he covered the painting again, she stepped back and let him have his distance. “I don’t understand love. I was a fool to think I could do better than they.”

  “You’re a fool, all right.” She slashed the air, an impatient gesture. “I’m going downstairs, and I’ll see myself out. I’d say, ‘Enjoy your wallowing,’ but that would defeat the purpose.”

  She had already turned away and eased by the facedown table before he spoke.

  “Jane. Wait. Stay.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Tell me what you mean,” he said. “Tell me why you think I’m a fool.”

  Slowly, she turned on her heel. The effect would be one of great exasperation, and therefore—she hoped—he would pay more heed to it. An answer one had to drag forth was far better than unsolicited advice.

  “Oh, Edmund.” Her voice dripped with pity. “There are so many reasons. Where should I begin?”

  Humor touched the corner of his mouth. “Stubborn,” he muttered.

  “You’re a fool to think our marriage never had a hope simply because your parents were unhappy. You’re a fool to think you know nothing of love because you weren’t raised by a loving family.”

  He lifted his brows, but before he could interrupt her, she charged ahead. “You know everything about love. You’re drunk on it. It’s your opium. For years, you’ve lived to make women love you in a thousand tiny ways. Every ball. Every conversation. You couldn’t let them rest until you’d squeezed out a bit more love, and returned it, too. You’re good to everyone, Edmund, and that doesn’t come from an empty heart.”

  By the time her voice trailed into silence, her own heart was thumping, as if to say I’ve had enough. Let me out; let me get away. For whatever this revelation meant for him, if he took heed of it at all, it could mean only bleakness for her. This man, so full of love, could offer none to his wife.

  “That’s not love, Jane. None of that. It’s more like—” He cut himself off, frowning.

  “You already admitted that you didn’t know anything about the subject. I won’t argue with someone so ill-informed.”

  Unwelcome tears were beginning to well at the corners of her eyes. “Excuse me,” she said, and turned away from him to blunder back through the cast-off furnishings.

  Stop it, she told herself. You’re a baroness now. Have a little dignity.

  By the time Edmund caught up to her at the stairs, her face was back under her control. The tears were banished. But as usual, his expression was a mystery. She never could tell if he was angry or hurt. Or whether he was a thousand miles away, not thinking of her at all.

  “You,” he said, “have a most remarkable ability. You can say the kindest things and have them sound insulting. And you can also call me a fool, time and time again, and make it sound like a sweet endearment.”

  He turned his head to the side, and light filtering through the open doorway to the catchall room caught his profile.

  All at once—finally—she understood. Because that light caught him in the eye, contracting the pupil she could just barely see.

  “You’re looking at me,” she said. “When you turn your head like that. You can see me. You—you look at things that you don’t want people to know you’re looking at.”

  His mouth crimped. Turning his head to face her, he squinted a bit in the slice of light that came through the doorway. “I never could deceive you.”

  “You deceive everyone.” She choked off a laugh. “Xavier thinks you’re trying to look like Byron when you snootle around like that.”

  “Byron—snootle—I—” Failing to emit more than two syllables at once, he settled for shaking his head. “I am a fool, aren’t I?”

  “Yes. You’re a fool.” She did her best to make it sound like a sweet endearment, as he’d said. This time she was the one who turned her head away. “I ought to be going now, I think.”

  “I’ll see you out.” No argument. But then, it wouldn’t be good manners to argue.

  In silence, they walked down stairs, more stairs, yet more, until they found themselves in the marble-tiled entrance hall. Jane remembered how gray it had been before she lived here. He’d lived with grayness for so long, he hadn’t realized things could be different.

  “You know,” he said mildly, as she began tugging on her gloves. “You’re a fool, too.”

  Jane’s chin jerked. “I most certainly am not.”

  “Yes. You are.” He lifted a hand as though he wanted to touch her, then let it fall again. “If you have so much faith in me, why did you leave?”

  A face she knew so well;
every plane and contour. Who was the man behind those handsome features, though? What did she know of his heart?

  Not enough. Far too much.

  “It wasn’t you I was trying to protect.” The admission was as painful as that first time she’d said she loved him, and he apologized.

  “I see.” He started to turn his head to the side, then paused. The effect was of a man with a dreadful crick in the neck.

  “You can do your sideways-head peek,” Jane said. “I won’t tell your secret.”

  He smiled. “No need for such subterfuge. Not right now.” He stepped closer to her; so close, she could see the freckle at the corner of his mouth. He smelled like clean linens and citrus; good enough to bathe in, good enough to eat. “May I kiss you good-bye?”

  She blinked at him. “What? You want to kiss me?” The question seemed better suited to a couple just coming to know one another, not trusting the depths of their regard. It seemed odd to hear such a request from her husband, who had kissed every part of her body, who had never felt the need to ask before.

  Perhaps he had never doubted her answer. Now Jane wasn’t even sure if anything made him her husband besides a special license, a signature, and a few witnesses.

  And . . . and this question. Say it again. Please.

  He did. “Well. Yes. That is, there’s mistletoe above us. Do you see? But if you think a kiss would—”

  “Yes,” she interrupted. “Yes. You may kiss me.”

  His eyes went dark, as though he was ready to loose the emotion he’d been bottling up. He caught her face in his hands, and Jane let out a sigh, ready, melting already.

  For a few long seconds, he only looked at her, cradling her face as though astounded by the sight of her. And just when Jane began to feel self-conscious about his scrutiny, he lowered his mouth to hers.

  Not a hot tangle of lips; not a sign of frantic lust. It was a light, deliberate brush of his lips over hers. Slow, so slow that every fiber of her body seemed to wake and unfurl toward him. Sweet, so sweet that she felt herself dissolving like sugar. He simply held her, teasing her mouth as though he was learning the feel of it. As though he liked the lesson.

  Then he stepped back. His hands traced the curves of her ears, the slope of her jaw, then dropped to his sides. “Thank you.”

  The first time she had told him she loved him, he thanked her, and it sounded like an apology. It was the beginning of the end for them.

  But this thanks—this sounded like gratitude. Like a simple, unexpected joy had caught him unawares.

  Jane didn’t know what it meant. She didn’t trust her own impressions; she’d been too muddled and scrambled and hope-filled and let down even to know her own mind or heart.

  “Come back any time you like, Jane,” he said quietly. “But only if you intend to stay.”

  He helped her into her cloak; found her gloves on a side table and drew them onto her hands. Each gesture was so simple, so tender, that her icy resolve cracked into jagged pieces. “Is that a threat, Edmund? Or a promise?”

  He traced the line of her cheekbone, then let his hand fall. “It’s a promise. With me, it’s always a promise.”

  Chapter 22

  Concerning a New Variety of Plans and Plots

  Just as Edmund had requested, Jane didn’t return for another visit. Why she had chosen to become compliant at last, he had no notion.

  He wished he hadn’t given her an ultimatum. He meant it as self-preservation, but Jane probably saw it as a challenge. Which of them would give in first?

  And did giving in mean staying apart, or finding one another again?

  The endless days in the House of Lords kept this question from wearing a groove in his thoughts. Bills were put forth on misdemeanors and seditious meetings, preventing seditious meetings, protests against the prevention of seditious meetings—the unrest and bloodshed at Peterloo had shaken the staid upper crust of society. The two houses of Parliament agreed that they must act, but could not agree how.

  Familiar, very familiar, to one touched by the Irish rebellion twenty-one years earlier.

  Each day, Edmund returned home so tired that he almost didn’t notice the quiet of the house. He entered the drawing room so seldom that he hardly saw the garland across the mantel beginning to droop.

  He asked Xavier, when they caught sight of one another in the House of Lords, how Jane fared. All Xavier could say, or would say, was that Jane remained at Xavier House, seemed not to be committing any crimes, and was learning to play chess.

  So the pages of Edmund’s date book turned, and all of a sudden it was the week before Christmas. As his carriage trundled him through London, spices teased his nose from the open doors of bakeries. Some drivers had added strings of bells to their horses’ reins, the jingle a pleasant counterpoint to the city’s usual cacophony of wheels clattering over stone, of raised voices and animal bleats and whinnies. Even the weather added cheer; instead of autumn’s miserable drizzle, the sky frosted rooftops with snow.

  The streets and shops seemed busier than usual as the polite world hunted for gifts. Though Edmund had already arranged for a sensible gift of mutton, grain, and cloth to be distributed to his tenants, Jane’s words echoed in his ear.

  If you think that giving someone a hat is taking care of her . . .

  No, he didn’t think so, and he’d said as much. He’d also said he didn’t know how to make things different with his family.

  So, on this snowy evening, he began with his tenants. He drafted another letter to Browning, inquiring whether any of the tenants had a particular interest in learning a trade, or reading, or music. Something to show that they weren’t all the same; that he cared what they liked.

  At the last moment, he lettered a postscript asking what his sisters and mother had thought of their gifts. Then he sealed the letter, franked it, and tried to put it out of his mind.

  But his thoughts lingered on Cornwall: stone cottages with gently bowed roofs; tors and rocky hills; sandy shores under a watery sun. He looked out the window of his study, wishing he had a better view than rows of houses. Snow-frosted and bright though they appeared, the city seemed to press on him sometimes.

  Without intending to, he had built a life that was small. When had that happened? And why had he never realized it before?

  Soon his time would be his own again, though; only two more grueling slogs remained for the House of Lords. After the day’s session ended on December 21, the nobles would toss the nation’s business to the House of Commons and melt away, freed for a week—though some would leave for the country, not planning to return until spring. Xavier and his countess would dart off to Surrey, leaving Jane behind in Xavier House.

  Edmund wondered whether the solitude would lead her to return. But he suspected that nothing—not scandal, not solitude, not a fortune in Spanish gold—would convince her to return before she was ready. If that time ever came.

  Pye’s knock at the door was a welcome interruption. “A Mr. Bellamy has called for you, my lord. Do you wish to receive him?”

  Not a welcome interruption, after all. Damn Bellamy. Turner. He should have left London by now. “I suppose I must. You may show him in, Pye. And if you’ve left him alone downstairs, we’d better count the silver before he leaves.”

  The butler’s brows lifted. “I shall see to it myself, my lord.”

  A few minutes later, Turner bounded through the study doorway.

  “You look gleeful,” Edmund said. “There’s no need for polite inanities, is there? Shut the door and tell me what the devil you’re doing in London.”

  Turner knocked the door shut, then dropped into the chair across from Edmund. “Stealing things.”

  “Are you being metaphorical or literal?” Edmund shook his head. “What am I thinking? Both, of course. Turn out your pockets.”

  The older man obliged, still wearing a pestilent grin. “Ah, I could steal trinkets from anyone. From you, boyo, I’ve stolen something quite special.”

>   “You must mean my wife. No doubt you are aware she no longer lives under my roof. So why are you still in London?”

  “The game isn’t played out yet.”

  “It damned well is. You said you wanted to go back to Cornwall once you took away my wife. Well, congratulations, Turner. You’ve won, though I hardly even needed your help to ruin my marriage. Lady Kirkpatrick has left me, so you can leave, too. Be off with you.”

  The determined smile flickered. Turner ran a blunt finger inside the tumble of lace that served him as a cravat. “You’d be content to see me go, would you? And leave Lady Kirkpatrick’s name in the mud?”

  Edmund’s stomach became annoyed by the conversation; he pressed a fist against his breastbone, willing the pain away. “Lady Kirkpatrick’s good name cannot be affected by you. And yes, I’d be content to see you go. If you’re in such a tearing hurry to go to Cornwall, just leave.”

  Turner began to blink rather more often. Edmund’s stomach settled down as he perceived the best way to pick through this conversation. Turner wanted to play the game? Fine. But Edmund had his own rules.

  “I believe you, by the way,” Edmund added in a bland tone. “About my sisters being your daughters. They have your eyes. I saw it in a family portrait. That being the case, I’m sure you will treat them well. You must have missed them very much during your lengthy incarceration. Do you think they’ll be glad when you tell them they’re bastards? Perhaps it will be some comfort to them when you replace the father you all but killed.”

  “Me? Or you?” Turner growled. “You’d best shut your gob. You don’t know a damned thing about what happened.”

  Edmund shrugged. “If you like. But it was only a few weeks ago that you told me you’d dishonored my parents and that my sisters were illegitimate. I remember that fairly well. Unless you were lying?”

  The smile was entirely gone now. “It’s the truth, and no denying it.”

  “Oh, well, that’s settled. If you promise you were telling the truth. I’ve no reason to distrust you.”