A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal

  “Marrying an American,” Nell said. “Somebody with money, like that Churchill bint.”

  “Yes, like that Churchill bint.” Such marvelous language she used. “So, you see, I am—”

  “Well screwed.”

  Her words—their hot, immediate effect—caught him off guard. He pressed his lips together, eyeing her up and down. “Hmm.” So many possible replies. Such restraint on his part.

  “Precisely,” he said on his exhale. “Yet your miraculous reappearance offers …” He smiled. “Another route. I can help you reclaim your true place in the world, Nell. But I will have to ask you to make it worth my while.”

  “And how would I do that?”

  Curious that he couldn’t yet manage to read her tone or expression. He was accustomed to understanding people. Often he understood them even better than they did themselves.

  He might have taken her inscrutability to mean there was no depth to her, but even their short acquaintance proved otherwise. Conversely, she might be opaque because her depths were so foreign, so purely lower class, that he simply had no hope for getting a grip on them without prolonged exposure.

  Well. It seemed he’d turned into a snob, which made this next bit all the more ironic.

  “You’ll do it very simply,” he said. “Marry me.”

  The world looked different from behind glass. Nell pressed her forehead to the window, felt the tickle and brush of the gold tassels that hung from the upraised shade. Puddles lined the road, the work of last night’s rain, and they reflected back her passage, her pale face peering out from a vehicle large and black like a monster, lacquered to a high gloss, pulled by four strong horses with hides of steel gray.

  She slid a palm up the polished wood paneling and took hold of a hand strap wrapped in velvet. They were flying through the street. She felt weightless. Released from earth, adrift in the scents of oiled leather and polished wood and something woodsy and male: St. Maur, sitting across from her, smelled as she’d always imagined a forest might. Nottingham, say. Or high Scottish mountains. Dark and a touch wild.

  Possibilities, possibilities. They spiraled in her brain no matter how she tried to fix her wits on the goal.

  She couldn’t even feel hopeful. She was dazed. This couldn’t be real, any of it.

  “Almost there,” said St. Maur. She sat back into her seat, her hand closing now on a button sewn into the maroon leather cushion beneath her, holding herself down. He was real enough. Beneath the brim of his silk top hat, his thick hair waved down his temples, disorderly, black as ink. With one arm stretched out along the back of his seat, his long legs casually crossed, he looked at her. He had a smiling mouth and watchful eyes. A bad combination to win a girl’s trust.

  He said she was an earl’s true-born daughter.

  Madness.

  Yet what cause had he to lie?

  The idea was like a firecracker, exploding again and again in her brain. She shook her head at herself and looked back out the window.

  People looked smaller from this height. The swift passage blurred their faces into generalities: open mouths, upturned eyes. Gawking at the grand coach barreling past. Leaping back to save their feet or their necks.

  She was used to being the one who nearly got run over. She knew that fists were lifting in the wake of this carriage, angry, hopeless insults offered silently. Nobody in these fine vehicles ever noticed them.

  “You could slow down,” she said.

  “I thought you were in a hurry.”

  She was. Once he’d said he could get Hannah free for her, her amazement, her skepticism, had collapsed. Next to that offer, doubt seemed irrelevant, questions only a waste of time. “I am in a hurry,” she said. “Makes no difference. You could slow a little.”

  He eyed her for a moment. Then leaned toward her—causing her to suck in a breath. The slight curve of his mouth acknowledged how she tipped away, ever so slightly, as he lifted his knuckles and rapped on the window behind her. She felt the warmth of him as he hovered near. Her pulse kicked up a notch; she found herself holding her breath as a face appeared at the window: one of the footmen.

  A little pane in the glass popped open. “Your lordship?”

  “A touch slower,” said his lordship, and sat back, slowly and smoothly, like the coiling retreat of a snake. His eyes met hers. He lifted an expectant brow.

  She set her jaw and kept mum. It was common decency to slow down. He didn’t deserve thanks for it. His story made no sense, either. The letters weren’t proof of anything. One of them had been from Michael, the greatest liar on the earth. Now she knew how he’d gotten that windfall last year: he’d conned the old earl of fifty pounds.

  But the other letter? Maybe the penmanship had born a slight resemblance to Mum’s, but nothing decisive. Anyway, it couldn’t be true. If not her mother, then who had Jane Whitby been? Certainly not the sort of woman who stole someone else’s baby.

  The coach turned under an archway into a small courtyard bounded by stone walls. Gravel crunched as the vehicle rocked to a halt. The door opened, a man in dull green livery letting down the narrow stair.

  St. Maur rose, a large man in a small space. She drew her legs tight to the bench, but the adjustment proved unnecessary: an easy duck, a twist, and he was stepping down onto the ground, the watery sunlight gleaming off his hat brim, casting his eyes into deep shade.

  He ran a quick thumb and forefinger over the brim, straightening it. The footman stepped forward to brush down his long black coat. He tipped his head back until his eyes found hers.

  “This won’t take long,” he said. “You’ll wait in the coach.”

  Suddenly a hundred possible problems occurred to her. Anxiety brought her off the bench. “But how will you know that it’s her?”

  “Sit back down,” he said, and then stepped back, watching, waiting for obedience.

  She gritted her teeth and took her seat again, stiff with resentment. He wasn’t her master. She’d make that clear as soon as circumstances allowed it.

  “Hannah Crowley,” St. Maur said calmly—while one hand checked the other for the fit of his glove, smoothing, tugging, as the footman continued to hunch at his heels, brushing the jacket, thwip thwip thwip. “Do I have that right?”

  “Yes, but they may try to trick you into freeing somebody else. Say they’ve got a friend of their own inside. They might try—”

  “They won’t,” he said. No boasting in his voice: just a simple statement of fact. Nobody would dare to play tricks on him.

  The footman straightened and backed away, leaving St. Maur alone, framed by the doorway against the ugly gray face of the prison. He tilted his head in question. “All right?”

  Slowly she nodded.

  He gave her a faint smile. “Have a bit of faith,” he said. He turned on his heel—nodding as he mounted the steps to someone out of sight.

  The door thumped shut in her face.

  She sat back. Have a bit of faith. The instruction seemed more comical the longer she dwelled on it. Faith in him? Why? Why in God’s name should she have a drop of faith in a man like him? The clothing he wore probably cost a year’s salary at the factory. He’d just walked into a prison as lightly as though to a dance. Ordinary fears had no purchase on him. He probably thought her quaint for worrying.

  Have a bit of faith. Was it so easy to trust in his world? Could it be that he simply had no concept of a situation in which wariness would profit him? When life was easy, when the floors lay even and carpets softened them, you didn’t even have to watch where you stepped.

  His voice lingered with her in the silent compartment. Gorgeous. Low, smooth, posh—his vowels so clipped they might have been chipped from diamonds. Mum had spoken like that. People had laughed at her for it. Said she nursed too many airs for the pennies in her pocket.

  A scrap of fabric lay on the opposite bench. It gleamed in the low light of the side lamp. She plucked it up. Slippery-soft, the color of a summer sky. Fine white embroider
y at the edges. SR picked out in the corner.

  She slipped the scrap into her pocket. Just in case, she told herself.

  Her head fell back against the bench. In case what? Did she really mean to humor this lunatic?

  I took you, Mum had said.

  Mum had refused to speak of Rushden after that night. Soon, she’d not been lucid enough to speak at all. But—I took you, she’d whispered. I thought it for the best.

  Mum had always been a touch mad. But what would it make her to have stolen someone else’s baby?

  To have stolen me.

  Nell swallowed. Too strange, almost sickening, to think that that girl in the photograph might be more than her half sister. If St. Maur was right, they’d shared a womb.

  But Nell had known a pair of twins, the Miller girls down the road. Inseparable, those two. Finished each other’s sentences. Cared for each other before even their husbands. Such a bond as that—could a girl forget it? She’d looked into Katherine Aubyn’s photograph and seen nothing that spoke to her heart—only to the blackest parts of her, envy and bitterness and anger.

  But even if St. Maur’s story wasn’t true … She cast a look around the interior. This little space was finer than any she’d ever called her own. Ha! Finer than any she’d ever seen before last night. Cut-glass lamps fixed in brass, panels of polished wood, tapestry rugs rolled up at her feet—a girl could live in this coach.

  Marry me, he’d said.

  She reached into her pocket and felt past the handkerchief for the ten-pound note he’d given her to show his promises were good. She’d handled a bill, once or twice, but this one felt different, maybe because it was so clean. Crisp and crackling, like it had just come from the bank.

  Did it matter who she was? St. Maur said people would believe it, regardless. And why not? She did look just like that girl.

  She closed her eyes and took a breath through a throat that felt as dry as bone. If he came back with Hannah, maybe … Maybe she’d decide to give him a bit of trust. Just a bit, mind. She’d see where this led, at least.

  Minutes passed. The vehicle trembled as others trundled by. Footsteps cracked toward the vehicle; three hard strikes made the door rattle. Now came an angry voice, demanding that the door be opened, the coach be moved; bloody cheek, blocking the entrance! Just as quick, two strident voices tumbled over each other to demand an apology. Lord Rushden’s carriage; special business; respect your betters.

  And in reply, a flustered apology. Humbly begging his lordship’s forgiveness, etcetera.

  She sat frozen as the footsteps moved off. So it really did work like that. She’d never witnessed such craven groveling, but then, nobody in Bethnal Green got the opportunity for it, did they? Not many lords would see a cause to visit Peacock Alley.

  More footsteps approached. A muttered exchange between the erstwhile defenders of his lordship’s right to park himself where he pleased. Her heart fluttering in her throat, she sat up. The door shuddered, then swung open.

  Hannah’s tearful face peered up at her. “Oh, Nell!” she cried, and then burst into tears.

  “So he wants me to come back and marry him,” Nell concluded. She spoke in low tones, aware of St. Maur waiting outside. His coach was set to take Hannah home, but by the terms of their agreement, she’d stay here in Mayfair with him. He obviously meant to hold her to the fine details, too: he’d not even gone inside his house, but was lingering on the front step. “Can you believe this tale?”

  Hannah licked her lips. “No.”

  “It’s a bit much, ain’t it?” Nell reached out to take her hand. “Poor duck. You look exhausted.”

  Hannah nodded, looking down to her lap, to the fist in which she held the crumpled blue handkerchief Nell had lent her when she’d started to weep on the way to Grosvenor Square. St. Maur had noted the new ownership with a lift of his brow and a slight but pointed smile.

  Now I know, that smile had said.

  Yes, now he knew. She was a thief as well as a would-be murderess.

  She didn’t like to think how tight her throat would feel in a noose. She focused instead on Hannah, whose hand was trembling beneath hers. “You’re all right, now,” she said, giving the girl a proper squeeze. “And Hannah …” Why not dream big? “Think of it. This means I could be rich. Rich beyond all belief!”

  A moment of silence passed. Hannah looked up to show a frown. “But you’re not that girl, Nell.”

  “Maybe I’m not. But …” She hesitated, then spoke in a rush: “There’s this painting in St. Maur’s library and I swear to you that I’ve seen the place before.” She’d been thinking about it. “I recognized the house in it. And you were the one who said I looked like that girl in the photograph.”

  “True, but you say—” Hannah cast a quick glance toward the door, which still stood closed. “You say you’re her father’s bastard,” she whispered. “So maybe you saw the house as a babe.” She wrinkled her nose. “Though I can’t credit that you kept that secret from me! All these years, and you never breathed a word!”

  “But Mum never told me of Rushden till she got sick.” Why hadn’t she told? Nell felt her stomach tighten. “And if this bloke is right, she had cause to keep quiet, didn’t she?”

  Hannah made a sharp noise and pulled free of her grip. “I can’t credit my ears. You think your mum could do such a thing? Aye, Mrs. Whitby was a small bit daft, but it takes a bedlamite for sure to steal another woman’s babe!”

  Nell flushed. The words too closely echoed her own thoughts. “I’m not saying she was a bedlamite! But if she did it—” She took a breath. “Well, maybe she had cause. Maybe she worried for me. Maybe I wasn’t safe, somehow, or …” She trailed off. Hannah was looking at her like she was blaspheming on a Sunday.

  “Here,” Hannah said tartly, thrusting the handkerchief out. “Take this back. If you’re going off to whore, I want no part of the payment!”

  Nell shook her head. A sinking feeling was overtaking her. “He talked of marriage, not a poke.”

  Hannah let out a snort. “You didn’t used to be a fool.”

  Nell stared at the fine handkerchief, clenched so tightly in Hannah’s freckled, work-worn fingers. “You’re right to worry,” she said quietly. “You’re right about Mum, too. Of course she wouldn’t have done that.”

  “No, she wouldn’t.” Hannah’s jaw squared. “But I see how you were taken in,” she offered. “He’s a right handsome beast, and I’m grateful that you made him free me. But what a bounder to try to trick you like that! If he wants you for a moll, he might be honest, at least!”

  Here was the catch. “I don’t think he’s lying.” Nell shrugged. “What’s he to gain by trickery? Men like him, they think they can buy any girl they like. And to want to buy me?” She made a face. “I’m no eyesore, but it’s a bit of a stretch to think he’d go to so much trouble for me, don’t you think?”

  Hannah’s mouth pursed. “You’re pretty, Nellie. Dickie Jackson always—”

  “Oh, piffle to Dickie! You twig what I mean. I’m not you. Maybe if it were you, I’d believe he’d make up lies to have you. But—let’s be frank, Han.”

  “I don’t know …”

  “Forget the question of Mum,” Nell said hastily. “Just consider this: no matter what’s true, he believes his story. Either way, then, I’ve naught to lose by going back to him.” Besides, St. Maur had too much on her for her to dare refuse his offer. But she wouldn’t worry Hannah with that point.

  “Oh, aye, I’d wager he will believe this story,” Hannah said, her tone ominous. “Until the day comes when he’s supposed to wed you! Then you see what he believes! You’ll be left high and dry without a penny to show for it!”

  Nell made an impatient noise. “No, but listen: he did promise to set me up, Hannah—a whole wardrobe of new clothes, he said, to introduce me to his kind. Now, imagine what I could do with three or four dresses—not the cheap sort, but silk and satin, the kinds you see in the photographs.”

&n
bsp; She paused, cheered by the thought. It was a lowering thing to consider his offer only because he could have her arrested if she refused it. But this plan was flash. Even if she’d felt certain of being able to refuse him without consequences, she would have considered this road. “No matter if he changes his mind about marrying me, I’ll still have the dresses. Imagine how much Brennan would pay for just one of them!”

  Hannah drummed her fingers against the leather bench. “I don’t know. Aye, they’d fetch a handsome price,” she said softly. “But what if he set the police on you for taking them?”

  “But he could do that right now if he wanted.” Of course, right now he thought he had a use for her. Once that changed, he might throw her to the dogs for fun. “It’s a risk,” Nell admitted. “But no greater than the one I’m running already.”

  Hannah pressed her hands together at her mouth, a prayerful posture that caused her lips to whiten. Nell went still, recognizing it as the preparation to a verdict.

  “You said he wants your money,” Hannah said finally. “He wants to marry you. If he’s not having you on, then … then he’ll really want to marry you.” She blinked very rapidly, then crossed herself. “Begging your mum’s forgiveness … you could be a countess, Nell.” Her eyes got wide. “A countess.”

  Nell opened her mouth but words failed her. A countess. Her laugh felt slightly hysterical. “What a mad idea. If you’d only seen the inside of this place …” Or him in it. St. Maur’s indifference to the luxury in which he lived—the impatience with which he’d glanced around his library, as though seeing nothing to hold his interest—that was what it meant to belong in his world.

  She’d never manage that.

  “He’s a looker,” Hannah murmured. She was eyeing Nell queerly. “Do you like him, then? Would you want to be marrying him?”

  Nell leaned back. The leather seat felt like a warm, steady hand against her back, holding her up as all the butterflies came back to life in her stomach. “He’s … clever,” she said. “Slippery.” More than that, of course. Sorcerer’s eyes, the devil’s mouth. Smiles that came and went like quicksilver.