The Scandals Of An Innocent

by Nicola Cornick

  “No wonder it was taking you such a great effort to haul the body up onto the top of the bonfire,” Alice said. “If only I had realized!” She gave a bitter little laugh, angry at her own stupidity. “And to think I thought you were contributing to the celebrations out of kindness-providing the figure of the guy and even placing it on the fire yourself!”

  “Of course, the problem was that Sampson was too heavy,” Faye Cole said, in the sort of tone that made it sound as though she was discussing a difficult household dilemma. “We only realized that when the fire started to burn and settle, and the weight of the body made it roll off. No one would have known otherwise. He would have burned to a cinder and no one any the wiser.”

  “But it all turned out so well for you when Tom Fortune was suspected of the crime because of the ring he had given Lydia,” Alice said. “You must have thought that you were safe.”

  “Oh, we did,” Faye said. “Safe enough not to worry that you would remember anything dangerous. But then those incompetents allowed Fortune to escape from jail and we heard he had come back and we were afraid that it would jog your memories of that night, Miss Lister, and so-” she made a helpless, shrugging gesture “-you had to go.”

  “I missed you on Fortune Row,” Henry said, sounding hard done by. “Used to be a good shot, damn it. Had plenty of practice with rabbits. Vickery was too quick and got you away. Damned nuisance.”

  “And then you had me thrown in jail,” Alice said. “If you could not get rid of me one way, you tried another.”

  “Henry saw you and Lady Elizabeth that night,” Faye said. “We were appalled-the daughter of the Earl of Scarlet behaving like a hoyden! We paid that modiste to lay charges and to say that she was the one who saw you, but Vickery got you out again with the help of that damned lawyer.”

  “Vickery isn’t here to save you now, though, is he,” Henry said. He put a hand on the neck of Alice’s gown and ripped it away. “Perhaps I’ll throw you in a ditch afterward, as well-”

  “On the contrary, sir,” a cold voice said. “I am here and you are under arrest.” There was a scrape of stone and a shaft of light and then Miles dropped neatly through a gap in the thatch, landed like a cat and, straightening, hit Henry Cole once, cleanly, on the jaw. The duke toppled over.

  “Get up,” Miles said. His face was white with fury. “Get up so I can hit you again.”

  The iron door swung inward, and Lowell ran in, closely followed by Nat Waterhouse and Dexter Anstruther. The duke tried to stumble to his feet and Miles felled him with another blow of such controlled and concentrated force that Alice winced.

  “That,” Miles said to Henry Cole, “is for Alice.” He caught her in his arms. She felt the taut anger in him and the fear and the relief and the love. It was in the touch of his hands on her and the press of his body against hers and in his voice.

  “Alice,” he said. “Alice.” That was all, but it was enough. His eyes were blazing. He bent his head to press his lips to her hair, and Alice felt so safe and so relieved that her knees buckled.

  The duchess was wailing and crying as though her heart would break. Miles loosed Alice reluctantly and moved toward her, and at the last moment Alice saw the glint of a blade in her sleeve and Faye Cole’s hand moved swiftly to strike, just as it had done in the carriage.

  “Miles, she has a knife!” Alice called and, seizing one of the blocks of ice from the pile beside her, she swept it around in a low arc, hitting the duchess just behind the knees and taking her legs from under her. The duchess collapsed like a deflating marquee, the knife skittering away across the floor. The duke made a lunge for it and came up, snarling, the blade pointing at Miles’s heart, but Lowell brought his hand down in a chopping motion across the duke’s wrist and the knife spun away and the duke sank back down, groaning.

  “My thanks, Lister,” Miles said, hauling the duchess unceremoniously to her feet and handing her over to Dexter Anstruther.

  “A pleasure,” Lowell said. He grinned. “Fitting somehow that the Duchess of Cole is felled by a former servant girl and the duke disarmed by a farm boy.”

  “Alice, you were magnificent,” Miles said, but then, seeing her sway, he grabbed her by the upper arms to steady her. His face was a white mask and suddenly there was so much urgency and fear in his voice that her heart turned over to hear it.

  “Alice! I didn’t realize…Did they hurt you?”

  “No,” Alice said. “I’m just a little dizzy. They gave me opium-”

  The fury flared again in Miles’s eyes. He looked at Henry Cole. “If that damned scoundrel wasn’t already down-”

  “I think you’ve hit him enough,” Alice said, teeth chattering. “Besides, it was the duchess who gave me the opium. She is the one who planned it all, Miles.” She shivered. “There is something…monstrous…about her.”

  “You can’t arrest me!” Faye was blustering even as Nat and Dexter led her away. “Don’t you know who I am? I’m the Duchess of Cole!”

  “I must get you out of here, sweetheart,” Miles said to Alice. “It’s getting more crowded than a garden party, and you are almost frozen to death.” He looked at her and although his voice was gentle, once again there was something primitive in his face. Alice thought that she would never forget the moment that Miles had knocked Henry Cole down and she had thought for a moment that he would kill him.

  “Can you walk,” he asked, “or are you too light-headed?”

  “I can manage,” Alice said, clinging to his arm for support as he steered her toward the door. Her legs felt like jelly.

  “Did you have to bring all of Fortune’s Folly with you?” she joked weakly as she saw some of Lowell’s farmworkers marching the groom away. “I am only surprised that you were able to persuade Mama to stay behind. I imagine she would have loved the chance to hit the duchess over the head with her reticule!”

  “As it is you did the job for her,” Miles said. “Nice work. Another of the maneuvers you learned to escape the attention of lecherous gentlemen?”

  “Something of the sort,” Alice said with a shudder. “Miles, how did Lowell come to be here?”

  “Lowell was the one who sent for us,” Miles said. “Lydia saw her parents bring you here and went to Lowell’s farm for help. Lowell sent a man down into the village to fetch us whilst he came up here and dispatched the man guarding the door.”

  Lowell came across at that moment and shook Miles by the hand.

  “So you two are friends, are you now?” Alice said, from the circle of Miles’s arms.

  Miles and Lowell exchanged a look.

  “He’ll look after you,” Lowell said gruffly.

  “I think that counts as approval from a Yorkshire man,” Alice said, as her brother kissed her cheek and walked away. “I didn’t think you would be back yet,” she added. “If I had known…”

  “If you had known perhaps you wouldn’t have done anything quite so foolish as going to look for Lydia on your own,” Miles said. “I’d just returned and was at the Old Palace looking for you when your brother burst in.”

  “You said that it was Lydia who raised the alarm,” Alice said, remembering. “What was she doing here?”

  A shadow touched Miles’s face. “I will tell you all about it later,” he said. His voice changed. “Fortune has betrayed her again, Alice. She is in a bad way.”

  “No!” Alice thought her heart would break for Lydia this time. “How could he?”

  Miles drew her closer into his arms and held her so tightly she was afraid she would not be able to breathe for some considerable time. There was comfort in his touch, and sympathy for her anguish for Lydia as well as love for her.

  “Tom is a free man now, I suppose,” Alice said, sighing. “I hope he does not show his face around here though.”

  “Fortune is an out-and-out bastard,” Miles said, under his breath. “He will get his just deserts in the end.” He held her a little way away from him, his gaze moving slowly over her face, his expressio
n hardening as he took in her ripped bodice and filthy skirts. “You gave me a hell of a fright, Alice,” he said. “Next time I tell you not to venture out alone when I am away, will you obey me?”

  “I hope,” Alice said, “that the situation will not arise.”

  Miles laughed. “Now I have the special license, you will be marrying me very shortly. And then you will be promising to obey me.”

  “Fortunate then that you saved me before Henry Cole knocked me on the head like a dying rabbit,” Alice said. “Thank you for saving my life again.” She smiled. “You would not want to see your heiress whipped from under your nose before you had a chance to save yourself from the debtor’s prison.”

  “That,” Miles said, kissing her gently, “was the least of my concerns.” He released her. “Let’s go home,” he said. He laughed. “Let’s go and get married.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  T HEY WERE MARRIED three days later in the little church at Fortune’s Folly. Lizzie Scarlet was bridesmaid and caught Alice’s bouquet. Miles had asked Philip to be his groomsman, alongside Dexter and Nat. Philip had been puffed up with pride at the honor and Lady Vickery had cried with joy. Lydia had been there, too, a silent, pale Lydia whose eyes were red from crying but who had come to see her friend wed because, as she had whispered to Alice when she had kissed her in congratulation, one of them deserved to have found a rake who had put aside his past for the love of a good woman. Alice’s heart had bled for Lydia but later she had seen her friend walk away to sit quietly by the river and had seen Lowell follow her to talk to her, and she had wondered a very little. It would take a great deal for Lydia ever to trust any man again but perhaps one day…

  The only sour note in the day was struck when Sir Montague Fortune announced that he was reviving the medieval Marriage Tax, which was to be levied on all couples tying the knot. Dexter and Nat had thrown him in the River Tune before returning to toast the health of the bride and groom.

  “A circle with a dot in the center!” Mrs. Lister said triumphantly, looking into her teacup as she and Alice sat in the parlor at Spring House partaking of a quiet cup of tea together at the end of the wedding breakfast. “That means a baby, Alice! A honeymoon child!”

  “Mama,” Alice said, “that splodge in your cup looks more like a fish than a circle-”

  “A fish means good news,” Mrs. Lister crowed, peering closer. “Though perhaps it might be a heart or a horn…”

  “It can be whatever you wish it to be,” Alice said, taking her mother’s hand in hers. She felt so happy that she was not sure she cared what swam out of the cup.

  There was a knock at the door and Frank Gaines stuck his head around. He had been at the wedding breakfast earlier with Celia, but then a messenger had arrived for him from Harrogate and Alice had seen him speaking with Celia again afterward. It had appeared that hot words were being exchanged and Alice had wondered at it, especially when Celia had walked off, head held high, and had ignored Gaines for the whole of the rest of the afternoon. Now, she thought, he looked grim and tired.

  “If I might trouble you for a moment of your time, Lady Vickery,” Gaines said. He took the chair that Alice offered and sat down slowly. There was an odd expression on his face, a compound of pity and embarrassment. Even Mrs. Lister had noticed it, for she dropped her teacup back into the saucer with a clatter.

  “A raven,” she whispered. “Bad news.”

  “Mama,” Alice said sharply. A strange, hard knot had formed in her throat. “What is it?” she said to Frank Gaines.

  Gaines shook his head. “Mr. Churchward and I have been making the arrangements for the transfer of funds to clear Lord Vickery’s debts, my lady,” he said. “In the course of our discussions-” he cleared his throat “-it became apparent that there was an ongoing charge on the Vickery estate which must be honored.” He stopped again.

  “Please, Mr. Gaines,” Alice said, trying not to sound impatient at the interminable legal language.

  Frank Gaines gave a slight shrug. “In truth,” he said, “it is none of my business but…Churchward and I disgreed…I said that the money was yours before it was given to your husband and so you had a right to know. I am your trustee and as such I could not do less than my duty though it pains me. I feel-” he cleared his throat and tried to loosen his neck cloth “-though it is not a fashionable view…that an intimate relationship can only succeed if based on honesty, my lady.”

  “I agree,” Alice said, “but I am afraid that I still do not quite see-”

  “None of my business,” Frank Gaines said again, “but I would rather that you knew-”

  “Is there a list of Lord Vickery’s ex-mistresses who have all been pensioned off?” Alice inquired. She tried to keep her voice steady. She would have to be very mature about this, she thought. It might be difficult to swallow the fact that she was in effect paying off Miles’s past lovers. But that was all over and done with now. He loved her now. She knew it.

  “No, madam,” Gaines said. “Not exactly.” He took a deep breath. “Lord Vickery has in his keeping a woman named Susan Gregory who was once a maidservant in his father’s house. Her rent and keep is paid from the estate on an ongoing basis, madam, and has been for eleven years.” He hesitated. “She has a child, madam, a little girl. She is said to be of Lord Vickery’s fathering. She is just over ten years old. He visits them sometimes.”

  There was a long, long silence. Alice stood up abruptly, knocking over her empty teacup. Her mind was spinning.

  Miles had a woman in his keeping. A maidservant. There was a child.

  He had not told her. Even though he had professed to utter honesty, he had kept this secret from her.

  The words repeated over and over in her head.

  A maidservant. A child. He had not told her.

  She grasped after something to steady herself and felt the back of her chair hard beneath her fingers. She gripped it tightly. Eleven years took them back to the time that Miles had quarreled with his father so badly that he had been banished. Eleven years before, Miles had walked out on his family, joined the army and become the hard, embittered man whom she had thought she had finally, finally reached out to touch and bring back into the light. But it seemed she had been wrong, for Miles had kept from her the most important secret of all, that of his daughter.

  Mrs. Lister made a tiny noise. She seemed to have shrunk in her seat, dwindling under Alice’s gaze. She spun around accusingly on Gaines.

  “You should not have told her. She did not need to know!”

  “Mama,” Alice said, “Mr. Gaines was my trustee and he has my best interests at heart.”

  Mrs. Lister’s face crumpled. “I saw it in the leaves,” she said. “A lamp for secrets that would be revealed. Well, you are a marchioness now, Alice.” Her voice broke. “Four strawberry leaves…You will just have to close your eyes and pretend that you do not know.”

  “I am sorry, my lady,” Gaines said. “I only discovered today. Too late.”

  “Too late to tell me before the wedding,” Alice whispered. She looked at him. “You told Celia that you were going to tell me,” she said, understanding at last what it was she had seen between them. “She was upset. She knew about the mistress and the child.”

  “I am sorry, my lady,” Gaines said again, and Alice’s heart sank like a stone that he did not contradict her.

  Celia had known. Lady Vickery must know, too. They all knew that when he was eighteen Miles had seduced a maidservant and the woman had given birth to his daughter. They must know that he was still paying for the upkeep of mother and child, but they all ignored it with the aristocratic disdain of their kind, pretending that it did not matter.

  But it mattered to Alice because she had trusted Miles and thought that she knew him. It mattered because she loved him and thought that he loved her. It mattered because he had sworn himself honest and yet he had not told her.

  “I need to think,” she said. “Excuse me…”

  Sh
e went out into the gardens. The day was fine and the early spring buds were starting to show on the trees, new leaves unfurling bright green. The cool air kissed her face. A bird sang in the hawthorn.

  A maidservant, Alice thought. That could have been me.

  Miles had once told her that there would have been desire between them whether she was an heiress or a servant and it was true. Was that what had happened with Susan Gregory, the maid in his father’s house? Perhaps they had been drawn to each other in mutual desire, for despite this betrayal, Alice still believed stubbornly that Miles was not the man to force an unwilling woman.

  That could have been me, she thought again, except that I am rich and so I am Marchioness of Drummond, and Susan Gregory and her bastard child have nothing but a cottage to live in and their upkeep paid quarterly. It was something, she thought. At least Miles had not abandoned them as Tom Fortune had abandoned Lydia.

  She found she was in the walled garden. She sat down on the bench close to where she had walked with Miles only a few weeks before.

  Her heart was so sore she wanted to cry. He had not lied to her, she thought. He had simply omitted to tell her the truth. You know that I have been a rake. I have never concealed my past from you…

  But neither had he exposed it. He had kept an enormous secret from her. It was no wonder that he had never wanted to tell her the truth of his quarrel with his father.

  “Alice?”

  She turned. Miles had come into the walled garden and was standing a few feet away, looking at her. For a moment his face seemed so dear and familiar to her that Alice wanted to throw herself into his arms and forget all she knew. She wanted to forge a future that was un-troubled by the past. But even as she grasped after it she knew that it would be a fraud, based on lies and deception and pretence. She could not close her eyes, as her mother had suggested, and pretend that she did not know. Perhaps others would do that in her place. She could not.

  “What is it?” Miles said. He came to sit beside her and took her hand. “Your mother said that Frank Gaines had said something to upset you.” He was frowning. Alice wanted to reach up and smooth the lines from his brow, as though touching him would reassure her that he was hers and hers alone. Except that he was not because there was a woman and child who had a claim on him.