Slightly Scandalous

by Mary Balogh

  “I would have hated him,” Freyja said fervently.

  He laughed softly. “Yes,” he agreed, “I believe you would.”

  “And yet,” she said, “you were always quarreling with him? You told us so at Lindsey Hall.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Badness usually does not appreciate goodness, Free. I was very, very bad. And Albert was very, very good. He frequently lectured me on goodness, and I just as frequently told him what he could do with his lectures.”

  His voice was full of his usual careless laughter. It was a mask behind which he hid all the darker shadows of his life, Freyja realized. She had wondered before if the mask hid nothing at all or something. She knew the answer now, though she had not yet penetrated those shadows. She did not want to either. She wanted to be able to remember Josh as a light flirt who during one memorable night had become more to her. She did not want to feel any regrets, any pull of darker memories of a person who might have been worth knowing.

  They had walked around another bend in the path. The hillside rose above them here in an almost sheer cliff, and they were again sheltered from the wind. They stopped walking, and Joshua leaned over to rest his elbows on the wall and gaze downward. The moonlight lit his profile. He was smiling.

  “If you hated life so much here,” she asked him, “why did you stay so long? You left here five years ago. You must already have been—what? Two or three and twenty?”

  “Three,” he said. “I left Penhallow when I was eighteen. I went to live in Lydmere.” He nodded his head in the direction of the village. “I apprenticed myself to a carpenter and learned the trade. I was good at it too. I would have made a decent living from it. I was happy enough, and would have continued to be, I believe.”

  It was a strange thought that Lady Freyja Bedwyn would never have met Joshua Moore, carpenter, from the Cornish village of Lydmere and would have been unaware of his existence even if their paths had somehow crossed. They would have been from different worlds.

  “But then Albert died and you became the heir to all this,” she said, “and everything changed.”

  “Yes.” He turned his head to look at her, a strangely mocking smile on his lips. “And then I became Hallmere and could aspire to the hand of a duke's daughter even if only in a fake betrothal. Life is strange, would you not agree?”

  But he still had not explained why he had left.

  Freyja remembered something then, something she had not particularly noticed at the time. He could no longer remember what he and Albert had quarreled about in the boat on the night Albert died, Joshua had told her family back at Lindsey Hall. How could he not remember? Considering how that night had turned out, surely every last detail must be etched on his memory.

  But she would not ask. She really did not want to know—though that was becoming rather a thin argument even in the privacy of her own thoughts.

  “Did you not come to Penhallow at all during the years when you were living in the village?” she asked.

  “I came once every week on my half-day off from work,” he said. “I came to see Prue.”

  “Poor girl,” Freyja said. “Her mother is not at all fond of her, is she?”

  “One need never use the word poor to describe Prue,” he said. “We tend to view those with physical and mental abilities different from the norm as pitiful creatures with handicaps or disabilities. We talk about cripples and idiots. We view them from our own limited perspective. I once knew a blind person whose sense of wonder at the world put my own limited perceptions to shame. Prue is happy and bubbling over with love—both attributes that many of us allow to lapse with our childhoods. In what sense is she disabled? Or handicapped? Or poor?”

  He spoke with an intensity that made him seem unfamiliar to her for a moment. He had been kind and patient with the girl all afternoon as well as during dinner, with no sense of martyrdom or boredom or condescension. Prue had not been the only one brimming over with love. Joshua had reminded her rather strongly of Eve, whom Aidan fondly described as a woman with a bleeding heart and a fondness for lame ducks. Their house was filled with servants whom no one else would employ for one reason or another, including a truly ferocious ex-convict of a housekeeper who would cheerfully die for Eve and whom Freyja admired enormously.

  “Perhaps now you have returned,” she said, “you will decide to stay—once this nonsense your aunt has been hatching has been cleared up, that is. You would have to have her move elsewhere, of course, but she cannot have been left destitute.”

  “She has not been,” he said. “But she will continue to live here. I will not.”

  And yet if she were in his place, Freyja thought, she would have to have the satisfaction of ousting the marchioness from Penhallow, of stripping from her all that was not rightfully hers. Even if she did not choose to live here herself, she would not allow the other woman to do so instead. She would enjoy the satisfaction of wreaking some revenge.

  But it was none of her business what Joshua did or did not do. He was none of her business.

  “A quiet hillside on a starry night,” he said, “with the moonlight dancing on the surface of the sea. And a gorgeous woman at my side. Whatever am I about, holding a polite conversation with her and simply admiring the view? I must be losing my touch—and would quickly lose my reputation too if anyone could see me at it.” He straightened up from the wall and turned to grin at her.

  “You may imagine, if you will,” she said, “that my maid is standing a few feet off.”

  He chuckled softly. “But Aidan said you did not need a chaperone,” he reminded her.

  “Because Aidan trusted you,” she said, “and because he thinks we are betrothed.”

  “And so we are,” he said, “thanks to my aunt and thanks to Bewcastle—and thanks to your decision to accompany me here. Your hair is loose beneath that hood, is it not?”

  She had pulled out the pins when she went to her room to fetch her cloak.

  “What has that got to do with anything?” she asked haughtily. Now that he had mentioned it, the surroundings were rather conducive to romance—or to dalliance at least. But she had dallied quite enough with Joshua during the past few weeks. They were fortunate indeed that they had not been trapped into having to marry each other. She really ought not to invite any further indiscretions.

  But he had closed the distance between them and raised his hands to lift back her hood. Her hair cascaded out about her shoulders and down her back. There was enough wind even in this shaded spot to lift it and waft it about her face.

  “It is just, you see,” he said, “that a red-blooded male itches to tangle his fingers in such hair, Free. Nothing personal, of course, but I am red-blooded.” His fingers played with her hair and then twined themselves into it. “But then of course once he does that, then he cannot resist doing this.” He drew her against him and tipped back her head so that she was gazing up into his moonlit face. His eyes, as she fully expected, were dancing with merriment.

  “But the trouble is,” she said, setting her hands on either side of his waist, “that the woman then feels an almost-irresistible urge to go at that red-blooded male with her fists.”

  He chuckled. “A good bout of fisticuffs might send us tumbling over the wall and rolling down the hill to get caught in the bushes down there,” he said, “all arms and legs and other body parts tangled up together. It might be very interesting indeed. I think I'll take my chances.” He lowered his head and rubbed his nose back and forth across hers.

  “I cannot think of any reason in the world,” she said, “why we should be doing this.” Liar, liar.

  “You see?” he said, licking at her lips and sending raw sensation sizzling into all the wrong parts of her body—wrong if she wished to walk away from this unscathed, that was. “We are a perfect foil for each other, sweetheart. I cannot think of any reason in the world why we should not be doing this.”

  “This is for courting couples,” she said. “For betrothed couples. For
married couples. We are none of those things.”

  “But we are a man and a woman,” he said, dipping his head and speaking with his lips touching the pulse at the base of her throat. Her toes curled up convulsively inside her shoes and one of her hands clutched at his hair and then lost itself within the soft, silky mass of it. “Alone together on a moonlit night. And panting with desire for each other.”

  “I am not—”

  His mouth stopped her protest. Not his lips, but his mouth, open, hot, moist, tempting, seeking, his tongue pressing against her lips and finding its way through into her mouth. She came against him with a low moan, a dull, aching pulse beating between her thighs and up inside her where he had once been.

  She fenced with his tongue and got her hands beneath his cloak and under his coat and waistcoat—why did men wear so many layers of clothing?—while his own fondled her breasts beneath her cloak and then moved behind her to cup her buttocks and pull her hard against him, half lifting her as he did so, rubbing her against him so that the ache inside her almost exploded to add to the starlight.

  “You are not—?” he prompted her much later, lifting his mouth perhaps an inch away from hers.

  “Panting with desire,” she said, ignominiously breathless.

  He laughed softly. “Heaven help me if you were, then,” he said. “Why do you not want to marry me, Free? You cannot have Ravensberg, but I suppose sooner or later you must have someone. Why not me?”

  “Must you have someone sooner or later?” she asked sharply, drawing back her head another inch.

  “It is different for a man,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “A man likes freedom and no commitment,” he said. “He can enjoy dalliance and look for nothing beyond it. Women have nesting instincts. They want homes and fidelity and everlasting romance and babies.”

  He laughed suddenly and caught her right wrist in his, moving back far enough to look down at her hand.

  “What, sweetheart?” he asked. “No fist? I thought that would provoke you if anything could. Ouch!”

  Her left fist had caught him a solid blow on the jaw.

  “Why do I not want to marry you?” she asked. “Perhaps it is because I feel some pity for your pretty face. If it were within my daily reach for the rest of a lifetime, it would soon be in sorry shape, like the faces of those brutes who are employed to box each other into oblivion for the amusement of gentlemen who choose to wager on blood sports.”

  He threw back his head and laughed, fingering his jaw and flexing it as he did so.

  “We had better get back to the house,” he said. “It is perfectly understood, then, is it, that I am footloose and restless and not nearly done with sowing my wild oats, if I ever will be, and that you would rather go through life as a spinster than marry someone who cannot engage your feelings as deeply as they were once engaged? We will never marry, Freyja. But we are attracted to each other, and we tend to erupt like a pair of volcanoes when opportunity presents itself. Shall we avoid such opportunities until we can put an end to them altogether? Or shall we not, but simply enjoy the moment for what it is worth? The moment being the next few days or weeks or whatever.”

  “You speak as if the next few days can be taken up with nothing but opportunities for dalliance,” she said. “There is supposed to be a plot afoot, is there not, to have you accused and convicted of murder. A witness can be a dangerous thing.”

  “Lord, yes,” he agreed. “Half a dozen witnesses could be even more deadly. I wonder if my aunt would be so wise—or so foolish.”

  “I wonder what really happened that night,” she said. But she shook her head even as she was speaking and pulled her hood up over her head again before turning and striding back along the path in the direction of the house. “But I do not want to know.”

  He fell into step beside her. “Because you fear that I really did kill him?” he asked her.

  Was that why she was so reluctant to hear the truth?

  “I did threaten to kill him,” he said.

  “But you did not do it,” she said firmly. “You told Aidan you did not when he asked at Lindsey Hall, and I believed you. I still believe you. Would you have killed him if he had lived long enough?”

  He was a long time answering. They walked around the corner into the wind again, at their backs now.

  “I really do not know,” he said. “But I very much fear that perhaps I would not have.”

  There! That was all she wanted to hear on the subject, Freyja thought, lengthening her stride. She had already heard too much. Something horribly serious had happened that night—apart from the nasty fact that someone had died. And she did not want to know what it was.

  I wonder if Hallmere has thought to mention to you that he has the most adorable little bastard son living in the village close to Penhallow with his mother.

  The remembered words came back to Freyja in the marchioness's whining voice.

  She was the girls' governess until the unfortunate incident forced my husband to dismiss her. They appear not to be suffering. I understand that Hallmere still supports them.

  The sordid story had nothing to do with her, Freyja decided. He was not her betrothed and she felt no inclination whatsoever to stand in judgment on him. But she had a horrible suspicion that the quarrel in the boat that night had been about the governess and her child. Had Albert delivered one of his stuffy, self-righteous lectures on the topic? And had Joshua . . . Well, how had he reacted apart from threatening to kill his cousin? Exactly how and why had Albert died?

  She did not want to know.

  “I have shocked you, sweetheart,” Joshua said. “Does this mean there will be no more dalliance between us? You have slain me.”

  “Is nothing serious to you?” she asked disdainfully.

  But she knew the answer to that question now, of course, and really she wished she did not.

  Yes, there were many things in his life that were serious to Joshua Moore, Marquess of Hallmere.

  She should have said good-bye to him long ago, before she even began to suspect that he was not simply a laughing, carefree rogue too handsome for his own good.

  He chuckled softly, found her hand beneath her cloak, and held it as they walked, lacing his fingers with hers.

  CHAPTER XVII

  “Who is it?” Joshua asked, propping himself against the edge of his steward's desk and crossing his arms over his chest. It was early in the morning, but Saunders was already at work in his office.

  “Hugh Garnett,” Saunders said. “His land is on the other side of the valley—his mother was a baron's daughter. He is prospering by all accounts. He bought more land after taking over from his father a couple of years ago. He is not by any means a gentleman without influence.”

  “Oh, I know Hugh Garnett.” Joshua frowned. “He is a nephew, on his father's side, of Mrs. Lumbard, the marchioness's particular friend. I am not overly surprised. But what would be in it for him, do you suppose, apart from the fact that he has reason to dislike me? He is not the sort of man to do something for nothing.”

  “He has been displaying some interest in Lady Chastity,” Saunders said, “but without any encouragement from either the lady herself or the marchioness. Yet she did invite him to tea here with his aunt and cousin after the return from Bath. It would be a brilliant match for him, of course, especially if it came with her mother's full blessing.”

  “And more especially if I were not likely to spoil things by coming here to live now that I am betrothed and likely to marry at any time,” Joshua said. “I daresay the Reverend Calvin Moore has been brought here as much to woo Constance as to bring moral support and comfort to the marchioness. She rules her world with as much ruthlessness as she ever did, does she not?”

  He got to his feet and crossed to the window. It looked out onto the upward slope of the hill. But it was a pretty view nonetheless. The kitchen gardens and flower gardens were back there, as well as several hothouses. Behind them a foot
path snaked its way upward past cultivated bushes to the hardy wildflowers closer to the plateau above.

  He remembered then what Constance had told him and swung about to look at Jim Saunders. He was a gentleman of perhaps thirty years, perhaps less, who would inherit a very modest fortune and property on the death of his father, though there were a younger brother and several sisters to provide for. He was a pleasant-looking fellow and a hard worker. It was easy to understand why Constance, living in such isolation from men of her own class, would cast her eyes and her dreams on him. Did he return her regard? He was sitting behind his desk, looking down at a closed ledger, no readable expression on his face.

  “You must understand, my lord,” Saunders said, his voice carefully formal, “that I am relatively new here and have not yet formed firm opinions on everyone in the house and vicinity. I do not know the marchioness well and do not presume to guess her motives. Neither do I know you well. But I am sensible of the fact that I owe my loyalty to you and not to her ladyship.”

  It was a careful answer. It was not obsequious.

  “So you are not sure if there is any truth to these charges you warned me were imminent,” he said. “You are wondering if you are employed by a desperate murderer.”

  “I like to think not,” his steward said.

  “Thank you.” Joshua looked more closely at him. “How did you know? Nothing has been said since my arrival. There has been no constable panting on my doorstep to arrest me. Who told you?”

  Saunders straightened the ledger and brought its bottom edge even with the edge of his desk.

  “Constance?”

  Saunders began to open the book and then let it close again. “She suggested to me that you ought to be informed, my lord,” he said.

  “Ah,” Joshua said softly. “Then I must thank her and thank you for complying with her wishes. It would seem that the plot is not quite cooked and that my arrival might have hindered its smooth progress. Why is it not cooked, I wonder, if there is a witness, a prosperous gentleman, willing to swear that he saw me murder my cousin?”