Wickedly Ever After

  “Where do you think you’re going?” her assailant growled. It was a very familiar voice. Athena stopped struggling, and the man loosened his hold.

  She whirled around and gasped. “Marshall! You scared the life out of me! What the hell are you doing here?”

  His lips flattened. “I rode in to Endsleigh to see you. I was hardly surprised you weren’t there. Your grandfather told me where you’d gone. And that you’d stormed out of the house before he could stop you.”

  “Well, you can go back and tell him you found me. Goodbye.”

  “Just a moment. You mean to tell me that you are seriously thinking of berating that reporter?”

  “You have a firm grasp of the obvious.”

  “And just what do you intend to say?”

  “Before or after his funeral?”

  He chuckled. “By God, your sharp mouth alone could win England the war. I should set you loose on the local abattoir.”

  Athena rolled her eyes and turned to leave the alley, but she was halted by Marshall’s hand on her arm.

  “Not so fast. I want a word with you first.”

  “Not now, Marshall.”

  “Precisely now. Come with me.” Marshall took her hand and pulled her toward the coaching inn Athena’s stage had just pulled in to from the country.

  The Mount Olympus was the largest coaching inn in London and the tallest building on Delphin Street. In addition to the pub on the ground floor, there were two floors for bedchambers. A large brick fireplace, big enough for a man to stand in, was roasting a side of beef. The pleasing aroma filled the room.

  Marshall led her to a small table in the pub. He ordered some beef stew for them both, and then focused his full attention on Athena.

  “I can understand your anger. There wasn’t a shred of truth in that salacious article. But poleaxing Edward Nance, despite the pleasure it would give us both, is not the answer. It will just give him fodder for his next article.”

  She crossed her arms. “All right, then. What do you propose I do? Accept this injustice?”

  “Of course not.”

  “What then?”

  He stared at his clasped fists. “I don’t know. But there are deeper issues connected to this article than at first glance. I suspected Lord Rutherford of being Nance’s source, but now I’m not so sure. Lord Rutherford profits nothing from closing down the school or ruining you. So who does?”

  “What does it matter? Nance wrote the article. He can bloody well print a retraction!”

  At the next table sat two people: a man with a large mustache, and a woman with a smaller one. The woman looked over at them, aghast. Marshall sharpened his blue-eyed gaze on Athena. “Keep your voice down.”

  She brought her tirade down to a whisper. “I’m just so frustrated with all of this. That man printed up lies . . . and I don’t want him to make away with demolishing all of us.”

  “But you have to understand that his hand is not the only one against us. Someone put him up to this. Do you have any other enemies?”

  “No! None whatsoever.” Athena reflected. “You don’t suppose it could have been Calvin or the duchess?”

  He wrung his clasped hands, their rough texture making a papery sound. “I’m not sure. What do they stand to gain by exposing you?”

  Athena didn’t get a chance to answer. She was distracted by murmurs at a nearby table where a group of five women sat. There was a newspaper in front of them, and their disapproving faces were comparing Athena’s face to the image on the front page. Athena fixed her sight upon them. They said nothing.

  But the woman with the mustache at the next table said what the others did not. “Shameless slattern.”

  Athena’s eyes flew open, the air in her lungs escaping her. Shocked, she turned to the table of women, who smiled in vulgar gratification.

  She reeled from the table, and made for the door.

  “Athena, wait!” Marshall cried out, as he hurried to pull some coins from his money pouch. “Sir,” he said to the mustachioed man, “see to it that you govern your wife’s tongue, or you may find yourself facing the end of a blade in a duel because of her lack of restraint.”

  Marshall ran after Athena, finally catching up to her at the end of the street. Tears streamed down her face. He wrapped his arms around her.

  “Don’t cry,” he said gently over her sobs. “Athena, please stop.”

  “I can’t help it.” Her words were muffled by his warm chest. “That horrible woman was right.”

  “Of course she wasn’t. She doesn’t know the truth.”

  “But everybody thinks I put men in my employ for sexual congress.”

  “It isn’t true.”

  “But it is. I paid you, didn’t I?”

  His chest started to shake with laughter. “So you did. But I’ll let you in on a secret. I would have done it for free.”

  His playful jest couldn’t bore through her dismay. “You oughtn’t to be seen with me, you know. There’s no sense in both of us enduring the humiliation. For your own sake, you should cut me loose.”

  Gripping her arms firmly, he drew her attention to his face. “I will never—never—cut you loose.”

  The memory of his chilling story aboard ship floated back from his determined stare. His eyes told her . . . there was no price too great to save those he wished to protect.

  His kiss snuffed out a sob . . . her very last.

  The parlor room at Willett House was a cozy nest, and the room breathed of Hester’s warm touches. The dressed limestone walls of the old house were elsewhere covered in plaster, but not here in Hester’s parlor where the fawn-colored walls were draped with decorative russet curtains and Hester’s own needlepoint. Its detailed vaulted ceiling was painted in royal blue with small gold diamonds. A long sofa and two comfortable chairs were arranged near a roaring fire.

  “I’m so sorry I got you into this mess, Hester,” Athena said for the fourth time since she and Marshall had arrived. “I had no idea anything like this would ever happen.”

  Hester shook her head. “If it’s any consolation to you, I suspected very strongly that this would happen.”

  That comment earned her a puzzled look from Thomas, who sat in the chair opposite Marshall. “Then that begs the question . . . why did you do it?”

  “Because, Thomas, I believed the rewards outweighed the risks.”

  Marshall crossed his legs. “A strategy every good captain must subscribe to before entering battle.”

  Thomas set down his wine glass. “But this school can hardly be considered battle.”

  “Oh, but it is,” countered his wife. “Athena had proposed to rescue these women from a fate of disgrace and loneliness by helping them to become aware of their own ability to attract a man, an objective that she met with considerable success. The dangers she had to brave were many.”

  Athena shook her head. “Hester, you make me sound like a hero.”

  “And so you are. If not to the rest of the world, then to me.”

  Her cheeks colored. “But I’ve failed our students utterly. They’re going to be ostracized, just as we’ll be. I let all of you down.”

  “Not yet, you haven’t. We are not done fighting.”

  Athena marveled at Hester’s pluck as she rose and went to her writing table. She picked up a stack of letters and brought them to the tea table. “These are letters that were delivered today. From our students or their families, demanding answers. It is to them we owe an answer. Before we answer the public.”

  Athena picked up the sheaf of letters. “I don’t know what to tell them.”

  “The answer will come. But first we must play a game of chess to determine our future, at all times thinking several moves ahead of our opponent.”

  “But if the adversary is a dishonest press, what do you propose we do?” said Thomas.

  She smirked at her husband. “We cheat.”

  They talked through dinner, during dessert, and into brandies and sherries. Th
ey discussed—and discarded—several courses of action. Finally, Hester suggested a bold gambit that was in equal parts risky and promising. But even though they tried to analyze every move and countermove, the variables were far too uncertain. It was a gamble, but then again, the rewards outweighed the risks.

  “I don’t think I can do it,” said Athena. “I just can’t see myself being called awful names over and over. I don’t want to have to deal with that ever again.”

  “Athena—” began Marshall, but Hester halted him.

  “Athena, you must know what you’re up against. People will despise and ridicule you, and those that don’t hurl insults at you will shun you. But I will be standing right beside you. We will show them all what women are truly made of.”

  With Hester’s support, what started in Athena as resignation turned into acquiescence. Little by little, she found the courage to once again become headmistress of the School for the Womanly Arts.

  It was nearly midnight by the time that Athena and Marshall started to leave Willett House. It was an indecent hour for an unmarried lady to be out, but Athena could hardly consider herself anything but indecent anymore. She was anxious and weary, and she wanted more than anything to return to Scotland, far away from all that awaited her in London in the days to come.

  “Thank you both for dinner,” said Marshall. “Perhaps the next time we dine together, we’ll have jollier things to talk about. Tomorrow will be a difficult day for all. And I think, Athena, that you and I should also make an impromptu visit on the Duchess of Twillingham.”

  “Why?” asked Hester.

  “It’s about Kildairon. I want to ask her just how she knew about the gold there.”

  Thomas’s gray eyebrows drew together. “Hester told me about the nuggets you found in the brook in Scotland. But I’m curious . . . what does the Duchess of Twillingham have to do with your gold?”

  Athena closed her eyes. “It’s a long story. And we shouldn’t keep you up any longer.”

  “Of course,” he responded. “Let me see you both to the door. The duchess seems to be amassing a fair collection of gold these days.”

  Marshall stopped in his tracks. “What do you mean?”

  Thomas shrugged. “Just a bit of gossip I heard at Almack’s last year. One of the tenant farmers on the duchess’s Lancashire estate had fallen behind on his rent. Her man up there had accepted as payment a small gold nugget from him, and that’s what was used to pay the duchess. The whisper was that the man had stolen it from the tooth of a cadaver, but no one knows for sure. Still, he’s been making his payments ever since in gold. Digging up corpses just to plunder their mouths seems a horrid way to earn a living, if you ask me. I should stick to farming.”

  Marshall and Athena exchanged a knowing glance. “I don’t suppose you happened to have heard if this tenant farmer was Scottish,” he asked.

  Thomas shook his head. “Can’t say for certain. Come to think of it . . . yes. The ladies I heard the gossip from had teasingly christened the man ‘MacGraverobber.’ ”

  Marshall looked at Athena. “So that’s how the duchess learned about the gold in Kildairon . . . one of her farmers must have stumbled upon the find. Once he started paying his debts to her in gold, she got suspicious and made him confess how he found the nuggets.” His jaw tensed. “I think it’s safe to assume that Her Grace has known about your little gold stash for some time.”

  Anger in Athena surged, but it was not directed at the Duchess of Twillingham. It was aimed at Calvin Bretherton. Despite all that had happened, she had still been unwilling to believe that Calvin was romancing her just to get his hands on Kildairon. She foolishly still harbored hope that Calvin had, in his own distorted way, nurtured feelings for her. But now it was a certainty . . . he was the duchess’s puppet to rob Athena of her only inheritance.

  Calvin’s feigned love had made her feel like a queen. But in truth, she had only been a pawn.

  She exhaled her shame. Even pawns can topple the king.

  TWENTY-SIX

  It was nine o’clock in the morning when Athena knocked on the door of Calvin Bretherton’s London town house. It did not matter that Countess Cavendish’s book of rules prohibited visits at breakfast, and unmarried ladies visiting gentlemen alone. As far as she was concerned, Countess Cavendish could take his rules and shove them right up his arse.

  A surprised butler with a weathered face and bowed legs answered the door. Athena pushed her way past him. “I’m here to see Lord Stockdale. Where might I find him?”

  “I shall see if he’s at home. Whom shall I say is calling?”

  “I’ll tell him myself.” She went to the first door she found and looked inside.

  “Miss, if you’d care to wait in the study—”

  But he had to finish the sentence at her retreating back as she opened and closed two more doors. The butler protested vociferously but he was too old to catch up to her impassioned search. She ascended the stairs faster than his curved legs could let him pursue.

  She flung open a bedroom door. Calvin was inside, lying in a rumpled bed. He sat up, blinking in shock at her.

  Athena was unprepared for the sight before her. He was naked from the waist up, and his body was just as enthralling as the statues of Roman gods she had seen at the museum. Miles of muscle lined his arms, which hung on a wide chest dense with light brown hair. The shadowy beard that darkened his chin, together with the explosion of golden hair tousled from sleep, gave him a savage look. It was a vision she had daydreamed about many times, yet now it left her cold.

  The wheezing butler toddled in from the corridor. “Sir, I tried to eject her forcefully, but I had no wish to hurt her.”

  “Don’t blame him,” Athena said. “I’m too angry and Scottish for him to catch.”

  “It’s all right, Jansing. Let us have a moment alone.”

  Calvin regarded her intently as the butler closed the door. He pointed to a spot beside her. “Chair?”

  “So it is,” she replied.

  He sighed heavily, resigning himself to a hostile interview. “To what do I owe the pleasure? Am I right in thinking that you’ve chosen me over Captain Cuttlefish?”

  She smirked jadedly. “You’re the one with the preference for lovers who act like lady octopuses.”

  “I thought you’d forgiven me for that little indiscretion with Lady Ponsonby.”

  “I shall never forget the sight of the two of you together. If I could somehow scrub it from my mind, I would.”

  “Aren’t you a bit too old not to comprehend a simple act of sex?”

  “I don’t expect you to understand. If you knew what love I had for you, you’d realize how it forced me to live off only pieces of my heart.”

  He had the grace to look repentant. “I do know. And I’m sorry.”

  His expression of remorse dulled the blade of her anger. She raised her chin. “Are you also sorry for conspiring with the Duchess of Twillingham to marry me?”

  A look of guilt marred his handsome features. “How did you know about that?”

  The confession caused a stab of pain in her heart. “Does it matter?”

  Calvin stood up from the bed, tying the bedsheet securely around his waist. He approached her, seemingly growing taller and larger as he neared. His nearness sparked a mysterious flame in her heart that she wished weren’t there.

  “I never wanted you to find out, Athena. But the duchess . . . I found myself in a hole with her. You see, a couple of years ago I invested heavily in a rather risky American venture, and I borrowed a great deal of capital from the duchess. A lot of time has passed, and there haven’t been any returns. Nor, I fear, will there be. But she has demanded to be repaid, and I’ve been rather embarrassed financially of late. All of my assets are committed, and I haven’t the blunt to pay her back. She told me she would consider my debt paid in full if I would just marry you.”

  It was hard to keep the hurt from her face. “Just marry me?”

  He shrug
ged. “Well, that and transfer ownership of Kilkairnon.”

  She closed her eyes. “Kildairon.”

  “Right. Sorry. It wasn’t that I didn’t fancy you. But I just hated being manipulated into marriage.”

  She chuckled mirthlessly. “Did the duchess ever tell you why she wanted Kildairon for herself?”

  He nodded. “She said she wanted to pasture her sheep and goats there. She’s a rich woman. She has several thousand head of cattle too. I didn’t think you’d mind if I used it to pay my debt. I owe her twice as much as those few acres of mountain crag are worth. Besides, you didn’t seem to have much attachment to that land. As I recall, you rather belittled it.”

  “I see,” she remarked with asperity. “But I did have an attachment to my school. So why did you expose me to that journalist?”

  “What journalist?”

  “Nance, the man who scrawled those lies about my school in the Town Crier. Just because it was a bordello while in the possession of your onetime paramour, Lady Ponsonby, doesn’t make it a bordello still.”

  “Please don’t hold Lady Ponsonby against me, Athena. She means nothing to me.”

  “Is that so?” said a voice from the back of the room.

  Athena’s head jerked in the direction of the darkened doorway. A woman stepped into the doorframe, her naked body covered only in the muted sunlight from the shaded window. Large brown nipples covered her small, watery breasts, and her bony hips thinned over a large triangle of black hair.

  “Lady Ponsonby.” Her name felt like a curse on Athena’s lips.

  The woman sat on the bed, her back against the mahogany headboard, oblivious to her own nudity. “Or, as I am otherwise known, Lady Octopus.” She picked up a second glass on the bedside table, a detail Athena had missed completely. “Would that I had four more limbs to wrap around your precious lover.”

  In exasperation, Calvin flew to the bed. “Why didn’t you stay in the other room? Athena, I can explain.”