Sweet Scandal

by Scott, Scarlett

  Ah, so it had not been Levi’s doing, then, but his betrothed’s. Helen begrudged the stab of disappointment that sliced through her. Of course he would have married Miss VanHorn and her millions and her heart-shaped face and her twenty-inch waist. How foolish, how silly, how unutterably stupid for a tiny part of her heart to have hoped that Levi had somehow cried off because of her. No, the news that he had been thrown over by beautiful, rich, wasp-waisted Miss VanHorn would not have been welcome. Not at all.

  Tia sniffed the air then. “Lud, but you smell foul, Helen. Perhaps someone ought to change you as well. Cleo is right. Where did you find that dreadful gown?”

  “One of the ladies made it for me.” She gave Tia her most severe look. “You ought to be ashamed, calling it dreadful.” She had sold every last one of her fine dresses, and in addition to being a budding reader, Ruby was also a dab hand with needle and thread. Helen knew her dress didn’t compare to the gowns she’d once donned without a second thought, but Ruby had worked very hard on it for her.

  “I’m ashamed alright,” Tia drawled, “but only that my sister is gadding about wearing a sack lined in donkey manure.”

  “It isn’t a sack, and I’m quite sure the manure in question came from a horse.” Helen stared down her sister. Tia was like a butterfly, beautiful and bold, but Helen was the eldest, and even if her circumstances had been dramatically reduced by her own poor decision-making, it didn’t mean that she couldn’t still browbeat her younger sibling. Even if said sibling was a duchess who outranked them all.

  “You know Heath and I would give you anything,” Tia returned. “You needn’t live as a pauper and an outcast.”

  It was true that Tia, Cleo, and Bella had all offered Helen assistance. They had offered to help her with money, shelter, whatever she needed, and regardless of the potential scandal she could bring upon them. She had refused them all in the end, choosing to live her life on her terms. She’d discovered a great deal about herself in the last year. She’d realized that she was capable of surviving on her own, and she was fiercely proud of that.

  The nurse arrived to take Theo from Helen, a stout woman with steel-gray hair and a kind smile, and Helen relinquished her son with great reluctance. She’d entrusted his care only to herself or Maeve thus far, and being separated from him at all induced a strong sense of anxiety. If she held on to him a moment longer than necessary or polite, she couldn’t be blamed. She turned to watch Theo’s little white cap and gown disappearing out the drawing room door in the arms of someone else.

  “You needn’t be so territorial,” Cleo admonished when the door closed once again. “Evans is the finest nurse to be had, I assure you. Theo is in wonderful hands.” She caught Helen’s elbow and dragged her to the ornate settees and Louis Quinze table laid out with an impressive array of tea, muffins, and scones. “Do sit. You look as if you require sustenance. Do you wish for something stronger than tea? Wine? Whisky? Thornton has an excellent stock.”

  Helen didn’t know what she required. Whisky was tempting indeed. Anything to calm the jagged edges of her nerves. She sat dutifully, the odor of her befouled hem and shoe wafting up to her. She wrinkled her nose in distaste. Perhaps Tia wasn’t that far off the mark with her suggestion.

  Cleo, Tia, Bo, and Bella all sat as well. With their grand gowns and elaborate coiffures, Helen felt as out of place as a goose in a pond filled with gorgeous swans. She hadn’t allowed herself to venture to any of her sisters’ homes after her pregnancy had become evident for fear of tainting them with her scandal. She had to admit that she had missed this, not the finery but the camaraderie, the sisterhood. Sisters spoke to each other’s souls. They understood each other in a way no one else ever could.

  “Tell us everything,” Bo ordered. With her vibrant auburn hair and flashing blue eyes, Bo was a true original. Though her outer beauty was undeniable, it was her vivacious personality that made her blindingly beautiful. She was giving, loving, naïve to a fault, and never failed to make Helen laugh. “Helen, dearest, you don’t look happy. Is he not a fluent kisser?”

  Cleo spit the sip of tea she’d just taken all over her cup and saucer. “Boadicea,” she sputtered, indignant.

  “It is a valid question,” Tia pointed out with a wicked grin.

  “Quite,” Bella agreed, her cheeks pink. “Kissing is most important.”

  Dear, sweet heavens. This lot was going to be no help to her whatsoever. Three of them were hopelessly in love with their husbands and the fourth was a rapscallion in skirts.

  “Boadicea, what do you know of kissing anyway?” Helen demanded, because she was oldest and she felt responsible. She was certainly no model for her youngest sister to pattern herself after, though that didn’t seem to matter in the moment. Yes, Levi was a fluent kisser. Everywhere. Helen was very wisely inclined to keep that knowledge to herself.

  Bo blinked and attempted to school her features into an expression of demure innocence. “I’m sure I don’t know a thing, sister dearest.”

  “Clearly, I’ll have to tell our mother to do a more thorough job of scrutinizing your suitors,” Helen said, her brow raised.

  They all knew quite well that their parents were a bit unorthodox. Well, perhaps very much so. Mother hadn’t blinked an eye when Helen had delivered the news of her pregnancy. She’d simply asked her if she wished to go abroad or send her maid to the pharmacy. Don’t be silly, the countess had said, waving a careless hand in the air. You can’t believe you’re the first to ever require such a solution? Helen, of course, had chosen neither the former nor the latter.

  “Angels in heaven, he isn’t attempting to force you into this, is he?” Cleo asked suddenly, her gaze far too shrewd as it narrowed upon Helen. “You needn’t go through with it, you know. Thornton would gladly take up the cudgels for you if need be.”

  Somehow, Helen doubted that even Thornton, solid example of English masculinity that he was, could best Levi in a fight. Levi was taller, for one. And his muscles…she had forgotten how splendid and strong he was beneath his waistcoat and shirt. But when he’d held her against him earlier, she had remembered. She had remembered everything.

  Much to her shame.

  Cleo’s offer was appreciated nonetheless. Was Levi forcing her? He had been very angry with her, yes. He had threatened. He had raged. And yet, she knew that he would never hurt her, not physically. And she knew, too, that much of what he’d said had been the product of his anger. He would never make her wed him. Nor would she allow him to force her into a union that was unwanted. She was strong enough to stand on her own. She’d been doing so for a year and could continue for the rest of her life. No, then, he was not forcing her. Nor, if she was brutally honest with herself, was the union entirely unwanted.

  The thought gave her pause.

  Still, that didn’t mean that she was going to simply take up where they had left off. She wasn’t a meek and mild miss easily influenced by a handsome face and a wicked mouth. She’d been very careful to enumerate all of her requirements prior to agreeing to the marriage. Now that she’d had her taste of freedom, she found that she didn’t wish to lose it, even while she knew that protecting Theo by marrying Levi was the right thing to do. She was marrying Levi because she chose to, plain and simple.

  “He isn’t forcing me.” She took a sip of her tea at last and wished it was far stronger, perhaps with a dram of the whisky Cleo had so recently extolled. “He was rather irate with me for not informing him about Theo. We had quite a row, and he threatened to take Theo back to New York City without me. But in the end, I suppose he calmed down enough to reason with me. And I realized that it isn’t fair to punish Theo with a life of shame because of my own foolish actions. He can’t help the circumstance of his birth, but I can do my best to rectify it for him. I will rectify it. I owe him that as his mother.”

  “Oh my,” Tia said. “Mr. Storm sounds like a veritable beast.”

  “He’s not a beast,” Helen defended quickly. Too quickly, for she caugh
t her sisters’ knowing smiles.

  “You care for him,” Cleo observed.

  “You love him,” Tia chimed in, smiling gaily. She and Devonshire were almost sickeningly in love, and so of course she assumed everyone else must also be suffering from the selfsame malaise.

  “Oh dear, I think this is all my fault,” said Bella.

  “Old Helen has finally met her match,” crowed Bo.

  Helen glowered at the four miscreants before her, all of them beloved, all of them irksome indeed. “I am not old, you incorrigible minx. And I do not care for him or love him. But Bella, I must confess that you are, in part, responsible for the sad state in which I find myself, for Mr. Storm was your guest.”

  “Of course you’re not old.” Bo blinked, the picture of innocence yet again.

  “Of course you don’t love him,” Tia added, rolling her eyes skyward.

  Oh, they were too much, these sisters of hers. They saw too much. They knew too much. They said too much. Helen’s shoulders sagged.

  “Perhaps I do care,” she acknowledged. “Just a bit.”

  “Only a small bit, I’m sure,” Cleo said agreeably. “You know, dearest, men are a most exasperating species. Ingratiating themselves to us in one deed and vexing us in the next.”

  “But they aren’t ever vexing for long,” said Bella.

  “Oh no,” agreed Tia with a secretive smile. “Not for long.”

  “How can they be exasperating when they kiss so wonderfully?” Bo asked.

  Helen, Tia, Bella, and Cleo all groaned.

  Perhaps, Helen thought, she wouldn’t be the most scandalous of all her sisters after all. What had they taught Bo in finishing school, anyway? That she ought to be kissing every suitor who came across her path? Surely not. Helen sniffed the sour air once more. Oh, fiddle. Mayhap she would need to change anyway. That horse dung was proving most unshakeable.

  Most unshakeable indeed.

  he hadn’t allowed him to kiss her on the mouth, and it rankled Levi even now as their carriage hurried through the streets of London, taking them back to Helen’s House of Rest to gather her belongings and little Theo. The ceremony had been succinct. A far cry from the lavish affair that would have brought the cream of elite New York City society together to watch him wed Miss VanHorn. Helen had deserved such a splendid and ostentatious showing. She deserved orchids and roses and an orchestra and a blue-blooded prince among men. She’d gotten instead a hasty marriage, no flowers, no sweeping orchestral accompaniment, and a commoner who had bribed the Registrar to record their marriage with the wrong date after wedding them by License.

  That part didn’t sit well with him, but he’d had little choice. He didn’t consider himself an unethical man, had never succumbed to the temptations of Tammany Hall corruption like some of his contemporaries. In his youth, he had stolen, sometimes to feed himself and other times simply because he could. In war, he had wounded and killed, bound by his oath as a soldier.

  It had been during that very war, the war that had torn apart a nation and ravaged his youth, that he’d realized the true meaning of honor. He could take pride in knowing he had never committed another crime since his time in the Army of the Potomac until today. But for Helen and his son, he was more than willing to take that black mark against his soul. He wanted the Marriage Notice Books to reflect the story he would tell the world hereafter, that Theo had been born after his parents’ marriage and not before. He’d pay any price to protect his wife and his son.

  Wife. Strange word, foreign word to tie to the woman he’d wed. A title, a benediction. For a year, he had thought of her with longing and bitterness, with regret and anger and the driving fear that he’d made the greatest mistake of his life in letting her slip through his fingers. He’d kept her hat, had carried it with him to Paris and then on the long journey back to New York City. An albatross indeed. Now, their time apart was almost as if it hadn’t been. The annals of history, certainly, would never know otherwise.

  “Happy anniversary, Mrs. Storm,” he told her drily, watching her on the well-appointed bench opposite him. She held herself stiffly, even in the swaying conveyance. Her gown was simple and plain beneath her equally plain redingote. She, however, was not. Her golden hair had been wound into a heavy knot of basket plaits at her nape, putting the elegant beauty of her features on display. Mrs. Storm. She was his wife now, and the knowledge sent a sudden surge of something strong and sharp straight through him. Something he couldn’t define.

  “We haven’t been married for a year, and it was wrong of you to lead a man into sin merely to absolve ours.” Her gaze, trained to the small window to her right, swung to his at last.

  His eyes slipped to her lush mouth, the mouth she had denied him. “If he was that easily led into sin, I’m afraid this isn’t the first time he’s danced with the devil, my dear.”

  The good man suffered from a gambling addiction. Levi didn’t make a practice of underhanded business dealings. But he wasn’t a fool. He had always been adept at finding his opponent’s weaknesses and using them against him however he could. However he must. And in this instance, his desire to protect had been tantamount. Theo would never be known as a bastard now, and that was all that mattered.

  “I hadn’t realized the two of you were old friends,” she said pointedly, and then looked out the window once more.

  She could imply he was the devil all she liked, but it wouldn’t change a damn thing that had happened this day. They were married in the eyes of God and man now. And regardless of how angry he was with her for keeping Theo from him, regardless of her insistence that their union be in name only, and regardless of the murky circumstances surrounding their abrupt nuptials, taking Helen as his wife felt right all the way to his bones.

  “You married this devil,” he reminded her, wanting to needle her a bit, to rattle her out of the frigid poise she’d displayed since she had stepped into his carriage earlier that day.

  “For the sake of my son,” she retorted.

  “Our son,” he corrected.

  “For the sake of Theo,” she amended, “that he be afforded the life he deserves.”

  “Our son.” He wanted to hear her say it. “Our son, Helen.”

  “Very well, our son.” She turned to him once more, her eyes flashing with fire. “You win, Levi. There, are you happy now? You always win.”

  “No,” he said slowly. “I don’t.”

  No indeed, he did not always win, else he wouldn’t be in a carriage with the only woman in the world that he wanted, a woman who was his wife, goddamn it, and who didn’t want him to touch her.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” she said quietly. “You didn’t win your heiress after all, did you? I understand she jilted you. That must have been quite a blow to your pride.”

  “There was no blow to my pride. I didn’t wish to marry her, nor did she wish to marry me. We parted ways with a great deal of mutual relief.” By the time he’d returned to New York City after overseeing repairs on the Paris station, he’d had just enough time to undo the damage he’d done the day he’d accepted VanHorn’s investment and his daughter’s hand both. The VanHorn money and power weren’t worth a cold union to a woman he scarcely knew. He wasn’t willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of his business, regardless of the cost.

  And so, he’d arranged a meeting with Miss VanHorn, who had tearfully revealed to him that she loved another and wouldn’t be heartbroken in the least if their engagement were to end. Her father, however, had been another matter. VanHorn had been enraged. He’d pulled his funds and his support of North Atlantic Electric, and Levi had spent the last few months working as hard as he possibly could to keep his business afloat after such a crippling blow.

  It hadn’t been easy, but he’d managed by selling off some of his stocks and nearly all of his real estate. Everything but the Fifth Avenue and Belgravia homes was gone, but North Atlantic Electric had withstood, and it had begun venturing into a new form of power generation that Levi fe
lt was far more promising than the geographically limited direct current method they had previously used. He’d made it all happen the way he’d made everything happen, with his own hard work and determination.

  “Why didn’t you wish to marry her?” Helen asked then.

  Because she wasn’t you.

  Levi cursed himself inwardly for the wayward thought. But it was true. Something within him had changed during his time in London. Helen had changed him. He’d realized he’d turned into a man who was willing to sell himself for greater riches, a man who no longer recognized what he had become. Her angry words to him at their last parting had stung, and they had stung because they had been true.

  He held her gaze. “Someone once told me that I was a vile opportunist who cared only about my businesses, money, and pleasure. I sought to prove her wrong.”

  If hearing her own words unnerved her, it didn’t show on her face. She remained implacable. “I daresay you’ll have to do quite a bit more than that to prove her wrong.”

  “I have a lifetime in which to do it, Mrs. Storm.”

  His less-than-subtle reminder of their recent marriage gave her even more starch in her posture. She frowned at him, but not even a ferocious moue of disapproval could dim her beauty. “I don’t require you to prove anything to me, Mr. Storm. You’ve upended my life. Let that be enough.”

  “As you have upended mine,” he said grimly. “Had you simply responded to any one of my letters, had you simply sent word to me that you were carrying my child, I would have come for you without delay.”

  “Had you not already possessed a betrothed you kept secret from me, I would have.”

  Damn it, they were always talking in circles. He leaned across the carriage, bringing their faces temptingly close as he bracketed her skirts with his hands. “You too are guilty of the sin of omission, my dear, and don’t you forget it.”