Scandal of the Year

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  “Ah.” He considered a moment, then gave in. “Well, we are rewriting the ending, aren’t we? I suppose I could loosen my tie a bit earlier this time.” His tie joined his jacket and he undid the three buttons of his shirt. Only then did Julia comply with his request, pulling the bottle from its now-slushy ice bath and handing it to him. He popped the cork and poured for both of them, then lifting his glass, he proposed a toast. “To second chances.”

  “And better endings,” she added. They clinked glasses and looked into each other’s eyes, and as they drank, Aidan vowed this ending wasn’t just going to be better, it was going to be the best he could make it for her.

  They set aside their glasses and began pulling foodstuffs out of the picnic hamper. He opened jars of caviar, mustard, and pickles as she unfastened plates and silver from beneath the lid of the hamper. He sliced bread, ham, chicken, and various cheeses as she pulled out tins of savory biscuits and shortbread, and a basket of blackberries.

  “How long have you had this place?” he asked as they ate.

  “About seven years. I inherited it from my grandmother. She died after my parents, and it came to me. It’s one of those quirky entailed properties that comes down through the female line, and since I have no older sisters—no siblings at all, in fact—it came to me. I’m glad, too. I love it here.”

  “But you didn’t grow up here?” When she shook her head, he added, “If you had, we would have met much sooner, I suppose, since Trathen Leagh is so close.”

  “I spent a few summers here as a girl, though I always went to Pixy Cove for August. Like my cousins, I grew up in Devonshire, not by Danbury, but further east, closer to Dorset.”

  “Since you have no brothers or sisters, we have something in common, then. I, too, am an only child. My mother died shortly after I began at Eton, and my father only a year later. That’s so frequently the way, isn’t it?” he added thoughtfully. “When one spouse dies, the other often follows shortly after. Why do you suppose that is?”

  She shrugged. “Loneliness, perhaps. I wouldn’t know. My parents died together, in a carriage accident when I was twenty-two. I’m glad they never knew how unhappy my marriage was. It would have grieved them.”

  “Would it?” Aidan paused over his sandwich, thinking it over. “That surprises me.”

  “Really?” She reached for a hunk of chicken. “Why should it?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps because I gathered your parents knew you didn’t love him, even though they had pushed for the marriage.”

  “I think they hoped it would all turn out well. They did love me, and they wanted what they thought was best for me.”

  “Why was Yardley their choice? His rank?”

  “Partly. My father had a prosperous farm, but no title. More important, Yardley wanted to marry me. His family often spent the summer just this side of Dorset, near our farm. We’d known each other most of our lives, but I never liked him. I don’t know quite why he wanted me.” She paused, considering, as she ate another bite of chicken. “Probably because he knew I didn’t want him,” she said at last. “He was . . . perverse like that. But my parents believed he had genuine affection for me, and they felt that my becoming a baroness was an excellent match that would give me a secure future. They assumed I would grow to love him.”

  “It does often happen that way.”

  “Does it?” She seemed doubtful, but she didn’t debate the point. “I’m glad they never knew my aversion to Yardley became loathing. It would have grieved them. Their marriage was a contented one. They liked each other and were fairly happy. No real passion, though I suppose they may have had that once.”

  “Well, I’m glad that at least one of us had parents with a contented marriage. My parents’ marriage was an emotional tumult.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head. “They were madly in love when they met, and suitable to marry, but my father simply could not resist other women. It was a source of great unhappiness to my mother, always.”

  “I see.” She paused, and he could feel her gaze on him, studying him. “That’s why you feel fidelity is important, don’t you?” she asked. “Because infidelity made your mother unhappy?”

  “Not just my mother. My father, too, in a strange way. None of his mistresses ever made him happier than my mother did, and he knew his infidelities grieved her, and he had terrible guilt over it. There were constant quarrels, but my father never stopped his philandering. He was in bed with his current mistress when he died. I could never understand that, and I vowed that if I ever married, I would not stray. I would not dishonor my wife nor make her so unhappy.”

  She reached out, touched his hair. “You didn’t even betray the woman you were going to marry. You must have gotten your mistress after Rosalind broke your engagement, then.”

  “My mistress?” Puzzled, he turned his head and looked at her, and then he remembered. “Oh, her.”

  He lifted his fist to his mouth and gave a slightly guilty cough. “I . . . umm . . . I don’t have a mistress. She doesn’t exist.”

  “What?” Julia sat up, setting aside her plate.

  “I have had mistresses over the years. I mean, I’m no saint. But I gave up my most recent mistress when I decided to find a wife.”

  “What, before you met Beatrix?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you haven’t had a mistress since then?”

  “No.” He tugged at his collar, a bit embarrassed by this admission. “A courtesan every now and again. Between engagements,” he added with a touch of wry humor. “But nothing else.”

  “But you don’t have a mistress now? Aidan, you lied,” she added when he shook his head, staring at him in disbelief. “You lied to me.”

  “Yes, I did. Sorry, but it just came out. I couldn’t resist. A man has his pride, you know. And I—”

  He was stopped by her fingers against his lips. “It’s not a lie, really, not now,” she said, a smile spreading across her face, a wide, happy smile that made him feel as if he were the king of the earth.

  Aidan, though he liked that smile, liked it a lot, was puzzled by her cryptic remark. “I don’t quite understand what you mean.”

  Still smiling a little, she moved to sit on her knees, facing him. “You have a mistress now. If you want her.” Being Julia, she just had to add irrepressibly, “You don’t even have to pay me. How’s that for a bargain?”

  “So we are lovers, then?” he said, and reached out to rake his fingers through her hair. Pulling her close, he kissed her.

  She nodded. “Lovers, it is. Aidan?”

  “Hmm?”

  She lifted her hand, fingering his collar. “Before this goes any further, there are certain things I want you to know about me.”

  To his surprise, her tone had become quite serious. He was even more surprised when she took his plate off his lap and then reached for one of his hands to hold it in her own. “When we were here before, I was ready to give you my body, and I was acting the part of the sultry seductress, but the truth is that every second of it, I was afraid I’d lose my nerve.” She gave a laugh, but she didn’t sound amused. “I’m no innocent girl, God knows, and I’ve done more carousing than most women ever will, and I know I was as brazen as I could be that day, but Aidan, I want you to know that despite all the talk about me and what a scandal I am, and the blatant way I seduced you, the truth is, I’ve only bedded two men in my entire life.”

  He stared at her. “What?”

  “It’s true. The first was Stephen Graham, a Scotsman who’d rented a cottage on my father’s estate the summer I turned seventeen. He wrote poetry and read Marx. I was violently in love with him, as only a girl that age can be. He became my lover. When he proposed that we elope, I agreed, ecstatically. We made plans, he went ahead to Glasgow, his home, to arrange things. I was to follow him.”

  Aidan remembered her words about why she’d married Yardley, because her family insisted, and he began to get a picture of w
here this was going. “And did you go to Scotland?”

  “Yes.” She paused, her face working, her lips trying to form a smile, as if even now, she was fighting for a mask to put on. “But he was dead. They had an outbreak of scarlet fever and he died.”

  She reached for the champagne. “My father wanted me to marry Yardley,” she said as she poured herself another glass. “Their fathers had been friends. He thought it would be a good match for me. Yardley wanted me, but until that business with Stephen, I had refused to consider him. As early as that, I sensed something . . . wrong about him.”

  She paused to set aside the bottle and take a swallow of champagne, and he wanted to ask what she meant, but as he opened his mouth to raise the question, she spoke quickly, forestalling him. “When I came home from Scotland,” she said, setting her glass down again, “I was disgraced, no longer an innocent girl, with my reputation at risk. There was gossip already about Stephen and me, which is how my father found out. I don’t know how it happens, but somehow, these secret affairs never stay secret, particularly in small villages. Servants, prying spinsters with too much time on their hands—someone always knows, and the gossip spreads, and before long, a girl is ruined. Anyway, Yardley was known to our family, my parents wanted the match, he wanted me, so it was all arranged. As I said, I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t love him, but I’d made so many mistakes. I had always been a rebel, you see. A disobedient, willful, independent girl.”

  “You?” He pretended to be surprised. “Not possible.”

  “I had already caused my parents more than enough grief. I wanted to do something right for a change, make good for all the stupid things I’d done wrong. How ironic that in trying to do something right, I was to make the biggest mistake of my life.” She shook her head and swallowed hard, squeezing his hand. “That’s not what I wanted to say.”

  She sat back, facing him, wriggling and pulling at her skirt so that she could sit cross-legged on the blanket. It exposed her lower legs, reminding him of that day on the bridge, causing arousal to flicker up within his body.

  “In the lavender house,” she said, her voice bringing his gaze back up to her face, “you asked me if I felt anything when we . . . when we almost . . . the last time we were here. You asked if I wanted you, and I said I would have done anything, but that wasn’t quite true. I had been trying to work up the nerve for an affair because I hoped it would impel Yardley to divorce me, but I never could take a lover, because . . . well, I just couldn’t. But then I saw you again at the St. Ives Ball, and I remembered how much I liked you that day on the footbridge, and how you had the divine good taste to appreciate my legs—”

  “They are the finest pair of legs on God’s earth,” he said fervently, and once again he glanced down, sliding his gaze along her calf.

  “Anyway,” she said, jerking firmly at her skirt to conceal her legs and giving him what he assumed was meant to be a look of reproof. But he wasn’t fooled, for there was a mischievous curve to one corner of her mouth. “When I saw you again at the St. Ives Ball, that’s when I decided to have a go at seducing you.”

  “That night?”

  She nodded. “When I saw you, I noticed you were even better-looking than you’d been all those years ago. And when we talked, you were so . . . well . . . so nice.”

  “Nice?” He pretended to be affronted. “Nice? Woman, I am a duke. I have been involved in politics, the most ruthless occupation there is. I have vast business interests. There are men who shake in their boots when I walk into a room.”

  “I’m sure there are,” she said, her smile widening, “but I think you’re terribly nice. And,” she added before he could protest again, “nice is a very good thing. So, I was thinking about throwing myself at you in a most shameless and wanton manner, but then you met Trix, and she sort of fell for you, and you seemed to like her, and I . . . well . . .” She paused, giving a deep sigh and looked away. “I gave up my chance.”

  He thought of that night in St. Ives when he’d met Beatrix, and he didn’t know what to say. The idea that even then, only the second time they’d ever met, she’d been thinking of seducing him was rather astonishing. “Julie, from the moment we met, I’ve always had a deep desire for you. You know that. But you were married. When I met Beatrix, I was looking to marry as well. I never dreamed—”

  “I know. And Trix was trying to put Sunderland behind her. I love Trix dearly, and I knew she would be a fine choice as a wife for you, while I had nothing to offer you but an affair. So I stepped aside.” She laughed with a hint of chagrin. “So many times afterward, I thought, ‘Oh, if only I’d danced with him first!’ But it wasn’t meant to be, and I put any plans to seduce you out of my head. Then you and Trix became engaged, and when I came home that summer for the Marlowes’ house party at Pixy Cove, I tried to be happy for you both. But, oh, it was hard!”

  “It was?”

  She gave him a rueful look. “Yes, it was awful—seeing you with Trix, wanting to be happy for the two of you. I tried to put on a good show, laughing with Will and playing comic songs on the piano. That’s why I kept trying to aggravate you. I felt so resentful, and so sorry for myself, though I was trying not to.” She sighed. “You have no idea what I was going through.”

  “You?” he echoed with a wry chuckle. “Put yourself in my place. There I was, about to marry your cousin, my fiancée, a woman I wouldn’t hurt for the world, and across from me was her old love sitting with you, you, the woman I had desired from the time I was seventeen, a woman I could never have. I was striving to be a gentleman, but the whole time, I kept imagining those amazing, beautiful legs of yours. It drove me mad. And I hated myself for it.”

  “And me as well, I imagine.”

  “Well, yes, in a way. You wouldn’t stop playing that damnable ragtime.”

  She laughed. “I was so awful to you during that entire house party! I’m so sorry.”

  He considered a moment, then he said, “As long as we are telling truths here, I have something to tell you as well. Later that night at Pixy Cove, I walked Beatrix to the stairs, and I kissed her just to reassure myself I was doing the right thing by marrying her, but the whole time my lips were on hers, I was thinking of you.”

  “You were?”

  “Yes.”

  “If Sunderland hadn’t come back, you would still have married Trix, though, wouldn’t you?”

  He leaned back on his arms, looking into her eyes. “Yes. A gentleman does not break an engagement except for the most egregious behavior on the part of his fiancée, and until she kissed Sunderland, Trix had done nothing to deserve being jilted by me. And I would have spent my whole life striving to be the best husband I could be to her.”

  Unexpectedly, she chuckled. “You are such a pukka sahib.”

  “A good thing to be, in my opinion, though you tease me for it.”

  “It is a good thing,” she agreed. “Men like you, who believe in honor and don’t just talk about it, are rare as a hen’s teeth. I ought to know. Anyway,” she added, “the point I’m trying to get to, in a most rambling, roundabout way, is that I . . . I’m . . . not very experienced at this lovemaking business. All those supposed affairs I’ve had? They’re bunkum. I staged them, hoping Yardley would be so disgusted that he’d divorce me.”

  Aidan thought of all the times he’d disapproved of her behavior, her disregard for fidelity and her scandalous, party-loving lifestyle and restless, constant living off her friends, and he wanted to kick himself for being such an ass.

  “I finally learned that every time a new affair was supposedly in the wind, Yardley would send private detectives after me to verify it. That’s why he never brought a divorce suit. He knew it was all a hum. I realized if I was ever going to rid myself of him, he’d have to catch me in the act, or as close to it as possible.”

  “And you chose me for this. Why me?”

  She looked at him steadily. “Because after what Yardley had done to me, you were the only man I ever th
ought I could allow to touch me.”

  Aidan stared at her, stunned, flattered, and pleased beyond words. But then, a second later, the sickening, sinister implications about her former husband began snaking back into his consciousness. He forced himself to speak. “You felt nothing that day with me, did you? There was no pleasure in it for you.”

  “It wasn’t quite nothing,” she admitted, “but it probably wasn’t anything like what you were feeling.”

  “And you’ve never taken a lover, because of him and what . . .” He could barely get the words out. “Because of what he did to you.”

  “Yes. I was so used to being numb, and cold, feeling hate rather than any sort of desire, so used to not wanting to be kissed or touched. It’s more than that, but I don’t know how else to explain it to you. The point is, I couldn’t give myself to you fully that day. I wanted to, but I just couldn’t. It wasn’t in me to give of myself that way.” She paused, then added softly, staring out at the sea, “It may never be.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “You don’t know.” She swerved, looked at him again. “You don’t know how he made me feel. It was like the pit of hell to me. Anyway, I thought you should know all that.” She tried to smile. “I don’t want you to be too disappointed.”

  “I won’t be disappointed at all. You must believe me about that.” He brushed a tendril of hair back from her face. “Julia, do you—” He stopped, knowing this question could ruin everything today. But he also knew he had to ask it. “Do you want to tell me about him?”

  She shook her head. “No. Maybe one day I’ll tell you, but not today.”

  “All right,” he said, unable to suppress a tiny hint of relief. He didn’t want any talk of that bastard to spoil their day.

  “The reason, of course,” she went on, a lightness coming into her voice that he knew was forced, “is that I have far more important things to do right now.” With that, she picked up her glass, drained it of the last swallow of its contents, and tossed it onto the grass as she stood up. “Like dip my feet in the water, for example. It’s deuced hot today.”