The Scandals Of An Innocent

by Nicola Cornick

  “Pity,” Miles said thoughtfully as she walked away. “A neat setdown, Miss Lister.”

  “I thought so,” Alice said. She watched Celia stroll over to Frank Gaines, who was standing with Mr. Churchward at the edge of the ballroom. Mr. Churchward was nursing a glass of lemonade and looking very ill at ease. Mr. Gaines was drinking some hot rum punch and looked entirely at home and entirely oblivious to the glances of disgust that the Duchess of Cole was shooting in his direction.

  “I see that my lawyers are here tonight to ensure that you behave in an upright and worthy manner, my lord,” Alice said. She could not help a smile. “How tiresome for you! Do you think they will follow you around everywhere for three months?”

  “Very probably,” Miles said. “I am sure they will be disappointed by my blameless life. Mr. Gaines in particular is determined to catch me out and protect you from my dangerous ways.”

  “Well, that is what I pay him for,” Alice said. She watched as Gaines handed his glass to Churchward, who looked as though he did not know what to do with it, and offered Celia Vickery his hand for the country dance that was forming.

  “I think your sister is marvelous,” she said. She looked up into Miles’s face. “But tell me, does she really dislike you or is it merely her manner?”

  Miles was silent for a long time, a rueful expression on his face. “Honesty compels me to say that I do not know Celia well so cannot answer with any certainty,” he said finally.

  Alice was startled. “How is it that you do not know her?”

  “Not everyone is as close to their siblings as you are to Lowell,” Miles said. There was a shade of expression in his voice that Alice could not place. “I have been away from my family a great deal and so have not had the opportunity to build a close relationship with them.”

  “I did not realize,” Alice said. Once again she felt a treacherous stir of sympathy for him. She looked at him but his face was dark and closed, his expression impossible to read. “That must have been difficult for you,” she said slowly, thinking of how she had always relied on the love and support provided by her mother and by Lowell in particular.

  Miles shrugged. There was tension in the line of his shoulders. “There is no need to commiserate with me,” he said. His voice was terse. “I have managed tolerably well to survive without them.”

  Alice frowned. “But surely it must have hurt you to be estranged from them?”

  Miles’s hand tightened on her arm. “Miss Lister, pray do not endow me with feelings that I do not possess. I assure you that I am not hurt.” Then, as Alice shook her head slightly in disbelief, he added a little roughly, “Do I look vulnerable to you, Miss Lister?”

  Alice looked at him and caught her breath at the hard, dangerous look in his eyes. “No,” she whispered. “You look…” Virile? Menacing?

  A man who was prepared to blackmail a woman into marriage for her money was hardly weak and defenseless, she thought, nor did he deserve any sympathy. Alice shivered, and knew that he had felt it.

  “Quite,” Miles said. “Save your pity for a more deserving cause.” His grip on her arm was at the same time a warning and a gesture of possession as he steered her toward the corner where a gaggle of matrons occupied their rout chairs.

  “You will allow me to introduce you to my mother, I hope, Miss Lister?” he said formally. “She is aware of our betrothal and as Celia mentioned, she is anxious to make your acquaintance.”

  “I am sure she is,” Alice said. Miles had asked courteously, but she knew she had no choice other than to fall in with his wishes. His politeness was just for show.

  Miles slanted a look down at her. “You will oblige me by showing some enthusiasm for our betrothal this time, Miss Lister,” he said, his words echoing Alice’s thoughts.

  “I shall muster what eagerness I can, my lord,” Alice said coldly.

  Unlike her daughter, Lady Vickery was tiny, and Alice thought that she must have been a diamond of the first water in her youth. She was still a very beautiful woman, with stunning bone structure, a very slim figure and not a trace of gray in the rich chestnut hair that was exactly the same shade as her son’s. Her presence in the Granby’s ballroom was provoking some interest and the Duchess of Cole was looking very put out to have a rival for the role of grande dame of the neighborhood. Lady Vickery might only be a baron’s widow but that baron had also been a bishop, and Lady Vickery was the daughter of a viscount and had family connections to half the blue bloods of England. Faye Cole, on the other hand, might be a duchess now but had once been a mere Miss Bigelow, daughter of a coal magnate.

  “My dear!” Lady Vickery grasped Alice’s hands tightly as soon as she was within touching distance, drawing her down to sit beside her. “You look like a young woman with a great deal of compassion. Can I not prevail upon you to marry my son at once and do away with all these tiresome conditions and requirements? For my sake, if no one else’s?”

  Alice was laughing as she took a seat beside the dowager. “Yours is certainly an unusual approach, ma’am,” she commented.

  “May I appeal to you as a mother?” the dowager persisted. “I am absolutely desperate for you to marry Miles, my dear. Can you not elope and confound the lawyers that way? Three months is a dreadful long time to expect Miles to behave well. I am not at all sure he can do it. Besides, I must be frank and say that we are as poor as church mice, and we need you. We need you now! We are all in Queer Street and then there is this wretched family curse that is ruining all our lives and positively driving me to distraction! One cannot trifle with such dangerous things as curses, you know.” She looked at her son. “And though we all know that Miles is an out-and-out scoundrel, and it would be foolish to pretend otherwise, I confess I am still too fond of him to wish him to die horribly.”

  Alice looked up at Miles. His expression was, she thought, particularly wooden. This time he met her gaze with absolutely no emotion at all.

  “How interesting to know that your mother cares so deeply for you, my lord,” Alice said. “What have you done to deserve her love?”

  Miles laughed harshly. “That is a mother’s privilege,” he said, “regardless of whether or not such affection is justified.”

  Alice returned the grasp of the dowager’s hand. She felt a slight shock as she saw the depth of sincerity in Lady Vickery’s eyes. She had assumed that Miles had set his mother up to plead his case, but now she was not so sure. There was anxiety in the dowager’s gaze as well as hope and a rather touching appeal that Alice found difficult to resist.

  “Dear ma’am,” she said gently. “As Lord Vickery’s mother you would naturally feel a degree of attachment to him. I imagine that most mothers know something of their sons’ faults and love them anyway.”

  “I knew you would understand, Miss Lister!” Lady Vickery said. “You are a delightful young woman. And you are excessively pretty, just as Mr. Gaines said that you were. Yes, really, much prettier than I had imagined.” She sat back a little and cast an appreciative look over Alice’s rose-pink evening gown. “You have good taste, too, for a provincial.”

  “And very good manners, Mama,” Miles intervened smoothly, “unlike you and Celia, who have been distressingly blunt with Miss Lister.”

  “What have I said?” Lady Vickery demanded. “Only what everyone else is thinking, I’ll wager, since Miss Lister was once a housemaid and could have been impossibly unpresentable-”

  “I see my own mama approaching,” Alice murmured, entertained against her will by the discovery that the elegant and highborn Dowager Lady Vickery had such an unfortunate penchant for putting her foot in her mouth. “If you will permit, ma’am, I should like to introduce you to her.”

  “Of course!” Lady Vickery said, beaming. “Of course! I am sure that she will agree with me that a marriage between you and Miles is greatly to be encouraged as soon as possible. We mamas must put our heads together and see if we can come up with a way to persuade Mr. Gaines and Mr. Churchward to overlo
ok the trifling matter of the conditions…” She squeezed Alice’s hand. “You should know, Miss Lister,” she said, a slight shadow touching her face, “that it is not merely for his own sake that Miles wishes to pay off his debts and to evade the Curse of Drum. He has a young brother, Philip, who will inherit if Miles dies, and it would distress all of us unbearably if he were to be crippled by debt or, even worse, if the Curse of Drum fell on a mere boy.”

  “Mama!” Miles’s voice cut like a lash and Lady Vickery jumped, as did Alice. “You have already importuned Miss Lister quite shamefully,” Miles said, moderating his tone. “Pray, say no more.”

  The dowager drooped like an elegantly cut flower. “But, Miles, darling,” she protested, “we all know that you would positively detest anything bad happening to your little brother-”

  “Mama, I beseech you. You have said enough.” This time Miles sounded really angry, and Lady Vickery looked hurt and downcast. Alice hurried to smooth matters over. Lady Vickery, she thought, was far too good for her son.

  “I understand, ma’am,” she said. “Although Lord Vickery has not spoken of his younger brother to me…no doubt not wishing to influence me unduly-” she cast an ironic look at Miles “-it would be unnatural indeed for him not to be moved at the horrid thought of the Curse of Drum falling upon him.”

  Lady Vickery smiled. “I knew you would understand,” she said again. “My very dear Miss Lister, you are indeed a charming young woman, and so I shall tell your mama…” She let go of Alice and extended a hand to Mrs. Lister, who had swum up to them, very much like a swan, Alice thought, in her regal purple with white feathered headdress.

  “Dearest madam,” the dowager said theatrically, “I am so pleased to make your acquaintance. Your daughter is delightful and it is my greatest wish that she marry my son!”

  “Oh, indeed, it is mine, too!” Mrs. Lister said in heartfelt tones. She cast Alice a look in which hope and incredulity were all too clearly at war. “I can scarce believe that Alice is going to accept Lord Vickery,” she said, failing to eradicate the doubt from her tone. “She has been distressingly recalcitrant in even considering her previous nineteen proposals, but then Lord Vickery is a marquis and no one of higher rank than an earl has proposed before…”

  Alice sighed. There had never been any point in trying to explain to her mother that neither she nor Lowell shared Mrs. Lister’s social-climbing ambitions, and anyway, Alice could see the nervous look in her mother’s eyes fading as the dowager encouraged her to take the seat beside her. She knew Mrs. Lister had been half expecting a rebuff, for it was the normal response of most titled ladies to the upstart in their midst. But Lady Vickery was talking animatedly and Mrs. Lister was beaming at her as though they were lifelong friends, and really, Alice thought, it was exactly the happiness she would have wanted for her mother if only the circumstances had been different. The bitterness caught in her throat. It was difficult to see her mother’s joy and not resent that it had been bought at the high price of her own freedom and desires. And of course if-when-Miles failed to meet Lady Membury’s conditions and this sham betrothal was at an end, Lady Vickery would no doubt drop Mrs. Lister like a hot brick and Mrs. Lister would be inconsolable.

  “Nineteen suitors?” Miles said to her, claiming her attention. “How sought after you are, Miss Lister.”

  “You mean how sought after is my money,” Alice corrected him. “It would have been twenty refusals,” she added, lowering her voice so that only he could hear, “had you not found the means to coerce me, my lord.”

  “Thank you for the reminder, Miss Lister,” Miles said dryly. “I would not wish to forget that this is no ordinary betrothal.”

  “At least Mama is happy,” Alice said, sighing. “One of us is.”

  “I adore your gown,” Lady Vickery was saying to Mrs. Lister.

  “I love your shoes,” Mrs. Lister responded.

  “And the feathers-so chic!”

  “And your diamonds. Are they a family heirloom?”

  “Paste,” the dowager said briskly. “But with your daughter’s money…”

  “Oh, quite,” Mrs. Lister said. “And in return, your son’s title-”

  “Absolutely!”

  Alice shook her head and turned away. “I can scarce believe that they are bosom bows already,” she said.

  She saw the smile curve Miles’s firm lips, and it made her stomach flip and her toes curl within her slippers. “They are united by a very powerful desire, Miss Lister,” he said softly. “They both want to see you as Marchioness of Drummond. We all do.”

  “For all the wrong reasons,” Alice said bitterly. She looked at him. “Tell me about your brother, Lord Vickery,” she said. “I was fascinated by what your mother was saying.”

  Miles laughed harshly. “Is this your revenge for my blackmail, Miss Lister? To ask me awkward questions about my family and oblige me to tell you the truth?”

  “If you wish to see it like that,” Alice said. “Indulge my curiosity, my lord. How old is Philip?”

  There was a pause. Miles’s face was blank of expression, but Alice could sense a conflict in him, one she could not understand.

  “Philip is sixteen,” he said, after a moment.

  “Hmm,” Alice said. “Your mother swears you are attached to him. It would be a callous man indeed who did not care for the fate of a sixteen-year-old boy.”

  “It would,” Miles said.

  Alice moved a little closer to him. “Could you be such a man?” she asked.

  “I could quite easily,” Miles said. He grabbed Alice’s arms so suddenly that she could not prevent the gasp that escaped her lips. Several people standing nearby turned to look at them with mingled curiosity and surprise. “Do not look for gentleness in me, Miss Lister,” Miles ground out, his fingers digging into her skin. “You will not find it. I care for no one.”

  “But your mama-” Alice began.

  “She deludes herself.” He let her go as swiftly as he had captured her. “It makes her happy to think that I love my family, so-” she saw him shrug “-I let her believe it. The truth is that she is the one who worries about what might happen to Philip, not me.”

  Alice rubbed her arm where he had gripped her. “But surely you must care, too! They are your family.”

  “And I have already told you that I barely know them and have no desire to change that.” Miles sounded cold, as though she was trespassing on dangerous ground.

  Alice knew that she was stubborn. Obstinacy was one of her besetting sins. She knew she was persisting long after it would have been polite and politic to give up, but some tenacious instinct pushed her on to challenge him further.

  “You are not as cold and unfeeling as you claim,” she said, wanting to make him admit it. “You want to marry money not only for your own sake but to save Philip from inheriting crippling debt and to spare your mother the humiliation of seeing your birthright sold. That is the reason you are a fortune hunter-”

  Miles laughed. He sounded genuinely amused. “Do not endow me with qualities or motives that I do not possess, Miss Lister,” he said. “What you mean is that you wish I was not so cold and unfeeling.” His hazel eyes were hard as they appraised her face. “You want to find an acceptable reason for my behavior. Sadly there isn’t one. I cannot fulfill your faith in me. I am as callous as I appear, I have no affection for my family and I wish to marry you solely to save myself from the Fleet and in order to bed you. Is that honest enough for you?” He smiled grimly at Alice’s look of shock. “Now-” his voice eased “-would you care to dance? We are, after all, pretending to the perfect courtship.”

  Alice moved a little away from him. She tried to breathe calmly and steady her erratic pulse. It was true-he had shocked her. She had wanted to make him admit that he cared for something worthwhile. Instead he had confirmed that he cared for nothing-and no one.

  I wish to marry you solely to save myself from the Fleet and in order to bed you.

  The bluntne
ss of it stole her breath and bruised her feelings.

  “I can pretend to a devotion to your title,” she said sharply, wanting to retaliate, “or even at a pinch to pity you because of your family curse, but I will not pretend that this is a perfect courtship nor that I am in love with you, my lord.”

  Miles’s hand tightened suddenly on her arm. He drew her out of the heated ballroom and through the doors that led to the conservatory. The cooler air was soothing against Alice’s hot skin. Through the glass roof she could see the stars pricking the black, winter sky and she could hear the faint splash of a fountain in the depths of the shadows. Miles led her away from the ballroom door and deep into the darkness. His hold on her was unrelenting and he did not release her until they were well away from all prying eyes. The only light in this dark corner was from one lamp high on the wall, and by its glow Alice could see Miles’s expression was harsh and uncompromising.

  “Perhaps I did not make myself clear enough yesterday,” Miles said. His voice was level but there was a hard undertone to it now. “Privately we are betrothed. I am your official suitor. As such we shall be in each other’s company a great deal and I expect you to behave as though you are glad of my attentions.”

  “There is not the least chance of that, my lord,” Alice said. Her feelings were so bruised by now that she was not even prepared to try to be diplomatic.

  “That,” Miles corrected, ignoring her protests, “is precisely how it will be. If you do not manage to summon at least a modicum of enthusiasm for my presence, I will kiss you in front of anyone who happens to be about until it is quite clear that you are extremely happy to be courted by me.”

  Alice was outraged. “How dare you.”

  “I also expect you to address me by my given name,” Miles continued, as though she had not spoken. “When you call me my lord you sound like a servant.” He saw her flinch. “I appreciate that you do not like being reminded of your past.”