A Little Scandal (6 page)

The man—he was more of a boy, really, not a day over twenty-five—stammered, through lips that had gone blue with the cold, “Y-you’re n-not, my lord?”

“Certainly not,” Burke said. “My days of throwing men through windows and over balconies are quite over.”

“Are th-they, my lord?”

“Quite. Rage takes passion, you know, and I haven’t felt passionate about anything—certainly any woman—in quite some time. You’ll find you feel the same, son, as you get older.”

The boy looked immensely relieved. “Oh … thank you, my lord.”

“But just because I’m not in a rage,” Burke went on, conversationally, “doesn’t mean I shan’t be wanting satisfaction from you. I’ll expect to meet you tomorrow at dawn—oh, no, I say, that’s much too early. Only in a few hours. How about tomorrow at dusk? The far side of the park. You choose the weapon. Pistols or blades?”

The young man’s heart—which Burke could plainly see, thumping against the skin of his chest, since the fellow was shirtless—gave a spasmodic shudder. “Oh, sir,” the boy said. “I—if you please, sir—”

“Pistols it is, then,” Burke said, since he doubted the fellow was much of a fencer. Fencing, long considered a crucial element in the education of a gentleman, seemed to have become a lost art of late, which Burke considered unfortunate. “Bring a second. I’ll provide the surgeon. Good night.”

He turned, and headed back into the bedroom. There, Sara had flung herself across the bed, and was wailing fitfully.

“Oh, please, Burke!” she cried, lifting her beautiful, tear-stained face from a lace-trimmed pillow. “You don’t understand! He forced me! I merely invited him back here for a drink, and the next thing I knew, he’d forced himself upon me!”

Burke nodded, pulling his gloves back into place. He’d thought to use them to strike his rival across the face, but when he’d actually laid eyes on the shivering fellow, he hadn’t had the heart. He did wish, however, that he had his horsewhip handy. He’d have applied that, readily enough, to Mrs. Woodhart’s generous backside, since it seemed to him she deserved a whipping very badly, indeed.

“Please, Sara,” he said. “Histrionics might earn you applause on stage, but they’re quite wasted on me. If there was any forcing going on here tonight, I’ll wager it was you who did it. Stop crying now, and listen to me carefully.”

But Sara was too far into her performance to stop now. She shrieked, “Burke! Don’t you know I could only love you? Only you, Burke!”

Burke sighed. “Listen to me, Sara. The rent on this place is paid through the month, but I expect you to be gone by the first. You understand, of course.”

Sara let out a sob. It occurred to Burke that if she’d thrown half this much energy into her performance as Lady Macbeth, she might have pleased the critics better. It was the public who loved her, loved her for exceptionally good looks.

Well, and was he any different, really?

“You can keep the jewelry and the carriage,” Burke said. He was, he knew, losing his edge. Just a year ago, he’d have asked for the carriage back. Now he simply didn’t care enough to make an issue of it. “And of course all the clothes and hats and whatnot are yours.” Was that all? He tried to remember. Had he given her anything else?

No. He was quite safe. She hadn’t anything at all of his.

“Well,” he said, as he watched the estimable Mrs. Woodhart beat her mattress with her fists. “Good night then, Sara.”

He left the bedroom, and retrieved his hat from a wide-eyed Lilly, who said, quite fiercely for such a little country thing, “If you’d only been here tonight, instead of off gallivantin’ about, it never woulda ’appened, you know, my lord. Her and him, I mean.”

Burke raised his eyebrows at this sage piece of advice. “Well, Lilly,” he said. “I’m terribly sorry. But I wasn’t off gallivanting about, as you so charmingly put it. I had to look after my daughter.”

Lilly shook her head, clearly unhappy that her residence in this fine hotel was at an end. “There’s folks you can hire to look after daughters, you know, my lord,” she said bitterly—right before shutting the door in his face.

Standing out in the corridor in front of the door to a hotel suite for which he’d paid, Burke considered the maid’s words. “There’s folks you can hire to look after daughters, you know.” Certainly. And he’d hired—how many? He’d lost count of the number of women who’d unpacked their bags in the room next door to his daughter’s, only to repack them a few days later and leave—usually in tears. Was there no woman in England with whom Isabel could get along for more than a week? Who could he possibly hire who might satisfy the girl?

He had put that very question to Isabel, the moment they’d returned from the Peagroves’ cotillion. She had replied, slamming her bedroom door closed as if to emphasize her words, “Someone like Miss Mayhew!”

Well, Burke decided, there in the hallway outside of Sara Woodhart’s door. If Miss Mayhew was who Isabel wanted, then by God, Miss Mayhew was who Isabel was going to get.

Kate propped Lady Babbie up onto the top of her desk and asked, “What am I do with you?”

Lady Babbie blinked at her with cool green eyes.

“You’re going to get us thrown out of here,” Kate said. “You’ve simply got to stop putting headless mice on his pillow. No more stalking his coattails. And no more hairballs in his shoes. You have got to stop it. He’s making my life a perfect misery.”

Lady Babbie opened her mouth and let out an enormous yawn, showing all of her white pointy teeth and her long pink tongue.

“If only,” Kate murmured mournfully, “you understood a word I said.”

Footsteps outside the schoolroom door. Since Kate had promised Phillips that she wouldn’t let Lady Babbie out of her bedroom, she snatched up the creature and thrust her beneath her desk, holding the cat there, spitting and squirming, while she waited to see who was at the door.

But it was only Posie, panting breathlessly from having run all the way from the first floor to the fourth, where the schoolroom was located.

“Oh,” Kate said, visibly relieved. She lifted the hissing cat from beneath the desktop. “It’s only you. You scared me. I felt sure it was old Fusspot.”

“Oh, miss.” Posie leaned against the door frame for support as she attempted to catch her breath. “You won’t believe—you won’t believe—”

Lady Babbie let out a snarl, and Kate was forced to drop her, or risk getting scratched. “There, you nasty thing,” she said fondly, as the cat stalked away, her long striped tail swishing angrily from side to side. “Go on, then. And don’t blame me if Mr. Phillips comes after you with the water basin next time you take it into that pea-sized brain of yours to pay him a social call in his private quarters.”

Lady Babbie retired to the fireside, and began industriously to clean herself. Kate glanced at the small watch pinned to her blouse. “Are the boys back from their riding lesson already?” she asked. “I’d have thought they’d be another half hour at least. I haven’t had a chance to see Cook yet about their tea.”

“Not the boys,” Posie said, finally managing to gulp a few words out. She kept a hand flattened to her chest, as if to still her too quickly beating heart. “There’s a gentleman here to see you, miss. He’s waitin’ in the library. Fusspot had to put him in the library, since the mistress’s got the Ladies’ Society fer the Betterment of the Lot of the Popping New Guineas in the front drawing room—”

“A gentleman?” Kate reached up instinctively to smooth back her hair. “What on earth is Freddy doing here, and in the middle of the day? He knows I don’t have Tuesdays off. What can be the matter with him?”

Posie shook her head. “No, no, miss,” she said, her eyes glittering with what could easily have been mistaken for feverish excitement. “It isn’t Lord Palmer. Not a bit! It’s a great tall dark man. Big as a mountain an’ with eyes just like Lady Babbie’s there. I was thinkin’ he’s got to be that man you said you saw abusin’ his daughter on the street’t’other evening—”

“What?” Kate found herself on her feet before she was even aware that she’d stood up. “Lord Wingate, you mean?”

“That’s right.” Posie snapped her fingers. “That’s his name, all right! Fusspot tol’ me, but I forgot it. Wingate. Right.”

Kate stared. “Lord Wingate? Here? To see me?”

“Yes, miss. That’s what he said. He gave Phillips his card and asked if you were at home, just as if you was the lady of the house!” Posie’s cheeks were flushed. “You shoulda seen ol’ Fusspot’s face! Like to ’ave a fit, he was! Went straight to Mr. Sledge an’ tol’ him, an’ Mr. Sledge, he says, ‘Well, don’t just stand there, Phillips. Go and fetch her!’ ” Posie shrieked with nervous laughter. ” ‘Go and fetch her,’ he says! To Fusspot! You shoulda seen the ol’ milksop’s face!”

“Good Lord.” Kate hurriedly swept cat hair from her skirt. “What could he possibly want?”

“Maybe you poked a hole in his coat with yer umbrella,” Posie offered cheerfully. “Maybe he wants to make you pay fer replacin’ it.”

“Oh, no.” Kate froze, even as her foot was on the stairs. “Good Lord, Posie, I can’t afford to buy a new coat for that man. His cravats alone probably cost more than I earn in an entire year.”

Posie patted her on the arm. “Don’t you worry. Just ask him for the coat back, and we’ll have Mrs. Jennings stitch that hole right up. You know what a good job she did with the boys’ coats that day they took into their heads to pitch those hot chestnuts at one another. It’ll be good as new. He won’t be able to tell the difference.”

Only somewhat comforted, Kate began a slow descent to the second floor, where his lordship waited. There could be only one reason, she knew, why the Marquis of Wingate would deign to call upon the home of Mr. Cyrus Sledge: he was undoubtedly still outraged over Kate’s accusations that night nearly a week ago, and had come to demand her dismissal and subsequent removal from Park Lane. When she entered the library, Mr. Sledge would dismiss her on the spot … in return for a modest contribution to the Reverend Billings’s cause, of course.

But when Kate approached the library door, she found Mr. Sledge hovering about outside it, with Mrs. Sledge and Mr. Phillips in close attendance. All three of them looked up expectantly when she came near, and it was Mrs. Sledge who said, quite kindly, and in a loud whisper, ostensibly so that his lordship would not hear her through the door, “Why, Miss Mayhew! We had no idea you were acquainted with Lord Wingate!”

Kate stared. “I—” she began, but Mr. Sledge cut her off.

“Lord Wingate is an extremely wealthy man, Miss Mayhew.” Her employer was trying, Kate could see, to maintain a dignified poise, but his excitement was getting the better of him. “He hasn’t the sort of reputation that the Reverend Billings would find desirable in a sponsor—Lord Wingate has somewhat of a checkered past, I’m sure I needn’t tell you—but he is so wealthy that even what he might consider a very small donation would keep the Papua New Guineans in prayer books for years to come, and might possibly even pay the salary for someone to teach the poor souls to read them!”

Kate said, “Well, I would think that if Lord Wingate had come to make a donation, he’d have asked to see you, sir, and not me, Perhaps there’s been some mistake—”

“There was no mistake,” Phillips said majestically, from where he stood by the door. “He asked for you by name, Miss Mayhew.”

Oh, Lord, Kate thought. I’m doomed.

“Well, whatever he’s come for,” Mrs. Sledge said, slipping something into Kate’s hand and giving her a little push toward the library door, “do see if you could give him these tracts. I understand that Lord Wingate is quite an intellectual. He studied the law for his own amusement, and reads philosophy and things, they say. So he ought to find these quite interesting.”

Before Kate could say another word, Phillips had flung open the library door and said, “Miss Mayhew, my lord,” and Kate was quite literally propelled into the room by a hand placed very firmly in the small of her back.

She stumbled, of course, over the fringe on the Oriental carpet, and dropped the tracts. When she’d regained her balance, she looked up, and saw the man she’d accosted on the street a few nights before turning around from the fire he’d been staring into.

Only without the fog to soften and blur his extremely hard edges, Kate saw that the Marquis of Wingate was far more intimidating indoors than he’d looked out of them. Over a foot taller than she was, he was nearly as wide as the mantel across the shoulders, though his shape tapered down nicely after that, to a pair of slim hips, and a trim waist without any paunch at all hidden beneath his satin waistcoat. Still, he was far too large for Kate’s sense of comfort—too large, and much too direct with his gaze, which once again pierced her with alarming intensity.

So directly, and with so much intensity, that Kate hastily dropped her own gaze, and hoped he wouldn’t notice.

“Looking for a parasol, Miss Mayhew,” he inquired, “with which to skewer me?”

He’d noticed. She started, though she recognized the voice easily enough. A deep, menacing growl it had been, cutting through the fog and enveloping her with its displeasure. Now there was far more amusement in it than displeasure … but it was nonetheless intimidating.

“I assure you,” Kate said, looking up, “that I am as handy with a fire poker as I am with an umbrella.”

If Lord Wingate was surprised by her temerity, he didn’t look it. He said, quite dryly, “Thank you for putting me on my guard. But I’d hoped to survive this interview without having any holes poked through me. Do you know who I am?”

Kate put her hands behind her back, and assumed what she considered a suitably cowed expression. It was one she’d had to work on quite hard in the mirror upon her realization that the only way she was going to survive, after the deaths of her parents, was by her wits. She prided herself that she’d got it exactly right.

“I do indeed, my lord,” she said. “You are Burke Traherne, the Marquis of Wingate.”

“I am,” he rumbled. “I assume you remember reviling me just the other night with some rather startling assumptions. Do you recall them?”

Kate nodded. “Indeed, my lord, I do.”

One of his dark eyebrows lifted. “But no apology, I see.”