Scandalous

by Jenna Petersen

Julia gasped and a wealth of understanding flooded her face. “You’re leaving, aren’t you? Just you, Katherine.”

  Katherine winced. “No, of course not,” she lied. “Why would I go?”

  Julia cocked her head. “Don’t play me for a fool. You’re packing a bag and it looks like you’ve another already brimming. The tears I see in your eyes are from anything but joy. You have been the biggest advocate of Adrian and me pursuing the attraction we felt, so I know you would be ecstatic if your own heart weren’t breaking. Tell me the truth. Are you leaving my brother?”

  Katherine drew in a shuddering breath. “Yes.” She reached out to take her shocked friend’s hands. “But you mustn’t tell Dominic. Let me disappear without interfering.”

  Julia shook her head in utter disbelief. “Why in the world would you possibly want that?”

  “It’s complicated,” she answered on a wail.

  “How is it so complicated that you feel you must run away into the night like some kind of criminal?” Julia asked with wide eyes. “I know my brother and I know you. You two love each other.”

  The truth cut Katherine more than any knife. If she admitted she loved Dominic, Julia would tell him. That could only create more problems. Dominic’s guilt might drive him to make promises he couldn’t keep. Ones she wanted to believe with everything in her.

  She forced herself to deny the words with a firm shake of her head. “No.”

  “You do!” Julia insisted. “And something is driving you to leave. What is it?”

  Katherine shivered. How was she supposed to explain to Julia that she loved Dominic, but he didn’t return that sentiment? Didn’t even believe it was possible. Or that she knew from personal experience that a woman couldn’t force a man to love her? She couldn’t bear to relive the heartache she experienced in childhood.

  She couldn’t expose her own baby to such emptiness.

  “We simply don’t belong together,” she whispered.

  Julia shook her head. “Perhaps I can help you. I could talk to my brother. Adrian and I could mediate any problem you’re having. I’m sure if you just spoke to him—”

  “No.” Katherine’s answer was firm and louder than she wanted it to be. Then her shoulders sagged in defeat. “Thank you for your kindness through all of this. You have been the best friend I could have. And now I need you to do just one more thing for me.”

  Julia opened her mouth to continue her protests, but Katherine didn’t allow it. She grasped the bundle of letters by her bedside and the note of goodbye she’d penned to her husband. With trembling hands, she offered them to Julia, who took them with a frown.

  “Please, let me go and don’t say anything to your brother until he comes looking for me. He won’t return until late evening and I’m leaving directions for him to be told I have a headache and have retired to my own chambers. Let me have the night to put some distance between us. In the morning, give him these.”

  “What are they?” Julia asked, examining the awkward bundle with a scowl.

  “They’re the answers he’s been looking for,” Katherine admitted with a sigh. “And I want him to have them.”

  “The answers…” Julia’s eyes came up. “You mean about his father?”

  Katherine nodded silently. What would Dominic do with the information she’d found? What would his expression be when he realized these letters told him everything he’d been looking for over the years? She would never know.

  “My God, if you found the answers, why wouldn’t you stay? This will be the most difficult time for him. Dominic will need you!”

  Katherine shook her head. “It will all work out. One way or another, Dominic will know who he really is. You and Adrian will support him, just as you did long before I married him. I can’t stay.”

  Julia set the bundle aside. She caught Katherine’s hands and whispered, “Please, don’t do this!”

  Katherine shook off bitter tears. She couldn’t shed them now. There would be plenty of time later. For the moment, she needed to focus on escape and convincing her friend to do this one favor for her.

  “I must,” she said. “There is no choice. And believe me, I’ve tried to find one over and over. We simply do not…suit. This is the only way.”

  Julia’s hands dropped in a gesture of defeat. Katherine should have felt pleased she’d won, but didn’t. In fact, disappointment raged through her. In some secret part of her heart, she’d hoped her friend would force her to stay. Then the decision would be removed from her hands.

  Julia turned away. “I should have been a better friend to you in the beginning.” She sighed heavily. “I should have told you what my brothers were planning. Perhaps all this pain and anger could have been avoided.”

  Katherine started. Julia thought she was leaving because Dominic deceived her. Letting her believe that was certainly easier than explaining her true motivations.

  “We can’t live on what might have been,” she said with a gentle brush of her friend’s shoulder. “And we can’t go back in time. You did what you believed was best for everyone involved. I don’t blame you. What I need is for you to be a better friend today, right now.” She turned Julia back to face her. “Please.”

  Julia’s face fell in response and she nodded slowly. “Go.” Her hand tightened on Katherine’s arm. “But please, take some of the time you spend alone to think about what you’re doing and why. I lived without love for so very long, Katherine. I would hate to see you throw it away over a mistake made so long ago.”

  Katherine hesitated as she thought of all she would give up by leaving. Dominic’s touch. His laughter. His kiss.

  But she couldn’t forget the pain that would plague her if she stayed.

  “I have no other option.”

  With that, she gathered up her bags and hurried downstairs. Only a few servants knew of her departure, but the carriage was waiting for her. Once the door had closed and she was alone, she sank down into a prone position on the seat and sobbed. Leaving Dominic was like cutting a piece of herself away, like breaking her own heart.

  But if that was what she had to do to protect herself and the child that grew within her, she would.

  Dominic entered the house with his eyes firmly focused on the reports in his hand. His undercover man still had no hint of his father’s identity or whereabouts. Dominic felt a strange peace about it, despite his long search.

  Something had happened to him since he last confronted his mother and brother. Something in him changed that night. Katherine knew he was a bastard, but she still chose to share her life with him. Now he looked forward to the future. The one he was building with his wife.

  After all his years of feeling empty, she somehow filled him up. Yes, he still wanted to find the man who sired him, but the search no longer consumed him.

  He looked up and was surprised to see Julia and Adrian waited for him in the foyer. Both were pale and looked worried. Julia even appeared to have been crying. He lowered his papers with a skipping heart. He guessed what they were going to say. They were getting married, and were afraid of his reaction to their announcement after he’d been so irrational.

  “I need to speak to you, now,” his sister said as she came forward.

  He glanced from his best friend to Julia, then back again. “Yes, I do want to talk to you, but first I need to see Katherine. When I arrived, the footman said she’d gone to bed with a headache, but I have a gift that might make her feel better.”

  He dipped his hand into his pocket and brushed his fingers against the velvety box hidden there. Inside was a ring. Not one that had been chosen by his brother, but by him. One that would tell Katherine she was his wife by choice. It would tell her how much he cared.

  “This cannot wait,” Julia interrupted with a frown. “It needs to be done immediately.”

  Dominic stared at her impatiently. “If this is about the two of you, I know you and Adrian have grown very close in the last few weeks. Despite my initial reaction, I’m very
pleased you are growing serious in your intentions. I am more than happy to talk to you and give you my blessing for whatever your future together holds, but first—”

  He turned to go up the stairs as he spoke, but Adrian’s tense voice stopped him. “She’s gone, Dominic.”

  Ice flooded his veins as he halted midstep. He must have misunderstood. Slowly, he turned back to the couple in the foyer. “What?”

  His sister nodded with renewed tears sparkling in her eyes. “It’s true. Katherine is gone. I walked in on her finishing her packing and confronted her.” She shook her head. “I tried to keep her here, Dominic, but she insisted on leaving. And she wanted me to keep it a secret in the hopes you wouldn’t follow her.”

  His mouth dropped open and all he could hear was the whoosh of blood in his veins. He felt no emotions, just an overwhelming numbness that threatened to take him to his knees. But behind it, the pain was coming. He just had to get all the facts before agony took over and he collapsed under its weight.

  “Secret?” he repeated.

  “That’s why she told the servants she was going to bed with a headache,” Julia explained.

  She swayed toward him like she wanted to offer him comfort, but held back. It was just as well. He didn’t know if he could bear her touch, or anyone else’s if this was true.

  Julia’s voice broke. “She hoped her lie would keep you away. Then you wouldn’t discover she was missing until the morning. My walking in disrupted her plans.”

  Adrian nodded. “Julia knew keeping Katherine’s departure a secret would be wrong, so she told me and we decided to inform you together.”

  The pain began surging through Dominic’s veins. He shook his head. “No. She is not gone.”

  Turning on his heel, he rushed up the stairs and charged down the corridor to the chamber the two of them had shared since the first night they arrived. The chamber Katherine slowly personalized and made a home for them. Like everything else at Lansing Square.

  She wasn’t there. The chamber was empty and strangely quiet.

  With a growl, he stormed into her adjoining chamber. He tore open her armoire only to find it bare. All evidence of his wife’s existence, of the life they shared, was gone. Packed away and taken. Except for the soft floral smell of her skin that still clung to her pillow. Except for memories that threatened to overpower him as he stared at the vacant closet in shock and horror.

  “Damn!” he howled as he slammed his hand against the wood. It did nothing but send a shot of pain through his fist and arm.

  “I’m sorry, Dominic,” Julia said from behind him.

  He spun on his heel. He wouldn’t give up so easily. “Where did she go?”

  “That I don’t know,” she admitted softly. Then she held out a packet of papers with a frown. “All she left were these things. I was to give them to you tomorrow morning after you discovered she was missing. Perhaps they’ll give you some clues to where she’s gone and why she left.”

  Dominic took the bundle with trembling hands and stared at it blankly. Was this all he had left of his wife? All she could think to gift him with was a bundle of worthless papers? Not her laughter, or her touch, or her love for a lifetime. Just letters.

  He almost laughed, but couldn’t seem to muster the strength. In an empty voice, he muttered, “Go. I want to be alone with whatever it is she has to say.”

  Julia opened her mouth as if to protest, but Adrian caught her arm gently. With a short nod, he said, “Whatever you need, Dominic. We’ll come back in a while to check on you.”

  Dominic nodded as he ushered them out of his chamber and shut the door. Then he turned to the pile of correspondence. The top one was in her handwriting. His name stared up at him, mocking him.

  With a roar, he stormed over to the fire. He was tempted to throw the bundle in. To forget he ever met or married Katherine Fleming. To forget he’d fallen in love with her.

  With a start, he pulled back from the flames. He was in love with her.

  Of course he was. He had been for some time, he had just been so obsessed with finding the truth, so convinced love didn’t exist, so tangled up in lies that he hadn’t recognized or accepted it.

  But now that Katherine was gone, it slapped him across the cheek and woke him from his haze.

  His gaze drifted back to the note she’d penned. No, he couldn’t just throw away his wife’s explanation. He had to find out why she’d gone. Why she chose to leave him with nothing but a pile of paper and a broken heart.

  Dominic didn’t even bother to look up when Adrian came back into the room an hour later. He sat on the floor, staring at the two letters in his hand, as he had been for the past quarter of an hour. One revealed his past, the other took his future and crushed it into powder. Both stabbed him like knives.

  “Dominic?” his friend said softly.

  He glanced up briefly, but didn’t answer. How could this be? How?

  Adrian stepped over the line of letters Dominic had spread out on the floor around him. “My God, what is this?”

  He shook his head and forced himself to look at his friend for more than a moment. He had to concentrate, regroup.

  “Uh, yes, the letters. They belong to my mother.”

  “Why did Katherine give them to you?” Adrian asked as patiently as Dominic guessed he could manage. It was obvious Dominic’s quiet anguish frightened and worried his friend.

  “Katherine gave them to me because they reveal who my father is. He wrote them.”

  Adrian stared at him with much the same look Dominic guessed he had himself when he realized the truth the slender packet of letters held. Shock, absolute disbelief.

  “Wh-Who?” Adrian whispered as he sank down on his knees across from Dominic.

  “His name is Charles Vidal.”

  The name rolled over his tongue. He somehow expected his father’s name would feel different. Would make him tingle or give him some sense of who he was. It didn’t.

  Adrian wrinkled his brow. “I don’t recognize the name.”

  Dominic shook his head. “You wouldn’t. He isn’t a peer. He isn’t even a gentleman. He was a piano master my mother intended to hire when Julia showed a talent for music at a very young age.”

  Adrian’s eyes went wide. “My God.”

  Dominic nodded. “According to the letters, the relationship blossomed very quickly. She interviewed with him in London, and was surprised when it turned out he was here in the shire teaching another gentleman’s daughter music.”

  He thought of the beautiful words Vidal had written to Larissa. They were heartfelt admissions of true love and regret they were kept apart. He even expressed fear over her welfare in Harrison Mallory’s home.

  “My mother was very unhappy in her marriage,” he said softly. “More miserable than I ever knew. This man brought her joy.”

  “Then why was she so indifferent toward you? Why did she keep his identity a secret for all these years?”

  Dominic shrugged. “When she became pregnant, Mallory knew immediately the child could not be his. He went on a rampage, demanding to know the truth about who her lover was. To keep Vidal safe, she cut him off. Many of his letters beg her not to turn away. Ask her to run away with him. And plead for access to his child. To—to me.”

  He swallowed hard. Knowing Mallory as he had, he understood why Larissa turned from the man she loved. If Harrison discovered his wife’s lover was without the protection of society or title, he would have destroyed him.

  But despite that knowledge, an angry ache continued to burn his chest. He had been kept from a man who wanted him. Who begged Larissa for any small detail about his son. Who even wrote for several years after it was clear Larissa ceased answering, holding out hope he might have a glimpse of Dominic.

  “What happened to him?” Adrian asked.

  Dominic fingered the last letter in the pile. “This one is dated six years after my birth. It says Vidal had gained some reputation for his musical talent in London. He a
lso mentions an engagement. He told my mother he loved her still, but knew they weren’t meant to be together.”

  He stared at the missive. Even a quarter of a century later, the droplet stains on the paper were clearly from Larissa’s tears.

  Adrian stared at him. “What will you do? You know his name and that he lived in London. Surely you’ll be able to find his whereabouts with this new information. You can go to him. He must know who you are. I’m sure you could—”

  He lifted a hand to cut his friend off. “What does it matter now?” Dominic slowly rose to his feet and dropped the letter from his father. Now he only held Katherine’s missive. “Katherine gave me the gift of this information, but only on her way to leaving me.”

  “Did she say why?” Adrian asked as he, too, got to his feet. He held himself stiffly, like he was unsure how to handle Dominic’s tormented emotions.

  Dominic held out the letter. “She says she tried to forgive my lies.”

  He thought of the night she gave him that beautiful gift of forgiveness. It had taken such weight from his shoulders. It had given him hope for a future even if he never discovered the truth about his past.

  “But she says she can’t forgive. She doesn’t care for me and can no longer share my home.”

  “She lies.”

  Dominic turned to watch Julia enter with her mouth in a thin line and her eyes flashing.

  “She loves you, Dominic. I don’t understand why she felt compelled to leave, but it isn’t for her lack of love. She was broken by her decision. And desperate to give you the truth about your mother and father. She wanted you to find peace. If she truly didn’t care for you, she wouldn’t have worried about whether you found out about your father or not.”

  A sharp jab of hope surfaced in Dominic’s overwhelming despair, but quickly faded. “Even if that’s true, what can I do? Sarah’s disappearance and resurfacing is proof enough that a woman who doesn’t want to be found won’t be. Even if I can find her, it may be for nothing if she really doesn’t care.”

  Julia stepped forward to place a hand on his forearm. “Dominic, it comes down to this. Do you love her?”