After the Scandal

by Elizabeth Essex

  Hadleigh’s response was as instant as it was vicious. “You can’t believe her. Look at her—she’s in love with him. She’d take his part, the little slut.”

  The room gasped around her, but she would not let it stop her. “I am the second young woman you have declared a slut”—she could not stop her voice from choking over the word—“this evening, my lord. One might think you thought all women to be such, when that is not in fact the case.”

  “You can’t believe a word she says.”

  No one refuted Hadleigh’s accusation—but neither did anyone give it credence.

  It gave Claire an opening. “Why not, my lord? Why is my word as a peeress any less valuable than yours? Because it is not what you want these good people to hear?”

  Lord Bennet had risen to his feet.

  Claire pressed her whisper-slight advantage. “But I should like to speak to my Lord Bennet, who presides here, and not to the marquess. It is Lord Bennet who must weigh the evidence and the charges, and he from whom I seek permission to speak as a peeress, and as a victim of Lord Peter Rosing.”

  “Yes, of course,” the magistrate stammered. “I am obliged.”

  “Thank you, sir. And my statement is this—that it was Lord Peter Rosing who was guilty of assaulting me. It was Lord Peter Rosing who pulled me by the arm from the dance floor, and down the length of the Dowager Duchess of Fenmore’s garden at Riverchon, and pushed my face into the brick wall of the boathouse.” She turned her cheek so Lord Bennet might see. “Lord Peter Rosing assaulted me, and would have—”

  Claire took a deep breath. It had not happened. It was well and truly over.

  “He would have continued, and raped me as he did Maisy Carter, if the Duke of Fenmore had not come to save me.”

  Her mother came to her side, and put her arm around her, but no one said anything.

  Lord Bennet looked from her to Hadleigh, who pulled back his lips in a sneer that told her he was about to speak.

  She pre-empted him. “The Marquess of Hadleigh will counter this by dragging my name, and that of my father, through the muck. He will say I am a flirt and worse, much worse. But all will be lies in the service of all his other lies. The Duke of Fenmore is guilty of nothing more than defending my honor, and there should be no charge against that.”

  Hadleigh edged slightly back, and tried an entirely new gambit. “The accused can’t lay evidence against another man while he is under a charge.”

  “Am I in custody, Lord Bennet?” Tanner asked quietly. “Are you going to recommend I be bound over for trial?”

  “If the Duke of Fenmore cannot lay evidence, then I will.” The Earl Sanderson spoke. “I will lay all of this evidence against the Marquess of Hadleigh, and I will bear witness to the fact that the Marquess’s son assaulted my daughter with the express purpose of ruining her and forcing her into marriage.”

  Tanner stood and faced the magistrate. “What is it to be my lord?”

  Tanner prided himself on not holding his breath. But he almost did when Lady Claire Jellicoe reached out to take his hand.

  Bennet finally made up his mind when his man came back to the room holding Hadleigh’s traveling case. “I find no evidence except hearsay laid against the Duke of Fenmore. But I will see the Marquess of Hadleigh taken up for a charge of murder.”

  They came out of the house into a fine grizzling rain that was soft against her skin. The night seemed even more different that it had last night—newer and fresher, splashed and washed silver white in the light rain.

  Hadleigh had been taken quickly—Tanner and Jack Denman had seen to that. And Rosing would be stopped.

  It was over.

  And it was just beginning.

  Because Tanner had eyes only for her.

  “Why did you come back?” he asked. “I wanted you safe—your name never mentioned.”

  “Why did you think to face him alone? Why did you not believe I would bring you help?” she asked instead of answering, though she suspected she knew the reason. The same reason he had followed her down the lawn with Rosing the first night—because it was the right thing to do.

  But he had an even more philosophical answer. “Because when you run all your life you get tired. And you learn the only way to escape is to stop and face your accusers, or whoever or whatever is chasing you. You learn to face them all down. I wanted to face them all down for you.”

  There was nothing cold and aloof about this man. How had she ever through it?

  Poor lamb—he’d never get rid of her now.

  “And the reason I came back, was that you stayed to face them—just as you ought. But I felt we had not settled satisfactorily between us, you and I, about whether you are, or are not, going to make me your wife?”

  “We did settle that most emphatically.” That slow, wicked smile began to curve across one side of his face. “We did so earlier this night, Claire. In my bedchamber. On my lap.”

  “On mine,” Claire insisted, thought she could feel heat singe her cheeks from the warm rasp of his voice along her skin. “But I meant properly, with—”

  “Did I not do it properly? For you looked quite properly satiat—”

  “Hush. My parents”—who had stepped aside to speak to the dowager duchess while she spoke with Tanner—“will hear you.”

  “Let them.” Another huge surge of warmth insinuated itself deep into her belly, as his smile slowly curved along his lovely, wickedly carnal mouth. “I welcome another change to do it properly. You know you have only to command me, and I will—”

  “Stop it. You know what I mean.”

  “After what transpired between us tonight, I consider you my wife. And that is an end to it.”

  “That, Your Grace, is not an end—it is only a beginning. My father stands ready nearby. So as I see it, you have two choices. You can either arm yourself—which I should not like to see, since you are both excellent shots, and I love you both—or you gift me with that ring that is still hanging around you neck. I beg you would choose. Now.”

  “Claire. You must know how I feel.” Tanner heard the raw emotion he took pains never to show, in his voice. “You must. I told you.”

  “You told me you wanted to protect me.”

  “I do. Desperately.”

  “But do you love me?”

  “Desperately.”

  Claire put her finger up to her chin. “Ah.”

  “Ah?”

  “Yes, ah—you always put a world of thought and feeling into your ahs.”

  “And what are you feeling.”

  She took pity upon him, and smiled at him, and enlaced her fingers with his, so he could know unequivocally how she felt. “That I love you rather desperately, too.”

  Despite her parents and his grandparent, and a host of servants and magistrates hovering nearby, he drew her nearer.

  Near enough to kiss, softly and solemnly on the corner of her mouth, where he knew she liked it. Where he could decide if he wanted to kiss her some more.

  “So have you decided whether you will do me the infinite honor, and very great personal favor of become my wife?”

  “Yes, I’m quite de—”

  “Determined, yes. It is one of the things I admire excessively about you.”

  “Do you?” She looked up at him, it that hopeful, guileless way that always, always absolutely slayed him.

  “Yes. Excessively. Desperately.” He did not care if he sounded stupid or juvenile or exposed. He was in love, and he did not care who knew it.

  The corners of her wide blue eyes turned up ever so slightly to tease. “Are you only saying that so I’ll kiss you?”

  Tanner felt warmth and ease and something altogether non-desperate fill his lungs. “Would it work?”

  “I think it might.” Her smile was a slow transfer of the pleasure of her face from the corners of her mouth, to the corners of her blue eyes, which lightened and sharpened and danced as her gaze fell from his face to his lips—she wanted to kiss him.


  And he wanted to kiss her. With heat and passion, and all the pent up desire he had kept to savagely behind his wall of restraint.

  Her voice was the barest whisper. “Would you like to try again?”

  “Oh, God, yes.” His own voice cracked a little, as if it were under a great strain and was finally giving way. “Yes. Please.”

  He kissed her then. A whole-hearted, nothing-held-back, pick-her-up-and-walk-her-into-the-sunset sort of kiss that held nothing back for later. He kissed her hair, and inhaled the lovely scent that was her, as if they were just a fellow and his lass lost in the simple pleasure of each other’s company.

  Lost to everything of the world but themselves.

  He felt not as if he were a duke, and she his duchess—although he was surer than ever that he was about to make that plan a reality—but as if they were simply people, who had chosen to be together for no other reason that mutual company and pleasure.

  A new feeling welled within him—a feeling he had not felt since the day his sister had married her captain, and put her hands on his face, and looked him in the eye, and said it was over—that they were safe.

  They hadn’t been, for safety was a mutable fickle thing, but he had believed her then. And she had been partially right—he had never been that cold, or that desperate or that hungry again.

  But he had been lonely. And lonelier still.

  But not this morning. Not now.

  Not ever again.

  He had always watched her—watched the inestimable Lady Claire’s beautiful, wide eyes sparkle, and her glowing porcelain face light with smiles for others, and he followed the bright shine of her golden blond hair as she twirled and whirled around the dance floor with other, more worthy, less guileful men.

  But now she was real, and his.

  Tanner wasn’t worthy of her, of course, his self-possessed swan. He was only an accidental aspirant to her world—an interloper who would never really feel at home in their glittering mansions and palatial estates. Even when the palatial estate in question was ostensibly his own.

  “May we please go get married now? Surely you’re rich and influential enough for that special license. Or are you a flat with the ecclesiastical crowd?”

  “A complete flat. You’ll have to manage it for us, my duchess.”

  “My duke. My Tanner.”

  “Yes.” He took her by the hand and led her to the Fenmore coach and felt, for the first time in a very, very long time, since he had become a man an understood all the responsibilities and people who depended upon him day after day, as if all were right with the world. There was nothing more he could hope or wish for.

  “Should you like to get married straight way, or wait, to show the world the lofty Duke of Fenmore answers to no man, and will not be rushed, but does things in his own sweet time?”

  She was teasing him, smiling up at him with her open guileless face, and he could only smile back.

  “Right away. I should like to begin telling the world you are my duchess straightaway. Especially your father. I don’t expect he has liked a delay in clearing your name.”

  “My father will like what I like. And I think my father and his Countess— Oh, I shall outrank my own mother—how very odd. I hadn’t thought about being a duchess.”

  “Then you shall be different, and eccentric, and do as you like.”

  “Yes. And I think we should get married in a week’s time, only so my mother can order up enough ribbons and white soup for a wedding celebration that will not cause a scandal.”

  Tanner did not care if it was one day or one week or one month—he was sure of her.

  It was remarkable how he stopped thinking when he was around her. He had always thought such a thing—to not think—would be a disadvantage, a hinderance to his life. But now it felt like a much needed respite.

  Such a respite that he wanted to kiss her still. He wanted to consume her whole. He wanted to revel in the physical fact that she was so much more than the porcelain doll he would have painted her to be. He was luckiest man in Christendom to have Lady Claire Jellicoe at his side, accepting him for who he really was, not a cardboard cutout of a Duke.

  He pulled her closer and kissed her forehead but said nothing else as they made their way back toward the city, looking for all the world just as he had said last night, like fellow and his girl with nothing but love to feed themselves.

  Epilogue

  The wedding of Lady Claire Jellicoe and His Grace, the Duke of Fenmore, did not, as it ought, take place deep in the bosom of society at St. George’s, Hanover Square.

  Instead, the marriage of the season—of the popular and only daughter of an earl to the enigmatic and aloof duke—was celebrated in the less rarified, but comfortable confines of Mayfair Chapel, directly across the street from Sanderson House.

  The Duke of Fenmore had done Lady Claire the honor and courtesy of courting her openly, of walking with her in Hyde Park or Green Park every afternoon, and chatting only with her at every soirée, ball and rout. He intimidated hostesses into seating her next to him, and he ignored the entirety of the other company, as he had done for years, and talked and looked and smiled only for her.

  He was, he heard them say, a new man. A man utterly besotted.

  An man in love.

  He did not mind. Nor did he correct them. For they were entirely correct.

  He was a new man.

  They had made something new between them.

  And he would have her in his house, to have and to hold. To kiss and to do many other various and erotic things as well.

  Sanderson House was abloom in flowers, and even the wrought iron gate fronting Curzon Street was decorated so gaily that the street was nearly overrun with gawkers.

  But not only society came to gape and celebrate the unlikely nuptials—the pavement outside the venerable old church was crowded with the oddest and most unlikely collection of revelers anyone could ever remember seeing.

  Street thieves and beggars, highwaymen and magistrates alike shared the pavement until the crowd swelled so large Curzon Street became impassable.

  And in further defiance of custom, the bride and groom did not retreat in solitude to the opulent fortress of Fenmore House, but threw the grounds open for a masked ball, where Tanner Evans, ninth Duke of Fenmore astonished the world by doing what he had never, ever done before.

  He danced—with his bride.

  He kissed her hand, and led her out upon the wide green lawn where a patchwork parquet floor had been laid, and he swept the new Duchess of Fenmore into a waltz so close and scandalous and flagrantly romantic that dowagers standing by the side of the floor, fell unconscious in swooning faints.

  But the duke and duchess never noticed—Tanner and Claire were too busy making up for lost time. Too busy making the promise between their hearts and their bodies sing its way from the present all the way to tomorrow.

  He had stolen her fair and square, and he had managed to keep her, though it had taken every last ounce of stealth and guile he had ever possessed.

  But she, with all her innocence, and simple honest grace, and desperate bravery, had proven far more larcenous than he—for she had well and truly stolen away his heart.

  Thank You from the Author

  Thank you for reading AFTER THE SCANDAL!

  * * *

  If you enjoyed Antigone and Will’s story, perhaps you might also like to read the story of that woman Will lived with who was his friend!

  The characters in my RECKLESS BRIDES books tend to come from other books I have written: secondary characters in one book are destined to become the hero or heroine of the next.

  * * *

  This is doubly true of AFTER THE SCANDAL: readers of my previous books will have met our hero, Tanner, before—the story of how he and his sister Meggs lived as thieves in London, is found in my RITA-nominated book, THE DANGER OF DESIRE.

  * * *

  And our heroine, Claire Jellicoe, was first introduced to r
eaders as a secondary character in the story of her brother, Will Jellicoe, and his true love, Antigone Preston, in the award-winning book, A BREATH OF SCANDAL.

  * * *

  The story of Will’s navy service is found in ALMOST A SCANDAL.

  * * *

  The story of how Claire’s other brothers, Thomas Jellicoe, and James Jellicoe, Viscount Jeffrey, find their happily-ever-afters is found in SCANDAL IN THE NIGHT.

  * * *

  And the story of Charles Dance, (Will Jellicoe’s fellow midshipman in the Royal Navy in Almost a Scandal), and his blue-stocking scientist, Jane Burke, is told in A SCANDAL TO REMEMBER.

  * * *

  The story of another midshipmen from Almost a Scandal, Ian James, and his arranged marriage to Anne Lesley, is the heart of THE SCANDAL BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

  * * *

  While each book reads as a stand-alone, the The Reckless Brides series is best enjoyed in chronological order:

  * * *

  Almost a Scandal

  (re-released January 21, 2020)

  * * *

  A Breath of Scandal

  (re-released March 2, 2020)

  * * *

  After the Scandal

  (to be re-released April 14, 2020)

  * * *

  A Scandal to Remember

  (to be re-released June 30, 2020)

  * * *

  The Scandal before Christmas

  (to be re-released October 13, 2020)

  To keep up to date on The Reckless Brides, learn about other series (including The Dartmouth Brides and The Highland Brides), sign up for Elizabeth’s newsletter and get exclusive excerpts, contests, and more