The Scandal of the Season

by Aydra Richards

  Mouse peered up at him quizzically, as if attempting to divine from whence his abrupt good humor had originated. A delightful little curl had sprung free from its pins, sliding down to nestle against her throat. Her hands, folded in her lap, shifted minutely, tightening together.

  He was still laughing as he clapped his hand over the back of an empty chair, still laughing as he pulled it from beneath the table to position it near her own, and still laughing as he sank into it.

  He could not even attribute her mettle to liquor, since she’d declined even so much as a glass of wine. It was just the way she was—all soft fur and twitching nose and unaccountably sharp fangs. A tiny mouse, standing firm in the wake of a lion’s roar.

  “Give me your hands,” he said again, though he knew the command was softened by the dregs of his amusement.

  She sat like a little porcelain doll, all starched and pressed and elegantly arrayed in her lovely blue gown, a lady all the way to the backs of her molars. Cool and poised and prim in the kind of way that made him want to ruffle her up a bit. To shake the starch free of her petticoats and make her less a lady and more a woman.

  She said, “No.” She didn’t know the sort of danger she courted.

  “You don’t tell me no, Mouse.” But she had, and it had been thrilling. Perhaps because no one else had ever dared. Because there was little satisfaction in winning when one’s opponent simply rolled over an accepted defeat. Grey might have vanquished Andover, might have locked Mouse away like a prisoner in a dungeon—if a well-appointed room and carte blanche to do as she liked could ever count as imprisonment—but she had not been beaten.

  “I believe I just did,” she said, and he wanted to laugh again. But more than that, he wanted to kiss her. Her lower lip was full and soft, a dusky pink that another lady might have tried to deepen with cosmetics, but somehow suited Mouse entirely.

  She wasn’t the sort of woman to whom he would ordinarily be attracted. She hadn’t even attracted much attention in her own world. She would never be a striking beauty of the kind gentleman lost their heads—or hearts—over. But she didn’t need beauty, not with a tongue that cut like a knife. She didn’t need honey-gold hair or limpid blue eyes, or breasts the size of melons.

  The men whom had largely left her a wallflower for the last few years were arrogant fools, and she was miles away too good for them. Too contrary, too spirited, too…everything.

  But she was unnervingly right for him. It was an uncomfortable realization, one he would have preferred to reject out of hand. One that she would likely have preferred for him to reject.

  Instead he said, “God help you, then,” cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her.

  She squeaked. Like the mouse he had named her, she squeaked in surprise, and her hands leapt from her lap and hovered in the space between them as if she knew not what else to do with them. Whether she ought to shove him away or tear his hands from where they had slid into her hair, cradling her head.

  A queer shudder slipped through her, and as she gasped, her lips parted. By the startled sound she made, he guessed that she had not expected his tongue to trespass between her lips.

  “My lord!” she said. Or so he assumed, given that it was rather difficult to parse her muffled speech.

  “Really, Mouse,” he chided against her full lower lip, which was just as soft and lush as it had appeared. “This is hardly the time for titles.”

  “But I don’t—I don’t know your name.” Her breath puffed out against his lips, her voice low, dazed and distant.

  He laughed again at the bewilderment permeating her voice. “Grey,” he said. “It’s Grey.”

  “Grey,” she repeated, like she was testing the sound of it, speculative and hesitant. But her palms settled on his chest as if to steady herself.

  He didn’t want her steadied. He wanted the Mouse who left her hair down and decorated his marble floors with inky footprints. The Mouse who had hacked apart her writing desk with a hatchet because it had pleased her to do so. The unexpected wild child that she’d buried this evening, somewhere beneath all of those petticoats and perfect curls.

  Not too deep down, he hoped.

  “Is it your surname?” she asked, and seemed not to notice that he had begun plucking pins from her hair, or even the soft pings as they landed on the floor. “Because it could be either, I suppose, and—”

  “Mouse,” he said. “Shut up.” Her hair fell free, a riotous tumble of what had once been artful curls but now looked disheveled and wanton. Not quite so wild as it had been last evening. But close. His fingers slid through her hair, tangled, seized a handful—not too tightly—and angled her head back.

  Her eyes flashed fire at him, annoyed all over again. “Mouse is not my name,” she said emphatically.

  “I really don’t care,” he said as he fit his mouth over hers once again, and then drew back as a sharp flash of pain lanced through his lower lip. “You bit me,” he accused, shocked. Just a nip, not enough to draw blood, but enough to be a warning. Enough that he wondered if her teeth were her only weapon. If perhaps she’d tucked away that knife she’d stolen from his table somewhere on her person.

  “Mouse is not my name,” she repeated, that firm little chin tilted, obstinate and resolute. That core of steel straightened her spine, set her shoulders, and challenged him. “It’s—”

  “Serena.” He relished the surprise that flitted over her face. “Have you concluded your tantrum?”

  Her nose wrinkled in irritation, her lips pursed in petulance. “I suppose.”

  “Good.” His mouth crashed down over hers, and this time she kept her fangs hidden. She had no idea what she was meant to be doing, but she did it with confidence, boldly parrying each thrust of his tongue. By all rights she ought to have slapped him down, cast some excoriating remark in his direction and stormed out of the room, but instead she listed toward him, learning how to kiss, embracing it with the same enthusiasm she had his brandy.

  If only she knew how much worse he was for her than liquor.

  Her hands smoothed up his chest, soft as a whisper, and she made a sweet, kittenish sound in her throat as her hands found his shoulders, little fingers kneading with a pressure he could feel even through his coat.

  Until she flinched, and her lips broke from his with a gasp, a flicker of pain sliding over her face.

  Before she could retract them, he caught her wrists in his hands and held them in a firm grip, resisting her efforts to pull them free. It would be a good lesson for her, he thought, and so he let a wealth of arrogance slip into his voice as he told her, “I win, Mouse. I always win.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Mouse was quiet as he peeled back her gloves. Grey had seen the flash of fury streak through her eyes when she had realized that he had gotten precisely what he had wanted, and, correspondingly, he’d expected a bit of a fight, but she’d disappointed him there. She merely chewed on her lower lip and averted her eyes with a huff, giving the distinct impression that she had better things to be about and that he was cutting into her valuable time.

  There was a long welt running along her right inner wrist and forearm, and he’d probably irritated the hell out of it when he’d grabbed her. Her hands were a dull red, her knuckles chapped and angry-looking. Her soft palms had the beginnings of blisters, bright spots where the skin had been rubbed raw by some unfamiliar repetitive motion.

  “I thought you said you’d been doing laundry.” Her hands looked like they’d been shoved in an oven and left to broil.

  “Well,” she sighed, “I didn’t say I was any good at it.” She gave a tug in a futile attempt to reclaim her hands. “Sarah prepared an ice bath for my hands afterward, and called me seven kinds of a fool while she was putting salve on them.”

  His fingers tightened over hers until she hissed in a breath and he forced himself to relax his grip. “You’ll have a new lady’s maid tomorrow.”

  “No!” she said quickly. “I like her.”

&n
bsp; “She called you a fool and you like her?”

  “Yes.” Her shoulders lifted and fell in an awkward little shrug. “It’s hardly the first time someone’s been less than complimentary toward me. But I think she means it fondly. She helped me do the laundry, even though she’s been a lady’s maid for years and it’s not her job to do so.”

  But it was her job to keep her mistress in comfort, and this was most assuredly not that. “What possessed you to do a damned fool thing like laundry?”

  “You said I was useless.”

  “You’re a lady. Your primary function is to be useless, up until the point you start birthing heirs and spares.” It was a crass, cruel thing to say, but Grey had never been put into the position of having to take someone else’s feelings into account when he spoke.

  Mouse made a disgusted sound in her throat, wrenching her hands from his in a gesture that had to have hurt her in the process. “As there is certainly no chance of me doing that any longer, I don’t see how it matters how I choose to fill my time.” She shoved her chair back from the table and rose to her feet.

  “Well, you won’t be filling it with laundry.” He didn’t want her hands raw and ragged; it made him feel like the villain in a fairy tale, forcing the poor downtrodden heroine into slave labor.

  “Don’t,” she flashed at him in a sudden show of temper, and she was blazing again, bright and brilliant—all of that magnificent fire she’d hid from the whole world now on display. “Don’t think you can order me about, because I am sick unto death of men arranging my life for me and forbidding from anything other than needlework and dancing. I’m not a lady anymore, and I’ll do as I damn well please!”

  It would have been a glorious speech upon which to flounce to an exit, if only she hadn’t stamped her foot as she did so, trod upon the hem of her gown, and stumbled a few steps, her disordered hair flying into her face.

  Valiantly he resisted the impulse to laugh, but she speared him with a glare as if he’d shaken the room with one anyway. “I mean it, Mouse,” he said. “I’ll have the laundry room locked. Find a more appropriate hobby with which to entertain yourself.”

  “Go to the devil!” she tossed over her shoulder as she stormed away, and shortly thereafter her footsteps pounded upon the stairs with what sounded like contrived force, as if she had put effort behind each stomp.

  Grey chuckled to himself as he heard, in a distant corner of the house, the door to her room slam shut. Her gloves were still there, draped over his thigh. He tucked them into his coat pocket and told himself it meant nothing.

  ∞∞∞

  Serena spent the rest of the evening sulking in her room. She didn’t particularly wish to think of it as sulking, but Sarah had accused her of it when she’d come into help unlace Serena’s gown and inform her that the marquess had instructed that the laundry room was to be off limits to anyone who was not staff, which everyone in the house well knew meant her and her alone.

  Just the thought of it stoked her ire anew, and she flopped onto her stomach, buried her face in her feather pillow, and screamed. How dared he first chastise her for being useless and then refuse to let her make herself useful?

  Even if she hadn’t truly wished to perform that particular chore again, it was beyond unkind for him to take it from her.

  She faltered there and heaved a sigh. Certainly she didn’t wish him to be kind to her, after all. She’d even told him as much earlier in the library. Kindness could carry its own brand of cruelty, and she had always preferred the sort of cruelty that looked one in the eye and made its point clear. At least it was honest.

  She’d thought that the marquess—Grey Something-or-Other, or Something-or-Other Grey, that had really never been made very clear—might have been trying his hand at kindness in the library. It didn’t suit him well. He had the sort of severe, austere face that lent itself to scathing remarks, not fond-sounding reminiscences of one’s captive’s deceased mother. She would have sworn his face would’ve split straight down the middle had he ever been moved to a genuine smile.

  But then he’d laughed at dinner, and he’d worn that well enough. He’d looked years younger, and his brown eyes had glinted with merriment, and if he had ever shown that aspect of himself inside a ballroom, she suspected he’d have had to peel the ladies from his side. She’d never thought of him as handsome before—she’d never expected to think of him as handsome, even though he was.

  She’d certainly never expected him to kiss her. Her fingers feathered over her lips, which had not stopped tingling in the intervening hours. It hadn’t been what she’d expected, but she had no experience upon which to draw there. She was not the sort of woman to inspire passion from men—she’d never been lured out onto a moonlit terrace, or coaxed into a shadowy alcove. No one been moved to compose poetry in her honor, nor had any gentleman ever even hinted at so much as a passing fancy to kiss her.

  She knew she wasn’t beautiful or even striking; she had never been called a scintillating conversationalist or particularly witty. Most of the time she had merely felt…present and accounted for. Like a place card, or perhaps a potted fern.

  So it seemed especially odd that Grey had kissed her. It didn’t make sense, given his earlier pronouncement that he hadn’t wanted her for that, with the sneering insinuation that she wasn’t attractive enough to appeal to his interests. But he had kissed her nonetheless.

  It had been…remarkably pleasant. More than pleasant, which she had not expected. She flexed her fingers—which Sarah had once more soothed salve over and stuffed into a soft pair of gloves—and wondered why she hadn’t pushed him away. Why she hadn’t pulled away herself.

  It wasn’t that she’d wanted to be kissed. It truly hadn’t even crossed her mind until he’d done it. And she’d been—so surprised. That he had kissed her. That he had even wanted to kiss her.

  There had been a wicked part of her, one that she had never even suspected had existed until she’d been pulled from her home, her comfortable life, that had sent the fleeting thought skittering through her brain: This, too, is something disallowed to ladies.

  So she’d let it happen. Because the time in her life where she had been bound to proper behavior, to the rules of civilized society—that was all gone. Done. Finished. But the rest of her life would march onward, and it would be what she made of it. Whatever she made of it. Whatever she chose to make of it.

  She could still feel the press of his hands to her cheeks, his fingers catching in her hair. And her lips burned worse than her hands.

  The echo of his voice resounded in her head. I win, Mouse. I always win.

  Not for very much longer, she thought, turning her hot face into the cool surface of her pillow. Ass.

  ∞∞∞

  Mouse was plotting something. Grey couldn’t be certain what, exactly, but she’d spent much of the last several days all but locked away in her bed chamber, and the house had been deathly quiet. Too quiet.

  He’d seen Sarah, Mouse’s lady’s maid—who had studiously averted her eyes whenever she’d chanced to cross paths with him—more frequently than he’d seen Mouse. She brought Mouse the majority of her meals, and assorted other things that Mouse had apparently sent her to purchase. He couldn’t have said what, as the bills hadn’t yet been sent round, but neither had he insisted upon inspecting whatever it was Mouse had sent out for. It would have been within his rights to do so, of course…but he had promised her carte blanche to purchase what she would, and it would have felt uncomfortably like breaking a promise to keep tabs on her purchases. Probably he could have interrogated her lady’s maid, but even that had seemed uncomfortably akin to spying, poking his nose into Mouse’s affairs.

  Still, there was an aura of expectation lingering in the air, a queer sort of tension that made the house feel as if it had been filled with gunpowder, and Mouse was sitting in her room with a tinderbox, just waiting for the proper moment to set the whole thing alight. But whatever it was she was working so diligently
at, she was clearly biding her time, preparing for exactly the right moment to strike.

  He didn’t doubt that she was scheming up something to irritate him, but he did wonder what a gently-reared lady would deem suitable. He didn’t think Mouse had it in her to be cruel—but she’d surprised him before. He swiped his thumb across his lower lip, remembering the sting that had lingered there for a full day afterward.

  She’d bitten him.

  Without control or power, without regard for her continued safety and good health—still she had struck out at him on principle. Because he had told her he didn’t care what her name was, and she had thought that meant that he did not know it. Of course he had known it. But it hadn’t mattered—at least to him. To her, it had mattered a great deal.

  Serena. It hadn’t suited her as a babe, and she certainly had not grown into it, either. Perhaps she had once tried to fill that role, to wear her name like a cloak and force herself into the mold of the ideal serene, elegant lady, but that had gone out the window with her reputation, and now she was just shy of feral.

  Grey liked her better this way. And that thought set off another uncomfortable skirl of guilt, because it did not matter how he liked her. What mattered was how Mouse liked herself, and he—he had stolen so many opportunities from her. Perhaps she would never have been satisfied with any of them. Perhaps what was left to her now would be preferable to her, eventually. She would have freedom and security. She would be the mistress of her own fate, answerable to no one—most especially not her miscreant of a father.

  But whatever choices to which she once could have laid claim had vanished, crushed beneath the heel of his boot. She would never marry into what had once been her social set, never bear children destined for power and position, never enjoy the status she had been born into.