Whisper of Scandal

by Nicola Cornick

  “Lottie will be pleased,” Joanna said. “She will see trees at last.”

  “She will also be able to have a hot bath,” Alex said, “which will no doubt please her even more, since she spurned the sweat baths. The guesthouse is most comfortably appointed.”

  Joanna’s bones ached for a hot bath, too. Soon, she thought, we can have warmth and clean clothes and soft beds, and all will be well.

  They turned a corner, ducked under a magnificently carved stone gateway and then the young monk was knocking on a huge wooden door and with a murmured word slipped inside, leaving them standing on the threshold.

  “He will only be a moment,” Alex said. “He has gone to tell the abbot that we are here.”

  Joanna’s heart was beating in her throat. Her thoughts were tumbling over themselves like butterflies trapped in a net. For the first time she wondered what Nina would look like. Would she be fair like David, or would she resemble her Russian mother? She wondered suddenly how Nina would feel, being taken from this environment that she knew, a child who was barely more than a baby and had already lost her mother, being taken so far from home to a new life. Why had she not thought of that before? Another wave of anxiety took her and she pressed her hands together and felt the slippery dampness of her palms.

  The door opened.

  “Abbot Starostin will see you now,” the young monk said.

  Joanna hesitated, and Alex took her arm and drew her forward. “Courage,” he whispered.

  They were standing in a study. It had wide glass windows looking out across the gardens to the sea. A huge fire blazed in the hearth. There were richly colored rugs scattered across the stone floor and a desk with a vast book upon it open to show illuminated writing and pictures of men and sea monsters, whales and mermaids. There was such a profound sense of peace about the room that for a moment even the excited pounding of Joanna’s pulse eased and she drank in the tranquillity.

  A man rose from a chair beside the fire and came toward them. He was old and a little bent. In his hand was a letter and Joanna recognized David’s writing on it with a leap of her heart. So it was true. Up until that moment she was not sure she had really believed it. But her late husband had left instructions at the monastery as to the arrangements he had made for his daughter. He had told the monks that one day his wife would come for the child. And now she was here.

  The excitement burst within her like an explosion of light. A shiver went through her and she knew that Alex had felt it, for he looked sharply at her. She started forward, no longer able to wait.

  “Father Abbot—”

  But the monk’s grave old face did not change to show a matching pleasure. His gray eyes, pale and shrewd, searched her face. He gave her his hand and his skin felt cool and papery and dry against her feverishly hot fingers.

  “You are welcome at Bellsund, Lady Grant,” he said in perfect English. He turned to Alex and gave a little bow. “Lord Grant, a pleasure to see you again.” A tiny frown marred his brow. “I understand, Lady Grant, that you have come from England to fetch Nina Ware, your late husband’s child, and take her home?”

  “That is correct.” Joanna could barely form the words. Her heartbeats echoed in her ears and it almost felt as though they were audible, bouncing off the stone walls. She was shaking.

  The abbot nodded slowly. “It is as Commodore Ware’s letter decrees,” he said. There was something hard to define in his tone. “I will take you to Nina at once since you have traveled so far and I can tell—” he smiled faintly “—that you are most anxious to see her.”

  They followed him down the endless stone corridors again and out into the bright, cold air. Joanna, who had thought she would have so many questions, so many things that she wanted to ask, found herself silent as she walked beside the abbot. Her apprehension had a different quality now. It stemmed from the abbot’s quiet acceptance of what had happened. There had been no censure in his tone. It was not that he had forbidden her to see Nina or to take her away. But there was something else, something that she could not understand. Joanna could feel it and it breathed fear along her nerves and she knew Alex felt it, too, because he drew closer to her, offering her wordless comfort through the strength of his presence.

  They turned a corner and then they were alongside a long low building and there was a garden and the sound of children’s voices on the air. Joanna blinked. It seemed so unexpected.

  “We have a school here,” Abbot Starostin said, and Joanna remembered Anya telling her that she had learned her letters and her English at the monastery school. “The hunters and trappers come and go,” the abbot continued, “but there is always a place here for their children.”

  The children were playing. There were ten or eleven of them, and they had hoops, bats and balls, shiny marbles made from the pebbles on the beach and painted spinning tops that shone brightly in the sun. Joanna thought of the crate of toys from Hamleys. They were so much shinier, newer and more expensive than these handmade playthings, so much better. She could give Nina lots and lots of games and dolls and spoil her with gifts and trinkets.

  “That is Nina,” Abbot Starostin said, pointing to a little girl who was sitting with two other children, chattering as they threaded bright stones onto a leather strip. “She is almost six years old now.”

  Dark, like her mother, Joanna thought, not fair like David…

  She was a dainty child, with black hair and black eyes. She was wearing a faded pink dress with a tiny version of an embroidered white apron over it. Old clothes, Joanna thought.

  I will buy her new ones, whatever she wants, dresses with sashes in every color of the rainbow and bonnets with ribbons to match…

  She wanted to run to the child, gather her up and hold her close. The urge to do so, the consuming strength of it, stole her breath.

  “The other boy and girl are her cousins,” the abbot was saying. “They are called Toren and Galina.”

  Joanna looked at him sharply. “Cousins? But I thought that Nina was an orphan.”

  “She is,” the abbot said, “but her mother came to Spitsbergen originally with a brother. He, too, has family here in the village and when Nina was orphaned and left with us they came to ask if they might take her in. Nina does not live here,” he added. “She lives with her family.”

  Joanna watched as Nina held one of the perfectly round pebbles up to the sun, laughing as the light sparked colors of gold and russet and deep red in the stone. The other little girl, Galina, looked a solemn child. She placed another stone in Nina’s palm and their dark heads bent together as they looked at it.

  Something hard and sharp lodged itself in Joanna’s chest and stuck there.

  Cousins, playmates, friends… Family in the village, a school, a community, people who loved her…

  It was so very different from all that she had imagined.

  Nina looked well cared for, well fed. Happy.

  The abbot was still talking, quietly, explaining about Nina’s family and the school and the sorts of lessons they offered there when the children were older. Joanna tried to imagine Nina in quite a different setting, walking with her governess in the park in London, riding in Joanna’s carriage, playing with Max. Nina would make new friends, Joanna thought. Perhaps she might even go to school, to one of the Bath seminaries. The horizons were wide, the possibilities endless, with a little money and a place in the world.

  I will love her, too, Joanna thought violently, watching the two little girls laughing together. I want her. I will give her everything that she needs.

  But something inside her was cracking and breaking. She tried to shore it up, but the split grew wider and wider until it yawned with a despair that threatened to consume her.

  In all her thoughts and plans she had never once considered what Nina would want. She had never imagined that Nina might have other relatives and that there were people who loved her and who would miss her when she was gone.

  I have been so selfish, Joanna thoug
ht. I only ever thought of what I wanted. She could feel her heart breaking piece by little piece.

  The abbot was watching her with his perceptive gaze. She said, “I can see that Nina is very happy here, Father Abbot. We must talk about her future and how Lord Grant and I may help ensure that she may stay with her family for as long as she wishes. Now, will you please excuse me?”

  And then she turned and walked away before she started to cry.

  “JOANNA!” ALEX WAS almost running by the time he reached the inner courtyard of the monastery. He was desperately worried. He had heard in Joanna’s voice that brittle tone that he was starting to know. It did not mean that she did not care; quite the contrary. It was her defense, her protection. He knew that she must be hurting terribly and the thought made him feel sick.

  He had been about to follow her when Father Starostin had put a hand on his arm to detain him and Alex had been obliged to stop.

  “Your wife is an extraordinary woman,” the abbot said. “Such generosity and selflessness, to think of the child’s happiness before her own wishes and desires.”

  “Yes,” Alex said. He shook his head. He could not believe what Joanna had done, not when he knew how deeply, how desperately, she had wanted Nina. “There are matters that we must discuss, of course,” he said. “Formalities…finances…”

  Father Starostin patted his arm. “We have managed very well without those until now. There is no financial obligation, Lord Grant.” He looked back at Nina, engrossed in her play. “I will make sure that when she is old enough, she knows the truth,” he said softly. “About her father—and about Lady Grant’s generosity. She may wish to write, to visit…”

  “Of course,” Alex said.

  “Bring your wife to see me when she is recovered, Lord Grant,” the abbot said, “and we shall talk on it. You are, of course, welcome to stay at Bellsund for as long as you wish.”

  Alex had thanked him and had gone out, impatience and the need to find Joanna thrumming in his veins, but she had already disappeared. The sky above the monastery had turned heavy and gray with the onset of snow. The wind had turned to the north, spiteful and biting cold.

  Lottie was supervising the bringing in of her luggage when Alex reached the guesthouse door, and for once she seemed in a good mood.

  “Hot water!” she said to Alex, beaming. “Warmth! Young men! I think I might decide to live here.”

  “The young men are monks, Mrs. Cummings,” Alex said. “I do beg you not to corrupt them.” He ran an impatient hand over his hair. “Have you seen Joanna? We are just this minute come from the abbot and I need to find her urgently—”

  “Oh, she went out!” Lottie said, waving a vague hand toward the door. “She said that she might be gone some time…”

  Alex was out of the door before she had finished speaking.

  He could not find Joanna in the lush beauty of the botanical gardens and he stopped, frustrated, trying to think what she would do, where she would go, if she felt so raw and despairing that she wanted to hide from the world. Certainly she would seek out solitude and in Spitsbergen there were plenty of places she might find it. But she was on foot and in her second-best pair of boots at that, so she could not have walked far. For once he blessed the utter inadequacy of her fashionable wardrobe. He slipped out of the monastery gate, turned away from the village and walked out onto the strand.

  A hundred yards along the beach he found her. She was standing staring out to sea. She had her back to him. No cloak, no hat. She must have taken them off in the guesthouse and wandered out just as she was. The snow was swirling about her. Her long dark hair tangled in the wind.

  “Joanna.” Alex stopped a few feet away from her and she turned to look at him and his heart stuttered when he saw her face. Her blue eyes were terrifyingly blank. He doubted she even saw him, let alone knew who he was. She had turned inside herself and he did not know how to reach her. Her gown clung to her body, soaked through already by the snow. There were flakes in her hair and on her lips. Alex looked at her and felt a violent surge of emotion.

  “We must get into shelter.” He spoke above the rising howl of the wind. Already it was too late to return to the monastery. The snow had thickened to a blizzard and he had seen storms like this blow up time and again. If they did not reach a trappers’ hut soon they would lose their way in the white wilderness and very probably freeze to death even though they were so close to the village.

  Alex put an arm about her, wrapping them both in his cloak, guiding her along the shore toward the nearest dwelling. She felt stiff, but she came with him docilely enough and he had no difficulty drawing her in through the door into the meager shelter within. Unlike some of the trappers’ huts it was snug and well cared for, ready for overwintering once the long dark Spitsbergen nights came. Alex sent up a silent prayer that it was proof against the storm.

  Joanna sat down on the edge of the bed. Her arms were locked about her body, but she was not even shivering with the cold. It was as though she was not really conscious of either herself or her surroundings. Alex wished he had some way to light the fire, something hot to give her, but there was nothing they could do but sit out the storm and hope that it would be of short duration, no more than a squall.

  “You have to get out of those wet clothes.” The words came out more roughly than Alex had intended. “Come on. I cannot have you taking a fever.”

  She allowed him to undress her, passive beneath his ministering hands and it was only when she was sitting there in her shift that suddenly she looked up and her eyes met his. There was such a blind anger and such terrible hurt there that Alex flinched.

  “Alex,” she said. Her arms went about him in desperate need and he drew her closer so that her head was resting against his chest. He found himself cradling her, whispering endearments, pressing his lips to her hair. She clung to him, soft and pliant in his arms. He felt her body shake with the sudden onset of tears; they soaked his shirt, hot against his cold skin. She was crying so hard now that the shudders were racking her entire body. He held her tighter until she stopped at last.

  “I had to do it,” she said.

  “I understand.” His heart felt so full that he could hardly speak. “You were so generous. More generous than I could ever have imagined.”

  “I did not want to be.” She sounded angry, vicious even. “I wanted to take her away. I wanted her to be mine…” Another sob racked her. “But she never was…”

  “Hush…” Alex gentled her with his hands. Her face was streaked with tears and her eyes were swollen and red and he felt the most enormous compassion for her. He touched her cheek, tilted her chin up in his hand and then she was leaning into his touch, linking her hands behind his neck and their lips met and his world exploded.

  There was neither love nor tenderness in the kiss. It was deeply physical, a desperate cry from Joanna for relief from intolerable strain. Alex knew she only wanted him as an escape from the pain, but she was holding nothing back and every desire he had ever had leaped into full and shocking life. If he thought she had been responsive before, now she was as fierce and elemental as the storm. He kissed her back, his hands hard on her slender frame, his palms tingling from the rub of her silk chemise and the warmth of her skin beneath it.

  She opened her lips to him, nestling closer now, and his mind went blank of everything except the innocent scent of her, almond and herbs, and the taste of her on his tongue and the tightening spiral of his lust. He responded to her by taking her mouth with a growing demand, pressing deeper and closer, and whatever claim he made she met and pushed him further. Her tongue tangled with his now, tempting him, intimate, provocative, the kiss delicious in its intensity. She pulled him down to lie beside her on the bed, running her hands over the muscles of his shoulders and chest, pressing herself against the whole hard length of him. He felt the swell of her breasts through the thin silk of her shift and his body tightened and heated to feverish proportions. But though his desire drove
him he grabbed the last shreds of self-control and eased back, feathering kisses across the curve of her cheek and the line of her throat, tracing his fingertips lightly across her skin even as he drew away from her.

  Her face was flushed now, her breathing had quickened and her eyes were glittering deep blue with desire.

  “Joanna,” he whispered. “Wait—”

  “I want you.” She grabbed a handful of his shirt and pulled him back down to her so that their lips were touching. “Oh, please…” Her tone had changed. There was something desperate in it now even as she kissed him again with heat and need and longing. She slid a hand beneath his shirt and his skin jumped and quivered at her touch. She tugged the shirt up and pressed her lips where her hands had been and he groaned aloud.

  “Please, Alex…” Her lips were grazing his belly now. He could feel her breath brushing against him even as the tip of her tongue traced a tantalizing path lower and lower to the band of his breeches. “Please make love to me.”

  How many men would refuse such a plea? Alex wondered dazedly. He felt he ought to—that if he was a gentleman he would offer her comfort in other ways that were not so deeply physical. He should talk to her, listen and allow her to pour out her feelings. And yet, if all she wanted in this moment was to escape from the intolerable loss of giving Nina up then he would not refuse her that comfort.

  Then all thoughts were lost in the hot darkness conjured by her lips and her hands. She was easing open his breeches now and her breath caught on a sigh of satisfaction as she found him so primed and hard for her. She rose to her knees and shed her shift and in the pale light of the hut she was naked and beautiful. He pulled her roughly down beside him and looked at her and his heart ached because she was so lovely and she tasted so sweet and yet she looked so impossibly wanton with her hair spread about her and her limbs pale and tumbled in abandonment.

  “Now,” she said. The dark blue glitter of her gaze challenged him.

  “No.” If he was going to do this he was damned if it would be no more than a swift coupling to wipe out her misery. He was not going to allow her to use him to that extent. He would make sure she could not forget this. He would bring her back to him.