A Little Scandal (8 page)

“But I’m not angry.” Burke was making an effort to sound calm. “Not a bit.”

The girl behind the podium said, “I don’t believe you. You look very angry.”

“But I’m not.” Burke took a deep breath. “Miss Mayhew, are you under the impression that I might strike you?”

“You have something of a reputation for violence, my lord,” she said, readily enough.

Burke felt he really would like to break something, preferably the podium she was clutching so hard. He felt as if he would like very much to rip it out of her hands and hurl it through the hideous stained-glass window on the opposite side of the room. But then he remembered he’d given up that kind of thing, and he controlled the impulse.

“I’m afraid I must take umbrage at that, Miss Mayhew,” he said instead. “While I certainly haven’t made any sort of effort to restrain my inclinations toward force where men might be concerned, I have never in my life struck a woman.”

He saw her slim fingers loosen from the sides of the atlas stand. “I’m sorry, my lord,” she said. “But the look on your face, when I said I couldn’t come work for you—it was rather … startling.”

“Are you afraid of me?” Burke demanded irritably. “Is that why you won’t accept the position? You certainly weren’t afraid of me the other night, when you tried to skewer me with your umbrella. Why should you be frightened of me now? Unless ….” He experienced another wave of annoyance. It wasn’t anger. He refused to call it anger. “Unless someone’s been prattling to you about me. About my past.”

“Not at all,” Miss Mayhew said, too quickly.

“They have.” Burke glared at her. “How else would you know about my reputation for violence? Well, you already thought me a vile abuser of innocent women. It must be gratifying to know that you were right.”

“How you conduct your personal business,” Miss Mayhew said stiffly, “is hardly any of my affair, my lord.”

“It oughtn’t be,” he replied with a grunt. “But I can see that you’ve already formed an opinion about it. Have you an objection to the fact that I divorced my wife, Miss Mayhew?”

She dropped her gaze.

“I’d appreciate an answer, Miss Mayhew. In matters such as this—business matters, I mean—I find that honesty among all parties concerned is generally best. And so I repeat my question. Do you disapprove of the fact that I divorced my wife?”

“There isn’t much about the life men like you lead, Lord Wingate,” she said, to the atlas, “that I find worthy of approval.”

Burke stared. “Well,” he said, after a moment. “That’s frank, anyway. I can see that whoever’s been prattling to you about me has done a fine job of filling you in on the particulars.”

She looked up. “Lord Wingate,” she said, and if he hadn’t known better, he might have suspected she was angry. “I told you before, your private life really isn’t any of my business.”

“Oh, I see. And that’s what you were doing the other night on the street, when you came at me with your umbrella? Minding your own business?”

Miss Mayhew stuck out her rather sharp little chin. “I thought a young woman was in peril,” she said, and there was a dangerous light in her grey eyes.

“Oh, of course, of course,” he said. “And you were quite convinced you and your umbrella were going to stop a man three times your size and weight.”

“I thought I had to try, at least,” she said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.”

The reply sent a shiver down Burke’s spine. He told himself that the absurd physical reaction he felt to her words was actually relief, because she was exactly what he’d been looking for all along in a chaperone for Isabel. It certainly wasn’t due to anything else. Certainly not because he thought he’d happened to find—and on his very own street, no less—that rarest of all things in London: a truly good, truly honest person. And certainly not because all that goodness and honesty came wrapped in such irresistibly lovely packaging.

Still, her words took him so by surprise, that he momentarily forgot himself and burst out with a laugh. “Miss Mayhew, what if I were to pay you three hundred pounds a year? Would you come work for me then?”

She said, looking quite appalled, “No!”

“Why in heaven’s name not?” Then a horrible thought occurred to him. It ought to have occurred to him before. “Are you engaged, Miss Mayhew?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Engaged.” He stared at her. “It isn’t such a strange question. You’re an attractive young woman, if rather odd. I imagine you must have suitors. Have you impending plans to marry one of them?”

She said, as if the idea were entirely preposterous, “Certainly not.”

“Well, then, why the hesitation? Are you in love with Cyrus Sledge? Is it that you can’t bear the thought of leaving him?”

She burst out laughing at that. The sound of Miss Katherine Mayhew’s laughter had a curious effect on Burke. It made him feel as if thirty-six was not quite so advanced an age, and that there might possibly be more to his future than flannel waistcoats and books by the fire.

Perhaps a madness seized him. There was no other explanation for it, really. His valet was undoubtedly correct, and Burke was beginning to slip into senility. But at that moment, it seemed to him the most perfectly natural thing in the world to cross the room, snatch Miss Mayhew up by the waist, and lay a hearty kiss upon that laughing mouth.

Or at least, that’s what he’d intended to do. And he succeeded in most of it, catching her quite unawares, and pulling her easily against him. But when he stooped to kiss her, she brought the atlas up, quite hard, against his forehead. Though the blow didn’t hurt, it was unexpected to say the least, and in his amazement, he loosened his hold on her—

And she darted away, flinging open the library doors and leaving him alone in Cyrus Sledge’s library.

It wasn’t any wonder, really, that he picked the atlas up and hurled it, with all his strength, at the stained-glass window.

Kate didn’t stop running until she reached the schoolroom. Once in its relative safety, she snatched Lady Babbie up from the hearth and began to pace, her face buried in the cat’s fur.

Oh, Lord, she prayed. Please don’t let them give me the sack. I am begging you, please, please, please don’t let them give me the sack. I haven’t anywhere—truly anywhere—else to go.

It was a prayer not at all dissimilar to the one she’d uttered when the Reverend Billings had assaulted her in the pantry. The only difference, really, was that she’d crowned the reverend with a pie dish because he’d repulsed her, and she’d whacked the marquis with an atlas … well, for different reasons.

Posie looked in just as Kate was uttering a silent amen.

“Well?” she asked excitedly. “What did he want, then?”

Kate released the cat, who’d been struggling for some time in her arms. “Oh, Posie,” she said with a sigh. “I am utterly wretched.”

Posie shook her head. “New coat, then, is it? The bastard. Them titled blokes is all the same, acting like posh gentlemen, when underneath, they’re nothin’ better than money-grubbers. Well, I’ve got a bit saved up, if you need a loan, miss. I won’t even charge you interest, how’s that?”

Kate sank down onto the hearth. “It wasn’t the coat, Posie. He wasn’t here about the coat at all. He wants to hire me, Posie, to chaperone his daughter during her first season out for two—no, three hundred pounds a year.” Kate took a breath. “And I said no.”

Posie was across the room in three strides. She took hold of Kate’s wrist and said, “I lied to you. I suspected he wasn’t here about the coat. I saw you run up the stairs, and then I heard a dreadful crash from the liberry. I reckon he’s broke something, since Fusspot and both the Sledges went runnin’ in there. I’ll wager he’s still there, gettin’ the business from Mister and Missus. We can stop ’im afore he gets to the door, and you can tell ’im you’ve changed your mind. Come on, now. Look sharp, or you’ll miss ’im.”

Kate snatched her hand from the younger girl’s grip. “Posie, I can’t.”

Posie stared down at her, dumbfounded. “You can’t what? You can’t live like a queen on three hundred pounds a year? Do you have any idea how much money that is, miss? That’s more money than either of us is ever likely to see in a lifetime, that’s how much it is!”

Kate winced as Posie’s voice rose to a shriek. “Posie,” she said weakly. “You don’t understand.”

“You’re right I don’t understand! I have to tell you, miss, I like you better’n any of those stuffy bitches they had watchin’ the boys before you. But if you don’t go an’ work for his lordship, I swear to you I’ll never speak to you again!”

“Posie.” Kate dropped her face down into her lap. When she spoke again, her voice was muffled by her skirt. “I can’t work as a chaperone. Not here in London.”

Posie glared at her. “And why not?”

She couldn’t, of course, tell Posie. She had told no one in the Sledge household of her past. She wasn’t sure what they made of Freddy—if they wondered where she had met him, or how the two of them had come to be such friends. No one had bothered to ask. They were a particularly incurious household.

But the fact was that Kate had selected her employers with care. The Sledges—like all of the families for whom Kate had worked before them—were not, though wealthy, members of the beau monde. They were not invited with any regularity to the season’s finest balls. They did not even go to the theater, or attend the races. They did not number amongst their acquaintances anyone who might remember the name of Mayhew, or who might have had occasion to own a diamond mine.

And that, as far as Kate was concerned, was just fine. The quieter the lifestyle of her employers, the better her chances at maintaining the comfortable anonymity she’d managed, after seven long years, to attain. Not that, as a governess, she was in much danger of discovery. Occasionally, she was required to escort her young charges to birthday parties and the like. But even there, the chance of being recognized was low, for she invariably encountered only other governesses like herself.

But as a chaperone—and to the daughter of a wealthy marquis—Kate would be thrust into the very same circles in which she had used to travel a lifetime ago. She would visit households in which she’d once been entertained as a guest, encounter persons with whom she’d once shared intimate friendships, meet, after her long absence, old acquaintances … not to mention old foes.

And she would be forced to endure, all over again, the snubs, the catty remarks, the suspicious looks, she’d finally managed to escape.

No. She had lived through it once. How, she hadn’t any idea. But she had survived it. She would not endure it again. She could not.

For she despised them. She quite thoroughly despised the beau monde, for their hypocrisy, their snobbery, and their self-serving deceit. Men like the marquis, who thought that because they had money they could treat human beings any way they saw fit. Men like the marquis, who had seen to her father’s ruin. Men like the marquis, who had coldly turned their backs when Kate needed them.

All except Freddy. Kind, simple Freddy, who had stuck by Kate, even in her darkest hours.

He had been unwavering in his friendship to her. He was the only one. The only one from the ton who hadn’t let her down when it had really mattered.

And he was the only one she could now abide.

She couldn’t go back. She wouldn’t. Not for all the money in the world.

“I can’t, “Kate said, lifting her face from her hands. “Don’t you see? I would have to go to dinner parties and balls and the like.”

Posie snorted.

“Oh, aye,” she said sarcastically. “A fate worse than death. You might even have to drink champagne and eat caviar every night. And get paid three hundred pounds a year for it! It’s shocking what people will ask of a girl these days.”

“You don’t understand,” Kate said, with a shake of her head. “It isn’t what it seems from the outside, Posie. Those people—the marquis and his friends—they’re not like you and me. They’re not even like the Sledges. They’re horrible. Truly horrible. All of them. They haven’t any loyalty, any sort of human decency. All they think about is themselves and their precious money. They can ruin someone’s life with just a single well-placed whisper. It doesn’t matter whether or not what they say is true. The fact that it was said at all is taken as proof of its veracity.”

Posie regarded Kate wryly. “If a bloke gave me three hundred pounds a year, people could say whatever they wanted to about me. With three hundred pounds, what would I care?”

“But you would care, Posie.” Kate got up suddenly, and paced the length of the schoolroom. “You would care, because it hurts. Especially when it isn’t true.”

“It only hurts,” Posie remarked, “if you let it.”

Kate stopped pacing and stared down at the younger girl. It was easy, she supposed, for Posie to believe something as trite as that. Posie had never been hurt, not once in her short life. Oh, certainly, the occasional love affair gone wrong, maybe … but never irrevocably wrong. The eldest of a happy brood of twelve, both of Posie’s parents were still living. It was easy, Kate told herself, for Posie to be brave. She had never lost anything she cared about. She hadn’t lost everything she cared about, as Kate had.

Suddenly, Kate smiled. She couldn’t help it. She had never been capable of allowing anything to depress her for long, and now was no exception.

“What’s the use?” she asked, spreading her arms wide. “Even if I thought I could put up with it—life in the ton—the marquis isn’t likely to want me now. I hit him, Posie.”

“You what?”

“Hit him. Over the head.” Kate mimed the action. “With an atlas. He tried to kiss me, just like the Reverend Billings, the conceited dolt.”

Posie’s mouth, Kate saw, had formed a perfect O of astonishment. A second later, she’d jumped up and, clutching Kate by the wrist, tried to pull her bodily toward the door.

“It ain’t too late,” Posie said. “He might still be down there. Go on and apologize.”

“Apologize? Me? Posie, are you mad? Didn’t you hear me? He tried to—”

“I’ve got three words for you, Miss Kate,” Posie said. “Three hundred pounds. Understand me? Now go down there and apologize. On your knees, if you have to. But do it.”