One Night Of Scandal

  "Now, look what you've gone and done," Hayden scolded, spotting the overturned ink bottle.

  Looking utterly unrepentant, the kitten jumped down from the table and marched calmly to the hearth, where she proceeded to plop down and lick her furry little belly.

  Stealing a look at Lottie to make sure she hadn't awakened, Hayden moved to right the bottle before the ink could spill over onto the rug. But it seemed the kitten was justified in its smugness. The ink was dry, spilled long before the cat had gone on its rampage.

  As Hayden pried the bottle off the ruined page, his elbow hit the writing case perched on the edge of the desk. It tipped over, pouring out page upon page of vellum stationery, all filled margin to margin with Lottie's rather spectacular handwriting. She tended toward dramatic curlicues and majestic flourishes. She didn't dot her i's so much as anoint them with splashes of ink. Picking up one of the pages, Hayden felt a smile curve his lips. His wife wrote much as she made love — with unfettered passion and a raw enthusiasm that more than made up for any lack of precision.

  Assuming she was keeping some sort of household journal as most ladies did, he was moving to gather the rest of the pages and tuck them back into the compartment at the bottom of the case when the first sentence on the very first page caught his eye: I'll never forget the moment I first laid eyes on the man who planned to murder me…

  Hayden's smile slowly faded as he sank into the desk chair and began to read.

  Chapter 18

  Disaster! I am found out!

  "LOTTIE! LOTTIE, WAKE UP! IT'S NEARLY time for tea!" From the quaver of horror in Harriet's voice, one might have deduced that missing afternoon tea was equivalent to missing the last chariot to heaven on the Day of Judgment.

  Groaning, Lottie dragged a pillow over her head. But Harriet was not to be dissuaded. She tugged the pillow away, then pried open one of Lottie's sluggish eyelids with her thumb.

  "You need to wake up," she shouted, as if Lottie were suffering from deafness as well as drowsiness. "It's Sir Ned's last day here and you've nearly slept it all away." Lottie glared at her friend through one baleful eye as Harriet picked up the glass of water sitting on the table next to the bed and gave it a tentative sniff. "Oh, dear Lord, the marquess hasn't gone and poisoned you, has he?"

  Despite Lottie's reassurances to the contrary, Harriet persisted in believing that Hayden was some sort of homicidal lunatic, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to murder them all in their beds.

  Shoving Harriet's hand away, Lottie sat up. "Do stop fussing over me, Harriet. No one's slipped any arsenic into my tea. I just didn't get much sleep last night."

  As Lottie flexed her limbs in a long, lazy stretch, she was keenly reminded of exactly what she'd been doing instead of sleeping. She was sore in muscles she'd never even known she had. But if not for that warm, tingly soreness, she might have wondered if the whole night hadn't been some delicious dream. Perhaps it would be easier to believe if she had woken up in Hayden's bed, in Hayden's arms.

  "Tell me, Harriet," she asked, hugging her knees to her chest, "have you never thought it odd that the marquess and I don't share a bedchamber?"

  Her friend shrugged. "Not really. My parents can barely stand to share a house. So what kept you awake last night? Was it the return of the ghost?" Harriet cast a nervous look over her shoulder. "Apparently, I slept right through the fracas, but the servants have been whispering about it all morning. Someone or something was playing the piano in the music room again. At first everyone thought it was Allegra, but when Martha looked in on her, there she was, nestled snug in her bed. Meggie said Martha came flying back into the servants' quarters as if her skirt was afire." Harriet looked rather pleased by that tidbit. "Oh, and there was no wailing this time, but after the music stopped, several of the servants claim to have heard the most frightful moaning."

  "Indeed?" Hoping to hide both her smile and her blush, Lottie pretended to smother another yawn behind her hand.

  Harriet's eyes grew even rounder. "Martha told me it sounded as if some poor soul was being tortured to death."

  Lottie saw herself sprawled half-naked on top of the piano; lying limp and sated with pleasure beneath Hayden's powerful body; on the divan shivering with anticipation as he rose up on his knees behind her. The only death delivered by her husband had been the one the French so eloquently called le petit mort. And it was a death she would gladly die a thousand times at his skillful hands.

  Unable to completely hide her shiver of delight, she said, "You can tell Meggie to stop fretting. I don't think we'll be hearing from the ghost again any time soon."

  "What makes you say that?"

  Lottie could not bring herself to betray Justine, not even to Harriet. She was too grateful to the woman for luring both her and Hayden to the music room with that haunting melody. "It's just a notion I have. And besides, who wants to dwell on the past all the time when the future is all that matters?" Driven by a surge of hope that she, Hayden, and Allegra might actually become a family, Lottie threw back the blankets and bounded out of the bed. "I'm ravenous. Didn't you say something about tea? I feel as if I could eat a whole tray of scones." Before Harriet could answer, Lottie strode to the window and threw up the sash. "How could I have slept so much of the day away? It's absolutely glorious out there!"

  Outside the manor, the wind whipped across the endless expanse of moor, driving scudding gray clouds across an even bleaker sky.

  Lottie turned around to find Harriet blinking at her as if she'd lost her wits. "Are you entirely sure you haven't been poisoned?"

  Lottie laughed. "If I have, then I'm already craving more of the stuff, for it's the sweetest poison I've ever tasted."

  Before she could close the window, a gust of wind went swirling around her, sending the papers scattered across the writing desk fluttering into the air. Both she and Harriet rushed to rescue them. Lottie had half of them stuffed back into her writing case before she realized something was amiss. Every page in her hands was blank.

  She frowned down at them in confusion for a moment before snatching the remaining pages out of Harriet's hands. They, too, were as pristine as they'd been on the day she'd purchased them from the Bond Street stationers.

  "Whatever is the matter?" Harriet asked, staring at Lottie's trembling hands. "You've gone as pale as a ghost."

  Grabbing up the writing case, Lottie pried frantically at the false panel nestled in its bottom. The compartment below was empty.

  "My book," she whispered, dread clutching at her stomach as every damning word she'd written since coming to Oakwylde Manor resounded through her brain. "It's gone."

  * * *

  After a fruitless search of the house, Lottie finally found Hayden sitting on a rock at the edge of the cliffs, framed by a misty canvas of sea and sky. Although the rocks below weren't visible from her vantage point, Lottie could almost feel them there, their jagged and glistening teeth yawning open to snag the careless or the foolhardy.

  Hayden was studying the document in his hand and looking every inch the Gothic villain in his buff-colored trousers, open-throated ivory shirt, and scuffed boots. The restless fingers of the wind tossed his dark hair. As Lottie studied the terse line of his mouth, she marveled that it could be the same mouth that had curved into a tender smile before brushing her lips with a kiss, the same mouth that had given her such exquisite pleasure only a few hours before.

  Feeling heat rush from her cheeks to other even more traitorous regions of her body, she said, "You had no right to go through my things."

  Hayden lifted his head to meet her challenging gaze. They both knew she was bluffing. According to the laws of England, she had no things. Everything she owned belonged to her husband. Including her body.

  "You're absolutely correct," he admitted, startling her. "I'm quite ashamed of myself. But you really should consider my ill manners a tribute to your literary skills. I stumbled upon the first page of your little masterpiece by accident, but once I start
ed reading, I became so engrossed in the adventures of the 'Deadly Duke' and his fearless young bride that I couldn't bring myself to stop."

  He withdrew an entire stack of pages from a cleft in the rock. With a sinking feeling, Lottie recognized her own handwriting. Oddly enough, she felt more naked before him now than she had last night. Then she had felt cherished and protected. Now she felt raw and exposed, as if Hayden was peering into the darkest, most cobweb-infested recesses of her soul with a quizzing glass. It was all she could do not to snatch up the pages and hide them behind her back.

  She nodded toward the edge of the cliff. "I'm surprised you haven't scattered them to the wind."

  "And deprive the world of such a burgeoning talent? I think not." Hayden tapped the manuscript with one finger. "Oh, you're given to the occasional lapse into melodrama, such as the chapter where your intrepid heroine discovers the feeble-witted daughter her dastardly husband keeps locked in the attic, but overall, it's a fine effort. You should be quite pleased with yourself."

  Then why did she feel so wretched? "There's always some unfortunate soul locked in the attic in these books," she tried to explain. "Especially if the house has no dungeon."

  "Perhaps I should consider having one built," he murmured, the glint in his eye making him look every bit as devilish as Lottie's duke.

  Weary of being toyed with, she snapped, "You know, this never would have happened if you had just carried me back to your bed."

  He gave her a reproachful look. "But how could you have rested comfortably knowing that at any minute I might have strangled you in your sleep?" Despite his mocking good cheer, he rather looked as if he'd like to strangle her now. "So tell me, have you found a publisher yet?"

  "Of course not!"

  "But you had every intention of finding one." It was not a question.

  "No. Yes. I don't know!" Lottie shook her head, desperate to make him understand. "Perhaps I did, but that was before."

  Tucking the manuscript back into the cleft, Hayden rose, an admiring gleam in his eye. "And to think I accused you of spying for the scandal sheets. You had a much loftier goal in mind, didn't you? This way, you won't have to share any of your profit or your glory. 'Lady Oakleigh' should be quite the literary toast of London."

  Lottie gaped at him, incredulous. "Is that what you believe? That I planned this from the start? That I trapped you into marriage for the sole purpose of using your life as inspiration for some ridiculous novel?"

  "I don't know. You tell me." He stroked the backs of his fingers down her cheek, his touch sending a frisson of heat dancing over her skin. His voice deepened to a silky murmur. "Did you find last night to be an inspiration as well? Was it a way for you to find out just how the 'hands of a murderer would feel against your flesh?' "

  Lottie closed her eyes briefly, unprepared for the shock of having him use both her words and his caress as a weapon against her. But when she opened them again, it was to meet his smoldering gaze with one of her own.

  "I suppose there's no help for it, is there?" she said flatly, pushing his hand away. "I've been found out. If you must know the truth, I came peeping into your window that night just hoping I'd be mistaken for a common doxy and accosted in front of my family and most of London. Then, with my reputation in ruins, I hoped to be dragged away from the loving bosom of everyone I held dear and delivered to some drafty old mansion on the edge of creation where I could be treated as little more than a servant by some brooding nobleman and his bratty daughter. After determining that the brooding nobleman was still in love with his dead wife, who has a reputation for popping out of the grave whenever something doesn't suit her, I planned to entice him into making mad, passionate love to me on top of a piano." Lottie's voice rose. "And just as you suspected, this was all part of my diabolical scheme to further my literary ambitions!"

  Hayden gazed down at her for a long moment, a muscle twitching in his cheek. "Would the clavichord have done or did it have to be the piano?"

  Without a word, Lottie snatched the manuscript from the rock and strode to the edge of the cliff. The wind tugged her curls from her topknot and whipped them across her face, nearly blinding her.

  "Don't!" Hayden barked just as she prepared to feed the pages to the sea. His hands closed over her shoulders, drawing her away from the brink of the cliff. "Don't," he said more gently. "The literary world might survive such a loss, but I'm not sure either one of us would."

  Hugging the manuscript to her chest, Lottie turned to face him. "I started writing the first night I heard the ghost," she confessed. "After you informed me that ours was to be a marriage in name only."

  Hayden retreated a few steps, almost as if he didn't trust himself to remain near her. "I would have thought such a revelation would have been a relief, especially given that the 'icy touch' of my hand was enough to provoke 'shudders of dread in any innocent.' "

  Lottie gave him an annoyed look. "Did you memorize the entire manuscript?"

  "Only select passages," he assured her, folding his arms over his chest. "Mostly those dealing with my 'utter moral depravity' and the 'compelling grimness' of my 'sardonic countenance.' "

  Lottie moaned. "Not your countenance, the duke's countenance. It's just a silly bit of fiction, you know, not a biography."

  "So any resemblance between the 'Murderous Marquess' and your 'Deadly Duke' is purely happenstance?" he asked, the skeptical arch of one eyebrow making him look quite sardonic.

  She swallowed, trying not to squirm. "Well, I might have borrowed a few elements of your life to enrich the story, but I'm reasonably sure you've never sold your soul to the devil in exchange for immunity for all your crimes."

  "There might be some who would disagree with you," he said softly, all traces of mockery disappearing from his face.

  As Lottie gazed at him, a thread of hope wound its way through her remorse. Perhaps it wasn't too late to atone for her own crimes.

  Still shielding her heart with the half-finished manuscript, she took a step toward him. "Then why don't you let me prove them wrong?"

  Hayden raked a lock of hair from his narrowed eyes. "Just what are you asking of me?"

  Lottie drew in a deep breath, wishing she were half as fearless as her heroine. "I'm asking you to let me tell society your story — the one the scandal sheets will never print."

  The look Hayden gave her was almost pitying. "It's a bit late in the tale to reform the Deadly Duke, don't you think?"

  "It's never too late," she said, taking another step toward him. "Not if he has someone to believe in him."

  Hayden stiffened. "I accused you of being given to melodrama, my lady, not maudlin sentimentality."

  Lottie felt a pang of loss. So she was back to being "my lady" instead of "lovely Lottie" or "sweeting," was she? But it was the prospect of losing something even more precious that emboldened her. "I'm not talking about redeeming the Frankenstein monster. I'm talking about vindicating a man who's been wrongly accused of killing the woman he loved more than life itself."

  Although Lottie managed to say the words without flinching, they slid like a blade through her tender heart.

  Swearing beneath his breath, Hayden strode to the edge of the cliff a few feet away from her. He stood gazing out over the white-capped waves, his profile as stark as the sky.

  Lottie drifted toward him. "All I need to clear your name is the truth about how Justine died. You told the authorities it was an accident. Was she drunk on laudanum? Did she wander away from the house and lose her way in the mist? Did she trip over a loose rock or the hem of her gown? All you have to do is tell me what happened that night on the cliffs. Let me give you the happy ending you deserve!"

  She reached for his arm, somehow believing that if she could touch him, she might be able to reach him. After last night, she refused to believe that hands capable of such mesmerizing tenderness could also be capable of shoving a defenseless woman to her death.

  As her fingertips brushed his sleeve, he wheeled a
round and caught her by the shoulders, his hands hard and ruthless as he backed her toward the edge of the cliff. "You say you want the truth, my lady, but what if the truth won't give either one of us a happy ending? What then?"

  As her heels fought for purchase on the looserocks, sending several of them tumbling into the abyss behind her, Lottie shrank from her husband, frightened by the darkness in his eyes. She regretted it immediately, but it was too late. That all too familiar mask of wariness had already descended over his face.

  Swinging her away from the cliff, Hayden released her, smoothing away the fingerprints his grip had left on her sleeves. "Go back to London with Ned, Lottie, and finish your story," he said gruffly. "Give your duke the nasty comeuppance he deserves. Rescue your foolhardy heroine from his clutches and give her a hero worthy of her regard. But please don't ask me to give you something I bloody well can't."

  With those words, Hayden turned and went striding toward the house, leaving Lottie clutching the crumpled pages of her manuscript.

  * * *

  The day Lottie left Oakwylde Manor was much like the day she had arrived. A leaden bank of clouds brooded over the moor while a chill wind churned the sea into swirling whitecaps. If not for the tender haze of green veiling every hill and tree, Lottie might have believed that spring had been nothing more than a dream, as beautiful and fleeting as the night she'd spent in Hayden's arms.

  Although the servants had gathered in the drive to bid her farewell, there was no sign of Hayden or Allegra. While Meggie dabbed at her eyes with her apron, Giles stood at rigid attention, his cravat starched, but his mouth drooping mournfully. When Martha started sniffing, Mrs. Cavendish whipped a handkerchief from her pocket and handed it to her, her mouth pressed into a thin line, but her eyes suspiciously bright.

  Ned escorted Harriet and Lottie to his waiting carriage, but even he couldn't come up with a suitable quip to lighten the mood. He was handing Harriet into the carriage when Allegra came sprinting around the corner of the house, Miss Terwilliger hobbling along behind her. Much to Lottie's relief, the crusty old governess had elected to stay on at the manor, realizing that her young charge would need her now more than ever.