A Matter of Scandal (12 page)

“Oh, no. Thank you for the offer, but I’m already breaking curfew, I’m afraid.”

Brushing past Grey and Haverly, she entered the drawing room again. The tall blonde woman, Alice, looked at her with such hatred that it startled her. The others, Tristan and Lady Haverly included, bore speculative looks that she found nearly as disturbing.

“Did Tobias drive you?” the duke asked from behind her.

“No. I rode Pimpernel.”

“You went riding alone at this hour?”

His voice was sharp, though she wasn’t certain whether he was concerned for her safety, or appalled that a female had managed the ride to Haverly manor in the dark without becoming lost. “I have ridden alone frequently, Your Grace. I hardly think to find highwaymen on Haverly land.” She curtsied to the room. “Good night, my lords and ladies.”

“You are
not
riding back in the dark on your own.”

Emma paused in the doorway. “Are you presuming to dictate to me, Your Grace? I am not one of your servants. Good evening.”

She made it to the stairs before she heard his footsteps thudding behind her. Squaring her shoulders, she continued down to the first floor. Grey didn’t say anything as he drew even with her in the main hallway, but she could practically feel the heat radiating from his large, strong form.

Finally she couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “It’s kind of you to walk me to the door, but it’s quite unnecessary. I know my way.”

“I’m not walking you out,” he grunted. “I’m accompanying you back to the Academy.”

“You are n—”

“Argue all you want,” he interrupted, “but you have your rules of etiquette, and I have mine. You are not riding off alone in the dark.”

She’d barely managed to escape intact from the conversation in the sitting room. She didn’t dare go off alone with him again. Her lips felt swollen and bruised from his kisses, and her heart hummed with wild emotions she couldn’t even put a name to. “Then send one of your grooms.”

To her dismay, he smiled. “Afraid to be alone with me?”

“No! Non—nonsense. I fear your guests will begin gossiping about your odd behavior, and I don’t wish to be involved in a scandal.”

“My guests are my concern. You are more interesting.”

Hobbes opened the front door for them, and
Emma preceded Grey down the shallow marble steps. When she heard the door close behind them, she turned around and jabbed a finger into the duke’s chest. “You presume too much. Simply because you find me ‘interesting,’ like some three-legged goat in a carnival, does not mean that I find you interesting.”

He looked at her. “You seemed to be plenty ‘interested’ a while ago.”

With effort she held his gaze. “I will admit that you kiss well. You’ve had a great deal of experience, no doubt.” He opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off. “As I said, I know how the world works. I know why I ‘interest’ you, and I know precisely how long that ‘interest’ will last.

“This is where I live. I have nowhere else to go. So I would appreciate it if you would keep your ‘interest’ in check until such time as you lose your wager and take yourself and your coaches back to London.”

Finally, he gave a slow nod. “Collins!” he bellowed in the direction of the stable. “Saddle a mount and accompany Miss Emma back to the Academy!”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“Thank you.” She turned on her heel and walked toward the stable.

“Emma,” he continued in a low, soft voice behind her, “you don’t know everything.”

She kept walking. A moment later she heard him return to the manor. Perhaps she didn’t know everything, but she knew she was right about him. And the miserable thing was, she wished she were wrong.

“I
really don’t think that’s right,” Mary Mawgry said.

Grey glanced down at her, and at the rest of the girls, seated in a semi-circle at his feet. With effort he kept his back turned to the noisy chicken run behind Haverly’s stable, and the three figures standing beside it. Even not looking at her, he couldn’t keep his thoughts off Emma.

“Of course it’s right,” he returned, speaking up a little to be heard over the squawking chickens. “Men like women who are
capable
of playing an instrument. Being expected to sit through and listen to a performance, though, is considered pure torture.”

“That’s nonsense.” Elizabeth scowled at him. “I love listening to music.”

“You, my dear, are a female. I wasn’t talking about you.”

“You never talk about us,” she returned, fearless as always. “Only about how to make men like us.”

“Isn’t that the point?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow.

Jane sighed. “It would be nice to be liked simply because we’re likable,” she said, absently plucking blades of meadow grass and letting them blow through her fingers. “Not because we know how to answer every question in a pleasing manner.”

Grey stopped pacing. “Isn’t that what Miss Grenville’s Academy teaches? I’m just refining the process.”

“Not very well.” Lizzy stood, brushing leaves from her walking dress. “If some man says the sky is green, I’m not going to say, ‘Oh, yes, my lord, the sky is green,’ just because he’s an earl, for heaven’s sake.” She bowed and sat again.

“He’s a very stupid earl,” Julia muttered, and Henrietta laughed.

This didn’t make any sense at all. Rubbing his chin, Grey studied the chits arranged in the grass before him. They all seemed to have a fair share of intelligence, particularly Jane and Lizzy. Up until this moment they’d followed his instructions and listened to his lessons and explanations without complaint, though their questions and commentary had been rather amusing. He’d even been enjoying himself; or he would have been, if he hadn’t been so damned frustrated by Emma.

Unable to stop himself, he turned around. The headmistress, wearing a plain yellow morning
dress, chatted with Tristan and Uncle Dennis’s chicken keeper. Her sheaf of notes had grown to book size, and still she continued jotting things down, making measurements, and refusing to ask him any but the most inane questions. As he watched, Tristan put a hand on her shoulder as he interjected something into the conversation. She laughed—the laugh she never had for the Duke of Wycliffe.

Grey clenched his jaw. For four days he’d kept away from the haughty miss. For four nights he hadn’t slept, instead spending the time pacing and cursing and making up revenges, all of which involved the two of them being naked. In the evenings he made up lesson plans for his students, lesson plans the ungrateful chits now seemed to think were merely a poor joke.

For the first time, it occurred to him that he might lose the wager. Grey shook himself. For God’s sake, he was a duke. He never lost at anything.

He turned back to his charges, who now chatted and giggled together. “Hypothetically,” he said, sitting cross-legged in the grass with them, “if an earl did approach and inform you that the sky was green, how would you respond?”

“I’d tell him he was batty as a belltower,” Lizzy announced.

“You would not.” Jane sat forward. “Miss Emma says there are two ways of looking at any question or statement. The first is that the speaker is being sincere, and the second is that he isn’t.”

The young chit even sounded like the headmistress. “Continue,” Grey urged.

“If he’s sincere, he’s soft-headed, and contradicting him won’t do any good.”

“So you humor him,” Grey said, and the girls nodded.

“And if he’s insincere, he’s trying to make himself look witty or clever or intelligent, and—”

“—and he’s therefore seeking an opportunity to make an impression,” Mary took up.

“So you humor him.” Again his charges nodded.

“Unless his intent is without a doubt malicious, in which case you say ‘pardon me,’ curtsy, and leave the conversation.” Julia counted off the steps on her fingers.

Several things which had been troubling him began abruptly to make sense. “What’s the difference, then, between my advice and Miss Emma’s?” he asked, just to hear how they would word the answer.

“Because you just tell us to agree with everything a man says, no matter how ridiculous it is. Miss Emma tells us how to do it knowing his intent, and seeking the way that most benefits us.”

“And,” Elizabeth said stoutly, “she teaches us about everything. Not just stupid blind earls and remembering to flatter nobles when we waltz with them.”

The curriculum she’d painstakingly written out for him in her letter came to mind. In his initial interpretation, it hadn’t been all that impressive. “Geography” had meant learning the major capitals for parlor games. “Mathematics” had been what the chits learned so they would understand how much they spent on clothing.
None of it would have required actual learning or intelligence.

Not for the first time, he wondered whether he had underestimated Miss Emma and her Academy. She clearly considered most males only one step removed from gorillas; since she didn’t spend any time around men, he had to wonder why she viewed them with such contempt.

The girls sat gazing at him, and he shook himself. “If Miss Emma’s taught you so well, what do you think is left for you to learn?”

“I want to know why Miss Emma says you’re a rake,” Lizzy stated.

Grey narrowed his eyes. “You’d have to ask Miss Emma about that.”

“Well, what is a rake?”

Mary patted Elizabeth’s shoulder. “You’re too young for that class. A rake is…a man who tries to kiss lots of women.”

“Oh, good God,” Grey muttered.

“What?” Mary asked, frowning.

Grey frowned back at her. Providing a definition of rakes and answering any of the questions likely to follow had little to do with the ballroom etiquette lessons he’d mapped out for the chits. On the other hand, with inaccurate information like Mary’s, the lot of them were likely to end up with lifted skirts two minutes after they arrived in London. He glanced at Jane. If they made it as far as London.

“Tell us,” Lizzy urged.

“Yes, please.”

Jane’s quiet plea affected him more strongly than Elizabeth’s; she was older, and she was being pursued by a rake. One with whom he’d
spent several hours last week, encouraging and coaching.

“Just a moment,” he said, standing.

Emma and Tristan were stretching measuring tape along the length of one of the chicken coops as he strolled over. The chicken keeper flushed to the top of his bald pate as Grey reached them, making him wonder which sordid details of his life Tristan had been regaling Emma with now.

“Did the little chits frighten you away, Wycliffe?” the viscount asked.

“I need to speak with you for a moment,” he informed the headmistress, ignoring the two men. “In private.”

“All right,” she said after a hesitation, handing the end of the measuring tape to the chicken keeper. “Excuse me.”

She would have stopped just out of earshot of the chicken run, but Grey kept walking until he’d rounded the near corner of the stable. He heard her pause as she realized where they were headed, and only let out a breath when her footsteps continued after him.

“I hope you’re not going to attempt to lecture me about chickens,” she said, rocking back on her heels and acting precisely like a nervous young lady making every effort to appear calm. “I know all about chickens.”

“Your students have asked me to explain what a rake is. And they didn’t mean the farming tool.”

Her mouth opened, then closed again. “Oh. I’ve already explained that—”

“Did you actually tell them a rake is a man who tries to kiss lots of women?”

Emma blushed. “Well, not in those words.”

Grey snorted. “That’s criminal.”

Immediately her expression became defensive. “In some cases I am bound by the dictates of polite society, whatever I might wish to say. And besides, isn’t kissing what you tried to do to me?” she asked, her voice indignant.

“No, I
did
kiss you, Emma.” He took a step closer. “Do you really think that was all I wanted?”

She put a hand on his chest. “Stop.”

“Why? I already kissed you, which is apparently all I was inter—”

“Don’t make fun.”

“Don’t mislead those girls. There has to be a better way to explain things.”

Her hand remained on his chest, and it took more willpower than he’d expected to keep from looking down at it, especially as he felt her dainty fingers curl around the top button of his waistcoat. Sweet Lucifer, she was killing him.

“Why do you even care?” she asked, avoiding his gaze.

“Why are you presuming to dispense information on a topic you obviously know nothing about?”

“I know about you.”

Grey reached out and tilted her chin up with his fingers. “I don’t think you do,” he murmured.

Slowly, so he wouldn’t frighten her off, he leaned down and touched his lips to hers. She responded with a soft sigh, tiptoeing to deepen the kiss. That was what he’d done wrong before, he realized, relishing the play of her soft mouth against his. He’d pushed, tried to guide and con
trol their contact. Emma being Emma, she first balked, and then attacked him with her finest weapon—her wits.

So, even though he practically vibrated with tension, he let her break the kiss, and didn’t pursue her when she did so. For a long moment she looked up at him, her gaze dreamy and unfocused. Then she blinked and lowered her hand from him.

“I would like your permission,” he said, in the same quiet, nonthreatening voice he’d used before, “to tell your students about rakes, and to answer any other questions that might spring from that one.”

“I couldn’t allow such a thing. It has nothing to do with the conditions of the wager, anyway.”

“Emma, if they all go into the world as naive about men as you are, it won’t matter a whit if they know the capital of Prussia, or how to dance prettily.”

She drew a breath, and using all of his willpower he kept his eyes off her pert, heaving bosom. “I am not as naive about men as you seem to think,” she said, bitterness touching her voice.

“But—”

“However,” she interrupted, “neither will I deny my students knowledge which might assist their success.”

He nodded, surprised, and more than intrigued by her statement. “Good.”

“You will only have these discussions when I am present. If I ask that you cease, you will do so immediately. Is that clear?”

“Clear as glass. I have no wish to overwhelm Miss Perchase with practical information.”

“I still don’t understand why you want to be so helpful, after that whole ‘gratefully declining’ nonsense.”

He didn’t blame her for being suspicious, because he had no explanation himself. “I’m trying to win a wager,” he said.

Her expression grew more contemplative. “You still don’t have a chance. This is the first time, though, that you’ve actually turned in the right direction.”

The Duke of Wycliffe had brought luncheon, and three footmen to serve it. Considering that they all sat out on blankets in the meadow, alfresco style, having liveried servants walking among them offering chicken and cucumber sandwiches seemed absurdly overdone. The girls, though, enjoyed it. Emma did, as well, even if she would never tell the duke so.

She looked over at him again, munching on a sandwich and surrounded by females half his size. He’d been different today. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but when he’d kissed her she hadn’t felt cornered or overwhelmed. The kiss had been heavenly, and if she’d ever had a chance of another peaceful night’s sleep, it was gone forever now.

“So you want to expand the coop area?” Tristan asked as he sat cross-legged beside her.

“The price of beef has been soaring since the war. The nobility might still be able to afford it, but I imagine the rest of London has already turned to fish, chicken, and pork. Haverly could supply chicken on the…hoof, as it were.”

He nodded. “It’ll bring in a few more quid, I’m sure.”

“It won’t be enough to win the wager. I know, I know.” Emma set a peach on her thick stack of notes so they wouldn’t blow away. “But every little bit helps.”

When she glanced up again, Grey held her gaze for a moment, then returned to his conversation with Julia and Henrietta. Emma sighed.

A plucked daisy appeared before her. “Cheer up,” the viscount said, twirling the flower in his fingers. “We’ll be out of Hampshire before much longer.”

Emma smiled. “Oh, it’s not that. I enjoy being out-of-doors like this.” In truth, the thought of Wycliffe leaving Hampshire didn’t cheer her up in the least. It would make life more simple again, perhaps, but it didn’t make her happy.

“Miss Emma, it’s been almost an hour. Can we continue our lesson now?”

“May we continue,” she corrected Lizzy.

“
May
we continue?” her youngest student repeated.

Emma’s nerves fluttered. She had discussed rakes with the older girls, in terms of dangers to be avoided. Wycliffe was right, though. Her practical knowledge in that area was sadly lacking, and it was an important topic—particularly for students like Jane and Mary, who would be out in Society among all the male dangers very soon.

“Yes, you may,” she answered.

Tristan climbed to his feet. “Back to the chickens?” he asked, holding his hand down to her.

She allowed him to assist her to her feet. “Actually, I’m going to sit in on this lesson.”

“I thought you’d decided to chaperone from a distance today.”

“I had, but I believe this particular topic requires my undivided attention.”

Tristan looked at Grey. “And which words of wisdom will His Grace be imparting to the flock this afternoon, then?”

“I’m going to teach them about rakes.”

The viscount froze. “Really?”

“Yes. Care to volunteer any of your own experiences for the class?”

Dare eyed the students with almost comical horror. “Actually, I think I’ll go take a walk and gouge my eyes out with a stick.”