Scandal's Mistress (A Novel of Lord Hawkesbury's Players)

by C. J. Archer

  She gave him another sideways glance. “So Enderby still has it.”

  “I’d wager he does.” They walked side by side in silence while he tried to think what they should do next. But all he could think about was how Grayshaw had looked at Alice. He’d wager it was the same way Leo looked at her.

  “Why are you staring at me like that?” she said, cutting off his thoughts.

  He quickly turned and signaled a waterman on the river. They’d reached Paul’s Stairs. Water slapped against the steps and the sides of a wherry just leaving with a gentleman passenger on board. It passed another wherry preparing to dock, the waterman steering with expert precision into the landing area. His two passengers alighted and he called out, “Eastward ho!” with his inquiring gaze firmly on Leo.

  “I was going to use the bridge,” Alice said. She was still watching him, a deep frown drawing her brows together.

  He resisted the urge to smooth it away with his thumb and instead stepped down to the waterman. “This way is faster,” he said. He could see the top of the Rose’s polygonal roof directly across the river. It only covered the galleries and tiring house, of course, but it was prominent nevertheless. Taking the bridge would add extra time to her journey. Time that might alarm her father or Style. “I’m sure they’re beginning to worry about you.”

  “Hardly,” she said on a sigh as she came up beside him. “I could miss the entire performance and no one would realize. Not even Father if he was busy.”

  He took her hand to help her into the wherry. The fingers were long and slender, like her, but held surprising strength. “Then they’re all fools.” As soon as he said it, he wished it back. He also wished he hadn’t been holding her hand.

  Her fingers tightened around his. Then, as if she’d been bitten, she suddenly let go. “Thank you.” She settled into the bench seat and pulled out her leather pouch. Before she could pay the waterman, Leo pressed a penny into his callused palm.

  “No, I’ll pay,” she protested.

  The waterman simply chuckled and pushed off the stairs with his oar.

  She twisted to look back at Leo standing on the landing. “What now?” she called out.

  “Now you return to the theatre and I return home.” No, not home. Not yet. There was something he needed to find out first.

  “That’s not what I meant.” Leo could hear her annoyance, despite the splashing of the oars and the distance.

  “We’ll sleep on it,” he shouted to her, “and discuss our thoughts tomorrow.”

  He couldn’t quite make out her face anymore but he suspected she was scowling. Perhaps she didn’t trust him to come to her. Or perhaps she thought sleep was out of the question. Whether it was for Leo depended greatly on what Grayshaw had to say.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Warhurst!” Grayshaw said upon Leo’s arrival in his study. He indicated Leo’s bruised and cut face. “Haven’t you and your brother grown too old for that?”

  Leo fingered his swollen lip. “This isn’t Blake’s handiwork. Some other fool got in my way.”

  “When will you learn that your fists will only get you so far? It’s wit and charm that achieve the best results.”

  “When wit and charm lay an opponent flat, I’ll consider employing them. For now, I prefer a solid punch.”

  “Wit and charm can lay the women flat, I assure you.” Grayshaw chuckled and bade his old friend sit. Leo hesitated then sat on the only spare chair, situated to one side of the desk. “You just missed Mistress Croft.” Grayshaw picked up a pile of papers and began to shuffle them over and over. “I believe you two are…acquainted.”

  “As I believe are you,” Leo shot back.

  “We were once. Acquainted I mean.” Grayshaw laughed nervously. When Leo didn’t join in, he tried to cover it by clearing his throat. “Can I ask how well you are…acquainted with Alice?”

  “No.”

  “I see.”

  “No. You don’t. I hardly know her. She’s helping me with information gathering, as you know. We aren’t even friends.” None of which was a lie. It wasn’t quite the truth either but Leo wasn’t prepared to dwell on that.

  “Oh.” Grayshaw’s dimples appeared with his sudden grin and he leaned back in his chair. “Good to hear. She did assure me there was nothing between you but…” He shrugged and left the sentence unfinished.

  “What? Are you jealous?” Leo tried to make it sound flippant, as if he were teasing, but it was hard when the words felt like sand on his tongue.

  “Certainly not.” Grayshaw ran his hand absently along the edge of the desk. “What a ridiculous notion.”

  “Then tell me, what is the nature of your relationship with Mistress Croft?”

  “I’m not sure that’s any of your affair.” For the first time since they’d met many years earlier, he looked like he wanted to smash his fist into Leo’s nose. So much for wit and charm.

  “I like to know about the people who work for me.”

  “I was under the impression she was working with you, Warhurst, not for you. Alice doesn’t take orders well from anyone, not even her father I suspect. It’s a good thing she’ll have her own shop soon. I commend you for helping her in that endeavor, by the way. I wish I could have done something like that for her.” The smile returned, but with sadness this time.

  A clamp closed around Leo’s heart and squeezed. “You haven’t answered my question. What is the nature of your acquaintance with Mistress Croft?”

  Grayshaw drew in a deep breath and crossed his arms. “If I fail to answer will you leave it alone?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.” He sighed. “We were lovers. It ended two years ago.”

  “I said what is the nature of your acquaintance, not was.”

  “There is no is. Today was the first time I’d seen her in two years and all we did was talk. She asked me about Hawkesbury, the same as you did this morning. There’s not much in his file, by the way.”

  “I know. I spoke to Mistress Croft just now. Thank you,” he added as an afterthought.

  “Why didn’t you ask her about the nature of our relationship?”

  Leo didn’t speak for a few heartbeats then said, “I thought you’d give me a more honest answer.”

  “Alice isn’t dishonest, Warhurst. Indeed, she’s one of the most trustworthy people I know. And kind too. So if you hurt her…”

  “The way you did?” Leo wasn’t sure what prompted him to say it. Alice hadn’t given him any real indication that her relationship with Grayshaw had ended badly, and yet…and yet…

  “She never loved me.” Grayshaw spoke quickly, as if he’d wanted to say it for some time. “Despite…” He shook his head. “The feelings between us were not equal. I knew that, although I’m not sure she did at the time.” He waved his hand. “Besides, it wasn’t a relationship that had a future. You of all people should understand that.”

  Leo knew. God how he knew it.

  “If she never loved you, why was she with you?” Leo’s voice cut through the thick silence that shrouded them. But he had to slash through it, had to know more. Had to. “What did she want? Tell me. What did she want from you then?”

  “Nothing.” Grayshaw buried both hands in his hair and shook his head. “I don’t know. I offered her nothing. I had nothing to give!”

  Leo rose and looked down at his friend, his head still in his hands. He wasn’t sure if he felt sorry for Grayshaw or not. He did know he no longer wanted to wring his neck. “You could have given her your name,” he managed to say. The clamp around his insides tightened, squeezed like the devil.

  Grayshaw barked out a laugh. “Don’t be absurd.” He stood and met Leo’s gaze with a steady one of his own. “You of all people should know the impossibility of someone like her marrying someone like me. Like us. I may not have the title like you, Warhurst, but I have just as much pride and ambition.”

  “I don’t have ambition,” Leo snapped. “What I have is duty to my family
, my tenants, and my lineage.”

  “Same thing.”

  “It doesn’t matter anyway. We’re not talking about me. My relationship with Mistress Croft is based on a financial arrangement, that’s all.”

  “If you say so.”

  Leo wanted to reiterate the point but kept his mouth shut. Protesting more would only dig the hole he’d stumbled into deeper.

  Grayshaw walked him to the front door. They shook hands on the threshold but there was no warmth in it. “Good luck.”

  “With what?”

  “The Finchbrooke widow.”

  Christ. Leo had forgotten about Catherine. “You too.”

  “Thank you, but I have no chance with her. Not now.”

  “Why not now?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Anyway, I’m not sure I can marry someone I’ve never met.”

  “Lucky you’re not royalty then,” Leo said. It was an attempt to lighten the mood between them but it failed pathetically. Melancholy seemed to have settled on Grayshaw’s shoulders.

  “Sometimes I wish I were a simple tailor,” he said. “Someone with no ambition beyond being good at my trade. Someone who didn’t have to resort to desperate measures to satisfy his desires.”

  Leo swallowed and looked down at his boots, then forced himself to look up at his friend. “So you could be with Alice Croft?” he said.

  “I don’t think she’d be interested in me no matter what my occupation was.”

  Leo left Grayshaw standing in the doorway and headed home on feet that felt like they were made of clay. He wanted to find Alice, wanted to…what? Talk to her?

  He pressed the heel of his hand to his eye but that only made the bruise there throb. Going to see Alice would be a stupid thing to do. Especially now while he was liable to say something he later regretted. Best to wait until the blood pumping through him had settled and his heartbeat steadied.

  That meant not thinking about her at all. An impossible task considering his mother took one look at Leo’s bruises when he arrived at Blakewell House and said, “Did you incur those over that seamstress?”

  Leo had wanted to avoid his family until he could inspect the damage Hawkesbury had caused but the ever-present Greeves had met him at the door and insisted Lady Warhurst needed to speak to him. Delaying the meeting would only delay the inevitable lecture, so Leo went straight to her withdrawing room where he found her doing needlework.

  He kissed her on the cheek she raised to him. “Do you mean Alice Croft?” he said.

  “Have you been spending time with any other seamstresses lately? And before you try to tell me you haven’t seen her since she left here this morning, I should warn you I saw you two speaking a short time ago.”

  He strode to the window and peered at his reflection in the glass. A half-closed black eye, cut lip, and bruised cheek looked back at him. “Been spying on me again, Mother?”

  “Gazing out my window on occasion is not spying. I saw you together across the road, just before you and Lord Hawkesbury disappeared down that lane.”

  He switched his focus to the far side of Dowgate Street. Just his luck that his mother would be looking out her window at the wrong moment.

  “My disagreement with Hawkesbury had nothing to do with Mistress Croft. It was over Lilly, of course.”

  “Of course. I hope he knocked some sense into you, Son.”

  He swung around to face her. “I’ll not end my quest, Mother, if that’s what you mean. I will make him marry Lilly. I’m not sure why you keep insisting I leave it alone.”

  She stabbed her needle into the cloth and regarded him with her shrewd, narrowed gaze. “Because Lilly assures me it is fruitless. I believe her. And that’s not what I meant.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Ah. You were speaking of Mistress Croft again.”

  Her lips flattened at the mention of Alice and her gaze darted back and forth across his face, as if she were searching for something there. “Yes,” she said. “I am.” When he said nothing, she rose and came toward him. She linked her fingers in front of her skirts and regarded him openly. “What is she to you?”

  He sighed. He was tired of explaining. Or attempting to explain. What Alice meant to him defied any reasonable explanation. He didn’t entirely understand it himself. She had become more than an acquaintance. His conversation with Grayshaw had taught him that much, and now that he was calmer he could see a little more clearly. He cared about her. Cared that she wasn’t going to get her heart broken by Grayshaw. Cared that she was going to find happiness with her shop.

  But that was all. Absolutely, definitely nothing else.

  “She’s my friend, Mother. Nothing more.”

  She stared at him so long he worried that she could see into him, see what he was feeling. Perhaps he should ask her to interpret what she saw there because he couldn’t.

  “Good,” she said emphatically. “The last thing we need now is a scandal. Even a whiff of something inappropriate could waft up to Northumberland and create a stink. Catherine’s father wouldn’t tolerate it, not with those Puritanical tendencies of his.”

  A prick of heat swept up Leo’s spine and flared before his eyes. “Don’t,” he said but it was drowned out by the pounding in his ears.

  His mother turned away as if she didn’t hear him. “It might be best not to speak to your friend until the betrothal with the Finchbrooke widow is sealed.” She sighed and sat at her desk. “Let’s hope it’s settled before Lilly’s condition becomes obvious. Perhaps you should also stay away from Lord Hawkesbury too before someone grows suspicious about your constant bickering. Is that clear?” She looked up at him and frowned. “Good lord, are you unwell? You’ve gone quite pale.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, Mother.” He strode across the room, pulled open the door with a jerk, walked through, and slammed it so hard the walls shook.

  “Ah,” said Blake, lounging on the landing. “In one of your tempers, I see.”

  Leo grabbed him by the front of his doublet and shoved him back into the wall.

  Blake held up his hands in surrender but he looked anything but contrite. The fool smiled. Leo punched it off.

  “What the hell was that for?” Blake said, shoving Leo away. “Just because someone used your face as a punching bag doesn’t mean you have to make mine match. I have to go see Min later.” He suddenly smiled. “If I get some sympathy out of it, I won’t make you pay next time I see you.”

  Leo grunted an apology.

  “So who’d you offend?”

  “No one.” He pushed past Blake but his half brother followed him down the stairs.

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Believe what you like. It’s none of your business.”

  “Speaking of which, how is your business proceeding with Hawkesbury? I assume it’s your pursuit of him that resulted in your face getting rearranged.”

  They reached the bottom of the stairs but Blake kept following him into the main hall. “He asked me to stop pursuing the matter. I refused. We settled the disagreement with our fists.”

  “I see. So Hawkesbury won and now you have to leave him alone.”

  Leo stopped and his brother halted alongside him. A couple more bruises, one on each eye, wouldn’t look amiss on Blake’s smug face. “You have so little faith in my ability to fight that you think I lost?”

  Blake had the decency to appear apologetic. “You could best almost anyone, Leo, except me and perhaps Hawkesbury. He’s good with a sword and as capable with his fists, so I hear. Does that answer make you feel better?”

  Leo snorted. “You think I can’t beat you? Your memory is short, Brother. Have you forgotten the time I made those womanly lips of yours bleed?”

  “How could I? Mother made us both muck out the stables for a month. The grooms thought it a great joke. But that was years ago. I’ve improved since then.”

  “Care to test that theory?”

  “You want to fight me? Here?” Blake held out his arms,
inviting his brother to take another swing. Leo didn’t think it would be as easy as the last punch. No matter what he said to Blake’s face, he knew his brother was a tough fighter and now he was prepared for the blow.

  “God knows I want to hit someone.” Leo clenched his fists. “And you’re already here.”

  Blake laughed but kept a close eye on Leo. “This endeavor to uncover Hawkesbury’s secret is sending you mad. I’ll have to warn Alice to stay away from you. It’s not safe.”

  “Do that. I’ll be grateful.” As would his mother. And possibly Grayshaw.

  “Ah. I see.” Blake’s smile turned sly.

  “See what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Tell me!”

  “Very well,” Blake said. He looked like he was enjoying himself. “She’s got to you, hasn’t she?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you slept with her last night while she was here, and now you can’t get her out of your mind.”

  Leo ignored him and stalked off down the corridor to the kitchen. Blake followed him. Again. “What makes you say that?” he asked when his curiosity became too much to bear.

  “The mere mention of her name makes you flinch. As if you can’t decide if you want to hear it or would rather eat hot coals.”

  “Now you’re the mad one,” Leo said over his shoulder. The corridor was too narrow for them to walk side by side. “Being in love is going to your head and turning it soft.”

  “I’d rather be soft-headed than soft-bellied. You can’t even own up to how you feel about Alice.”

  Leo stopped and rounded on Blake. The two stood only inches apart, their gazes locked. Blake’s eyes danced with amusement. “I have no feelings for Mistress Croft,” Leo said under his breath. “She and I are friends. We have a business arrangement. You know that.”

  Blake cocked an eyebrow. He wasn’t in the least afraid of Leo or his temper. He was one of the few people who never had been. “Then how do you explain last night?”

  There was no point denying he’d slept with Alice. Blake always knew when Leo was lying. “A momentary lapse of concentration on my part. She’s a pretty wench under the same roof as me—it was inevitable.”