Lady Scandal

by Wendy Lacapra

“Go,” she seethed. “Get her! If she is not already beyond your reach.”

  The disgust in her voice wrung his already pained muscles. He’d chosen to give up Eustace. She would have had him choose differently. This was not his Sophia…

  “The attackers,” he said, “have gone in different directions.”

  Her head fell back. “Damn.”

  He searched her face for the woman who’d surrendered to him in wild abandon and could find no trace of his love. Yet, somehow, she was familiar.

  “This attack was well-planned,” he said. “By now, I have little hope of catching either one.”

  “Yes,” she reluctantly agreed, “If they chose the path of their retreat in advance, an ambush could await.”

  Her voice was wrong. Flat. Her low, gritty tones kicked the strings of his memory.

  She set her jaw; her cheeks were sallow. She opened her eyes and her glare’s full force hit him like a gut-punch. Her eyes—unique, ethereal, and blue—had always dominated her face. However, the weak lamplight diluted the effect.

  His memory slid troublingly into place. She looked like Helena. Moreover, she looked like her father. She’d warned him she feared a descent into Baneham’s world—and he’d ensured her fears were realized. He’d done this. He’d done this because he had failed.

  “You are bleeding,” his eyes fell to her sooty, stained dress, “and filthy.”

  “Pig-fat.” She fanned her bodice. “Hot pig fat from the lamp.” She dragged herself up and leaned against the back of the bed. “I planned to drop the cruise lamp and set my would-be attacker alight.”

  Oh God. His Sophia, the woman who took others into her home, the woman who learned to scrub and wash just to keep her soul free of Baneham’s corrupting influence had dispassionately planned to set someone on fire.

  “What happened?” he asked gently.

  She frowned. “She fired first. The ball shattered the window. I dropped the lamp and had to smother the fire—that’s when I cut my foot.”

  His heart seized. “The house could have burned to the ground.” And I wouldn’t have been able to save you.

  “I am well-aware what could have happened.” Her breath slowed. “Baneham rule number fifteen: Study your errors. I will not lock myself away again.”

  Now she was quoting Baneham’s book?

  “The error,” he said, “if there was one, was mine.”

  Her glance was hard and judging. “We should have attacked first. Instead we were—” She stopped abruptly and groaned. “I knew. I knew passion would be my downfall.”

  Her words hit him like a swift slap.

  “We believed ourselves well-hidden.”

  “I had been well-hidden,” she accused.

  “Hugh!” Elizabeth’s voice sang through the open window. “Jane!”

  “We are here,” Sophia called.

  He cast Sophia a look communicating their conversation was not at an end and started down the stairs. He’d not been vigilant, damn his distracted mind. His mistake had led the enemy directly to Sophia.

  How could he repair this damage?

  What could he do to shield her? Where could he send her to keep her from those who intended her harm? If Garrett was to be believed, Kasai himself could be in England. He could be anywhere—even working for the Under Secretary.

  Kasai could be the Under Secretary.

  He must find Helena and Eustace. Find them, before they had time to execute another attack. Although, if Helena were working for Kasai, why had she fired on Sophia? Killing her would not give Kasai access to Baneham’s records…or his fortune.

  He opened the door. Elizabeth stood on the stone step, her unbound hair streaming like a thick white sheet past her hips.

  “Jane?” she inquired.

  “Upstairs,” he answered.

  She pushed past.

  Randolph lit the candles in the kitchen and then returned to the bedchamber. He entered as Elizabeth slowly took in the scene. The shattered glass, Sophia’s dress, the overturned oil lamp, the poker and the blood.

  “Thy foot is badly cut,” Elizabeth said.

  Randolph entered the chamber and knelt by Sophia’s side.

  “The cut is not deep,” Sophia said. “I just need to bandage the wound. Is Anna…?”

  Elizabeth exhaled. “Anna hath suffered bruising…and something harder to heal.”

  “Could she describe the man who attacked her?” Randolph asked.

  Two sets of bewildered eyes met his.

  “You’ll not,” Sophia said, “question Anna.”

  “Not tonight,” Elizabeth amended.

  His request seemed reasonable enough. Elizabeth rested a steadying hand on his shoulder. Her calming presence, in this case, did the opposite. He needed to get Sophia out and away and he needed to turn to his mission with full diligence.

  “How was she attacked?” he asked Elizabeth.

  “The attacker came in through the window,” she said. “He tried to drag her from her bed.” Elizabeth shuddered. “He may have succeeded, but when the moonlight hit the window, Anna said he cursed, released her, and was gone.”

  “He was looking for me.” Sophia spoke Randolph’s thought aloud. “Elizabeth,” Sophia’s voice softened, “we have brought violence to your refuge, and I am sorry. We will leave at daybreak.”

  “Thou art in accord with thy wife?” Elizabeth looked back and forth between them.

  Were he and Sophia ever in accord, outside of bed? “I agree we cannot remain here. And I am certain the attackers will not return once we leave.”

  Elizabeth turned to Sophia. “My concern lies with thee, not with those who would do thee harm.”

  Sophia’s face lost tension and a measure of her warmth returned to her eyes. “You have done for us as much as you could.”

  Elizabeth sighed—too world-weary for a woman who knew so little of this world. “Thou will,” she spoke to Sophia, “remember everything thou hast learned.”

  A subtle change came over Sophia. “I promise to try.”

  Elizabeth collected the lamp from the floor and set it to rights. “There is always,” she said, carefully placing the lamp into Sophia’s hands, “a way to light the darkness.”

  Sophia’s lip trembled, cracking what was left of Randolph’s heart.

  Elizabeth rose and took Randolph’s hands in hers. “Take care of thy wife.”

  “I intend to,” he said.

  In the knowing weightiness of Elizabeth’s steady gaze, he silently vowed to release Sophia from his darkness. No matter what it cost him. No matter how broken he’d be left.

  Elizabeth nodded and then she left.

  As careful as he would have been with a babe, he lifted both lady and lamp and carried them down into the kitchen. He set Sophia in the chair by the fire.

  The flames he’d lit flashed across her face in a warm orange hue. He tucked her hair behind her ear. “Comfortable?”

  She nodded.

  “I will be right back.”

  He locked the door and then returned to the hearth. His was the fault, and hers was the wound. He was sick with the knowledge—sick and utterly unable to engage in the argument to come.

  I will not lock myself away again, she had said.

  But she must. She must be locked away so she could one day be free. She would not understand, of course. She may even hate him for awhile. But he prayed she would one day understand what his actions had cost him.

  There was no way in hell he would allow Kasai, Eustace, or Helena to come that close again. And there was no way he was going to strip her kindness to serve his selfish need.

  He added fuel to his fire and then swung the half-filled kettle hanging on an iron hook so that it would be warmed by the flame.

  “Tea?” Sophia snorted. “Really Hugh?”

  He closed his lids over his burning eyes and bowed his head, pretending to study the fire.

  “Warm water,” he said, “to wash away any remaining glass…and wheat tea
, if enough water remains.”

  He located the vial he’d palmed from his bag and placed in the folds of his shirt between his hip and his breeches.

  He turned. “Will you let me wash your wound?”

  She nodded.

  He poured a bit of the warm water into a bowl and set it on the floor. “Hand me your foot.”

  She held out her leg with a brave attempt to conceal her tremble. He forced a reassuring smile. He cradled her foot in his hands—a caustic visual echo of the way he had touched her hours before…shamefully unaware that Helena and Eustace, with murderous intent, had been making their way through a darkened wood.

  Her foot was impossibly tiny for a woman who had such a sure step. The cut was small. It could have been much worse. Gently, he dipped the cloth into the warm water and then washed away any small remnants of glass. The washing must have hurt, but she remained silent.

  A spine of iron and kiss like spring. She was a patchwork of opposites, his love.

  His fingers tightened around her ankle.

  His love. His. Love.

  Perhaps he needn’t send her away. He could keep her for his own—lock her away in one of his estate’s medieval turrets. The mad and fleeting hope was useless. She would never come to her jailer with wanton and willing desire. Better to finish this and set her free where she had a chance to be happy.

  He’d been wrong. Love was not buoyant. Love was anguish. Love did not make you weak. Love gave you the strength to do things you found unimaginable.

  He had been close to catching the attacker. Then, he’d done what he had sworn to the spymaster he would never do: he had chosen Sophia.

  …fail again, and I will assume your loyalty is not with the crown.

  The Under Secretary’s dichotomy had been false. His feelings for Sophia were rooted in the same honor driving his work for the crown. Life would always be the priority. Life. Liberty. Love.

  He may have failed so far, but Sophia had made him a better man. A stronger man.

  He wrapped her foot.

  Because he was a better man, he must help her rest while he did the hardest thing he would ever have to do. Leave.

  There would be sleep tonight, but not for him.

  …

  Earl Baneham’s Rules for Winning

  “Give no ground to the softer sentiments. Vigilance. Always vigilance.”

  Sophia’s heart had finally settled into a somewhat predictable beat, but like her hapless apron, the edges of her mind were fraying.

  At least she was alive.

  Alive, yes, but to what purpose? Only a few hours ago, she had sworn on her soul to tell Randolph the truth and confess she wanted more—a promise she now found naive. She was being hunted by a killer. Vigilance should give no ground to softer sentiment—the most basic of all Baneham’s rules.

  But the rage screeching in her from the moment she’d laid eyes on her sister weakened when Elizabeth handed her the lamp. She had no call to promise Elizabeth she would try to remember all she had learned here.

  Her older lessons—Baneham’s lessons—would win out. They always did.

  She searched her heart for the sense of peace she’d had when working—to no avail. In the last few weeks, she had thought to glimpse another way. And in the past few nights…

  Randolph tended her on bended knee. He bandaged her foot with the gentlest of hands. Giving herself over to his care would be so easy…

  Then again, his gentleness was costing him in spades. She could feel his heat, his frustration, and his anger.

  He tied the bandage tightly around her wound. He held her ankle for a moment longer than necessary, and then he stood. He kissed her crown, running his hand down over her hair as if she were a child in need of comfort. His breath was deep and matched hers inhale to inhale, exhale to exhale.

  Without warning, he broke away and moved back to the fire.

  She watched his broad back, willing an answer to their future. None came. They had begun a journey together without a map or a specific direction. At night. Over mud-drenched, rutted roads. Without food. Or firearms.

  …and their journey had somehow taken an even darker turn.

  “Randolph,” she said, “did you hear me say my attacker was a woman?”

  “Unlikely. Could it have been a boy?”

  “No. She knew me by name and she said this ends tonight.”

  She had thought she had earned his trust. But withheld truths hung heavy in his posture. Why would he try to make her doubt she’d seen her bastard sister?

  He rubbed his forehead. “The attacker fired first?”

  “Yes.”

  Randolph’s brow furrowed as if he were trying to order the nonsensical.

  “Perhaps,” she offered, “you could tell me what is going on?”

  He returned to the hearth and stared down into the flames. “Like everyone else, I always assumed Kasai was Turk or Mughal.”

  “Something has caused you to question your assumption?”

  “The man at the madhouse,” he stoked the flame, “suggested Kasai is English.”

  A sheet of fear passed through her body like a driving rain, flushing away the thought of her sister. Kasai was English?

  “If Kasai is English,” she said, “he could be here even now. He could even have been a guest at my soiree.”

  Randolph turned. “Yes.”

  “Who is this man at the madhouse?” she asked. “Can he be trusted?”

  “His name is Garrett. Harrison believed he had pledged fealty to Kasai after being imprisoned. The Company said he was dead. He, however, says he was working for your father.” He hesitated. “Trying to fix a problem Baneham had created.”

  “Baneham.” Sophia covered her mouth. “How could I not have made the connection?”

  “What connection?”

  “I knew of Elizabeth’s farm because I traveled with Baneham to the village just a few weeks before his murder.”

  Randolph exhaled hard. “Which lends credence to Garrett’s story. Did Baneham tell you anything—leave you anything—that might have explained his work?”

  “You accused me of hiding such before,” she said. “The night he was murdered, his study—my study now—was ransacked. I suspected there may have been something, but I found nothing. Then again, Baneham was altered when he returned. Suspicious and frightened. I found nothing, but that does not mean something is not hidden.”

  Randolph paced. “Madness, the Company said. Baneham was not mad. He was uncovering a conspiracy.”

  “What will we do?”

  His look was hard and unyielding. “You will rest. You must heal. Will you take something from Elizabeth’s apothecary?”

  She sniffed. “Of course not.”

  “Of course not.” His half-smile was on his lips but not in his eyes. “Weak as it is, wheat tea will have to do, then.”

  He turned back to the hearth to pour water over the dried wheat he had placed in two copper cups. He handed her the tea with an odd, sad expression.

  She wrapped fingers around the metal and leaned back. She took a long swallow of hot liquid. Wheat tea was always undrinkable but this cup was by far the worst. The nut-like bitter taste lingered on her tongue after she swallowed.

  “When I get back to London,” she said, “the first thing I am going to do is have cook serve us white soup with a proper cup of my most extravagant tea.”

  Had she imagined the pink tint to his ears?

  He swirled the liquid inside his cup and watched the wheat settle. “Harrison is less than a day’s ride. I will take you to the inn, meet with him, and we will make a plan.”

  “By we, you mean you and me.”

  Randolph took a sip from his cup. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.

  By we, he had meant him and Harrison. “Randolph, I will accept nothing less than equal footing, since I already share equal burden.”

  “I know you are brave,” he said without looking up.

  His cheek
s were wind-flushed from his time out-of-doors. If a master’s chisel had carved him to her exact specifications, his perfection would have been no less. But, shadows had gathered beneath his eyes. Pinched skin marred the edge of his lips. This was draining him…as much as it drained her.

  They were stuck. Without hope.

  Then, in the dark and the muck and the pain and the mire, Elizabeth’s light flickered. Why must she sink back to Baneham’s level, when she and Hugh could rise—together?

  Together they could fight.

  Together they could win.

  Together they could build something new.

  The thought was so terribly marvelous, her head floated. What a pleasant feeling.

  She conjured a vision of her home shimmering into the water of the Thames…the tall and stately windows, the gardens she had paid a fortune to tame and the gently sloping path to the edge of the river. But for the short sojourn with the dowager duchess, she had lived there all her life. Earl Baneham had holdings in other places, of course, but she had been raised there—a child of London, a child of the river.

  Their marriage contract had specified she could make her London home where she pleased.

  “We can…” she hesitated. “What was I saying?”

  Randolph frowned as if attempting to divine some message in the dried wheat. “You were about to agree to go somewhere you will be safe.”

  “No.” No, that was not what she had been about to say. As a matter of fact, it almost sounded like he didn’t intend… he didn’t intend…

  She blinked. “You want me, don’t you?”

  He sat down, placed his elbows on his parted knees and leaned forward, head bowed. “Tonight has changed things. Kasai has become bold. You will be better off with the Furies at the Dowager’s.”

  The Furies…? She frowned. Was he sending her to the Furies? Why? When there were things they had to do. Both of them.

  “You…you,” she stuttered, “need my help.” She forced the sentence—or, at least she tried.

  She heard her voice as if through a closed oak door—slow and slurred. He looked up. His sparkling eyes were two, then four, then two. He set down his cup, came to his knees by her side, and took her hand, awfully interested in a close inspection of her face.

  He sighed. “Let us not quarrel tonight.”