Slightly Scandalous

by Mary Balogh

  “And I have come home.”

  “And you have brought Freyja,” Prue said. “I like Freyja. I like everyone. I like Eve best, though. Except Josh. I love Josh most in the world. Except for Chass and Constance and—”

  “Prudence!” her mother said a little more faintly.

  Joshua chuckled and caught Freyja's eye. She was not looking cold or haughty or shocked or repelled or any of the things he might have expected. She was gazing fully at him, a light of sharp curiosity in her eyes.

  His aunt led the way into the house. Eve hurried forward and took Prue's arm, a kind and very genuine smile lighting her pretty face, while Aidan strode across the terrace to fetch the children. Morgan and Alleyne had already stepped inside. Joshua offered Freyja his arm.

  “She has always been a child,” he said. “She always will be.”

  “And you love her,” Freyja said.

  “She is made up of love,” he said. “There is nothing else in her but love. How could one give back to her anything else but love?”

  “Josh,” she said with a sigh, “this is something I really did not need to know about you.”

  “Sweetheart,” he said, laughing softly, “did you think me incapable of loving? How unsporting of you.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  The pillared hallway was two stories high with marble friezes and marble busts that would be worth examining more closely some time. The stairway with its wide, gleaming oak stairs and intricately carved banister was in a separate chamber. The drawing room to which the Marchioness of Hallmere led them was a large, square, elegantly classical apartment with an ornately sculptured marble fireplace, silk-paneled walls with gilded trim, a high, coved ceiling painted with scenes from Greek mythology, and a deep bay window with a breathtaking prospect down over the valley and out to-ward the sea.

  Freyja did not immediately notice the view, but from the moment she stepped inside the house she realized that it was far grander than she had expected. Yet it was a place to which Joshua had never wanted to return.

  Lady Constance was waiting in the drawing room. She smiled with genuine warmth at Joshua and at Freyja. The other lady with her, slender almost to the point of thinness, brown-haired with a long, oval face and large, beautiful, sad eyes, was her younger sister, Lady Chastity Moore. The slightly portly, somewhat balding gentleman with shirt points so stiff and high that he had to move the whole of his upper body when he wished to turn his head, was introduced to the newly arrived guests as the Reverend Calvin Moore, Joshua's second cousin.

  The heir, who had been sent for, Freyja supposed.

  It was Joshua who made the introductions, not his aunt. Indeed, Freyja noticed with interest, his whole manner had changed as soon as they set foot inside the drawing room. The room became almost visibly his. He became lord of the manor. He invited them all to be seated after the introductions had been made or to look out at the view from the bay window. He asked his aunt if she would be so good as to have tea brought up.

  “Prudence,” his aunt said, her sweet smile belying the venomous glance she darted at her youngest daughter, “return to Miss Palmer in the nursery immediately.”

  “Oh, no,” Joshua said, the Marquess of Hallmere to his fingertips, “Prue may stay for tea, Aunt.”

  The girl flapped her hands in excitement, and Lady Chastity took one of them in her own and drew her sister down beside her on a love seat.

  “Absolutely,” Eve agreed, seating herself close to them and beaming at both. “We came here to see Joshua's home and to meet the members of his family who live here. Prue is one of those.”

  “A splendid view indeed,” Alleyne commented after strolling into the bay window. “I suppose the beach on this side of the valley is a private one, Joshua? Part of the estate? I envy you.”

  “I still want to paint the sea,” Morgan said—she was standing beside Alleyne. “But I want to paint this valley too and the house and the park on the hillside. It is a good thing you are to be my brother-in-law, Joshua. I may have to visit you here several times and at different times of the year before my palette has been satisfied. Oh, Freyja, all this is to be yours too.”

  “I daresay this is sheep country, is it, Joshua?” Aidan asked. “Your farmland is above the valley? I look forward to viewing it with you and to chatting with your steward.”

  Freyja was ignoring the view beyond the window for the moment. She was very deliberately viewing the room, standing in the middle of it and turning slowly.

  “It is a magnificent apartment,” she said in her haughtiest voice. “I daresay I will wish to change some of the furnishings and draperies after we are married, Josh, but those are minor matters. I shall very much enjoy entertaining here. I daresay you enjoyed it in your day too, ma'am.” She smiled graciously at the marchioness, who smiled sweetly back but was saved from having to reply by the arrival of the tea trays.

  The Bedwyns, Freyja thought, had made their point.

  Joshua was talking with his second cousin.

  “It is a happy chance that you should be at Penhallow at just the time I have brought my betrothed and some of her family to see the home that will be hers after we wed,” he said. “It must be nearly ten years since I saw you last, Calvin. You decided to take a vacation in Cornwall, did you?”

  The Reverend Calvin Moore flushed. “I was invited here by Cousin Corinne,” he said stiffly.

  “Indeed?” Joshua raised his eyebrows and looked at his aunt with a smile. “You guessed that I would bring Freyja here soon, did you, Aunt, and thought to surprise me with a visit from my heir? That was extraordinarily kind of you. Feel free to stay for a week or longer, Calvin—as long as you wish, in fact. It will be pleasant to have my own family about me here as well as Freyja's.”

  Mr. Moore cleared his throat. “It is good of you to say so, Hallmere,” he said.

  They all sat down for tea after that and conversed pleasantly enough on a variety of different topics. It was all rather amusing, Freyja thought. The air fairly shouted the unspoken topic. A witness had stepped forward to accuse Joshua of a five-year-old murder. The Reverend Calvin Moore obviously knew about it already. So did the daughters, with the probable exception of Prue. And so, of course, did Joshua and all the Bedwyns. But not a word of the pending scandal was spoken aloud.

  The marchioness had been taken by surprise, Freyja guessed—by the sudden arrival of her nephew, by the fact that he had brought her and other houseguests with him, and by his courteously masterful manner. She had hatched the plot, but it obviously had not yet come to full fruition.

  And so there was an absurd sense of normality about the whole scene. Two families, about to be connected by marriage, took tea together and made themselves agreeable to one another. The marchioness fairly sparkled with joy.

  “Mrs. Richardson will be ready to show you to your rooms,” she said when they had finished tea. “You will all wish to rest before dinner, I am sure. How delightful it will be to have so many guests at my table. I have longed for this moment. Have I not, Constance?”

  “Rest?” Freyja said, smiling faintly at the woman. “I think not, ma'am. I will change and freshen up and then I will be ready for a tour of the house. You will oblige me, Josh?”

  “It would be my pleasure,” he said. “Will everyone else join us? You too, Calvin? And Chass, you must accompany us, if you will. You were always more knowledgeable about the house than anyone else. And yes, Prue, my love, we will certainly not go without you. Shall we all meet in the hall in half an hour?”

  The house was far larger than it had appeared to be during their approach to it. It was an elegant, square building. Most of the living apartments were in the front wing, facing toward the southeast and the magnificent views over gardens and valley and sea. The private apartments and bedchambers were in the east wing, the state apartments, the ballroom, and the long gallery in the west wing. The north wing, facing half up the valley and half back toward sloping gardens and hillside, consisted mostly of o
ffices, with servants' quarters on the upper floors.

  Joshua did most of the talking as he took them about, though Constance added a few comments of her own. But it was Chastity who made all the explanations once they arrived at the state apartments and the long gallery. She knew the history of every architectural detail, every work of art, every generation of the Moore family who had lived there, both in the old house before it had been pulled down and in the new, which was only four generations old. She spoke softly and clearly and concisely and with obvious warmth for her topic. Freyja found that she rather liked all three daughters. They all seemed surprisingly different from their mother.

  Joshua, free of the responsibility of being guide in the state apartments, drew Freyja's hand through his arm and looked down at her with laughter in his eyes.

  “The Bedwyns are indeed formidable when they go into action,” he said. “You most of all, sweetheart. So you are going to refurnish my drawing room, are you? And enjoy entertaining there?”

  “The draperies are the wrong color,” she said. “And several of the chairs are in poor taste—they are far too ornate.”

  He chuckled. “I shall very much enjoy entertaining here,” he said softly, quoting her exact words. “I daresay you enjoyed it in your day too, ma'am. If one could only have seen into her thoughts at that moment, Free.”

  “There has been no mention of any suspicion of murder,” she said.

  “Ah, but there will be.” He grinned at her.

  He was so very like her, she thought. He was enjoying himself. The foolish man—he might hang if convicted, but all he could do was grin at the exciting prospect of danger.

  The rest of the day progressed very much as it had since their arrival. Joshua took the head of the table at dinner and seated Freyja at his right, Constance at his left. His aunt sat at the foot of the table. He nodded to her quite firmly when he deemed it time for the ladies to withdraw and leave the gentlemen to their port and their male conversation.

  Chastity and Morgan, who appeared to have developed something of a friendly acquaintance, entertained themselves and everyone else at the pianoforte, Eve sat with Prue, whom Joshua had permitted to take dinner with everyone else—Freyja guessed that it had never happened before, and Freyja stood in the bay window looking out onto darkness until the gentlemen joined them.

  Eve conversed with the marchioness and Constance. She did not have the chilly hauteur of the Bedwyns, but she did quite well enough in her own quiet, sweet way.

  “It must be sad to lose so much more than just one's life's partner when he passes on,” she said. “Being mistress of Penhallow must have been a wonderful part of your marriage, ma'am. I am sure Freyja will also find it so. What are your plans for the future? Or is it too soon for you to have decided with any certainty? You are still in mourning, I perceive.”

  The marchioness dabbed at her eyes. “My dear Hallmere—the late Hallmere—is all I can think of at present, Lady Aidan,” she said. “I will welcome Lady Freyja here with open arms, of course. There is much I can teach her about the running of so large a household, though I daresay she has learned something at Lindsey Hall.”

  “The dower house in the valley is a pleasant-looking place,” Eve said.

  “How prettily your sister plays, Lady Freyja,” the marchioness said, raising her voice. “And what beauty she possesses. I daresay she will be married before next summer. All the prettiest girls are snatched up young.”

  “If they choose to be snatched, ma'am,” Freyja said. “I am not sure Morgan is one of their number.”

  “And you, Lady Constance,” Eve continued, “what are your plans now that your mama's year of mourning is drawing to an end? A Season in London, perhaps? Provided Freyja and Joshua are married before the spring, Freyja will be able to sponsor you if your mama still does not feel up to it.”

  Yes, Freyja thought, smiling to herself, Eve was quite as formidable as any of them.

  “It is time you went back to the nursery, Prudence,” her mother said in the little-girl whine Freyja remembered so well from Bath.

  “Come, Prue.” Eve got to her feet and drew the girl to hers. “It is high time I went up and read a few stories to Becky and Davy before tucking them in for the night. Would you like to hear some stories too?”

  Later, after the gentlemen had come to the drawing room and they had all taken tea and prolonged the conversation for a while, the marchioness suggested an early night, which she was sure they would all welcome after such a long journey.

  “And I am quite weary myself, I must confess,” she said, “from all the excitement of welcoming dear Joshua home, where he belongs, and his dear betrothed and her family too.”

  No one voiced any objection. It really had been a lengthy journey. But Joshua was not ready to retire yet, it seemed.

  “Would you care for a breath of fresh air first, Freyja?” he asked.

  “Oh, but Joshua, dear,” his aunt said faintly, “Lady Freyja would need to take her maid with her.”

  Alleyne grinned and waggled his eyebrows at Freyja.

  “She will be with her betrothed, ma'am,” Aidan said, sounding wonderfully arrogant and starchy. “There will be no need of a chaperone.”

  “And even if there were . . .” Freyja said, arching her eyebrows and leaving the sentence uncompleted. “Yes, I would, Joshua, thank you.”

  It was a chilly night, as befitted early autumn, but it was lovely nonetheless. The sky, which had been so dark earlier while she stood in the bay window of the drawing room, was now star-studded, and the moon shed its light onto the land and gleamed in a wide, sparkling band across the sea and the lower part of the river.

  There was a footpath leading along the hillside on a level with the house, bordered by bushes and flower beds on the inner, hill side, and by a waist-high stone wall half-covered with ivy and other plants on the other. Beyond the wall there was another flower border and then lawn sloping down to bushes and the road below. In the summertime, Freyja guessed, this must all be a blaze of color. Even now, and even at night, it was beautiful.

  “What a foolish woman your aunt is,” she said. “You intended never to come back here, did you not? You would have left her to live out her life in peace here and to rule the household as if it were her own. Yet she had to stir up trouble where there was none.”

  “And now Morgan is to visit us here frequently in order to paint, Alleyne is to come in order to enjoy my private beach, Aidan is interested in my farms, Eve is planning a come-out Season for my cousins, you are planning to remodel my home, and I am here,” he said. “Yes, I suppose that if my aunt could go back and ignore Mrs. Lumbard's letter informing her of my presence in Bath, she would perhaps do so. But perhaps not. She always had to feel in complete control.”

  “Why did you intend never to come back here?” she asked.

  She knew very little about him apart from the fact that he was an amusing, attractive companion. It was strange how one could have known a man in the most intimate way physically and yet not really know him at all as a person. She had not wanted to know him. She still did not. Yet it seemed inevitable now. She had made the impulsive, mad decision to accompany him here, and now she had been drawn inextricably into his life.

  “I came here at the age of six,” he said, “after my parents had died. I was not even told they were dead at first. I was told they had had to go away for a while. The theory was, I suppose, that I would gradually forget them and would never have to be told the searing truth. But my aunt told me the first time I got up to some mischief here. My parents would be very disappointed to know that they had such a bad little boy, she told me. It was a good thing they were dead and would never know.”

  “Ah, yes,” Freyja said. “It is just the sort of thing the marchioness would say. I hope you told her to be damned.”

  “I did,” he said, “in words far more colorful than that, I believe. But I knew in that moment what the truth meant to me. I had endured until then with all t
he patience I could muster. I had lived for the day when my mother and father would come for me and take me back home. There was the truly terrifying emptiness of knowing them gone forever. And there was the knowledge that my present life with my uncle and aunt and cousins was my permanent life.”

  “I hope,” she said tartly, fighting pity for the boy he had been, “you were never abject.”

  He laughed. “Sweetheart,” he said, “you are supposed to be in tears of pitying sentiment by now. No, I never was. I made up my mind that if my aunt was determined to think me bad, I would do all in my power to earn my reputation.”

  “Your uncle?” she said. “Your cousins? Did they share her low opinion of you?”

  “My uncle had no choice,” he said. “I was bad, Free. I could make your hair stand on end with an account of some of my escapades.”

  “I doubt it,” she said. “I grew up with Bedwyns and Butlers. I was a Bedwyn myself. But in my family we were called high-spirited and mischievous before we were punished. Never bad.”

  “I rubbed along well enough with the girls,” he said. “But they were much younger and therefore were never really my companions.”

  “I suppose,” she said, “your aunt hated you because you were the next heir after her son.”

  “Undoubtedly.” He chuckled.

  “Oh,” she said as they rounded a slight bend in the path and were suddenly buffeted by the wind. They also had a much wider view of the sea—and the village had come into sight on the opposite side of the river. “Magnificent!”

  “It is, is it not?” he agreed.

  Yet he had never wanted to come back here.

  “What was Albert like?” she asked.

  “The perfect son,” he said. “He learned all there was to learn from my uncle and helped him with estate business whenever he was allowed. He adored his mother and was attentive to his sisters. He excelled at his studies in school and at university. He was an active member of the church and contributed to every charity that arose. He frequently intervened with his mother on my behalf.”