How to Survive a Scandal

by Samara Parish

  She curtseyed to the group—a thank-you for their respect back when that was what had mattered to her—and then walked away. The disappearing weight from her shoulders was utterly delightful.

  It was time to leave London. Leave this.

  She had enough funds to buy a small cottage, somewhere only a few hours’ ride from Abingdale. Cassandra would be able to visit when she was older, and Fiona could come and stay when she needed time away.

  Maybe, over time, Benedict would see that she was no longer the selfish, myopic girl he had married. Maybe, over time, they could repair the damage they’d done and start again.

  The tenor of the room changed. A chorus of whispers drowned out the orchestra. People were staring at her. News of her showdown with Luella had travelled fast. Nevertheless, she held her head high. She didn’t care. She was making the only decision that was right for her. The only choice that gave her some hope of a life with Benedict.

  She turned toward the stairs and froze.

  It was not her argument with Luella that made her the center of attention.

  He had come.

  Moreover, he had not come alone.

  It was worse than Benedict had expected. All of London currently had its gaze pinned on him—the enormous violent brute dressed up like a bloody parrot. Standing there naked couldn’t have attracted as much attention.

  “The Most Honorable, the Marquess of Harrington and Mr. Benedict Asterly.”

  He swallowed and tried not to pull at the goldwork embroidery of his cravat as he waited for his grandfather to descend the short set of stairs into the ballroom. But the marquess was reveling in the attention and showed no sign of joining the crowd.

  Face after face. The room was a kaleidoscope of irritation, amusement, and conjecture. The upper crust wondering what his appearance with the marquess meant. They’d mock him if they knew. It meant that he would do anything to be with his wife—even if that meant making peace with his grandfather.

  Harrington put his hand on Benedict’s back, an intimate gesture that doubled as a bold announcement. Asterly is family.

  Was it a warning for Benedict to toe the line? Or was the marquess protecting him? Benedict didn’t know. Their time spent together had been cold and stiff, full of broken conversation. Every word had been laden with decades of loathing and mistrust. Eventually, they’d reached an understanding—Benedict would listen to Harrington’s advice in matters related to the running of an earldom—but beyond that the waters were murky, their relationship still undefined.

  It wasn’t easy to stand next to the man who’d destroyed his mother, but it had to be done. Partly because he had a responsibility to those he would one day serve but mostly because of Amelia. Because it would show her that he could listen, could change and that he valued her opinion. Amelia was why he’d finally opened those bloody letters in his desk drawer.

  He scanned the room. When he finally saw her, he took the first full breath he’d managed in months. He drank in the sight of her, her head held high with her usual confidence, her grace and elegance that was at once gentle and steel-strong, her beauty derived less from her physical perfection and more from her intelligence and wit.

  He took another full breath, the tension he’d been carrying dissipating into a calm serenity. He was whole. With her in the room, he was complete.

  Amelia’s hand pressed against her lips and her eyes shone. To hell with his grandfather and the peacocking. He couldn’t wait another moment, another second, to have her in his arms. But as he stepped forward, she stepped backward.

  Again, he moved toward her and she backed away. Her surprise quickly turned to an expression of horror. With an agonized look, she turned and fled through the crowd, pushing her way through the horde to the balcony doors, where she disappeared into the night.

  “Amelia!” As he raced through the ballroom, the crowd parted before him, but by the time he reached the exit, he could see nothing but empty paths into the garden, strung with lanterns. There were two trails she could have taken, one that skirted the edge of the elaborately landscaped maze and another that plunged deep into the heart of it. He knew instinctively which she would have chosen.

  “Amelia!” At every turn, he expected her to be just around the corner. At every turn the hollowness inside him spread. She had every right to be angry—he’d said cruel and hurtful things. But he had hoped that reconciling with his grandfather and stepping foot where he’d sworn he’d never tread would have earned him enough time to plead his case.

  He ducked through an archway, moving toward a patch of light. Surely, she’d head for one of the lantern-lit groves. The bushes were tall enough that he couldn’t see a clear way to her. He was blind and desperate. “Amelia, please,” he called.

  Finally, he rounded a corner, and she was there, sitting on a bench beneath a lamp, head in her hands. “Amelia.”

  She looked up. Tear tracks shone under the light, and his heart broke all over again. He’d made a mistake, coming here. He should have left her in peace rather than hurt her again. But the damage was done. All he could do now was ask for forgiveness.

  He knelt before her, cupping her hands in his. “I’m sorry. I was a damned fool. Even worse than that, I was deliberately shortsighted. I didn’t want to face my own failings or admit that I’d made mistakes, so I blamed you. It was spiteful and wrong and I’m so, so sorry. You were and always will be the best thing to ever happen to me.”

  She looked down at him, her eyes dropping to the carrot-colored cravat that had taken a full hour to knot properly, the contrasting blue and green quilted waistcoat and the bejeweled slippers on his feet. Horrendous, all of it, but he wasn’t a man of words and so this was his love letter to her.

  She shook her head, pulling her hands from his. “This is not what I want,” she whispered.

  No moment in his entire life had hurt like this one, not even the day his mother had left. A sharp ache formed in the back of his throat. He clenched his fists, digging his fingers into the barely healed blisters on his palms, channeling his grief into that pain.

  But he wasn’t going to stop trying to win her back. “I need you. We need you. I was wrong to say we didn’t. Nothing works without you. Not the firm, not the house, not me. Every moment is just a fraction of what it would be if you were home. Whatever it takes, I’ll do it. Whoever you need me to be, I’ll be it.”

  His plea didn’t have the effect he’d anticipated. She stood and walked to the other side of the small clearing, putting as much space between them as she could, hands wiping at her face as she did so.

  He stood, straining against the need to go to her.

  “I don’t want you here, like this,” she said, gesturing to his outfit. “I don’t want you turning into something you’re not just to make me happy. Can’t you see how much damage I’ve already done?” She hugged her arms around her body as though she was trying to hold herself together.

  The regret he’d felt over the past few weeks was tepid and shallow compared to what engulfed him as he realized she’d truly taken his hateful, shameful words to heart.

  He covered the ground between them and gathered her into his arms, hoping that the feel of them holding each other once more brought the same sense of relief to her that it did to him. “No, sweetheart,” he murmured. “None of it was your fault. None of it. It was a series of situations that did not go our way.” His arms tightened around her and he kissed the top of her curls, breathing in the familiar scent of her.

  “Everyone must hate me.” Her words were muffled as she pressed herself into his chest and sobbed.

  He hugged her close, trying to shore up all the pieces of her. “No one hates you,” he whispered. “They all want you back. I need you back. Princess, come home.”

  She dragged in a few breaths, and her shaking slowed. She tipped her head back and looked up at him. Her eyes still brimmed with tears, but they held a flicker of hope. “Truly? You wouldn’t prefer just to take your old life bac
k? The one where you didn’t have a wife upending everything?” Her breath hitched on the last note, a hiccup that snagged around his heart.

  “Truly. My life needed upending. It was dull and lifeless and far too comfortable before you came along.” He pulled a handkerchief from the inside pocket of his coat and wiped it across her cheek, the tears soaking it.

  She swallowed hard and took it from him, blotting her tears and wiping her nose. “You need to promise that you’ll throw this hideous outfit away.”

  Relief spread through him, a wash of light across the shadows. They were going to be all right. He stepped back, twirling with every bit of peacockness he could muster. “This? I thought you’d love it.”

  She smiled. That she was breathtaking was an understatement. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, even with her eyes watery and her hair all mussed. He didn’t know what force had brought her into his life, but he was going to make damned sure he never risked losing her again.

  She smoothed out the creases she had pressed into his jacket, her hand pausing over the gold thread. “I love parts of it. In isolation. Perhaps with a diamond stick pin.”

  This was his Amelia. And God he was glad to have her back.

  Despite the teasing, she was serious when she took his hand and pressed it against her heart. “I don’t want you to dress differently; I know you hate color. And you don’t need to make amends with the marquess. I can live without London.”

  He tipped her chin and placed a light kiss on her lips. “No, you can’t. You love London. You love its energy. You love coming to horrendous parties like this. I don’t want you to give that up.”

  “I haven’t loved it lately. My friends are awful.”

  He chuckled. “In a city this large, I’m sure you can find some non-awful friends. And I’m sure I can find some men with whom I share some common ground.”

  She tightened her arms around him, sighing into his chest. “It’s a deal.”

  The moment was wonderful but incomplete. He had come to London determined to bare his soul, and there was still one thing left to reveal. The words caught in his throat. Giving voice to what his heart felt could make the night perfect or turn it sour. Right now, as it stood, they were happy. He didn’t want to jeopardize that. But he also needed her to know.

  “I love you, princess.” The words came out with more assurance than he felt. His heart quickened in the silence that followed.

  The interminably long silence.

  Maybe she hadn’t heard him. Or maybe she had heard him and couldn’t think of a response. Maybe he should say it again, louder. Or not and pretend the words had never been said. Blood rushed through him, creating a pounding in his head that matched any noise his steam engines could make.

  Just as he was about to apologize, to take it all back and urge her to forget it all, she looked up at him, reached on her toes, and kissed him. “I love you too,” she whispered. “Now take me home, please.”

  Epilogue

  Amelia hummed to herself as she watched the firm thrum and buzz below her. It had taken a year to get back to full production, but the work on the Duke of Camden’s locomotives was well underway.

  She leaned back in the armchair Oliver had carried up to the mezzanine for her, gently stroking her belly.

  “How did you even get up here?” Benedict asked as he climbed the stairs.

  Amelia flushed. “Oliver might have helped.” After she’d paused on the fourth step and come to a dead stop on the eighth, the foreman had sighed and lifted her like she didn’t weigh the rough equivalent of a baby whale.

  “There’s a reason they call it confinement.” Benedict dropped a quick kiss on her brow. “Are you feeling well? You should be in bed.”

  “I just wanted to see her fire up.” They had invested every ounce of energy they had into forming new systems and procedures that would see Baby Tess delivered in sixty percent of the time it had taken to make the old Tessie, and nothing would keep her away from the first test run.

  “Did John get off all right?” she asked. “He seemed awfully anxious before you two left—like he couldn’t leave England fast enough. I worry about him in the Americas all by himself.”

  Benedict supported her under the arms as she shifted in the chair. “He’s hardly all by himself. The factory is not far from Boston—not exactly the Wild West. And he’ll have a team of people working for him.”

  “Still…I do wish we’d sent someone else to oversee the whole thing. There was no need for him to set sail for the other side of the world.”

  “Shhh, princess. You’re going to miss it.” He turned her head toward the new locomotive. The stoker shoveled coal into the firebox, and the engineer released the brakes. Slowly, Baby Tess began to move, the cast-iron wheels turning.

  As she exited through the side door and onto the testing track, she picked up the pace. The crowd that had gathered, made up primarily of the men that worked for the firm but also their families, broke into applause.

  They had done it. And this time Amelia had been there from the beginning.

  “There,” Benedict said. “You’ve seen it now. Can I please take you back to the house? You’re giving me an apoplexy traveling around in your condition.”

  “Only if you promise to give me a foot rub.”

  He nuzzled into her neck, his breath sending shivers down her spine. “Oh, I promise I can do more than that. Let’s get you into a hot bath.”

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  About the Author

  Samara has been escaping into fictional worlds since she was a child. When she picked up her first historical romance book, she found a fantasy universe she never wanted to leave and the inspiration to write her own stories. She lives in Australia with her own hero and their many fur-babies in a house with an obscenely large garden, despite historically being unable to keep a cactus alive. How to Survive a Scandal is her debut novel.

  You can follow her writing, gardening, and life adventures on social media or by signing up for her newsletter at SamaraParish.com/newsletter

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