Julia London - [Scandalous 02]

by Highland Scandal

  Jack.

  Jack was walking across the house on his way to the red salon, where he would meet Christie and Lord Lindsey, who was up from the country. His footfall was silent on the carpet that lined his halls and, he realized, as he neared the entrance hall and caught sight of her, that Lizzie had not heard him. He paused just inside the corridor and watched her wandering aimlessly about, glancing up at the paintings he’d had sent back from Italy and mindlessly touching an empty, hand-painted porcelain vase.

  How was it that she seemed lovelier to him each time? She dressed plainly, nothing to adorn her gown but her eyes. Her hair was prettily bound up with a string of pearls. But as she turned slightly to look up at another painting, he noticed a sadness about her eyes, a pain, he imagined, like that he felt rather deep in himself.

  But his pain came from knowing he’d put the sadness in her eyes. He’d hurt her in a way he’d hoped himself incapable of, yet it had seemed the only way. How else could he make her understand him? He’d made a horrible, cruel mistake with Lizzie. He’d given a woman he loved a hope he could not fulfill. It was little wonder the entire populace of Scotland had found him so untrustworthy at first glance. They’d seen something in him he hadn’t seen in himself.

  She suddenly turned, as if sensing his presence, blinking those clear blue eyes that haunted his every moment. “Jack,” she said, her voice soft and uncertain.

  “Lizzie.” He bowed politely.

  They stood only feet apart, but the breach between them seemed so wide that he was mildly surprised he could see her at all. She moved forward a step or two, as if she believed he would speak. Hardly aware of it, Jack moved too, his gaze taking in every lovely curving inch. When his gaze reached her eyes, his chest tightened painfully. “You are going out,” he remarked flatly.

  “Aye. With Mr. Gordon and your sister,” she said. “She insisted.”

  And she had protested, but Jack had been firm with Fiona—remove this woman from his sight. He had not told Fiona that he could not bear to be near Lizzie and not touch her, that he could not breathe the same air as her and not feel as if he were gasping for breath. “My sister is the consummate hostess.”

  “That is rather surprising, really, given that her brother is no’.”

  “Touché,” he muttered. Walk on, he told himself. The damage is done. Just go.

  “You look…” She clasped her hands behind her back and let her gaze wander over him. He was dressed in a new suit of clothing, one that had arrived from the tailor shortly after he departed England. “Very handsome. London obviously agrees with you.”

  Jack hesitated. He wanted to tell her she looked beautiful in any location, that he could scarcely take his eyes from her, that the glimmer in her eye alone made his heart beat a thousand times faster. “Thank you,” he said simply.

  “I beg your pardon, but I have no’ had the opportunity to tell you how…” She glanced around her. “How beautiful is your home. I’ve never even dreamed of something so fine. It’s little wonder you were anxious to come back, even with your troubles.”

  The band around Jack’s chest tightened. His home seemed like an opulent monstrosity. He was beginning to think that a home was a wee bit more like Lizzie’s house.

  “I thank you, Jack,” she said. “You’ve done me an enormous favor, really. I fooled myself into believing I could trust you, but, as you pointed out, my instincts about you were quite right. You would no’ have changed for me and Thorntree. My only true regret is that I was…I was foolish enough to have fallen in love,” she said, gasping a little with the word.

  “Lizzie—”

  “But that I did, and I only have myself to blame. So thank you,” she said, inclining her head, “for so clearly disabusing me of the notion that you might have returned that affection. Surely one day I shall look back and know that in your cruelty, you spared me immeasurable sorrow. And how odd it is yet, that I can no’ thank you enough for it, for you have saved my life while stealing my heart.”

  “Diah, Lizzie—”

  “Please, please, donna say a word,” she said, throwing up her hand to stop him at the same moment someone knocked on the front door. “I canna bear to hear another word but that you’ve arranged to see the king so that I might go,” she said, her voice breaking. “Go home to Thorntree, where I belong.”

  A footman opened the door behind her.

  “No’ as yet,” he said.

  Christie swept in, Lindsey in tow. “Lambourne!” Lindsey said jovially. “Christ be to saints, I was certain I’d never see you again!”

  Lizzie walked forward, away from the door and passing so close to Jack that she brushed his arm, sending a charge through him. By the time Christie and Lindsey had handed over their cloaks and gloves, she had disappeared.

  “There is much to tell you,” Lindsey said as he greeted Jack with a handshake. “It would seem the entire world has gone mad, lad.”

  Lindsey had no idea just how mad.

  Jack spent the better part of the night hearing the news from Lindsey and Christie. His shock over Wilkes was not diminished when Lindsey told him all who had been involved in the failed plot to murder Princess Caroline so that when George ascended the throne, he did so without the haze of the awful scandal hanging over his head. Evelyn, Lady Lindsey, had been targeted when they suspected her purported lover might have told her about the plot.

  The men—they called themselves the prince’s coterie—included some of the most prominent men in England. It was shocking, unbelievable.

  Jack found himself missing his own little Highland scandal, which seemed almost laughably sedate in comparison to what he was hearing.

  They talked quite a lot about Jack’s fate. Neither Christie nor Lindsey seemed to think it mattered if Jack was guilty of bedding the princess or not. “What matters is that His Grace believes it to be true,” Christie said. But neither man thought Jack would hang. However, they were not confident he’d emerge unscathed, either.

  “A repossession of lands,” Christie suggested. “That would be a fitting punishment.”

  Jack cringed. “But I never touched her!”

  “No,” Lindsey said, shaking his head. “The prince doesn’t have the funds for the upkeep of a castle in the middle of bloody Scotland. Prison is more likely.”

  “That hardly eases me,” Jack groused.

  “You mustn’t fret, old chum,” Lindsey said solemnly. “We shall visit you.”

  “What of an audience with the king?” Jack asked Christie.

  “Bloody hell, Lambourne, why?” Lindsey insisted. “Is there no other way you might help the lass?”

  Jack shook his head.

  Lindsey suddenly surged forward. “You need not see the king. We can help you, band together—”

  “Can you void a handfasting vow?” Jack asked angrily. “Can you keep her land safe from her uncle? Rein in a Highland laird?”

  Lindsey and Christie looked at each other.

  “Believe me when I tell you that if there were any other way, I’d be quite pleased to do it, for I do no’ relish twisting at the end of a rope.” Jack slowly leaned back. “Have you requested the audience?” he asked, his voice calmer.

  “I am waiting,” Christie said solemnly. “It is not the easy matter it might once have been.”

  “How long might it take?” Jack demanded impatiently.

  Christie shrugged. “A day. A week. A month. One cannot predict.”

  “I canna remain trapped like an animal in this house!” Jack said testily, thinking of his close proximity to Lizzie. “I’ve told Winston no one may mention I am in residence, but how long might I expect before someone slips?”

  “That is the risk,” Lindsey said. “You may leave London yet, Jack. No one knows you are here.”

  That was sorely tempting, but the image that popped into Jack’s head was the one of Lizzie standing in the entrance hall tonight, and the unbearable hurt in her eyes. “I can no’,” he said shortly, and tossed ba
ck a tot of whisky.

  The gentlemen left well after midnight, but Jack remained in the red salon, nursing a whisky and mulling over the many changes his life had undergone in the last three months and the many changes he was facing.

  Fiona found him ruminating when she returned from the supper party to which she’d dragged Lizzie and Gordon. She entered in grand fashion, tossing her shawl onto the settee and helping herself to a bit of whisky before bending at the waist to peck Jack on the cheek.

  “Your guests have gone so soon?” she asked with some surprise. “I fully expected to see you with cards in hand.”

  A game of cards seemed an empty and frivolous activity to Jack now, but that is precisely what he might have done three months ago. “I’ve little patience for card games, given the circumstances. Lindsey informs me I shall have quite a lot of time for it in Newgate.”

  “Jack! You will no’ go to prison! I suspect they will banish you from England. That seems far more likely, aye?”

  Only in the fairy tales Fiona had read as a girl, but he had no desire to frighten his sister with the truth. “How was your evening, then?”

  “Oh!” she exclaimed with a roll of her eyes. “Lady Gilbert had her awful little mongrel in tow. Diah, but that thing is incorrigible, and Lady Gilbert completely blind to it! Oh, and did you know, then, that Mrs. Kirkland has been having an illicit association with Lord Howard?” she asked excitedly.

  “No,” Jack drawled. He hardly cared. There were such weightier matters at hand.

  Fiona nodded eagerly. “They’ve been scandalously open about it, too. I heard from Victoria Runsgate that they attended the opera! Can you imagine it, attending the opera with your lover, in plain view of your husband?”

  “No,” he said again. How did people fill their days with such prattle? “How did our guests find the evening?”

  “Oh, very well, I suppose. Mr. Gordon was quite animated and engaging. I do believe Lady Gilbert’s sister, Miss Handlesman, was quite taken with him. And he with her. He’s handsome, which puts him in good stead in London. Has he any fortune?”

  As if fortune were the true measure of a man. He could hardly fault Fiona—that was the ton’s way of thinking. Certainly that had been his measure all these years. “I would no’ know,” Jack said. “And Miss Beal?”

  “She was rather subdued. But honestly, Jack, you canna expect her to go out in the same gown night after night.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Her gown,” Fiona said impatiently. “I should think it a lovely summer frock, but it is no’ suitable for London, and it is so plain.”

  “I am sure she will wear another one,” he said, chafing at this bit of shallow conversation.

  “Another one! She does no’ possess another one. She’s purse-pinched and her best gown is the teal one. She needs a proper wardrobe to go into society.”

  Of course. Why hadn’t he thought of it? “Then you must get her one, Fiona. You must find proper gowns that she might wear. And a bonnet.”

  “A bonnet?”

  “Aye, aye,” he said, and suddenly sat up. “You must find her the best bonnet London has to offer. And…and gowns, and shoes, and that sort of thing. But a bonnet, Fi. The best bonnet.”

  “A bonnet.” Fiona’s eyes narrowed on him. “If you love her, why do you no’ admit it, then?”

  “I donna love her,” Jack said gruffly.

  “Jack.” Fiona gave him a look that told him she knew him quite well.

  He sighed, slumped in his chair, and ran a hand through his hair. “It’s all very complicated, Fi.”

  “Rubbish.”

  “She is a provincial woman, and I…I am…”

  “A man? A man in need of a wife, a wife he could love desperately and completely, and one who might very well love him just the same?”

  “I am a man bound for prison. Or worse.”

  “You’re no’ in the least!”

  “And besides…she’d never consent to life in London. She has a crippled sister in the Highlands who needs her.”

  “Then you must consent to life in Scotland. I have, and I am right glad of it.”

  Jack chuckled.

  Fiona slapped him on the knee. “I have! And so might you! Have you even considered it?”

  “No,” he said. Strangely, he never had. He’d always thought of Scotland as lacking any proper society. But he’d not missed society at Thorntree. Perhaps society was of one’s own making? “There is something else,” Jack said. “Our father.”

  “Father! He’s dead, God rest his soul!”

  “No, no,” Jack said, trying to verbalize his very vague fears. “Do you remember him, Fi? Do you remember how hard he was on Mother?”

  “How could I forget it?” she said, slumping into her chair.

  Jack couldn’t forget it either. One night, when he was only fourteen years, he’d found his mother with a bruised cheek and black eye. He’d taken up a gun, intent on killing his father. But he’d been just a boy, and his father had taken the gun from him easily, then slapped Jack so hard he’d been knocked to the ground.

  He could remember lying there, stunned, and his father looming over him, his eyes so wide they seemed almost completely white. “One day you will understand what misery a woman can cause a man, lad,” he’d said. “One day you will understand the only way to manage them is the same way you’d manage your dog, aye?”

  The memory of it made Jack shudder to this day.

  “What is it, then?” Fiona asked him.

  Jack glanced at her sidelong. “I have often wondered if I might be driven to…to harm as Father was.”

  Fiona surprised him with a laugh. “Jankin Haines, you are no more like him than I am! There is no’ a cruel bone in your body!” She laughed again, but when Jack did not laugh with her, she quickly sobered. She reached out to put her hand on his knee. “Mi Diah! You are no’ like him! You could never be like him. You are the kindest, most generous man I’ve ever known, and I donna tell you that because you are my brother. You have taken care of me all these years and never so much as raised your voice. You are a gentle rogue, darling.”

  Jack squeezed her hand in gratitude.

  “Have you truly feared it? Is that what keeps you from her?”

  “No’ all of it,” he said, shaking his head with a wry smile. “Her sister has lost the use of her legs and has no one on which to depend but Miss Beal. And she has a small estate from which a few derive their livelihood and only her to manage it. And I…I am better suited to life in town, I am. I’ve no’ lived in Scotland since I was a young man. Lambourne is an empty shell—”

  “Of your own volition. It could be quite nice.”

  He shook his head. “I can scarcely abide it.”

  “Because when you are there, you are alone with your memories, Jack. But what if it were filled with light? And laughter and love and children? And I shall be close by.”

  That was something. But Jack shook his head again. “No, Fi, my life is here now. And what does it matter, really? She will marry Mr. Gordon.”

  Fiona made such a sound of laughing surprise that she startled Jack.

  “Marry him?” she cried gleefully and fell back in her chair with a laugh. “She will no’ marry Mr. Gordon.”

  “What do you mean?” Jack demanded.

  “Darling, if she marries him, I am English. Oh, donna look so shocked! She certainly would no’ be the first woman to settle for the best match of fortune instead of the heart. I suppose she’s done the best she might, aye? But she loves you, Jack. It is perfectly obvious and she strikes me as the sort who would follow her heart.”

  “She has no choice,” Jack said.

  “We all have a choice,” Fiona said sagely. “It is precisely what I told Lady Gilbert about Francesca Boudin. Are you acquainted?”

  “No,” Jack said, his mind already wandering.

  “Francesca Boudin is hopelessly in love with Lord Babington, but she’ll no’ admit it, no’ to a single so
ul, for Lord Maberly is a better match for her in terms of fortune and position in society, aye? Lady Gilbert, who can be contrary when presented with facts, argued with me. She said…”

  Jack did not hear the rest of his sister’s long and rather convoluted tale. He was feeling too perplexed. Everything seemed so different now. He was different now. And London’s high society suddenly seemed meaningless and vapid to him. All he could seem to think about since he’d arrived in this town was Lizzie or his own wretched future.

  “Jack! You are no’ listening to me at all!” Fiona complained.

  “No,” he said, and stood up. “I am no’.” He leaned over and kissed his sister on the top of her head. “Bring round some suitable gowns for our guest. And the bonnet. Donna forget the bonnet, Fiona. Good night, leannan.”

  “A bonnet! When did you become so particular about your bonnets, then? I shall write Duncan straightaway and tell him you’ve gone quite soft in the course of becoming a fugitive.”

  Jack smiled to himself as he went out. If there was a constant in his life, it was Fiona. And Lizzie in his blood.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Lizzie was so miserable in London that the next day, she kept to her rooms, save the few moments at breakfast when Gavin reviewed his itinerary for the day. “Vauxhall Gardens,” he began. “Miss Handlesman told me they were spectacular and offered to show them to me. Will you join us, Lizzie?”

  Lizzie smiled thinly. “You’ll pardon me, will you? I am feeling a wee bit unwell.”

  “Nothing serious, I hope?” he asked as gained his feet.

  “No’ at all. You should go without me.”

  “You’re certain you willna mind?” he asked, looking at his pocket watch.

  “Of course no’. I think I shall rest.”

  “Aye, that will do you a bit of good.” He looked up from his watch and smiled. “Good day, lass,” he said, and leaned down to peck her cheek.