A Little Scandal (27 page)

And he knew how, when she said his name, it caused him to forget everything: everything he had ever known, everything he had ever been, everything he had ever hoped to be, except a seemingly insatiable desire to hear her say it again ….

“Lady Babbie,” Isabel continued, thankfully oblivious to the carnality of her father’s thoughts just then, “is Miss Mayhew’s cat, of course. And if Miss Mayhew’s taken her cat with her, well, then I expect that she’ll be away for quite a while. And I can’t say that I blame her. I’m very certain you were horrid to her.”

That remark shook Burke from his pleasant memories of his activities with Miss Mayhew the night before. In fact, it sent his sense of uneasiness escalating to full-fledged alarm. He shook his head, trying to rid it of a sudden buzzing sound that had begun between his ears. “When? When was I horrid to her?”

“Last night, of course. When you frightened away Mr. Craven, and then shouted at her for it. But it wasn’t her fault he came throwing pebbles at her window, the way he did.”

“Mr. Craven?” Burke threw down the newspaper and stood up, leaning his fists upon the table, for fear he might use them for something else. “Daniel Craven? What the devil has Daniel Craven to do with any of this?”

“Papa,” Isabel said, shaking her head until her black curls swayed. “You know perfectly well. I heard the whole thing. Those pebbles he was throwing woke me, too. But really, she told him straightaway to leave. You know she doesn’t like him, Papa. I’m sure it was very wrong of you to shout at her the way you did. He couldn’t have been up to any good, slipping round here like that—”

“Daniel Craven?” Burke kept his fists exactly where they were. Otherwise, he was quite certain he might put them through the back of his chair. “That was Daniel Craven in the garden last night with Miss Mayhew?”

“Yes, of course,” Isabel said. “Who’d you think it was?”

Abruptly, Burke felt as if all the marrow left his bones. Either that, or his skeleton had suddenly turned to jelly. He sat down quickly, because for a moment, he was quite convinced he was going to fall down.

Daniel Craven. Daniel Craven. All this time, he’d thought it was Bishop who’d been out there in the garden with Kate. But it hadn’t. It had been Daniel Craven. He’d accused her … well, he wasn’t certain exactly what it was he’d accused her of. That part of the evening was a bit of a blur. But he’d accused her of doing something, and of doing it with the Earl of Palmer.

When all the time, it hadn’t been Bishop at all. No, not at all. It had been Daniel Craven, a man whose very glance, if Burke wasn’t mistaken, terrified her to the core. And he’d had the blockheaded audacity to accuse her of—

Not that she had blamed him for it. That much he did remember. No, she hadn’t resented the implication, or even mentioned it again, once he’d started kissing her ….

But he’d accused her of something. Something dreadful. Something of which she was perfectly innocent.

And now she was gone. And no wonder.

“You needn’t look like that, you know,” Isabel said.

He blinked at her. She was sitting with one elbow on the table, her chin balanced in her hand, stirring her tea with a silver spoon as she gazed at him, a kind smile on her face—the kindest smile Burke had ever seen on his daughter’s face.

“I’m quite certain that whatever you said last night to Miss Mayhew,” she said, “she’ll forgive you, Papa. Some mornings, I’m perfectly horrid to her, and she’s always forgiven me.”

Burke found he had no reply to make to that. What could he say? He felt as if someone had just reached into his chest, pulled out his heart, and tossed it to the floor. And up until the night before, he hadn’t even been aware he still had a heart.

“Miss Mayhew will be back soon,” Isabel said confidently. “After all, she left her books.”

But Miss Mayhew did not come back soon. Certainly she did not come back that day. Nor did she send notice of where she’d gone, or any word of explanation as to how long she’d be obliged to stay there. All day, Burke waited at home for the post. And each time Vincennes presented him with the silver salver containing the mail, there was no letter, nor even a note, from Kate Mayhew.

Nor did the post bring any word the next day. Or the next.

It was then that Burke, who had been baffled and hurt before, began to grow angry.

He did not know why he was angry. After all, it was not as if Kate had stolen from him, or betrayed him by running off with some other man. No, nothing like that. She had merely disappeared. Disappeared without a word, and after a night such as the one they had spent together. A night such as Burke had never experienced in his life, and he was a man who was no stranger to such delights.

But never, never in his thirty-six years, had he spent such a night as the one he’d spent with Kate. How any woman could simply walk out after having spent a night like that, he could not fathom. He could not fathom why she had left, or what he could possibly have done to drive her away. Certainly he’d been wrong about Daniel Craven—stupidly, idiotically wrong. But she’d forgiven him that. He was quite certain she’d forgiven him that the moment their mouths had met. So why? Why?

He had been, he was convinced, the most careful of lovers, conscious all the time—well, all right, not all the time. But most of the time, after that first initial thrust, that thrust that he’d felt destroy the thin fabric of her maidenhead—of her inexperience, her innocence. He had, he felt, exerted iron self-control, keeping even his climaxes, the most powerful he had ever known, in check, as much as he was able, for fear of either hurting or frightening her. She was so very young, and so very small, he’d been afraid of breaking her.

And yet, incredibly, that delicate vessel, which he had lifted as easily as one would lift a child, and held aloft with a single arm, had contained a spirit more genuinely sensual, more passionate, more giving, more everything, than any woman he had ever known.

And now she was gone, in spite of the pleasure they’d shared, in spite of the care he’d taken, even in spite of his offer of a town house and carriage, even—what could he have been thinking?—his promise of purchasing for her a bookshop. Never had he been so generous with any of his other mistresses.

But never, it had to be admitted, had he felt this way about any of his other mistresses. Or even, truth be told, his wife.

It was on the fifth day of Kate’s absence that Burke summoned the servants to him, and quizzed them, one at a time, on the chaperone’s possible whereabouts. But though their concern for the missing young woman was quite genuine, not a single one of them could tell him where Miss Mayhew might have gone. No, she had never mentioned an ill relative in their presence. In fact, she had stated quite plainly that all of her family was dead. Burke’s next move was to send Mrs. Cleary to the Sledges, and put to them—and to their servants—the same questions. It was absurd, he knew, to go canvassing the neighborhood for news about one of his own staff, but he did not see any other way to go about it. Cyrus Sledge might think it strange, but Burke didn’t give a whit what Cyrus Sledge might think. All he wanted was to find Kate Mayhew.

He did not, of course, wish to alarm his daughter, and so he kept from her, as best he was able, his concern over her chaperone’s disappearance. And Isabel, quite preoccupied with her romance with Geoffrey Saunders, only periodically said things like, “I do wish Miss Mayhew would hurry up and come home. I’ve got so many things to tell her,” and “If only that horrid relative of Miss Mayhew’s would hurry up and die so she could come back to us.” The only thing for which Burke could be grateful was that in Miss Mayhew’s absence, Isabel had not much interest in attending the dozens of functions to which she’d been invited, and did not ask her father to accompany her. It was no use, she said, going to balls without Miss Mayhew to help her with her hair. Geoffrey would quite go off her if he happened to see what a rat’s nest was growing on her head.

It was on the tenth day after Miss Mayhew’s abrupt and mysterious departure that Burke was pacing the upstairs hallway, and happened to pass by the door to her room, and notice that it was open. There were sounds of activity from within it.

With a myriad of emotions in his chest—relief that she was finally home; bitter outrage that she’d left him so coldly; and a certain amount of salacious delight at the prospect of once again hearing his name pronounced by those adorable lips—he stepped into the room, but saw only Mrs. Cleary there with one of the footmen, lowering Kate’s books into a crate. At the sound of his footstep, Mrs. Cleary looked up, and then, incredibly, blushed. Burke, who had never before seen the old woman blush, could only stare.

“Oh, my lord,” the housekeeper said, all in a rush. “I’m so sorry if we have disturbed you.”

He stared at the crate. He stared at the books in the footman’s hands. He stared at the blush on his housekeeper’s face.

“Where is she?” he asked.

He did not shout it. He did not hit anything as he said it. He merely asked it, in what he considered a quiet, reasonable voice.

“Oh, my lord.” Mrs. Cleary rose from her knees, and, wringing her plump, dimpled hands, cried, “I only just received the letter this morning. I would have shown it to you straightaway ….”

He said, again in what he considered an utterly calm voice, “Yes?”

To Mrs. Cleary, however, he did not evidently sound so calm, since she hastily thrust a hand into her apron pocket, and drew out a piece of foolscap.

“Here it is,” she said, hurrying toward him. “Right here. It’s not from Miss Mayhew, you see. But it does say she does not believe she will be able to return to London anytime soon, and begs to inform you, my lord, that you had best engage a new chaperone—”

Burke took the letter from his housekeeper’s fingers and perused it.

“I only hesitated to tell you, my lord,” Mrs. Cleary went on, “because I knew how much it was going to upset poor Lady Isabel. She was so very fond of Miss Mayhew—and I’m quite sure the feeling was mutual. Miss Mayhew never had a harsh word to say for my lady, and you know, my lord, as well as I do how she can be … trying. Well, young girls are trying, I suppose, by nature. But I’ve never seen anyone improve as much as Lady Isabel improved once Miss Mayhew came to stay. Almost like she was a different person.”

But Burke had come to the part of the letter where an address was given, to which Mrs. Cleary was asked kindly to send the remains of Miss Mayhew’s belongings. He stared at this address for nearly a full minute while Mrs. Cleary chattered on.

“Lady Isabel’s going to take this news very hard, I’m afraid,” the housekeeper went on. “Very hard, indeed, my lord.”

But Burke hardly heard her. Because he had already turned around, and was heading out the door.

The maid who answered the door stared very hard at the card Burke presented to her.

“Lord Wingate,” she said, “to see Lady Palmer. Yes, my lord. I’ll just go and see if her ladyship is in.”

Then off she scampered, her apron strings flying behind her. Burke, left standing in the morning room, briefly entertained the thought of tearing the house apart, stone by stone, until he found her. But he thought that might not ingratiate himself to his hostess.

A door was flung open a few minutes later, and an elderly, but by no means frail, woman entered the room, her neck and hands heavily bejeweled, her gown a season out of date. But then, when one had reached one’s seventies, fashion was not necessarily one’s primary concern.

“Lord Wingate,” the Dowager Lady Palmer said, coming toward him with only the lightest taps of her ivory-handled cane. “I hardly believed my eyes when Virginia handed me your card. You have some gall, young man, to come paying social calls this late in the game. You are still in disgrace, you know, from polite society, for divorcing that pretty young wife of yours. Some bootlickers might be willing to forget such an affront, especially when it happened so long ago. But not me. I consider divorce a sin, young man. A mortal sin. I don’t care how many lovers she had.”

Burke’s lips parted. What came out from between them was more of a growl than anything else.

“Where is she?”

“Where is who?” The dowager waved her cane at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You know very well what I’m talking about.” Burke thought he would have liked, despite the woman’s age and sex, to wrap his hands about her wobbly neck and choke her to death. “Katherine Mayhew. I know she’s here. I’ve seen the note instructing that her things be sent to this address. Now I demand that you let me see her.”

“Katherine Mayhew?” The dowager looked geuninely shocked. “Can you be so stupid as to think, just because I receive a man like yourself, who is as base as base can sink, that I would admit to my home the daughter of the man responsible for driving my husband into an early grave? You must be mad, Lord Wingate. You certainly look it. I’ve never seen any gentleman look quite so scruffy as you do at the moment. How long has it been since you shaved?”

He said only, “I know she’s here. If I have to, I will rip this place apart until I find her. But I will find her.”

The dowager snorted. “We shall see about that. Virginia! Virginia!” The pretty maid poked her head in. “Fetch Jacobs at once. I want this madman removed from my house.”

No sooner, however, had the maid closed the door, than it opened again, and the Earl of Palmer strolled in, looking annoyed.

“What’s all the infernal shoutin’ about, Mother?” he demanded. “I can hardly hear myself think.” When his gaze fell upon the marquis, his eyes widened.

Burke did not hesitate. He was across the room like a shot, his fist plunging into the younger man’s face with all the force of a blow from a blacksmith’s hammer. The earl went down, taking a small table, and the vase of flowers that had been sitting on it, with him. The dowager screamed, then promptly joined her son upon the floor in a dead faint. But Burke paid not the slightest heed. He reached down and seized Bishop by his lapels, then dragged him back to his feet.

“Where,” Burke demanded, giving him a shake, “is she?”