How to Survive a Scandal

by Samara Parish

  She rushed to him and buried her face in the soft linen of his cravat.

  Hesitantly, he stroked her hair. This was the most intimacy they’d shared throughout their entire courtship. Typically, it was a stiff embrace. The few times she’d pressed him for a kiss, it had been a perfunctory peck on the cheek.

  “Edward.” She sobbed. “What is happening? I don’t understand.” She took in rapid, shallow breaths that made her chest press against his. “I don’t know what”—gasp—“to do. Please tell me it isn’t true.”

  Looking up at him, she allowed one tear to roll down her cheek.

  “I just can’t,” he said, his voice catching.

  “But we can weather the gossip. You are the Duke of Wildeforde, and I am Lady Amelia Crofton. There won’t be a scandal if we forbid it, not one they’ll remember. You aren’t your father.”

  Edward stiffened before he pried her hands from his lapel and stepped back.

  “I can’t take that risk. It’s not just me I need to think about. I have my sister’s future to think of. My brother’s. God, my mother—”

  “Ugh, your mother. Your mother will be sour and spiteful regardless. She might as well have something to be sour over.”

  He shook his head, although whether it was at her comments or at the thought of the current duchess, she couldn’t tell.

  “Why did you do it?” he asked, as though the fight was lost, and he was trying to work out where it all went wrong. “Why leave London?”

  Every muscle tensed. Yes, she’d departed London in a madcap state—so hot with fury she hadn’t noticed the cold. But she was not responsible for this situation. How dare he insinuate that she was.

  “Why, Amelia?”

  “Miss Josephine Merkle announced her engagement. To Lord Cossington. I thought you would want to know,” she bit off.

  His brows knitted as though she’d spouted off some complex riddle. “Why would I want to know?”

  And there was the crux of their problem. He couldn’t see anything beyond his dry, demanding duty. Beyond managing his estates and serving in the House of Lords.

  “For goodness’ sake, Edward. I was annoyed. And embarrassed. Even Moany Merkle is getting married before me, and she only came out this year. I’m sick of waiting. I’ve been waiting for you my whole life. Just do it. Keep your word. Marry me.” She beat his chest with those last two words. He let her.

  “I’m sorry.” He refused to meet her gaze, fixating on the painting on the wall behind her. “I must think of my family. When you’re a duke, society holds you to a whole different level of standards.”

  She inhaled deeply, counting backward until she was sure a snarl wouldn’t erupt with the exhale.

  “Standards? I am the daughter of the Earl of Crofton. Our lineage goes back to the Normans. I can name every peer in Debrett’s as well as their conversation preferences. Ladies beg me to attend their balls. I’m not the most fashionable young lady. I am fashion. The Incomparable. The diamond. And you worry about standards?”

  Edward at least had the good sense to look ashamed. “I know Asterly. We haven’t been close lately, but he’ll do the honorable thing.”

  She struck at him, a soft thwap sounding as her hand connected with the padding of his waistcoat. “I’m more interested in you doing the honorable thing, you wretched cur.”

  Blood drained from Edward’s face, but he continued. “He’s a good man—a better one than me in many ways. And he’ll treat you well.”

  “He’s a country simpleton with the manners of a goat and the breeding of a donkey. You’d have me stuck out here in some godforsaken backwater, married to a mere mister and eating what, potatoes and blood pudding? Do commoners even drink tea?”

  There was a cough from the doorway. Edward’s face flushed red, and she knew immediately who was behind her.

  For heaven’s sake. A brief wave of mortification assailed her.

  “We commoners drink tea. Courtesy of the West Indies.”

  Chapter 3

  Benedict’s cheeks burned as he strode into Wilde’s study, the sharp-tongued harpy at his heels. The esteemed Duke of Wildeforde had escaped out the front door.

  Benedict had spent the day hammering steel sheets—a departure from his usual work with a sketchpad designing his steam engines. But he’d needed the thunk, thunk, thunk of a hammer. Needed to sap the fight from him until he had the exhausted acceptance of a man ready to meet his maker.

  A country simpleton with the manners of a goat and the breeding of a mule.

  The words blazed across his skin, a stinging reminder of decades-old insults. They could have been taken straight from his mother’s diary. Well, to hell with them both.

  The aristocracy could hang itself. He didn’t care a whit for its good opinions. To think he’d walked in with an intention to marry the ice princess. Now he was just here for the entertainment.

  Her father didn’t bother to stand as they entered. There was one chair opposite him, and Benedict took it, crossing his legs lazily. He plastered an apathetic smile on his face—a “go to hell” smile he’d not used since he was a bull-headed youth.

  Lady Amelia’s nostrils flared, but it was the only hint of anger she showed.

  Last night, she’d been pale, drab, disheveled. But this evening, awake and furious, she was striking.

  It wasn’t just her beauty that was arresting. No, it was the crisp intelligence in her emerald eyes that had him transfixed. Pinned down. It was the set of her jaw, delicate but determined. The straight back and squared shoulders that weren’t quite disguised by her soft, ladylike lines. That was why she was a force to be reckoned with. Why her reputation preceded her. She was too bullheaded to have it any other way.

  “Amelia, you don’t need to be here.” Her father dismissed her with an unsteady wave of his hand.

  “Because you’ve done such an excellent job in my absence?” She stood, arms akimbo, like a veritable Amazon.

  Her father’s hand tightened around the glass he was holding, the only sign he’d heard her. He fixed his gaze—as best a drunken man could—on Benedict. “Wildeforde has arranged for the special license. The wedding can proceed as planned on Sunday.”

  Benedict slouched farther down into the chair, trying to look detached and uninterested. “I’m unconvinced a wedding’s necessary.”

  The words were directed to Lord Crofton, but it was Lady Amelia’s response he was watching for.

  He wasn’t expecting the warm smile or satisfied nod she gave. “Mr. Asterly, on this we are agreed. Thank you for your time.”

  With that thorough dismissal, she turned to her father, her voice switching from friendly to cast-iron hard. “Now can we be done with this business and focus on bringing Edward around?”

  Benedict laughed. He couldn’t help it. She couldn’t honestly think she still had a chance with Wildeforde in the face of such a scandal? They’d been engaged for over a decade, and she still didn’t understand her fiancé’s fears. “He won’t marry you.” He reached over to the small table between them and poured himself a drink. Now that he’d decided he wasn’t going to marry her highness, the situation was almost enjoyable.

  “Pardon?” Her smile was no longer warm. How many men had shrunk under the force of her cool look? Too many if that had become her expectation.

  He sat up straighter. “He wouldn’t risk a scandal in order to marry the woman he actually loved. There’s no chance he’ll risk it out of some obligation to you. His family’s happiness means too much to him.”

  Lord Crofton lurched to his feet, stumbling. He bore down on Benedict with a fist raised. “Listen here, you mongrel. You are—”

  Benedict stood, and the older man stopped. He had nearly a foot on Crofton and no cause to be reasonable. “I am no longer half dead with cold. Nor am I inclined to put up with threats from a man so brandy-soaked he struggles to stand.”

  Lord Crofton’s eyes narrowed. Benedict could see him debate the pros and cons of throwing a
punch and hoped the pros would win. Smashing something would feel gratifying.

  Lady Amelia stepped between them, placing her palm firmly against Benedict’s chest.

  It was unexpected. Few men would put themselves in his path when he was angry. This willowy chit had a set of bollocks of her own. Even through the fabric of his waistcoat he could feel her hand—surprisingly hot for someone cold-blooded.

  She looked up at him, meeting his eyes, and for the first time, he saw a crack in that ruthless exterior. A hint of uncertainty. A trace of vulnerability.

  “Edward won’t marry me?” Her voice, quiet and direct, formed a winch around his heart and pulled.

  Perhaps she wasn’t so frigid and dispassionate. Perhaps it was a mask to hide her fragility. He’d been there. He understood.

  He shook his head. “I know him, better than most, and he would never have hurt you on purpose. But what he went through when his father died? That left a wound that won’t ever heal. He won’t put his family through that same anguish.”

  She took a deep breath, nodded, and walked across to the window. Good. He hated to see any woman cry.

  “Then you will have to,” her father said.

  It was arrogant and presumptuous and everything that was wrong with the aristocracy. To be dictated to—as if Benedict’s life was not his own, as if he had no agency—lit within him a dangerous furnace. “I don’t have to do anything. I am not your employee. I am not your subordinate. I do not answer to you.”

  Lord Crofton waved a hand, as though brushing off an insect or some other low-level irritant. “An honorable man would live up to his responsibilities.”

  Benedict could barely keep the rage from his voice. “I fail to see how I benefit from this arrangement.”

  Lady Amelia whirled to face him. If she’d been crying, there was no sign of it. Her green eyes flashed sharp and spiteful.

  Oh, there’s nothing fragile about you at all…

  She looked at him as if he were a chimney sweep asking to dance with a queen. “I am the daughter of the Earl of Crofton. You are a…man in a patched coat.”

  He crossed his arms, brushing the patches at each elbow with his rough, working man’s hands.

  “Marriage to me raises your standing to something almost acceptable in polite company,” she continued. Her words were the punishing thump of a blacksmith’s hammer.

  “Polite company? Out here in some godforsaken backwater?” he lashed out.

  She swallowed at her own words thrown back at her.

  “There isn’t much ‘polite’ company out here, princess. Other than Wildeforde, and somehow, I don’t see how marrying his fiancée is going to raise my standing with him. You have no use to me as a wife.”

  She brushed a nonexistent loose hair from her brow. “I can run a household of fifty servants. I can host the perfect tea party.”

  “Can you make tea?”

  She sputtered.

  “Can you light a furnace? Boil water? Cook a meal, mend a tear, clean a hearth?”

  She flinched at each word.

  “Do you have any skills at all?”

  “I am an excellent watercolorist,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Well, I’m sure that will come in handy.”

  He didn’t need a wife. And if he were forced into marriage, he wanted one who could help raise his sister to be a kind and useful woman, who wasn’t afraid to pitch in and get filthy next to everyone else on his estate.

  “You’ve made your bloody point.” Lord Crofton had collapsed back into the chair and was pouring yet another drink. “Ten thousand pounds if you marry her tomorrow.”

  Benedict’s throat constricted as if a noose were slowly drawing tight. If he married her, he was facing a lifetime of his father’s loneliness. If he didn’t marry her, she’d be ruined. He shouldn’t give a damn, but he did.

  “I want the same terms as Wildeforde.”

  “What?” his soon-to-be fiancée shrieked.

  Her father spat out the brandy in his mouth. “You grasping—”

  Benedict interrupted him. “He wouldn’t have accepted a penny less than thirty thousand. Your signature on paper will do.”

  Crofton swore and stumbled across the room to Wildeforde’s desk, where he pulled out paper from a drawer and began to scribble.

  Amelia stared at her father, incredulous. “What, no bonus if I successfully breed within a year? No extra compensation if my children are male? What if I run five furlongs in under a minute?” She turned to Benedict. “Would you like to see my teeth?”

  He sighed. Devil help him if he were making the wrong choice. “He made the same negotiations with Wildeforde. Would you be complaining if I were a duke?”

  “I would if he didn’t think to negotiate an allowance or have any money put aside for my own use in case you lose my dowry at the local fair bobbing for apples.”

  He bit the inside of his cheek to hold back a retort.

  Her father looked up at her. “Really, Amelia. Out here, what could you possibly do with an allowance?”

  She pressed her lips together. Then she turned away to stare out the window once again. Had those been tears in her eyes? Or an illusion?

  Her father thrust a scrawled note in front of him. He read it over slowly, folded it, and slid it into his jacket pocket.

  “Crofton, Lady Amelia. I will see you Sunday morning.”

  Snow was falling lightly outside, yet Amelia was ready to suffocate from the heat. The small church with its rough wooden pews was densely crowded, and the smell of unwashed bodies made her nauseous.

  It took every ounce of self-control she had not to pull at the fur collar of her coat or strip her hands of the white silk gloves.

  In front of her, Edward and his mother sat alone on the first pew—precisely where she and her father should be sitting. From the throbbing vein in her father’s neck, it was clear the snub was getting his temper up.

  She took a deep breath and turned her attention back to the pasty, bulbous man in front of her.

  It was a traditional Christmas sermon. The local clergyman talked on and on in a tone of voice that scraped like chalk on board.

  She ground her teeth.

  Looking dead ahead of her, she examined the back of Edward’s head. As she’d lain in bed the night before, she’d convinced herself that Edward was going to change his mind. They’d been engaged for more than a decade, since she was just a child; surely that counted for more than some fear of a little gossip.

  Those hopes faded when she’d entered the church. He hadn’t looked over when she’d entered. Hadn’t chastised his mother when she refused to stand and let Amelia and her father join them. Hadn’t even flinched when Amelia had slid into the seat behind him. The muscles in his neck and shoulders were stiff and hadn’t moved since the service started.

  He was not about to rescue her. So what was she supposed to do now?

  She snuck a look at her intended. He sat stony-faced across the aisle. Next to him sat a child—a girl of perhaps ten years? Twelve? She couldn’t tell. She’d never interacted with children, not even when she was one.

  They were clearly related. Short of the broken nose and despite the long blond braid, the child was the spitting image of him. Tanned and freckled, she had her blue eyes trained on Amelia, brow furrowed.

  Amelia stared back.

  The girl cocked her head, her lips pursed.

  Amelia cocked an eyebrow. The girl was bold. Most debutantes wouldn’t dream of staring at Amelia so brazenly.

  The stare-off continued until, seemingly satisfied, the girl gave a quick nod of her head and turned to Benedict, whispering in his ear. His eyebrows rose, and he turned to look at Amelia in surprise.

  She quickly turned her attention back to her lap, her hands twisting in the grey fur muffler that contrasted with the pale pink of her pelisse. It was pretty, but hardly the pearl-encrusted creation she’d planned to wear on her wedding day. No, that dress was at home in a trun
k, along with the rest of her trousseau she’d been building over the years—every piece carefully embroidered “Lady Wildeforde.”

  As the sermon ended, people stirred in their seats, waiting for the priest to step down so they could leave. It took everything she had not to be the one leading the retreat. She pressed the soles of her trembling feet hard into the floor.

  The clergyman paused for a long painful moment before clearing his throat.

  “Before we depart, let us stand together for the union of Lady Amelia Elizabeth Crofton and Benedict Asterly.”

  There was a collective gasp among the parishioners. A furious muttering almost drowned out her thumping pulse. Almost.

  She looked across at Benedict. He stood and then bent down to whisper something in the young girl’s ear. The girl patted his hand—as if his life were being demolished—and stood to allow Benedict to make his way to the altar alone.

  How had she gotten into this?

  She should move. She should stand. But her body flat-out refused to comply—until her father elbowed her in the side. Hard.

  She stood and moved into the aisle. She would not give the congregation further gossip. She walked toward the altar, head high, her light steps at odds with the heaviness of her insides.

  Taking her place, she was once again reminded of Benedict’s hulking size. She was hardly a petite woman, yet she was barely as tall as his chin. He was a bear of a man, quite unlike the gentlemen she was used to.

  She cast a last glance at Edward. His eyes were averted.

  Coward.

  The eyes of the rest of the congregation were fixated on her. It was a sea of suspicion and contempt. To hell with them. Whatever their objections, they couldn’t possibly be stronger than hers.

  The priest’s rasping voice cut through the chaos of her thoughts. Good grief, it had started.

  “…is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly…”

  To Amelia, this marriage was highly unadvisable, but her thoughts didn’t signify, apparently. She bit the inside of her lip, considering what little information she’d gleaned of her husband in the past twenty-four hours.