Ripe for Scandal

by Isobel Carr

  There had been no sign of Granby or Devere when they’d reached Hawick, and she didn’t expect to see or hear anything more until after she reached London. If she made it that far without killing the curate… Every time he coughed—and he seemed to do so incessantly—his bulk crushed her into the wall.

  She fingered the tiny head of one of the pins holding her gown shut. She pulled it loose and crossed her arms, the sharp tip pointed at her seatmate. It might not solve the problem, but it might make him at least a slight bit aware of his encroachment. And if not, at least it would make her feel better.

  He coughed again and then yelped and pulled back into his own corner as much as he could. Beau smiled to herself and lazed back into the seat, relaxing her shoulders for the first time in hours.

  At the next stop, the curate didn’t rejoin them, and Beau settled in with a sigh of relief. She had at least two more days to go before she reached London, and if she’d had to share the coach with that man the entire way, she’d have been hanged for murder long before she reached her destination.

  It had been easy enough for Gareth to rent a hack and ride ahead with Leo in hopes of rejoining Devere, but there had, of course, been no horse broken to sidesaddle. Renting a lady’s hack in London was one thing, but it simply wasn’t done in the hinterlands.

  Beau squirmed about, trying to get comfortable on the hard seat. If Devere had managed to stick with Granby, he might already know where Jamie was. He and Leo might even have reclaimed him by the time she reached London.

  Beau tamped down the swelling of hope. The odds were against them ever finding Jamie, whatever Gareth might say. She knew it, and she knew that Gareth knew it. She could see it in his eyes. He wanted to find the boy, badly, if only because she wanted to do so. But he didn’t truly believe they would and he was already preparing himself for her reaction to failure.

  And even if they did find Jamie, there were still so many issues to resolve. How did you make up for the loss of an earldom? Even if Jamie never knew what had been taken away from him, the guilt was going to haunt her. And if she wasn’t careful, it was going to eat away at her marriage like a cancer.

  Beau reached London in the middle of the night. The clatter of the wheels across the cobbles woke her. Gareth, as grim as an executioner, was waiting for her when she disembarked. What little hope she’d been clinging to dwindled and died.

  He gave her a fierce hug. “Missed you, brat.”

  “Devere lost him?”

  Gareth shook his head as Boaz materialized with her trunk slung over one shoulder. Together they followed him to the waiting coach.

  “No, Devere stuck to him like a tick all the way back to London. Granby doesn’t have Jamie. Not anymore.”

  “What do you mean not anymore?” Panic pushed everything out to the margins.

  “According to your Mr. Nowlin, who paid Lady Leonidas a very drunken call, they haven’t had him since the day they took him. Granby didn’t want him in the first place. He wanted you, so they abandoned him.”

  “Where?” She was going to be sick. Her stomach churned and knotted. How could they do such a thing? Jamie was practically a baby still.

  “Therein lies the conundrum,” Gareth said, his irritation with the situation evident. “Nowlin claims to have abandoned him near a gypsy encampment. So, if we’re very lucky—”

  “Jamie was taken in, and it might be possible to find him.”

  “Might be,” Gareth emphasized. “Your brother’s ridden off to see if he can find any of the horse traders he knows and put the word out, but at this time of year, there’s not a lot of movement. We might even have to wait until summer, when they all turn up at the horse fair in Appleby.”

  “But that’s months away, Gareth. Months.” They couldn’t wait months. She couldn’t wait months, not knowing if Jamie was safe.

  He put an arm around her and pulled her close. Beau took a deep breath, letting the familiar scent of sandalwood and amber drive away everything else, if only for a moment.

  “I know, love,” he said, jerking her back into the moment. “I don’t like it either, but at least we have some notion of where to begin looking.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Gareth awoke to his wife shaking him. There was shouting and the sound of someone pounding on a door.

  “Gareth, open this door this instant!”

  His father. Gareth grimaced and threw off the bedclothes. “Best get dressed, love,” he said. “I’m afraid we’re about to endure a very trying morning.”

  He climbed out of bed and pulled on his banyan, and then strode out of the room, leaving the door ajar behind him. “Coming,” he shouted back as the earl continued his assault upon the door. He turned the lock and yanked the door open, nearly catching a fist to the face as his father readied himself to knock again.

  “Everyone in the building must have heard you by now,” Gareth said, taking in his father’s florid face and beetled brow with a sigh. This was going to go nowhere good.

  His father glared at him and shouldered him aside. “What do I care? If you had a proper home in town, it wouldn’t be a concern in the first place.”

  Gareth prayed for patience. Arguing with the old man wasn’t going to help. Pointing out that he didn’t have a proper home because the expense was out of the question wouldn’t help either. The earl was as angry as Gareth had ever seen him, and he’d seen him livid and ranting on many an occasion.

  “It’s madness,” his father said, his face betraying a hint of confusion. “Utter madness.”

  “What is, sir?” Gareth asked, though he already knew the answer. It has to be Souttar. Nothing else would compel their father to seek him out in such a way. Nothing else mattered so much to the earl.

  “Some Scottish woman has sued Souttar for divorce,” the earl said. “Word of it reached your mother and me in Bath yesterday. I’m sure Lady Olivia is having fits. When her father hears of this, there will be hell to pay. Your mother is prostrate and is refusing to leave her bed. I had to leave her behind while I came to town to see what can be done. And Souttar, damn him, has been playing least in sight like a damn whipped cur.”

  Gareth nodded sympathetically. Hysterical women couldn’t be easy to deal with, especially when their hysteria was well justified. And with no one else to badger, of course his father had turned up here.

  “You knew, didn’t you, boy? Knew we were ruined. That your brother was going to drag our name through the mud and make us the laughingstock of England.”

  “Not precisely, Father. I’d hoped that I was mistaken in my conclusions, and that it might all be resolved without ever coming to Lady Olivia’s notice.”

  The earl’s normally devious gaze was shadowed, as though he couldn’t quite grasp what was happening, or accept that he had no control over it. “Something’s got to be done,” he said, as though simply saying it would make it so.

  “Something is being done,” Gareth replied. “It’s just not a something you like.”

  His father’s expression hardened, and Gareth knew that he’d gone too far. “Souttar’s got to be saved. This nonsense can’t stand.”

  “And I’m to be the one sacrificed in his place? Lady Boudicea to be ruined in Lady Olivia’s stead? I think not.”

  “I think so, my boy,” the earl said, the threat implicit in his tone. “Souttar’s the heir. We can’t have this. The two of you are like enough. You’ll go to Edinburgh, you’ll present yourself to the court and clear up this woman’s mistake.”

  “I won’t, sir.” Gareth stared his father down. “I’ve helped as much as I can. I agreed to house Souttar’s son. I even agreed to claim him as my own bastard, all to preserve Souttar’s marriage and prevent Lady Olivia’s ruin. But that was when I believed Souttar’s first wife to be dead.”

  “Souttar’s son?” The earl’s face mottled, turning an ugly shade of puce.

  Gareth pinched the bridge of his nose. Damn his brother for not making a clean breast of it. “He’s still h
olding out on you, sir. If that Scottish woman proves her claim, the boy will be Souttar’s heir.”

  “Heir? Have you run mad as well? A child in the mix makes it all the more imperative that Souttar be relieved of responsibility. A cutler’s grandson to be the eighth Earl of Roxwell? It’s preposterous.”

  “No, my lord,” Beau said from the doorway between the two rooms. She’d pulled on just enough clothing to be decent. A frilled wrapper tied securely over several layers of petticoat. “It’s a simple fact of law.”

  “You stay out of this—”

  “Because it has nothing to do with me?” She crossed the room until she was standing directly in front of the earl. Gareth held his breath. His father had no idea what he was about to deal with. It was all that he could do to keep from grinning. With her hair in a braid down her back and her feet bare, she looked much younger than she was, and thus more innocent and more easily intimidated.

  The earl made a dismissive, blustering sound, and Beau inhaled sharply. “It’s my marriage and reputation you’re proposing to sacrifice on the altar of Souttar’s stupidity, and I won’t allow it.”

  “You have no reputation, my lady,” the earl said with a vicious smile.

  Beau smiled back, every bit as cold a predator as his father. His father’s smile faltered, and he glanced at Gareth, as though he expected help.

  Beau’s tongue darted out, wetting her lips. “You think the duke will take such an action lightly? It will be open war. And I swear to you, I’ll drag every dirty bit of the proceedings through the gossip rags. Lady Worsley’s divorce will be nothing next to what I’ll give them. And I’ll enjoy doing it. Remember,” she said, leaning in so that her voice was barely a whisper, “I’ll have nothing left to lose.”

  “You could remarry once the divorce was granted,” the earl said, desperation leaking out.

  “So could Lady Olivia,” Beau parried.

  “Lady Olivia isn’t the hussy you are,” the earl snapped, yanking off his wig and crumpling it in his hand. “And why would an heiress want to marry a man who already has an heir? She’d be throwing her fortune away. Her father would never allow it. It has to be you.” He punctuated the you by shaking his wig at her.

  “I don’t think you’ve thought it through, Father,” Gareth said before the two of them could come to blows. “The switch wouldn’t stand up to even the most cursory inspection.”

  “Why not?” the earl said, clearly not ready to give up on his pet solution.

  “The dates, sir. The dates.” Gareth almost felt bad about having to point out something so basic to his father. It was a clear sign of how upset the earl was that he hadn’t already worked it out for himself. “They must have already been clearly established in the libel, and while Souttar was in Scotland committing his folly, I was abroad committing my own.”

  Beau smiled triumphantly, and his father let loose with a blistering string of invective. “Look at her smile,” the earl said when he was done turning the air blue. “A lady ought to be stunned. Offended.”

  “A gentleman wouldn’t have put a lady to the blush in the first place, so I would propose we’re even on that score, my lord.”

  “Saucy bitch,” the earl growled.

  Beau curtsied to him as she would have to the king. An elegant maneuver, even in her dressing gown and bare feet. Saucy bitch indeed. She was practically daring his father to strike her. Of all things Gareth was sure of in life, he was dead sure that he didn’t want to contend with that.

  “Father, I suggest you prepare for the worst. When the scandal breaks—and it will break; it’s inevitable now—it’s probably best that mother not be in town.”

  The earl flicked an angry glance over both of them, as though they were somehow to blame, as though he were still trying to concoct some logic by which they could be blamed.

  “I suppose I shall take your mother to Spa after all.” The earl turned on his heel to leave, clapping his mauled wig back atop his head as he walked. He stopped at the door. “The boy,” he said. “I shall want to see him before we go.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible, sir.” Gareth said.

  “Why pray tell?”

  “He’s missing,” Beau said. “He’s missing, and we’ve yet to recover him.”

  The earl blanched. “He can’t be missing. You can’t just lose the heir to a title. Do you know what that would mean?”

  “It would mean the title would go into abeyance after Souttar’s death,” Gareth replied. The same horror that gripped his father rushed through him, making his pulse lurch unevenly. He hadn’t thought it through until just now. Damnation.

  “We can’t have that, Gareth. You find that child. Find him and bring him to Ashburn. Whatever you have to do, do it.”

  “Everything that can be done is being done, my lord,” Beau said. “When we find Jamie, we’ll certainly bring him to meet you.”

  “Jamie?” The earl looked decidedly displeased with the name.

  “James Gareth Sandison,” Gareth said.

  “Named him after the damn pretender, did she?” The earl shook his head in obvious disgust.

  “You named us after the knights of King Arthur’s court, sir. Being named after the first Scottish king to sit upon the English throne or his displaced descendant hardly seems more outrageous in comparison,” Gareth said. “What would you have done if one of us had been a girl?” he added, the thought simply spilling from his lips before he could stop it.

  “Named her Vivienne,” the earl snapped and stormed out.

  “The Lady of the Lake.” Beau stretched her neck, rubbing the back of it with one hand. “I’d have thought him more inclined to choose Elaine, who died pining. It seems he likes women of power after all.” Beau blinked up at him, doing her best impression of girlish innocence.

  “Only in theory,” Gareth replied dryly. “And certainly not when they stand up to him.”

  CHAPTER 49

  Gareth was ensconced at The Red Lion with Vaughn and Devere when his brother ran him to ground. His friends took one look at Souttar and melted away with only the sound of chair legs scraping across the floor to mark their departure.

  From across the room, young Kettleston glared at them. Vaughn’s forgiveness had been enough for most of the League to welcome him back into its ranks, but there were a few holdouts, especially among the youngest members, who seemed to share Kettleston’s rather rigid view of right and wrong.

  Ignoring the open hostility radiating off the boys gathered near the door, Souttar strode right past them and sat down heavily at Gareth’s table. The viscount rested his head in his hands, the long cuffs of his shirt obscuring his eyes. “What did you have to go and tell him for?” Souttar said, hands balling up into fists in his hair.

  “He had to know, Souttar. It would have come out sooner or later.”

  “He came home in a rage this morning. Yanked me out of bed and told me to leave. I’m cut off. Not welcome. Father said to come back with my son or not at all.” He looked up, hair wild, falling all about his face. “I gave him to you to take care of. How could you lose him?”

  “So this is my fault, is it?” Gareth picked up his glass and drank. It was just like his brother to want to shift responsibility onto his shoulders. He’d been Souttar’s whipping boy any number of times over the years.

  Souttar glared at him.

  “Neither you nor his mother wanted Jamie,” Gareth said. “You both made that much perfectly clear.”

  Souttar blanched. “I could hardly—”

  “You,” Gareth said with disdain, “could hardly be trusted with a puppy, let alone a child. What woman in her right mind would think her son would be better off with you?”

  His brother flinched as though Gareth had struck him. “Her letter said she wants to marry again, and her prospective husband doesn’t want Jamie underfoot.”

  Gareth fought down the urge to leap across the table and throttle Souttar. What a pair they were, he and his illicit wife.
Neither of them gave a damn about Jamie.

  “He was taken when Beau was attacked,” Gareth said after he’d got his temper back under control. “There wasn’t anything I could have done about it. And if you don’t think that makes me sick, then you don’t know me at all, brother. They were mine to protect, both of them, and I failed.”

  Souttar dragged a hand over his face, rubbing at the shadow of beard on his chin. “What’s being done to recover him?”

  “We’ve got men searching all over England. Searching and reporting back.” Gareth pulled out his pocketbook and opened up the notebook inside. “These are all the gypsy encampments we’ve found and alerted.”

  Souttar leaned closer and Gareth pushed the list at him.

  “Gypsies?”

  Gareth nodded. “One of the men who took him said he abandoned him near a gypsy encampment. It’s all we have to go on.”

  “Tell me what to do,” Souttar said as though the words were being wrenched out of him with something sharp. “Tell me where to look.”

  Gareth studied his brother. The offer was utterly surprising, but he looked and sounded sincere. Being cut off must have shaken his world off its axis. Perhaps Jamie had one decent parent—or the makings thereof—after all.

  “Well,” Gareth said, “we have reports of an encampment near Burgess Hill. I was going to go, but if you like, you can go instead and I’ll take the next one. If he’s not there, don’t forget to ask them where we might find other camps. Get names. Introductions. That’s vital.”

  “Burgess Hill.” Souttar nodded and stood, a little color flowing back into his face. “I’ll leave at once.”

  When his brother had left, Vaughn wandered back over and reclaimed his former seat. “Will wonders never cease?” Beau’s brother said, watching as Souttar pulled on his coat near the door.

  Gareth took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “I’d never thought to see the day Souttar put himself out for anything or anyone.”