The Seduction of Scandal (Scandals and Seductions 5)

by Cathy Maxwell

  “They left this morning,” was the reply. “Sad to see them off. Banfield and I think alike on many important matters. But I shall see him in a few weeks at the wedding.”

  “Did you have the chance to say your farewells?” Will had to ask, fishing to see if Lady Corinne’s absence had been discovered.

  “Oh, yes. We breakfasted together.”

  “How nice.”

  Either Bossley didn’t know Lady Corinne was gone, or he was pretending.

  “Lady Corinne will be a good breeder,” Bossley predicted, “as well as a lovely bit on a man’s arm. Freddie is a lucky man. But don’t you worry, Will,” he said, coming down the aisle toward him and giving him a clap on the arm. “I won’t saddle you with an ugly wife either. Trust me. Here now. Good seeing you last night. Don’t be a stranger. Come by the house any time you are about. You know you are welcome.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Will said, following his foster father out of the church.

  A young boy named Jamie Broxter held the earl’s horse, a huge grey that always looked as if he would snort fire. The earl swung himself up into the saddle.

  “Enjoyed our chat, Will,” Bossley said. With a wave, he put his heels to his horse and took off, not bothering to toss the lad a coin.

  Pondering his lordship’s true purpose for the call, Will watched him ride away . . . and wondered whether he was capable of treason.

  “He promised me a shilling,” Jamie complained. “Said he would give it to me.”

  “Here,” Will answered, pulling a coin from his own pocket. “Spend it wisely.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Norwich. Thank you.”

  Will watched the lad, his mind whirling with a dozen possibilities, none of them boding well for him. He needed to remove Lady Corinne as far from him as possible.

  Bossley never did anything on a whim.

  Chapter Six

  The day’s shadows had almost turned into evening by the time Will could make his way back to the reiver’s hut. He was not pleased to see Lady Corinne pacing impatiently in front of it.

  She stopped at the sound of his approach and waited for him, her eyes alive with indignation, her arms crossed. “I’m hungry, bored, and ill-tempered,” she warned as he dismounted.

  His response was to shove the basket he carried into her arms. “What are you doing outside the cottage?” he countered. “I thought you had better sense than to parade yourself around the countryside in hardly anything more than your petticoats.”

  “And whose fault is that?” she snapped back, having to put both hands on the basket’s handle to lift its weight. She was using her wounded shoulder. Will was pleased. It was a sign she would recover quickly.

  “I couldn’t sit inside all day,” she answered in her defense. “There is only so much sleeping or braiding my hair I can do.” She flipped the single long plait over her shoulder for emphasis.

  Will had seen her dressed in her finest, her hair carefully styled—and he found he liked her better this way. She appeared younger, less jaded, well, except for the scowl on her face.

  “You’d best be careful with that frown, my lady,” he murmured as he tied Roman’s rein to the rough-hewn station holding up the lean-to. “Your face might freeze that way.” He’d overheard Mrs. Gowan say this to her daughter Amanda, and apparently it wasn’t new advice to Lady Corinne.

  “A wife’s tale,” she shot back. “My face is fine.”

  And it was. The color had returned to her cheeks.

  “How’s the shoulder?” he asked, keeping his voice brusque, keeping the distance between them.

  “It’s sore,” she replied, rooting through the basket, so it couldn’t have been bothering her that much. “I slept most of the day. What is in this kettle?” She lifted it up, inhaled the perfume of meat, potatoes, carrots, and peas. “Supper,” she said with pleasure. “What is it?”

  “Mrs. Gowan’s stew.”

  “Mrs. Gowan?”

  “She’s the village lady who tends the parsonage and makes the meals.”

  “It smells delicious,” she replied, picking up the basket with her free hand. “Or else I am very hungry. My head was starting to ache, but I am happy now.” She went inside the hut and sank down on the wobbly chair, her petticoats spreading out in a perfect fan, as if she’d been in court. His shirt was so big that she’d had to roll up the sleeves, and the hem almost reached her knees.

  “Is there a spoon?” She frowned down into the basket even as Will made a sound of annoyance.

  “I forgot eating utensils,” he confessed.

  He had not followed her into the hut but hung back by the doorway. He needed to keep distance between them.

  Of course, his presence appeared not to have any impact on her. She worried about food and a spoon while he worried that she’d notice he was hard as an iron rod.

  “I’m so famished I could eat with my fingers,” she said without bothering to look at him. “Or lap it up like a dog. Oh, here, there is bread.” She pulled out the half loaf of Mrs. Gowan’s bread, tore off a hunk, and attacked the stew. She mm’ed her opinion. “What meat is this?” she asked after several bites.

  “Mutton.”

  She pulled a face. “I’m not fond of mutton. I prefer lamb. But hungry people eat what they must, and this is tasty. And,” she continued after another big bite, “I think when one is having an adventure, one should eat things that are not the usual.”

  “An adventure?” The woman was eating his supper, had disrupted his life and his peace of mind, and she called it an adventure?

  “Yes, that’s what I’ve decided,” she said. “I’m going to make the best of this and enjoy myself immensely. By the way, have you heard about my missing? I suppose everyone is up in arms.”

  “No, no one is,” he answered, almost enjoying the saying of it.

  She stopped eating. “What do you mean? There is no search for me?”

  “You have stew on your cheek,” he said.

  Lady Corinne searched it out with fingers and wiped it away. “Thank you,” she said before confessing self-consciously, “I’ve been gobbling.” She took a deep breath, as if resolving to have better manners. “Well?” she prodded. “What is the story? What have you learned?”

  Will barely heard her questions. He was lost in his own quandary. He didn’t want to like her. He didn’t want her personable and relaxed. This was too intimate between them. It almost bordered on friendship, and, he realized, he couldn’t be friends with her.

  Or he didn’t want to be. She was too potent, like a craving, a desire, a threat.

  He shifted his weight in the doorway. She noticed then that he hadn’t entered the room. “Oh, please, come in,” she said as if just remembering her manners and they were in some drawing room.

  “I’m not here to stay,” he said, standing his ground. “I saw Bossley today. He said your parents have left and made it sound as if you went with them.”

  “They left?” She lowered the hand that had been about to deliver a hunk of stew-dipped bread to her mouth.

  “I can only think that they believe you went to London,” Will said. “They must not know you were shot last night, so that means Ashcroft is keeping quiet. What had you anticipated them to do? How did you believe they would react?”

  She reached for the jug containing cider that he had put in the basket and took a drink before saying, “I didn’t think they’d leave. I hadn’t really thought about it. I assumed there would be a search.”

  “Bossley said he breakfasted with you this morning and that he plans to be in London in a few weeks for your wedding.”

  “He is obviously lying.” A frown line formed between her brows. She set both the cider jug and the kettle on the hard dirt floor beside her chair and came to her feet. “Do you believe he suspects you know where I am or what happened?”

&nb
sp; “That is the important question,” Will said grimly. “Although he didn’t give the impression he suspects me. If anything, during our short conversation, he sounds as if he still sees me as some benign and befuddled country parson.”

  “What shall we do?”

  “We shall do what we are doing,” he answered.

  “What if someone comes by here? Or notices smoke coming from the chimney?”

  “Or sees you marching back and forth in your petticoats?”

  She ignored the jab. “What if this is all a ruse and they suspect you?”

  “Then my wisest course is to act completely normal,” he said.

  Lady Corinne took a moment to digest this. “I’ve created problems for you, haven’t I?”

  “Just a few,” he remarked dryly.

  A frown came to her brow. “You don’t like me overmuch, do you?”

  I like you too much. “I have no personal feelings toward you,” he answered. “That being said, yes, you are a burden. What am I going to do with you now?”

  “I’m safe here,” she suggested.

  “Provided no one discovers you. People pass this way all the time. I’m certain if you stay here, in this one place for a long period of time—such as four weeks—your presence will be discovered. See? I wasn’t being difficult this morning. Is there someplace you can go?”

  She collapsed onto the chair. “No. Relatives would contact my parents. My friends, what few I have that are true, would not appreciate my involving them in such a scandal. But this—” She indicated the hut with a wave of her hand. “Works perfectly. I believe I must stay here.”

  “No.”

  He doubted if anyone told her no very often. He seemed to find himself saying it to her all the time.

  But instead of showing a flash of temper, she considered him a moment and then smiled, an expression that was welcoming, confiding, intoxicating—

  “I could come and stay in the parsonage,” she suggested. “We could tell people I’m a maiden aunt or, perhaps better yet, a cousin.”

  Will forgot about her smile. “That is the most harebrained idea you’ve put forth yet,” he said.

  “I don’t believe you have thought this through,” she said without taking offense at his charge.

  “You are talking to me about thinking things through?” Will forgot all of his lust and yearnings and vows to stay away from her. He walked into the hut, marching from one side of the room to the other while he tried to take control of his temper. He turned to her. “No. No, no, no.”

  “Well, you don’t want me to stay here because you are afraid I’ll be discovered, so where could I go? Why don’t I stay in the one place that it would make sense? Our parson in Suffolk has a cousin living with him. No one thinks anything about it.”

  “The people of Ferris will,” Will assured her. “I’m an orphan. Have you forgotten that? You don’t think people will wonder about cousins or maiden aunts who crop up out of nowhere?”

  Besides, she was suggesting staying with him. Under his roof.

  Here he was yearning, lusting, wanting—and she saw him as a eunuch.

  That was the greatest insult of all.

  “I’ll keep out of sight,” she promised, coming to her feet. “No one will know I’m at the parsonage. I’ll be a shadow, a mere sliver of a presence.”

  “You can stay out of sight here.”

  “You didn’t want me here.”

  “I’ve changed my mind.”

  “There are no doors or windows. And there are holes in the thatch. What if it rains? I’ll be even more of a burden if I take sick.”

  “A moment ago, you were perfectly happy to be here,” he pointed out.

  “But I’ve thought things through,” she said ingenuously. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? For me to think things through?”

  All Will’s life he’d heard the expression “seeing red.” He had assumed it was some idiom, rather meaningless.

  Now he discovered a person really could see red. A haze came over him, a mixture of anger, exasperation, and frustration. This woman knew exactly how to boil his blood. “I should have left you on the road.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” she said with conviction, and apparently not taking any offense. “It’s not your nature.”

  “You’ve changed my nature. You are willful, headstrong, and rude.”

  That last word brought her chin up. For a long moment they squared off, two fighters, each bent on having his or her own way.

  Then to his surprise, she backed down. “I thought it was a good idea,” she murmured, breaking eye contact and picking up the basket. “I haven’t meant to be rude. I don’t like rude people or pushy ones. It’s just that sometimes one must be a bit forward when he is in a dire situation—” She pulled out the dress he had brought for her. “Oh, look at this.” She held the serviceable green wool up to her person. “Not the first stare of fashion, but I’ll be able to return your shirt. Did you ask one of the ladies in the village for this?”

  “I’m a bachelor, Lady Corinne,” he said, sounding a bit priggish, even to his own ears. But she had to understand the great lengths he was being forced to take on her behalf. And for his. What if his parishioners or, worse, his bishop discovered he was hiding a peer of the realm’s daughter? The consequences could be brutal. “I can’t knock on doors asking for women’s dresses.”

  “No, I suppose you can’t,” she said lightly, and there was a smile on her lips, as if she found what he said humorous.

  And Will felt stiff, unyielding, and churlish. To compound the impression, he added, “I found it in the poor box.”

  “It will do,” she responded graciously. “Thank you. And I see you have socks and shoes.” She retrieved the leather walking shoes. “How stiff. I imagine I could walk the hills in these and have blisters to show for them.”

  “That’s why the socks are so heavy. Good woolen socks. Better for you than silk and cotton.”

  “I thank you for them as well,” she said, and Will felt the knot of his anger unravel. She held the dress against her body, lifting the skirt and swaying as if dancing, her movements feminine.

  His was a solitary world. A masculine one.

  And she had the power to upend it.

  Especially when she said, “Here, let me change, and you may have your shirt back.”

  “It’s not necessary—”

  But she’d flitted into the next room.

  Will stood, ill at ease. He didn’t like himself when he was rigid. His eye fell on the cold hearth. He had never restarted his fire that morning, and the kindling was still there.

  And she was right, the hut was very exposed and far from suitable for any gentlewoman to inhabit. Rain would flood the place. He knew that, since he’d been here after a bad storm.

  The corner of his eye caught movement in the other room. He should have looked away. Since there was no door, she couldn’t close it. She relied on his honor to know his place while she changed.

  Except from where he’d moved before the heath, he could see clearly. She stood with her back to him, struggling to take off his shirt with one hand. She lifted the hem. The sight of that curving indentation where her waist met her hips threatened to bring him to his knees.

  He remembered too clearly applying that bandage the night before. The vision had haunted him throughout the day.

  Will knew he should have looked away, but he lacked the ability to do so. The blood had left his brain. Again.

  She pushed one arm through the sleeve, then winced as the upward movement shot pain through the injured shoulder. She stood for a moment, her head down.

  His feet moved forward. He told himself he was being kind.

  Maybe he was.

  “Let me help,” he said.

  She stiffened, dropped the shirt hem. “
I can do it.”

  “At what cost?” he asked, pretending his impatience was for her sake. He gathered the material of the dress. “Leave the shirt on. I don’t need it, and it will be added warmth.”

  For once, she did as instructed, her manner as obedient as a child’s.

  Gently he eased the dress down over her wounded shoulder. “I will have to change the bandage,” he told her. “I thought I would do it tomorrow. There’s a salve in the basket that I plan to apply, but if there is pain or itching, don’t hesitate to rub it on the skin around the wound.”

  “What is in the salve?” she asked.

  “It’s a recipe that Alma McBride cooks up. I’ve seen it do good things for cuts.”

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  The dress was too big and too short. The hem barely reached her ankles. He began tightening the laces.

  She pulled her braid over one shoulder so it wouldn’t be in his way. The top of her head actually reached his chin. Her hair smelled of clear air and the sweetness he identified as her.

  He’d rarely noticed the scent of a woman before, unless she’d been wearing a strong perfume, but this was different. He was keenly aware of every facet of her. And it had been such from the moment he’d laid eyes on her all those many years ago.

  “I brought candles,” he said, feeling the need to be practical. “And I’ll start a fire.”

  “You aren’t afraid someone will see the light burning in the window?” she wondered. There was an edge to her tone, a mocking.

  “I want you safe,” he said. He’d tied her laces in a bow. He should have moved his hand, let go of the strings . . . but he held on.

  She turned, looked up at him.

  For a moment they stood so close that they breathed each other’s air.

  She knew she could conquer him. She had to have known. Men threw themselves at her at every party, every rout, every opportunity.

  He was a country parson, an orphan, a thief.

  A besotted idiot. A fool.

  Life experience had taught Will not to long for what he could not have. It was how he’d learned to make peace with childhood jealousies over being an outsider.