Suzi Love

by Embracing Scandal

  • • •

  At Devon’s house, Cayle flung himself out of the saddle and threw his reins to the waiting groom and raced up the steps.

  As he rapped the knocker, he grinned. Then he laughed aloud in total abandon. Something he hadn’t done in a long time. Throwing his arms wide, he practiced saying aloud the first words in the romantic string of vocabulary he now realised Becca yearned for. She needed to hear that he was sincere before she would further commit herself to him. His proposal had been a dreadful insult.

  Strangely enough, it didn’t perturb him as he imagined it would if he ever got close enough to another person to admit this feeling. The words came easier to his mind than he’d have believed possible a month ago. They flowed off his tongue. Soon, he promised himself, he’d say them to the person who deserved to hear them. A neighbouring window opened so the inhabitants could peer at Devon’s doorstep to see who was making an unseemly racket at this hour, in their sedate street. He smiled. He waved. For once in his life, he welcomed the tittle-tattle, the gossip, the scandal and all that went with it. Anything was an improvement over the half-life he’d been living of late.

  Too afraid to rock the boat with Julia for fear of consequences for his brothers. Too fearful of failure to risk falling in love. Too frightened of being hurt again to admit the depth of his feelings. He laughed again. He felt ready to embrace life.

  Devon’s butler admitted him with a look that said he was admitting this madman only under sufferance and he was directed to the breakfast room where Devon was enjoying a hearty meal. He signalled for Cayle to fill a plate and join him.

  “Henry and Tristan will arrive directly. You’d do well to eat before Henry arrives and devours everything.”

  They both grinned at the thought of perpetually hungry Henry. He was lean and light on his feet yet never gained an ounce of fat, despite eating every meal as though it was his last. His obsession with food was a longstanding joke among the four friends. As long as Henry was well fed, he was an excellent man to have at your side in a fight.

  Devon looked Cayle up and down as he heaped his plate with food from his friend’s buffet. “I see nothing wrong with your body, so it must be your soul that’s suffering from this over exuberance of glee so early in the morning.”

  Henry strolled into the room before he could answer and walked straight to the food to heap enormous quantities of everything onto his plate. “What’s wrong with Sherwyn’s soul?”

  Cayle continued to fork in food and grin at his friends at the same time. “There’s nothing wrong with my body, my mind, or my soul. I’m simply happy to be alive on such a beautiful day.”

  “Good God!” Tristan’s voice said from the door as he too entered and strode to survey the meal on offer.

  “Sherwyn’s happy. The sky must have fallen in.”

  “Oh, very droll,” Cayle commented without looking up from his eggs. “I’m unfailingly cheerful.”

  “Rubbish!” Devon disagreed. “Since we’ve returned to England, your gloom has rivalled the cloudiest winter day in Scotland.”

  Henry, who’d stared at Cayle throughout the exchange, all of a sudden said,

  “Well, I’ll be damned. Sherwyn’s in love.”

  “In love. With whom? I presume it’s a woman.” Tristan gave Cayle a smirking grin.

  “Tris, once again, very droll.” Cayle was forced into a snort of laughter. “And I didn’t admit to being in love with anyone.”

  “Well, unless the situation with Julia has been resolved,” Devon raised an eyebrow at Cayle who gave a vigorous shake of his head, “it can only be some fair young chit who has you in enraptures.”

  “Not a fair chit. She has flaming red hair with a temperament to match, and is without any doubt, all woman.”

  “Ah, the beautiful and buxom Becca,” Henry said.

  The others all nodded and made murmurs of agreement.

  “If I catch any of you leering at Becca’s bosoms, on any occasion, I will shoot you. One by one. Understand?” His three friends looked at each other then burst into gales of laughter.

  “Oh, this is too much,” Devon gasped between gusts of mirth. “Our world hardened Sherwyn has succumbed to love after denying its existence for so many years.”

  “Why does everyone insist it’s love?”

  “Possibly because Becca is all you’ve talked about for weeks,” Devon said.

  “Although until now, your comments have run to a categorising of her numerous faults. Her redheaded temper, stubbornness, recklessness. Her ability to argue you into an early grave.”

  “Oh, we’ve no doubt a good healthy case of lust is involved, Cayle, but you’re also showing all the signs of love.”

  “The question is, Cayle, what do you intend to do about it?” Henry asked. “The lust and the love. After all, she’s a cut above the usual gullible debutante and she’s an unmarried lady, not a beddable widow.”

  “Yes, she’s all of those,” Cayle mused. Becca’s attributes and, as Devon pointed out, her many irritating qualities were well above any other woman he’d encountered. His next problem was how best to manoeuvre her brilliant mind into his way of thinking without her realising she was being manipulated. To capture the wind and tame it. Bloody hell! An impossible task.

  After a lot of pushing and pulling, Cayle managed to steer his friends away from the juicy topic of his love life and onto the pressing business they needed to discuss. Notes were compared on the financial stability of the men on the Jamison’s list and new tasks assigned. Each of them had several avenues to follow up, several people to bribe to disclose even more information.

  By the time they left Devon’s house two hours later, Cayle had a better idea of who was involved and which men were so deeply involved and so deeply invested, that couldn’t risk a failure. They had to have money. And they needed it soon or they’d miss the opportunity to become the major investors in the next railway track being laid. And in this instance, the missed opportunity would equate to several thousands of pounds of lost revenue.

  Enough to make most men greedy. And a lot of them desperate.

  Chapter 16

  At nine that night, Becca stood with her arm on Cayle’s on the raised entrance of Lord and Lady Moreland’s ballroom. From her bird’s-eye view, she watched the butler announce them and the entire room come to attention and hold its collective breath. Every eye focused upon them. Some with amazement, some with maliciousness.

  Although she’d dressed in the height of style to make a good impression, upon her worried perusal of the assembled crowd she realised that not a single female looked happy to see her there. To the women’s eyes, she’d snagged the most eligible bachelor in town for her escort. That alone would make her as unpopular as a resurrectionist digging up bodies in a graveyard.

  Additional to those transgressions, a great many suitable men had followed the Jamison sisters liked a cloud of locusts on their recent swathe through society. The mothers, daughters, and sisters prowling for eligible bachelors disdained business dealings and didn’t comprehend that the lure of banknotes elevated she and her sisters to the status of season darlings amongst the men.

  “Half of London is in this room and they’re all staring at us. Whispering about us.” She tugged on Cayle’s arm in alarm. “What are we doing here?”

  He peered at her from his imposing height and grinned. Gloriously relaxed, completely unrepentant. “Embracing scandal.”

  At such a loud and unsophisticated announcement several people gasped and turned to look. They yearned for any ripple of excitement to relieve the tediousness of making inane comments on the weather in another stifling ballroom. A rush of unaccustomed fear and panic overcame Becca. Not for herself, but for Cayle. For her sake, he was taking an enormous risk. She squeezed her fingers hard into his forearm, trying to tell him to stop.

  “You’re supposed to be avoiding scandal.” She tried to whisper but in her panic it sounded more like a wild cat’s angry hiss. “Not
announcing it, saluting it. Not before a room of conservative minded socialites.”

  “My sweet, I’ve reached the conclusion that scandal can’t be avoided. Nor can it be outrun. It’s far easier to welcome it with open arms. Embrace scandal. Then let others make of it what they want.”

  “Wonderful! And if that theory backfires?”

  With an amused grin, he patted her hand.

  “If all else fails, sweetheart, we turn and run for the door like cowards.”

  Shaking her head, Becca muttered, “You’re not taking this seriously.”

  “I’ve been accused of being far too serious, far too often. My brothers tell me I’d forgotten how to laugh. But with you, Becca, I feel like the world is one large jest. And the only ones who appreciate it, are thou and me.”

  “And after this fiasco, I’m not sure about either of us.”

  “Come my love — ”

  “Stop! I told you not to call me that.”

  “Ah, but we’re here to play a game. And endearments are all part of the flirting game.”

  “Yes, well, you’d have far more knowledge of that than I.”

  His hands clasped over his heart. “Ooh, a direct shot. You know how to wound a man.

  Besides, I’m sure you must have engaged in more than flirting when you were betrothed to the almighty Lord Bennett.”

  She flinched from his insinuation. Did Cayle think her a hussy because she’d done more than flirt with him four years ago? She’d granted him liberties that young women of quality didn’t allow and tormented herself ever since thinking he’d left because she’d been too forward. From Madame Faberge, she now understood more. Men expected courtesans and prostitutes to be brazen in their seductions. Other women were expected to follow the example of Queen Victoria and adhere to conservatism, especially in the bedroom. Becca’s belief in women’s rights to freedom of thought and deeds often threw her into moral and self conflicts as she tried to guide her sisters through the neverending rules of society.

  Despite long practice at shuttering her feelings, Cayle always sensed her emotional turmoil. Tucking her arm further through his elbow, he pulled her close enough to his side that the feel of his warmth and the strength of his muscled body distracted her from what he was saying.

  “ … apologise. What you did, or didn’t do, with Bennett is none of my business. I’ll just say this. The man’s an indiscriminate seducer and you’re lucky he turned his attentions to another woman.”

  She looked at him as if he’d just uttered the stupidest comment of the century. “I beg your pardon?”

  He enunciated each word as if speaking to a child. “Lord high and mighty Bennett is a cad who is destined for a fall.”

  “Do you know Arthur’s business so well?”

  “Ah, so it’s Arthur is it? If you were close enough to call him by his given name, what else were you were close enough to do?”

  She gasped and jerked her arm back but he’d securely anchored it through his. “I don’t want to talk about it. Especially with you.”

  “Nothing that happened with that rogue was your fault, little one. I was at Oxford with Arthur. Even then, he’d a reputation of engaging young women’s affections, leading them to the brink of scandal and then deserting them, never to return. His reputation always remained intact and yet the ladies, ah, the poor ladies never came out of it quite so easily.”

  His steady gaze on her was as unnerving as his intuitive comments.

  “Is that how it happened with you, Becca?”

  Drawing a deep breath of courage, she straightened her spine and looked him in the eye. “Yes, but it’s in the past. Long forgotten.”

  “You can’t lie to me. I always know. Your left eye twitches.”

  “Fustian. You’re just baiting me. I’m long past worrying about the deplorable antics of so-called gentlemen.”

  To Becca’s horror, her left eye gave a distinct spasm. When Cayle raised his own brows in silent gloating, she blinked and pretended it hadn’t happened. “Except when they cheat gullible ladies who are then forced to appeal to me for help recovering their inheritances.”

  • • •

  Their party continued a parade of the ballroom and was soon rushed by eligible gentlemen. Brian, with Laura on his arm, and Tony escorting Lottie, looked as annoyed as Cayle felt when men clamouring for a moment of her time quickly surrounded Becca.

  However, this was their agreement. The two younger girls got the benefit of his patronage whilst Becca gained wider opportunities to investigate who had him in their matrimonial sights. Several men were claiming introductions to the women and forced to comply, Cayle made pointed reference to their chaperone, Lady Agatha Jamison. These men should all know that the girls weren’t easy targets.

  Managing to get Becca aside for a moment, he said, “You and your sisters have many friends. You know many of society’s elite and yet you’ve not caused this sort of sensation before. Why now?”

  “For various reasons, we didn’t venture about much for a time. It was easier to limit our socialising to paying calls and dinners with friends.”

  “And was I one of those reasons? My brothers told me what happened after I left. Becca, I’m so sorry about that.”

  Their conversation was cut short when several eligible gentlemen rushed to their side imploring dances with Becca. With mounting frustration, Cayle resorted to requesting her hand for a dance and then regretted it when she moved fluidly in his arms, reminding him of how good it felt to hold her. He held her closer than approved but the feel of her soft curves as they swung down the length of the floor together was worth the agony his body was forced to endure.

  “Rebecca.” Lord Bennett, with no compunction, interrupted them as they left the dance floor. Becca ignored him and endeavoured to walk past but he grasped her arm above her glove, forcing her to halt. Cayle wanted to hit the bastard. Keeping his hands on Becca’s arm, he held her a discreet distance from the letch and noticed with pleasure that Becca’s tone turned icier than a Scottish stream in winter.

  “How pleasant to see you, Lord Bennett.” Her tone dripped with sarcasm. “Is your new fiancée with you?”

  Ignoring her taunt, Lord Bennett carried on as if she’d welcomed him with open arms. “I tried to pay a call at your house but your butler seems to have the misguided idea that I’m not welcome.”

  Her eyes narrowed and Cayle felt Becca’s fingers tighten where he held them resting on his arm. “My butler is absolutely correct. I have refused you admittance. I am sure you understand why.”

  As she spun away, Lord Bennett’s hand snaked out to grab Becca once again. “Nobody refuses to see me. You will dance with me.”

  Cayle used a strong grip to remove Bennett’s fingers, taking great satisfaction from the pain he inflicted. “The lady doesn’t want anything to do with you.”

  “What’s between Rebecca and I — ”

  “Bennett. Please, show respect and address the lady by her title.”

  Lord Bennett shot Cayle a look of dislike before sidling closer to Becca. “Lady Jamison, may I request this dance?”

  Cayle stepped between them but Becca forestalled him. “I will give you one dance, Arthur, but only because I don’t wish to be the cause of a disagreement in a ballroom. I will suffer no more scandal on your behalf.”

  “You don’t need to suffer even one dance with this scoundrel, Becca. We’ll leave.”

  She placed a restraining hand on his arm. “Everyone’s staring. I’ll not be fodder for more gossip by refusing Arthur here.” She took Lord Bennett’s arm and they walked to join the set just commencing.

  Cayle was standing at the side, scowling at the pair, when a lady joined him. “Your Grace, I am Lord Bennett’s fiancé, Miss Margaret Johnston.”

  Cayle bowed over her hand, politely acknowledging her despite the lack of formal introduction. “Miss Johnston. Are you enjoying the evening?”

  “Not especially, Your Grace. I do not enjoy watching my betrot
hed make a cake of himself over another woman in front of my acquaintances.”

  “It is only one dance, Miss Johnston.” Cayle glanced to the floor to watch while Bennett clasped Becca far too closely as he swung her into each turn. He hissed in a breath.

  “Yes,” Miss Johnston said, “that is what I cannot allow. You must take care to keep your good friend, Lady Jamison, away from my fiancée.”

  “I am as dismayed as you are that he is persisting in claiming a close friendship with Lady Jamison.” His eyes narrowed as he watched as the dance finished and Bennett attempted to steer Becca to the other side, rather than returning her to him.

  The rogue had a grip on Becca’s arm and was towing her towards the French doors to the terrace. Excusing himself from a seething Miss Johnston, he murmured, “I will inform Lord Bennett that you are desirous of his presence.”

  Wending his way to Becca’s side was not easy in the crush and on the way he enlisted assistance from Laura, Lottie, and his two brothers.

  “Arthur Bennett forced Becca into agreeing to dance with him. But he’s led her to the other side of the ballroom, away from all of us. “We need to get to her before he touches her.”

  • • •

  Upon reaching Becca and Arthur, whose escape had been thwarted by the crowds, Brian and Tony and Becca’s sisters moved in closer so they formed a protective ring around Becca.

  The low pitch of Cayle’s voice did nothing to hide his fury.

  “Bennett, be warned, if you ever lay a finger on Lady Jamison again, I’ll kill you.”

  Arthur blanched under the attack but pulled himself up to reply haughtily, “And you, Sherwyn, should stay out of things that do not concern you. Lady Jamison and I have an arrangement.”

  Beside him, Becca gasped in indignation. “Lord Bennett, we have nothing of the sort. Any association we had in the past was severed. By you, I might add. I danced with you this evening to avoid further scandal. I no longer have anything to say to you. Goodnight.”

  As she tried to move past, Bennett reached out to grab at Becca. This time, Cayle gripped his wrist so hard that Arthur winced and paled.