The Scandals Of An Innocent

by Nicola Cornick

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “I F THIS IS THE CREAM of Fortune’s Folly society,” Lizzie Scarlet said, flicking her fan crossly as she and Alice stood viewing the sparsely populated ballroom at the Granby Hotel that evening, “then I may as well resign myself to remaining a spinster. Fortune’s Folly in the winter is so dull! There is not a single gentleman here that pleases me, Alice, except for your brother, Lowell, and you will not let me flirt with him, so where is the fun?”

  “You are only cross because Lord Waterhouse is dancing attendance on Miss Minchin,” Alice responded. It had been hard to ignore the fact that Lizzie had been in a foul temper all evening. If it came to that, Alice was in a foul temper, too, and was out of patience with herself because of it. She felt edgy and anxious. She had expected to see Miles and had found herself looking for him as soon as they entered the ballroom. When she had realized he was not present she had felt angry and slighted. It was typical of Miles’s breathtaking conceit to demand that she be there and that she save a dance for him, and then to be absent. She slapped her fan into the palm of her glove in a gesture of irritation.

  Lizzie was still grumbling about Nat Waterhouse.

  “You are quite unreasonable, you know, Lizzie,” Alice said, cutting her off, “for poor Lord Waterhouse must devote a little time to his affianced bride. You know he will come back to you in the end, for he enjoys your company too much to give you up.”

  She did not miss the small, self-satisfied smile on Lizzie’s face as her friend contemplated her eventual triumph over poor Flora Minchin. No doubt Lizzie had not even spared one second’s thought for how Miss Minchin might feel to have a suitor who spent much of his time with another woman. Lady Elizabeth Scarlet was very sure of her power, Alice thought, and why should she not be confident when she was beautiful and rich and titled, and had all the self-assurance that came with inherited privilege? In her beautiful sea-green silk and lace gown Lizzie looked poised and elegant with an innate style that bespoke birthright. She looked glossy, Alice thought, in the same way that Miles Vickery also looked expensive and self-assured even though he was a pauper.

  Alice shifted a little, sighing. In contrast to Lizzie she still felt a little unsure of herself whenever she went out into society. She had had the dancing lessons and she could converse and play cards and do all the things that a real debutante heiress could do, but every day she was conscious of the sideways looks and the whispered comments. She thought that she always would be. Even her gown of rose pink, which both Lizzie and Lydia had admired extremely, could not give her the inner confidence she lacked.

  One of Lizzie’s admirers, a young army captain called John Jerrold, came over to carry her off for a cotillion, and Lowell arrived with two glasses of lemonade, one of which he handed his sister.

  “I see I have missed my chance with Lady Elizabeth,” he said in his lazy country drawl, putting the second glass down on a ledge beside them, next to one of the carved marble busts of Grecian goddesses that adorned the alcoves in the ballroom. “Can’t drink this ghastly stuff myself and the Granby never serves beer on evenings like this.”

  Alice smothered a snort to think of her brother bringing a tankard in from the taproom.

  “I’d give a great deal to see you drinking beer in the ballroom in front of the Duchess of Cole,” she said, nodding toward Lydia’s mama, who was holding court in the chaperones’ corner, surrounded by her cronies. Faye Cole had managed to ride out the scandal of her daughter’s pregnancy by virtue of being the first and loudest to condemn Lydia, and she remained an arbiter of county society. Alice could not abide her. Neither could Mrs. Lister, who quite rightly blamed the duchess for being the architect of her social exclusion. Every so often the two of them would eye each other like prizefighters.

  “The duchess will be distraught that Mama’s feathers are higher than hers tonight,” Lowell continued. “Could you not prevent her from buying such a monstrous headpiece, Allie? She looks like a cockatoo with such a high crest!”

  Alice gave him a speaking look. “I would not dream of spoiling Mama’s fun, Lowell. If she wishes to wear pearls and feathers and artificial roses, that is her choice.”

  “She’s wearing them all together tonight,” Lowell said gloomily. “Looks like an accident in a flower cart.”

  “I did not think you would care about it,” Alice said, slipping her hand through her brother’s arm. “You never bother about what people say.”

  Lowell shrugged moodily. The morose expression sat oddly on his fair, open features. Normally he was the most equable of characters but Alice sensed there was something troubling him tonight.

  “Lowell?” she prompted. “You do not really have a tendre for Lady Elizabeth, do you?”

  Lowell’s grim expression was banished as he gave her his flashing smile. “Good God, no! Did you think I was sulking because she prefers some sprig of the nobility to me? Lady Elizabeth is far above my touch. Besides, we would not suit.”

  “No,” Alice agreed. “She needs someone less tolerant than you are.”

  “She needs to grow up,” Lowell said brutally. “She’s spoiled.”

  “She’s been a good friend to me,” Alice said, whilst not exactly contradicting him.

  “I appreciate that,” her brother said. He shot her a look. “You’re not happy though, are you, Allie?”

  Alice was startled at his perspicacity. “What do you mean? Of course I am-”

  “No, you are not. Neither am I, and Mama is the unhappiest of all. She hates to be slighted like this.” Lowell’s gesture encompassed the ballroom with its neat rows of dancers, their reflections repeated endlessly in the long series of mirrors that adorned the walls. “Strange, is it not, that when you are hungry and exhausted from working all the hours there are, you think that to have money will cure all your woes?”

  “It cures a great many of them,” Alice said feelingly.

  “But not the sense that somehow you have wandered into the wrong party,” Lowell said, his eyes still on the shifting patterns of the dance. “I am coming to detest the way in which we are patronized. This isn’t our world, is it, Allie? If it was, you would be dancing rather than standing here like a wallflower.”

  “The only reason I am not dancing,” Alice said, “is that I have refused proposals of marriage from so many of these gentlemen that there is no one left to stand up with me. No one except you, that is,” she added. “If we do not fit in, then the least we can do is stand out with style.”

  Lowell grinned and let the matter go as he led her into the set of country dances that was forming.

  “He dances well enough for a farm boy, I suppose,” Alice heard the Duchess of Cole say as the movement of the dance took them past her coven, “but I never thought to see the day a laborer would be dancing in the Granby!”

  Lowell laughed, executed a particularly ostentatious turn under the duchess’s disapproving eye and bowed to Alice as the dance came to an end. “Better be getting back to the byre, I suppose,” he drawled in his best rural accent. “Time’s moving on and the cows will need milking early. Dashed slow business squiring my own sister about, anyway, when I would rather be tumbling a milkmaid in a haystack.”

  “Lowell, will you be quiet!” Alice grumbled, dragging her brother away as Faye Cole squawked like an outraged hen. “People will believe you!”

  “Who says I am lying?” Lowell said unrepentantly. He glanced over her shoulder and his expression changed abruptly. “Alice-”

  “Good evening, Miss Lister.”

  Alice spun around. Miles Vickery was standing just behind her, immaculate in his evening dress. Her stomach tumbled as she looked at him. Her breathing constricted. Miles took her hand. Determined not to show him how much his appearance had affected her, Alice gave him a cool smile.

  “Lord Vickery,” she said. “You are well?”

  She saw Miles smile in return as he took her meaning.

  “In the best of health, Miss Lister, I thank you,”
he said. “The Curse of Drum has yet to carry me off.”

  Alice could feel Lowell shifting impatiently beside her. He seemed incredulous that Miles should even approach her, which, Alice thought, was no great wonder given the nature of their previous acquaintance. She cast a quick look at her brother’s face and saw that he was frowning ferociously. “Alice,” he began again.

  Alice turned to him, gripping his arm tightly in a gesture she hoped conveyed a plea for good behavior. “I am sorry,” she said quickly. “Lord Vickery, may I introduce my brother, Lowell Lister? Lowell, this is Miles Vickery, Marquis of Drummond.” She squeezed Lowell’s arm again and gave him a speaking look into the bargain.

  Miles held his hand out to shake Lowell’s. “How do you do, Mr. Lister?” he said pleasantly. He did not adopt the patronizing air of superiority that most of the local aristocracy used when greeting the Lister family, the condescension of the great recognizing their inferiors. Alice noticed it and felt surprised.

  Lowell, however, ignored both the hand and the greeting. “I know who you are,” he said. “You are the…nobleman…who made a wager concerning my sister last year.” His tone was steely.

  Alice caught her breath. “Lowell-”

  “I was,” Miles said truthfully, his gaze meeting Alice’s very directly. A smile still lurked in the depths of his hazel eyes. “Although,” he added, “I now regret it most profoundly.”

  “Twenty guineas against my sister’s virtue, so I heard,” Lowell said, the contempt in his voice as cutting as a knife.

  “You heard incorrectly,” Miles said. “It was thirty guineas.”

  Alice drew a sharp breath. Why had she not foreseen that this might happen? This was such an inconvenient moment for Miles to start telling the truth on everything. The tension radiating from Lowell was so powerful as to be palpable. He clenched his fists.

  “When my mother told me that you wished to renew your addresses to Alice, I thought there was some mistake,” Lowell said. His eyes were narrowed pinpricks of fury. “Is it true that you still seek to marry her for her fortune?”

  “My interest is not entirely in Miss Lister’s fortune,” Miles drawled, making his meaning explicitly clear. Alice felt the color rush into her face. She saw Lowell take an involuntary step forward.

  “Lowell,” she said again, “not here, not now.”

  Lowell turned on her. “I cannot believe that you are prepared to tolerate this man’s company for a single moment, Alice!”

  “It’s complicated,” Alice said, avoiding looking at Miles and placing a placatory hand on her brother’s arm. “Lord Vickery and I have an understanding. I’ll explain later. Please leave this-”

  “You’re defending me,” Miles said. “That’s very sweet.”

  “I am trying to avoid a public scene,” Alice said tersely. She gave a sharp sigh as Lowell shook off her hand and stalked away. “Perhaps I should follow him and try to explain,” she said.

  “Don’t,” Miles said. “He has gone to the card room. You will only cause more speculation if you follow him in there. The worst that is likely to happen is that he will be so angry he will lose heavily. Inconvenient, I know, when you are paying his bills, but there it is.”

  Alice gave him an exasperated look. “Did you have to provoke him like that?”

  “I was telling the truth,” Miles said. “I am obliged to do so under the terms of Lady Membury’s will, if you recall.” He took her arm and steered her away from the curious gazes of the other guests. “Am I supposed to lie and pretend that I do not want you, Miss Lister?” he added softly.

  “Yes! No! I don’t know!” Alice looked up, her troubled blue gaze tangling with his hazel one. There was a lazy smile on his lips but it was belied by the glint in his eyes. He looked dangerous. Alice pressed her fingers to her temples. “I did not realize that it would be like this!” she said.

  “I appreciate that,” Miles said, “but if I am to fulfill the terms of the agreement I must be honest.” His fingers tightened on her elbow. “You wanted the truth from me, Miss Lister,” he said. “Well, you will have it. And you will have to deal with that.”

  Alice bit her lip. She shook her head fiercely. “You said that there were good social reasons for not always telling the truth.”

  “There are. You have just experienced one of them.” Miles laughed softly. “Never tell the hotheaded brother of a young lady that you desire her. It is asking for trouble.”

  “He could have challenged you!”

  Miles shrugged. “I had every faith that you would come to my rescue before that happened, my sweet. Which you did.”

  “It was more than you deserved,” Alice said hotly. She wished now that she had not followed her natural instinct to help him. She knew that she had always been far too kind.

  Miles smiled. “That is true, as well. I deserve nothing from you.”

  His matter-of-fact acceptance of it, his utter lack of emotion, made Alice blink, until she remembered that Miles Vickery was renowned for having ice rather than blood in his veins. He did not care whether she was kind to him or not. It was not kindness he wanted from her.

  “Very likely Lowell will never speak to me again,” Alice said forlornly, suddenly feeling acutely lonely. She felt bereft to have lost her brother’s support so swiftly and unexpectedly. She knew that she should have grasped the nettle before now and told her family and friends that she had accepted Miles’s proposal, but there had never seemed to be a right time. There never would be, she realized. Her mother would be delighted, of course, and ask no difficult questions, but Lowell and Lizzie and Lydia all knew her too well to accept a feeble explanation and she could not think of any convincing ones.

  “Lowell will come round,” Miles said. “He’ll speak to me, too. I’ll think of a way to smooth matters over. It would not do to be at odds with my future brother-in-law.”

  Alice glared at him. “This is all an entertainment to you, is it not, my lord!”

  Miles shook his head. “On the contrary, Miss Lister, I am deadly serious. You have already seen tonight how determined I am to win your hand by meeting Lady Membury’s stipulations. I assure you that I will stop at nothing.”

  They stood staring at one another whilst the tension seemed to spin out between them and the chatter and hum of the ballroom carried on unnoticed around them. Alice felt trapped and alone, captured by the intensity she could see in his eyes. There was such single-mindedness in Miles, such unwavering intent. When she had surrendered to his blackmail she’d had no idea of what she was unleashing.

  “This frightens me,” Alice whispered. “I don’t like you. I hoped the terms of the will would make matters difficult for you.”

  Miles did not smile this time. “Oh, they have,” he said. He raised a hand to her cheek and she felt his gloved fingers brush her skin in the lightest of touches. His hazel eyes were dark. “Be careful what you wish for, Miss Lister,” he said. “The terms of the will have made matters difficult for you, as well, because my honesty now compels me to show you how much I want you.”

  He stopped and bent closer to her, and despite the crowded ballroom and the press of people about them and the curious glances, Alice had the absolute conviction that he was about to kiss her. His face was so close to hers that she instinctively closed her eyes. Immediately she did so her other senses took over. She could hear Miles’s breathing, smell the tang of his cologne and the delicious scent of his body beneath it, a smell that went straight to her head and made it spin. She knew he was so close, only inches away from her, and then she sensed his withdrawal and opened her eyes quickly.

  Miles had straightened up, swearing softly beneath his breath, and Alice turned to see a tall, rather gaunt woman bearing down on them with a determined look on her face. She had Miles’s hazel eyes and brown hair, and an air of piercing intelligence.

  “Celia, I had not forgotten that you and Mama had asked for an introduction to Miss Lister,” Miles said. “I was intending to bring her
over to you.”

  “You were such an unconscionably long time about it that Mama sent me instead,” Celia Vickery said. She held out a hand to Alice. “How do you do, Miss Lister?”

  “This is my sister, Celia,” Miles said. “I apologize in advance for her. She is quite terrifying.”

  Celia Vickery gave her brother a look that would have stripped paint and then turned to smile at Alice. “I have been in a positive fever to make your acquaintance, Miss Lister,” she said. “I was desperate to meet a woman brave-or foolish-enough to accept my brother’s suit. You know that he is an inveterate fortune hunter, of course, so you can have no illusions about him. He has very little to commend him, I fear, other than the marquisate and his good looks, and you do not strike me as a ninnyhammer who would have her head turned by those. Are you sure you do not wish to reconsider?”

  Alice glanced at Miles. His stance betrayed tension. He was watching his sister, not with the sort of acceptance and affection that Alice had for Lowell, for example, but with a definite wariness.

  Alice smiled back at the older woman. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Lady Celia,” she said. “I am sure you are right that your brother has little to commend him. I am accepting him out of a sense of pity, and in the unwavering belief that the Curse of Drum will carry him off before long, leaving me a widow.”

  Celia gave a bark of laughter. “Pity! How marvelous!” She gave Miles a malicious look. “I do not believe any woman has ever pitied you before, Miles.”

  “I am happy to take whatever Miss Lister offers me,” Miles said smoothly, with a speaking glance at Alice.

  “Hmm, well, I do not believe you for a moment, Miss Lister,” Celia Vickery said, “but no doubt you have your reasons and I shall not press you. Oh, there is Mr. Gaines!” she added. “Pray excuse me. I really must go and importune him for a dance. It is rare enough for me to meet a man who is tall enough to partner me, but when he can also hold an intelligent conversation he is to be prized indeed.” She smiled at Alice, gave her brother a sharp nod and walked away.