Lady Scandal

by Wendy Lacapra

  He dropped his lids. “I do not need an heir. The Randolph line of inheritance is awash with capable cousins.”

  She propped her head up. “That was not an answer.”

  He pursed his lips, apparently fascinated by a spot high up within the rafters.

  “Hugh?”

  He sighed. “I would not be opposed…”

  He would not be—she blinked—opposed.

  Clearly, he regretted not having taken precautions. Family is a liability was printed in bold black letters in Baneham’s book.

  “Baneham,” she spat.

  He sighed and rubbed his forehead but did not look her way. “Sophia, your father has nothing to do with—”

  “Do not call him my father. To me, he is Baneham or the earl. And I know his rules about families and split loyalty. He had a weakness for me—but he had hated his weakness.”

  “Again,” he said to the ceiling, “you are confusing my values with his.”

  She flipped onto her back and searched for the point fascinating Randolph. “I thought I was done with the Earl. I had wanted—no, I had sworn to live my life without the influence of his damn rules and his twisted way of thinking. Do you know what it was like to be his daughter?”

  She wrapped her arms across her chest and held on as if her physical strength could keep internal fissures from snaking through her heart. He moved against her side, but she refused to turn.

  “You described it once as hell.”

  “The sick world of Baneham’s mind was a level of hell. Not melting flesh hell, but bad.”

  “Make me understand.”

  She inhaled. “I created a world for Lavinia, Thea, and I. Elizabeth created a world of solace for troubled souls. Baneham, too, created a world. Only his world was built on harshness and cruelty. He formed his world so he could play absolute monarch. He held the power of life and death over those he fought, those he commanded, and those unlucky enough to be called his own.”

  “Do you believe I would have blindly followed Baneham to death?”

  “No.” She pressed the back of her hand to her lips and staunched her tears. “My mother,” she waited for the wobble in her voice to pass, “withered under his constant rage and criticism. Yet when he’d leave for India, she would pine for him as if he were her breath.” She hiccupped. “She longed for something that would destroy her.”

  …and the apple had not fallen far from the tree. All this time she’d been afraid of becoming Baneham while forgetting to guard against her mother’s much lonelier fate.

  “She died and left me alone. For all of Baneham’s professed love—he did not return for months. But,” she snorted, “he sent me a copy of Baneham’s rules for comfort.”

  “Ah, Sophia.”

  She resisted the urge to snuggle against his side and ask him to hold her tight. Why would he hold her out of comfort? His care for her had been confined to mutual desire.

  “I knew then that I needed to get away from him before he could shape me into his creature,” she said. “I proposed an elopement to my first husband.”

  “Of course,” he said wryly, “you were the one who proposed.”

  Yes, of course. “I do not expect you to understand.”

  “How can I understand when you have not helped me to understand? How am I in any way like Baneham?”

  Randolph was his own man. But still a dangerous one. “Yours is a world of lies and intrigue. A world as threatening to me as a vat of gin is to a slobbering drunk.” She lifted an arm into his line of sight and ran her finger down her wrist. “Through these veins runs ruthless blood.”

  “Sophia,” he said with a sharp intake of breath, “Are you afraid you share Baneham’s character?”

  “My proposal to my first husband came after the loss of my virtue. I transitioned from innocence and obedience to complete rebellion with horrifying ease, at first rejecting every stricture—even the sound ones.”

  He placed a comforting hand over her stomach. “The scoundrel compromised you?”

  “Compromised? No. He had my enthusiastic participation. I realized I lacked whatever part of a soul Baneham lacked. I never sank to Baneham’s amorality, but I was on a direct descent into hedonistic wantonness.”

  “Is that why you insisted on marriage to me?”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  She had never told anyone—anyone about her deepest fear. Not even the Furies. She rolled over, seeking judgment in Randolph’s eyes. She saw none. He drew her into his arms and cast his leg over hers—a gesture of either possession or protection. She was not sure which.

  He studied her thoughtfully, his breath deep and even. “Who was he?”

  “My husband?”

  “Your first husband.”

  “He was my cousin’s friend. The same cousin who introduced you to me.”

  He did not respond to that pearl. “…And your first husband had no idea the power your father wielded.”

  “No,” she said. “Not at first.”

  “Baneham wanted to have him killed.”

  She drew her brows together. “You speak with an authoritative tone.”

  “He expressed such a desire.”

  She should have been surprised the earl had gone so far as to speak his murderous intentions aloud, but the knowledge only served to remind her how mired in Baneham’s world Randolph had once been.

  “In a way, Baneham was responsible, for his death.”

  Randolph made a sound of disbelief. “Your husband died, if memory serves, in a duel. Someone accused him of cheating at cards.”

  “Something of that nature.” Dice. Hazard, to be specific.

  “Sophia, your father was ruthless and arrogant. Hell-bent on protecting the interests of the Company, and through the Company, the crown. But no one ever questioned his honor. He would not have influenced your husband to cheat.”

  She considered telling him about Baneham’s weighted dice—the dice Baneham had passed to her unwitting husband the night of his death. Maybe then, Randolph would understand his mentor’s nature.

  But, if she told him about the dice, eventually he’d realize she’d used those dice to ensure she lost their last game. She rubbed her temples hard—as if she could massage away her conflicted feeling.

  He rubbed small comforting circles on the small of her back.

  “May I ask if you loved him?”

  “Baneham?” she asked.

  “No.”

  She pressed her fingers against her eyes. “Why ask?”

  “I would like to know.”

  “No,” she answered. “I was happy enough during our short time together, but I did not love him.”

  He untangled their bodies, retrieved the cruise lamp from the hook on the wall and, very carefully, he held it aloft beside the bed. He stared deeply into her eyes. Her heartbeat slowed and she fancied she could hear the insistent pounding in her chest.

  “Hugh…is there something you wish to say?”

  His mouth formed a grim line. “Just trust,” he said, “that I will see you safely through this nightmare.”

  He returned the lamp to its hook. He lay back on the bed and pulled her back into his arms, but his embrace offered no relief from her disappointment.

  Randolph believed the earl had been a man of strength and honor. And though Randolph treated her with tenderness and care, he did not have the kind of feeling for her that would inspire him to question those beliefs, let alone alter them.

  She hoped she had not conceived.

  She may have been able to create a safe haven for Lavinia and Thea, but with much more jaded hearts, she and Randolph had no hope of creating a life suited to raise an innocent child.

  …

  Baneham’s Rules for Winning

  “Never lose sight of the larger goal.”

  Randolph’s notes.

  “Never.”

  Not long after dawn, Harrison’s messenger stopped Randolph on his journey from the cottage to the main hous
e. The news was not good. Randolph was needed. Today. Randolph decided Baneham’s rules may not apply to wooing, but they applied to everything else of importance.

  The farm’s main kitchen was alive with the cookery clinks and, to Randolph’s consternation, Sophia remained busy amid the noise and discord.

  …Busy, silent, and seemingly oblivious to his presence.

  He had seen his lady in triumph, he had seen his lady in anger, and, last night, he had seen his lady in the throes of an all-consuming passion and in the grip of encompassing grief. This coolly indifferent Sophia was a version of his lady he had never met.

  He tilted his head to try and catch her eye. “Are you certain you understand why I must leave?”

  “I told you I understood, did I not?”

  He was no expert of the behavior of women, but he knew he was missing something. Sophia’s voice was falsely gay, and she had not looked up from her scrubbing.

  “Perhaps thou should take thy wife at her word,” Elizabeth said from the hearth.

  For a former-but-still-observant Quaker, the woman was certainly an interfering wench.

  “Will you walk with me to my horse?” he asked.

  Sophia glanced up from under her lashes with a distinctly unwelcoming look. “Thy eyes should answer for thee.”

  “Jane,” Elizabeth said with the loss of her usual patience, “plain speech is not something to be mocked.” She stopped stirring the large pot of stew and sighed. “Walk thy husband to his horse. The pots will not wash themselves in thy absence.”

  “Very well.” Sophia’s tone suggested Elizabeth had just asked her to muck out the stable stalls. She lifted her hands from the water and wiped them on her apron.

  He held out his arm, but she pretended not to notice. She walked brusquely across the room and let the door slam behind her.

  “I do not,” he said under his breath as he turned, “understand.”

  “It is not my place to comment on thy trials.” Elizabeth pursed her lips in self-chastisement

  “Please comment.” He needed any help he could get.

  “I can,” she said with a faint smile, “tell thee of my own experience. My heart did not rest easy when uncertain of my husband’s affections.”

  “No,” he said immediately. “Sophia is not concerned about the nature of my affections.”

  Last night, Sophia had admitted she married twice out of fear of her wanton nature. She showed no deep jealousy and revealed a distinct preference to remain childless. Looking into her eyes after she had said she’d been happy enough with her late husband, he had finally given up hope she would ever form a deeper attachment to him.

  “Perhaps thou should not assume.” She returned to her stirring. “May the Light guide thee on thy journey, Hugh,” she finished, firmly ending the conversation.

  He thanked the crazy bat, bid her farewell, and then wandered toward the stable.

  Could Elizabeth be right? Was Sophia angry because he had not spoken of his regard? If so, what did that mean…especially in light of his discomfiting devotion and the danger his devotion invited?

  Last night had been magic—magic that had transformed into hell. Not only had his control failed at a crucial moment and, consequently, he and Sophia could have created a child, but he had finally understood how little she had ever expected of marriage.

  She twisted her vision of life and marriage to protect herself from Baneham’s end. She hated Baneham so much, she had created the fiction that Baneham had influenced her husband’s death. Such hatred was enough for destruction—not only of the enemy but of the self.

  He embodied everything she hated. She truly did not want to live if she must live in the world of a spy.

  If he loved her—and he did—he would free her. …if it were not a legal impossibility.

  A chill shivered through his spine.

  Never lose sight of the larger goal. Baneham’s rule pulled him back from the abyss. Right—the larger goal. He shook his head. Kasai.

  Harrison had written to say the man at the madhouse had refused to speak to anyone but Baneham. Harrison had not told the man Baneham was dead. He thought it best that Randolph, with his greater knowledge of Baneham and his dealings, should handle the man.

  …which Randolph intended to do.

  Baneham’s rules may not apply to wooing, but Harrison’s note was a stark reminder how far Randolph had strayed from the mission—again—and how much he had put at risk.

  When Baneham had first given him a copy of the rules, he had felt like someone had given him the illusive key to the Answers of Life.

  His father’s early death had left Randolph at the mercy of swindling stewards and solicitors with interests other than his own. With the help of those rules, Randolph had learned a different way. The way of power. When following those rules, everything had lined up for his benefit.

  Until her.

  There was nothing in those rules about what to do with a woman who opened freely in your arms and then retreated into a shell of suspicion. Nothing to guide his response—if the Quaker was to be believed—such a woman told you she had married without feeling and yet secretly longed for you to shower her with assurance.

  What would Earl Baneham have done?

  Uneasily, he had some idea. Baneham would have ignored the woman. Chalked her anger up to the female nature. Moved on to the next quest. But in this case, quest and woman were intertwined.

  Last night, he had resolved to disregard his uncomfortable feelings for Sophia until he completed his larger goal—Kasai’s defeat. If the Quaker was right, however, and Sophia was in want of reassurance, reassurance she must have. He could not distance himself from Sophia to the extent he would sabotage his true aims: her protection and the mission. If she ran from him again, all would be lost. He had to provide reassurance without frightening her by revealing just how deeply he’d been smitten.

  Inside the stable, Sophia held her forehead against Charlemagne’s strong jaw. She spoke in low tones of affection. His horse nuzzled back. Traitor.

  “May I approach?” he asked.

  Sophia wrinkled her nose. “Have I been awful?”

  “You have been angry.”

  She sighed, giving Charlemagne one last pat. “I have.”

  “I explained why I must leave. Harrison wants me to question a man who could help us identify Kasai.”

  “I know.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Last night, did you know you would have to leave today?”

  “No,” he said firmly. “Harrison’s letter came this morning.”

  Her shoulders settled. “Oh.”

  Damn me, the Quaker was right. A tiny hope blossomed anew.

  “I will return by evening, I promise.”

  She sucked in. “What if Kasai has reached this man? What if this is a trap?”

  She was worried? “Though private, the madhouse is regulated by the College of Physicians. The county magistrate is to introduce me to the steward. Even Kasai-trained mercenaries could not have manipulated all the above.”

  She exhaled.

  “Do you feel better?” he asked.

  She gave him a warning look of which he was actually becoming fond.

  “If I am not back by the setting of the sun,” he offered, “you may send out riders.”

  “From Elizabeth’s vast network of servants?” she asked with sarcasm that befitted her friend the duchess.

  “Send for Harrison via the innkeeper. Lord knows I have given the innkeeper funds enough to do your bidding, as well as mine.”

  “You are asking me,” she said—more statement than question, “to act as Lady Randolph.”

  He kissed her forehead—which was safer than taking her lips. “You are Lady Randolph. Looking out for me is your right and responsibility. Just as looking out for you is mine.”

  She closed her searching eyes and then rested her head on his shoulder.

  Surprising sensation, though not an unwelcome one. In her ges
ture was nascent trust. A trust he needed in order to save them both.

  …How to temporarily stall the deepening of his affection while encouraging her trust was one hell of a conundrum. But, at least while they were safe at Elizabeth’s farm, there was one thing he need not deny.

  “I will return,” he said. “Because no one is going to keep me from the pleasure of my wife’s bed.”

  “Truly?” she asked.

  Astonishment swept through him. Did she really not know he had been pleased—in fact, too pleased?

  “Truly.” He set her back and placed his fingers beneath her chin. Such a tiny thing she was. So tiny, and yet with a power he could feel from his height. He bent his head and placed a light but lingering kiss of her lips.

  “Go then.” The line of worry still marred her forehead. “But take care, Hugh.”

  She held her skirts up from the gravel with a strangling grip and started back toward the house.

  He doubted anyone—even his mother and sisters—had ever truly worried for him. The sensation was odd, like the first time he had donned his dead father’s oversized court robes.

  Sophia worried for him. She wanted reassurance he enjoyed her bed.

  ….Which meant she cared for him.

  How extraordinarily terrifying.

  Chapter Eleven

  Earl Baneham’s Rules for Winning

  “Before you engage, be sure you have chosen to fight the right enemy.”

  Randolph followed an asylum keeper down an unornamented, whitewashed corridor. He had been welcomed with utmost civility and had yet to witness mistreatment of patients, but an air of hopelessness thickened his every breath. For those confined within this pile of stone, the future was as bare as the corridor walls.

  The steward stopped in front of a door painted with the number “23.”

  “The man you want—Mr. Garrett—is in there,” he pointed with a sideways thrust of his head. “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t interact with the other one.”

  “What would happen if I did?” Randolph asked.

  “At best, he will not respond.” The keeper held up his arm and displayed a series of teeth-shaped bruises. “At worst, this is a sample of what you should expect.”

  Randolph responded less with fear than with commiseration. If confined in a place like this, he would do more than just bite.