Improper Match: Scandalous Encounters

by Reed, Kristabel

All breath left her. She collapsed against Edmund, struggling for air, gasping. No. No! The cold bit into her knees, and even Edmund’s body couldn’t counter it.

  Selina sobbed into his chest, defeated.

  * * * *

  The morning dawned cold and gray. Selina barely registered the day. All she saw was her father’s ashen face, the cold stiffness in his fingers. The lifeless feel of his skin.

  She shuddered and drew closer to Edmund. His arm tightened around her shoulders, and she allowed herself the comfort of leaning on him. Of drawing strength from his touch, his presence. The unfaltering love and affection he even now showed her.

  The front door to her townhouse opened, and she stepped through. Her legs moved, though she had no conscious memory of forcing them to, her feet and hands numb. She blinked and tried to bring the foyer into focus, but all she saw was the dimness of the jail. Her father’s dead body.

  She knew Edmund spoke, had made arrangements, but his words were naught more than a buzz of sound.

  “My lord,” Thompson said and snapped Selina from the haze.

  Thompson stood before her, and Selina forced her gaze to meet that of her butler’s.

  “Miss Selina, Miss Annabelle,” he said carefully, “are you well?”

  He didn’t know. None of the servants had known of her and Edmund’s plan. Swallowing the bile that threatened to choke her, Selina grappled for words.

  “Father is dead.” She sucked in a deep breath. Aloud, the words rang harshly through the foyer.

  “No!” Thompson cried and took a disbelieving step back. “He wasn’t supposed to go to the gallows today!”

  Her lungs tight and stomach threatening to rebel, Selina swallowed convulsively. She sniffed, just barely managing to control her tears. The wrenching agony of her father’s death.

  “They say it was an accident,” Annabelle said. Her voice cracked, and she took several too-fast breaths. “He took a fall at Newgate.”

  “It was no accident,” Selina snapped. Her control disappeared, and she dug her fingers into Edmund’s arm. Her lungs constricted and her heart raced and she felt ill, but she forced herself to look at Thompson.

  “Someone hurt him,” she told the butler through tears, her voice thick with them.

  “I’ll see to her, Thompson,” Edmund said, and the quiet assurance finally penetrated Selina’s fog.

  She looked up at him, watched him nod to Thompson, and allowed him to lead her up the stairs. She vaguely realized Annabelle followed them, but couldn’t lift her head from Edmund’s shoulder. She felt his arms tighten around her until he all but carried her the last few steps.

  “I can’t—” Annabelle said, the words strangled.

  Selina looked up and through her own tears saw her cousin sobbing as she stumbled to her room.

  She felt Edmund’s hands on her waist, felt the bench before her bed hit the back of her legs. She sat, or her legs gave out. Edmund carefully untied her cloak and took off her gloves. His fingers were cool on her cheeks as he wiped away her tears.

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered brokenly. “I don’t understand how or who could’ve done this to him.”

  It had been no accident. She’d seen the back of his head. The blood and broken pieces of his skull.

  “We were close, so close, to having him free of that place,” she said, her breath hitching. The words hurt and she spoke faster, her breath heaving. “To leaving all these liars, these bastards who’d done this to my father.”

  She stood on shaking legs and turned to look at Edmund. He looked grave and silent, his entire focus on her. His hands opened and closed at his sides and he kept himself unnaturally still.

  “Why?”

  He immediately closed the small distance between them. He gathered her close and held her near, her head tucked beneath his chin, fingers warm on her cold skin.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted in a low voice. The words flowed over her but did nothing to soothe her. “If I could change it for you, I would.”

  Selina believed him. Believed in him. Knew he didn’t say things only for comfort.

  “I know.” She nodded and tried to catch her breath.

  Looking up, she met his gaze. Her fingers brushed his cheeks, the raspy stubble there, the firm jaw clenched in impotent anger. Anger for her, for Arthur, for the entire untenable situation.

  She tried to push words past the lump in her throat. “I’m just so angry. This was done to Father. He did nothing to deserve it! Nothing!”

  Edmund’s lips pressed to the top of her head, his hands stroking gently down her back. “He didn’t. He did nothing to deserve this.”

  Exhausted, angry, Selina once more rested her head against his chest. His fingers were warm on the nape of her neck, on her shoulders, around her fingers. Some of that warmth seeped into her.

  “Selina,” Edmund said and tilted her chin up just enough to meet her gaze. “I’m worried more about you.”

  He turned her and urged her to sit, but her legs gave out and she slid to the floor. With her head on the bench, she couldn’t hold back her tears any longer. Edmund sat beside her and held her. He didn’t say anything but simply held her.

  “We will survive this together,” he promised.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Days passed, and Selina remained in a fog.

  Fatigue tugged Edmund’s limbs; guilt and helplessness weighed down on him, but he walked faster. He once more walked the familiar path in the early morning from his townhouse to Selina’s. He no longer cared about propriety. No longer cared about his reputation. He didn’t bother with the whispers — in some cases the shouts — that belittled Selina and her father, taunting and jeering her as the daughter of a criminal.

  They wanted her gone from their polite society, gone from her own townhouse, from their petty little world. And certainly gone as his fiancée. Shoved, instead, into a hovel, never to be seen again. They wanted her tossed aside like the day’s rubbish to become one of the many nameless faces on the street.

  The hateful cruelness caused him to lose his temper on more than one occasion. He’d punched a man who jeered at Selina and threatened several groups of women who strolled down her street only so they could gossip about her and Arthur before the Lyndell townhouse.

  She’d been through enough and didn’t deserve to be subjected to such pettiness.

  The words that called for him to leave her, spoken by those who knew nothing about Selina or him, infuriated him. Blinded him with rage over the needling slights to his woman.

  As if he’d ever leave her.

  She hadn’t left the house since they returned from the docks eight days ago.

  He was losing her.

  The knowledge settled in his bones, but he did not know how to counter it. What to do or say. He’d shown her his love. Held her night after night. Made love to her with whispered promises of love and forever.

  Edmund didn’t care what his friends thought — he lashed out at Neal and Hawkhurst for their failure, fired the incompetent investigators who had done naught to clear Arthur’s name, and ignored Hamilton’s warnings about his reputation; he even shut Octavia from his life. His own correspondence and business fell by the wayside. All that mattered was Selina.

  It was a cruel thing to have given her hope. To have had the taste of what life could’ve been like had they saved Arthur. Only to have it ripped from one’s hands.

  Was that worse than leaving things as they were? Than helping her to heal after Arthur had been hanged?

  Though he stayed with her each night, he felt her grow ever more distant.

  He wanted to tether himself to her — where she went, he followed. He wanted to be who she reached for at night. At first, in those first nights after Arthur’s death, she had reached for him. She held onto him and grieved. He wanted that, wanted her to grieve, to allow herself to lean on him to do so.

  He was strong enough to bear it for both of them.

  In these last da
ys, however, she held herself aloof, apart from him. Much as he tried to stay near her, Selina stepped away. Slipped through his fingers. Edmund desperately wanted to stop that retreat. Wanted her to hold onto him and not let go.

  In his entire life, Edmund had never felt this way; he hadn’t thought he would. And then she stepped up to that counter in the bazaar and changed his life, saving him in so many ways.

  He never regretted giving in to her, them giving in to each other. Even if their first times together had been full of fear and need, she turned to him. Regardless of the propriety or lack thereof.

  Edmund scrubbed his hand down his face and picked up his step.

  Normally he left in the predawn, only to return home to wash and change and return to her townhouse. Every morning he made the walk from his residence to hers, so all of London saw him returning to her home.

  One small shred of respectability.

  Last night she’d asked him to leave shortly after midnight. She kissed him softly and smiled, her first real smile in weeks. Promised she was all right for one night.

  Unease prickled along his spine and settled icily in his stomach, but eventually Edmund reluctantly agreed. Selina said she needed time, a single night, to herself. Time to privately grieve.

  He hadn’t fully agreed, too worried about her, but acquiesced to her wishes.

  He was a full half hour earlier than his normal arrival, but Edmund didn’t care. He wanted to see her, anxious to hold her again. To gauge how ready she might be to discuss their future.

  He’d not shared with her his plans. It had certainly not been the right time to do so. He planned to take her away from this house and the last memories of her father.

  He stopped at the corner before he turned onto her street. The broadsheets finally stopped talking of Arthur; they’d moved onto the scandal of the Lord of the Exchequer and his embezzlement of Crown funds to pay for his mistress’s lavish lodgings.

  Now was the perfect time to slip away and quietly marry at his townhouse and leave on the next tide for the Continent. Edmund wanted to show her so many places. All of them, the entire world.

  In time she’d heal — not forget, never that. But heal. When they eventually returned, all rumors of Arthur and the trial would’ve disappeared. Forgotten in the next scandal and the next.

  Now he rapped on Selina’s front door and waited. It took longer than normal for Thompson to open it.

  “Lord Granville,” the butler said with a formal bow. The butler looked surprised, jittery.

  Maybe he thought Edmund courted even more scandal than already heaped upon Selina. Or maybe the butler had heard a whiff of something from one of the other servants. The household staff had proved loyal to Selina and Annabelle and silent as the grave when it came to gossip.

  He wondered if that had somehow changed.

  Edmund eyed the man carefully and handed him his hat and gloves. The last weeks had been difficult on all of them, especially Selina’s staff. Everyone from the butchers to the milliners had gossiped about Arthur, wanting to know more about the charges, the business, what the household ate that morning — anything and everything.

  It turned his stomach, the lengths people went to.

  “Has Miss Lyndell sent for breakfast?”

  “No.” Thompson swallowed hard and shook his head. “No, my lord.”

  Good, he’d let her sleep then. She hadn’t slept more than snatches at a time, even in his arms, even after they made love and she lay weak and boneless by his side.

  “Is Miss Annabelle awake?”

  “My lord,” Thompson said, and his voice shook.

  Edmund focused on the butler. The older man straightened and looked at him with all the concern and worry Thompson had shown throughout the trial and aftermath. It made Edmund’s blood run cold.

  “Miss Lyndell has requested I inform you of her decision to leave London,” the butler said. He tried for formal, but all Edmund heard was pity. “She’s asked that you do not return to this townhouse.”

  Thompson took a deep breath, but Edmund couldn’t breathe. He heard the butler’s words but did not comprehend them. His heart pounded and his blood roared in his ears.

  “She’s also asked me to tell you she wishes to formally break your engagement and hopes you have a good life,” Thompson finished.

  The words thundered in Edmund’s ears. But he stood there staring at the man, frozen, as he tried to make sense of those words. Before he realized he moved, he had Thompson pressed to the foyer wall.

  “Where is she?” he demanded.

  “I do not know,” Thompson said.

  “Where is she?” he roared.

  “I’m sorry, my lord,” Thompson said. He sounded sad, resigned. “She and Miss Barton left in a hired carriage before dawn. They took only Miss Lyndell’s lady’s maid and the head footman with them.”

  The butler’s emotion grated along his nerves and through his heart. It twisted and stabbed.

  “None of us know where she and Miss Annabelle have gone to.”

  He dropped his hands from the butler and turned, sprinting upstairs and to her bedroom. Their bedroom. It lay empty and desolate. All her things gone — clothes, jewelry, some of her favorite treasures Arthur had given from his early travels.

  Edmund whirled and raced down the hall to Annabelle’s room. He’d never entered her private chambers of course, but it was painfully obvious the room had been packed up. A woman he presumed to be Annabelle’s lady’s maid stood in the center of the room, with several gowns over her arm, and she silently stared at him.

  Gone.

  Back in Selina’s room, he looked closer. Desperate for… anything — any hint she left, any clue as to her whereabouts. A note, anything. Had she left London? England? Did she head for the docks or for Cheapside? Was she even now on a ship for France or Spain? The Americas?

  Nothing. No hint of her plans.

  He didn’t expect a note — no, not if Selina packed up and left in the middle of the night and tasked her butler with giving him that message.

  On the center of the perfectly made bed, something glinted in the weak November sunlight. Edmund crossed the room, his legs like iron. The bedroom smelled like them. They’d never been truly happy here, not with all that surrounded them. They’d had soft moments, quiet and intimate, as they lay wrapped around each other. Moments where he showed her his love with every touch and caress.

  In this room, he had hope.

  He hoped she understood his love for her was not tested by the whims of the ton. He hoped she’d see he’d stay with her and stand by her, no matter what happened. He hoped she trusted him enough.

  Her hair combs lay in the center of that bed — the hair combs he’d given her when she agreed to marry him. They’d laughed over his present, smiling and carefree, and kissed as if nothing touched them — no scandal dared to mar their happiness.

  Beneath the combs lay a single piece of paper.

  “This is for the best.”

  With infinitely gentle hands, Edmund took the combs from the bed and cradled them in his palms. He remembered was the happiness they shared. The hope and love for the future. The trust she’d once showed him.

  Now it was gone, swept away in the cold autumn day like so much rubbish. No. He refused to let what they shared disappear. Vanish.

  He would find her.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Selina sat in a small, sparsely furnished parlor in her rented cottage on the outskirts of London. Annabelle had found this place and made the arrangements, though she protested doing so.

  If they’d taken one of her father’s ships, Edmund would’ve known; he could’ve easily discovered which one and come after her. While Selina knew the ships’ captains were loyal to her, she didn’t want to take the chance one might confess all to her fiancé.

  Former fiancé.

  Her stomach clenched and bile rose in her throat, but she pushed past all that. Leaving Edmund had been the hardest decision sh
e ever made. But she truly believed it to be the right one.

  Annabelle entered and with her a gust of wind. Selina pressed her hand down on her correspondence and waited for the papers to stop fluttering. She already wrote to Captain Graham, thanking him for his help, though their plan had not come to fruition. And she had several more references to complete for the staff she left in London.

  Most importantly, however, were her letters to those she knew on the docks. They were her best hope of finding an investigator, not merely someone who dabbled in it or one of the Runners who bowed to the highest bidder. Selina wanted someone tenacious.

  Yesterday, Annabelle had returned with a name. They were to meet Mr. George Bromley.

  “Did you find him?” Selina asked in a voice verging on a demand as soon as Annabelle entered. “Was he agreeable to take this job?”

  “Yes.” She sat on the threadbare settee and rubbed her hands together. “He’ll be here this afternoon to discuss the particulars. And for payment, of course.”

  Sara brought in the tea, and Selina smiled at her lady’s maid. The other woman willingly followed them here, though Selina knew she thought serving tea in the parlor beneath her.

  Annabelle poured them each a cup and sat back with a sigh. “From what I’ve heard,” she continued, “he is indeed as you wanted — a tenacious man. I believe he’s the best we can do.”

  Selina bit back a sigh as Annabelle sipped her tea, but she let her friend warm up. She’d been willing to leave the cottage when Selina was not, willing to deliver her mail and seek out this investigator. Selina owed her much, far more than she thought it possible to ever repay.

  “I don’t know how you plan to inquire as to his progress if we’re not near London to speak with him,” Annabelle added with a significant look.

  Selina ignored it as she had for the previous six days since they’d sneaked out of the townhouse and ran from London. From Edmund.

  She hastily swallowed a sip of tea, but it did little to ease the tension. “Annabelle, I don’t want to argue this yet again.”

  “You have never made the time to truly argue this,” Annabelle snapped. She set her teacup on the table with a loud click. “You informed me of your decision and barely gave me the opportunity to question it.”