A little scandal

by Patricia Cabot

  And then the minute she did so, she regretted it. Because even though it had been nearly a week since that embarrassing incident in Cyrus Sledge’s library, everything she’d felt then came back in a rush: the shock at the hardness of his chest, the incredible strength in those muscular arms; the stimulating scent of him—a scent that shouldn’t have been the least arousing, since it was only a combination of soap, and the fainter odor of tobacco; the sight of those sensual lips, so out of place in such an otherwise masculine face.

  But most of all the intense heat that emanated from him, which had produced in Kate the oddest desire to give in to that warmth, to press herself against it and forget everyone and everything else, to lose herself in all of that intoxicating masculinity ....

  And then, of course, the horror that she could even think such thoughts, and about someone like him, coupled with the indignation that he’d made her think them, which in turn had caused her to reach for the atlas ....

  And here she was, days later, suddenly as aware of his physical presence as she’d been when she’d stood in his arms. Only this time they weren’t even touching, his arms weren’t even around her ....

  Abruptly, Kate sat back down, her knees having suddenly given way beneath her.

  The marquis, however, did not move from where he stood. Kate wasn’t certain, since she found herself perfectly incapable of looking at him, but she believed he was looking down at her.

  And then, as if his thoughts had been traveling along the same lines as hers, he said, in a somber voice, “I believe I owe you an apology, Miss Mayhew, for that unfortunate incident in the Sledges’ library.”

  Kate, certain she’d gone scarlet all the way to her hairline, kept her face turned resolutely toward the fire.

  “We owe apologies to one another,” she said stiffly. “Let us consider those apologies said, and the matter done with.”

  But that didn’t seem to satisfy Lord Wingate. “I am afraid that won’t do, Miss Mayhew. I was the one who behaved abominably. You had every right to repudiate me.”

  “But I ought,” Kate said, now speaking to her lap, “to have repudiated you in a gentler manner. And it is for that that I apologize.”

  Lord Wingate cleared his throat. “Nevertheless,” he said. “I feel an obligation, as your employer, to assure you that it will never happen again.”

  She risked a glance at him then, surprised as much by his words as by his tone. Why, he actually sounded sincere! But that, of course, was impossible. Sincerity was not a virtue held in any sort of esteem by the haut monde. He was only parroting what he thought a gentleman ought, under the circumstances.

  Wasn’t he?

  But he certainly looked as if he meant it. Was it possible that there existed a nobleman who was not a two-faced parasite?

  No. And if so, it certainly wasn’t this one. She would not soon forget how he’d treated her that afternoon in the library, as if she’d been put on earth exclusively for the purpose of providing him with a bit of lascivious entertainment.

  Still, Kate stood up again, unwilling to let him think she was incapable of letting bygones be bygones. She stuck her right hand out toward him, and, looking him straight in the eye, said, as his large warm hand closed over her much smaller, and significantly cooler, fingers, “And I shall do everything in my power to see that you do not become a grandfather before you’re ready, Lord Wingate.”

  A strange expression passed over the marquis’s face. As it was similar to the one he’d worn the moment before he’d tried to kiss her that day, she took a wary step backward.

  But he merely shook her hand, and then turned to go, muttering something about how she had better hurry up and dress, as she hadn’t much time before the carriage pulled round.

  Before he left the room, however, Lord Wingate was stopped in his tracks by the sight of Lady Babbie stretching luxuriously, all of her claws extended, on Kate’s bed pillows.

  “Good Lord,” he said.

  Kate felt all of her short-lived self-assurance drain away. Before she had a chance to begin apologizing for the animal’s presence, however, Lord Wingate asked, “That cat’s not female, is it?”

  Kate raised her eyebrows. “Yes, she is. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, it explains why I saw Vincennes’s ginger tom sniffing around this floor earlier. You had better keep this door closed, Miss Mayhew, unless you want to be a grandparent.”

  And with that, the marquis left the room without another word.

  Chapter Nine

  It hardly seemed possible, but after six interminably long weeks, Burke Traherne finally had an evening to himself, to do with exactly as he chose. He almost didn’t dare believe his good fortune.

  Since Isabel had been released from school, Burke had been harassed and harangued at every turn. He had cajoled, threatened, and finally punished, all to no avail. Storms of weeping had become a commonplace occurrence. Remonstrations were hurled hourly. Burke had found himself using language he had not employed since his own days at school, when the headmaster’s whip had brought swift retribution for every curse, and finally cured him of the habit. All it had taken, however, was a seventeen-year-old girl’s first season out to bring them back to the tip of his tongue.

  And now, quite suddenly, silence. Perfect, undisturbed silence.

  It was an exceedingly odd sensation. Burke was still a bit incredulous. Under Miss Mayhew’s firm but gentle guidance, his daughter, Isabel, had actually left the house without a single tear or recrimination. She had even kissed him goodbye! Kissed his cheek and laughed, saying, “Good night, you silly old thing. And thank you for letting me see Geoffrey. Enjoy your silly old book.”

  She was a changed creature, and Miss Mayhew hadn’t been in the house twenty-four hours yet. Could it be that if he had only given in to Isabel’s demands that she be allowed to see the wretched Saunders, he might have had this silence weeks earlier?

  No. Impossible. Because with the other chaperones, everything had been a battle, from deciding on which dress to wear to how Isabel ought wear her hair. But tonight, none of it. The dress had been agreed upon without acrimony, and Isabel’s hair had never looked less blowzy—doubtlessly the work of Miss Mayhew.

  Oh, there was no doubt about it. It was Miss Mayhew. It had to be. There was no other explanation for it.

  And now he was free. Free to enjoy his “silly old book” at last.

  And Burke had settled down to do just that—enjoy his silly old book, which was just that, a work by Mr. Fenimore Cooper that he ought to have read as a boy, but was only just now getting to. He sat in a deeply cushioned, hugely comfortable chair by a fire that hissed every so often from the rain that was pouring steadily outside. He had a glass of his favorite whiskey resting on the small table beside him, and he had left instructions with Vincennes that he wasn’t to be disturbed, not by reports from his various properties overseas—he had holdings in both Africa and the Americas—not by petty household difficulties, and, most especially, not by Mrs. Woodhart.

  For Sara Woodhart, in her continuing effort to win back his affections, had lately taken the habit of sending missives marked Important at all hours of the day and night, and instructing the messenger to wait for a response, thus inconveniencing the entire household until Burke either sent the letter back unopened, or penned a laconic reply. The missives were not, actually, all that important, since they contained only long and tearful—in some cases, the ink with which they’d been written was smeared, as if by actual tears—appeals to Burke’s better nature, begging his forgiveness.

  But there was nothing, in Burke’s opinion, for him to forgive. He ought, he sometimes felt, to thank Sara for her inconstancy. Because of it, he had been driven to the desperate act that had resulted in his securing the peace he was currently enjoying. He did not regret, not for a minute, the sum of money he was paying in order to insure it, either. Though to some, three hundred pounds was a staggering sum, three hundred pounds to a man who had a few hundred th
ousand more than that was nothing.

  And yet it had bought him something he’d thought beyond price.

  Quiet.

  Luxuriating in his solitude, Burke dove into his novel, beginning where it was proper, with the preface, which he normally skipped. He was in no hurry, after all. He had all night. He had, in fact, an endless calendar of nights, since he had not yet found a replacement for the estimable Mrs. Woodhart. He was in no rush to find a new mistress. Mistresses were fine things, it was true—as fine as this whiskey that rolled so smoothly over his tongue when he sipped it—and yet, like the whiskey, too much of any fine thing was not necessarily good.

  Perhaps, he thought, lifting his gaze from his book, and staring into the fire, he would not find a new mistress at all, but try celibacy for a change. It was a novel thought, and yet it seemed to fit in with his new mode of restful quietude. He had never, after all, given celibacy a try. Even during those horrible months after he’d discovered Elisabeth with her wretched Irishman, when he’d torn about the Continent in a drunken haze, he’d still had a need to slake, and he’d slaked it readily enough, with ballerinas and the occasional soprano.

  But the truth of it was, he was tired of mistresses. Oh, they were pleasant enough, he supposed, in their way. And his appreciation for a finely turned ankle and ivory shoulder had not waned in the least. But there was no denying that aside from their obvious usefulness in relieving pent-up ... er ... tension, mistresses were a bit of a nuisance.

  Perhaps this was a natural result of the fact that their affections were of the purchased variety. And while actresses like Sara Woodhart were fairly good at feigning an interest in the buyer, the dancers and singers hardly even bothered. They were far too used to being worshiped themselves to know how to worship others. And it seemed to Burke that if he were going to spend good money on a woman, she ought to at least act as if she liked him.

  And there was, of course, the uncomfortable fact that he was not the most even-tempered of men. Invariably, mistresses—perhaps by the very nature of their position in a man’s life—drove him to some act of violence, whether it be dispatching some rival for her affections—such as they might be—or defending himself from various members of her family, who felt outraged by his refusal to marry their sister/daughter/cousin/niece or, in one memorable incident, mother. Burke’s reputation for possessing a volatile temper was bad enough. He did not need to have it constantly tempted.

  It was factors like these that cemented Burke’s resolve to avoid mistresses for the time being.

  He took another sip of whiskey, replaced the glass, and neatly turned to page two of the preface to Last of the Mohicans. He was, he decided, going to enjoy his newfound peace and quiet.

  Peace and quiet, at long, long last.

  Only now that he had it, Burke found that he couldn’t help thinking perhaps it was a bit too quiet.

  Not that he missed Isabel’s tantrums. Nor did he miss having chaperones fly into the room and give notice ten minutes before an engagement was to begin. Good Lord, he did not miss those things at all.

  But he did find that he’d grown rather ... well, used to them. To having at least some noise about the house. Isabel had been a noisy baby, who’d grown into a rambunctious child. His life after the divorce had been filled with considerable upheaval, but one thing had always remained constant: Isabel, and her incredible capacity to fill a house, no matter how large, with her presence. How often had he railed at her to be quiet? How many nurses had he given the sack for failing to keep her that way?

  And now that he’d finally gotten his wish—a quiet house—he found himself missing the screams, the bickering, the occasional explosions.

  It was suddenly so quiet, he could hear the clock above the fire ticking. It actually ticked quite loudly. Perhaps there was something wrong with it. A clock shouldn’t tick so noisily.

  And the rain. It was making quite a noise against the windowpanes. Surely they had to be experiencing some sort of hurricane, for the rain to be pounding down so heavily.

  Isabel, he reflected, since her absence had brought her to mind, had been so delighted by his sudden reversal on the Geoffrey Saunders issue that she had almost—just almost—looked pretty. In one of the dozens of white ballgowns he’d purchased for her, she’d flitted into his room and thanked him, while Miss Mayhew waited by the door, holding on to her young charge’s wrap. A Miss Mayhew whom, Burke had noticed immediately, looked quite different from the Miss Mayhew with whom he’d shared such an ... interesting conversation just an hour earlier. That Miss Mayhew had been fetching, but no more, in a plain white blouse and tartan skirt. This Miss Mayhew looked radiant in silk—grey silk, to be sure, but extremely well cut, and quite obviously designed with the intention of bringing out the wearer’s assets, which in Miss Mayhew’s case included an extremely narrow waist and a small though pert bosom.

  The gown had not been at all indecently cut—in fact, it hadn’t allowed even a hint of decolletage—and yet, Burke realized, it didn’t really matter what a woman like Miss Mayhew covered her body with: men were always going to picture her naked. Well, men like himself, anyway.

  Not, of course, that he had the slightest intention of ever again acting on his attraction to her. He had quite lost his head that afternoon at the Sledges’. It wouldn’t happen again. He couldn’t afford to allow it to happen again, not if he valued his newfound peace and quiet.

  And yet, it had to be admitted that it did rather bother him, the thought of Miss Mayhew out and about in a silk dress—even a grey one. If Burke found her attractive in it, it was only natural that other men would, too.

  Burke shook himself suddenly. What was he doing? Meditating on his daughter’s chaperone’s figure, rather than enjoying his evening alone!

  Duncan was quite right: he was getting dotty in his old age.

  Burke turned resolutely to the third page of the preface to the book he was reading. It was quite interesting, the preface. He’d have to remember to read the preface from now on. It had obviously been put into the book for the express purpose of being read. Why was he always skipping it?

  Why was that bloody clock so loud? He’d used to think Isabel maddeningly loud, but now, well, now he knew what loud was. He’d have Mrs. Cleary send the clock out for cleaning upon the morrow. It was surely defective.

  Chaperones, Burke knew quite well, didn’t dance at balls. They sat behind the mothers and the widows and the spinsters no one wanted and watched their charges, making sure no improper advances were made against them, and kept them from slipping off with their partners into a garden or upstairs bedroom. Burke had never heard of a chaperone dancing at any function to which she’d escorted a charge.

  But it occurred to Burke that there was no real convention dictating that a gentleman couldn’t ask a chaperone to dance. Miss Mayhew was certainly young enough that she might not be taken for a chaperone at all. Supposing—just supposing—someone at this ball she and Isabel had gone off to happened to notice the fair-haired young woman in the grey silk dress?

  And what if this someone took it into his wretched head to ask her to dance? It would be rude of Miss Mayhew to say no, when it was clear she was otherwise unengaged. But Burke had never taken offense at Katherine Mayhew’s rudeness to him—and she had been very rude to him, indeed. Why should any other man be different? Her rudeness, in fact, might be exactly what was so appealing about her.

  Her rudeness and, he had to admit, that absurdly small, pink-lipped mouth.

  She might, of course, tell the fellow that she could not possibly dance with him because she’d been employed by the Marquis of Wingate to chaperone his daughter. That was precisely what she was there to do, after all, not dance with whey-faced young men who happened to spy her from the ballroom floor. That would be quite the proper thing for her to do, Burke decided.

  And Miss Mayhew was very proper. She had made sure that her bedroom door was open almost the entire time Burke had been in there with her, hadn’
t she? There weren’t many women, Burke knew, who’d have bothered with such propriety. Especially when it involved a rich and titled fellow like himself. Many a woman, he knew from experience, would have quite thrown herself at him, under the same circumstances.

  But not Miss Mayhew. Not at all. In fact ....

  In fact, if he hadn’t known better, he might almost have suspected Miss Mayhew of harboring a dislike for him.

  But that wasn’t possible. She had quite forgiven him his moment of weakness in Cyrus Sledge’s library. She had shook hands on the matter. Miss Mayhew’s handshake had been all that was warm and generous. She did not dislike him. Not a bit.

  Except ....

  Supposing the fellow wasn’t whey-faced? The fellow who asked her to dance, that is. Supposing he was some Italian count, debonair and charming, and Miss Mayhew, obviously no sophisticate—she had thought Burke some sort of flesh-peddler, hadn’t she, the first time she’d seen him—fell for him? It would be quite easy for a wealthy gentleman with an accent and a handsome face to win the affections of a girl like Miss Mayhew, if he went slowly enough. The girl must surely be looking for any opportunity to escape her slavish existence as a paid companion to spoiled society brats. Why, even now, this very second, some nefarious hanger-on might be trying to wheedle himself into Miss Mayhew’s good graces, promising her moonlight and grappa ....

  Burke threw down his book and went to the hallway to call for Duncan to lay out his evening clothes.

  It was ludicrous, he knew. He was being exactly what Isabel had called him, a silly old thing. Miss Mayhew was not about to run off with any count, Italian or otherwise.

  But Burke knew enough about his own sex to know that it would not be for lack of trying. If Miss Mayhew escaped this or any other function without falling prey to some reprobate, it was only because she had slightly more sense than the average female. She had made it this far through life, it was true, without his help. But she had doubtlessly never traveled before in the circles she was about to enter. She could have no way of knowing just how unscrupulous the gentlemen of the beau monde could be when it came to a fresh new face. And since he was the one who was forcing her to enter this exalted sphere, it was his duty to protect her. A chaperon for the chaperone, so to speak.