Midnight Scandals

by Courtney Milan

  “I can’t make this right.” Her voice was low.

  “Maybe,” he suggested, “if you tell me everything that happened…”

  “I—” She choked on the remaining words. Her shoulders trembled. Her breathing grew even more ragged, and she pulled her arms around her, swaying from side to side. “It was—”

  If this was an act, she had incredible control over her body. Tremors passed through her in waves, too swift to be manufactured. She let out another shaky breath, and looked over at him. “Can’t you just…take me,” she asked, “so that I no longer have to fear the worst?”

  Whatever his body might have preferred, the word fear killed the remainder of his desire. “I don’t take women to bed who are dreading the experience,” he said bitterly.

  She lied to you. She stole. She cheated. She’s hiding something, and she’s using her body to do it.

  All quite possibly true. But he hadn’t lied to her earlier when he said that he saw systems. And this one—his understanding of Mary—no longer seemed to hang together. It was a mess of discordant notes, of impossibilities and unlikelihoods. It was a tangle of lust and—as he watched her shoulders heave under the weight of his blanket—unfortunate affection, diluted by a good measure of anger.

  He didn’t know anything any longer.

  She had never seemed so impossibly far away as she did at that moment—naked, and two feet away from him. He could have had her body, but Mary herself—whoever she was—had vanished. And for the first time, he realized that this wasn’t just about the money. It was about the truth. About the words she’d said that still smarted.

  I don’t love you.

  “Come,” he said. “It’s late, and we’re both rather worked up. Get dressed, and I’ll see you back to Doyle’s Grange. We’ll talk on the morrow. And, Mary…”

  She looked up at him.

  He held out his hand. “Stop dreading. This is me we’re talking about. I should think you’d know me better than this.”

  Chapter Five

  MORNING CAME, AND WITH IT a full slate of duties for John. Yesterday’s digging had brought a new round of chores, none of them interesting. The tile drains that had been installed in the upper fields years ago were laid too shallow. They’d cracked, and were poorly positioned besides. Supervising their replacement would take weeks. He would have resented the time twenty-four hours ago; now, he suspected he would need every extra day to try to entangle the business of Mary.

  As he plodded along the hill, just under the line of trees, he had to wonder how Mary fared on the other side. Had she been caught, returning to the house at the dead of night?

  And more importantly…

  He took a shovel from one of the men, more than happy to throw himself into physical labor. But the repetitive motion didn’t distract him from his thoughts; instead, it focused them, bouncing them off one another in a repeating echo in his head.

  Mary’s behavior last night had left him with a welter of emotions. Anger. Sadness. Physical lust so powerful that he’d had to take care of himself not once, but twice after she’d left. He’d been so surprised—and so randy—that he’d not had time to consider what her actions meant. But now, with nothing to do but shovel dirt, he considered. And slowly, over the course of the ever-growing ditch, he grew suspicious.

  He might think a great many ill things about Mary. But if she’d been the sort to try to cloud his mind by offering up her body, wouldn’t she have tried it back in Southampton? He might explain her behavior by calling her an amoral, greedy slut—but if she truly had been one, wouldn’t she have found it more profitable to throw herself at him eighteen months ago?

  If she’d been able to fake that careful, innocent unfurling of passion that they’d begun to explore during their betrothal, she could easily have inveigled him into marriage. He’d been loath to let her go, and so enamored of her that a touch, a kiss, an entreaty would have bought her everything.

  But she hadn’t even asked. She’d fled to this—a life of demeaning service.

  And then there was the matter of her eyes—the way she’d set forth her plan to provide compensation in the form of her person. Nothing about her history—born into a well-to-do family, pampered, showered with affection and cosseted at every turn—would have brought her to his bed in that way.

  The girl he had once known wouldn’t even have considered offering her body. Not only had she not known such desperation, it wouldn’t have crossed her mind to see herself as currency. To see it so much that she’d begged him to take her, to free herself of debt.

  No. There were no two ways about it. If the Mary he had known—the sweet, sheltered girl who had loved to play the pianoforte—had become this woman, it was because something had happened between now and the time he’d last seen her.

  In these last eighteen months, someone had done a grave harm to Mary. His fists clenched around his shovel at the thought; he slammed the tool into the ground with such force that it clanged against the old tile a foot beneath the soil.

  Maybe she had brought it on herself.

  But he couldn’t believe it. Even if she’d lied and cheated and stolen, it wouldn’t justify what he’d seen last night.

  She’d been willing to offer him her body in exchange for his silence. What threat could he make that would wrest the truth from her? Nothing he would consider doing to her was as bad as what she’d been willing to do to herself. No, if he wanted to have the full truth from her, he wasn’t going to get it by yelling and blustering.

  “God damn it,” he swore.

  “Your pardon, sir?” They’d dug far enough to reposition new tile, John realized. And he’d spoken aloud. The laborer who stood next to him was frowning in consternation.

  “Ah, nothing.” He stared up the hill, at the cottage he couldn’t see. “I think, though, that I have…”

  Why was he making excuses to this man? The laborer was used to working with Beauregard, who couldn’t see fit to bestir himself from his house before nine in the morning.

  “I have other things to see to,” he said. “Up until we hit that little rise up there—just dig up the old, and lay the new flat. I’ll want to look it over, before it’s covered again.”

  A grunt was his only reply.

  He didn’t need more. He left to wash his hands—and to make his way up the hill to find some answers.

  IT WAS A MORNING precisely like yesterday morning: The sun was hot in the sky, breakfast was spread on the table, and Mary sat in the shade of the rowan.

  It all felt fragile and unreal to her, as if her mouth were full of cotton. As if she were encased in a bubble of false, cozy normalcy, and the slightest pinprick would send her crashing down.

  “Falls of lace,” Lady Patsworth was saying, “thrice gathered over undersleeves of brocaded silk—”

  Sir Walter stopped abruptly. “What in blazes is he doing here?”

  Mary looked up. There was her pinprick—not just one, but a dozen vicious points of cold, pressing into her skin. John Mason was coming up the road; she could see him over the low hedge.

  She wasn’t sure whether what had happened the previous night had been ill luck or good. In the firm light of day, she wasn’t even sure it had really transpired. She remembered the events of the evening as if she’d read them in a story—as if they’d occurred in some strange, distant person’s life. Another woman; not her. But John was coming. It had really happened to her.

  Ill luck. It had all been ill luck. She had no idea how Sir Walter would take the news that John had to deliver. The truth of what she’d done last night would get her sacked, and no magistrate would listen to her claim for back wages if they heard that sordid tale. Without realizing what she was doing at first, she closed her hand around the silver teaspoon by her plate, hiding it away in her fist, as if she might secret it in the folds of her skirts.

  Don’t be a fool. Of all the things you are, at least you’re not a thief. Not yet.

  Sir Walter stood as J
ohn came up to the garden gate, and moved to put himself between the table and the intruder.

  “Mr. Mason,” he said in clipped tones. “How may I be of assistance?”

  He was standing in the way. She couldn’t see John’s face, with Sir Walter standing there. Was he angry? Or did he think that what transpired last night was a mere amusement? She could just imagine that smile she’d once adored creeping up. This time, though, the joke would be on her.

  “I noted the good care you took of your ladies yesterday.”

  If the morning hadn’t been so silent, Mary might not have made out John’s reply. She concentrated, so as to catch every word.

  “I don’t know if the women of your household go out walking,” he said, “but I’ll be directing laborers on the neighboring field for the next few days. You might want to have them turn away from the west, if you would.”

  Sir Walter rubbed his hand against his head, a gesture that Mary recognized as confusion. She felt similarly dazed. He wasn’t going to disclose what had happened?

  Stop dreading. He couldn’t have meant it, though. Not really.

  John continued. “I’ve heard from Beauregard that you’re protective in that regard, so I thought I’d pass along the information.”

  “Thank you,” Sir Walter said. “It was most considerate of you to bring that message.”

  “We’ll be tromping around in the trees near the windbreak until sunset—and possibly after.” She still couldn’t see him, with the gate and Sir Walter in the way. But he’d said last night that they would talk. Clearly this was his way of letting her know when and where. Not a reprieve, then. A temporary cease-fire.

  “Sunset is quite late,” Sir Walter said.

  “I don’t believe in wasting good daylight. The sooner I can get my people away from your boundaries, the happier I think we shall all be.”

  “Indeed,” Sir Walter said. “And really—you are a good fellow. Better than I gave you credit for at first. My apologies.”

  “How could you know?” came the reply. “I might have been anyone. One can never be too careful these days. I must take myself off—I’ve still a good bit left to be done today.”

  John took a step away—so that Sir Walter stopped occluding him—and Mary got her first good look at him. He looked…tired. His hair was rumpled, and the ends of his cravat had come untucked. But when he met her eyes, they didn’t seem implacable, as they had yesterday. They’d softened. “Ladies,” he said, “I trust the morning finds you well?”

  Mary froze, unsure whether a response would be allowed. Whether she should look away from him, or look at him. But even over this distance, even though she couldn’t really see the expression in his eyes, she felt caught up in the net of his gaze. She looked down swiftly.

  “Lady Patsworth?” Sir Walter asked. “Do speak.”

  “Tolerable,” the lady returned. “It is dreadfully hot, but the fashion pages are a comfort to me.”

  John nodded, as if that response made sense. “And you, Miss Chartley?”

  Mary’s lungs burned. She focused her gaze on the teaspoon that she had not stolen, clenched in her fist.

  “Go ahead,” Sir Walter said, his eyes flat on her. “You may address him.”

  John didn’t flicker an eyelash at that. But his very lack of reaction gave him away.

  You need his permission to speak to me?

  She did. It was one of the first rules she’d learned. She wasn’t to communicate with anyone outside the household unless she had his explicit approval. For her safety, he said. Always for her safety. He would know who might use her badly. She’d been naked on top of John last night, but today, in the dim light of morning, with him seeing the poor, helpless thing that Sir Walter had made of her, she felt truly exposed. She couldn’t win. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t even draw breath to ask for help.

  And now John, of all people, knew.

  “As you can see,” Mary said to her teaspoon, “I am perfectly well. Sir Walter would never allow anything to happen to me.”

  Maybe, if she didn’t acknowledge the obvious, it wouldn’t exist.

  But John tipped his hat at Lady Patsworth. “I wish you all continued health,” he said. “Sir Walter. Lady Patsworth.”

  He didn’t say her name in farewell. But he caught her eye—just for a second—and he gifted her with a glimmer of a smile.

  Her heart came to a halt. For one moment, she felt like the naive, foolish girl she’d once been, giddy simply because a handsome man grinned at her. She felt the weight of all her worries lift, buoyed away temporarily by the curve of his lips.

  She hadn’t realized how much she’d come to dread everything about her life until she forgot to fear for one second. But then he turned away, and she was left to stare after him, blinking, uncertain of what had just transpired between them.

  Chapter Six

  IT WAS TEN IN THE EVENING when John finally saw Mary’s slim figure separate itself from the back garden gate.

  From there, she picked her way across the meadow, toward the place where he waited in the shadow of the trees. The windbreak wasn’t a proper wood—just a section of steep, rocky soil that followed the slope of the hill, one that would have been almost impossible to cultivate.

  Maybe that’s why nobody had bothered to cut down the little coppice of oaks. It was a wild, stony stretch of land, not quite an acre in size. The trees were stunted by the soil; their lowest branches scarcely topped John’s head. The ground underneath his boots was rough with assorted pebbles and carpeted with a thick blanket of granny’s nightcap.

  Mary looked one way, and then the other, as she approached where he stood.

  “Mary,” he said softly, as she came to the trees.

  Her eyes swiveled in his direction; she frowned, until she made him out.

  “Is this going to cause trouble for you, if Sir Walter discovers your absence?”

  She paused. Too long; as if she’d heard the question he hadn’t asked.

  “He doesn’t look in on me at night,” she said. “He’s too busy watching his wife.”

  There was something ugly there. He’d seen it the first day, even if he hadn’t untangled it. Even when all looked well on the surface, something about Sir Walter simply smelled wrong. But she held her head high and met his gaze, as if challenging him to ask for particulars.

  “Come,” he said, holding out his arm. “Walk with me.”

  She balked.

  “We mustn’t be seen from the house. Or anywhere else.”

  “We’ll walk amongst the trees,” he said. “It’s not a lot of space, but we could stroll back and forth.”

  She didn’t say anything. She didn’t take his arm. But when he took a tentative step, she matched his pace.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Ask your questions. I suppose you deserve answers, if nothing else.”

  He wanted answers. He didn’t think he was going to get them, though. Even if she’d wanted to explain everything, he could see the slight tremor in her shoulders. He could hear the uneasiness in her voice. Last night, he’d asked and she’d choked, unable to even get the words out.

  There were, as he saw it, two possibilities. First, she’d been badly hurt—so badly, that she could scarcely bring herself to speak about it. Second, she was lying to him with such brazen deceit that he could trust nothing out of her mouth. In either case, interrogation would get him nothing useful.

  “The money is gone,” he said slowly. “Spent.”

  “Yes.”

  Perhaps it was not so. Perhaps she lied still. But if she did, he was willing to bet that she lied out of fear, not greed. If he wanted the truth, more threats would only heighten her fear.

  He shrugged, pretending nonchalance. “Then I don’t see the point of asking any further questions.”

  He’d get his answers by a more indirect route.

  A slice of moonlight drifted through the tree limbs, touching her lips with silver. She opened her mouth to speak, then c
losed it. Opened it again, then shut it once more. “Then why did you insist on seeing me tonight?”

  “Today, when I came by, Sir Walter said something that made me think.”

  “Oh?” Her tone was flat.

  “It made me think,” he said, “that you might be in need of a friend.”

  “A friend,” she repeated.

  “Yes, a friend. You had a good number of them once—you were always with the other young ladies, talking and laughing.”

  She turned away and strode deeper into the windbreak. “Friends gossip and swap stories,” she tossed over her shoulder. “They don’t claim friendship just to get the other person to answer questions. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather we not pretend.”

  He felt a stab of guilt at that, but pressed on.

  “We were friends once.”

  “We were betrothed.”

  “We were friends,” he snapped. “We talked of music and books and—” And a future that some part of him still wished they had together. “—And my ambitions,” he finished lamely. “Do you want me to beg? I’ve missed you.”

  He had only thought to put her at ease, but those words came too easily to be entirely false. “I missed you,” he repeated, “and of all the things that most enraged me about your departure, that was the worst—all those moments when I made a note of something I had to tell you, only to remember seconds later that I couldn’t any longer.”

  She looked up at him. “Oh, John,” she said, her voice weary. “I am sorry.”

  Maybe she didn’t mean it. Maybe she was just trying to put him off. But no matter how he tried, he wanted to believe she’d meant those three simple words. Her apology caught at his heart.

  Stupid, bloody heart.

  This wasn’t about his feelings. It was about the truth—about convincing her to trust him with the full story. So that if her father had taken everything and abandoned her, John would know where to find his nephew’s money. This was about nothing more than that—letting her feel safe enough to finally tell him everything.