Season for Scandal

by Theresa Romain

  As though she hadn’t spoken, his hand still pressed the seal to his letter.

  “Edmund. Did you hear me? I apologize.”

  “For what?”

  She chose her words carefully. “Because I left the ball without you. Because I was jealous. Not in the way you assumed,” she added in a rush. “It’s not because I mind your attentions to other women. I know you’re being kind.”

  When he lifted his seal, the Kirkpatrick crest was imprinted clearly in red wax. “Oh? How do you mean it, then?”

  “I’ve never had a suitor, Edmund. I’ve never been to a ball, or anything more than one of Xavier’s country house parties. After my father died, I had a quiet village life. No lessons or instructors. Horrid clothes.” She gave him a thin smile. “I just felt I didn’t belong last night. And you always know how to set people at ease. I’d have liked your company. That’s all.”

  Wariness fled his face; sympathy took its place. “I understand. And you’ve every right to expect that sort of consideration. I simply didn’t think.”

  “Well. Marriage is new to us both.”

  “You’re right. And we ought to do something more to celebrate it than we have.” When he stood, the clean scent of soap and starch caught her, made her want to bury her face in the hollow of his neck. “I can’t take you out of England right now, but is there somewhere in London you’d like to go?”

  “Vauxhall Gardens,” she said promptly.

  He looked at her with mock severity. “Yes, I can only imagine what you’d do with a cloak of shadows and a park full of drunkards. It’s a fortunate thing for the world that your taste for adventure stopped with gambling and never turned to pickpocketry.”

  “You’ll give me the vapors with such praise.” How she hoarded these signs that he knew her, even a little.

  “I regret that Vauxhall Gardens is closed in autumn and winter. Perhaps we can go in the spring.” His voice trailed off, and he straightened the items on his desk before adding, “Is there anywhere else?”

  She considered. “Yesterday you suggested Bond Street. Why not there?”

  As he stood, his answering smile was worth the heartburn of all her swallowed pride. “An excellent plan.”

  “We don’t have to,” she said. “I know gentlemen don’t like to go to Bond Street until after dinner, when they can buy themselves a . . . um, fancy lady.”

  “Do you honestly think I would do that?”

  “No, I guess not.” Jane scuffed the toe of her slipper on the carpet, then made herself stop. “But. Well. I don’t mind if you don’t want to go.”

  “As it was my idea, I fully intend to accompany you. A lady of quality must have a chaperone, and I know of no lady of better quality than yourself.”

  A few steps brought him around the desk to face her; then he raised her hand to his lips. Just a quick brush, light as a moth wing.

  Jane felt as though she had fallen into a flame.

  His hand on hers; those sweet words; his mouth. This tiny politeness seemed more intimate than the marital acts they had engaged in over the past weeks.

  She drew her hand free of his grasp. “Don’t be ridiculous.” She must convince him that he didn’t need to reassure her. If she were strong enough to lean on, one day he might rely on her. And that—that would be enough.

  She could hope.

  “I’ll get a bonnet,” she said. And before she could say something else, something that would ruin the moment, she darted from the room.

  “I’ve had the carriage brought around,” Edmund said when she joined him in the entrance hall a little while later, a drab-colored poke bonnet now atop her head. Jane noted that he had used the time to put on a fresh cravat. Thoughtful of him.

  She hadn’t expected the carriage, though. “You don’t want to walk?”

  “In late November? You’d be chilled in an instant. As it is, you can hardly be warm enough even while we’re in the house.” His fingers stroked the fur cuff of her long sleeve. “This is nothing like enough covering, is it? Your hands must be cold. Or your neck, with your hair piled up under your hat like that.”

  “It’s not a hat. It’s a bonnet. And it’s meant to be fashionable. Comfort has nothing to do with it.”

  He frowned. “Surely you could have both fashion and comfort.”

  She had gooseflesh on her arms, less from cold than the fact that he sounded genuinely interested in her welfare. “You think so? Then talk to the modistes of the world about that. In the meantime, I need my pelisse.”

  While she wrapped herself up, Edmund said, “You must be wanting new clothes, though. We could visit a modiste’s. Or a milliner’s?”

  “Why must I be wanting new clothes?”

  He looked at her askance. “Women always want new clothes.”

  She looked askance at him right back.

  He tilted his head. “Don’t they?”

  “I have new clothes. Don’t you remember? I had them made before we were married.”

  “Well, you could get more.” At her ferocious expression, he lifted his hands. “All right, Jane. It’s your outing. Let us go to Bond Street and see what strikes your fancy.”

  Edmund gave instructions to the coachman, and off they rolled. Rather than sit on the backward-facing seat, he sat next to Jane on the plush squabs of the closed carriage.

  She flinched when his sleeve brushed against the edge of her breast.

  “I’m sorry, I should have asked if I might sit by you,” he said. “If it doesn’t crowd you too much, may I?”

  Yes yes yes yes yes. “If you like.”

  “We can talk more easily if we’re next to each other.”

  Jane disagreed with this about as much as a person could disagree with any statement. When Edmund sat this close to her, her senses became so full of him that talk was impossible. The faint shush and thump of his boot heels shifting on the carriage floor. The shadows that his tall form cast in the carriage interior. Even a hum of heat as he sat close, as her body yearned toward his.

  She made herself pull back. “Is something on your mind, then?” she asked lightly.

  “Not at all,” he said at once. “I just want to make certain you have a nice time. Are you having a nice time?”

  “Er. That’s not your responsibility, Edmund.”

  Her blunt words must have startled him, because he leaned away from her so he could look her in the face.

  The small distance made it easier to muster an explanation. “You’re taking me to Bond Street, which is very kind of you. But if I should decide to be in a temper, that wouldn’t be your fault. Nor could you likely talk me out of it. And if you keep asking me whether I’m having a nice time, I will be in a temper.”

  He considered this for a moment. “Fair enough. If you should begin not to have a nice time, I’ll trust you to tell me.”

  “I should hope so.”

  Edmund drummed his fingers on his thigh, then nodded. “All right.” Drum drum. “Jane. Who invited Mr. Bellamy to our wedding?”

  “Mr. Bellamy?” This ranked very low on the list of questions she might have expected him to ask. It took her a moment to think through an answer. “Probably my cousin Xavier asked him. Why?”

  “I just wondered. You don’t know him well, do you? Bellamy, I mean. Not Xavier.”

  “Not well, no.” She smiled. “Bellamy, I mean. Not Xavier. I know my dratted cousin far too well.”

  He didn’t respond to her attempt at humor. “Bellamy doesn’t strike me as a good person to associate with.” His profile was to her, but she caught the flicker of a glance from the corner of his eye.

  Her insides fluttered. “You don’t have to be jealous,” she blurted.

  His jaw tightened. “I’m not.”

  “No, of course you aren’t,” she muttered. “How stupid of me.”

  He seemed to realize he had been ungracious. “Not that I doubt your appeal to middle-aged men of questionable background, Jane. Because I certainly do not.”


  “Oh, stop.” She sank back against the squabs. “You’re only making it worse. Forget I said anything.”

  “Please don’t forget I said anything,” Edmund said quietly. “Don’t let him catch you alone. And don’t believe his tales.”

  “Tales? Do you know something about him that I don’t?”

  His eyes met hers and held. “No.” He laced his fingers through hers. “I’m only thinking of propriety. Now, where shall we stop first? Your wish is my command.”

  She wished that were true. More than wished: she yearned, pined, hungered. Every pitiful overwrought urge that a poet could dream up.

  But she had apologized, and she had made him—and herself—a vow. There would be none of that nonsense.

  She looked out the carriage window at the jostling crowds. “It doesn’t matter.” Somehow, she sounded calm as she eased her fingers from his grasp. “How about a bookshop?”

  “Your wish,” he said again, “is my command.”

  The pallid sunlight peeking through gray clouds drew out crowds of shoppers in full force. Throngs slowed Jane’s progress along the pavement at her husband’s side, and she welcomed the chance to look about. The busy streets of London were as much a novelty as the goods in shop windows.

  Jane hadn’t realized how different the winter was in London than the country. Living on the fringes of the village of Mytchett, Jane and her mother—like the other scattered villagers—hoarded coal and wood and preserved food each autumn. Not because they were unwilling to rely on their neighbors, but because they knew distance and weather might make it impossible. Londoners had no such fear: the world, they seemed confident, would come to them.

  Jane was beginning to like London more and more.

  The decision to go hunting for books, rather than ribbons or slippers, had required a turn of the carriage from Bond Street into Piccadilly. The road was blocked by a wagon with a broken axle, so Edmund and Jane disembarked shy of their destination.

  He drew her gloved hand onto his arm once they stood on the pavement. “I won’t ask how you are because you’ve threatened me with a tantrum. Only you must tell me if you get cold.”

  “What would you do if I was?” Wind snagged a wisp of hair on Jane’s forehead, ruffling it against the broad brim of her bonnet.

  “I’d buy a hot potato for you to hold.” He grinned. “Or get you into someplace warm. The shops will be crowded enough to keep you well toasted.”

  Jane could believe it. Each one seemed crammed with shoppers, wealthy men and women looking for any excuse to spend their coin. More likely they were preparing for the opening of Parliament in a few days, the beginning of society’s extended social whirl, than snapping up the perfect Christmas gifts for loved ones. But Jane could pretend: that it was nearly Christmas, that she was beloved, and that she would get the gift she wanted most.

  She could pretend. Could. But she wouldn’t.

  As they made their way toward the windowed front of Hatchards, the wind’s breath came sharp and chill. Jane heard a woman cry out, “Oh! My bonnet!”

  Tumbling atop the crowd from head to shoulder, person to person, came a woman’s hat topped most improbably with a stuffed pigeon.

  With a quick catch, Edmund grabbed it before the wind could whirl it away. Its owner—a buxom, well-dressed young woman—was upon them in a few seconds, stammering her thanks. “The ribbon parted from the brim,” she explained. “I can’t think how. I should have been so sorry to lose my favorite hat.”

  “And rightly so,” Edmund said with a bow. “It looks good enough to eat.”

  The woman laughed, her cheeks pinker than the snap of wind would warrant, and went on her way.

  Jane took Edmund’s arm again. “You shouldn’t have saved that hat. It was horrible.”

  “She didn’t think so.” His gaze roamed over the crowded street. “And since I could catch it, I did.”

  Though he spoke mildly, Jane had the feeling she’d been put in her place. And it wasn’t a place she particularly liked. She took her hand from his arm.

  Not that he noticed. His eye had been caught by a hackney a few steps farther on. A woman hesitated in the hired carriage’s open door, unwilling to venture into the muddy slush at the edge of the pavement.

  “Allow me, madam.” Edmund extended a hand to help her jump to dry stone, then assisted her maid. “Such angels should float above the muck of the streets.”

  With a tip of his hat, he moved on. The sound of a maid’s giggles and a surprised thanks floated after them.

  “Angels,” Jane grumbled.

  Edmund shot her a sidelong glance. “Well, I could hardly call them devils. I don’t know them at all.”

  “Why did you have to call them anything?” Jane bit her lip. Remember: just a good old chum. “Never mind. I can see that they liked it.”

  “Most women like being called angels.” He took her arm again as though there had been no interruption, and certainly not two.

  “What would London do without you?”

  Edmund looked down at her with some surprise. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “You seem to find many ways to do things that people like.”

  “I do little enough. It could be more.” His mouth pulled tight, and without another word, they continued their walk.

  It could be more. Yes, he was right about that.

  Jane was torn between wanting to kick him—since this was, after all, the day for kicking things—and wanting to press kisses all over his face.

  But. Maybe it was a good thing that he didn’t treat her with swooning solicitude. Maybe that meant he thought she was strong enough to fend for herself.

  Or maybe he simply forgot about her.

  She hoped it was the former, and that in some way—even if not the way she wanted—she was special to him.

  Chapter 10

  Concerning Cartography and Selfishness

  They reached Hatchards without further interruption by wayward hats or street-shy angels. Without waiting for Edmund to usher her inside, Jane flung open the door to the bookshop and pressed into its crowded confines.

  A stack of little rooms around a tightly coiled staircase, the space was edged with counters interrupted by ceiling-tall bookcases. Every inch of shelf and table space was full of books in boards and bindings. Clerks with a sheen of perspiration on their brows, handing over volumes or jotting notes. Patrons with clucking tongues or triumphant smiles.

  “I’ll wager you’re not worried about me being cold anymore,” Jane murmured to Edmund, who had jostled in behind her. He chuckled.

  Jane felt crushed in on all sides, and for some reason, this made her feel bigger. She was part of the crowd, part of London now. As she swept up the stairs with no particular destination in mind, she became separated from Edmund, but it didn’t matter. She was a baroness, out for a little shopping, with pin money and credit and infinite leisure.

  Turning a bend in the staircase, she found herself in a less-full part of the shop. In a side chamber, a large table dominated a small space. And scattered over its surface . . .

  Maps. Stacks and sheaves of maps on parchment and paper and vellum and linen. Large maps, rolled up and tied with cords; small ones, inked and beautifully hand-colored. The whole world had been tumbled onto that single table, and it drew Jane as if whispering her name.

  Atop the messy stack was a small watercolor of an island, a hand-drawn antique labeled La Sicilia in an elaborate script. Jane took the corner of the paper in her fingertips, then drew her hand back.

  She looked around. No one paid her any heed. Stripping off one glove, she touched the corner of the map again. The old paper was hand-laid, thick as cloth. Faint lines crossed it where the fibers—linen, cotton, Jane couldn’t tell—had been pressed dry; she felt them as tiny ridges.

  Had the person who drew and painted this map ever been to Sicily? Basked in the sun and eaten olives and oranges straight from trees? Or was the artist, like Jane, simply someone who wished for
faraway places?

  Even if she only found bits of the world in London, it was better than having none of the world at all. And even if only on a map, she could see places she’d never seen before.

  “How can I help you, miss?” A clerk had come up beside her, the sound of his footfalls lost in the noise that leaked upward through the staircase. He was a young man in a dark coat, his expression slightly harried.

  Jane folded her hands behind her back. “Lady Kirkpatrick,” she corrected him.

  “My lady.” He bowed, turned red, and made a gulping sound all at once. “I beg your pardon.”

  “That’s all right.” Jane realized she rather enjoyed the whole business of surprising people, then being gracious to them. And then she hit on an idea. “Could you show me where the atlases are kept?”

  By the time Edmund rounded the third turn of the hairpin-tight stairway, he was perspiring. Yes, it was damnably hot and crowded in the bookshop, but the real problem was that he’d lost his wife. And if he couldn’t see her, then maybe Turner could. Maybe Turner was here, and he . . .

  No. Edmund had to find Jane, and when he did, he had to keep a daft smile on his face.

  The press of the crowd lessened as he climbed into the upper rooms of the shop. When he rounded one more turn of the little wood stairs, there she was. No Turner in sight; just a small woman holding a medium-sized book, standing behind a large table. The dark green of her pelisse made her cheeks rosy, and wisps of her light-brown hair sneaked from beneath her pale bonnet.

  The smile that crossed his face might have been daft, but it was also genuine. “Jane. I thought I’d lost you.”

  “I’m not lost.” She turned a page, not looking up from her book.

  “What have you found there? Something for Louisa?” Lord Xavier’s wife was known to be quite a scholar.

  “For me. I think.” When he reached her side, she looked up. Her hazel eyes were bright, crinkled at the corners with excitement. “It’s an atlas. The maps are beautiful, and there are color plates, too. Scenes of cities and people.”