Scandalous Brides

by Annette Blair

  “I deserve your anger and more,” Alex said. “Five thousand pounds you gave me in exchange for my promise to wed you, but I failed to fulfill my part of our bargain, and I cannot repay you. Not yet, at any rate.”

  “Why do you not let Hawksworth worry about repayment?”

  “I do not want him to know about the money, Judson, please. He would be angry that I took it. Let me repay you, myself, in time?”

  “For once in his charmed life, let Hawksworth face his responsibilities. Everything has always come so bloody easy to the rogue. Looks, money, a title, women, all handed to him on a gilded platter.”

  “You are not being fair. Hawksworth fought for his country and suffered mightily for its cause. His looks are altered irreparably; his title and wealth have gone to another.”

  “But as for women, he ended with the best.” Chesterfield bit off a curse. “You understand do you not, Alexandra, that he set off to play at war and left you to carry his burdens? That is why he was shocked out of countenance and damned near broken. He discovered that war was not a devilishly entertaining sport or particularly glorious, either.”

  Chesterfield’s words resembled her own often-uncharitable thoughts after Hawksworth first left. “No, there you are wrong. Do not be angry with him.”

  “I have lost my bride and my future, yet you do not want me to be angry with the man who took them from me.”

  “You do not love me, Judson. You wanted a mature wife, and I wanted a secure future for my family. No matter what has passed between us, it is finished now. Let us at least be honest with each other.”

  Chesterfield nodded. “So be it.” He turned to the window. “You are in alt, I take it, that your true love has returned from the dead?”

  True as the words were, Alex did not appreciate the way Chesterfield sullied the sentiment with his caustic tone. “Hawksworth is well liked by everyone,” she said. “Why do you dislike him so?”

  “For that reason, I suppose. Because everyone else likes and accepts him, without question, while I see him as a spoiled boy, who takes and takes, but never learned to give. The very same reason he despises me. I see him as he really is. Selfish.”

  Alex had learned long ago that Hawksworth disdained Chesterfield as much as Chesterfield disdained her husband, and where they were concerned, emotions ran high and animosity had festered too long to give credence to much one said of the other. But in her mind, it all boiled down to one thing. “You have always been jealous of Bryce, have you not?”

  Chesterfield gave her a half-smile and shook his head, almost in wonder. “Yes, but that does not change the facts.”

  “No, but it does color them. Let us be friends. Please.”

  “The three of us? No. But I will not tell Hawksworth about the money, yet. That is as friendly as I can be right now.”

  “Thank you. I will repay you before you feel the need to tell him. Why are you here? Is there something that I can do for you?”

  Chesterfield cursed again, and sighed, as if in resignation. “I came to make certain you were all right. You had not come around by the time he took you away the other day, and I was worried about you.”

  “I am fine, but I was in shock then, I think. Anybody would be.”

  He stepped toward her. “Anybody, except you, my strong one.”

  Alex stepped back. “Can we be friends?”

  “If you find yourself in need of a friend, I would be a fool to apply for the position.”

  Alex pulled her jilted bridegroom away from the door, where someone might hear them, and toward the center of the room. “I do need a friend, Judson. I need one badly. I need help.”

  Chesterfield stepped closer and took her hand. “Tell me what I can do.”

  “I need to stage a seduction and I do not have the least idea how, nor do I know anyone else I can ask.”

  At the reverberating slam of the door, Claudia stepped from behind the drawing room curtains with a huff of frustration.

  Alex exclaimed in surprise as she did.

  “Drat,” Claude said. “I thought you had both left.” The seventeen-year old grinned. “You certainly set fire to his tail with that request.”

  “You were listening,” Alex charged, partly in accusation, partly in admonishment, but mostly to hide her mortification. “You are worse than your sister.”

  “I adore Chesterfield. He is my destiny. Of course I was listening, though I do wish he did not seem so broken by the loss of you. Do you not think that fate tore the two of you apart at the very last moment, so that I may still have him?”

  “I think Hawksworth’s excellent recuperative powers were responsible, not to mention the little matter of our previous marriage.”

  “Still I wish Chesterfield had been willing to discuss seduction,” Claude said dreamily. “I would dearly have liked to know how he would go about one.” Her gaze changed from otherworldly to worldly in a questioning blink. “Why do you need to seduce Uncle Bryce, anyway? I thought he was a master of seduction.”

  “Who in the world told you that? Never mind, I do not wish to know.”

  Claude giggled. “Do you want to know what I think you should do to seduce him?”

  “Good Lord, no.” Alex lowered herself to the settee and covered her face with her hands, doubly chagrined. But as Claude sat beside her, she regarded the sagacious teen with a curious respect. “Claudia Jamieson, what do you know about seduction, anyway?”

  “Not nearly as much as I would like, but— Does this mean that you are still untouched?”

  “Claudia, really.”

  “Oh, all right. I have often found that words alone can be very… stirring in the right circumstances. I was thinking you could tell Uncle Bryce that I have begun to ask some, er, rather embarrassing questions, which you, in your untouched state, cannot answer.”

  “What good will that do?”

  “Then you are untouched.”

  “Claude.”

  “Sorry.” The girl sighed in resignation. “Perhaps, if you can get Uncle Bryce to explain all the things every young woman wants, or at least needs, to know about dealing with the male of the species, you can, ah, ask a few more leading questions. You could even require a demonstration, which might, er, stimulate… things, enough to let nature take its proper course.”

  “You devious little brat. Shame on you.” Alex grinned. “But you already sound knowledgeable. What do you know?”

  “Only what I have garnered from watching the horses.”

  “But horses are nothing like…” Alex regarded Hawk’s niece rather warily. “Of course they are not.”

  “I do think they must be. I swam once with the Cruikshank boy—you remember little Harold—and everything on him, seemed a teeny, tiny version of, er, those things, on a male horse.”

  Alex remembered Hawksworth as a child, though the word small had not seemed to apply even then. Then there was that growing something prodding her in the night, and standing as if at attention beneath his dressing gown this morning, which did seem to be very much like…

  So much became clear to Alex of a sudden that she gasped. “But a man cannot possibly grow as long as a horse?”

  “Well how the blazes would I know?” Claude spoke with utter disgust for her ignorance. “I hoped you would tell me.”

  That absurdity sent Alex into peels of laughter.

  “However long it might become,” the precocious teen said, giggling as well. “I would not know what in Hades to do with it, if it were dancing before my eyes.”

  Alex composed herself as she straightened the pleats in her skirt. “I shall tell you when you are older,” she said, which set off a further bout of merriment between them. “Gad, what an inappropriate conversation.”

  “Outrageous,” Claude agreed. “But nothing half so scandalous as the five thousand pounds you accepted from Chesterfield. How could you Alex? And what in heaven’s name did you use it for?”

  Alex sat straighter. “My reason is not your concern.
That I took it, and why, is between me and Chesterfield.”

  Claudia narrowed her eyes and turned a becoming shade of envy-green. “Besides your promise, were you forced to give Judson anything else in exchange?”

  “In exchange for what, pray tell?”

  “Uncle Bryce!”

  ELEVEN

  ALEX AND CLAUDIA exclaimed in shock as Hawk walked in on their conversation about the money that Alex owed Judson. Claudia shot to her feet. “In exchange for, ah, dancing lessons,” Claude said.

  Alex released the breath she had been holding.

  Hawk’s jaw set and he leaned more heavily on his cane.

  “I mean, you know, how to act when one dances. Chesterfield taught Alex,” Claude said. “And she was supposed to teach me—for when a man asks me to dance, if ever one does. I need to learn everything, and not just about dancing. I have just been asking questions, which Alex has been trying, and failing, to answer. Is that Bea calling?” Claude curtseyed and ran from the room.

  “What was that about?” Hawk asked, seating himself opposite Alex.

  “She has been asking questions is all, just as she said, things a young woman is curious about, and she was embarrassed that you walked in on us.”

  “I see. I see, also, that your swain has left.”

  “Do not mock him. Chesterfield was here because he was worried about me. Please remember that he would have rescued everyone in this house by marrying me, which he was very well aware of, and willing to do, anyway. If you had not survived, he would have made me a good husband, as I would have made him a good wife.”

  “But I did survive.”

  “Yes you did.”

  “I am sorry, Alex, not so much for surviving as for every selfish thing I have ever done or said to you, including today, especially today.” Hawk cringed. “Perhaps I should apologize in advance for my every half-witted remark or action of the future as well.”

  Alex rose and went to look out the window. “Do you feature a ride about the grounds this morning, to view the property?”

  “First, you must forgive me, then you must break your fast, then we will take that ride.”

  “You are right. I should eat something.”

  Hawk sighed. “Eat then, after which we can tour the estate. He hooked his cane on his left arm, and took her on his right. They went to the kitchen, where their appearance together seemed to cheer the servants.

  Hawk met Mrs. Parker, who served as both cook and housekeeper.

  “Welcome home, your grace.” The woman bobbed a curtsey.

  Hawk accepted a cup of coffee while Alex took toast and tea. “Have you spoken to your solicitor about your cousin and heir?” she asked. “The last I saw, Baxter was carrying on and spending money as if he might run through your fortune in a fortnight.”

  “I did speak to my solicitor, but not to my father’s, who is the man that matters. My own agrees with you, however, that Baxter is like to squander it all. At least there is still Hawksridge. As far as the estate and title reverting to me, all possible petitions have been filed. It simply remains for them to be approved, signed and sealed, which, as you know, could take years, especially with my father’s solicitor having passed away as well, and his heir off in Scotland at the moment. Meanwhile, Baxter, himself, seems to be gallivanting in the American colonies.”

  “Let us hope he gets stranded there.” Alex sipped her tea. “We are no worse off than we were.” Her expression softened when she regarded him, almost in wonder, as if seeing him for the first time, and incredibly happy about it, despite his earlier thoughtlessness. “We are, in fact, a great deal better off than we have been for some time.”

  Hawk remained silent, afraid she was wrong and would soon realize it. That he had saved her from a dire fate and thwarted Chesterfield into the bargain, always a pleasure, was the best that had come of his return. What he feared most was that they had not even imagined the worst. “Ready for that ride?”

  Alex rode Buttercup, a sorrel mare she had raised, herself, which served double-duty on the home farm. Since Hawk’s Arabian now belonged to Baxter, Hawk rode one of the field horses, Bumptious, a robust, light bay with three white stockings. A sad day for the horse set. If anyone from Tattersall’s saw him, Hawk thought, he would be forced to resign his membership in the Jockey Club.

  Nevertheless, it was a fine, dry day for a ride, almost sunny, in fact. Bright enough for him to spot every cracked and broken window. Clear enough to see the gothic molding on the east tower as it fell to earth with a resounding crash, narrowly missing a mongrel that dashed away squealing, tail between its legs.

  Once upon a young and selfish time, Hawk mused, he might have dashed away, himself, from this primitive and destitute situation in which he found himself—in name, in holdings, even in his own physical aspect.

  Yet he could not look at Alex without realizing how very fortunate he would be, despite present circumstances, if he were worthy of her. In his weaker moments, Hawk wished to the devil that he had not sworn on his honor as a gentleman to set her free. But he had, and he must. He would not let her down this time, as he had let them all down when he abandoned them. He would not.

  Hawk returned his attention to a perusal of the estate and pondered the ways and means by which it could be improved. For the safety of his family, the house itself needed immediate attention.

  Given the clarity of the day, the damage seemed even worse. Paint peeled from molding, where molding existed. Bricks lay scattered on the ground, having fallen away in clusters. The manse looked as if a giant beast had gnawed upon it, taking several large bites from its corners.

  As they rode, they saw deer feeding in flower gardens and wild ducks swimming in the huge bowl of a broken fountain. Ivy crawled along every surface of the house, and in some places, it had made its way inside.

  At the bottom of the drive, near the gate, the sky shone bright upon the surprising sight of Alexandra’s Aunt Hildy leaving the abandoned gatehouse in the most furtive of manners.

  Without words or conscious thought, he and Alex slowed their mounts and stepped within the trees, until Hildy passed. When they made to exit their cover, there came his uncle Gifford, out the same door, so over-easy in his gait and manner that he, too, caused suspicion.

  As one, Hawk and Alex backed their mounts into the trees and waited for Giff to pass, as well, whistling, of all things.

  Hawk saw his surprise reflected in Alex’s expression. “What do you make of that?” she asked.

  “Ah, I had rather not conjecture.”

  Her eyes widened before she shook her head, dismissing whatever notion entered it, and Hawk wordlessly followed her onto the drive.

  Huntington tenants, he found, were few, but those in residence were hard workers, respectful, and protective of their mistress. Clearly, they adored Alex. Of him, however, they seemed to be reserving judgment, though most had the mistaken notion that he was some kind of war hero—another of Alexandra’s tales, Hawk feared.

  Still most tenants had suggestions as to how he could alleviate his wife’s burdens by taking them over as soon as may be, and they were absolutely right.

  “Perhaps when we get back to the house, you will allow me to go over the accounts,” Hawk said. “I may be able to find ways to improve the property and increase its yield.”

  “I neither know how, nor do I have the time, to keep accounts, so there are no books to look over.”

  “But, Alex, you must.”

  “My father never did.”

  “Which is precisely why the Lodge and estate are near ruin and have lost so much money.”

  “Well, there is no money now to lose,” she snapped as she turned her horse. “So keeping books matters not a whit.”

  “Alex, wait.”

  She slowed her mount. “Perhaps you think you can do a better job than I have?”

  Hawk slowed as well, and they trod along side by side. “Only in keeping accounts,” he said. “Those I will do better, for you ne
ver did them at all. But for the rest, given your obvious monetary restrictions, I am in awe of your accomplishments.”

  Alex reined in her mare to overlook the property at the estate’s highest vantage point.

  Hawk pulled up beside her. “You deserve commendation with thanks.”

  Alex nodded, grudgingly acknowledging the compliment.

  “There, down at the home farm,” Hawk said, “who are those workers in the field?”

  “Uncle Giff is collecting the last of the summer vegetables, Claudia and Beatrix are weeding.”

  “Good Lord. By themselves?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Aunt Hildegarde is catching the winged and multi-legged insects that eat the vegetation, and Nanny is helping by eating them.”

  Hawk opened his mouth, but no words came forth.

  Alex laughed. “They do not usually work alone. I am generally there working beside them.”

  Bryce regarded her, as if she had turned green. “What have I done to you?”

  “You have done nothing. I am grateful for our present situation.”

  “Grateful?”

  “To the lad who rescued you.”

  “Ah, Gaston. A good lad, if a bit misguided.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Ten now, I think.”

  “A baby? Robbing corpses?”

  “A baby trying to survive. As are we all. Along that line, I have been thinking that besides keeping the accounts and managing the estate, I can also do most of the required repairs to the buildings, inside and out, I believe.”

  “What we really need,” Alex said, regarding him from the corners of her unexpectedly mischievous eyes, “is someone to repair the roof.”

  Hawk’s bark very nearly resembled mirth. “Roof climbing is out, at least for the moment. And do not say that you will do it, yourself, for I will not allow it.”

  “Actually Beatrix is desirous of that position, the monkey.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “My exact words. For the nonce, then, all leaks must simply… leak.”

  Bryce nodded. “Unfortunately. How are we set for funds, Alex? Is there any money at all?”