The Scandal of the Season

by Aydra Richards

  “My father killed himself only two months later,” Grey said. “My mother lasted only a few more years herself. Everything had been taken from us by then—we had had to leave our tidy little house in Cheapside for a hovel in St. Giles. She sold herself to pay our rent, and died of the pox before I was fifteen.”

  “Oh, Grey,” Mouse whispered. “I know it cannot mean much, coming from me, but I—I am so very sorry.”

  Her fingers tightened on his—her delicate hand which had, under his care, acquired burns and blisters. And he thought that perhaps it meant more coming from her. That she could overlook what he had put her through to express her sympathy showed a sort of character that he could never understand. It was a kind of generosity of spirit that shamed him right down to his toes.

  He cleared his throat of the lump that had risen there. “I made up my mind to destroy him the day I found my father’s body,” he said. “For a few years after my mother’s death, I lived hand-to-mouth, sleeping in the alleys of the rookeries with other street children and taking odd jobs for every coin I could hoard. It’s a rough life, Mouse, in the rookeries. I did many things I’m not proud of—picked pockets, broke into houses to steal whatever I could sell for a bit of coin.”

  “What else could you do? You were only a boy.”

  He smothered a rueful laugh. “I could have taken a factory job,” he said. “But I’d seen boys stronger than I done in by it. It’s backbreaking labor, and you’re as likely to lose a limb as not. I fancied myself too intelligent to waste my talents there, so I hoarded my coins and bided my time until I was old enough to enter a gaming hell. There, I played the odds and gamed the House. Fleeced a number of them out of a fortune in a few short weeks. For the first time in years I was comfortably situated, and when finally I had been banned from the gaming hells on suspicion of card counting, I turned my talents toward investment, financing projects and inventions in exchange for a share of the profits.”

  “Because of your father,” she guessed.

  “In part,” he acknowledged. “But I have an eye toward the future, Mouse. If the nobility could manage to wrap their brains around the fact that the world will move forward with or without them, there wouldn’t be such a wealth of them in dire financial straits.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Once I had acquired enough wealth, I began buying up debts. Your father’s, your brothers’…and anyone else’s whom I felt might be useful to me in the future. I collected their secrets, their scandals. Money is not the only form of currency. Power and influence are equally valuable.”

  “Have you—” She hesitated, nibbling at her lower lip. “Have you secured your father’s patent?”

  “It was among the first things I took,” he said. “Years ago. In fact, I’ve been amusing myself with taking pieces of Andover’s life for years now. He had no idea who I truly was, not until the day I came for you—but he knew I’d been nipping at his heels for years, and he’d long since lost the means to evade me.”

  Her fingers squeezed his reflexively, and she stared down at their joined hands with a wistful expression, unable to meet his eyes. “I don’t understand how you can even bear to look at me,” she said softly. “How can you be so kind to me, when—”

  “It had nothing to do with you, Mouse,” he said, his voice scratchy with a regret that he feared would haunt him for years to come. “It never had anything to do with you.” But he had made her a part of it, anyway.

  And he had run out of excuses to keep her. By far the kindest thing he could do for her would be to let her go at last.

  ∞∞∞

  Serena should have suspected something was amiss when a single yellow gown appeared in her dressing room the following morning. Her stomach had pitched and rolled, but she had let Sarah help her into it anyway, and then she had gone in search of Grey, with Cassandra rolling about her heels, yipping excitedly.

  The house was quiet—there was only Cassandra’s yips and the distant sound of the housekeeper, Mrs. Hathaway, whistling as she inventoried the silver. Though there was hardly ever what Serena would have termed a flurry of activity within, it felt to her as if a pall of misery had descended over the house. That Gothic manor she had once envisioned rose in her mind, overtaking the sparkling windows through which poured thick beams of sunlight. The banisters became rusty iron railings; the stairs, creaking and decrepit. She felt as if she had been reduced once again to an unsuspecting waif, trembling and fearful of what fate awaited her.

  She took a deep breath and reminded herself that she had come a long way since when she had first arrived—that she alone, perhaps, knew the true nature of the beast who resided here with her, and that his bark was so much fiercer than his bite.

  That his bite was, in fact, quite pleasant indeed.

  That wicked thought tucked away firmly inside her mind, she scoured room after room until at last she found Grey in his office, where he was seated at his desk, head bowed over a number of papers that were spread across it.

  His brow was knitted; one of his hands scraped absently over his jaw—a repetitive, anxious motion. He looked…conflicted. Uncertain. For a man who could calculate odds in his head at a whim, it was a strange expression to find upon his face, and Serena felt once again that flutter of unease in her stomach, as if she’d swallowed a dozen butterflies.

  She braced one hand upon the door jamb and said, “Grey?”

  His head jerked up, his expression shifting to a careful neutrality. It was not a look he had given her in some time—as if he had divorced himself of all emotion, erected a barrier between them.

  “Lady Serena,” he said finally, his voice bland, dispassionate. “Come in.”

  Lady Serena. The words crashed over her with the force of a tidal wave, though he had spoken them softly. Her own name and title had become so rare to her ears, so alien, that she hardly associated them with herself any longer. It was as if they belonged to a different person entirely—someone smaller, weaker, someone who had no will of her own, no voice, no confidence. Mouse was a different person entirely, a woman of courage and conviction, who did as she pleased and thumbed her nose at societal conventions. She wasn’t certain, exactly, when first she had begun to enjoy the appellation—but she was certain that she did not enjoy the sound of Lady Serena. Not from Grey’s lips.

  “I’m afraid I had only one gown in my dressing room this morning,” she said, sidling into the room, shoving down the clench of anxiety in her belly, only somewhat comforted by the warm weight of Cassandra’s small, furry body as the puppy pressed against her ankle. “I’m surprised you returned to me a yellow gown. I thought you did not favor them.”

  His movements were brisk, methodical, as he collected the papers spread over his desk, aligning them into order. “It doesn’t matter what I do or do not favor,” he said. “Not any longer.” With one hand he gestured to the chair set before his desk, and she sank into it gracefully, as if her knees were not trembling.

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” she said slowly. Her hands folded in her lap, an instinctive motion, an ingrained habit of the lady she once had been, the lady he seemed to wish her to be once more.

  He shoved the papers into a folio and pushed it across the desk to her. “Everything is in here,” he said.

  She didn’t want to take it. But she reached for it anyway, because by the closed, flinty expression he wore, she did not think he intended to explain himself unless and until she did. So she swiped the folio off of the desk and began to look through the documents contained therein with a growing sense of incredulity and dread.

  Grey’s fingertips drummed on the surface of his desk. “I think you’ll find everything is in order—and exceedingly generous.”

  “What—what is this?” she asked, and her tongue felt thick and unwieldy in her mouth. The question truly had not been necessary. She already knew. It was impossible not to know, not with page after damning page of evidence. A house. A bank account. An allowance for clothes, for jewelr
y, for furniture. A list of her preferred shops, whom he had instructed to add her purchases to his account.

  She was being cast aside. Discarded. Somehow, she had let herself forget that Grey had never intended for her time here to be permanent. Somehow, she had let herself hope that he, too, had forgotten. She had hoped that perhaps Grey had learned to love her, as she loved him. At least a little; at least enough to let her stay.

  “It’s your severance,” he said. There was no warmth at all in his voice, no trace of the man who had so recently made love with her, who had held her closely even in sleep. Perhaps she was not quite so sophisticated as he, for she could not imagined doing such things with someone she did not care for. But Grey could—and he had. It was all there in his eyes. Or rather, it was what wasn’t there in his eyes, and that was any sort of affection she might have hoped to see.

  “I don’t want it,” she said, the words cutting her throat like shards of glass. “I don’t—I don’t want this.” She held the folio aloft.

  A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, chiding, faintly patronizing. Exactly the sort of voice with which every other man in her life had spoken to her. As if she hadn’t a single thought in her head worth examining, a single opinion worth considering. As if her only purpose in life was to remain quiet and be decorative. Useless.

  But she wasn’t useless. And she wasn’t that quiet, cringing girl anymore. She was strong enough not to allow herself to be shunted off without a fight—without at least making her own desires known.

  “I don’t want to go,” she said, and she set the folio on the desk. “Grey, I don’t want this. I don’t want any of it. I want to stay. Here. With you.” She cast it between them like a challenge, unwilling to stomach his nonchalance any longer.

  Grey remained cool, aloof. “I’ve never lied to you. You knew this was a temporary arrangement.”

  Unbidden, his words from so many weeks ago flashed through her mind. You’re a means to an end, Mouse. Nothing more. Now that end had been achieved and she had outlived her usefulness. She didn’t want to believe it, to believe that their relationship had meant nothing at all to him. Her stomach churned and roiled—had he truly tolerated her only so long as she had been useful to him? Useless. Useless. Useless.

  Still, the part of herself that loved him so desperately, the part of her that was slowly dying in the wake of his cold, steady stare, was compelled to make a final, hopeless plea. “Please, Grey, don’t do this.” Her breaths rasped in her throat, burned and strained her lungs. “Please let me stay. Please don’t send me away. I love you.”

  For just a second, she had achieved a reaction—but it had not been shock, or surprise, or elation. It had been horror, raw and visceral. Her heart fragmented in her chest with a soft, neat crack. Nothing messy, no splintery shards. Just the last, dying gasp of a heart that had been too wounded already to hold out much hope of surviving this most recent damage.

  She hardly noticed the scratch of chair legs against the floor as he jolted from his chair. “I’ll find you a husband,” he said, as if he thought that was the proper response to her declaration, and his voice sounded tight and tense. “A lord, certainly. I couldn’t get you the duke—”

  Serena felt herself pale so rapidly that her head spun. “You asked him?” she asked, mortified. “You asked the duke to marry me?”

  “Asked and threatened,” Grey snapped. “Unfortunately, he’s got nothing in his past I can use to compel him.”

  “How lovely,” Serena said tonelessly. “I can only imagine how happy my supposed marriage would have been with a bridegroom forced to the altar.”

  “Damn it, that’s not what I meant.” Grey dragged his fingers through his hair in agitation, and tugged at his neatly knotted cravat as if it had grown too tight. “I only meant I intended to find you a husband. Best of the best, I assure you.” He tugged open a drawer and removed a piece of paper, which he slid across the desk to her.

  A list of names—the potential husbands he had clearly carefully selected. Somehow that hurt worse even than his horror, to know that even as she had shared his bed he had been contriving to foist her off on some other gentleman.

  “I couldn’t get you the duke,” he repeated. “But I’ll get you any of these, however it must be done. There’s viscounts, earls, marquesses….”

  The names blurred before her eyes, and she realized that they had filled with tears. It seemed such a foolish reaction, because she had thought the hurt had gone too deep for them. But her voice was steady as she said, “I don’t want any of them. I only want you.”

  “You don’t love me,” he said, and she heard the desperation in his voice. “You think you do, but you don’t. You’re young, naïve, romantic…you would have thought yourself in love with any man who showed you a little kindness.”

  Apparently, humiliation was not something a person could die of, or she would have perished on the spot. She had exhausted all of her pride—she had all but thrown herself at him. She would not beg him to love her. She would not prostrate herself at his feet, pleading for whatever affection he might deign to spare for her. She would not place herself once more in the position of seeking approval from a man who could never—would never—give it.

  Slowly she rose to her feet. “Of course, if you say it, it must therefore be correct,” she said softly, and bent to retrieve Cassandra, taking comfort in the small, wriggling body cradled against her chest. “Choose any of them you like,” she said, with a nod at the list. “I don’t care who.”

  Grey bit off a curse as she turned away, but she could not remain any longer to have more humiliation heaped upon her shoulders. So she walked away as serenely as she could manage, head bowed, giving those inconvenient tears to Cassandra’s soft golden coat.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  It was a lovely house, Serena supposed, but she could not enjoy it. It was clear that the house had been renovated for her, styled to suit her preferences. The scent of new paint and glue lingered still, where the rooms had been updated to reflect more modern touches. There were silk damask and paper-hangings, all fresh and new, gilding the walls. Nothing at all had faded with age or with neglect, and though it was lovely, it only served to remind Serena that this house had been prepared for her. No spur-of-the-moment decision this; Grey had put both time and effort into it.

  It had to be weeks at least. The renovated bathing room attached to what comprised the master suite had surely taken a good deal of time to perfect, and yet here it was—pristine and sparkling, all polished marble and gilded opulence.

  She hated it. She hated every shining bit of it.

  She hated the beautiful terraced garden, resplendent with bright blooming flowers and trees. She hated the carriage house that boasted a smart, gorgeously-embellished carriage that would certainly be envied for its magnificence. She hated the library, which had been stuffed with hundreds—perhaps thousands—of volumes, and the dining room with its luxurious furnishings, and the drawing room, which had been outfitted with a pianoforte and several selections of fine brandy encased within crystal decanters.

  Only the servants were spared her enmity, because certainly it had not been their fault that she had been cast off like an unwanted coat. So she had suffered through staff introductions, and tried not to take too much note of the fact that even her new employees demonstrated the level of interest Grey had taken in seeing her settled—away from him.

  It had been only a few hours since she had arrived at what would be her new home, and aside from the staff introductions and a brief tour, all that had had the will to do was seclude herself away in her room with Sarah and Cassandra, and cry into a throw pillow.

  Sarah had no patience whatsoever for what she considered to be unseemly moping. “You’ve come out better than could be expected, really,” she said as she pawed through Serena’s dressing room, which contained all of the gowns that had gone missing from Grey’s household. “Most mistresses would be content wit
h a brooch or a necklace as a parting gift, so long as the diamonds weren’t too small. I can’t say as I’ve ever heard of one who got her own house—or at least, more than the remaining lease on one.”

  Serena flopped onto her stomach and smothered a sob in the pillow. “I doubt he even noticed the expense,” she said caustically, though the words came out muffled around a mouthful of tassels. And then she dissolved once more into crying, because it occurred to her that perhaps Grey had been so eager to be rid of her that he had spent indiscriminately of his own funds to achieve that end.

  “I don’t know,” Sarah mused. “I doubt there’s a man in all of England that wouldn’t notice that much money missing. Most ladies who come into so much money must first wait for their aged husbands to die and hope they have been well-provided for.”

  A husband. That hateful list flashed before her eyes, and Serena wished she could recall it better—because despite what she’d told Grey, she’d be damned if she would marry any of them, even if he managed to harangue one of them into making an offer.

  She would never marry. It was that simple, and that devastating. She would never place herself in the care of a man, never make the mistake of trusting one ever again. The whole blasted gender could go to the devil, because she would have none of them.

  “I didn’t want any of this,” she whispered, mostly to herself, and Cassandra whined and licked at her cheek, wiggling in a way that suggested she might soon need to take a trip out to the garden to relieve herself.

  Sarah snorted. “I suppose you’re entitled to a bit of sulk,” she allowed, in what she no doubt thought to be a generous offer. “If you absolutely must.” She sat at the edge of the bed and patted Serena’s shoulder in a gesture that was less consoling than it was chiding. “You can do anything, you know. There’s nothing standing in your way. And yet here you are, complaining of it.”