Courting Scandal

by Donna Lea Simpson

  And a woman like Arabella, pampered and used to all of the best in life, would never fit in among his friends. Look at her now, he thought, gazing fondly down at her. Dressed for a day in the country, she still wore gloves, a walking dress of some pretty shiny material, a spencer, and a ridiculous, tiny hat perched on her blonde ringlets, which, as always, were perfectly coiled.

  Moira had been a rugged Scotswoman. She was beautiful in her way, but her red-gold hair was simply pulled back on her neck, her dress was of sprigged cotton, handmade and well-worn, and her perfume was rainwater. She was not afraid of hard labor, having worked her father’s farm her whole life. She knew how to muck out stables, make candles, boil maple sap for sugar, collect wild rice in the native way, chop wood . . . and still, as much as she fit into the land he loved, he would not have asked her to marry him but for the news she whispered, that she was with child, his child. He turned away from the dark memory of the months leading up to her death. Even with all her hardiness she had died before childbirth from some mysterious illness connected with the pregnancy.

  No man had a right to expect any woman to live like that, and he could not give up his dream of going back to Canada. The sweet flower he held in his arms was a cultivated plant; she would wilt and die in the wilderness.

  She opened her eyes and turned her face up to him. “You have stopped talking. Why?”

  For answer, against all his common sense, against all of his sensible resolutions, he covered her lips with his own and felt her immediate surrender to his kiss. Fire and ice raced up and down his spine, and he felt the swift pulse of desire. He plundered her mouth for a moment longer, then put her away from him, angry at himself for letting his passion overpower his reason. He felt a sureness within him that she was absolutely innocent of experience. She may have kissed before, but not in this way, not with the wanton disregard of propriety that he had led her to with his own lust.

  Her eyes were dazed and shadowed with desire, the green deepened to an olive of incredible hue. Her lips were moist still, and he licked his own lips and took in a deep shuddering breath. What he would give to have her, just once, to love her as a woman should be loved!

  But it could never be. He could not—must not—forget her destiny, a rich man’s treasure.

  “Marcus?” Her voice was sweet and thick, as though she held a mouthful of Devonshire cream and honey. She moved closer to him on the log and threaded her arms under his, around his waist.

  He pushed her away, gently, though it was the last thing he wanted to do. “I always seem to be apologizing to you for my behavior,” he said ruefully. “It’s getting annoying.”

  She sat straight, pulling away from him, and the haze disappeared from her eyes. “Then don’t do it,” she said tartly, and lifted her chin, shaking back her mussed curls. She took a deep breath and swallowed. “Tell me of George and Mary Two Feathers, instead.”

  After a silent moment, they returned to the safety of neutral subjects.

  “You seem so very fond of Mary,” Arabella said after he described her, her fawn-dark eyes and glossy black hair, and how she called him “Père Marc.”

  “She is about the age my—” He stopped and looked away, struggling with his emotion, then continued. “She is so very easy to be fond of, bright and engaging, smart as a whip. She dances at the lodge meetings in an outfit her mother made her, all buckskin and feathers and little bells obtained by trading with the English. I have been privileged to be named her second father, an honor.” He stared straight ahead of him and spoke woodenly.

  Arabella could feel some curious hurt within him. “Do you ever want children?”

  She saw him flinch as if she had slapped him, and an idea stole into her brain. But how to ask? “Did you . . . did you have a child once?” she said, as gently as she could.

  “Almost,” he said brokenly.

  “Moira?”

  “Yes.”

  There was silence but for the trill of a lark. A light breeze had sprung up and it rustled through the brush that crowded the pond edge and created dancing ripples on the surface.

  “I am so, so sorry, Marcus,” Arabella said gently, and laid her hand over his. “You must have loved her very much. And to lose not only her, but the life she carried . . . it must have broken your heart.” Inevitable pain streaked through her, but she abandoned it as an unworthy emotion. He had loved and lost, and she regarded him with a kind of awe she reserved for deep suffering.

  “I suppose,” he said. He covered his eyes with his hands for a moment, then took a deep breath and shook his head, smiling. “Moira was truly wonderful. Brave, resourceful, tough. Those don’t sound like womanly traits, but I admired her for them, more than I can say.”

  Arabella thought how her mother would criticize to hear a woman spoken of in such terms. In her mind men wanted women to be fragile, frail, a delicate ivy needing the strong oak of the male to cling to, so she could wind herself around him and live off his strength. But the men she had most admired, and that included her cousin True’s husband, Lord Drake, appreciated strong women, women who were themselves. Was there something in that, then? Did she not have to pretend to be something she was not for her whole life?

  But she was going to marry Lord Pelimore, and she had seen how he criticized the girls who seemed too independent. He derisively called them “boys” and said they would never marry, for no man would want them. She would be doomed, then, to play the clinging vine her whole life, or live in disharmony with her husband.

  She turned her thoughts away from London. “Would you like to try again, to have a child?”

  He frowned and laced his fingers together. They both watched his long, strong fingers create a pattern as he threaded them through each other. “The idea has its charm. When I see Mary and George, I think I would. But—” He shook his head. “I think that part of my life, that possibility in my life, is over. I belong in Canada, and the moment my inheritance is out of the way, I will return.”

  Unaccountably downhearted at his answer, Arabella said, “It is only a couple of hundred pounds. Can they not send it to you?”

  He appeared uncomfortable and stood. He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. “There are details to be worked out, paperwork to be signed.”

  “Ah.” That was men for you; they went all mysterious whenever financial matters came under discussion. And of course she, a mere woman, could never understand.

  They walked, but some of the comfort between them had disappeared. He held her hand, though, and they walked back through the woods to their picnic area, which had been tidied by the servants—the groom, two drivers and a maidservant—who now sat a ways off having their own lunch.

  Arabella and Marcus were just sitting back down on the blanket when Harris and Eveleen came out of the far copse. Eveleen had a grin on her face, and when she got nearer, Arabella could see twigs and leaves clinging to her hair and dress.

  Harris collapsed on another blanket, yawned and said, “I’m sleepy. Going to take a nap, children.” He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep rapidly.

  Eveleen sat down beside her friend and took a bottle of lemonade out of the basket that anchored one corner. “I am so thirsty,” she said. She took a long drink and corked the bottle again, sighing with satisfaction. “What have you two been up to?” she asked brightly, looking from Arabella to Marcus.

  Assailed by suspicions of what her friend had been doing, flustered and confused that she would even think such a thing, Arabella was unable to answer. Marcus jumped in and retailed parts of their conversation, leaving out the kiss.

  “How well behaved you are.”

  She seemed her usual bright self, but Arabella detected a hint of dissatisfaction, or edginess in her friend, she couldn’t decide exactly what it was. It irritated her, the distance between them, this secrecy on Eveleen’s part.

  Nettled, she replied, “Better well behaved than misbehaved.”

  “Better misbehaved than bored!” Evelee
n’s smile had turned sour, and her voice had a bite of tartness to it.

  “Better bored than with child,” Arabella blurted pointedly, glaring, and then was immediately sorry. Especially when Eveleen’s eyes drifted shut and she fainted.

  Chapter Eleven

  There was shocked silence for one moment, and then Marcus flung himself into action, kneeling beside Eveleen on the soft blanket and checking her head to make sure she did not bump it.

  “Here, you,” he called to Eveleen’s maid, a tiny girl named Molly. He beckoned to her. “Smelling salts! Bring smelling salts.”

  Molly dithered and fluttered, but in the end it turned out that she did not carry that necessity, Miss O’Clannahan never having an ill moment in her life before this one. Arabella’s Annie was not with her, or she would have been so equipped. One of the manservants brought a bottle of water and a cloth, and Marcus hastily poured some of the chilled liquid over it and held the damp cloth to Eveleen’s pale brow.

  Arabella was shocked to the core and near tears that her nastiness should have such an outcome. What had she been thinking? How could she be so bitter, so spiteful? And even now it was Marcus, virtually a stranger to them, who was holding her limp friend and tenderly administering to her. Finally finding the use of her limbs, Arabella knelt beside them and took one of Eveleen’s hands. “Eve, Eve?” she said gently. “Awaken, my dear.”

  Glancing at her with a question in his tormented eyes, Marcus said, “Is there something here that I do not know about? You don’t need to tell me what it is, if it’s a secret.”

  Arabella gazed at him blankly for a moment, and then remembered her mean-spirited crack and what it might seem to imply, and further, what that implication would mean to Marcus. Her eyes widened and shame engulfed her. What had overtaken her? She had reacted to Eveleen’s tweaking her on her innocence with such a monstrous barb! Monumental bad judgment, and this was the result. Calmly, she looked Marcus in the eye and said, “No, there is nothing there, believe me. It was merest chance that what I said—horrible, mean and impolite as it was—should have this outcome.”

  At least so she believed. Or was there something there? Arabella shook her head as Marcus, satisfied with her answer, had gone back to his nursing. Watching him, she wondered if he had performed this service for his beloved Moira before her demise. A streak of jealousy chased by remorse coursed through her. He was unlike anyone she had ever met, she thought, as she watched Eveleen’s eyes flutter open. He was unlike anyone she was ever likely to meet again. He was everything that a man should be, and more.

  “What’s wrong?” Eveleen sat up, then held one delicate freckled hand to her head. Her maid dithered around in the background offering up prayers for her mistress’s recovery.

  “The heat overcame you for a moment,” Arabella said awkwardly.

  Eveleen’s eyes widened. “The heat? Oh. Yes. The heat. Molly, do stop that moaning, I am perfectly all right, as you can see.”

  Harris, oblivious to the commotion, snorted and turned over, settled himself once again, and slept on.

  “Are you sure that you’re all right now, Miss O’Clannahan?” Marcus said, squeezing out the rag and handing it back to the manservant who stood nearby, ready to offer assistance.

  “I’m perfectly fine,” she said. “It was just a passing faintness. How odd! I have never felt that way in my life.”

  “Eve, I think we should be going home, don’t you?” Arabella watched her friend with worry nagging at her. She wished a certain suspicion had not entered her brain; once there, it would not be calmed. But how could she ask? What could she say?

  The drive back to London was long and quiet.

  • • •

  The next morning Arabella was handed a note by a footman as she sat down to breakfast. It was brief and to the point: Eveleen was going away for a while. She and Sheltie were traveling to a distant relative’s home on the Isle of Wight.

  Stunned and disbelieving, Arabella read the last few lines.

  Do not worry about me, my dearest friend. I will tell you all about my decision to leave London, but only when the time is right. Just trust me that I am fine. For yourself, forget some of my disastrous advice and heed only this: Marcus Westhaven loves you and you love him. I can see it in both your eyes when you look at each other. Marry him, even if you have to break with convention and ask him yourself! Goodbye, my dear, and I hope to see you in the not-too-distant future.

  “What is that, my dear?” Lady Swinley asked as she entered the breakfast room.

  “A note.” Arabella frowned down at it and chewed her lip. So much of Eveleen’s life was a mystery to her, and so much of her character, too. She was like a placid lake with a mirror surface that teemed with life and tumultuous activity underneath. Who was the real woman? And what did the note mean?

  Lady Swinley’s dark eyes sharpened and she snatched the paper from her daughter’s hand. “From Pelimore? Is it from Pelimore? Is he finally securing your hand? I cannot believe he has been content to be away from London for a whole week on business! Business! His business this Season is getting a wife, and he should be more attentive to it. It would serve him right if you found another wealthier beau while he is frittering his time away on his estates.”

  Arabella snatched back the letter, desperate to keep her mother from reading it. Lady Swinley had enough to say about Marcus Westhaven, all of it bad; she did not need to see Eveleen’s mysterious advice. “No, Mother, it’s just a note from Eveleen saying she has gone out of town for the rest of the Season. And as far as Lord Pelimore goes, you know as well as I do that he is with Lady Jacobs, his mistress, this week. That is what detains him.”

  Her mother hissed with shock, the sound whistling through her gapped teeth. She gripped the curved mahogany back of a dining room chair so hard her knuckles turned white. “Arabella Swinley, I never thought to hear you say such an indelicate thing! That is what comes of consorting with the like of Eveleen O’Clannahan. No daughter of mine—”

  “Do not disparage Eveleen to me; she is my friend!” Arabella clutched the note to her bosom.

  “And I have never been sure that she was a healthy, moral influence. But regardless, no daughter of mine will ever say or think such coarse, vulgar . . .”

  Arabella failed to listen to what no daughter of Lady Swinley’s would ever do, say, or think. She read again the note, and worried over Eveleen’s sudden disappearance. The Isle of Wight? Though she had never been there, she had heard tales of that island off the south shore of England, and they were stories of pirates and smuggling and sundry illegal and dangerous activities. She had not known Eveleen had relatives there. But as her friend was already gone and had not left an address for Arabella to write to her, she supposed there was nothing for it but to pray for her, wait for another letter, and hope that her suspicions were not true.

  She desperately hoped that Eveleen was not with child and alone.

  • • •

  At the Vaile ball that evening, Arabella stood alone and missed Eveleen. She kept thinking what Eve would say about that dress, or what witticism Eve would come up with on the occasion of a certain couple’s engagement. Was that all their friendship had amounted to? A social liaison, a pairing of two sarcastic spinsters? She hoped not. She truly loved Eve and felt that they had woven a friendship over the last few London Seasons. The note had been so brief; Arabella truly hoped that her friend was not in trouble.

  Standing there at the edge of the ballroom floor watching the groups of young girls stroll by, their heads together as they giggled and gossiped, Arabella realized that she had not really made a lot of friends in London. Hundreds of acquaintances, many valuable social contacts, but few friends. Why was that? she wondered.

  Perhaps she knew and just didn’t want to admit it to herself. She had noticed in herself in recent months a few mannerisms that were startlingly like her mother’s. She almost sounded like her mother sometimes: judgmental, snobbish, faultfinding, harsh. Had she dr
iven people away with her shrewish manner? Look at how cruel a barb she had leveled at Eve, her best friend! That was the action of a harpy. She was lucky Eve seemed to have forgiven her, or perhaps had forgotten her words.

  Is that what she did to others, though? Drove them away with her sharp tongue? Had there been opportunities for friendship that she had caused to wither and die with her caustic remarks, or her cool demeanor?

  And yet Eveleen had become a steadfast friend. She did not think she had been any different with her than with anyone. And she had tried to drive away Marcus Westhaven and it had not worked for some reason.

  As the music started with a screech of bow across violin strings and couples took to the dance floor, her thoughts drifted inconsequentially to the past, and her occasional opportunities to observe her parents’ marriage. Lady Swinley let no opportunity for fault-finding pass. She belittled her husband in private and in public, complaining constantly about his weaknesses even in personal areas that should not be canvassed in company. Her behavior had undermined what could never have been a strong marital bond, until Lord Swinley frankly loathed his wife, from what Arabella had observed on her rare visits home.

  And yet Lady Swinley accused her daughter of being vulgar for merely stating the truth, that Lord Pelimore was visiting his mistress? It was ludicrous in the extreme. Was it not more vulgar to air in public personal grievances with one’s husband?

  When she married would she treat her husband like that, hold him up for public ridicule in that manner? Her two choices were to marry a man above reproach or learn to hold her tongue. Since the first was highly unlikely, she would have to start practicing the second.

  “Tuppence for your thoughts.”

  The voice in her ear made her jump, and her heart leap. “Marcus!” She whirled to find him grinning down at her. She had a strange urge to throw her arms around him and thank him for not abandoning her despite her occasional sharp tongue. If nothing else came of this Season, she was learning the value of friends. Instead of greeting him in such a wildly inappropriate manner, she smiled up at him and said, “I’m so happy you’re here.”