Whisper of Scandal

by Nicola Cornick

  As for Alex, she thought, she would make it easy for him. She had chartered Sea Witch for the journey home, but she would not be on the ship. Instead, she would take passage with Captain Hallows on the Raison. It would be an uncomfortable journey with Lottie and John Hagan on board, too, but she did not care. She could not feel anything now beyond a numb misery that she had lost Alex forever. With the last of her money she would pay Owen Purchase to take Alex wherever he wished to travel. She would be the one to give him the freedom to go wherever he chose. Small recompense, perhaps, for her betrayal of him, but it was the only thing she could do.

  She walked out of the huge monastery gates and stood on the bluff above Bellsund Bay. It was another soft summer day like the one that had greeted her arrival in Spitsbergen. A breeze from the south tugged at her hair and danced with her skirts. She could feel the sun on her back and it was warm. The sky was a perfect clear-washed blue with the mountains so sharp against it that they looked like cutout shapes. The snow was so white it hurt her eyes.

  She was going home. It was time to say goodbye.

  She looked down on the ships anchored in the fjord below. She was going back now, back to London, back to the same life she had known before. It was odd that in the end nothing had really changed. She and Merryn would live in town and she would design beautiful interiors for people and attend fashionable events and smile and dance and skate across the surface of her life as she had before. She would be Lady Grant rather than Lady Joanna Ware, but it would make little difference because Alex would be in India or the Amazon Basin or Samarkand, wherever that was. She would have to ask Merryn for an atlas or buy a globe, perhaps, so that she might learn where all these places were.

  Or perhaps she would not, for following Alex’s journeys across the globe would only serve to remind her how far he was from her.

  She heard a step behind her and spun around, her heart lifting with hope, only for it to swoop down into her boots a moment later when she saw it was not Alex but Owen Purchase who was standing there. He came to stand beside her and for a moment neither of them spoke.

  “You’re going to run away, aren’t you?” Purchase said. “You’re going to go with Hallows on the Raison.”

  Joanna shook her head. “I’m not running away,” she said. “I am going home.”

  “Come with me,” Purchase said. Then, as Joanna gazed at him incredulously: “We’ll take Sea Witch. We can go wherever we choose. Anywhere in the world.”

  Joanna looked into his eyes and her heart stuttered with shock at what she saw there.

  “Owen—” she began, but he shook his head.

  “Don’t say anything. Not yet.” He half turned from her and stood looking out across the fjord. “I never thought I’d do this,” he said, “never thought I would play a friend false by running off with his wife.” He took a breath, looked at her. “But the truth is that you’re too good for him, Joanna. He doesn’t deserve you and it near enough drives me insane.” He laughed harshly. “It sounds so trite to say the words, but they’re true.”

  “No,” Joanna said. “No, they are not. Owen, if you knew—”

  “All I can see,” Purchase said fiercely, “is that you are here and you are sad, and that Grant is nowhere to be seen and anyway, he is the bastard who has made you sad in the first place and I cannot watch that anymore.”

  Joanna struggled to find the right words. “Owen,” she said, “you were the one who told me that Alex was a fine man, and you were right.” She sighed. “I am not better than Alex. It’s simply that he and I are wrong for one another. Something happened, and it can never be put right, and that is why I am leaving.”

  Owen took her hand. His eyes were a dazzling blue-green, the color of the summer sea. He looked so handsome that Joanna smiled ruefully, for how many women would have given all that they owned to be standing in her place? Yet she could never go with him, for she loved Alex too much. She would not compound her betrayal of him with another.

  She freed herself gently and saw Purchase smile, too, in wry recognition that she was going to refuse him. She did not say anything. She did not need to.

  “Devil take it,” Purchase said after a moment, and there was true, deep bitterness in his voice. “The only time in my life that a woman turns me down and it is the only time that it matters.”

  He raised a hand to her in farewell and walked away, his boots crunching on the gravel.

  ALEX HAD SPENT AN HOUR that afternoon with Captain Hallows, of the frigate Raison, a man whom he had always deplored as a stuffed shirt and whom he disliked even more on this occasion.

  “I’m anxious to be gone from this godforsaken place, Grant,” Hallows had snapped when they met in the monastery library. “The forecast is bad and the ice could close in again at any moment. We’re reprovisioning now and I intend to sail on tomorrow morning’s tide.”

  “Of course,” Alex had said. “Spitsbergen is no place for the timid sailor.” He watched Hallows’s indignant face grow redder and more indignant still before the man marched off toward the harbor to rejoin his ship.

  Alex then called for pen and ink, and spent a second hour composing a letter to his London lawyers concerning the arrangements for his wife’s allowance. Joanna, he thought, could take the letter with her on Sea Witch when she left. For a moment his thoughts veered, dark and angry, toward his wife, and then he pushed them away, for what was there to think about? Joanna had betrayed him in the most fundamental way possible, with deliberate deceit from the first. He could hardly bear to acknowledge that her perfidiousness hurt all the more because he was in love with her. That was a weakness he fully intended to exorcise. The hard angry slashes of his pen on the parchment helped express his feelings, but he ruined three perfectly good quills and a number of sheets of paper in the process.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon and evening occupied in discussions with Abbot Starostin on the practical and financial arrangements for Nina Ware’s future, for although the abbot had said there was no obligation to fulfill, Alex had insisted that there should be a formal settlement. He was still one of Nina Ware’s trustees alongside his wife and he was determined to meet his responsibilities. In terms of Ware’s so-called fortune, Alex, too, had seen the marble that Dev had brought back from Odden Bay and knew that John Hagan had claimed it as his inheritance. After a few minutes—and a conversation with the abbot—they had agreed that it would be of no practical use to Nina and therefore Alex would not oppose Hagan’s insistence on taking it back to England. Privately Alex thought that Hagan was mad to imagine that he could ever mine the stone in sufficient quantity to make a fortune, for the harsh Spitsbergen climate made a mockery of the plan. Well, Alex thought sourly, let the greedy, unprincipled bastard find that out for himself.

  The discussion of business matters soothed Alex, rational and unemotional as it was, but at the back of his mind he was aware that there burned something more dangerous, hot and strong, a feeling of detestation of what Joanna had done to him and a disbelief and dismay at her betrayal of him. Yet his feelings for his wife were anything but simple. He had to accept that Joanna had shown courage and resilience on this journey beyond anything that he had expected of her. She had proved herself truly generous in leaving Nina with her family. She was kind and loving and giving and he ached for the Joanna he had thought he was starting to know and love. He wanted to find that woman again—wanted it violently, far more than he had ever thought possible.

  When the discussions were complete, Starostin ordered food for them, and wine spiced with herbs, and they talked of Alex’s travels and of Spitsbergen and Russia and the future, whilst the light turned from bright white to the softer blue that heralded night. Eventually Starostin went to a small wooden cabinet in a corner of the study and took out two glasses and a thick green bottle.

  “You will join me in a glass of vodka, Lord Grant?” he asked. “I should warn you, it is strong.”

  Alex laughed. “I have drunk some strong spirit
s on my travels.”

  “Of course.” The abbot poured, came across to the long windows where Alex was standing and handed the glass to him. “You know that it is bad luck not to drink it in one go?”

  They toasted one another and then Alex downed the spirit in one mouthful in the traditional way—and almost choked. Drinking with the abbot, he thought, might well prove the most demanding ordeal of his journey so far.

  Several hours and eight measures of vodka later, Alex was feeling considerably mellower than he had all day and staggered back to the monastery guesthouse where he collapsed on the sealskin rugs on his bunk and promptly fell asleep. He woke to find himself lying in exactly the same position. His boots were still on. Clearly Frazer had despaired of him and Alex could hardly blame the man. He knew that he stank of spirits and it felt as though a furnace was hammering in his head.

  The building was very quiet. Accustomed to waking to the sounds of his fellow travelers, in particular to Lottie Cummings’s grumbling, Alex lay and reveled for a moment in the peace. Then he realized that it was probably too quiet. It was suspiciously quiet. He struggled up, glanced once at the clock, looked at it a second time in horror to see how much time had elapsed and levered himself from the bed, shouting for Frazer.

  The steward appeared immediately in the doorway, a razor in his hand, a towel over his arm and with a bowl of steaming hot water, which he placed on the dresser behind him.

  “About time, my lord,” he said, his mouth turning down at the corners.

  Alex rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Where is everyone?”

  He walked past Frazer into the room beyond. The guest chambers opened off a central stone-floored room; the other doors were ajar. He could see Dev and Owen Purchase’s spartan room with two small kit bags. The next room was empty. It should have been full to overflowing with Joanna’s luggage. Fear, sudden and sharp, pierced Alex’s aching head.

  He looked at Frazer, who looked back at him with what Alex had no difficulty interpreting as gigantic disapproval.

  “Frazer,” he said. “Where is Lady Grant?”

  “Gone, my lord,” Frazer said, and closed his mouth like a trap.

  Alex waited. When nothing further was forthcoming, he added, “Do you have any more information for me, Frazer?”

  “Captain Hallows took on supplies yesterday, my lord,” Frazer said. “Whilst you were asleep, he sailed for England.” His mouth shut again with an audible snap that promised no further words would voluntarily be forthcoming.

  “Lady Grant went with Hallows on the Raison?” Alex checked the clock again. “How long ago?”

  There was a silence.

  “How long?” Alex bellowed.

  “Four hours, my lord,” Frazer said reluctantly. “Maybe five.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you wake me?” Alex said.

  Frazer glared. “Lady Grant asked that I should not,” he said.

  Alex rubbed his temples. Joanna’s absence, the emptiness of the rooms, the silence, mocked him. He was the one who had told Joanna to go back to London, he remembered. He had told her that he would take ship from Spitsbergen. He had as good as told her that he never wanted to see her again. Mired in bitterness at her betrayal, he had thought that he did not. Yet now that she had gone he realized how much disillusion and anger had blinded him to what he truly wanted.

  He grabbed his coat.

  “Pack my bags, please, Frazer,” he said over his shoulder, “and have them ready with the others to take down to the harbor. Where is Captain Purchase?”

  “Captain Purchase is finishing provisioning Sea Witch, my lord,” Frazer said.

  Alex hurried down the guesthouse steps and out of the gate. He could see Sea Witch alone again within the curve of the bay, a tiny ship on a blue sea, dwarfed by the sharp black peaks of the mountains. The sea was quiet today, dazzling sparks of sunlight leaping from the surface.

  He found Purchase in the middle of his men, helping the crew roll barrels of pickled eider eggs and salted herring on board the ship. The sight made him think how much Joanna would hate such a diet—and then he realized that she would not be eating it and he felt his stomach drop and the dread of loss choke his throat.

  “Is it true?” he asked urgently. “Has she gone?”

  “I assume that you mean Lady Grant?” Purchase said. His expression was hard. “Yes, it’s quite true. They sailed on the tide this morning.” A faint, cold smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he and Alex stood side by side watching the provisioning of Sea Witch.

  “She paid me another six months’ charter,” Purchase said. “It was for you.” The look he gave Alex was hard with dislike. “She made it easy for you, Grant,” he said. “She gave you Sea Witch.” He paused. “So where do you want to go?”

  His tone implied that hell might be his favored option.

  Alex looked at the trim little vessel. She was no ship of the line, but she had proved her worth. And it had been their contract, his and Joanna’s, in the beginning. He had given her his name and his protection and she had promised him the freedom to pursue his dreams.

  But now his dreams had changed.

  He thought of the bargain that they had made. He had demanded that Joanna make no emotional claim on him. He had insisted that she give him leave to continue to pursue his life as an explorer, to make no compromises or concessions, to be free to travel as he wished without responsibility or constraint.

  He had been irredeemably selfish.

  What could an adventurer offer the woman who loved him? he wondered. He could offer his heart, perhaps. He could give his love in return for hers.

  He thought of Dev, telling him in London that it was not money that Chessie needed but company and love. He thought of Joanna upbraiding him for giving everything to his family in a material sense but nothing in an emotional one. He thought of the bargain that he had offered her and the fact that she had deceived him because she was so desperate for a child to love that she had been prepared to do anything to gain one. He thought of the way she had come to find him at the Villa Raven and how she had broken through the defenses he had put around his heart after Amelia died. Most of all he thought of her sacrifice in giving up Nina Ware for the sake of those who loved her. And what had he offered her in return? He had given her material protection, perhaps, but with it a life as hollow and empty of love as it could be.

  But that could change.

  Alex’s heart started to race, the blood beating in hard urgent strokes through his body. “Can you catch the Raison?” he asked Purchase abruptly.

  A brilliant light leaped in Purchase’s eyes. “You’re going after her?”

  “I’d be a fool not to,” Alex said.

  “You’ve been a fool a long time,” Purchase said. “Why break the habit now?”

  “Because I love her,” Alex said. He looked his friend straight in the eye. “You know that. You love her, too.”

  Purchase did not deny it. “I know she’s too good for you,” he said bitterly, “but you are the one she loves.” He shook his head. “She loves you, and in return you treated her as badly as Ware did. You hurt her.” He moved away and spoke with his back to Alex. His shoulders were tensed, muscles bunched. “I could kill you, Grant,” he said. “You may not have hurt her physically like Ware did, but in your own way you are just as cruel as he—”

  “What?” Alex said.

  Purchase turned. His face was tense. “I said you are just as cruel—”

  “Yes, I heard you,” Alex said. “Not that bit. The bit about Ware hurting Joanna physically.” He waited. Purchase was silent and Alex felt the fear creep up his spine until he could not stand it. “For God’s sake, Purchase,” he burst out, “just tell me.”

  Purchase ran a hand over his fair hair. “I tried to tell you before but you’d hear no word against him, would you, Grant?” The look that flared in Purchase’s eyes was murderous. “Ware told me about it himself, one night when he was in his cups. He boa
sted of it, the bastard, about how they had quarreled because she’d failed to give him a son, and how he’d beaten her. Said he’d left her lying on the floor that very night…” Purchase’s fists balled. “I nearly killed him there and then with my bare hands.”

  “You should have told me.” Alex felt sick and cold and furiously angry. He thought of Churchward and his devotion to Joanna, of the loyalty—and the love—she commanded, of Daniel Brooke and the boxing crowds swearing to protect her, and of Purchase keeping her secrets. And he thought of David Ware, the hero… He felt incredulous, ripped with disbelief and disillusion.

  “Ah, Grant,” Purchase said, “it was Joanna’s place to tell you if anyone did. I should not have said anything, but I was too angry to keep quiet.” He sighed. “In the interests of our friendship I should also tell you that I asked Joanna to run away with me.”

  Alex rocked back. “What?” he said again. “When?”

  “Last night,” Purchase said. “You can call me out if you like.” His lips twisted. “I don’t really care at the moment.”

  “She turned you down,” Alex said. He felt hope flare inside him. “She wouldn’t go with you.”

  Purchase’s sardonic smile deepened. “No need to rub it in.” He held Alex’s gaze fiercely. “She’s a fine woman. You’d better not make a mess of this again.”

  “I won’t,” Alex said. “I swear it.”

  “So what are you waiting for?” Purchase gestured to the ship. “Go!”

  “Not me,” Alex said. “You. Much as it pains me to admit it, you are the better sailor. I couldn’t catch the Raison. You can.” He hesitated. “Or am I asking too much of our friendship?”

  Purchase grinned. “You’re pushing it, for sure. But—” he laughed “—you’re not wrong. I am the better sailor.” He slapped his friend on the shoulder. “Come on. You can crew for me this time.”