Slightly Scandalous

by Mary Balogh

  “Whom did you want me to meet this time?” she asked.

  He brightened, offered his arm, and climbed a steep hill with her until they reached another picturesque cottage with rosebushes climbing all over the front wall and a view down over the rooftops to the harbor. He knocked on the door.

  The woman who opened it was young and personable. Her eyes lit up as soon as they looked on Joshua.

  “Joshua!” she exclaimed, reaching out two slim hands to him. “Is it really you? Oh, it is. What a wonderful surprise.”

  Freyja guessed in some shock as Joshua presented her to Anne Jewell that this must be the governess who had borne his child. She was introduced as Miss Anne Jewell, yet she had a child, a little boy about five years old, who was blond and blue-eyed, with all the potential of being a lady-killer when he grew up. His mother had him make his bow to the Marquess of Hallmere and Lady Freyja Bedwyn before he ducked out of sight behind her skirts.

  They did not go inside even though they were invited to do so. They all stood on the threshold for a few minutes, talking. Freyja fought outrage. It was true that she was not really betrothed to Joshua. Nevertheless, it showed poor taste on his part to bring her here.

  “Now what have I done, sweetheart?” he asked as they made their way back down the hill in the direction of the harbor. She had not responded to any of his conversational overtures.

  “Done?” she said in her frostiest, most quelling tones.

  “You were not jealous, were you?” he asked, chuckling. “She is not nearly as gorgeous as you, Free.”

  She was truly angry then and wrenched her arm free of his.

  “You might show more loyalty,” she said. “She does, after all, mean more to you than I do. As she ought.”

  He stood still on the pavement and looked quizzically at her.

  “Uh-oh,” he said. “I perceive my aunt's malice at play here. And you fell for it, Free? Do you not know me better? She always did believe I was Anne Jewell's seducer and father of her son. I let her believe it. I have never cared for her good opinion.”

  Freyja felt horribly mortified then. For of course she had heard it from the marchioness and had not thought of questioning the essential truth of the accusation. How very foolish of her.

  “You are not the boy's father?” she asked. “But he looks like you.”

  “And also like his mother,” he said. “Did you notice that she has fair hair and blue eyes?”

  “Do you support her and the child?” she asked. “That is what your aunt told me.”

  “Not entirely any longer.” He smiled at her. “She takes in one or two pupils now, Free, and refuses to take any more from me than she absolutely needs, but the time was when she was not at all well accepted here. These people are kind but not always as tolerant as they might be. They are humans, not saints. She was destitute and had no family to go to.”

  Freyja drew in a slow breath and turned to walk on, her hands clasped behind her back. But he was beginning to look something like a saint, and she did not like it one bit. If she was to have any chance against him, she had to have something to despise.

  “Let me guess,” she said, wondering why the truth had not whacked her over the head long before now. “Albert?”

  “Yes, Albert,” he said. “And it was not with Anne's consent. She has altogether better taste than that.”

  They had reached the bottom of the hill and turned to stroll along the street that ran parallel to the beach. Becky and Davy were cavorting along the sands with a few other children while Eve and Aidan looked on. They all seemed to be shrieking and making merry. Prue was sitting up on the side of one of the beached fishing boats, swinging her legs and looking excited and happy while Chastity talked with an older woman and a young man hovered close to Prue as if to catch her should she fall. Constance and the Reverend Calvin Moore were at the far end of the street.

  “Why did you not simply tell your uncle?” Freyja asked. “Ought he not to have known?”

  “What would Bewcastle do,” he asked her, “if he discovered that one of your brothers had impregnated your governess or Morgan's?”

  “He would thrash the offender within an inch of his life,” she said with conviction.

  He laughed softly. “Ah, yes,” he said, “I believe Bewcastle would. I also believe none of your brothers would put him in such a position. I cannot know how my uncle would have reacted, but I can guess. He would have gone to my aunt, and she would not only have dismissed the governess, but would also have driven her out of the neighborhood. Anne would have found herself destitute and with child and a vagrant to boot. She would have ended up in prison somewhere. Her son would have been fortunate to survive.”

  “And so you allowed the blame to be put upon you,” she said.

  “I have broad shoulders,” he said, shrugging.

  And probably very little money for the past five years—until he inherited the title, she thought. And yet through most of those years he had supported a child who was not his own.

  “I find you rather stupid,” she said scornfully. “Remarkably stupid, in fact. I am enormously relieved that we will never be married.”

  And she stuck her nose in the air and went striding off toward Eve and Aidan, trying to convince herself that she had just spoken the truest words she had ever uttered.

  She hated him.

  She really did.

  How dare he be so foolishly noble!

  How ridiculous all this was.

  She wished fervently that she had not so impulsively decided to come here with him. She wished she were back at Lindsey Hall. She wished she had never gone to Bath. She wished she had never met the Marquess of Hallmere.

  No, she did not.

  “Sweetheart.” He was coming along beside her, she realized. “You are doubly gorgeous when your temper is up. No, make that triply gorgeous.”

  She almost shamed herself by laughing. She lofted her nose into the air instead.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Constance and Chastity sat down with Joshua during the afternoon and helped him draw up a list of guests to invite to the ball. Despite the splendor of the ballroom at Penhallow, he could not remember its ever being used. As his aunt had pointed out at breakfast, there were not enough families close by of sufficiently high social status to merit an invitation.

  “We will invite everyone,” he explained. “I suppose the inhabitants have not changed a great deal in five years, but you must help me make sure I have forgotten no one.”

  “A real ball,” Chastity said, her eyes shining, “in the splendid Penhallow ballroom. I am so glad you did not allow Mama to talk you out of it, Joshua.” She flushed, apparently at her own disloyalty. “And I am glad you did not allow her to force you into marrying Constance.”

  Constance flushed pink too.

  “Perhaps,” he said, his eyes twinkling, “Constance likes Cousin Calvin better.” He had been right in his guess this morning, of course. His aunt was doing her best to promote a match between them.

  “Oh, no, Joshua,” Constance said gravely.

  “Constance likes Mr. Saunders better,” Chastity said.

  “And you, Chass?” he asked. “Do you like Hugh Garnett?”

  He had meant it as a teasing question, one over which they would all laugh. But she stared at him with stricken eyes, her face paling.

  “I would not give my consent anyway,” he told her hastily. “I am your guardian, remember?”

  She smiled, her lips as pale as her face.

  “You are Prue's guardian as well,” she said. “Will you allow her to be cooped up in the nursery for the rest of her life, Joshua? Or sent to an asylum?”

  “An asylum?” he said, frowning. “That has not been mentioned again, has it?”

  When it had first became obvious that Prue was not as other children were, her mother had wanted her sent to an asylum for the insane. Fortunately it was one of the few matters over which Joshua's uncle had asserted his will, and Prue had
stayed. Chastity had devoted most of her girlhood to being a companion to her sister. Joshua had helped, as had Constance to a lesser degree.

  “If you come here to live and we have to remove to the dower house, Mama says she will have no choice but to send her away,” Chastity said. “Her nerves would not be able to bear having Prue within her sight every day.”

  Joshua sighed. He had appointed a good and competent steward to look after his estate and had considered his duty to his new position done. But he was Chastity's guardian and Prue's too. Perhaps after all it was neglectful of him to have stayed away—and to be planning to leave again as soon as this business with Garnett had been cleared up. It was an admission he did not want to make.

  “Prue will have a home at Penhallow as long as I am alive and marquess here,” he said. “And the whole of the house will be hers to use as well as the nursery. Is Miss Palmer good for her?”

  “Mama calls her an improper governess,” Chastity said, “because she does not even try teaching Prue most of the things governesses usually teach. But she has taught Prue all sorts of things nevertheless, and she takes her outdoors, where Prue loves to be. Prue can tend the sorriest-looking plants and make them grow into a lovely garden. She is not insane, Joshua. She is just . . . different.”

  “You are preaching to the converted,” he said, smiling at her. “You and she were with Mrs. Turner and Ben Turner down at the harbor this morning?”

  “Mrs. Turner adores Prue,” Chastity said. She hesitated. “And I believe Ben does too. Mama would have an apoplexy.”

  Joshua drew a slow breath. Devil take it, it looked as if he was going to have to stay awhile. His aunt was the mother of these girls, of course, and therefore their rightful guardian even if not their legal one. But he could see nothing but unhappiness all around him. Here were two young ladies—both in their twenties—who had not yet been given any chance of a life of their own. And Prue was now grown up—she was eighteen. They could no longer continue to think of her as a child, though he gathered that his aunt preferred not to think of her at all. She seemed incapable of thinking of anyone's happiness but her own.

  He wished then that he had not come back after all.

  Would the problems vanish, then, if he were not here to see them?

  Could he so selfishly ignore his responsibilities?

  “I'll speak with Miss Palmer,” he said. “And we will talk another time of what is best for Prue. But now, to our list. We have ten names on it so far. I believe we need a few more if we are to outnumber the members of the orchestra.”

  Constance laughed.

  “An orchestra?” Chastity asked, her eyes shining again. “Really, Joshua? How magical this ball is going to be.”

  Some time later Joshua made his way up the steep path behind the house, the sun warm on his body, though he knew it would feel cooler when he reached the top and was no longer sheltered from the wind. For the first time in seven months he really felt like the Marquess of Hallmere. He felt weighted down by responsibility. The really alarming thing, though, was that it did not feel like an oppressive weight. His cousins needed him here even if everything else could be managed by a steward, and he was fond of them. Now he had the power to do something positive to make their lives happier—and the power not to do so. He could go away and leave them to his aunt's care, or he could stay and assert his guardianship.

  Strangely, he had spared scarcely a thought all afternoon for the murder charge that still hung over his head. It was difficult to take it seriously.

  The path brought him up out of the valley, and, as expected, a gust of wind assaulted him. He looked back down toward the house and gardens, to the river and the bridge below them, to the village just visible beyond the headland on the other side of the valley. And he turned to look at the land swelling slightly to his left, rough with stone outcroppings and coarse grass and gorse bushes and wildflowers. The sheep of the home farm were dotted about the land, grazing. To his right the land sloped downward and leveled off into a neat patchwork of fields separated by stone walls and a few hedges. The main road came up out of the valley not far away and snaked its way between the fields and stretched ahead as far as the eye could see, on its way to Land's End.

  His land. His farms. And the farms of his tenants.

  A totally unexpected love for it all hit him like a low blow to the stomach. Good Lord, had he taken leave of his senses?

  He shook his head and turned left to stride in the direction of the cliffs. The Bedwyns were an energetic lot, as he had discovered at Lindsey Hall. The ride into Lydmere during the morning and the romp on the beach had not been enough for them. They had come up here at his direction to see the view. He had promised to join them as soon as he had finished drawing up the guest list for the ball.

  Soon he could see them in the distance. The children and Prue were dashing about, a safe distance from the cliff top. It looked as if they were chasing sheep—a favorite childhood pastime of his own. But the sheep—sensible creatures—showed no signs of real panic but merely bobbed off a safe distance just before they could be caught, and then returned to the serious business of grazing. Eve was sitting on a flat rock, her arms clasped about her knees while Aidan sprawled on the ground beside her. Morgan and Alleyne were strolling along the headland some distance away. There was no sign of Freyja.

  Prue spotted him first and came lumbering toward him in her characteristic ungainly manner, her elbows clamped to her sides, her hands flapping in the air. She was laughing and excited, and he opened his arms and braced himself as she hurtled into them and took her usual death grip on his neck.

  “Josh!” she cried. “Josh, Josh, Josh. I am having such fun. I like Becky and I like Davy. I love Eve and I love you and—”

  He released himself gently from her hold, set an arm about her shoulders, and hugged her to his side.

  “You love everyone, Prue,” he said. “You should save your breath and just tell me that you love everyone. Are you chasing sheep?”

  “Ye-e-es.” She laughed. “Eve said we could if we did not hurt them. Davy does not want to hurt them. Becky does not want to hurt them. I do not want to hurt them. I love sheep.” She beamed up at him.

  “Where is Freyja?” he asked.

  “Looking at the sea,” she said. “She likes it. She likes me. She let me hold her hand and pull her up the path.”

  Freyja had done that? he thought in some astonishment.

  “I held her hand because she is lonely,” Prue said. “I made her feel a bit better. You will make her all better, Josh.”

  Freyja lonely? Now that was a strange notion, but very possibly deadly accurate. Prue sometimes had unexpectedly sharp perceptions, which were quite unhampered by expectations that had been processed through thought and intellect. It was a novel thought, though. Freyja lonely?

  “Joshua,” Eve said as he came up to them, “this is all quite breathtakingly lovely. I am so glad we came here instead of going to the Lake District. After you are married to Freyja, we are going to be angling for invitations all the time. Are we not, Aidan?” Her eyes were dancing with laughter.

  Aidan reached up with a blade of grass and tickled her behind the ear with it. She laughed out loud as she batted it away.

  “I am going to have to teach you some manners, my lady,” Aidan said, poker-faced.

  Joshua felt a curious lurching sensation low in his abdomen. He tended to think of marriage as an outlet for passion, the sort of sexual passion one might find elsewhere without having to make a lifetime commitment. But here was an aspect of marriage that was altogether more enticing—strangely so, perhaps, when there was no overt sign of the passion that he guessed must flare when the two of them were alone and private together. They were relaxing together, laughing together—Aidan was laughing despite the deliberately severe expression—and teasing each other.

  “Might I say,” Aidan said as Prue skipped off to join the children in their play, “that your handling of that ridiculo
us situation at breakfast this morning quite won my admiration, Joshua? Bringing the whole thing out into the open as you did was clearly the very best thing to do.”

  “I learned early,” Joshua said, “not to play my aunt's games her way.”

  “But what if that man—Garnett, is it?—should bring along more witnesses?” Eve asked. “Today is all so lovely and so peaceful that I keep having to remind myself that someone is trying to frame you for murder.”

  “I have no worries about it.” Joshua smiled. “It is just a nuisance of a matter that needs to be cleared up once and for all. Where is Freyja?”

  “She found a hollow back there to sit in,” Aidan said, indicating the cliffs behind him with his thumb. “I do believe she is awestruck.”

  Joshua knew just the place she must have found. It was like a scoop of land hollowed out with a giant cup, its floor grassy, its three sides a mixture of rock and firm earth. On the fourth side the cliffs fell away beyond a grassy lip almost sheer to the beach and sea beneath. It was a place that was sheltered from most winds unless they were coming directly from the south.

  She was sitting in the middle of the hollow, her legs stretched out before her, her arms braced on the grass behind her taking her weight. She had changed out of the smart riding habit and hat she had worn this morning. Now she was wearing a muslin dress and a warm-looking cloak. Her hair, predictably, was loose down her back.

  “This was my childhood fortress,” he said, standing on the rim of the hollow above her, “and my ship's mast and my eagle's aerie and my haven for all sorts of dreams.”

  She lifted her face to the sun as he came down to stand and then sit beside her.

  “I have never been fond of the sea,” she said. “It has always seemed too vast to me, too mysterious, too . . . powerful. One could never control the sea, could one?”

  “And you like to feel in control of everything?” he asked her.

  “I am a woman,” she said. “Women have very little control over anything in their lives. We are not even persons by right, but the property of some man. We have to fight for every bit of control we can wield over our own destinies. I have four powerful brothers. I have had to fight harder than most. But I could not fight the sea.”