Season for Scandal

by Theresa Romain

  And he knew: that was why she’d left. Because she knew she would never get back as much feeling as she gave, and being faced with the evidence of that—day after day, through endless breakfasts and teatimes and not right nows—was, eventually, intolerable.

  And in that sense, they were not so very different after all.

  His anger vanished, and he poked at the space where it had been, to see what had replaced it. Not guilt; nothing so heavy and familiar as that. This pierced like a rapier, sleek and pointed in its agony.

  It was regret.

  I love you. She had only said it once. Now he wished he hadn’t been so vehement in his reaction. He wished he had known how to help that feeling grow in her. He wished he had said it back, even.

  But Jane was immune to words. And Edmund tried not to lie, except out of politeness.

  Would it be a lie to say he loved her? He didn’t know. He didn’t know how to separate love from protectiveness, or respect from desire. That didn’t make the feelings false, though, did it? It just meant . . . he wanted her to be all right.

  Impatient with himself, he turned and left the drawing room without another glance at the vase. He padded up the stairs, candlestick in hand, to ready himself for bed. All too aware that only one day before, he had made the journey with Jane.

  Three weeks before Christmas, and he’d misplaced his wife. The wife who he’d hoped would gift his family with a future—a family that wasn’t even his, a future that had lost all its urgency. So Turner had come back; what did it matter now? Edmund had chased Jane away all on his own.

  The loss was harder to bear than he had expected. Regret again. But for what? The past he had dwelled on? The future he had laid aside? Or a dream he had never dared to let himself possess?

  I love you, she’d said. But only because she didn’t really know him.

  Yet now, with the quiet of the house like a glowering master, he thought: she had left him, and maybe that meant she knew him best of all.

  Chapter 18

  Concerning Ice

  Scandal didn’t wear as well as Jane had expected it to.

  If it could be thought of as clothing, she had always imagined scandal as a red silk gown or a pair of gilded slippers—or for a man, a snowy cravat tied in a style entirely new. Something that set one apart, that made even the most beautiful and fascinating people seem more so.

  She first suspected she was wrong the day after she left her husband’s home in Berkeley Square. She borrowed Xavier’s carriage for the quick hop to Grosvenor Square, looking forward to a call upon Lady Audrina Bradleigh. Her new friend—unwillingly draped in jewels, ear attuned to all the latest news—would provide much-needed distraction from the tumult of her own thoughts.

  Yes, she had hoped Edmund would come for her, but with heart in hand. Instead, he had brought a finite store of cheerful kindness and a list of reasons why she ought to come home with him. As though “ought to” mattered to Jane Tindall.

  Jane Kirkpatrick. Whoever the devil she was.

  She had taken pleasure in tapping Edmund’s good cheer; letting it run out, wasted, against the insoluble surface of her own stubbornness, until he lost his temper with her. But it was a blank sort of pleasure, less like joy than like the satisfaction of defeating an opponent.

  When had Edmund become her opponent?

  Jane shook her head, then rapped at the door of Alleyneham House again.

  A butler opened the door to Jane, admitted her to the mansion’s entrance hall, and took her card into the drawing room.

  “We are not at home to callers,” rang the voice of Audrina’s mother, Lady Alleyneham, even as the Duchess of Penlowe shoved past Jane and marched into the house.

  That in itself meant nothing. Duchesses were rather prone to doing whatever they wanted.

  But then Mrs. Protheroe—a bawdy, widowed cit who arrived in a crested carriage Jane was fairly certain belonged to the spendthrift Marquess of Lockwood—was also admitted into the house.

  “I don’t understand,” Jane began. “Has there been some mistake with my card? I—”

  “Pardon me, madam.” The butler cut her off. Before Jane could muster a protest, he caught her by the arm and ushered her over the threshold. With no more of a nod than he’d have given to an underservant, he shut the door in her face.

  Jane blinked at the glossy wood and brass for an inordinate length of time.

  What had happened? Was it because of Edmund? No, surely not. He would never publicly abuse her. And as far as the world knew, if they knew anything about her departure at all, she was simply staying with her cousin. There was nothing wrong with staying with one’s cousin.

  Was there?

  No, likely Lady Alleyneham was miffed at Jane for some other reason. Her ladyship was a stickler for rank, and she might disapprove of Jane’s friendship with Bellamy. Or maybe she hadn’t forgiven Jane for botching the curtsy at their ball a few weeks earlier.

  Yes. That must be it.

  Odd how it could come as a relief, the conclusion that one had snubbed and offended a socially powerful countess.

  The next time Jane came upon Lady Alleyneham, she would crumple at the countess’s feet. Her curtsy would be a positive debasement. The countess might even find the whole affair amusing.

  For now, the door to Alleyneham House was closed to her. All Jane could do was lift her chin and make her way back down the mansion’s wide stone steps.

  “Where to, my lady?” Xavier’s coachman touched his cap to her. Pretending dutifully that he hadn’t seen what had just passed.

  Jane cast about for some instruction. “Gunter’s.” She didn’t want to return to Xavier House yet, and at the popular sweet shop, she might meet someone she knew. Someone with whom she could talk about the weather, or discuss ideas for Christmas gifts, all while slurping up a peppermint ice.

  The carriage arrived at Gunter’s after a short drive. Though it was the custom on fine days for waiters to serve ladies in their carriages, the chilly weather had chased the shop’s customers indoors. All the better for a comfortable chat. Jane took her coachman’s hand and hopped to the pavement, feeling more hopeful.

  But when she entered the crisp, chattery little shop, it went silent.

  Every person within it looked at Jane, still framed within the doorway, then looked away. Spoons ceased clattering against glass dishes. Tongues stopped their wagging about . . . whatever. It was as though the inhabitants of the shop were ostriches, and their heads had just decisively been buried in the sand.

  The scent of sugar and mint stung Jane’s nose; her stomach gave a queasy flip. She had not botched curtsies to all these people. Which meant she had botched something else.

  She wished for Edmund’s comforting presence at her side; for his cheerful greeting. The light teasing that would coax smiles from every one of the faces . . . well, she presumed the women in the shop had faces. All she saw was the back of bonnet after bonnet.

  “Excuse me,” she called to a waiter, determined to brazen her way through the situation. “Might I . . .”

  “She might do anything,” sniffed an unfamiliar voice. “A woman cast out by a doting husband such as Lord Kirkpatrick might do any number of ungodly things.”

  “She might. And then she might find out what others would not do. And not tolerate.” A different voice that time.

  Jane’s stomach followed its horrid flip with a heavy flop. She couldn’t even tell from behind which bonnet the voices were issuing. Did it matter? It could be anyone.

  And that meant it was probably everyone.

  It would be ridiculous to protest her innocence to the back of a bonnet. But she couldn’t keep silent.

  She tried to recall the Baroness Walling’s porcelain face and gracious smile, then reconstruct the expression on her own features. The mask felt as though she’d donned it askew; it pinched at the corners of her mouth and made her eyes water.

  “A woman might have reasons for doing something that the wor
ld knows not of,” Jane said, hoping she sounded calm. Best to end her statement there. It wouldn’t be fair to blame Edmund; it wasn’t as though he’d beaten her. He was everything kind. Why, he had even ventured after her and tried to persuade her—first sweetly, then forcefully—into coming home.

  No, she had said. He wanted his wife back so he could keep her safe and sound. Like a bonnet to be rescued, or a book to be bought. Jane was just another good deed to tick off his list.

  “Disgraceful,” spoke up another voice. “Admitting it openly like that. The cheek!”

  “Is scandal any better if it’s kept a secret?” Jane asked the room as a whole.

  She didn’t know. Society thought so, though. Likely many of the women sitting here, spooning up ices and consuming tarts, inhabited the same houses as their husbands, but lived wholly separate lives. Was suffering in silence better than leaving?

  Could it be called suffering if those women never loved their husbands to begin with?

  She wondered if she had made a terrible blunder.

  The bonnets remained facing resolutely away, though chatter broke out again. Chatter in which Kirkpatrick’s name figured prominently. Kirkpatrick, and the women he ought to have married who might have been worthy of him.

  Jane’s hands gripped the handle of her reticule. She wanted to shake these women, shout at them. But he’s just a man. He’s not as perfect as you think. And I am not so terrible.

  She couldn’t open her mouth again. If she relaxed her jaw the slightest bit, she’d do something for which she would never forgive herself. Cry, probably.

  With jaw clamped shut, then, she pushed back through the door. The explosion of talk behind her was as sudden and loud as a rifle shot.

  Well. She wasn’t forgotten by society anymore, was she? The thought brought a grim smile to her face.

  As her cousin’s carriage brought her back to Xavier House, silent and shaded, she realized that she’d been wrong about the feel of scandal. It was nothing so light and bright as red silk; nothing so bracing as starched linen.

  Being draped in scandal wasn’t even like wearing a sodden pelisse, suffocating and heavy, or a fussy, choking organdy such as those Jane’s mother used to choose for her.

  In truth, it made her feel naked.

  By the time she returned to Xavier House, Jane realized two dreadful things.

  First: that the only attention she wanted was from the person she’d left.

  Second: that, if her guess was right, the only doors that weren’t closed to her were the one she now entered, and the one through which she had left her husband.

  Jane had always cared what people thought. She also cared that they didn’t think of her at all. But now— now she was an ingrate and a scandal, her indiscretion unknown but assumed. Kirkpatrick must have thrown her out for some reason, for who would leave lovely, kind, handsome, wonderful Lord Kirkpatrick?

  A woman sick of his polite indifference, that was who.

  Before her marriage, she’d been so good at playing a part. But the effort of being Lady Kirkpatrick, serene and cosseted and utterly useless, not even permitted to love—well, that had sapped her. She had no energy now for other roles.

  “Tea, please,” she requested from a servant as she settled herself in Louisa’s morning room. The countess was out paying calls, Xavier was trapped in Parliament, and Jane was alone in this sunny room, now gone gray in the weak afternoon light.

  A maid entered to light a lamp, then a branch of candles, from the low fire in the hearth. Holding up her hands before the tiny flames, Jane heard a footman enter with a tray. It was a relief to feel something so normal as hungry.

  “My lady,” whispered the maid as the footman set down the tray. “You’ve a caller. I just saw him speaking with the butler.”

  “Kirkpatrick?” Senseless for her heart to leap in that fashion, when she’d sent him away so decisively the day before.

  “Can’t say, I’m sure, my lady. He’s ever so handsome, though.” The young woman ducked her head, then both servants bowed from the room.

  Kirkpatrick.

  Triumph rose inside her body like a small sun, warming her from the inside out. What did words matter? Only action would prove how he felt. And if he kept coming back for her, maybe he cared that she had left. Enough to ignore her angry words. Enough to be able to tell that they were angry, even when spoken with determined calm.

  She arranged herself gracefully in one of Louisa’s tapestry-covered chairs. Ankles crossed, hand over hand. At the last instant, she decided to be caught in the act of pouring out tea; unconcern would suit her better than expectation.

  To her lack of surprise, someone scratched at the door a moment later. Jane swooped for the teapot and set out the cups. When she bade the servant enter, he announced her caller.

  “A Mr. Bellamy to see you, my lady.”

  Jane’s hand wobbled; tea sloshed into a saucer. “Mr. Bellamy? Are you certain?”

  “Indeed, my lady. Shall I show him in?”

  “Yes. Yes, you may. Thank you.” She set down the teapot, and in the servant’s absence, allowed herself five seconds to feel desolate.

  Foolish Jane. If one chased a man away, one shouldn’t be surprised when he stayed away.

  By the time Bellamy entered the morning room, her hand hardly trembled on the spoon. “What a pleasant surprise,” she said. “May I offer you some tea? I’m just in from a few calls myself and wanted to warm up.”

  “No need, no need. I never get cold.” He seated himself with a smile, looking like a Christmas portrait from her parents’ generation: a coat of red velvet, with hair in a queue and snowy lace at his throat and wrists.

  Jane took a sip of her own tea. She usually preferred it sweeter, but the burnt-sugar smell in Gunter’s had put her off for the moment. “Living in India as you did for so long? I’d have expected the English cold would get into your bones.”

  “Now, now, Lady Kirkpatrick. You wouldn’t be trying to make an old man of me, would you?” He winked, settling back in the chair Louisa usually occupied.

  “Not at all.” She sipped her tea in silence, feeling too bruised for easy conversation. Still wounded from the social cuts she’d received earlier, and wary of this man, always so pleasant, whom Edmund liked so little.

  A suspicion crossed her mind; just a flash. The figure at Lord Weatherwax’s ball had been the right height. But no, the voice had been wrong. A brogue, where Bellamy’s accent was flat.

  But a voice could be changed. So easily, Jane had become a serving wench for a short time.

  “Mr. Bellamy,” she spoke up. “What sort of accent do the English have who live in India?”

  “Just like this, my lady.” He beamed at her. “After twenty years away, I couldn’t help but pick it up, could I?”

  “But now that you’re back in England, you’re not around that way of speaking anymore. How did you speak before?”

  He tilted his head. “Why, I can’t rightly say. I’ve been all over the world. I speak however I need to speak, I suppose.”

  “That’s a gift.” As Jane stirred her unsweetened tea, her hand was steady.

  But she wondered.

  “Speaking of gifts,” he said jovially, “I may be leaving London soon. Had to track you down, didn’t I? I couldn’t go without telling you good-bye and giving you a little present. Tut, tut, Lady Kay; you’re a hard woman to find.”

  “Nonsense,” she said in a colorless voice. “All London knows where I am.”

  He took a small parcel from an inside pocket of his velvet coat. “It’s a bit early for Christmas, I know, but I couldn’t wait.”

  “How kind of you.” Gifts. Damn gifts. Even as she undid the parcel, Jane wanted to throw whatever it was into the chamber pot.

  Oh. No, she didn’t, after all: a glossy black figurine fell into her hand. A carved column, three inches high, capped with a pierced crown, all atop what looked like a galleried vase.

  “It’s beautiful,”
she murmured. “A chess piece?”

  “A queen.”

  She turned it in her hand. “Where is it from?”

  “France. This is how they like to carve their pieces there. Elegant, isn’t it?”

  “Very.” Without possessing a face—or any human attributes at all—this little figure seemed regal. It had traveled across the Channel, only to rest in Jane’s hand. “What is it made of? This isn’t wood.”

  “It’s bone. The black pieces are stained. I’ve the rest of the set at my lodging, if you care to play?”

  “I don’t know how.” She clutched the bone-sculpted piece tight in her hand; once it had been part of a living creature. “I wish I knew how.”

  “The game is easy enough to learn. I can bring the set another time, if you wish.”

  Something about the way he said the game—yes, she wondered.

  She handed the piece back to him. “You must keep the black queen with her friends until it’s time for our game, Mr. Bellamy. I couldn’t be so cruel as to separate her.”

  “Ah, but she’s a queen, my lady. The most powerful piece of all. She’ll do fine on her own. She can move any direction, as far as she wishes.”

  “It’s the king that wins the game, though, isn’t it?”

  “Very true.” He reached for her hand, but instead of taking the chess piece, he folded her fingers over it. “Very true. If the king is lost, so is the game. I see you know a little of chess after all.”

  “A very little. Only a bit about how to win.” She held the queen tightly, liking the way its time-smoothed contours pressed into her fist. Delicate and strong at once. Perhaps a woman had created the game of chess, to grant so much power to the queen.

  Bellamy took his leave soon afterward, though promising to return soon with his full chess set “so we can have a proper game of it.”

  Jane smiled and accepted his kiss on her hand. She drank her tea quickly after he left, wishing she could feel warm again.

  The game, the game. There was a game being played, if Jane was not mistaken, and somehow she was a part of it.