Whisper of Scandal

by Nicola Cornick

  The door opened and Joanna shuddered as a wall of noise washed through, the sound of flesh against flesh, the sympathetic groans of the crowd as the youngster took a hammering. Joanna put her fingers in her ears.

  She became aware that Alex Grant was standing in front of her, immaculate in his casual evening attire. His lips were moving. She took her fingers out of her ears.

  “What on earth are you doing in a prizefighting tavern if you dislike the sport?” he demanded.

  How marvelous. Within the space of ten seconds he had managed to destroy all her feelings of relaxation and put her back up. The prickles of irritation jabbed her.

  “How do you know I dislike it?” she countered.

  “You are sitting in here alone with your fingers in your ears and an expression on your face as though you were sucking lemons,” Alex said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to try to find myself a bodyguard to accompany me to Spitsbergen,” Joanna said. She gestured Brooke forward. “Lord Grant, this is Daniel Brooke, a former prizefighter. Brooke, Lord Grant.”

  Brooke bowed politely to Alex, but there was a steely light in his eyes, as though he was spoiling for a fight.

  Just say the word, his demeanor seemed to suggest.

  Joanna saw Alex’s gaze sweep over Brooke with the same look of shrewd appraisal that the prizefighter was giving him. Many men would be intimidated by Brooke’s raw aggression, Joanna thought, but Alex held his ground. He was at least half a foot taller than Brooke, leaner and less bulky, but in his own way he had a dangerous edge. Perhaps it came from having knocked about those corners of the world where only reckless adventurers chose to tread. A man had to be strong, resourceful and courageous to survive in such places. But this was perilous ground. Joanna gave herself a little shake. Those were the kind of thoughts she had had about David when first she had met him. David Ware, the hero…

  The two men measured each other and Joanna felt something elemental in the air, then Brooke stepped back and nodded once, and the tension diminished.

  “A bodyguard,” Alex said, and he, too, nodded, and Joanna saw the tight muscles in Brooke’s shoulders ease a little more.

  “Good gracious, Lord Grant,” she said. “Do I discern approval from you?”

  A smile lifted the corners of Alex’s mouth. “A journey of the type you plan to undertake is full of surprises, Lady Joanna,” he said, “and not all of them pleasant.”

  “So I thought,” Joanna said. “Unfortunately, Brooke has turned me down because he does not like the cold. It is bad for his joints.”

  “A hazard of the profession, I suppose,” Alex said.

  “May I offer you a drink, sir?” Brooke inquired courteously.

  “Thank you, but no,” Alex said. “I am here only to speak with Lady Joanna.” He turned to her. “You are aware that prizefighting is illegal, my lady?”

  “The Dukes of York and Clarence are watching, as are three London magistrates,” Joanna said. “I do not think we shall be troubled by the law.”

  Alex gestured to the armchair across from hers. “May I?” His gaze fell on the glass of stout. “Is that beer?”

  “Stout,” Joanna said. “I enjoy a glass of malt beer.” She waited for the inevitable condemnation.

  Alex turned to Brooke. “Perhaps I shall take a drink after all, thank you, Brooke. Brandy, please.”

  Brooke bowed and went out.

  “You are extremely polite tonight,” Joanna said.

  “No sane man would be otherwise with a prizefighter in attendance,” Alex said. He looked at the glass of stout again. “Are you foxed, Lady Joanna? Dark beer is the strongest.”

  “I know,” Joanna said. “It is delightful.”

  “You are foxed.”

  “There are so many things about me that you can disapprove of,” Joanna said sweetly. She slewed around in her seat to look at him. “Why are you here, Lord Grant? And how did you know where to find me, for that matter?”

  “Owen Purchase told me,” Alex said.

  “Ah. Then he will also have told you that Lottie and I have commissioned him to take us to Spitsbergen.”

  “He did.” Alex frowned. “Mrs. Cummings plans to go, too?”

  She thinks it will be an adventure,” Joanna said. She sighed. “I suppose that you tried to dissuade Captain Purchase from accepting our offer?”

  “I did. I failed.”

  Joanna smiled a little at his honesty. She was beginning to see that one would never get Spanish coin from Alex Grant, no matter how uncomfortable the truth. It was a quality that would have made her like him under normal circumstances, but his mistrust of her, those poisonous seeds that David had sowed, would always stand between them.

  “Captain Purchase is very loyal,” she said. “Or perhaps it is just the money I offered him.”

  Alex laughed. “Purchase is, as you so rightly point out, an adventurer.” His look changed, became keen. “Though he does appear to hold you in esteem. Do you know him well?”

  “Not in the way that you are implying,” Joanna snapped, sensitive to the implication in his voice. “Lord Grant, your opinions are offensive. I can see that to you it is unaccountable that anyone might think well of me if they are not my lover!”

  “I beg your pardon,” Alex said mildly, taking the wind out of her sails. “I meant to imply no such thing. Brooke appears to hold you in esteem, too.”

  “The prizefighters are devoted to me,” Joanna said. “I am a Lady of the Fancy.” She laughed as she saw his expression. “Oh, dear, Lord Grant—that moment of approval really was brief, was it not?”

  “I do not care for prizefighting,” Alex said stiffly, “nor for the sort of celebrity it bestows on you, Lady Joanna. To be acclaimed by the boxing fraternity is not my idea of success.”

  “Of course it is not,” Joanna said, her temper fraying. “One would have to paddle up the Ganges in a canoe to gain your appreciation, Lord Grant. Oh, but I forgot—” Her tone was scornful. “That does not apply if one is a woman.”

  She saw that his face had set into its customary stern lines. “It is true,” Alex said, “that I prefer women to stay at home.”

  “In their place,” Joanna said. “Of course.”

  There was a cold silence between them whilst Brooke delivered Alex’s glass of brandy and slipped out of the room again as discreetly as the best-trained butler. Joanna could feel Alex’s gaze on her face, intense and thoughtful. Despite the friction between them it made her feel prickly and hot. There was something about Alex’s quiet appraisal that stripped away all pretense and defense and left her emotions naked. She wished it were not so. Alex Grant was a man who distrusted and disliked her and as such he was the last person for whom she wanted to feel this disturbing current of attraction. It pulled and pushed her in contrary directions, provoking her, arousing her against her will.

  “You have not answered my question,” she said abruptly, breaking the sharp sense of awareness between them. “Why are you here?”

  “To beg you to allow me to accompany you to Spitsbergen,” Alex said. His tone was ironic. “Purchase tells me you have the final word. If you turn me down I shall have to work my passage as a cabin boy.”

  Joanna gave a spontaneous burst of laughter. “A cabin boy? You?”

  “Indeed. Even Devlin would be giving me orders.”

  “That would be a terrible waste of your experience and expertise.” Joanna considered him. “You offered to pay Captain Purchase for your passage?”

  “I did. He still maintained that it was your decision.”

  “How very gratifying that he cannot be bought,” Joanna said. “The answer is no.”

  She saw a faint smile touch Alex’s lips and knew he had been expecting her blunt refusal.

  “Let me try to persuade you to change your mind,” Alex said. He shifted. “It is not too late.”

  “Change my mind about going to Spitsbergen?” Joanna said.

  “About the entire business,�
�� Alex said. His dark gaze slid over her thoughtfully. “You live very much at the whim of society, Lady Joanna. There will be those who not only disapprove of you going to Spitsbergen but of you rearing your husband’s bastard child. I suspect that John Hagan, for example, will be appalled. What happens to you if the ton withdraws its favor from you?”

  There was a hush in the room. Outside the door the tumultuous roar of the boxing crowd swelled and fell like the flowing tide.

  “Then I starve,” Joanna said lightly. She had confronted those fears earlier. She refused to let him frighten her. “But fortunately, Nina will not, will she, Lord Grant? I assume that David has left you the means to support his child since you are to be our trustee?”

  There was a rather odd silence. Joanna raised a questioning brow. For once, she thought, Alex Grant was actually looking a little… What was it? Embarrassed? Discomfited?

  “Ware left a treasure map,” he said gruffly.

  Joanna blinked. “I beg your pardon? A treasure map?”

  Alex put a hand into his jacket and extracted a flimsy piece of paper, yellow with age. He unfolded it and handed it to her. Joanna gaped. It was a very rough drawing of an island with inlets, bays and coves, crudely executed but with a large X marking a spot close to a beach on a long peninsula. There was, for good measure, the sign of the skull and crossbones.

  “Well, really,” Joanna said. “Why could David not deposit money in a bank like normal people?”

  There was a hint of color along Alex’s cheekbones. She wondered if he had thought the same thing. He did not strike her as the sort of man to have much truck with buried treasure. She found that she was smiling. It was so gratifying to see Alex Grant at a disadvantage for once.

  “Did you bring this back from Spitsbergen along with the letter?” she queried.

  “No!” Alex practically snapped the word. “Churchward gave it to me. It was with Ware’s will.”

  “It looks all a hum to me,” Joanna said. She shook her head. “How typical of David to be so mysterious.”

  “It is all rather unsatisfactory,” Alex said stiffly.

  “Well, that was David all over,” Joanna said. “He was most unsatisfactory in so many ways.” She glanced at Alex. His dark gaze was fathomless. “But I forget,” she said, unable to erase the bitterness from her voice. “David could do no wrong in your eyes, could he, Lord Grant? He was above reproach even if he expected you to dig up Nina’s fortune as well as everything else.” She shifted in her chair. “And for that reason I repeat that I cannot permit you to accompany me to Spitsbergen. You neither like me nor trust me and the journey will be uncomfortable enough without turning around and falling over your disapproval at every turn. If you wish to take ship to find this so-called treasure then that is your choice—and your responsibility, but you are not coming with us.”

  Alex’s frown had deepened. “It makes absolutely no sense to sail separately, Lady Joanna.”

  Privately, Joanna acknowledged that. It did not, however, change her feeling that the last person she wanted on her ship was this disapproving stranger.

  “We need not be enemies,” Alex continued. “For the sake of the child we could try to be friends.”

  “You aim too high,” Joanna said. “Let us keep our expectations within reason. We could try to be civil.” She shook her head. “The answer is still no. You are forceful by nature… You would be forever trying to tell me what to do and then we would quarrel. Simply being near you makes me feel—”

  “Makes you feel what?” Alex raised one dark, quizzical brow.

  “Makes me feel infuriated!” Joanna exclaimed, jumping to her feet. It was true. The room felt too small, airless and close, dominated by Alex’s presence, the antagonism simmering between them like a kettle coming to the boil.

  Alex got to his feet, too. “So,” he said, “you swore that you would do everything in your power to bring Nina safely home and even in that you lied.”

  Joanna stared at him, flayed by his contemptuous tone. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Only that anyone with any sense would see that it is in Nina’s interests for you to accept my escort,” Alex said. “But you are so headstrong that you will not agree to it.”

  “Don’t speak of me as though you are referring to a horse,” Joanna said furiously. “I am not headstrong, I am the one with sense here! We have been talking for all of ten minutes and already we are arguing. What Nina will need is reassurance and stability, not a pair of guardians who fight like cat and dog!”

  She turned away from him and wiped away the errant tears that insisted on escaping from the corners of her eyes. She did not want to cry in front of Alex Grant. He already made her feel so vulnerable, so emotionally exposed. Her feelings felt as though they had been rubbed raw, stinging. David, she thought bitterly, had chosen well when he had sent this man to torment her.

  “You must excuse me,” she said rapidly. “It is late and my business here is concluded—”

  She turned to find Alex very close to her.

  “You’re crying,” he said, his voice rough with some emotion she could not place.

  “Of course I’m crying!” Joanna exclaimed. “I have had a very bad week!” She flashed him a look. “Go away, Lord Grant. Can you not take a hint? I really do not want to cry in front of you!”

  Alex ignored her words. His hand was on her waist, the gentle warmth of his touch searing her through the silk bodice of her gown. How had that happened? He was drawing her closer, as though he wanted to comfort her. Joanna had never equated a man’s physical proximity with reassurance before; David had only ever touched her when he wanted to bed her. And surely Alex, of all people, cared nothing for whether she was distressed or not. She felt confused, disturbed. She was not sure what was showing on her face. Alex raised a hand and brushed away the smudges of her tears with the pad of his thumb. Her heart ached at the tenderness of the gesture. She looked up to meet the dazzling intensity of those gray eyes and then he was kissing her, his mouth gentle and persuasive, and the sheer surprise of it ripped through her and set her trembling.

  “Open your mouth,” he whispered and her mind reeled shock whilst her lips parted in instinctive response to the command and to the pressure of his. Alex coaxed them farther apart with sensual deliberation and she felt the slow sweep of his tongue against hers. She could taste brandy mingled with the salt of her tears. The heat consumed her then, fierce, scalding her, leaving her shaking and breathless. They fell apart and stood staring at one another.

  “What was that?” Jo found her voice first. “Comfort?”

  “Scarcely that.” For a moment Alex looked as stunned as she felt, his expression taut and astonished, his gray eyes mirroring her shock and confusion. Joanna felt a violent wash of pleasure to see how shaken he was.

  “That was not what I intended to do,” he said slowly.

  “I imagine not.” Joanna bit her lip. She felt dazed and heated, her stomach burning with wicked excitement. The air between them felt alive. From the room next door came the roar of the boxing crowd as atavistic as a beat in the blood. There was something equally primitive in Alex’s eyes, but it did not scare her. It called to her.

  “But now that I have…” He was drawing her close again, his voice so low that she could barely hear it, “I confess I have been wanting this for a long time. In Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and even earlier…”

  She could have stopped him. She thought she should have done, knew she should have done. She did not like Alex Grant, yet for some reason that very aversion seemed to make his appeal even more powerful. It added an undertow of raw passion that simultaneously seduced and appalled her. There was a dark current of attraction between them that tempted her with its wicked sweetness, drawing her in so that she clung to him instead of pushing him away. She did not understand it and when Alex held her she did not care.

  This time it was not so gentle. Alex’s lips captured hers and took them with all the passion she had a
lways sensed was in him. Joanna yielded to the danger and the excitement, sliding her arms about his neck, pulling him closer. The kiss was so urgent and primitive that she shook with the power of it. It called to an answering need in her. Gone was the ice maiden, the woman David Ware had scorned as barren and frigid. Her mind spun as she realized that she had never felt like this before, never experienced this intensity, this utter desire. It was what she had searched for and never found. She made a small, surrendering noise deep in her throat and felt the harsh need surge in him as he gathered her closer, every hard line of his body taut against hers. There was a tense, heated spiral of desire tightening within her. She wanted him to make love to her here, in this inn parlor with the wild noise of the crowd in her ears.

  When he finally released her Joanna pressed her fingers to her mouth in disbelief and felt her lips swollen and moist from the demand of their kisses.

  “Well,” Alex said, “that was interesting.”

  Interesting? Was that what he called it? Joanna stared at him in outrage. He had kissed her with lust and sweetness and a fiery heat that had her body still humming and he thought it was interesting? Really, she thought, he only needed to speak to annoy her.

  “I am glad that you thought so,” she said frostily, trying to damp down her feelings.

  His grin was pure wickedness. He looked damnably pleased with himself. Joanna’s annoyance grew.

  “I suppose it was a little more than that,” he said.

  “You flatter me,” Joanna said. “I should like to know how you can kiss me like that when you profess to dislike me so heartily.”

  “It seems that I do not need to like you to kiss you,” Alex said. His gaze was dark and hot. “Nor do you need to like me to kiss me back.”

  She felt color flare into her face. “It is unaccountable, is it not,” she said, “for I do not like you at all.”