A Proper Scandal (14 page)

“Indeed not, I'm afraid. But perhaps you would prefer a woman who would delight in uniformed servants in the park.”

He said nothing.

“It's all right, really,” she said. “If I'm being honest, few people have the patience or sensibility for . . . ” She couldn't finish.

He shook his head. “I will not lie to you, Elisabeth. I have given my future a great deal of thought for many years. And when I envisioned my home and the woman who would be my partner in life, I saw a girl I would respect but not necessarily bother to know, not really. Not beyond her preference in furs and jewelry and our unified plan for presiding over the viscountcy. I could not envision . . . could not
fathom
. . . disappearing with her into the British Museum to encourage a young street boy about his university education.”

Elisabeth nodded, her throat tight. “And you cannot bear it.”

He looked down at her. “Would you like to know what I told your boy, Stoker?”

She stopped walking. She wanted this most of all.

“I told him that I had gone to university too.”

“But of course you went to university.” She laughed bitterly. Of all the obvious, unhelpful things to say.

“But also like Stoker, I did
not
board in secondary school before I went. I had no years at Eton, like my university classmates at Cambridge. I entered university after only having worked with the local vicar to guide me through my studies, learning on my own, much like Stoker. Actually with far less help than Stoker appears to have. There was no well-paid Mr. Bridges in my life, regrettably.”

“He will appreciate this,” said Elisabeth, relaxing. It was a useful thing to say, after all.

“He asked if I was prepared. For my studies at Cambridge, when I arrived.”

“Please tell me you assured him,” said Elisabeth. “He's a very clever boy. I have not seen his equal. But of course he will be prepared.”

“I told him the reason I did not attend boarding school at Eton was because I was turned away. When I tried to enroll. A boy of thirteen.”

Elisabeth took a step toward him. She had not expected this.

“Unlike Stoker,” he went on, “I was eager—no, not eager, I was
desperate
—to escape the chaos in my parents' home and board in school. I longed for order and a routine and the possibility of a different future. The outside world was a mystery to me then, but I knew enough to know that, as the son of a viscount, even that wastrel like my father, I could begin Eton at age eleven or twelve.

“But my parents did not prepare me or enroll me, and they certainly did not deliver me. They didn't even mention the possibility, and they laughed when I asked them about it. So I discovered the schedule on my own, and I rode myself, on horseback, to the school. I arrived on the first day of the term with only a bedroll of meager possessions and my hat.”

The museum behind Elisabeth dissolved as she listened to his revelation. She stepped closer still.

“Of course, I had not been officially registered and no tuition had been paid, but I tried to forge my way through the queue. It was far-fetched but not impossible, I suppose. But in the end, my absent application was not the problem. The problem was that even at age twelve, I could barely read or write. Arithmetic was entirely out of the question. All the other boys had had tutors from the earliest age. They spoke Latin and French. They were reading proper novels and solving geometry. If you knew my parents . . . ” He shook his head. “They couldn't be bothered to provide my brother and me with meals in a timely manner, to put us to bed at night, to furnish winter coats. Tutors or even books were entirely out of the question. So I was turned away. Publicly. Scathingly. In front of the other boys and their parents. Sent home to ‘study up.' ”

He paused. Elisabeth waited, not daring to speak. She held her breath.

“Pitiful, isn't it?” He shot her an exasperated look. “But never fear. I've obviously learned to add two plus two.”

“What happened?” A whisper.

“A young professor at the school overheard the incident and took pity on me. He discovered our address and sought me out, weeks later. I was mortified . . . belligerent and dismissive and rude. But I wanted it too much not to hear what he had to say. He explained to me what I would need to learn in order to apply again at the most remedial level. He could see by the disrepair of the house that paying for a tutor was out of the question, so he suggested that I find someone in the village willing to coach me . . . a vicar, perhaps.

“Looking back, I cannot believe I managed the shame and uncertainty of approaching the local vicar, but that tells you how desperate I was to succeed. He could have rejected me, too—certainly my parents were a bane to the villagers and tenant farmers of his flock—but he accepted my begrudging, terse cry for help, and we set to work.”

Elisabeth whispered, “And you returned to Eton the next year.”

He shook his head. “And I refused to go back to Eton, ever again. I resigned myself to forgo boarding school entirely, and I set my sights on university. This is what I told Stoker. He and I are the same in this. For me, it was Cambridge, but I have heard of this school in Yorkshire, and I assured him it is an excellent opportunity. One he would do well not to miss.”

“And that he will be fully prepared? Did you assure him that you were ready by the time you went?”

Rainsleigh nodded grimly. “I was ready, and, if what you say is true, so will be Stoker. In my case, the vicar worked with me until I surpassed his knowledge. After that, I taught myself. And when the time came, and I finally arrived at Cambridge, I was ready. In some areas, I had already mastered the coursework.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. It was difficult to speak around the lump in her throat. “So you aren't regretful?” She ventured, finally. “About the park?”

He looked around again. “No, I do not regret the park, Elisabeth. It's simply . . . different. More.”

“Too much?”

“No.” He slowly shook his head. “Not too much.”

His slow, quiet words seemed to shoot straight through her very soul, and she was propelled, quite literally propelled, to touch him. She leapt—no, not a leap, a lunge—straight for his chest.

He opened his arms at the last moment, and she fell against him with a short cry. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face against his chest. She wanted to feel the beat of his heart. She wanted to touch his heart.

“
Oof
,” he said, and for a moment, he held his arms away. She thought he would decline the embrace, but slowly . . . tentatively . . . as if uncertain of his right, he settled his arms around her, securing her against him. She looked up, unable to hide the tears in her eyes.

“I will not have you pity me, Elisabeth,” he said, his voice low. “It's . . . it's not a story I share easily.”

Her answer was to rise up and kiss him. For this, he did not hesitate. His lips met hers more than halfway. He set the pace, reminding her of all things he'd taught her the week before. Within seconds, the kiss alone was insufficient, and he scraped his mouth across her cheek to her ear. He whispered her name, a plea, and she gasped in response. He moved lower, kissing her jaw, the expanse of her throat. She dropped her head back, inviting it all, tightening her hold on his shoulders as if she'd fall if she didn't cling to him.

“I tell you these things because the bloody picnic was . . . shortsighted,” he rasped. “I am out of my depth.”

“Good,” she said on a breath, seeking his mouth, digging her fingers into his hair and then trailing her hands down his neck. She toyed with his collar, fingers working their way beneath. His cravat was in the way, but she continued to search, wanting warm skin, wanting
him.

He growled and yanked the cravat free. He found her hand and flattened it over the exposed skin at the throat of his shirt. She thrilled at this, reveling in the hard muscle, the furl of hair, the hot skin.

“Elisabeth,” he hissed, roving over her shoulders, arms, back, massaging his hands into the curve of her waist and then dipping lower still, gathering her bottom in his palms to press her against him.

A moan escaped her, and she felt herself push back. The pressure was both a relief and wildly insufficient. She pressed again.

Rainsleigh made a growling sound and tore his mouth from hers long enough to look around the empty exhibit hall.

“Wrap your arms around my neck,” he rasped in her ear, and she complied. With the cravat gone, she could explore the skin of his shoulders beneath the collar of his shirt.

He lowered his head, kissing the expanse of breast above her neckline, and then bent down and scooped her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist without instruction.

While a new kiss blazed, he carried her between a giant stone urn and a naked statue to a small anteroom lined with glass display cases of ancient coins. There was a bench in the room, and he collapsed the two of them on it.

Oh, yes, that is better
, she thought.

“You shatter my self-control,” he panted.

She opened her mouth to defend herself, but she couldn't speak.

He scooped her close, tracing his hand down her leg to locate her ankle. “God, help me, Elisabeth,” he moaned. “This is madness.”

She hitched up her leg, and he found the hem of her skirt. His hand was beneath it in an instant, covering her slipper and inching upward . . . ankle, leg, knee. He rubbed, smoothing his hand up and down, going higher each time, nearly to the end of her stockings. Elisabeth stifled a cry, snuggling closer, cinching her legs more tightly around his waist.

Without warning, footsteps, distant but rapid, clattered through their pleasured oblivion. They froze. Two sets of feet by the sound of it, marching through the exhibit hall beyond.

Rainsleigh swore and scrambled to disentangle his hand from her leg, to set her off him, to stand up. It happened so fast, Elisabeth almost tipped over. He reached a hand out to steady her, leaning in the other direction to retrieve his cravat. She blinked and grabbed a display case for balance. “I have it,” she whispered, breathing hard. It was only half untrue. She had hold of the case but not steady breath, or rational thought, or the desire to stop.

“Where the devil is Miss Breedlowe?” Rainsleigh said lowly, whipping his cravat until it unfurled and then stuffing it around his neck.

Still dazed, Elisabeth said, “Likely she would have preferred the picnic.” She forced her hands to work, smoothing her skirt, straightening her bodice. She patted her hair; the pins were either barely hanging on or lost forever. Loose curls spilled down her back.

“We cannot let this happen,” he said, jerking his cravat this way and that. “Not again.”

The footsteps slowed, stopped, and then started again. He went still; and they listened. “We're in a public museum, for God's sake.”

He looked up for her reaction, and she raised one eyebrow.
What's a girl to do?

He growled, leaned in, kissed her again, hard and fast, and then grabbed her hand.

“This was my fault,” she whispered, allowing him to tug her along. “I was overcome.”

He stopped at the coin-room door and peered right and left, scanning the exhibit hall. “All the nude statues, no doubt,” he said distractedly.

“It was
you
.”

His head shot up, and he turned back to her, pulling the two of them out of the sight of the door. Grabbing her by the arms, he pushed her back against the wall. “We will find the bloody chaperone.
Now.
And you cease provocative declarations. I can only resist so much.”

“I merely said, ‘it was you,' ” she whispered tartly.

His eyes, already hot-blue with passion, dropped, heavy lidded. He leaned in. She thought he would kiss her again, and she turned up her face. Instead, he put his mouth to her ear and growled, “And I merely put my hand up your skirt. I would have taken you right here, in a public building, with patrons and staff and bloody school children walking through. Do not push me, Elisabeth. My God—
please
. Have mercy.”

She couldn't speak. The proximity of his lips, his voice in her ear, his body pressing against hers. She would have allowed it—she would have
hastened
it. Her body was on fire with need.

He stepped back, releasing her, pulling her from the wall and out the door. As they hurried along, he rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck. When they were in plain view, he yanked her forward, transferring her hand to his arm. He let out a long, slow breath. He slowed down, walking at an amble. Without looking at her, he led her to the stairwell in the far corner. Beside a crumbling pillar, two scholarly young men scribbled notes. They raised their heads and tipped their hats. Elisabeth smiled.

“You asked me, Elisabeth, if I could bear it—bear
you,
” he said in the stairwell.

“Did I?” Her brain had shut down. She floated beside him.

“I assume you're referring to your charitable leanings and your progressiveness?”

“That's not at how I see myself. I simply meant . . . me. All of me.”

He nodded, not looking at her. “I should like to be very clear. I have wanted you since the first moment I saw you. This, I think, has never been so clear. The answer is,
I can bear you
.”

She took in a shaky breath.

“Really, there are only
two
things I cannot bear,” he went on, pulling her along. “You've just heard that rejection came very early and very harshly to me. Since boyhood, it has followed me, in some form or another, everywhere I go. When you will not see me, I assume more of the same. If we do not get on,” he said, “so be it. But if you enjoy my company and have no other conflict, I . . . I do not like to
guess
at your affection.”

She nodded. “I was rude with my excuses this week.”