Whisper of Scandal

by Nicola Cornick

  He would show her he loved her…

  He touched her cheek again then ran his fingers over her lush lower lip, seeing her eyes darken still further with lust. She moved restlessly on the bed and reached for him, but he resisted, bending to kiss her again, a kiss that began gently and deepened into rich sensuality and sweet demand. He felt her sigh against his mouth and he prolonged the kiss until the tension and haste left her at last, replaced with a different sort of eagerness that was soft and tender. Her whole body seemed to relax beneath his hands, melting into pleasure.

  Only then did he let her touch him at will, her hands smoothing and roaming with caresses that brought him to wicked pleasure all too quickly. Fire roared through his veins and he forced it back down, controlling it so that he did not simply plunge inside her and take what he wanted. Outside, the storm was driving itself to a whirling, frenzied rage that threatened to lift the hut from its foundations.

  Alex groaned as Joanna slid down on top of him, hot and silken. He could not keep still and rose to meet the glide of her body on his. She gasped and he raised a hand to bring her head down to meet his, kissing her hot, open mouth, feeling the press of her breasts against his chest, lowering his hands to her hips to anchor her hard and deep above him.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  Alex heard the words and felt them like a breath across his soul. Something inside him, the last defenses he had been keeping against her, snapped once and for all.

  I love you, too…

  He felt her teeter on the edge and then she cried out and drew him in deeper still, and he fell with her into a void so bright and light and consuming he had never known anything like it.

  JOANNA WOKE TO THE WARMTH of the sun. Opening her eyes, she saw that it was filtering through the shutters and lying across her body in bars of light and shadow. For a moment she was aware of a feeling of sublime well-being and happiness, and then she remembered everything that had happened and something inside her chilled and shriveled like a flower left out in the frost. She could see her clothes lying in pools on the floor. Alex’s cloak was still wrapped about her and beneath it she was naked. Alex had gone.

  Shivering, resolutely refusing to think about the fact that Alex was no longer there, she reached for her clothes and dressed as best she could. Her shift felt cold against her chilled skin. The temperature in the hut could be barely above freezing and she was starting to feel icy both inside and out. Her limbs were stiff and she moved slowly, almost painfully.

  She opened the door of the hut and the sunlight struck across her eyes, almost blinding her. The sun was high in the sky. She must have slept through the night and the entire morning. The air, cutting and fresh, teased her hair. She wrapped the cloak about her and wandered down the beach toward the shore. The sea was calm again now. Mist rose from its surface like wraiths. Joanna sat down on a boulder and drew her knees up to her chest.

  The anger and grief that had possessed her the day before had gone, leaving her feelings hurt and battered, but no longer aching with pain. It was interesting, she thought, that David had not lied to her. His daughter had indeed been waiting for her at the end of her journey. Probably David never thought that she would have the tenacity to make the trip to Spitsbergen to claim Nina and so would never know one way or the other. He had laid out the temptation before her to cause her emotional misery, but she had been stronger than he had imagined, for she had undertaken the trip and she had survived the physical hardship. And in the end she had done the right thing, the only thing that she could do, in letting Nina go.

  Well, it was over now. Joanna brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes. Her feelings for David felt remote and cold. It was as though she had been scoured clean of all emotion for him. He no longer had the power to hurt her because the worst had happened and she had survived it and that was because she had changed, become stronger and braver than she could ever have imagined, and Alex had been by her side.

  Her heart did a giddy little swoop as she finally allowed herself to acknowledge how completely she had turned to Alex in her unhappiness. She had given herself to him wholly and without reservation. At first it had sprung from her need to blot out the pain, to forget. But Alex had refused to allow her to use him. He had made her see him as he truly was, a man she loved for his integrity and his directness and his honesty. She loved him for being a man of principle and honor, the hero she had wanted when she had been young, a man who had sworn to protect her and had been true to his word.

  For a moment Joanna was filled with elation, excitement and hope. And then the truth of her situation hit her like a flood tide and she wanted to cry, for she knew that falling in love with Alex was probably the single most foolish thing she could have done. Alex had all those admirable qualities and more, but he was at heart still an adventurer; exploring was his lifeblood and he had never made any secret of the fact. He did not want a settled home or any emotional ties. He had been scrupulously honest in making that clear to her from the start. And now the original reason for their marriage—to rescue Nina and provide her with a secure home—was gone, but she and Alex were still shackled together. And worse, his one demand of her, that she give him a child, would never be fulfilled.

  She had deceived him. That was the biggest betrayal of all.

  She had to tell him. She could not bear it any longer and now that everything else was at an end it was only right to end this, too.

  The crunch of footsteps on shingle drew her back to the present. She raised her head and saw that Alex was standing a few feet away from her. He was in his shirtsleeves. The wind stirred his dark hair. And looking at him it was as though every fiber of Joanna’s being caught alight and burned. Alex, who had possessed her body with such heart-stopping passion and tenderness from the first… Alex, the husband who had become her lover in every sense of the word…

  Alex, the husband she had cheated.

  She knew she had to end it. She looked away, overcome with emotion, unable to find the words.

  “I am sorry I was not back before you woke,” Alex said. “I went to the village to get some food and to send word to the monastery that we were safe.”

  Joanna felt a lurch of guilt. She had not spared a thought for any of their companions, who would probably have been beside themselves with worry. She looked from Alex’s face to the rather unappetizing food in his hands.

  “Thank you,” she said. She took a deep breath and made what felt like a monumental effort. “I am sorry,” she said. “So sorry that it was all for nothing.”

  Alex was frowning at her. “Joanna,” he said, and his gentleness smashed her heart, “you made the right decision about Nina. I cannot reproach you for it. You have been very brave.” He took her hand. “I understand that giving up Nina is desperately hard for you to bear,” he said. “You had built so much upon saving her and caring for her as your own. But in time we will have children of our own. I know you may not want to talk about that now, but once your sorrow has eased—”

  Something broke within Joanna. “Don’t,” she said. Her voice shook. “Please don’t say anything else. We will not have children of our own.”

  Alex had gone very still. Joanna freed her hand from his. It felt wrong to touch him now. She linked her fingers together to stop them from shaking.

  “When we were in London you asked me why David and I had quarreled,” she said. Her voice trembled. “The reason was because I failed to give him an heir. In five years of marriage I was never once pregnant. David and I quarreled because I was barren.”

  The word, so harsh and cold, seemed to hang between them in the air.

  Alex was staring at her. “But surely,” he said, “that was no more than mere chance. You said yourself—” his voice warmed into hope “—that conceiving a child was in God’s hands. Unless you are certain that you cannot conceive, unless there is good reason to believe it to be so—”

  He stopped. Joanna knew that he must have seen the change in her e
xpression, the guilt she could not hide.

  “There is good reason to believe it,” she said.

  Alex was shaking his head. His eyes had gone blank with shock. “But when I said I wanted an heir for Balvenie you said nothing!” He was looking at her with incredulity and dawning distaste, and when she did not contradict him he got to his feet and turned away from her.

  “Am I to understand,” he said in a tight tone she barely recognized, “that you knowingly deceived me? That when you came to me asking me to wed you and we made our bargain, you knew I was asking for something that you would never be able to give me?”

  “Yes,” Joanna said. “Yes, I did.”

  Alex rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “And you did this—”

  “For Nina’s sake.” Joanna’s voice faltered. “And for my own, I admit. Alex, it was my only chance to have a child!” She looked at him beseechingly. “You know how desperate I was—”

  “And you knew that in taking what you wanted you would deprive me of a child of my own, the very thing that I wanted.” Alex gave a harsh laugh. “Oh, I do not pretend to understand what it must feel like to be a woman denied of the chance to have a child.” He shook his head. “But now I know what it is like to be a man deprived of the heir he desires.” He looked down at her. “I pity your loss,” he said roughly. “I might even go so far as to say that I understand your motives. But the dishonesty of your behavior—” He stopped. “You lied to me,” he said, and the words fell like stones into the quietness. “Ware warned me that you were selfish and manipulative. How ironic it is, when I had at last come to believe that he was the unprincipled one, that he should have been right about you after all.”

  “Divorce me,” Joanna said helplessly. It broke her heart to say the words, but it was the only thing she could do to set him free. “You could remarry and beget an heir—” she began.

  “No,” Alex interrupted fiercely. “You stay as my wife.”

  Joanna stared at him. “But you cannot want that! Why would you do that?”

  She held her breath as Alex turned away and paced a little way away along the beach. She knew the words she wanted to hear him say; knew, too, that she had forfeit any right to his love through her deception.

  “You will remain as my wife because I pity you, Joanna,” Alex said over his shoulder, and the word made her shrivel inside. “I can see you must have been desperate to do what you did. I will not make that worse by causing a monstrous scandal that will ruin you.” He turned to look at her and his face was as hard as granite. “You may return to London. I will give you a letter for the lawyers. You will have my name and an allowance and you can take up your life as it was before. I shall travel.” He turned away to stare out across the cold gray bay. “I will take ship from here. The Admiralty will probably court-martial me for desertion, but at this moment I find I do not care.”

  He walked away and Joanna watched him go. She had thought she had lost everything when she had given up Nina, but that had not been true. This was more painful, to know that she loved Alex and to see him walk away from her. It was worse still to know that he despised her for her deceit and that very probably he wished never to see her again but that they would be locked together forever in a loveless marriage.

  She sat for a time on the cold shore and then, when there was nothing else to do, she started to walk back to the monastery to pack her bags.

  Chapter 16

  THERE WAS NO SIGN of Alex when Joanna returned to the monastery and she was fiercely glad that she did not have to face him again until she felt a little less raw and could conceal her emotions better. In a little while, perhaps, they would have to meet and speak, and she was not sure she could bear it. They had become strangers again in the most painful way possible, ripped apart by her deception after the sweetest and most tender night spent together. It seemed too cruel.

  With a heavy heart Joanna dragged herself to the monastery guesthouse, trying to prepare herself to face Lottie’s blatant curiosity and tactless questions. When she walked in, however, it was to find that no one was there. No one except Frazer and Devlin, whose clothes were streaked with white dust and who was wearing a grim expression that sat oddly on his good-humored face. He was pacing the floor whilst Frazer poured huge jugs of water into a steaming hip bath.

  “The treacherous, deceitful, conniving bitch,” Dev was saying, and for one terrible moment Joanna thought that Alex had told his cousin everything that had happened, that it was common knowledge, and now everybody hated her. Her heart shrank, but then Dev turned, saw her in the doorway and blushed.

  “I beg your pardon, Lady Grant,” he said. “I know she is your friend.”

  “You are speaking of Lottie, I assume,” Joanna said, pushing away her own preoccupations. “What on earth has happened? Where is she?”

  “She is down in the harbor,” Dev said.

  “Good Lord,” Joanna said. “Has she run off with one of the sailors?”

  “She’s run off with John Hagan,” Dev said gloomily. “And he has run off with Ware’s treasure.” He ran a hand over his fair hair, making it stand up in spikes. “Damnation take it,” he added a little sadly, “I never thought that she loved me. I was the one who told her that it was over! And now it seems she has taken me for a fool!”

  “No swearing in front of the lady, Mr. Devlin,” Frazer said disapprovingly. “Not that Mrs Cummings isn’t as brazen a piece as ever lived,” he added.

  “You are going to have to explain this to me,” Joanna said, sitting down. “What is John Hagan doing here? How did he get here? And how,” she added, frowning, “did he know about the treasure?”

  Dev blushed an even deeper red. “Lottie must have told him,” he muttered, rubbing a towel over his face. “She…persuaded…me to show her the treasure map when we were back in London.”

  “You’re a fool, laddie,” Frazer said dourly.

  “I know,” Dev said. “Damn it—sorry, dash it—I went across to Odden Bay yesterday afternoon and dug the thing up myself and brought it back here and did all the dashed work, and then Hagan walks in calm as you please this morning and says that it was Ware’s treasure and since he is Ware’s heir, it should belong to him!”

  “I still don’t understand how he got here,” Joanna said.

  “He bought passage with Captain Hallows on the Raison,” Dev said. “We lost them early on in the storm off Shetland and they only arrived this morning.” He gestured to the wide circular window in the guest-room tower. “The ice vanished in the night. The wind changed and the ice broke up and the ships could get in. Mr. Davy has brought Sea Witch round from the Isfjord.”

  Joanna went across to the window embrasure with its wide, bright view. All of Bellsund Bay and the mountains beyond were bright and white and clear in the afternoon sun. There were two ships now lying at anchor out in the bay. The diminutive Sea Witch looked completely dwarfed by a Royal Navy frigate.

  “Purchase has gone to see to the provisioning of Sea Witch,” Dev said. “We shall be ready to sail for home tomorrow.”

  He looked a little embarrassed and Joanna realized that he knew Alex would not be traveling with them. Frazer, too, was busying himself with towels and hot water and did not meet her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Dev said in a rush. “I had hoped that Alex might—” He stopped; started again. “I cannot understand why he is abandoning his commission, or indeed, abandoning you—” He broke off, looking awkward. Frazer was shaking his head and muttering something under his breath that sounded to Joanna like “bloody fool,” no matter how much the steward apparently deplored swearing.

  “Alex is not abandoning me,” she said lightly. The least that she could do, she thought, was to shield her husband from the censure of his friends when none of this was his fault. “I knew when we wed that Alex would always wish to travel,” she said. “It was agreed between us from the first.” She leaned against the wide stone sill of the window and stared fixedly at the view, blinki
ng to drive away the tears. She knew her voice sounded brittle and unconvincing. She knew that neither of them believed her.

  She turned back to the room. Both Dev and Frazer were staring at her with identical expressions of pity.

  “You did not tell me,” she said quickly, “what sort of treasure it was.”

  “Oh…” Dev’s face cleared a little. “It was not quite as we had imagined.”

  Joanna shook her head. “Why does that not surprise me? I suppose this is another of David’s unwelcome jests?”

  “It is, in a way,” Dev said, sounding puzzled. “The treasure is a piece of marble. I think Ware must have found a seam of it in the rock here and thought to mine it. Hagan seems delighted at the prospect. He says it is of quality as fine as can be found in Italy and that it will make him a fortune in London.” He set his jaw. “Purchase and I tried to show him the error of his ways, but the abbot prevented us from giving him a drubbing.”

  “The abbot is a man of sound good sense,” Frazer said. “Are you going to take this bath or not, Mr. Devlin?”

  “I shall leave you to it,” Joanna said, smiling. She looked at the hip bath. “At least you have Lottie’s bath to provide some comfort even if she has betrayed us.”

  “I am sorry,” Dev said. “She is your friend.”

  “I fear Lottie was always monstrously indiscreet,” Joanna said.

  “And monstrously disloyal,” Dev said bitterly.

  Joanna shrugged. She found she did not really care for much today. Finding Nina, giving her up and losing Alex were all so immense that she had no time for Lottie Cummings’s perfidy.

  She plucked Max from his basket and tucked him beneath one arm. The dog made a grumbling sound to be disturbed. “I am going down to the harbor,” she said. “I need to find Captain Purchase and make a few arrangements.” She went out into the courtyard. She felt enormous relief that the ice had gone and they would be able to return to England soon. She could not stay here in Bellsund with David’s daughter so close by and yet forever out of reach.