The Scandal of the Season

by Annie Burrows

  ‘Your mother was on terms with a duchess?’ His frown grew deeper. ‘What sort of woman was she? I assumed...’

  ‘What, that she was the daughter of an apothecary or something of the sort?’

  From the way his jaw clenched, it looked as though she’d hit the nail on the head.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but Mother was the third daughter of the Earl of Sydenham.’ So there! ‘Which is why it is perfectly acceptable for Godmama to launch me into society. And why even the strictest hostesses are not above sending me invitations to their balls.’

  That was not completely true and to her consternation Cassy felt her cheeks heat at the exaggeration. Only a few people had been willing to accept her and Rosalind to start with. The ones who had younger sons who would benefit from marrying an heiress, for the most part. And even though Godmama’s hard work had resulted in receiving invitations from those two ladies who’d been friends of her mother, and that probably because they were the sort who were ready to believe the worst of her stepfather, she didn’t hold out any hope that they’d receive vouchers for Almack’s. Not only was Rosalind not cut from the right cloth, but there was no denying the fact that Cassy had made that Fatal Error.

  What was worse, though, was the fact that somehow, not two minutes after vowing she was going to tell him nothing, she’d told him rather a lot.

  ‘So that was how you managed it,’ observed the Colonel grimly, as he turned the vehicle in through the park gates.

  Far from Cassy managing anything, it had been the Duchess who had breezed into her life and swept her along with her plans. But she wasn’t going to let him know anything more about her private life. She was not! It was bad enough that she’d succumbed to correcting the assumptions he’d made about her background. Which were ridiculous, because the first time they’d met she’d been one of a party made up largely of members of Guy’s family.

  Although she supposed he might not have been aware of that. It had been a public assembly, after all. Anyone could get in if they bought a ticket. And she’d danced with not only the squire, but the grocer, and the blacksmith’s son. She cast her mind back to the cheapness of the burly lad’s Sunday-best suit. And the unfashionable cut of her own cotton gown. She had probably looked as though she belonged with him, rather than with the silk-and-lace-clad ladies of Guy’s female relatives. And if he’d thought that, then perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that he’d disapproved of the match she and Guy had been planning.

  She glanced up at the Colonel’s hard, handsome profile, seeing exactly why he might have made certain assumptions about her. Although she was not going to launch into an explanation of her circumstances. For one thing, it would take a long time. For another, it was too painful to dwell on how horrid her life had been back then. But most of all, she had to heed Godmama’s warning that she couldn’t be sure what use he might make of anything she told him. Not when he’d made it plain he was out to thwart her in any way he could. Besides, every word he spoke, every gesture he made, even the way his nostrils flared, reminded her that no matter what she said, he was determined to believe the worst of her.

  ‘I suppose she thinks she owes it to the memory of your mother, or some such feminine nonsense,’ he said, incorrectly assuming that her mother was dead. Although in some ways that might be easier to cope with. It still hurt to recall the way Mama had made no effort to defend her. On good days, she could believe that Mama was simply too afraid of Stepfather to defy him by so much as the changing of a facial expression. But sometimes she wondered if Mama was in agreement with him. Did she think he’d done the right thing, in driving Cassy away? Did she agree with all the harsh things he’d said?

  They drove in silence for some time, both staring rigidly ahead, both sunk in their own gloomy thoughts.

  But gradually Cassy began to notice that many of the other people out driving in the park were whipping their heads round to get a better look at them as they passed, as if checking to make sure their eyes weren’t deceiving them. Apparently, her appearance at the Colonel’s side, during the fashionable hour in the park, was creating something of a stir.

  Just as she’d made this observation, she regained the presence of mind to smile at the occupants of the next carriage that was approaching, because she recognised the features of Mrs Doughty, a widow with three unmarried daughters, all of whom were squeezed into the vehicle with her. Mrs Doughty had been among the first people to recognise Rosalind’s worth and had invited her and Cassy to her home on several occasions, since she also had two sons to marry off. She wasn’t wealthy enough to host balls, but she certainly knew how to arrange parties that young people would enjoy, with plenty of foolish games to get them mingling in an extremely informal manner.

  Cassy’s smile, as she recalled some of the harmless fun she’d had in Mrs Doughty’s home, was still in place when the next carriage passed, although this one contained a lady she wasn’t aware of ever having seen before in her life. The lady smiled back, however, in a rather cat-like manner, after her eyes had flicked from Cassy to the Colonel and back.

  ‘You think you can succeed in society,’ Colonel Fairfax grated after the open carriage had passed, ‘because you have received a smile from one of the ton’s most vicious gossips?’

  Vicious? Oh, dear. What would such a woman make of Cassy driving without a chaperon with an unmarried gentleman? Oh, she knew she shouldn’t have let the Colonel have his way about this outing. Why did she keep on letting him goad her into doing such foolish, reckless things? And saying things she’d sworn she wouldn’t say? Why did she keep forgetting he was her enemy?

  Because, she answered herself, she’d spent so many years thinking of him as her hero, and it wasn’t easy to shake off a habit that old in a matter of days.

  ‘And because you have managed to persuade your godmother,’ he continued, ‘that you are as respectable as your mother, I don’t doubt.’

  They reached the end of the carriage drive and he turned the horses’ heads in the direction of the gate.

  Cassy heaved a sigh of relief. Her ordeal was almost over.

  ‘I can see that I arrived on the scene too late to prevent you from getting a toehold in society,’ he said grimly. ‘And now that I know about your background, how you have managed to achieve it. I can also see that I would be wasting my breath by approaching your godmother and attempting to enlighten her. You must have explained your episode with Gilbey in some kind of romantic light that has made her not only forgive you for it, but also made her think she owes you a Season.’

  Cassy turned her head and glared up at his profile, taking a breath to object.

  ‘But don’t think,’ he said, preventing her from voicing her objections to this latest assumption, ‘that I will let you get any further. From now on I shall be watching you like a hawk. I will not let you drag that hen-witted woman down into any sort of scandal...’

  Cassy promptly closed her mouth. Because if it came to scandal, Godmama was on the verge of creating at least two already. Not only was she embroiled in a feud with her stepson which had almost resulted in all the staff in the Grosvenor Square house losing their jobs, but she was also carrying on with a lover who was young enough to be her son. If either of those two facts got out, Godmama would be the talk of the ton for weeks. Possibly longer, if nothing more interesting occurred to set tongues wagging.

  ‘Nor,’ he carried on implacably, ‘will I stand back and see you get your avaricious claws into some other unsuspecting male.’

  Avaricious claws?

  Unsuspecting male?

  Cassy could not have uttered a word to save her life, she was now so furious. Far from ever getting anything in the way of money from any man, the only ones she’d been unfortunate enough to tangle with, through the course of her life thus far, had left her penniless and homeless. Well, yes, for the sake of complete accuracy she had to admit that Gu
y had, eventually, remembered her in his will. But his bequest had come along too late to make any real difference. If it hadn’t been for the generosity of her female relatives and friends, she would have been destitute.

  Not that she was going to waste her breath telling him so. Why should she even want to make him understand? He was just like every other man she’d ever known. Judgemental and mean, and...and altogether horrid!

  Which was an awful revelation. Why couldn’t he be the man she’d thought he was? Why wasn’t he chivalrous and dependable, and practical? A man she could trust with her predicament? The way he’d been when she’d first met him.

  Unless...had she only imagined he was all those things? Because she’d been far more gullible back then, seeing the good in everyone...

  The image of the Colonel Fairfax of her girlhood shimmered in a mist of unshed tears, leaving only the cold and implacably hostile man who was sitting beside her. A man, she acknowledged with a sinking feeling, she still found more compelling, more attractive, than any other man she’d ever met.

  * * *

  ‘And then he said he wasn’t going to let any other poor, unsuspecting male fall into my clutches,’ said Cassy, turning away from the window, and pacing back to the fireplace. ‘Godmama, this isn’t funny,’ she snapped as she caught the Duchess pressing a dainty handkerchief to her lips to disguise the fact she was laughing.

  ‘Well, dear,’ said Godmama, dabbing at her eyes, which were streaming with mirth, ‘it depends on how you look at it.’

  ‘How can I look at it with anything but...indignation,’ said Cassy, walking back to the window, twisting her hands together at her waist, ‘when he said you had the brains of a flea and that he was going to watch me like a hawk so that I wouldn’t be able to drag you down into whatever scandal I was planning to hatch?’

  ‘As an opportunity, of course,’ said Godmama through her giggles. ‘For what do you think everyone is going to say when they see him following you about, driving every other male away?’ Cassy turned yet again and stalked back in the direction of the chairs grouped around the fireplace. ‘That you are the only person who has ever meant enough to him to drag him away from all those stuffy duties he has always, before you came to Town, used as an excuse to turn down every invitation sent to him. And,’ she said, getting control of herself, ‘I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if they are right. It is what I am going to tell them, anyway, because I think there is more than a grain of truth in it. So I won’t be telling any lies on your behalf, which I promised, you recall, I wouldn’t do. No matter how inconvenient it might be.’

  ‘What?’ Usually, Cassy had no trouble following Godmama’s line of reasoning, even if she did relay it in a rather disjointed manner. But this time she was at a total loss.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean,’ said Godmama, slowly, with a delighted smile curving her lips, ‘that he is pursuing you and saying all those nasty things because, in spite of wishing he wasn’t, he is attracted to you himself.’

  ‘He...what?’ For the first time since returning from the park, Cassy felt the need to sit down. ‘He...no, he couldn’t possibly...’ Although he had said she was up to her pretty neck in mischief.

  She sank down on to the sofa next to Rosalind, who’d patted the cushions by way of invitation. ‘But he is always so...rude. And has assumed the worst of me, no matter what I say...’ Not that she’d really said enough to exonerate herself, not with any conviction.

  ‘Yes, he thinks you perfectly capable of luring unsuspecting males to their doom,’ crowed Godmama, as though it was the funniest thing she’d heard in ages.

  Well, actually, comparing her to a siren was...ludicrous. For she had never exerted, or attempted to exert, any fascination over any man.

  Yet Colonel Fairfax kept on insisting she had such power.

  Which meant... She looked up sharply at Godmama. Could she be correct? Well, Colonel Fairfax must feel that she had some kind of...allure, or something, to keep harping on about it the way he did. But did that mean he felt susceptible to it?

  Her heart thudded thickly in her chest.

  Could Colonel Fairfax be attracted to her?

  He’d said she was pretty, hadn’t he, at Lady Bunsford’s ball. And had accused her of being able to lure any man she wanted, by merely...

  At which point her imagination failed her. She had no idea how to lure anyone. And had no wish to exert any kind of destructive power, even if she had the first idea how to wield it.

  ‘As I said, he may not want to find you attractive, darling, but he does,’ said Godmama, spreading her hands in a little gesture indicating she’d made her point.

  ‘Your Grace is right,’ put in Rosalind with glee. ‘Now I come to think of it, he was positively devouring you with his eyes all the time he was with you at the theatre last night.’

  Cassy’s hand went to her bosom, at which, she recalled, he’d been glaring for much of the time, as though he was offended so much of it was on show, when truly her neckline hadn’t been all that daring.

  ‘You see?’ Godmama’s eagle eyes had noted the faint fluttering of Cassy’s hand to her neckline. ‘He thinks you are so alluring that any man who was not on guard could easily fall into your, how did he put it, your clutches? Which means he fears suffering such a fate himself. Oh,’ she cried, clapping her hands. ‘But this is delightful!’

  ‘No, it isn’t. How can you say that when he has such a warped notion of my motives?’ she said, feeling close to tears again. ‘You know I have no intention of getting any man to fall into my clutches. I don’t even have any,’ she said, looking down at her hands in bewilderment.

  ‘Which,’ said Godmama, ‘is what makes it so delightfully funny! Do you know, I have just had the most delightful idea? I think I should like to...’

  Cassy got a strange shrinking feeling in her stomach. If this latest idea was like any of the other ideas Godmama came up with, then it was more than likely to tumble her into yet more mischief and she felt as if she was already up to her neck in Godmama’s current series of schemes.

  ‘Please, Godmama,’ she begged, ‘don’t make me try to pretend to be the kind of woman he suspects me to be. I wouldn’t know how. I’d only make a colossal fool of myself, and bring scandal down round your ears, I shouldn’t wonder. And then what would happen to Rosalind?’

  Godmama’s face fell, confirming Cassy’s suspicion that she’d been thinking of asking her to do something of the sort.

  ‘Well, yes, I do see your point,’ said Godmama, glancing at Rosalind with resignation. ‘Only...’ She tapped her chin with her forefinger, a sure sign she was hatching another plot. ‘It seems such a shame to let him get away with speaking to you like that, and threatening to hound you the way he has, when it would be so easy to spike his guns...’

  ‘In what way?’ Cassy couldn’t help asking the question, Godmama looked so wistful.

  ‘Well, to start with, I shall be telling everyone that I believe he is wildly attracted to you. Because it happens to be the truth,’ she said defiantly. ‘I do believe that.’

  Cassy supposed she couldn’t object to that.

  ‘And the harder he tries to prevent you from interacting with any other eligible man, the more credence he will give to my position.’

  Rosalind clapped her hands. ‘Your Grace, you are a genius!’

  Godmama made a small deprecating gesture with her hand, though she smiled at the same time, to show the compliment was not unwelcome.

  But Cassy’s stomach was squirming. On the one hand, she had spent some sleepless nights, wishing there was some way she could make him...grovel.

  ‘Oh, pish,’ Godmama was saying to Rosalind. ‘It just occurred to me that while he is watching Cassy like a hawk, for no reason other than that he’s got a completely nasty notion of her in his head, we may as well make sport of him. And by simp
ly repeating my suspicions about how attractive he finds her, we can make him look like a besotted fool. Which will serve him right.’

  Only, Cassy wasn’t sure she wanted to make him look like a besotted fool. She knew what it was like to be stripped of all dignity and she would never want to inflict that feeling on anyone, no matter what. Nor could she forget that he had played a significant role in rescuing her from her Fatal Error. He might not have done it for the reasons she’d assumed, at the time, but nevertheless he had dipped into his pocket and given her the money to go home. And arranged for Betty to go with her. If he hadn’t done so, she would never have learned about her aunts and who knew where she would have ended up? Wouldn’t it be rather shabby behaviour to repay that act of generosity by making him look like a fool in the eyes of society?

  On the other hand, he had made her feel like a fool, hadn’t he, for holding his memory in her heart as a shining example of what a man ought to be...strong, and capable, and organised, and trustworthy...when all the time he’d wrongly assumed she was scheming and grasping and immoral.

  For that, yes, actually she rather would like to take him down a peg or two.

  ‘Besides which,’ said Godmama, as if she could see her wavering, ‘we have to give people some reason to explain his pursuit of you. And if it is not because we believe him to be smitten, then what tale will they come up with, do you suppose? Might they even start digging into your shared past and expose your silly scrape? And make it sound ten times worse than it was? Don’t you think my solution will serve our purpose better than allowing people to learn what he is really about? Hmm? And what do you suppose that would do for Rosalind’s chances?’

  ‘Please, Cassy,’ said Rosalind, taking her hand. ‘It’s not as if you have to tell any lies. Only not contradict what the Duchess says about him. Which will all be perfectly true.’