A Lady’s Code of Misconduct

by Meredith Duran

  He’d assumed, as always, that Crispin’s aim had outstripped his abilities. And that Atticus, the golden child, would provide a solution.

  The mirror showed Crispin’s darkening expression. It seemed he had made a success of himself despite everyone’s expectations to the contrary. But today, when delivering that news—that Crispin was an accomplished leader, the man who controlled the bloody Commons—even today, his father had managed to sound dubious. “Your methods, well . . .” His mouth had pinched. “They are not always honorable. Indeed, I fear they may have provoked someone to try to kill you.”

  Crispin stared at his now frowning reflection. What sort of man would have made such violent enemies?

  No. London was a dangerous city. And how typical of his father to assume that he might have done something to incite his own misfortune!

  A knock came softly at the door. “Mr. Burke? You called for me?”

  A political career was not his only accomplishment. He had married—not high, but handsomely. “One of the great fortunes of our time,” his father had called it.

  On a deep breath, he turned in his seat. “Come.”

  The door creaked open. Crispin’s bride hovered in the doorway, as though reluctant to approach. “You are dressed.”

  Soft, cool voice. An impression of surprise. The doctors had counseled bed rest for him.

  But he was done sleeping. This room had been forecast to house his corpse. He would not stay in it any longer than necessary. Nor did he mean to linger beneath his parents’ roof. It had not been a comfortable home since his childhood.

  He braced himself, then slowly rose, resisting the violent trembling of his limbs, the dizziness, the strain of muscles that still seemed to be sleeping.

  “Well done,” murmured the woman.

  Generous of her. But his intention had been to bow. He would not manage it. His heart was already thundering, and his knees wobbled.

  With a silent curse, he dropped back into his seat before he could fall.

  “As spry as a toddler,” he said—aiming for wry, landing instead on embittered.

  She took a step inside, her skirts whispering along the floor. A thick braid of dark hair wrapped like a crown around her oval face. She had large, watchful eyes, a wide and neatly shaped mouth. Lovely, really. But the opposite of Laura. Dark complexioned, tall. “You must be patient,” she said.

  “Patience is not my strong suit.”

  Her gaze fell. “Yes, I know.”

  A wave of amazement lapped over him—another in an endless series, regular as the tide. She would know. For she was his wife, whom he had courted and married.

  She did not appear to be particularly . . . affectionate. She had the posture of a woman bracing herself: shoulders squared, hands locked together at her waist.

  He remembered her curious manner at his sickbed two nights ago. His recall was hazy; he could not remember her exact words. But he’d had a clear impression of her fear. And she had not come to see him since then. What kind of marriage had they made?

  A furtive one, by all accounts. He had eloped with Jane Mason using a special license vouchsafed to him by the archbishop. They had kept the marriage secret—perhaps would have continued to do so, had he not been felled by random cutthroats.

  He wanted to know the reason for it. “Will you sit?”

  She moved elegantly, her step light and gliding. Today’s gown, like the one before it, was high necked and unadorned, a dull gray silk that ate the light. It was the choice of a woman who wished to go unnoticed. It could not conceal the swell of her bosom, though, or the narrowness of her waist.

  The plump curves of her arms suggested that she was generously molded all around. A man’s hands would feel full of her. Crispin would have enjoyed filling his hands with her; he felt certain of that. But he could not remember doing so.

  She settled onto the very edge of the wing chair opposite, gripping the arms as though in preparation for a quick leap away.

  He could not remember mistreating a woman. But none of them had ever looked at him as this one did—aslant, so warily.

  He did not like it. He had hoped for . . . an ally, he supposed. His relationship with his family had always been strained, but a wife, he had hoped, would make a natural confederate.

  He searched himself for a remark that might set her at ease. But he had no idea how to address her.

  “Forgive me,” he said, “but what shall I call you?” Some husbands addressed their wives intimately. But her manner toward him . . . “Shall I call you Mrs. Burke?”

  She flinched. “Jane. Jane will do.”

  “Jane,” he said with relief. So perhaps there had been affection between them, after all. “Jane, I imagine this must be as strange for you as for me. If you have any questions, I will gladly answer them.”

  She spoke instantly. “Exactly how much have you forgotten?”

  Crispin’s father had asked the same. But the tenor of that conversation, his father’s weighted silences and watchful looks, had felt so familiar that Crispin had not hesitated before answering. No matter what he had forgotten, he still knew exactly how every conversation between them was meant to go. Being ambushed by criminals was only a new variation on the old pattern in which Crispin failed to live up to his brother’s example, failed to exemplify dignity and self-possession.

  This time, he’d gone so far as to lose his own memories, and nearly his life.

  Yes, he knew how to speak to the resigned skepticism in his father’s look. How much had he forgotten? “Not enough,” he’d replied.

  But with his wife, he stumbled on the impulse to glibness. He studied her now, with a thoroughness that his shock had not permitted during their first conversation at his sickbed.

  What had drawn them together? Not her fortune, despite what his father claimed. Money had never been Crispin’s aim. Despite himself, he’d imbibed enough of the family’s self-importance to dismiss wealth as a goal far beneath him.

  Power, then? Power often required money, and a man who controlled the Commons would certainly covet it. But Crispin knew himself. He would not have made a marriage solely for bloodless advantage.

  Passion, maybe. Yes, he could imagine it. She was not dressed to her best advantage, but her husband had been ill—not an occasion for vanity. She wore her dark hair slicked viciously against her skull, twisted into submission in that painfully tight but practical braid. The hairstyle emphasized the perfect oval of her face, the straight, thick lines of her dark brows. It also tugged up the corners of her eyes, which were . . . lovely. Large and penetrating, shades of bark brown stippled with amber and mossy green. He stared into them until her gaze dropped again, and a slight flush pinked her cheeks.

  Her nose was too bony and pronounced for classic beauty. But it lent her an air of hauteur, which paired well with the penetrating quality of her eyes. She was intelligent, he sensed. He would not have wed her otherwise.

  He crafted his tone as an apology. “I’m not certain of precisely where my memories falter. After speaking with my father, it seems I am missing roughly five years. I have no memory of my campaign for the seat, or my friendship with your uncle, or . . .” You.

  She seemed to hear that unspoken word, for her mouth flattened. “Yes,” she said. “You and my uncle were great friends.”

  “Don’t lose heart,” he said gently. “The memories will come back.”

  A pulse beat in the hollow of her throat. “Are you certain?”

  None of the doctors had guaranteed it. But for her sake, he lied. “Of course. It may take some time, but there is no question.”

  “How long, do you think?”

  How tense she sounded. How miserable. “I’m afraid no one knows.” For a brief moment, he imagined never knowing. Never understanding what had led him into politics, or from the brink of failure to success.

  You have hopes for the prime ministership, I believe, his father had said. Had anyone else claimed so, Crispin would have thought
it a poor joke.

  Prime minister! “The memories will come back,” he said roughly. He would know how he had achieved so much, or else it would forever remain a myth to him, unreal, no source of pride. “Perhaps you will help me remember.”

  Her face was deeply expressive, but he did not yet remember how to read the emotions that flickered through her eyes. At last, her expression softened, and she leaned forward to touch his wrist—a light, shy touch, more like a question. “It must be very difficult for you,” she said haltingly. “To wake up to . . . so much.”

  Her sympathy made something ease in his chest. Surely this was its own form of remembering? He would not take solace from the touch of a stranger.

  He turned his hand so their fingers linked together, and his sense of rightness strengthened. “You mustn’t worry, Jane.” It was his duty to care for her, to comfort her. They were married, after all. “It will be deuced awkward for a time. But we will find a way to get through it together.”

  Her fingers twitched within his. “You’re kind,” she said in an odd tone—as though it were a revelation.

  Surely he was misinterpreting. Surely, after a lifetime of enduring his family’s disappointment, he had not managed to find a wife who felt the same.

  “We, you and I . . . we are fond of each other,” he said—stilted, trying to conceal his great need for reassurance. “Are we not?”

  She bit her lip, then lowered her gaze to where their hands joined. After a moment, the silence began to feel awkward.

  Was she timid? They had not been married long. A new bride might be shy, certainly. And in a situation like this, God above, who could blame her?

  But if this strange new reality was indeed a triumph—controlling the Commons! An ambition for the prime ministership!—then she was a crucial part of it. And claiming that triumph as his own, making it feel real to him, could begin here, now, by reestablishing whatever connection bound them together.

  So he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.

  She jumped. Startling like a bird, her fingers flexing. But she did not pull her hand away. Her skin smelled like lavender. At length, her hand relaxed within his, which he took as an invitation to kiss it again.

  Her breath hitched. Color came into her cheeks. She liked his touch.

  Craved it, perhaps.

  He had a sudden vivid image of kissing his way up her arm, of golden limbs bare in a hazy afternoon light. Fantasy or memory? Surely the latter.

  “I cannot imagine I married for convenience,” he said, increasingly confident. Some elements of a character never changed, regardless of the circumstances. He had never been a man to take the easy path.

  “Of course not,” she said slowly. “We were . . . very fond of each other.”

  Fond, were they? He wondered if that was a maidenly synonym for lust. Well, then. He fought back a smile. Shyness, indeed. He knew how to coax a lady from her shell.

  Very gently, he cupped her cheek. Her skin was so astonishingly smooth. As though no one, nothing, had ever touched it. As he stroked her cheek, her blush rose again, enchanting him. “Jane,” he said. “Look at me.”

  Her face lifted, but her eyes remained downcast; she had the look of an Italian Madonna meditating on sacred mysteries.

  “How difficult this must have been for you,” he murmured. His bride had a full lower lip, the lip of a voluptuary; she was nibbling on it, and he could not say he blamed her. He felt certain he had done the same in the past. “You risked your family’s wrath to wed me—and then, suddenly, I wake a stranger to you. You must feel very alone.”

  Her sigh was the only response she offered.

  “But I am still here,” he pressed on, “and I mean to honor my vows to you, and to show you the same respect and affection that you enjoyed from me before.” Indeed, perhaps she was the key to remembering. Surely familiarity would stir recollection.

  Her lashes lifted, revealing an opaque, brilliant gaze, unreadable. “I do so appreciate that, Crispin. But for now, you must concentrate on healing.”

  He shook his head. The headache, the weakness, the nausea—he could endure those. Healing would happen on its own. Far more pressing was this great curiosity unfolding inside him. From a heartbroken failure to a powerful politician married to a woman who blushed like a child, with great changeable eyes the color of autumn . . .

  “You know me better than my family does,” he said. He felt sure of that. His family’s view of him would forever remain clouded by the boy he’d been, a prankster and dreamer whose carelessness ultimately had shattered their lives. He had abandoned all hope of changing that. But he would not have guarded himself with his wife. “Tell me—what kind of man am I now? I’m an MP—how did that come to pass?”

  She took a deep breath and sat back, removing herself from his reach. “My uncle sponsored you. There was a borough in Cornwall for contest. You came to him, I believe.”

  Cornwall. Apart from a few trips in his childhood, he could not remember having spent time there. “And we . . . what is our platform?”

  “You shift allegiances as it suits you. At present, you have a solid block of support from the Conservative-leaning radicals.”

  For a moment he felt certain he hadn’t heard correctly. The Burkes had always kept to the liberal edges of the Whigs. “I—has my family abandoned reform?”

  Her smile looked thin. “Not your family, no.”

  “I broke with them? Why?”

  “Why?” Her laugh was faint and humorless. “I cannot say why. But I know that you and my uncle worked to bring down Prime Minister Palmerston two years ago. There was an uprising in India, you see. Many felt that Palmerston did not grasp the urgency of the crisis. He felt sure that the Russians had fomented it and that the uprising would come to an end quickly. He sent troops to Ireland that might have been sent to India. My uncle did not like that; he wanted a full-scale war. You . . . well, you quarreled. I believe you were sympathetic to Disraeli’s views, that it was not a mutiny so much as a national revolt, one sparked by our mishandling of the Indian princedoms, our violations of native customs. But my uncle was . . .” She shrugged. “At any rate, both of you wanted Palmerston out of office. The mutiny offered a way to do it.”

  He gripped his temples, massaging hard. God in heaven. “An uprising.” What else had he forgotten? “Palmerston.” He was as stupid as a three-year-old child right now. How in God’s name would he come to grips with all of this? “So Palmerston is out?”

  “He was. Lord Derby briefly came into power. But in the last election, Palmerston came back. Your aim is to unseat him and to take the prime ministership for your own.”

  Good God. Now she had said it, too. His father was not mistaken. He felt breathless—torn between wonder and panic. Did he truly have a chance at that office?

  “To what purpose?” he asked. “What is my aim?” Not warmongering, surely. He could not believe that.

  “Power,” she said.

  But that was no answer. “Power to do what?”

  Her smile was odd. “Some would say that power is an end to itself.”

  “Not I.” He must have had some scheme, some deep plan to account for his actions.

  “I’m . . . You did not confide in me that way,” she said after a moment.

  The notion startled him. In whom had he confided, then? Her uncle, he supposed.

  “I regret not doing so.” He fought to keep the frustration from his voice. “I suppose I never foresaw waking to discover my mind so blank. I . . .” God above, he would need to educate himself very quickly if he meant to keep hold of what he’d earned. “I will need copies of my speeches, all my files—the records of last year’s session, all the blue books—and a meeting with your uncle, of course. That should come first—”

  “You can’t.” For the first time, he saw panic in her face. “He did not approve of our marriage. He is no longer a friend to you, Crispin.”

  Bloody brilliant. He blew out a breath. “I must
keep a secretary.”

  “My uncle always said you did not.”

  He stared. “What kind of man—much less an MP—keeps no secretary?”

  Again, a curious hesitation. “A man concerned for discretion, I suppose.”

  This was absurd. He realized he was cupping the wound on his head and forced his hand back to his lap. He would not indulge in weakness. There was no time for it. “Will you guide me, then, Jane? For—” He let slip an unhappy laugh. What a turn—he did not even remember the names of his friends. “I’m not sure who else to ask.” Not his family. He remembered enough to know that. His political rise had no doubt astonished them more than his near death.

  “Of—of course,” she stammered. A blush darkened her face; she turned toward the door. “Is that the dinner bell?”

  He could not hear the gong, but the grandfather clock showed the right hour. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  It was no wonder if she startled again when he took her hand to slowly, haltingly walk her downstairs. After all, the man she had married no longer remembered her—how to touch her, how to please her, how to make her glow. He would simply have to learn it all over again.

  That, at least, would not be an unpleasant task.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Good comes even of great evil,” said Lady Sibley from the foot of the table. “To have all my children assembled here again, after so long . . .” She reached for the pearls at her throat, twisting the strand into a knot. She had her son’s dark eyes, but not his talent for concealing emotion; for a moment, it seemed that she might weep.

  Beside Jane, Crispin Burke lifted his water glass. The doctors had forbidden him anything stronger. “Hear, hear, Mother.”

  “Oh yes,” Charlotte said warmly from across the table. She sat next to her husband, Sir Richard. Together, they made a matched pair, blond and round cheeked, smiling genially as they joined in the toast.

  The rest of the table was oddly subdued. Viscount Sibley, his leonine white mane tamed by pomade, kept his craggy face blank. His heir, Atticus, Baron Randol—a shorter and heavier version of Crispin—seemed to swallow a protest along with his wine. Meanwhile, Lady Randol, a slim redhead decked out in glittering sapphires, gave a quick, covert squeeze to Atticus’s arm—more in warning, Jane thought, than in comfort.