Whisper of Scandal

by Nicola Cornick

  He let go of her with an exclamation of disgust and paced away from her. In his fussy evening dress he looked hunched and malignant.

  Joanna’s nails dug into her palms. She tried to keep calm, tried to find a way out of this tangle. Hagan was, she knew, a man who was happy only if the proprieties were observed. Until Alex Grant had arrived in London, until David’s letter had dropped like a pebble into a calm pond, he had been content enough with her way of life. He had in fact viewed her as a decoration to the Ware name with her style and elegance, her following in society and her popularity. Joanna was sure that those were the reasons that had prompted John Hagan to propose to her in the first place. He was not a man driven by strong passion other than for matters to be conventional and tidy. He had seen David Ware’s elegant widow and thought she could be an ornament for his home, perhaps. He had buried two wives already, he had his heir, now he had Maybole and wanted a fashionable hostess to put in it.

  That had all changed now, of course. Joanna knew that there would be no more marriage proposals from John Hagan, not now she had proved herself to be a disappointment rather than an asset. He would try to force her to conform and when she refused he would disown her.

  “Cousin John, please!” she said. “You know that I have nowhere else to go and that Merryn depends upon living here as much as I do, as will Nina once we return from Spitsbergen. We depend upon your charity.”

  Hagan turned. There was an expression on his face compounded of calculation and lust. Joanna’s stomach tightened when she saw it. She should have known, she thought bitterly, that there was no point in appealing to his better nature when he had none.

  “Perhaps,” he said slowly, his tone so unctuous it felt to Joanna as though oil was seeping out of his pores, “we may come to an agreement about the child—and about your home.”

  “An agreement,” Joanna echoed. She felt a little sick. She did not need to ask what sort of arrangement Hagan had in mind. She could see it in his eyes. He had come across to her now and was toying with the fastenings of her negligee. Joanna felt despairing. She could feel Hagan’s breath hot and rapid on her neck. She thought of David, and the way he had taken her with cold cruelty, and felt her stomach curl up with revulsion.

  “Cousin John—” she began.

  “My dear.” Hagan’s smile was vulpine.

  “I really do not want—” Joanna began.

  “You do not want to lose your home, do you?” Hagan murmured. “Or to be destitute. And you will be, my dear, if you do not see the sense in pleasing me.”

  Joanna froze. If she refused him she would lose her home, her place in society. She would be shunned and turned out, she would have no money and no means to make any. David’s relatives were mostly dead and they had thought he was marrying beneath him anyway. There was no help there. And her remaining family were poorer than she was. Lottie might give her and Merryn a home if Hagan threw her out, but she would be less eager to have Nina to live with her. The first time the child put her little sticky fingers on the Exeter carpet or the Indian-print wall hanging, Lottie would surely have a fit of the vapors. It would not serve.

  While she had been thinking, Hagan had slipped his hand inside her negligee and his hot, sweaty fingers were now rubbing over her nipple with disgusting intimacy. Joanna felt his wet mouth against the side of her neck. She screwed her eyes tight shut as he pulled the negligee open. She was doing this, she reminded herself urgently, so that she could not only save Nina but also give her a good home and defend her from those who would denounce her as a bastard throughout her life. The desperate maternal need twisted inside her. She simply had to claim and protect this child. David had already deserted Nina; she could not do the same.

  Yet the price was so very high. A shudder racked her body. What guarantee did she have anyway that Hagan would not double-cross her once he had taken her? Could she really succumb to his blackmail and do this? And if she refused, might he force himself on her anyway, as David had done? The thought paralyzed her. She remembered David’s viciousness and her limbs felt weighted with lead.

  Hagan was urging her toward the bed now. Joanna tried to absent herself from her body and fixed her gaze on the splendid Chinese silk of the cover as Hagan’s busy hands moved over her body. The Chinese silk really was a beautiful piece of work. She felt a sudden pang of loss. She loved beautiful things. She did not want to give up her elegant home and all her collection of paintings and china and her matching footmen and be thrown out on the street. Nor could she live as a governess or a servant of some kind. A different sort of shudder shook her. Of course she could not be a governess or servant. She had no intellectual accomplishments and she did not want to have to do manual work for a living. She knew it was shallow of her, but at least it was honest.

  But deeper, far deeper than that, was the knowledge that there would be no possible way she could claim Nina without a home to offer her. That was the truth that cut her to the bone; that would be the inconsolable loss.

  Hagan was breathing so hard now that she was afraid he might be ill. His moist lips were trailing down her neck to her breast. Oh, this was a very, very high price to pay to keep all the things that she valued. She had only ever slept with one man in her life and she had not wanted the second one to be John Hagan. She had wanted…

  She had wanted Alex.

  The thought burst into her head with the power of an explosion. She could well imagine what Alex would say if he were to see her now; she could almost hear his denunciation, feel his blistering contempt for her lack of moral fiber. Alex was strong. He would not compromise as she was compromising, so desperately, so cravenly.

  That thought was followed by one that was even more extreme. She would ask Alex to give his protection to her and to Nina. He had persuaded her to accept his escort to Spitsbergen—she would trump his suggestion with an even more outrageous one of her own. She would ask him to marry her. That would protect her from Hagan’s venom and mean that she could offer Nina a safe home into the bargain. It was her only hope, for once she had rejected John Hagan’s advances he would see her ruined.

  She wrenched herself out of Hagan’s grip, grasping for her tattered robe. “I am sorry, Cousin John,” she said. “I cannot do this.”

  Hagan gave a roar of rage and thwarted lust and grabbed at her. “Oh, yes, you can, you little whore! You’re not getting away from me now!”

  Joanna scooped up a vase from the windowsill and hit him over the head with it. The vase broke and Hagan staggered like a wounded beast, swearing with words Joanna had never heard before, even after nine years of marriage to a sailor.

  The bedroom door burst open. Merryn stood in the doorway holding another blue porcelain vase, this time with a dolphin motif on it. She had such a fierce expression on her face that Joanna almost quailed to see it.

  “Don’t break that one as well!” Joanna called, securing her negligee around her as Hagan lurched past Merryn and down the stairs. “I have already smashed one piece of Worcester porcelain and it is frightfully expensive.” She looked at the shards on the floor and shook her head. “What a waste!”

  “Drury said that Mr. Hagan burst in and was going to rape or murder you,” Merryn said, lowering the vase. She looked at Joanna’s rumpled hair and skewed robe. “I hope I was not too late,” she added.

  “Not at all,” Joanna said. “I am still alive, as you see, and he wasn’t really going to rape me.” She hesitated. “Well, perhaps he might have done. He suggested an…arrangement, but at the last moment I could not go through with it and I fear that my refusal angered him.”

  “An arrangement?” Merryn wrinkled up her face. “Is that what you call it?” She placed the vase carefully on the dresser. “Surely your virtue is worth more than a piece of china.”

  Joanna laughed. “I am not sure. I have never had to make the comparison before. It all depends upon what one wants and I do love my porcelain collection.” She saw Merryn’s expression and pulled a face. “I kno
w. You think me shallow.”

  “No,” Merryn said. “I think you are making light of this on purpose because you do not wish to alarm me. It sounds to me as though Mr. Hagan tried to blackmail you into sleeping with him, the insufferable toad!”

  “Indeed,” Joanna said. “And as I have both refused him and offended his pride, I need to act quickly before he throws us out into the gutter.”

  Merryn sat down heavily on the bed, crushing the exquisite Chinese-silk cover. Joanna, touched that her sister had rushed to her rescue, managed not to protest.

  “Is that what he threatened?” Merryn asked.

  “He did,” Joanna said a little bleakly.

  “Toad,” Merryn said again. “What are we going to do?”

  “I am going to persuade Lord Grant to marry me,” Joanna said. Her heart was beating hard, but she knew she sounded confident. Of course she did—she had had years of practice at perfecting her social facade when beneath it any number of emotions might be running riot. At the moment her chief feeling was one of terror; ever since the idea of marrying Alex had popped into her head she had been vacillating between fear and…well, an even greater fear.

  Merryn had given a little gasp at her words. “Marriage? But you do not even like him!”

  “That is nothing to the purpose,” Joanna said. She hurried on, as much to repress her own doubts as to convince her sister. “Look at all the alliances that are forged for convenience. All I have to do is marry Lord Grant for the protection of his name and for that, my love, I do not need to like him at all.”

  Merryn stared. “But you swore never to remarry! You said it was the last thing you wanted.”

  “I lied,” Joanna said. “The last thing I want is to lose all this.” She gestured around the opulent room with its rich red carpet and exquisite decoration. “I am very superficial,” she explained, seeing Merryn’s uncomprehending look, “and this makes me happy.”

  “Having a child is what will make you happy,” Merryn said incontrovertibly. “You pretend to be frivolous, Jo, but you are not really.”

  “Yes, I am,” Joanna corrected. She smiled at her sister. “Oh, I concede that being able to care for Nina and giving her a good home will make me very happy, but I am not prepared to do it on a pittance. I have a certain style to maintain.”

  Merryn stuck out her bottom lip in the stubborn gesture Joanna remembered from their childhood. “I know that you claim to be selfish, Jo,” Merryn said, “but the truth is that you are doing this for Nina and for me, too, so that we will have a roof over our heads and be safe and protected.”

  “You have me all wrong,” Joanna said dryly. “I am doing it for myself.” Nevertheless, she returned Merryn’s hug, holding her tightly for a brief moment.

  “I foresee a stumbling block,” Merryn said, pushing back the fair hair from about her face and rubbing eyes that were suspiciously red with tears.

  “Oh?” Joanna frowned. “What have I forgotten?”

  “That you have nothing to offer Lord Grant,” Merryn said. “It is expecting a great deal of him to ask him to do this purely out of honor and a responsibility toward Nina.”

  There was a pause. Merryn was sitting with her hands clasped in her lap, looking earnestly at her sister. Not for the first time, Joanna wondered how she had grown so cynical and Merryn had managed to stay so naive. It was the wicked influence of the ton upon her, she supposed, and the disillusionment of her marriage to David. For most certainly she could not say to Merryn:

  “You mistake. I can offer Lord Grant myself…”

  No indeed, she could not say that. Merryn would be shocked to the core. And truth to tell, there was a little—a very little—of her vicarage upbringing still within her that meant that she was shocked, too. But Alex could give her something that she needed—the means by which she could both provide for Nina and remain in the comfort to which she had become accustomed—and this time she was prepared to barter herself for it. Her uncle would probably have denounced her as a whore, but Joanna could not see that it was much different from a marriage of convenience with cold-blooded bargaining over money and land.

  “Well,” she temporized, “if I put it to Lord Grant as a business proposition—that I will care for all aspects of Nina’s welfare and perhaps offer to take his young cousin Chessie under my wing for a season as well so that he is free of all family obligations…”

  “That is still not my idea of an ideal marriage,” Merryn protested.

  Joanna laughed. “I hope that you never make the kind of match,” she said, “where you discover that the less you see of your husband, the better.”

  “I suppose,” Merryn said doubtfully, “that Lord Grant might be persuaded to help. He is not a rich man, but we could live cheaply, somewhere small, a village in the country perhaps—” She broke off. “But I do not suppose you would like that,” she finished a little sadly.

  “I would hate it,” Joanna said frankly. “You know I detest the country. I find it dull and slow and dirty.”

  She remembered the long, monotonous hours in her uncle’s country vicarage measured out by nothing more than the chiming of the long case clock in the hall. That dreary boredom had been one of the reasons why she had practically thrown herself into David Ware’s arms when she had met him at a local assembly. He had seemed so vivid and dashing in comparison to her drab existence. And of course he had been, but he had also been a complete cad and in throwing herself at him she had made a dreadful mistake. But she would not allow herself to think about the disaster of her first marriage. This time she would have her eyes wide-open and would be marrying Alex to secure the things that were important to her.

  “It was fun growing up in the country,” Merryn was saying. “It is far more friendly than London and there were places to play and quiet corners where I could go to read.”

  “I sometimes think,” Joanna said, smiling to take the sting out of her words, “that you were growing up somewhere completely different from me.”

  “But you did not read,” Merryn said.

  “No, I found it boring.”

  “Nor did you explore outdoors—”

  “In case I spoiled my clothes.”

  “So it is not surprising that you prefer London, where you may be entertained all the time,” Merryn finished. She glanced at the clock and stood up.

  “Are you going out this evening?” Joanna asked.

  For a split second Merryn looked suspiciously guilty, but then she shook her head. “It is already ten o’clock, Jo. You know I still keep country hours. No, I am going to bed.”

  “Good night then,” Joanna said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “Please, would you send Drury to me? I need her help to dress.”

  Merryn closed the door behind her and Joanna sat for a moment staring at her reflection in the pier glass. Was she really going to do this? She had told Alex that night at the boxing inn that she was not careless of her reputation and it must be true or she would not be sitting here agonizing about her actions. This would be a bargain, her choice, struck to gain the things that she wanted most. It would not be the same as David’s careless, cruel claiming of her. She closed her eyes briefly. Best not to think of David when she was planning to seduce his best friend.

  She went over to her wardrobe and started to sift through the scores of gown that hung there. The red silk was too fussy. The gold brocade was too formal. The purple velvet was simply too last season.

  An hour and a half later, dressed in her most becoming silver gauze gown, Joanna thought she looked every inch the sophisticated society matron. The gown skimmed her hips and clung lovingly to her curves. It rustled when she moved, the shades of silver shifting like opalescence in the light. It was a seductress’s gown, a costume, a disguise. She tried to draw confidence from it, to become the person who was looking back at her from the mirror. It was surprisingly difficult. She felt terrified, for the first time in her life wishing that she were like Lottie with the experience of dozens of love
rs to draw on.

  She drew herself up. So she did not have much idea of how to seduce Alex, but really, how difficult could it be?

  She picked up a matching gauze scarf and wrapped it about her shoulders. The hackney carriage was waiting outside. There was no going back.

  LOTTIE WAS DRAWING. It was not one of the female accomplishments that she possessed—in fact, had anyone asked her she would probably have said that the only feminine gifts she had were unmentionable ones—and as a result, the map was coming out extremely lopsided. John Hagan, looking over her shoulder, seemed unimpressed. He adjusted the candles to throw more light on the writing desk.

  “Are you sure that is what it looked like?” he demanded.

  Lottie gave a pettish little shrug. “Near enough. There was a long peninsula and the treasure was buried near the beach and it was called—” She stopped. She could not for the life of her remember the name of the place she had seen on Ware’s hand-drawn Spitsbergen map.

  “You will have to go back for another look,” Hagan said. “I am not setting off on some wild-goose chase without knowing the name of the place at the very least.”

  Lottie gave an exaggerated sigh. “Darling, much as I enjoy debauching James Devlin, he is going to get a little suspicious if I seem more interested in the treasure map his cousin gave him than in his cock.”

  There was a pause. Lottie saw Hagan flush darkly and knew that in that moment he was thinking more about her locked in flagrant immorality with Devlin than he was about David Ware’s hidden treasure. Men, Lottie thought. They were all the same, led by their pricks. She knew that given half a chance he would have her across the desk. She had no intention of giving him that chance. She did have some standards. And besides, Hagan was looking particularly unattractive tonight with a huge reddish bruise on his forehead and a cut above his eye. She’d asked him what had happened and he’d refused to tell her.