After the Scandal

by Elizabeth Essex

The moment her backside hit the brick, the cage of her chest tightened, and her hands came up, her cold-slick palms open wide, ready to push him off. Ready to stop him.

  But he did not come any nearer.

  Still, she felt the loom of him, the physical dominance of his position, the imminent threat of his mere presence.

  Her heart thundered in her ears, filling her up until she started to feel as if she could drown in it. Her chest began to rise and fall in great gulping gasps.

  “We’ll need to be close, Claire. To be safe.” His voice was a low rumble, and lowered his head to look at her from under the dark brim of his hat. “But you’ll tell me if I get too close. You’ll tell me if this distresses you.”

  And because he said it, because he seemed to know what she was feeling, some of the tight, strangled feeling eased—her heart was still pumping too fast, but she was no longer breathing like a leaky bellows.

  She nodded her understanding, and he stepped nearer, and reaching out to touch her, as if he had a right to touch her freely, sliding his hand along the line of her jaw and fanning around her nape.

  As if he were about to kiss her.

  Claire flinched back, her head smacking the wall smartly, knocking some sense into her. “No.”

  He stopped immediately. But then he leaned his head fractionally closer so the brim of his hat brushed against her temple. Enclosing them in a tiny, close tent of privacy. And then he waited. Waited for her to accustom herself to him. Waited for her to protest, or say she’d had enough.

  His touch at her nape turned even more gentle and careful—almost reverent, as if he feared she was fragile and might break. As if he thought she needed his protection.

  But she did not need that kind of protection. And she would not break. She was determined.

  And so was he—determined to take his time. Determined to be controlled, and light, and careful. His left hand came up to barely caress her elbow. “Right enough?”

  “No. Not yet.” She was all right, even if her voice did sound small and breathy. But she didn’t want to be toyed with.

  She needed—

  She wasn’t sure what she needed, but she needed to show him how she felt, even if she could not express it in words.

  Claire let her instinct be her guide, and clasped his elbow just as he had clasped hers, and swung herself around, so he was the one with his back to the wall, and she was the one who was free and could choose how close to him she wanted to be.

  He accepted the reversal with an easy grace and a confederate smile. He relaxed back against the wall, and waited, exerting just enough pressure against her nape so she could follow him if she chose.

  And in a another moment she did choose to lay her hand upon his chest, resting her palm lightly against the front of his coat.

  He touched her face again—that soft, gentle, reverent touch—and she let him. Let the warmth of both his fingers and his regard chase away the lingering cold within.

  It was nothing like before. He was nothing like Lord Peter Rosing.

  Tanner was protecting her.

  And it was nice. He was nice. He even smelled nice—of starch and cedar spice from the chest where he must have stored his clothes. Homey and practical.

  Safe.

  So unlike the chilly, aloof Duke of Fenmore.

  This Tanner was warm, and confident. “Are you ready now, lass?” His voice regained the low rumble of roughness, tumbling across his tongue like an agile acrobat.

  Claire found herself looking at his mouth, watching his perfect lips form the imperfect, mangled words, and still make then sound so compelling. “Yes.”

  “That’s my girl.” And then he pressed his lips to her forehead—a quick benediction and encouragement. “Stay close to me. Like we’re…walking out.”

  Like they were intimate, was what he meant. Like they were lovers.

  A new heat blossomed deep under Claire’s skin, and made her feel flushed and tingling and discomfited. Every nerve in her body was awake, and if not exactly uncomfortable, then alarmed.

  But she could no longer deny his attraction for her.

  He showed no such susceptibility. He was only playing a part, putting on the role of intimate just as easily as he had put on the worn redingote, and the casual, rangy stride that took up the greater portion of the narrow roadway, and made people pull back to let them pass.

  But there was something still of the duke in him—though he certainly looked humbler, rigged up in such worn clothes—something, if not of privilege, then of command.

  Yes, if anything, the rough spun clothing made him more masculine, and more powerful and commanding in an entirely different way than the sharp, clever tailoring of his perfectly cut evening clothes ever had.

  But this was not a place for evening clothes, for polite euphemisms and flattering, soft talk. This was a place for the sort of cagey swagger and quiet bravado that clung to him more tightly than his highwayman’s jerkin.

  And he seemed to know this city, these dark festering places, like he knew the sharp lines of his own face. He walked with authority, moving as if he knew exactly where he was, when she could barely keep conscious of which way was east the moment the crowded buildings blocked out the sight of the rising sun.

  The crooked buildings soon loomed over them, until it seemed as if they were walking back into the night. There was nothing familiar now. The farther they moved off the river, the thicker the air seemed to become, though no less damp, laden with the gritty stink of the fires that coughed out of listing chimneys leaning against the low, dirty hovels.

  He urged her closer with a hand at her elbow, though she was nearly walking upon his heels in an effort to stay close. “Snug up close, lass.”

  “Oh, yes.” She needed little urging to take advantage of the comfort of his sheltering height, as the fetid stink from the gutters assailed her nostrils, and the acrid smoke stung her eyes.

  But then she came to a fuller understanding of His Grace’s meaning, when he slung his arm across her shoulders, and pulled her flush against his side in the casually rough way of the stevedores and their girls working in the Hungerford Market down near the river, or the carters working the Shepherd’s Market near her father’s house in St. James’s, where she sometimes went in the morning at her mother’s request.

  How remarkable it was that she felt safe in the Duke of Fenmore’s roughly casual embrace—in what he had proclaimed to be one of the worst slums in London, she felt safe, when she had felt exactly the opposite with Lord Peter Rosing in the seemingly safe environs of a wealthy estate.

  How astonishing. And how dangerous.

  Claire’s pulse quickened and began to keep time with her footfalls upon the dank cobbles. She had already proved herself to be an execrable judge of one’s man’s character last night.

  Pray God she had not made the same mistake with another.

  No. Tanner was nothing like Lord Peter Rosing. Everything Tanner had said and done had already proved that true. Everything.

  Tanner angled then toward the side of the narrow lane, where what her buckish brothers would have called ‘a likely looking chum’ was splayed low against a barrel.

  “Lookin fer a ken.” Tanner looked down at him from under the brim of his slouchy hat. “Carters, live along ere?”

  The greasy little fellow squinted up at them, but didn’t move another muscle. “Whot’s in it fer me?”

  Tanner pushed his voice so low it raked the gutter. “Mebbe me not darkening your daylights. Mebbe a copper if you can furnish it sharpish-like.”

  The speed with which he devolved to casual violence shocked her to her core and sent a sharp wedge of doubt prying into her fresh convictions—this was too much like Lord Peter. She had conveniently forgotten how ruthlessly Tanner had broken Lord Peter’s leg. How coldly and efficiently it had been done. Despite the fact that Lord Peter certainly did deserve it.

  Despite his injunction to stay close, Claire pulled herself back from him. />
  But neither Tanner nor the chum paid her crisis of confidence any mind.

  The chum evinced a sour smile. “There’s a Molly Carter keeps rooms to let up Union Place way. Mean-eyed old mort. I’d watch my baubles with her, if I was you.”

  Tanner turned up one side of his mouth in a tight smile. “Obliged.” And with a flick of his fingers, he sent a single copper coin spiraling through the air.

  In the dimness Claire couldn’t see if it were caught, but she didn’t hear the penny drop.

  And had to smile to herself.

  This was what His Grace had been talking to her about—about how she knew more than she knew she knew. How she knew the chum had caught his penny because she never heard it hit the ground.

  How astonishing.

  Tanner led her in his meandering, loose-limbed way down the meanest, most filthy, most stinking streets she had ever encountered. And every step brought them somewhere meaner and filthier and more stinking still. They came along the back wall of St. Margaret’s workhouse, where the place stank of stale sweat and something stronger—desperation.

  Claire had to put her hand across her face to combat the stench.

  “Don’t, if you can help it,” he leaned close to rumble into her ear. “It will draw attention to you if you look like you can’t stomach the stench. Lean in to me. Jinks launders what he keeps for me, regular like. Or hide a bit in your shawl. Even cut up, you’re too bloody beautiful for the Almonry.”

  The off-hand compliment warmed her cheeks, and restored her faith in His Grace’s essential kindness. He might be violent and vehement, but he was violent and vehement on her behalf.

  The grim reminder made her hitch the plain-spun shawl higher over the crown of her head. Her abigail, Silvers, would have an apoplexy if she ever saw Claire looking like a worn out shopgirl, with her hair sliding loose from its pins.

  But despite her misgivings, she didn’t feel worn out—she felt alive and exhilarated by the exciting newness of it all.

  Her guide had another low word with an old slattern on the ill-lit corner of Orchard Street and somewhere chalked on the side of a semi-derelict brick building as New Rents—semi-derelict only because people were streaming in and out of the place even though it looked as if it were about to fall down on top of them.

  The old trull pointed them north, and in another few moments, they turned into the darkly narrow confines of Union Place.

  “It’s a dead end,” Fenmore said low into her ear. “In more ways that one. Look sharp. Stay behind me.”

  Claire wasn’t entirely sure how she might look sharp, other than keeping her eyes wide open, and trying to remember the way they had come. She began to count the number of footsteps they took into the dim little court.

  “Carter’s?” Tanner growled his inquiry at an urchin, who simply pointed to the open door of number ten.

  Tanner steered them across the gap where a thin gutter ran down the middle of the lane, whereupon he knocked on the doorframe with the side of his fist.

  Claire peeped around Tanner to see a middle aged woman with a uncapped head of fair hair, a face red with exertion, and a cynical, distrusting look in her eye come to the door. “Whatta you want?”

  “Lookin’ fer Molly Carter,” Tanner said.

  The sharp-eyed woman narrowed her gaze. “Oo’s asking?”

  “A friend o’ your daughter, Maisy.”

  The woman cut a sharp eye over him and shook her head. “My Maisy ain’t got no friends as look like you. She’s a good girl, she is, and not for the likes of you.”

  The woman made as if she would slam the ramshackle door in their faces, until Claire stepped quickly forward.

  “We’ve come from Riverchon Park, ma’am. We need to speak with you.”

  At the sound of Claire’s voice the woman stopped and took another look from Claire’s face to her skirts and back. “Yer no friends of my Maisy.” Her eyes were slitty with suspicion. “There’s summat off about ye, like four day old fish.”

  “No, ma’am.” Claire swallowed over the sudden heat in her throat. “I’m so very sorry, ma’am. Despite present appearances, we have come from Riverchon Park, and we must speak to you. I’m afraid it is very bad news.”

  Molly Carter’s red face fell pale, and she put her hand to her chest to steady herself for the blow.

  Tanner put a hand to Molly Carter’s elbow to support her, and urged them all over the threshold in uncompromising tones. “Inside. Private like.”

  Even as she stepped into the dimly lit, grim interior, Claire could see the fear darken Molly Carter’s eyes, and hollow out her features. And in the way of her kind, fear made the woman pugnacious.

  She shook off Tanner’s assistance and rounded on them threateningly, snatching up a rusty pair of scissors. “What have you done to my girl?”

  In his blunt, straightforward way, Tanner did not try to cushion such a blow. “She’s dead.”

  “No.” The scissors clattered to the wooden floor. The mother’s denial was no more than a whisper, but it went through Claire like a blade.

  But Claire did the only thing she knew how to do—she took the hand the woman had clenched into a fist, and held on tight. “I am afraid we’ve found her, ma’am. But too late.”

  “No.” The poor woman clasped on to Claire’s hand, and gripped harder, till her knuckles were white. “Not my Maisy.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  The poor woman shook her head, as if the action could stave of both the tears and the terrible truth.

  But it was impossible. Molly Carter began to cry. Loud, wailing sobs that tore Claire’s heart to absolute shreds. And all she could do was bleed with her, and hold on.

  Chapter 10

  Maisy Carter’s mother was a washerwoman. Tanner had instantly taken in her raw red hands—chapped from constant dunking in the lye soap vats that no doubt littered the small yard at the rear of the house—and rheumy, squinting eyes and concluded her profession. Her raw face looked as rough as her hands. And likely her withered old-before-her-time soul.

  He recognized the face of a cynic—he had looked in the mirror often enough.

  And the inside of the hovel, though canting dangerously to the north, was scrubbed within an inch of its life. Scrubbed so viciously there were scrape marks in the uneven, wood plank floor.

  Molly Carter hated the dirt. But she must have loved her daughter.

  “She were marked for something better,” Molly Carter said between sobs. “She were free of this place.”

  He hadn’t expected her tears—he had expected the kind of cynical stoicism that only a place like the Almonry could produce. He had expected Molly Carter to be what she appeared—cutty-eyed and deeply distrusting, hardened and worn to a dull blade by care and ceaseless work.

  Clearly, there was nothing more that could be done—they had done their Christian duty and given the poor creature the awful news, but hysteria was taking over—the woman’s sobs racked her stout body. They would learn nothing more from her now.

  “Claire.” He touched her elbow to show themselves out.

  But Lady Claire Jellicoe wasn’t listening. She was gently rounding her elbow out of his grip, and reaching toward Molly Carter, instead of away. Lady Claire Jellicoe moved close to Molly Carter, and took up the woman’s hand where it lay pressed flat and white against the bleached and battered table, and made one of those strange, wordless, sympathetic noises. Like a well-bred mourning dove, making an empathetic coo.

  And then she took the hard-boiled harridan that was Molly Carter into her soft, pale arms, as if she were giving the woman a lifeline. As if she would save her from drowning in her sorrow.

  And somehow, she was.

  Molly Carter was clinging to Lady Claire’s slim shoulders as if she were the last piece of flotsam in the whole of the sea.

  “God help her, miss,” the woman sobbed.

  Tears were sliding down Lady Claire’s cheeks as well. “I can’t speak for God, madam, bu
t I can speak for us.” Claire’s eyes met his. “We will help her.”

  “How?” the washerwoman howled. “She’s dead.”

  “We will find out who did this,” she pledged. “We will find who did this, and we will avenge her.”

  Avenge. Such a bloodthirsty word from such an immaculate girl.

  But he liked it. It suited his plans.

  Because it gave him permission to avenge Lady Claire, as well.

  Tanner had not imagined the way she had flinched away from him out in the street. He had not imagined the febrile heat of fear that left her cold in his arms. He had seen and felt it, and it slayed and enraged him all at the same time.

  But it gave him purpose, that flinch.

  “Nothing will bring her back,” Claire was saying. “And nothing will compensate you for her loss. But we promise you, we will put this right.”

  “You can’t put this right.” Molly Carter clenched her hands, as if she would rail against fate. “She’s dead.”

  Tanner spoke. “I can promise you that I will make the man who did this pay. I will find the miscreant who did this to your daughter. I will hunt him down, and see that he is hanged by the neck in Newgate yard, if it is the last thing I do.”

  That stopped her howls. “You do that. Do you hear me?” The woman pushed herself away from Claire, and wiped her face on her apron. “You find him, whoever the hell you are. You find the whoreson that took my Maisy, and you get him good. And you send me word when you’ve got him, so I can curse his soul to hell, and watch him dance upon a gibbet.”

  And then all her defiant anger seemed spent, and she collapsed down into a chair with a silent, gasping sob.

  Tanner looked her in her red-rimmed eyes. “Madam, you have my word upon it.”

  It was done. He turned toward the door. “Claire.”

  But again, Lady Claire Jellicoe was proving to be a great deal less predictable that he had expected—she had her arms wrapped tight around Molly Carter’s shoulders, making those soft, sympathetic noises.

  And then she did the most astonishing thing of all—she lied.

  Her face was as fresh and open and honest as it ever had been. But she lied through her teeth.