A Winter Scandal

by Candace Camp

  Twenty minutes later, they were all assembled in the library. The party had ended abruptly, with Damaris and her servants politely seeing the guests, agog with curiosity, on their way. One of the card players, the Squire, was also the local magistrate, so he had remained, settling himself at a table and adopting a judicial air. Lord Rawdon was planted in front of the closed door into the gallery, barring the exit.

  Emily sulked in one of the chairs facing the Squire, her husband, Ian, beside her. Ian wore a dazed expression on his battered face. The blood on his lip had dried, and the rest had been wiped away, but his nose was swollen and one cheek reddened, his eye above that cheek puffed and red, as well. Emily, with bits of leaves and dried grass clinging to her hair and clothes and her hair straggling down on one side, looked bedraggled but defiant, an appearance only heightened by the noticeable swelling on her jaw where Thea had punched her.

  Gabriel loomed beside the Woffords, arms crossed over his chest, his face stony. A few feet away from Emily sat the man who had attacked Hannah, his hands tied together and the other end of the rope tied to the arm of the chair. Myles was planted behind him. At right angles to the Squire and to Emily and Ian, completing the square, sat the maid Hannah. Her face was splotched from tears, and bright red spots were on her face, promising future bruises, where her attacker’s fingers had dug into her skin as he clamped his hand over her mouth.

  Thea sat between Damaris and Daniel a few feet away, watching. Her cheek still stung from Emily’s slap, and she was certain that she would have a number of black-and-blue marks down her back the next day, but she liked to think that Emily’s jaw was equally sore.

  “Now,” Squire Cliffe said heavily, sending a majestic glare all around. “What in the name of heaven has been going on here tonight?”

  “Nothing that need concern you,” Emily said, dismissing the country squire and turning to Gabriel. “Really, Gabriel, this is nonsense. The local law has nothing to do with any of this. It will only cause us all embarrassment to drag these people into it.”

  “If you think I am going to ignore the fact that you attacked Miss Bainbridge or that your hired thug over there assaulted Hannah and kidnapped my nephew, you are in for a rude awakening. I can assure you—”

  “Kidnapped!” The Squire turned his glare on the man tied to the chair.

  “I never,” the man said shortly.

  “The devil you did not,” Gabriel responded. “You struck me with a log! We wrestled in the snow. You are the man who stole Matthew from Miss Bainbridge’s house.”

  “I don’t know that man,” Emily said firmly, “and I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “The hell you say!” The kidnapper straightened and glared at Emily. “You ain’t pushing this off on me. I been doin’ your dirty work for two years now, and you’re not gullin’ them into thinkin’ I done it alone. You hired me, right enough, and you told me to take that brat. You think I’d a come up with that on me own?”

  “And why should I hire you to do anything with some by-blow that Miss Bainbridge”—Emily shot a venomous glance at Thea—“found in the church?”

  “I presume because that child is your husband’s son,” Gabriel replied bitingly. “Though I cannot imagine what you hoped to accomplish.”

  “She was trying to keep you from findin’ out, that’s what!” Hannah spoke up, her voice hoarse. “She didn’t want the world knowin’ it was her husband’s side-slip. Nor that she was the one what sent my lady out of the country!”

  “What!” Ian recoiled from his wife, his dazed face sharpening. “You knew about Jocelyn?”

  “Of course I knew, you fool!” Emily rounded on Ian, her eyes blazing. “I am not an idiot! Unlike your friends.” Her scornful gaze went to Gabriel and Rawdon before she turned back to her husband. “I offered you everything! I was willing to take you and all your debts. My father even made good your father’s obligations. I gave you a carriage and four, a hunter, a hack, fine clothes, anything and everything you wanted. And all I ever wanted in return was your affection! Your respect! Instead you made a fool of me, whoring around with that trollop Jocelyn! Getting her with child.” Her lip curled. “I knew. I knew it all!”

  “But how could you know? I didn’t even know she was carrying my child!” Ian exclaimed.

  “You are a simpleton,” Emily told him bitterly, the anger draining out of her voice, replaced by contempt. “I intercepted the letter she wrote you. You are not the only one who enjoyed getting his hands on my gold; your valet was happy to take my coins as well.”

  “You bribed Jossman?”

  “I paid him, which is more than you were prone to do. My grandfather may have been a cit, as you were so fond of throwing in my face, but he taught me the value of well-paid employees. I knew all about your secret correspondence with your paramour. It was easy enough to send her a note, pretending to be you. Jossman is also quite adept at forging your hand.”

  “No doubt another task you paid him well for!”

  “Indeed.”

  “Enough of this nonsense!” Gabriel’s voice cracked out. “I don’t care about your squabbles. I want to know what happened to my sister! Where is Jocelyn?”

  “I have no idea where she is,” Emily retorted. “Nor do I care. The last time I saw her was when I pointed out to her the impossibility of her marrying Ian.”

  “What did you say to her to make her leave?”

  “The silly goose thought that she would run away with my fiancé!” Emily flared. “She wrote telling him that she was carrying his child. She had planned to marry Rawdon to hide her shame, and I was prepared to live with that. I knew that eventually Ian would tire of her or she would lose her heart to Rawdon or some other man. But then she wrote Ian, saying she could not marry without love and begging him to run away with her so that Ian and she and the bastard child could be a family. And I knew that Ian might very well be besotted enough to do it, however idiotic it was. So I had Jossman write her as Ian, saying he would leave with her, but I was the one who met her.”

  “Dear God!” Ian stared at his wife as if he had never before seen her. “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her you would never marry her. You were so thoroughly in debt you would be thrown in debtors’ prison in a matter of months if you did not wed me. I told her you had no intention of marrying her or acknowledging her bastard, and I offered, out of the kindness of my heart, to help her. I gave her money to live on. I gave her the services of Pendergraft over there to get her out of the country to Italy and establish her in a pleasant house there. I even paid her a comfortable stipend to support her and her maid and the child.”

  “Yes!” Hannah cried. “So long as she never contacted any of her loved ones again! You broke her heart, you did. Not just giving up his lordship, which she was too fine a woman to have wasted her love on, anyway. But you wouldn’t let her even write her brother or her mother! Always crying her heart out, she was, missing everyone. She wouldn’ta got so sick if it wasn’t for that.”

  “Sick! What are you talking about?” Gabriel strode over and pulled Hannah up from her chair. “What is the matter with Jocelyn?”

  “I dunno. She was sick ever since she had the wee one.”

  “Was sick?” Gabriel paled, his mouth tightening. “What do you mean? Is she … dead?”

  Hannah nodded, and Thea heard the harsh intake of Lord Rawdon’s breath, the only sound that broke the utter stillness of the room. Gabriel turned blindly away, and Thea jumped up, going to him. He wrapped his arms tightly around her.

  “She gave me the baby and told me to bring him here to you, my lord,” Hannah went on after a moment.

  “Why, then, did you try to sell the brat to me?” Emily retorted caustically.

  “I didn’t try to sell him!” Hannah retorted as Gabriel swung around to fix his sharp gaze on her.

  “What exactly did you do?” he asked her.

  “I was goin’ to take him and bring him up me
self, that’s what. ’Twas I who’d taken care of him, anyways, ever since he was born. My lady couldn’t. It was the wet nurse and me. And I needed money, that’s all, to keep me and the baby from starvin’ to death.”

  “What a bag of moonshine! It was extortion, pure and simple,” Emily told her. “You promised to keep quiet. You said you didn’t have to take the baby to Morecombe as Jocelyn told you to—with her dying breath, I might add. You said you could take the baby off and no one would have to know. And if I did not pay you, you were going to take him to Morecombe and tell everyone what I had done! You threatened to ruin me!”

  “I deserved something! It was me what took care of her ladyship and the little one. I was the one who did all the work. What was I going to get if I handed him over to her brother? Nothing! A job back maybe if I was lucky, and if I wasn’t, being blamed for my lady running away in the first place! I shoulda got something!”

  “Yes, well, you would have, if you had brought the baby with you!” Emily retorted, jumping to her feet. “If you hadn’t decided to stick him in the church for Miss Propriety over here to find!”

  “And if I hadn’t hidden him, you’da knocked me over the head and taken him! That’s why you had that man there with you. I ain’t a fool. I knew better than to bring the babe with me. I know you been searching for me, and it weren’t to pay me. You’da killed me tonight if they hadn’t stopped you, and you’da done it back then, too. The same reason you had him try to steal the wee one away from her!”

  “Enough!” Gabriel roared. “Enough of these recriminations! I don’t care which one of you is a more wicked person. Neither of you have enough humanity in you to fill a teacup.” He fixed his gaze on Emily. “The truth is out now, and Hannah was right: you are ruined in the ton. Whether you will go to jail will, I suppose, depend upon what the magistrate decides and whether Miss Bainbridge wants to press charges. I will count myself fortunate never to see you or your husband again.”

  Gabriel swung to Hannah. “As for you, you should probably be locked up, as well.”

  “I took care of her! I did. Miss Jocelyn depended on me.”

  “So did we all, and you betrayed us. All I want from you now is to know where Jocelyn is. Where did she die?”

  The girl shifted and looked down. “She’s in Oxford, sir. That was as far as we could get afore she gave out.”

  “Very well.” Gabriel turned to Thea. “I must go. I have to take care of her.”

  “Of course.” Thea looked up at him, her eyes welling with tears for his pain.

  Lord Rawdon stepped forward. “I will go with you.”

  Gabriel turned to him. “Thank you.”

  Gabriel took Thea’s hands in his and squeezed them, lifting them to his lips. “I shall return.”

  Thea nodded, the tears spilling onto her cheeks. Gabriel bent and kissed her forehead, and she threw her arms around him, clinging to him for one long moment, not caring what anyone thought or said. She stepped back, and Gabriel strode out of the room, Lord Rawdon beside him.

  Thea arose from the prayer bench in front of St. Dwynwen’s statue, where she had given up the same prayer of thanks she had uttered for the past two weeks, and walked out of the church. Turning toward the ruins, she wound her way through the gravestones. She stopped at the edge of the graveyard and looked at the pile of stones that were the ruins of the old abbey. Her eyes paused on the arches of the cloisters, and she thought of the afternoon she and Gabriel had spent there and the kisses they had shared inside the sheltering walls. A longing as sweet as it was painful pierced her, and she looked past the ruins to the trees, imagining beyond them the sturdy bulk of the Priory.

  The Priory was empty now except for a cadre of servants. Gabriel’s guests had left the day after Gabriel rode off with Lord Rawdon. Sir Myles had come by to bid good-bye to Thea. He was returning to London, where he would rejoin Gabriel and Rawdon. Thea had no idea where Ian and Emily had gone. Squire Cliffe had tossed Lady Wofford’s man in jail, though he had not had the will to bring charges against a peer’s wife. In any case, much as she disliked Emily, Thea had not cared to press charges, either. Matthew was healthy and unharmed, and Emily could no longer do anything to him now that her secrets had been revealed. And whatever pain Lord and Lady Wofford had caused Gabriel and his sister, Thea doubted that any of it was punishable by law. It would only cause scandal for Gabriel and his family if Lady Wofford were hauled into court. Thea suspected that Ian and Emily’s life together, exiled from the life of the London ton, would be punishment enough, anyway.

  It had been a fortnight since Thea had last seen Gabriel. At first, in her sympathy for him, she had not thought about what his leaving meant for her, but gradually, as the days stretched emptily into one another with no word, she had realized that her time with Gabriel was over. Oh, she knew that he would briefly return. Matthew was his nephew, and Gabriel would want to raise him, so he would come back to Chesley to take Matthew off to live at the Morecombe estate.

  That would only increase her pain, for she would lose Matthew as well as Gabriel. Sometimes when she thought about it, Thea feared that she would be unable to bear losing them both. She loved Matthew; in the short time he had been here, he had stolen into her heart. Just as Gabriel had. It seemed absurd to think that she had at one time wondered if she was falling in love with Gabriel. It was so clear, so obvious to her now.

  Both man and child had opened her up to love. To life. They had given her something precious, a joy and fulfillment that would always live in her even after they were gone from her. She knew that she would never willingly return to the dry, narrow path she had lived before. She was grateful for the added richness in her life, and she could never regret meeting Matthew or Gabriel.

  But, oh, it was hard sometimes to remember that when she was alone.

  Thea turned away from the view of the ruins, firmly blinking away the tears that threatened, and started back through the graveyard. Deep in her thoughts, she lifted her head as she rounded the corner of the church. And there, walking across the bridge toward her, was Gabriel.

  Thea stopped, her breath catching in her throat, and for a moment she was unable to speak or even to think. Gabriel’s face was intent, and he strode forward purposefully. When he saw her, his face shifted, suddenly alight, and he hurried forward. Thea started toward him, her feet moving faster and faster. He was doing the same, picking up speed until he was running, and so was she.

  They met in the churchyard, his arms reaching out to her, and Thea went into them without hesitation. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her to him tightly. The world spun around her dizzily; the only solid, secure thing in it was Gabriel, his arms like iron around her, his body warm against hers, his voice muffled in her hair.

  “God, I’ve missed you!” He squeezed her more tightly for emphasis. “You don’t know how much. I’ve gone out of my mind the past few days, wishing you were with me. I should not have rushed off like that. I hardly knew what I was doing. It wasn’t until afterward that I realized that it would be even worse without you there.”

  “I’m sorry.” Thea clung to him, scarcely able to believe that he was here, that her life was not being snatched away from her just yet. She had no idea how long it would last, but at least for the moment, Gabriel still wanted to hold her, be with her. “I know it must have been awful for you, having to deal with your sister’s death.”

  He released her, moving back a little, but he did not break contact with her, still holding her hand as he gazed down at her. “It was hard. Worst was having to tell her mother. Rawdon stayed with me through it all. That helped.” Gabriel shook his head. “I wouldn’t say that we are exactly friends again … but just knowing that he had loved her, too, that we shared the same loss and confusion, that we’d both been in limbo the past year, waiting and wondering, somehow made it easier to bear. Myles joined us for the memorial service at the estate. And Alan. It was strange …” He sighed and started walking toward the church, still hol
ding her hand.

  “Strange not to have Ian?” Thea asked, matching her steps to his.

  He nodded. “We were friends for so long. I knew him before any of the others. His mother was a friend of my mother’s. I knew he wasn’t perfect, but I would never have thought he could have done that.” Gabriel shrugged. “Well, he was always weak, I suppose. He didn’t have the toughness that Rawdon does—stupid, really, that it was that hardness that made me believe that Rawdon had hurt Jocelyn, and all the time it was Ian’s weakness, instead.”

  They reached a bench outside the church and sat down. Gabriel took Thea’s hand between both of his.

  “I stopped by the vicarage.” He smiled faintly. “I believe Matthew has grown in just the time I’ve been gone.”

  “Did you see his new tooth?”

  “Indeed I did.” Gabriel smiled, but it faded rapidly. “I’m sorry that his mother won’t get to see him grow up.”

  “It’s very sad.”

  “I wish … oh, I wish a hundred things had been different.” Gabriel sighed. “I had become accustomed to thinking of Jocelyn as dead, it had been so long since we’d heard from her. But now … it’s as if the wound has been reopened.”

  “But at least you know that she meant to bring Matthew to you, that she still trusted you, loved you.”

  He nodded. “She was trying to return home, and that brings me some peace. I know now what happened, why Jocelyn left and where she went; we no longer have to wonder. And I understand why she hid it from me.”

  “Not because she feared you but because she wanted to shield her lover.”

  “Yes. She gave her heart to the wrong man.” Gabriel glanced at her and then away. He shifted on the bench. He was acting, Thea thought with some surprise, nervous. Abruptly, he stood up. “Thea, there is something I must ask you.”

  Thea’s heart clenched within her chest. It was coming now, she thought—he was about to tell her that he planned to return home and take Matthew with him. Her brief period of happiness was over. She wanted to turn away, to run from him rather than have to hear the words, but Thea made herself stay. She had always believed in facing whatever came straight on. So, clasping her hands together in her lap, she looked up at him, waiting.