Slightly Scandalous

by Mary Balogh

  Why did she not wish to marry him, then?

  Because he did not wish to marry her? Because she might be in danger of falling in love with him? Why would that be undesirable?

  Because she would feel disloyal to Kit? Or because she would destroy her foolishly romantic dream of love by proving that it was possible to love two different men in the course of a lifetime?

  Because she was afraid that her heart might be broken—again?

  But Lady Freyja Bedwyn did not fear anything or anyone. Ever.

  “If I were an enemy army watching you march into battle against me,” Joshua said, “I would not wait and stand my ground but turn and flee in panic and terror.”

  “What nonsense you speak,” she said.

  “Why the grim look and the long, purposeful stride, my charmer?” he asked her.

  “It is cold, if you had not noticed,” she said. “I am eager to get back to the house.”

  “Our outing has served its purpose, then, has it?” he asked.

  She turned her head and looked at him in the darkness.

  “You must understand,” she said, “that everyone in my family and Kit's, everyone in the whole neighborhood, I daresay, knew that he was coming home to marry me. And then he came with Lauren Edgeworth and presented her as his betrothed. I have never been accustomed to humiliation. I thought it a ploy to anger me, to punish me. I thought it a fake betrothal because they seemed so very unsuited to each other. In fact, the circumstances seemed very similar to yours and mine now. Except that I thought he really meant to have me in the end. But he married her instead. I am not abject, Josh. I am not an object of pity. I am just . . . angry.”

  “It is a love match,” he said. “Take it from someone who has met them for the first time today. It is very much a love match, Free.”

  She laughed softly as they approached the house across the lawn. “Are those meant to be words of comfort?” she asked.

  “I would not so insult you,” he said. “You like straight talk, sweetheart. You like the truth more than falsehood and directness more than evasion. Your Kit is very deeply in love with his wife.”

  “My Kit.” She laughed again. “He was raw with pain that summer four years ago. He had just brought Sydnam back from the Peninsula, broken and maimed and closer to death than life. He blamed himself. He was Sydnam's only companion on that reconnaissance mission and his superior officer. When they were trapped by a French scouting party and one of them had to court capture so that the other could go free to complete the mission, Kit was the one who went free. He was mad with guilt that summer—and he turned to me. My Kit—he was never mine.”

  She had never faced up to the truth of all this before now. While he had been as desperately in love with her as she with him that summer, for him it had been a transitory thing, a way of coping with his guilt and anxiety. She wondered if Wulfric had realized that and so had taken the unusual step of interfering in her life, of actually lecturing her about duty. She wondered if the Earl of Redfield had realized it. And Jerome.

  Everyone but her.

  There was no one strolling on the terrace now. Everyone was indoors.

  “This is the moment,” Joshua said, “at which we must hope that our absence has not been too particularly remarked upon and that every pin in your hair does not decide to clatter to the carpet as soon as we step into the drawing room.”

  Their long absence had not, of course, escaped the notice of Freyja's family. Aidan raised his eyebrows when they entered the drawing room, Alleyne waggled his, Morgan smiled knowingly as she caught Freyja's eye, and Wulfric fingered the handle of his quizzing glass. Only Rannulf did not react—he was deep in conversation with Kit and the viscountess and Judith.

  Kit was sitting next to the viscountess, his arm draped along the back of her chair, his fingertips just touching her shoulder on the far side. It was an almost shockingly informal pose, but it was late in the day and everyone seemed more relaxed than they had been earlier. They were both engrossed in listening to something Judith was saying.

  Yes, it was true, Freyja thought. She had known it for a long time, of course—perhaps even from the beginning. It was a love match. And perhaps they were even suited, the two of them. Certainly they were a handsome couple.

  She did not wait to consider whether or not the admission brought pain with it. She glanced at Joshua, who was looking down at her quizzically, linked her arm through his, and strode across the room with him.

  “I hope,” he murmured, “I am not about to be embroiled in a scene, sweetheart. I do find scenes embarrassing.”

  Freyja smiled, first at Kit, who looked suddenly wary, and then at the viscountess, whose gracious smile hid any sign of trepidation she might have been feeling.

  “I do apologize,” Freyja said, “for missing seeing the baby when you brought him down a while ago. Josh suggested a walk, and I was longing for some fresh air and dashed off without a thought. I should, of course, have waited a few minutes.”

  Although she was eating a great deal of humble pie—or perhaps because of it—she was also speaking in what she recognized as the haughty voice she always used when on the defensive. Nevertheless, all four of them looked at her in some astonishment. Joshua, she noticed, was hugging her arm tightly to his side.

  “Oh, but he is still awake,” the viscountess said, her smile bright and warm as she got to her feet. “It just did not seem kind to leave him down here when he is used to the peace and quiet of his nursery. Will you come up and see him now?”

  Freyja grimaced inwardly but maintained her smile.

  “If you are not afraid I will disturb him,” she said.

  “Oh, no.” The viscountess looked at Joshua and a certain merriment danced in her violet eyes. “But we will not drag you up there, Lord Hallmere. Do take my chair.”

  For a moment Freyja thought that the viscountess was going to link an arm through hers, but if she had had such an intention she thought better of it and led the way out of the room and up the stairs to the nursery floor.

  “I am afraid,” she said, turning her head to smile at Freyja as they approached the nursery, “new parents can be very tedious, Lady Freyja. We dote upon our children and make the assumption that everyone else must be as charmed as we are.”

  “Perhaps it is time,” Freyja said, “that you dropped the ‘Lady' every time you address me.”

  The viscountess looked quickly at her. “And you must start calling me Lauren,” she said. “Will you?”

  The baby was lying on a blanket in the middle of the nursery floor, his arms punching the air and his legs kicking while his nurse sat in a chair close to him, knitting. But it was not exactly a place of peace and quiet. There were several other children present, some of them babies, a few older, including Becky and Davy, who waved cheerfully at Freyja before returning their attention to their paints. There were three other nurses in attendance.

  Freyja would have been quite contented to stand looking down at the baby and to make a few appropriately admiring comments. But Lauren bent down, scooped him up into her arms, and deposited him in Freyja's before leading the way into an inner room, which was obviously the baby's bedchamber, and closing the door.

  Freyja held him gingerly, terrified of dropping him. He had Kit's brown hair, lighter than Lauren's. But he was going to have her eyes. He was soft and warm and weighed almost nothing at all. He smelled sweet and powdery. He made little gurgling noises and gazed at her with eyes that were not yet quite fully focused. She was alarmed by the rush of tender emotion she felt.

  For Kit's baby—and Lauren's.

  “He is beautiful,” she said—lame words indeed. She handed him back to his mother.

  “Freyja,” Lauren said, “I cannot tell you how happy I am that you have met Lord Hallmere and are betrothed to him. I will not pretend to know him on such short acquaintance, of course, but in addition to his extraordinary good looks he has smiling eyes. I always trust eyes like his. He looks happy, and y
ou look happy. How becomingly flushed your cheeks are! I knew this must happen for you one day, but until it did I have been anxious for you. I know how you felt, you see—I was abandoned at the altar by the man I had loved all my life. I thought my life had ended. I certainly never expected that I would love again. But I did—and the second love has been many times more powerful and satisfying than the first. I believe you must be discovering that too. It will only get better as time goes on. Believe me.”

  She really was extremely lovely, Freyja admitted grudgingly to herself. And she glowed with her new motherhood—and perhaps with more than just that.

  That man—the one Lauren had grown up with and almost married—was the Earl of Kilbourne. He was downstairs with his wife. Their daughter was one of the babies in the nursery. It was clear that Lauren felt not one twinge of lingering bitterness regarding him and what might have been.

  “I never really loved Jerome,” Freyja said. “I was fond of him. I mourned him far more deeply than I could ever have predicted. But I did not love him.”

  Lauren smiled her acknowledgment of Freyja's deliberate misunderstanding and looked down at the baby, who was being lulled to sleep in her arms.

  “I wish I had known Jerome,” she said. “Kit adored him.”

  Yes. But their last encounter had been a bitter, violent one. Kit had broken Jerome's nose before riding over to Lindsey Hall and fighting Ralf and then returning to the Peninsula.

  “I should tell you,” Freyja said, “about the time the two of them kidnapped me and locked me in that gamekeeper's hut in the woods.”

  Lauren looked up and laughed. “Kit has told me,” he said. “How delighted I was to hear that you came out the victor. Did you really swear the air blue? And did you really punch Jerome in the face? Childhood memories are wonderful, are they not? We use that hut quite often, you know, Kit and I. It is our own quiet, cozy retreat.”

  Freyja was suddenly reminded of what had happened there just an hour or so ago—she had been trying not to think about it. Perhaps even now she was with child herself. Perhaps even now she was fated to marry Josh—against both their wishes. But if it were not so, then she was fated to end their betrothal soon and never see him again.

  It was a strangely dreary thought.

  The baby was sleeping. Lauren kissed him softly on the forehead and set him down gently in his crib before covering him with his blankets. Then she turned back to Freyja, and this time she did link arms with her before they went back downstairs.

  “I am so glad we can be friends at last,” she said. “I have always liked and admired you. Sometimes I wish I had your bold spirit. But I must confess that I have also been a little afraid of you.”

  Freyja let out a short bark of laughter. “One would never have known it,” she said. “Do you remember that first time you came to Lindsey Hall with Kit?”

  “And you all tried to make me as uncomfortable as you possibly could?” Lauren said, laughing too. “How could I possibly forget? I could cheerfully have curled up and died.”

  “But instead you dealt me a magnificent, oh-so-ladylike set-down,” Freyja said. “My brothers were crowing with delight after you left.”

  The party was breaking up, Freyja saw when they entered the drawing room. Some of the neighbors had already left. Wulfric was on his feet. So were the other members of her family. The carriages must have been sent for.

  “Gracious, Free,” Alleyne said, appearing at her side as Lauren made her way toward Wulf, “has there been a grand reconciliation between you and Lauren? Life is threatening to grow very dull indeed.”

  “It is time you got a life for yourself,” she said severely.

  He winced. “A hit, Free!” he said. “A palpable hit, to quote some authority I cannot quite identify at the moment. I shall have to go out into the world to seek my own happy ending. Aidan, Ralf, you . . . Happy endings are becoming an epidemic among us.”

  Joshua was standing talking with Lady Kilbourne and the Duchess of Portfrey. He was using all his considerable charm on them and looking devastatingly handsome in the process. The light from the chandelier overhead made his hair gleam very blond. Again Freyja felt that rush of knee-weakening knowledge. Just an hour or so ago . . .

  He had tried to stop it from happening.

  She had dared him to stop.

  How complicated life had become.

  And how undeniably exhilarating!

  He turned his head and smiled at her, and she raised her eyebrows. And then he slowly depressed one eyelid and she bristled with indignation.

  Joshua was normally an early riser. He was not late up the following morning, but he was later than usual. He had scarcely slept all night, only to fall into a deep sleep when it was already light. All the Bedwyns except Freyja and Judith were at breakfast.

  “She is feeling indisposed this morning,” Rannulf said, looking rather sheepish, when Joshua asked about Judith, “just as she was yesterday morning until it was almost time to leave for church. I have just been admitting to the family that she is in a delicate way. We were going to keep it to ourselves for a while, but morning sickness is a great spoiler of secrets.”

  “Poor Judith,” Eve said. “I'll go up and keep her company for a while after breakfast—unless I discover that she would rather be alone.”

  “And Freyja?” Joshua asked. Surely she was not still in bed, unless she had had as sleepless a night as he. It was altogether possible.

  “Did you two quarrel yesterday?” Alleyne asked, grinning. “She would not come back inside after riding with us before breakfast. She said she needed more air and went striding off on foot.”

  “Quarrel?” Joshua said. “With your sister? How could one ever provoke a quarrel with a sweet-natured lady like Freyja?”

  Everyone at the table laughed. Even Bewcastle looked faintly amused.

  “I winked at her across the drawing room just before we left Alvesley last evening,” Joshua said, “and sent her into a towering rage. People, she told me when we had a moment alone together before getting into the carriage with Morgan and Alleyne, might have noticed and thought us remarkably vulgar. Where might she have gone?”

  “You might be wise,” Aidan said, “to wait for her to walk off any lingering indignation and return to the house in her own good time.”

  “Ah,” Joshua said, “but no one has ever been able to accuse me of excessive wisdom.”

  “There is a wilderness walk out behind the house,” Morgan said. “She usually goes there when she wishes to be alone. And if I had quarreled with my betrothed, Aidan, I would want him to come after me even if I had told everyone that I wished to be left alone and even if I had warned him not to follow me.”

  “Eve is still in the process of teaching me how to understand women,” Aidan said. “I spent too many years in the military, it seems.”

  It was not that they had quarreled exactly, of course, Joshua thought as he strode off beyond the stables half an hour later to where the wilderness walk began. And she had not been in a towering rage over the wink—only hotly indignant. He had made a kissing gesture with his lips and called her sweetheart when she had scolded him, and had watched her nostrils flare, and then they had been in the carriage with her brother and sister and he had deliberately drawn her hand through his arm.

  No, they had not quarreled. But last evening they had had conjugal relations and everything had changed between them. What had begun as a light flirtation to alleviate the boredom of being stuck in Bath for a week had escalated into an impulsive and very temporary betrothal to stave off his aunt's dastardly entrapment scheme and then into something rather more lengthy with his grandmother's decision to give them a betrothal party. And then Bewcastle had arrived in Bath and quickly discerned the truth, and that had led to this prolonging of the connection. He had known the danger. He had prepared himself for it, steeled himself against it, for both her sake and his own. But now look what had happened. They were in dire peril of having their temporar
y lark transformed into a lifelong commitment. If it so happened that she was with child, they would have no choice at all. And even if she was not . . .

  Good Lord, she was Lady Freyja Bedwyn.

  Last night she had seemed not to realize the seriousness of what had happened. Or perhaps she had, but had simply refused to admit it. This morning, if his guess was correct, she had faced reality and found it disturbing indeed.

  The wilderness walk began with a series of wide, earthen steps with wooden borders leading up between rhododendron bushes to larger trees farther up the hill. Then a well-worn, shaded path turned sharply to the right to weave among the trees and give the walker an impression of total seclusion, of being miles from any habitation. It was fragrant with vegetation even though the height of summer was past, and loud with birdsong.

  So had he—faced reality this morning, that was—or last night, to be more accurate. He was Hallmere now, whether he wanted to be or not. The wars were over with Napoléon Bonaparte imprisoned on the island of Elba. His job was done. He was twenty-eight years old. It was true that he had no intention of returning to Penhallow—ever. But he was a peer of the realm. He was going to have to take his seat in the House of Lords one of these days. He was going to have to acquire a permanent home somewhere—probably in London. He was going to have to settle down—those dreaded words.

  Though why he should think them with dread he did not know. He had settled down once before, years ago, when he had learned and practiced the trade of carpenter. He had expected to live his life out there in the village of Lydmere. He had even been starting to look about him at some of the village girls.

  Perhaps it was time he married. And if he must marry, why not Freyja? Socially he could not do better. He would never be bored with her. He found her attractive. He had discovered last evening that she was quite as explosively passionate in bed as he had expected. He would certainly enjoy the opportunity of bedding her under less frantic circumstances in order to discover if her nature was as sensual as it was passionate—he would wager it was.