Scandalous Scions Two

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  There had been two witnesses—one of them Burscough’s butler, Whittle. The other was the priest’s cook. No one else attended the wedding and there was no wedding breakfast.

  Sharla gripped her hands together. “Oh lord, Jenny…the wedding night…!”

  Jenny sighed, recalling the passionless groping in the dark room. Burscough’s clammy hands and grunting efforts. She had been completely unmoved by the coupling. “I don’t think Burscough even realized I was not a maiden,” she murmured. “He certainly did not take any care to ease me through the…matter. I don’t believe he cared one way or the other.” It didn’t embarrass her to speak of it, now. Dane and Ben had listened with complete absorption as she had spoken of her afternoon with Jack, and no one had breathed a word of dismay or disgust for the choices she and Jack had made.

  The same dispassionate numbness that had gripped her throughout the first weeks of her marriage held her now and allowed her to speak aloud every detail.

  “A few days after the wedding,” Jenny told them, “I wrote my last letter to Jack.”

  It had been a simple letter.

  Jack:

  Now you are free to do as you should. Honor your family’s wishes.

  Regards,

  G. Burscough.

  Dane rested his elbows on his knees and gripped his hands together, looking at Ben. “I cannot fathom Burscough’s reasons. Jenny’s, yes. They are abundantly and painfully clear now.” Dane gave her a brief smile. “Burscough, I do not understand. If he was moved to propose for all the normal reasons, Jenny’s family’s refusal to support the match should have deflected him. Instead, he climbs into the carriage and marries her as soon as the law allows.”

  Ben shook his head. “There is more to this than we yet know. Jenny, do you mind continuing your story? I sense…” He frowned, his dark brows coming together. “I cannot put my finger on it, yet I sense there is something we must learn here that will help with the case.”

  “Your instincts are speaking, Ben?” Dane asked.

  “Yes.” Ben shook his head. “I have heard every reason under the sun for why people marry and why they later separate. In this case—I do apologize for calling you a case, Jenny, but that is how I must think of it.”

  Jenny nodded.

  “There is nothing normal about this,” Ben said. “Burscough marries her, which goes against all good sense. Now he wishes to divorce her…which also defies all reason and sensibility.”

  “You don’t believe Burscough wishes to divorce me because of my journal?” Jenny asked him.

  “I suspect that is not the only reason,” Ben said. “There is something else at work here.”

  Jenny sat up straighter. For the first time since Burscough had burst into her room and ripped her journal from its hiding place, she felt a glimmer of something other than black despair. “Now you have said that, there is something else I have only remembered now that never made sense to me.”

  “About Burscough?” Ben prompted.

  “I suppose that is part of the story. I found out about it after the wedding.”

  “It isn’t in your diary?” Ben asked.

  Jenny could feel her cheeks burning. “My mother sent me the journal after the wedding. She encouraged me to use it to think.”

  Dane laughed.

  “I was not using the journal as a private confessional as other ladies do. I recorded dates and events, then I would write about some of them. Not everything is in the diary, Ben.”

  Ben looked confused.

  Sharla gave a soft tsking sound. “Pillow talk, Ben.”

  Dane laughed.

  Ben looked surprised, then rueful. Then thoughtful. “So you and Jack…?” he asked delicately.

  Jenny nodded.

  Ben ruffled his hair. “If you are up to it, we should hear the rest of the story.”

  “I am up to the task,” she said firmly.

  “Very good,” Ben said, his tone approving. “When you are ready.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Present day: The Davies Residence, Grosvenor Square, London. February 1867. At the same time.

  Bronwen and Sadie had been in the habit of slamming the front door of the red brick house and shouting for whoever they wanted to speak to, the moment they entered.

  Catrin had weaned herself of the habits and crudeness that her two elder sisters displayed. While society looked at them askance, Catrin was determined to demonstrate that not all her rambunctious, large and loud family were the same.

  She had watched the world adore Alice’s quiet and sweet ways, too. Now that Alice was gone, it was up to Catrin to impart some gentility to the Davies name.

  Meeting Daniel had made her question that ambition, though.

  Troubled, Catrin handed her bonnet and shawl to Stamp, picked up the front of her dress and moved into the drawing room, where she knew she would find her mother. The older Annalies, for whom Lisa Grace had been named, was sitting at the tall secretary in the corner, her glasses on, frowning over a letter.

  Catrin’s father was also there. He sat in the chair by the window, with a pile of newspapers spread around him on the floor.

  “Papa, you will excite yourself too much, reading the broadsheets,” Catrin chided him. She kissed his cheek.

  “As I have already told him,” her mother said, her tone distant.

  “This divorce scandal is affecting everyone in the family,” Rhys said irritably. “How does Lisa Grace fair, by the way?”

  “Much better this morning. Daniel came home and that cheered her up immensely.”

  “Really!” He raised his brows. “Possibly not the most auspicious moment in family affairs for a prodigal son to return. Barely anyone will notice he is here, with all this fuss.”

  “I think he might prefer it that way,” Catrin said. “He is…changed.”

  Her mother removed her glasses and considered Catrin. “In what way?”

  Rhys snorted. “He was reporting upon a civil war. Civil wars are not pleasant.”

  “No war is pleasant,” her mother replied, her gaze on Catrin. “How did you find him, my dear?”

  Catrin pulled the upright chair that lived next to the secretary out from the wall and settled on it. From this position she could see both her mother and father without craning in an unladylike way. She settled her skirts. The new, flat-fronted hoops were much easier to arrange than the old, wide ones. They folded over her knees with a perfect drape.

  Her mother was waiting for her answer. Even her father seemed interested.

  Catrin thought of the moment when Daniel had first walked into the room. For a moment, until Annalies had cried out his name, Catrin had thought him to be a stranger, just as he had assumed about her. That presumption had allowed Catrin to measure him as she would any other man.

  The Great Family had more than its share of tall men, although Daniel was not one of them. Oh, he was as tall as any normal man. She suspected he stood close to six feet tall, which was more than a respectable height. There were some lords and gentlemen who were shorter than her, and Catrin did not have her mother’s height. Not quite.

  It had been Daniel’s eyes she had first noticed. They were a clear gray, surrounded by black borders. It had been like looking into a still pond on a summer’s day.

  Then he had noticed her and the expression in them had become…complex. She was not sure she understood everything he had not said, yet one emotion she had been sure of was one of interest. She had caught his attention. Sharply.

  Catrin had grown used to that look in a man’s eye. It was the look that told her that her appearance was pleasing to them. That their thoughts had turned to speculation about possibilities. Could they steal a kiss from her? Squeeze her waist in some dark corner? More?

  She had grown adept at avoiding the complications that ensued when a man looked at her in that way. When she had recognized the look in Daniel’s eyes, though, she had wondered what it might be like to let him complicate her life.
/>   Then he had dismissed her as superficial and beneath his interest, because she had responded as a proper lady ought to.

  “Daniel has grown older,” Catrin told her mother. “His cheeks are drawn. He is very…sure of himself.”

  “It has been five years since he left for America. Everyone does tend to grow older as the years turn,” her father pointed out.

  “He’s older than that,” Catrin said.

  Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “He upset you.”

  Catrin hesitated. “Mother…do you think I am silly?”

  “He told you that?” her father said, sounding annoyed.

  Catrin kept her gaze on her mother’s face. She knew Mama would have the answers she craved. “I have only ever tried to be a good, proper lady…to be everything that Sadie and Bronwen are not. To make you and Father proud of me. Why does Daniel think that is not enough?”

  “Daniel demands more of the world than most men,” Rhys said. “Pay it no mind.”

  Her mother shook her head. “Oh, sometimes I so regret my decisions in life.”

  “I do not,” Rhys said firmly. “You are perfect the way you are.”

  “Only I have polarized my daughters. Sadie makes my choices, only more so…I would never have dreamed of travelling around the world the way she has. Bronwen, too—then she found she must compromise to be happy. And now Catrin, who chooses the other path, one of convention and propriety…and she is unhappy, too!”

  Rhys got to his feet and came over to the secretary and put his hands on her mother’s shoulders. “Do you not remember how unhappy you were, my darling wife?”

  Catrin stared at her mother, shocked. “You were unhappy?”

  Her mother sighed and put her glasses back on. “A thinking, intelligent woman will always be unhappy with the choices given her. When I rejected all the choices and made my own…” She looked up at Rhys. “Then I found happiness.”

  Catrin sighed. “I don’t want to marry Daniel,” she pointed out.

  Her father smiled. “You do want his respect.”

  “Yes!” She bit her lip. “I don’t like that he thinks I am…stupid.”

  Her mother laughed. “Ah, the dilemma of a beautiful woman.” She reached up to the upper shelf of the secretary pulled down a thick volume and handed it to Catrin. “The only weapon, the most powerful weapon you can use, is reading.”

  “Reading,” Catrin said, looking down at the dusty leather cover. “Sir Isaac Newton?” She wrinkled her nose. “If I read such books and if I actually understand them, won’t Daniel then think I am too smart?”

  “You are already too smart for him,” her mother said firmly. “You are our daughter. He has simply forgotten that.”

  Rhys bent and picked up the papers and shuffled them into a ragged pile, that he put on top of the book. “Reading never harmed anyone. Besides, if you are too smart for him, then he will respect you, as you wish.”

  “And you will no longer care whether he does or not,” her mother added, the corners of her mouth curling upward.

  “That would be a good thing,” Catrin admitted. She pressed her hand against the pile of newsprint. “Have they named the other party in Jenny’s divorce yet?”

  “They won’t for a few days,” her father replied, returning to his chair.

  “Why not?”

  “To give him…whoever he is…time to get his affairs in order,” her mother replied.

  Catrin’s lips parted in surprise. “What will they do to him?”

  “Adultery is a criminal offense,” Rhys replied, his tone one of a solicitor who had seen far too many crimes in his time. “The very least they will do is arrest him.”

  * * * * *

  Four Years Ago: The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. March 1863.

  Jenny didn’t remember telling the driver where she wanted to go. When the carriage halted, she stirred and looked through the window.

  There were a great many people gathered on the wide footpath in front of the big building. She looked up at the grand columns. Why…this was the Opera House! She barely recognized it in broad daylight. Why was she here? She couldn’t remember.

  The driver opened the door for her. “I believe the exhibition is on the first floor, Your Grace.”

  The antiquities exhibition. Her sluggish mind supplied the necessary information. All of fashionable London had been invited to view a collection of ancient Egyptian statues and jewelry and other finds that had been unearthed from the desert around Cairo. Experts said there might be much more such bounty, within the pyramids themselves, perhaps. Everyone had become very excited by the possibilities and there had been many hysterical articles in the newspapers.

  When Burscough had abruptly insisted they travel to London for the opening of Parliament, Jenny had been pleased to accept her invitation to view the treasure.

  She stumbled out of the carriage, barely staying on her feet. There were people in front of her, possibly people she knew, only she could not focus upon their features. Instead, the images of what she had just seen in Saint Pancras flickered through her mind, stealing her attention and her breath.

  Jenny was swept up in the tide of people moving into the theater. She recalled the curators had not wanted to hold the display in the British Museum, amongst all the other ordinary antiquities. They wanted to showcase their finds with velvet and swags and a private room with a stout, locking door.

  The river of people wound up the stone stairs to the first floor, through the front parlor that she knew well from other nights at the opera. Beyond were the doors into the private salon where the exhibition was housed.

  Jenny saw the door to her family’s private box. It was closed, of course. The passage that led to the boxes was barred by a velvet rope.

  Jack always sat in the stalls. He said the music sounded better, there.

  Quite without realizing it, Jenny found her feet moving her out of the stream of people and back through the other arch and down the other side of the stairs. She turned right instead of left, and pushed open the door into the auditorium and stepped inside.

  The backs of rows of chairs faced her. The cavernous hall echoed, with no one in it.

  “Jenny.” Her elbow was gripped and she was turned.

  It was Jack. He was as tall and strong as she remembered. Jenny blinked. Had she wished his apparition into appearing? She had been thinking of Jack and now he was here. Only, he looked tired and there was a drawn expression about his eyes that she would not have imagined.

  Jack let go of her arm. “Didn’t you hear me? I called your name, over and over.”

  Jenny glanced toward the door. What she had seen in Saint Pancras played in her mind, stealing her attention, making it hard to focus upon the present moment.

  Jack’s brow furrowed. “Are you quite well? Jenny?”

  Jenny reached out for the nearest chair back and gripped it. “He wanted to come to London to see his mistress.” It blurted from her, even though she had thought she would die to speak it aloud to anyone, and most especially to Jack.

  Jack grew still. “Burscough?” he ground out. He knew precisely what she was saying without further explanations.

  “He was quite open about it,” Jenny said. “Parliament was merely a good public reason to come to London. He insisted I come, too.” Her mouth pulled into a grimace. “For appearance’s sake.”

  Jack breathed heavily yet said nothing. His jaw flexed.

  “I went to Saint Pancras, to the address he shouted to the driver when he left.” Jenny looked up at Jack. Finally, the ice in her heart was shifting. Disintegrating. Pain seeped through. “I saw her. She is with child, Jack. Heavily pregnant. She had a son with her. He is perhaps ten years old.” She made herself say the rest. “The boy looks just like Burscough.”

  Jack closed his eyes.

  “What have I done?” Jenny whispered.

  Jack pulled her into his arms and held her. His arms were solid. Reliable. She let him hold her up. His t
ouch, his scent, his size…they were the impressions and sensations she had craved, now she could not have them.

  Finally, the ice in her heart was crushed and gone. She could feel again. And it was agony. She cried, each tear tearing at her throat and burning her eyes. Jack held her through it all, his hand soothing her back and stroking her hair. He said nothing. He didn’t need to.

  When did comfort turn to mutual sweetness? She wasn’t sure. In that dark space, with the murmur of hundreds of people just beyond the doors, all she could think of was how wonderful it was to be in Jack’s arms once more. Her lips met his although she wasn’t aware of turning her mouth up to meet them.

  His kisses were potent, making her shudder and her body to throb. Now she was awake, after weeks of numbness. She was consumed with hunger for him.

  Jack guided her steps until her back pressed against the wall behind the last row of chairs. His body pinned hers against the wall. His hands were everywhere. His mouth explored every inch of flesh she had on display, while Jenny rolled her head back against the wall and reveled in every attention.

  When he reached beneath her skirt and pushed her petticoats up, understanding flared in her. He was going to take her right here and now.

  The peak of pleasure she remembered with such vividness might be hers again. Her body leapt and her nub throbbed. When he lifted her and pressed her back against the wall again, she wound her legs about his hips eagerly.

  His fingers found the opening of her drawers and pushed the edges aside. Then his shaft was there, probing.

  She was shockingly damp and ready for him and he slid inside without the least hesitation. He filled her, completed her.

  For a moment Jack held still, as if he was sampling the sensation of being inside her. Jenny rested her forehead against his. She was trembling.

  Then he thrust, his strong hands gripping her thighs.

  It was glorious. Jenny clawed at Jack’s shoulders, encouraging him to deeper, harder movements, as her body gathered around him, her pleasure building.