Slightly Scandalous b-5

by Mary Balogh

  "You make light of the matter, Joshua," his aunt said in her plaintive whine. "But it may prove serious indeed. I could not bear to lose another son or a nephew who has always been as dear as a son to me. I might almost suggest that you leave now while you may, and disappear. At least you would be safe then."

  "Ah, but I would hate myself if I were to take the coward's way out," Joshua said, grinning.

  "And I would hate not to be mistress of Penhallow," Freyja said disdainfully as she got to her feet. "But this conversation grows more and more tedious. I am going riding, even if I must do so alone."

  The Bedwyns all got to their feet too, and the others followed suit, except for the marchioness, who looked too ill and frail to move.

  "Since Garnett is not to be confronted today, then," Joshua said, "we might as well enjoy the good weather. Shall we meet in the hall half an hour from now? The children and Prue too? Come, Aunt, you must not upset yourself further. I shall have a few harsh words for Garnett when I do see him for having so preyed upon your delicate sensibilities. Allow me to help you to your room." He offered her his arm and she had little choice but to take it.

  "I hope you will talk to him, Joshua," she said, leaning heavily upon him. "I really cannot bear all this."

  It was quickly apparent to Freyja that Joshua was very well liked both at Penhallow and in the village of Lydmere. The servants, she noticed at the house, had a habit of smiling brightly at him even whenever they served him or were in his line of vision. She could not help but make the comparison between them and the servants at Lindsey Hall, who would no more have dreamed of smiling at Wulfric than they would of breaking into song and dance in his presence.

  In Lydmere the reaction was even more marked. He was recognized instantly as he rode along beside Freyja at the head of their party. Everywhere people were curtsying or bowing or tugging at their forelocks. That was not so remarkable in itself since he was the Marquess of Hallmere, but, in addition, every face was wreathed in smiles, and some of the bolder villagers even called out greetings. Predictably-oh, utterly so, she thought, half in exasperation, half in a grudging admiration-Joshua was down off his horse at the first opportunity and tossing the reins to Alleyne before shaking hands and clasping shoulders and even kissing a few withered female cheeks.

  His face was alight with merriment and affection.

  It was the moment at which Freyja realized fully what grave peril she was in. Every minute was revealing more and more of his humanity to her. This morning at breakfast he had been bold and forthright, a hint of ruthlessness behind his courtesy and his smile. She might have been able to resist that man. Now he was full of warmth and laughter and concern for the friendship of people Freyja did not normally consider worthy of notice-it was a strangely shameful realization. This man was altogether harder to resist. He was so very different from any other man of her class and acquaintance.

  Of course, she might have been forewarned and have avoided all this. He had gone rushing to the rescue of a servant girl who had been frightened by a squirrel, had he not?

  But he did not neglect the relatives and guests he had brought to the village for an outing. They stabled their horses at the village inn and went inside for tea or ale and muffins. They sat in the public taproom, and he proceeded to point out various details of the view from the window and to describe other attractions they might find of interest. Eve and Aidan did not stay long. They took the children back outside and down onto the beach Joshua had indicated-not as wide as the private beach of Penhallow on the other side of the river, but just as picturesque in its own way with its several jetties and numerous boats bobbing on the sea or stranded on the sand, the water being at half-tide. Chastity took Prue with them. Calvin invited Constance to stroll along the front street with him, and after a while Morgan and Alleyne went to explore the narrow, sloping streets and to look in the few shops the village offered.

  Joshua introduced Freyja to Isaac Perrie, the innkeeper-a novel experience for her. He was a bald-headed, gap-toothed, florid-faced giant of a man.

  "A fine lady you have found for yourself, lad," he said, pumping Joshua's hand, which looked lost in his huge paw. "And right glad we all will be in Lydmere here when you marry her and come home to Penhallow to stay."

  He settled in for a chat, standing wide-legged before them, wiping his hands on his large apron. Freyja could not decide whether to feel amused or outraged but decided upon the former. Life with Joshua was never dull.

  "And Hugh Garnett," Joshua was saying when she brought her attention back to the conversation. "He is doing well, I hear."

  The innkeeper tutted and tossed his glance ceilingward. "Aye, well enough," he said. "On ill-gotten gains, no doubt. But live and let live is my motto, lad, as you well know."

  "He seems not quite prepared to let me live, though," Joshua said with a chuckle. "In fact, he has been to my aunt recently claiming to have seen me kill my cousin five years ago."

  "No!" Mr. Perrie stopped wiping his hands for a moment. "Is he daft?"

  "He is from home," Joshua said, "and so I cannot pay him a social call yet. I daresay he has been wise enough to go to round up a few other witnesses. Any wagers on who they will be?"

  "I am not daft enough to make any wager," the man said. "There would be no one to bet against me. Leave the matter in my hands, lad. You take your lady out to see the sights. An honor and a privilege to make your acquaintance, ma'am."

  The fresh sea breeze caught at Freyja's hat as they stepped out of the inn, and she raised an arm to hold it in place.

  "What was that all about?" she asked.

  "Hugh Garnett," he explained, "attempted to set up a smuggling business here a number of years ago. There was nothing in that to get excited about-smuggling is big business all along the south coast of England. But his underlings were an imported gang of thugs, and they attempted to rule the trade with an iron fist. They were persuaded of their mistake and took themselves off to other parts."

  "I take it," she said, "that you were one of the people who did the persuading. And that Isaac Perrie was another?"

  He chuckled and took her elbow.

  "There is someone I want you to meet," he said.

  He took her to a pretty whitewashed cottage close to the harbor and knocked on the door. It was the home of Richard Allwright, the elderly carpenter who had trained and employed Joshua. He and his wife invited them in and insisted upon their drinking another cup of tea before Mrs. Allwright proudly displayed a small, beautifully carved wooden table that Joshua had made under her husband's tutelage and given her when he finished his apprenticeship.

  "It is one of my treasures," she told Freyja.

  "You had real talent, Josh," Freyja said, running her hand over the smooth surface of the wood and trying to picture him as he must have been in those days.

  "Have, ma'am, not had," Mr. Allwright assured her. "Carpentry is a talent that does not die even when it is not practiced. And so now, lad, you are going to waste your time being a marquess instead of earning an honest living, are you?" But he laughed heartily and dug Joshua in the ribs with his elbow. "It is good to see you home. I never could understand why you felt you had to leave. You will like it here, ma'am."

  "I believe I will," Freyja said, feeling, strangely, that she spoke the truth. Or that it would be the truth if she had any intention of staying. She had not expected to like Cornwall, but there was something about this particular part of it that grabbed at her heart.

  "There is someone I want you to meet," Joshua said after they had left the carpenter's house.

  "Again?" Freyja said.

  He looked at her and grinned.

  "This is not quite your idea of an exciting morning, I suppose," he said.

  He was like a boy, exuberant with happiness. She tipped her head to one side and regarded him through eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun.

  "Josh," she said, "why did you leave here?"

  Some of the light went out of
his eyes as they stood outside the door facing each other.

  "Albert was dead and I was the heir," he said. "My aunt and uncle were devastated by grief and inclined to blame me, though murder was never mentioned. I blamed myself. I rowed beside him until he was within his depth, but I did not watch him all the way to shore. He got leg cramps and went under, I suppose. I could not stay here after that."

  It did not sound sufficient reason to her. Surely his uncle would have wanted him to stay, to learn his future responsibilities. But it was none of her business.

  "Whom did you want me to meet this time?" she asked.

  He brightened, offered his arm, and climbed a steep hill with her until they reached another picturesque cottage with rosebushes climbing all over the front wall and a view down over the rooftops to the harbor. He knocked on the door.

  The woman who opened it was young and personable. Her eyes lit up as soon as they looked on Joshua.

  "Joshua!" she exclaimed, reaching out two slim hands to him. "Is it really you? Oh, it is. What a wonderful surprise."

  Freyja guessed in some shock as Joshua presented her to Anne Jewell that this must be the governess who had borne his child. She was introduced as Miss Anne Jewell, yet she had a child, a little boy about five years old, who was blond and blue-eyed, with all the potential of being a lady-killer when he grew up. His mother had him make his bow to the Marquess of Hallmere and Lady Freyja Bedwyn before he ducked out of sight behind her skirts.

  They did not go inside even though they were invited to do so. They all stood on the threshold for a few minutes, talking. Freyja fought outrage. It was true that she was not really betrothed to Joshua. Nevertheless, it showed poor taste on his part to bring her here.

  "Now what have I done, sweetheart?" he asked as they made their way back down the hill in the direction of the harbor. She had not responded to any of his conversational overtures.

  "Done?" she said in her frostiest, most quelling tones.

  "You were not jealous, were you?" he asked, chuckling. "She is not nearly as gorgeous as you, Free."

  She was truly angry then and wrenched her arm free of his.

  "You might show more loyalty," she said. "She does, after all, mean more to you than I do. As she ought."

  He stood still on the pavement and looked quizzically at her.

  "Uh-oh," he said. "I perceive my aunt's malice at play here. And you fell for it, Free? Do you not know me better? She always did believe I was Anne Jewell's seducer and father of her son. I let her believe it. I have never cared for her good opinion."

  Freyja felt horribly mortified then. For of course she had heard it from the marchioness and had not thought of questioning the essential truth of the accusation. How very foolish of her.

  "You are not the boy's father?" she asked. "But he looks like you."

  "And also like his mother," he said. "Did you notice that she has fair hair and blue eyes?"

  "Do you support her and the child?" she asked. "That is what your aunt told me."

  "Not entirely any longer." He smiled at her. "She takes in one or two pupils now, Free, and refuses to take any more from me than she absolutely needs, but the time was when she was not at all well accepted here. These people are kind but not always as tolerant as they might be. They are humans, not saints. She was destitute and had no family to go to."

  Freyja drew in a slow breath and turned to walk on, her hands clasped behind her back. But he was beginning to look something like a saint, and she did not like it one bit. If she was to have any chance against him, she had to have something to despise.

  "Let me guess," she said, wondering why the truth had not whacked her over the head long before now. "Albert?"

  "Yes, Albert," he said. "And it was not with Anne's consent. She has altogether better taste than that."

  They had reached the bottom of the hill and turned to stroll along the street that ran parallel to the beach. Becky and Davy were cavorting along the sands with a few other children while Eve and Aidan looked on. They all seemed to be shrieking and making merry. Prue was sitting up on the side of one of the beached fishing boats, swinging her legs and looking excited and happy while Chastity talked with an older woman and a young man hovered close to Prue as if to catch her should she fall. Constance and the Reverend Calvin Moore were at the far end of the street.

  "Why did you not simply tell your uncle?" Freyja asked. "Ought he not to have known?"

  "What would Bewcastle do," he asked her, "if he discovered that one of your brothers had impregnated your governess or Morgan's?"

  "He would thrash the offender within an inch of his life," she said with conviction.

  He laughed softly. "Ah, yes," he said, "I believe Bewcastle would. I also believe none of your brothers would put him in such a position. I cannot know how my uncle would have reacted, but I can guess. He would have gone to my aunt, and she would not only have dismissed the governess, but would also have driven her out of the neighborhood. Anne would have found herself destitute and with child and a vagrant to boot. She would have ended up in prison somewhere. Her son would have been fortunate to survive."

  "And so you allowed the blame to be put upon you," she said.

  "I have broad shoulders," he said, shrugging.

  And probably very little money for the past five years-until he inherited the title, she thought. And yet through most of those years he had supported a child who was not his own.

  "I find you rather stupid," she said scornfully. "Remarkably stupid, in fact. I am enormously relieved that we will never be married."

  And she stuck her nose in the air and went striding off toward Eve and Aidan, trying to convince herself that she had just spoken the truest words she had ever uttered.

  She hated him.

  She really did.

  How dare he be so foolishly noble!

  How ridiculous all this was.

  She wished fervently that she had not so impulsively decided to come here with him. She wished she were back at Lindsey Hall. She wished she had never gone to Bath. She wished she had never met the Marquess of Hallmere.

  No, she did not.

  "Sweetheart." He was coming along beside her, she realized. "You are doubly gorgeous when your temper is up. No, make that triply gorgeous."

  She almost shamed herself by laughing. She lofted her nose into the air instead.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Constance and Chastity sat down with Joshua during the afternoon and helped him draw up a list of guests to invite to the ball. Despite the splendor of the ballroom at Penhallow, he could not remember its ever being used. As his aunt had pointed out at breakfast, there were not enough families close by of sufficiently high social status to merit an invitation.

  "We will invite everyone," he explained. "I suppose the inhabitants have not changed a great deal in five years, but you must help me make sure I have forgotten no one."

  "A real ball," Chastity said, her eyes shining, "in the splendid Penhallow ballroom. I am so glad you did not allow Mama to talk you out of it, Joshua." She flushed, apparently at her own disloyalty. "And I am glad you did not allow her to force you into marrying Constance."

  Constance flushed pink too.

  "Perhaps," he said, his eyes twinkling, "Constance likes Cousin Calvin better." He had been right in his guess this morning, of course. His aunt was doing her best to promote a match between them.

  "Oh, no, Joshua," Constance said gravely.

  "Constance likes Mr. Saunders better," Chastity said.

  "And you, Chass?" he asked. "Do you like Hugh Garnett?"

  He had meant it as a teasing question, one over which they would all laugh. But she stared at him with stricken eyes, her face paling.

  "I would not give my consent anyway," he told her hastily. "I am your guardian, remember?"

  She smiled, her lips as pale as her face.

  "You are Prue's guardian as well," she said. "Will you allow her to be cooped up in the nursery for the rest of her
life, Joshua? Or sent to an asylum?"

  "An asylum?" he said, frowning. "That has not been mentioned again, has it?"

  When it had first became obvious that Prue was not as other children were, her mother had wanted her sent to an asylum for the insane. Fortunately it was one of the few matters over which Joshua's uncle had asserted his will, and Prue had stayed. Chastity had devoted most of her girlhood to being a companion to her sister. Joshua had helped, as had Constance to a lesser degree.

  "If you come here to live and we have to remove to the dower house, Mama says she will have no choice but to send her away," Chastity said. "Her nerves would not be able to bear having Prue within her sight every day."

  Joshua sighed. He had appointed a good and competent steward to look after his estate and had considered his duty to his new position done. But he was Chastity's guardian and Prue's too. Perhaps after all it was neglectful of him to have stayed away-and to be planning to leave again as soon as this business with Garnett had been cleared up. It was an admission he did not want to make.

  "Prue will have a home at Penhallow as long as I am alive and marquess here," he said. "And the whole of the house will be hers to use as well as the nursery. Is Miss Palmer good for her?"

  "Mama calls her an improper governess," Chastity said, "because she does not even try teaching Prue most of the things governesses usually teach. But she has taught Prue all sorts of things nevertheless, and she takes her outdoors, where Prue loves to be. Prue can tend the sorriest-looking plants and make them grow into a lovely garden. She is not insane, Joshua. She is just . . . different."

  "You are preaching to the converted," he said, smiling at her. "You and she were with Mrs. Turner and Ben Turner down at the harbor this morning?"