One Touch of Scandal Page 10

  “I sold the stones out of my wedding ring,” she corrected. “I’m having the gold melted down to make a set of nose rings. So there.”

  He dropped her hand and stepped back, then, seeing the look on her face, burst into laughter. “Oh, Anisha, I should love to see that! Will you be sporting your new nose rings at St. George’s on Sunday?”

  Her face flushed with embarrassment. “I am teasing, and you know it,” she said. “No, I shan’t wear anything in public that might embarrass you.”

  He caught her hands, both of them this time. “Anisha, you could never embarrass me,” he said gently. “Never. But no woman should part with her wedding ring until she is ready. Luc’s comfort is not worth—”

  “I was ready,” she cut in, her voice firm. “I have been ready, Raju, for a long time. And it was my choice to sell the diamonds. It was my choice to spend the money on Luc. You are forever ranting about the evils of oppressing women, so do not you dare try to refuse me this!”

  Already he was shaking his head. “You are a wealthy widow, sister.” He dropped her hands. “You may waste your money as you please. But I ask you to think about Luc. He has never had to face the consequences of his actions. Pamela spoiled him, and now you are at risk of doing the same.”

  “Am I?” A soft, cynical smile curved her lips.

  “You will spend your days being Luc’s savior,” he warned, lifting his chin to unwind his cravat. “The lad’s becoming a bottomless pit of profligacy.”

  “You think me that naïve?” she answered. “I am making Lucan pay me back. He is to help the boys with their studies, and entertain them—ten hours a day until I find a new tutor, and three thereafter—for the next year.”

  “Surely you jest?”

  She shook her head. “Luc will think the sponging house a holiday, I daresay, before all’s said and done. I had Claytor draw it up properly—a promissory note, he called it.”

  “Did you indeed?” Ruthveyn stripped off his wet coat and tossed it aside. “That’s innovative, I’ll grant you.”

  His sister wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, your coat smells like smoke,” she said, her expression chiding. “Like charas. Raju, are you not sleeping again?”

  “Do not change the subject,” he answered, unbuttoning his silk waistcoat. “We were discussing Luc. You can’t have him teaching the boys to gamble, Nish. It won’t do, I tell you.” He sat down and began to tug at one boot. “Damn it, where’s Fricke?”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, give me the bloody boot,” Anisha complained, bending down to do so.

  “Anisha!” he warned. “Such language! What would Mamma say?”

  “She would tell you to stop picking on me.”

  She was probably right, Ruthveyn acknowledged. Anisha knelt, wedged a hand behind the heel, then gave the left boot a hearty tug. But the water had swollen the leather, and nothing budged. “Blast,” she grunted, “we may need the jack.”

  She yanked again, angrily, and this time the boot flew off. Anisha lost her balance and pitched gracelessly backward onto her derriere. Amusement danced in her eyes, and they both ended up laughing.

  Then the laughter fell away, and there was only the trickle of the tap to break the silence. Hands splayed behind her back, Anisha propped herself up, her sari and petticoat snarled about her knees. Above one tiny red slipper, which was studded with semiprecious gems, he could see Anisha wore the ankle bracelet of tigers’ claws and wide gold links that had once been their mother’s.

  Ruthveyn wore the matching pendant—beneath his shirt, but close to his heart. It was just one of the many things he and Anisha shared. Oh, he loved Luc, too—loved him just as much, and in some ways, felt more protective of him. But Luc was not just of a different generation but of a different culture. He had been born in a very different India than had his elder half siblings. Luc shared their father’s Scottish blood, yes, but his mother had been an English rose of the first water. There was nothing of the Rajputra in him—and nothing at all of the mystic. A pity the boy did not know his own good fortune.

  Ruthveyn tore his gaze from the bracelet and realized his sister was still staring deep into his eyes.

  “Raju,” she said quietly, “what is it?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  She smiled gently. “You cannot lie to me, brother,” she said. “You know you cannot. I feel the uneasiness about you. And last night, your stars—you were to begin a mystical journey. What has happened?”

  Ruthveyn dragged a hand through his damp hair, then sighed. “Get the other boot,” he answered, “and perhaps I’ll tell you after my bath.”

  Anisha rolled onto her knees, her gaze holding his. “Give me your hand.”

  “Anisha, just—”

  “Give me your hand,” she demanded.

  Reluctantly, he did so. “You can’t read me,” he warned.

  “I can read your palm and your stars,” she said quietly, “and perhaps your heart?”

  Anisha spread his hand open wide, studied it for a time, tracing the lines with the tip of her index finger. Then she stopped and set her hand over his, palm to palm, for a long moment.

  “Oh, it is a woman,” she said certainly, her eyes closed. “And you are much conflicted.”

  “One might say so,” Ruthveyn muttered.

  “This woman,” Anisha went on, “she is the cause of your sleeplessness—your frustration. She is in your dreams, and in your dreams, she maddens you—in part, because you find her so erotically—”

  “Anisha—!”

  A sleepy smile curved his sister’s lips. “Very well,” she murmured, eyes still closed. “We shall say instead that you find her attractive, yes? You feel much sympathy for this woman. You fear for her. She calls out to you, and yet…ah, and yet you do not entirely trust her, do you?” At that, Anisha’s eyes flew wide, and she fell silent for a long moment. “Raju, you…you cannot see her.”

  “Hmm,” said Ruthveyn.

  Anisha squeezed his hand. “Truly, can it be?”

  “It could be,” he acknowledged.

  Anisha appraised him slyly. “Ah, but there is only one way to be sure,” she answered, grinning. “And I think we both know what that is. So if the lady is beautiful—”

  “We are not going to have this discussion, Anisha,” he warned.

  But his sister merely smiled her knowing smile. “Tell me, brother, does the enigmatic lady have a husband? Or a lover? Every lady needs a lover, at the very least, does she not?”

  Ruthveyn scarcely knew how to respond to that one. “I believe, little sister, that we shall leave the lady to figure that one out for herself,” he said, rising and dragging her up with him. “Now let it go—before I start husband-hunting for someone to warm your bed.”

  “But I have been thinking, Raju, that I should prefer merely to take a lover.” Anisha batted her eyes innocently. “Is that not what London widows do? Perhaps you might arrange that instead? I believe Lord Lazonby might suit me very well indeed.”

  His hand still clasping hers, Ruthveyn drew Anisha close. “Believe me, Anisha, when I say this,” he growled down at her. “The minute I catch Rance Welham in your bed is the minute I’ll forget all my high-minded notions about female oppression and the same minute that you, my girl, will find yourself married again—and not to him.”

  “Hmm,” said his sister.

  “Anisha!” He gave her a little jerk. “Do we have an understanding?”

  “Haan, Raju!” Anisha gave a put-upon sigh, and released his fingers. “We have an understanding.”

  Behind them, a throat cleared sharply. Ruthveyn turned to see his valet standing in the doorway.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” said Fricke. “May I be of help with that last boot?”

  CHAPTER 6

  Tea for Two

  Awaiting the black-edged invitation that never came, Grace remained at home in Marylebone for the rest of the afternoon, and the whole of the next day as well. Lord Ruthveyn, she grimly considered, would
have been pleased by her compliance.

  On her next breath, however, she resolved not to think of him at all. She had but limited success, for the memory of his kiss had apparently been burned into her brain. Even the warm weight of his hands roaming her body seemed to linger. And underneath all that simmering heat was the disturbing realization that Grace had been on the verge of marrying a man who would never have made her feel any of those things. Never had she felt the slightest impulse to kiss Ethan Holding—nor to slap his face, it was worth noting.

  To distract herself, Grace spent Sunday afternoon pressing and airing the rest of her mourning and, in deference to English sobriety, ripping the satin ruching off her best black bombazine, a gown she’d bought in Paris for her father’s funeral.

  And still there was no knock at the door, so Grace fired off letters to every Parisian with whom she had a passing acquaintance—their old cook, the bachelor uncle she barely knew, her father’s former batman, and a half dozen others—asking their help in finding a cottage. It made for a pitifully small pile on the hall table when she laid them out for the morning post, but it had served to keep her busy.

  By Monday, however, it had become humiliatingly clear that she waited in vain. No funeral invitation had been sent to her, and Grace was reduced to reading the long and flowery obituary that appeared in the morning paper, and crying alone over her toast. Her almost-fiancé was already in his grave.

  Not, of course, that she would have attended the actual services. In England, Aunt Abigail had warned, a lady should be thought too delicate for such things. But Grace had wanted very much to go home—or rather, to go to Belgrave Square—to at least sit with Fenella and the other ladies in their mourning. To offer what comfort she could to Eliza and Anne. And to dine afterward in the company of people who had loved and respected the deceased.

  But it was not to be. They had forgotten her. Or perhaps—God forbid—they somehow blamed her?

  For a moment, Grace considered it. She had been the one to find him, gasping his last. She had been the one who had staggered from his study with blood on her hands. Perhaps Lord Ruthveyn had been right to warn her away from Napier. It was a chilling thought.

  On Tuesday, however, Grace regained her composure and simply took matters into her own hands. She returned her black gown to its muslin sleeve, then put on her dove gray walking dress and half-mourning. After counting out a few shillings of her savings, she went down to Oxford Street to buy a wreath of fresh flowers and hail a hansom. She no longer troubled herself to look around to see if anyone followed. Let them do so; she had nothing to hide.

  “Fulham Road, please,” she told the jarvey.

  As the old, odiferous carriage clattered down Park Lane, Grace stared into the green depths of Hyde Park, and tried her best not to think of that last, awful night in Belgrave Square. Or of Lord Ruthveyn, with his harsh visage and his black eyes, sharp as shattered glass. Instead, she wanted to remember Mr. Holding’s rounder, far more genial face, laughing and very much alive.

  Mr. Holding.

  Well. That was telling, was it not? His face, too, was something of a blur. How sad. Ethan Holding, a man who had deserved better, had died betrothed to a woman whose heart could recall from instinct neither his face nor his name.

  But her rash embrace with Lord Ruthveyn notwithstanding, perhaps her failings were understandable. For better than six months, he had been Mr. Holding, her employer. He had been Ethan for less than six weeks—though in truth, Grace had never grown entirely comfortable with his Christian name. Indeed, she had never been entirely comfortable with him.

  But many a woman, she had consoled herself, married without really knowing her husband. She had known his character. She had believed that enough. Nonetheless, if she could so quickly forget his name and face, perhaps it was no wonder his family had given up on her? Perhaps it was what she deserved.

  Just past Little Chelsea, Grace ordered the driver to stop. The smell and the sway of the creaky old carriage was making her dizzy. Or perhaps it was the sharp, sudden memory of Lord Ruthveyn’s hands on her face that first time—the recollection having returned to her senses with her gaze transfixed by his, utterly certain that she had somehow lost herself to him. That he had looked deep within her, and seen…what?

  It was too much. It was ridiculous.

  Why could she remember one man too acutely and the other almost not at all? Grace snatched up her wreath and stepped down.

  “Thank you,” she said, dropping her coins into the driver’s palm. “I shall walk from here.”

  He tugged at his forelock and glanced again at her flowers. “You’ll be wanting the West London Cemetery, miss?” He pointed a gnarled finger in the direction of Fulham. “’Tis but a short walk thataway, then up the little lane ter the right.”

  Grace thanked him and made her way to the south gate to wander up one of the little paths that threaded the green expanse. She had appreciated, but scarcely needed, the jarvey’s kindness. At Mr. Holding’s request, she had come here at least once a fortnight during her employment, bringing the girls to lay wreaths of lush, hothouse flowers at their mother’s tomb.

  Holding had spared no expense in honoring his late wife, having built as her mausoleum a small Romanesque temple, its white portico supported by two pairs of Doric columns. Even from a distance, it was unmistakable. But today as she looked at it, something caught her eye.

  Grace raised her hand against the sun. At the top of the mausoleum steps, a man and a woman in a veil were coming out, both attired in unrelieved black.

  “Fenella!” she cried, as loudly as she dared.

  It was loud enough. The gentleman beside Fenella turned his head but an instant. Then, very deliberately, he turned the lock and set one hand at the small of Fenella’s spine, urging her down the steps. Grace stepped up her pace, but they were already going up the path, leaving her no alternative save to run, or to shout after them, neither of which was appropriate in a cemetery.

  Horrified, she watched as the pair hastened around the corner and between a row of tombstones, then vanished into the trees. For an instant, she could not get her breath. Grace felt not simply snubbed but vilified.

  Had Fenella even spared her a glance? Given her heavy veil, there was no way to know. But it seemed Royden Napier’s work had been done. Josiah Crane had most assuredly seen her, and there had been no mistaking his intent.

  Grace went up the short flight of steps, only to ascertain that the iron gate beyond the columns was indeed locked. The once-mossy floor within had been trodden bare, and the signs of recent interment were plain. One hand clutching the ironwork, she bent down to lay her wreath, taking care to prop it neatly against the gate yet oddly reluctant to let go.

  But he was dead, she reminded herself. And holding on to his flowers would not bring him back.

  Grace looked down, the bouquet blurring ominously. At the flower seller’s, she had chosen carefully: bright yellow roses for friendship and colorful spears of agrimony to match. Agrimony was for thankfulness—and yet she had never truly thanked Mr. Holding, she realized, for all that he had done. Oh, perhaps there had been no love between them, but gratitude there had been aplenty. He had given her not just employment, but hope after her father’s death. He had entrusted to her care the two sweetest children that Grace had ever known. And he had paid her the greatest compliment imaginable in asking for her hand.

  No, she had not loved him—and today she was oddly certain she never would have done. Which made his death somehow all the more unbearable, for reasons Grace could not fathom.

  The sprays of green and yellow began to swim in earnest before her eyes. One tear wobbled hotly down the side of her nose as she fell to her knees on the cold stone. And there, in the utter silence of Brompton’s cemetery, Grace cried as she had never expected to cry again. She cried in great, gulping sobs. For promises unfulfilled and hope surrendered. For fatherless children, and for good men cut cruelly and coldly down, far sooner than G
od had intended.

  And still she could not remember Ethan Holding’s face.

  Which made her cry all the harder.

  Grace returned to her aunt’s house in the early afternoon more or less as she had departed, this time trudging up the last leg from Oxford Street, and bringing with her the loaf of bread and fresh rutabagas that she’d promised Mrs. Ribbings, their cook. Turning the corner at Duke Street, Grace was surprised to see a fine carriage sitting at the curb—a glossy black town coach with a red-and-gold crest upon the door, a pair of supercilious-looking footmen lounging at the rear, and a coachman with a black-and-blue jaw perched upon the box—all of it making quite a contrast, she ruefully considered, to her shabby hansom cab.

  Grace passed the trio by with a chary glance, then went up the steps to let herself in. Miriam met her in the entrance hall, her eyes wide as saucers.

  “I didn’t forget,” Grace chided, passing the bundles over. “I even found Aunt’s watercress—”

  “Never mind the cress, miss,” Miriam interrupted, her voice pitched low. “A gentleman’s come. To see you.”

  “Zut!” she softly cursed. Grace was suddenly sure to whom the elegant carriage belonged. The Marquess of Ruthveyn had likely never seen the inside of a hired cab.

  Miriam handed her the card, confirming her suspicions.

  Grace laid it facedown and tried to ignore the odd fluttering in her belly. She really did not wish to see Ruthveyn again. “Is my aunt not at home?”

  “Gone to her Ladies’ Temperance meeting, miss,” said Miriam. “But he asked for you—and I don’t think he fancied waiting.”

  “No, no, he’s not the sort who does!” said Grace dryly. “Well, fetch us a pot of strong tea, Miriam, and—”

  “Your sort of tea?”

  Grace considered it. “Yes, please,” she said. “I shall just go and change my shoes.”

  Grace hastened up the stairs to exchange her dusty half boots for kid slippers, and to tidy the tendrils of hair that had slipped their pins. Then, as a last resort, she powdered the red blotches around her eyes. She wanted no one’s sympathy.