It Started with a Scandal (11 page)

“I’d like to point out, Dolly, that you are not entitled to any conditions, but if you have reasonable suggestions or requests, I’d be happy to consider them, and, if necessary, convey them to Lord Lavay, who would be happy to discuss them with you.”

Dolly Farmer looked at her with that same cynical amusement she always employed. Perhaps skillful five-card loo players knew when someone else was bluffing.

Elise decided that, regardless of her skills as a washerwoman or scrubwoman, she wouldn’t mind in the least if Dolly was struck by lightning.

The others, on the other hand, had encountered Lord Lavay in his throwing moods, and his name still carried a whiff of a threat. It wasn’t something they wished to repeat.

“Well, then,” Elise said pleasantly. “What may I tell Lord Lavay about his staff?”

“We shall stay on, Mrs. Fountain,” Dolly Farmer said magnanimously, and rather sweetly. “I think you’ll be a right
pleasure
to work for.”

Elise narrowed her eyes at Dolly.

Who looked innocently back at her. And beamed and batted her eyelashes.

Perhaps she meant it. One would probably never know with the likes of Dolly Farmer.

Ramsey cleared his throat.

“
But
. . . our condition is that we should like livery.”

Elise nodded. “Very well. You shall have it inside a fortnight.”

“And we would like one evening a week to play five-card loo.”

“If Lord Lavay doesn’t require your services, you may play five-card loo one evening a week. If there are guests in the house, then the game is rescinded, which means you will not be allowed to play. If I see evidence of it when you ought to be working, you will be immediately sacked.”

“Fair enough,” James said cheerily, and stuffed half a slice of bread into his mouth. “You’re a right good baker, Mrs. Fountain.”

“Thank you, James,” she said regally. “I know.”

Chapter 11

A
FTER DEVOURING AN UNOBJECTIONABLE
beef stew mopped up with a fine slice of bread washed down with a glass of wine from a bottle donated from the Earl of Ardmay’s cellars, Lavay rang for Mrs. Fountain, almost as a reflex. The way some men would have a pleasant snifter of brandy or a cigar after dinner.

He knew a certain amount of impatience before she arrived. He had an agenda.

But when she did arrive, he briefly forgot why he’d rung for her. It was just that it was such a pleasure to look at her, particularly after she’d clearly taken the stairs at a run and her cheeks were pink and her hair wasn’t anywhere near as tidy as she thought.

“Ah, good evening, Mrs. Fountain. I should like to say that it was very kind of you to inflict the willow bark tea upon me. Or rather, it was three parts kindness, one part desperation to make me something other than insufferable.”

Her eyes flew wide in alarm, but then he could see that she decided he was teasing.

“I’ll add ‘how to tame a prince’ to my heirloom recipes.”

“Splendid. You taught the girls at Miss Endicott’s Academy? A variety of subjects, I would imagine.”

“Yes.” She was clearly suddenly wary.

“And you enjoyed your position?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. My loquacious new housekeeper is suddenly taciturn. Why are you now a housekeeper, Mrs. Fountain, and not a teacher?”

She hesitated, then said, “I thought we conducted our interview on the day I was hired, Lord Lavay.”

“Mrs. Fountain, why don’t you have a seat and indulge my curiosity, if you will.”

He said it pleasantly, but it was the sort of tone that clearly brooked no argument.

She sat down in the chair as if she were mounting the steps to the guillotine.

He sat down opposite her. The firelight turned her fair skin a glowing amber, and her eyes were softer and shadowier.

“I said something out of turn,” she admitted softly.

“Shocking.”

That made her smile, and that was better.

He was a little concerned that if she’d said
I committed a murder
, he would have found a way to rationalize her current position. Perhaps merely keep her away from the meat cleavers, that sort of thing.

He shrugged with one shoulder. “In some places, such a thing is more welcome than others. One must choose one’s moment, of course, and one’s opponent. And do you see, I can shrug now with less pain. You have restored my vocabulary to me, Mrs. Fountain, with your willow bark tea and speaking out of turn.”

“I’m glad to hear it, sir.”

“And now I must ask you to rewrite the letter to my grandfather.”

She looked astonished again. “Was it unsatisfactory?”

He was amused at how doubtful she sounded. Clearly Mrs. Fountain was rarely found unsatisfactory.

“Someone wept upon it.”

It was stealthy. He’d deliberately ambushed her.

She froze.

And then she looked up at him with something like a plea in her eyes, as if she’d been caught in the act of a crime.

He loved that she hadn’t denied it.

They locked gazes for a moment.

“Where
is
your home, Mrs. Fountain?” he asked softly.

“Northumberland.” She said it almost numbly. Still surprised by the ambush.

“Ah.”

The big, healthy fire gave a hearty pop.

“Home becomes a part of you, doesn’t it?”

She seemed to be breathing through some sort of pain.

“Yes.” The word was thick.

“Les Pierres d’Argent was my home,” he mused softly. “We’ve a number of homes, my family. But this was the home I knew and loved. It has belonged to my family for nearly two centuries. I know every tree as if they were playmates with whom I was raised. After a manner of speaking, they are. I fell out of more than one of them.”

She smiled faintly. But she was still tense. Her hands had vanished beneath the table, and he suspected they were folded together in a knot.

“I know every flower in the garden. I know every stone in the walkways and walls. I scraped knees, caught fish, climbed, took a whipping for stealing a tart meant for dinner, fought and played and laughed with my brother and sister and cousins. I learned how to be a man there. The voices of my family, all the laughter and tears, who we are, are in the timbers of it, in the stones. It is as much a part of me as . . . this.” He raised his hand. “And it was taken from us. Those of us who could scattered like insects to new countries. Taking only what we could. Things like . . . sauceboats. Silver spoons.”

She was imagining it, and her eyes looked hunted.

He found the notion of making her suffer in any way very distasteful. But for some reason, he wanted her to know.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I took only a hairbrush with me.”

He nodded shortly but didn’t ask any questions.

“You miss your home, Mrs. Fountain.”

Another pause. “Yes.”

So tentative, that word, and he was certain it hid multitudes.

“When will you go for a visit?”

“I cannot.”

She’d gone pale with tension.

“You are allowed time off from your position, Mrs. Fountain. Provided you last beyond a fortnight and outfit the footmen in livery.”

That ought to have brought a smile.

She tried for one. “I . . . cannot.”

He sensed he ought not press.

And yet.

“Why? Did you say something out of turn?”

This made her smile in fact. “In a manner of speaking.”

But her eyes were imploring him not to ask any more questions.

He relented.

“If you would be so kind as to copy this letter word for word again? I should like to take it to be mailed tomorrow.”

“Of course, sir.”

With apparent relief, she bent her head and applied herself to the foolscap and ink. In all likelihood happy not to show her face to him.

“I don’t need to return home. I’m quite fine on my own,” she said suddenly, after a moment.

“Of course you are,” he said lightly.

I thought I told you I didn’t like liars, Mrs. Fountain.

He settled onto the settee with Marcus Aurelius. One of the benefits of his convalescence was that he was able to read to his heart’s desire. He’d much rather be out galloping a horse on the green, of course, but that day would come again soon, and meanwhile he could improve his already satisfactory brain.

He turned the page and didn’t read a word of it, and watched the firelight amber her cheeks, and turned another page and didn’t read a word of that, and watched her tongue dart out to touch her top lip as she dipped the quill in the ink again, and he turned another page and glanced down at it, when the quiet was interrupted by a sharp rap on the door frame.

“Messenger for you, sir. Seems rather press—”

The messenger was the same granite-faced person who had pushed past Elise and hadn’t wanted tea, and he pushed past Ramsey into the room now.

Lavay, she noticed, didn’t even blink. As if he was expecting the man.

The messenger was an interesting man, Elise thought, glancing up, then reflexively ducking again so as to seem as unobtrusive as possible. He didn’t radiate any particular self-importance or station, but neither was he subservient or humble; his face was expressionless—she would not have been able to identify him in a crowded room after this evening, she was certain. But single-minded intensity of purpose accompanied him into the room.

Lavay rose to his feet.

The man held a missive out to Lavay, bowed, saluted, turned and was gone.

Lavay broke the seal.

He looked up. “Mrs. Fountain, have you finished with the letter?” His voice was abstracted and dismissive.

“Yes, sir.”

“That will be all this evening, thank you.”

And just like that, after he’d fished around and unearthed her deepest pain based on a teardrop on a letter, she was dismissed with the usual head-spinning abruptness.

But oddly, he had shared with her a peculiar moment of absolute peace, so singular and distinct that she realized that nothing had been peaceful about the last six years of her life, no matter what she tried to tell herself. His silent understanding, their complicity, had flowed into all those fissures that ached like cracks in skin.

She’d seen his face when he’d read the message from the messenger. It had gone cold, abstracted, intent as a predator’s.

She’d felt a clutch in her gut that she recognized, unnervingly, as concern.

She was forgotten.

But some things, she suspected, were more important than her pride.

Chapter 12

E
LISE GOT TH
ROUGH THE
following day without a single jingle from Lord Lavay, who had closeted himself with the Earl of Ardmay for the afternoon. In all likelihood, something to do with that message brought last night. Something about it struck her as ominous, as portentous as the great lingering masses of rain clouds now hovering between the kitchen door and the vicarage.

Those clouds would likely contribute to a magnificent sunset, given half a chance, if the rain didn’t fall.

She stood on the steps outside the kitchen door, her eyes aimed, as usual, toward the vicarage like a hunting dog’s. She would not exhale until she saw the two figures, small as birds on the green in the distance at first.

They increased in size.

When they came into view as people rather than dark specks, her heart launched heavenward.

And when he saw her, Jack began to run, and Seamus, bless him, did again, too, to try to keep up.

“We know you like these, Mama, so we brought more,” Jack huffed.

Jack had a fistful of daisies and some roses that had once sported considerably more petals, but which had been balded on the trip from the vicarage to home.

Seamus gave him a nudge.

“It was Seamus’s idea.”

“Was it now? Thank you, Mr. Duggan. Thank you, Jack. ”

“I’m going to be a sheep, Mama!”

“When you grow up? Instead of a bell ringer?”

“In the Christmas pantomime.
Baaaaaa! Baaaaaa!
”

He bent over and waggled his hindquarters.

“Very convincing. Excellent casting decision on the part of . . .”

“Mrs. Sneath.” Seamus’s face darkened, and his voice deepened as if he’d said
Beelzebub
.

Elise knew Mrs. Sneath. She was the redoubtable head of the Society for the Protection of the Sussex Poor, and she worked closely with the vicar. She was the sort of woman who would never let the Seamus Duggans of the world get away with anything, let alone get near all the dewy young women who volunteered for charity work.

And Mrs. Sneath was an
accomplisher
. If something needed to be done, she would make sure it was.

And . . . a pantomime would need costumes.

Hope and inspiration violently surged through Elise.

“There will be girls, too, Mama! The younger girls from Miss Endicott’s will be in it. They will be angels.”

“I wondered if I might have a word with Mr. Duggan while you run upstairs, Jack.” She said it in such a rush that Seamus’s eyes went wide. “Go and tell Kitty and Mary and James and Ramsey about your day. They would love to hear about the sheep and angels.”

Nearly the entire staff had fallen in love with Jack. Kitty and Mary treated him like a favorite pet, and James and Ramsey were jocular and silly with him. Jack gave Dolly a wide berth, however, with that instinct children and animals have for something that might not be quite right.

“All right, Mama. Are there tarts in the kitchen?”

“Yes, but no tarts before din—”

He was already off like a shot.

She whirled back to Seamus. “Forgive me for being brief, Mr. Duggan—”

“ . . . as I’ve said to more than one young lady.”

She blinked. Good heavens, he was incorrigible. She recovered with aplomb.

“—but will the ladies of the Society for the Protection of the Sussex Poor be sewing costumes for the pantomime?”

“Yes. Sheep, shepherds, and the like. A baby Jesus. Angel dresses. The reverend got hold of some music he’d like me to play. Singing and the like. A few hymns, ‘While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks at Night.’ Like that.”

“I’m in a bit of a pickle, Mr. Duggan. I need two footman uniforms. Coats, waistcoats, stockings, the works, on down to the shoes. Inside a fortnight. Well before Boxing Day.”

This gave Seamus a moment’s pause.

“Well, now, the baby Jesus was special indeed,” he said gently, “but I don’t think even he had footmen, Mrs. Fountain.”

“What are the wise men if not . . . holy footmen, of a sort?”

Seamus tilted his head. “Ah, ye poor lass. Ye really are in a pickle if ye’re spouting nonsense like that.”

“The wise men are kings! And kings have footmen!” She blurted it. Divine inspiration, that.

Seamus liked it. “
Now
you’ve given me a bit more to work with.”

“They have to be midnight blue. Trimmed in silver.”

“You don’t want much, do you, Mrs. Fountain?”

“And stockings. Silk stockings.”

“Shoes?”

Seamus was clearly thinking now.

“And shoes.”

“If I could persuade the ladies of the Society for the Protection of the Sussex Poor to add footmen to the Christmas pantomime, I’ll need something in return from you, Mrs. Fountain, and it won’t be apple tarts.”

Oh, God.

“Come to the Pig & Thistle on your next two evenings off,” he added swiftly.

“Is that all?”

He gave a short laugh. “It should be enough,” he said confidently. “Disappointed, dove?” He winked. “The pleasure of pulling one over on Mrs. Sneath is more than enough reward. If I can manage it.”

I
NSURRECTION WAS A
LLEGEDLY
afoot.

The Crown’s messenger had brought to Lavay a few curt lines scrawled on foolscap, a date, a meeting place, the names of men whom he needed to meet and track, the names of people with whom he would work, men he knew, including the Earl of Ardmay.

It was, of course, dangerous. He was to infiltrate their ranks by positioning himself as a French national still bitter about the outcome of the war.

That much wouldn’t prove too much of a challenge.

And the money . . . oh, the money they offered would solve nearly everything.

The trouble was Lavay knew he was currently in no way physically equipped to do it. He had his vanity, but he was no fool, and he would never endanger the men with whom he worked.

He had a month to decide.

And this decision essentially stood between him and everything he wanted.

The Earl of Ardmay had received a similar message, and they had talked it through yesterday, while reminiscing about some past adventures and skirting the true conversation they needed to have: whether or not they would accept the assignment.

Or whether Philippe would do it without the earl.

Because Philippe’s intuition told him that his friend was reluctant, despite the rewards promised, because of his wife and baby. There was just too much to lose now. Having lost nearly everything he loved, Philippe would never blame him.

He absently flexed his hand, which was still stiff, as was much of the rest of his body, though the willow bark tea did help. This did nothing for his temper.

And perhaps because he was feeling masochistic, he fished about in his stack of correspondence and slit open Marie-Helene’s most recent letter.

And his internal barometer shot upward.

Almost as a reflex now, he rang the bell violently.

And when Mrs. Fountain arrived, for a moment he just looked dumbly at her, his mood elevating already, as if she were a shot of brandy.

Her dresses were all simple and somber, and though they fit beautifully, they were clearly designed with economy in mind. She ought to wear more colors. Vivid ones. Deep ones. Soft fabrics that draped the lines of her and moved like liquid, because she was lithe. He wondered how she might look in a ball gown. Or if she’d ever worn a ball gown.

“Red,” he muttered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I . . . er, that is, I’d like you to help me with a response to a letter.”

She paused and studied him. “Would you like me to throw the vase for you, sir?”

His mouth quirked at the corner. “If you would be so kind.”

She picked it up and quite deliberately and gently placed it at the far end of the mantel, well out of his reach.

“Excellent aim,” he said dryly.

“Thank you.”

“The letter is in response to my sister,” he explained tautly.

“Ah,” she said.

The pure understanding in that syllable was balm.

She settled into the brown chair, and he watched her, amused, as she slid back into it with a suppressed sigh. Mrs. Fountain was a sensual creature.

It took one to know one.

He began almost before she could pick up the quill.

“Dearest Marie-Helene. Whilst my fondest wish is that you will rot in hell—”

“Dearest Marie-Helene,”
she repeated firmly as she wrote, “
I hope this letter finds you enjoying continued good health and happiness.”

“—with regards to your latest request for money to supplement the gowns from last season,
I am pleased to tell you where to stuff it.”

“With regards to your latest request for money, I request your patience and economy, and would beg you to recall that you look beautiful in everything and to hold your head high always and remember your lineage.

And as to your inquiry about the reasons I am dawdling in Sussex, it is hardly your concern how or where I spend my time.

And as to your inquiry regarding the reasons I am dawdling in Sussex, I thank you for your concern and assure you we will meet again soon . . .”

She stopped writing and looked up at him limpidly.

He glared blackly at her.

“Is that what you meant to say, sir?”

“Yes. Damn you, Mrs. Fountain.”

He leaned over and slipped the quill from her fingers and scrawled his name at the bottom. As if he were done with Marie-Helene forever.

And then he sighed a long-suffering sigh.

“Lord Lavay . . .”

“Are you about to ask a question, Madame Je-sais-tout?” he said testily. “And here I thought you knew everything.”

She didn’t even blink. “Does Marie-Helene know you were . . . shall we say accosted . . . in London? And that you are in Sussex because you are recovering?”

“Of course not,” he said dismissively.

“Why not?”

“My responsibility to Marie-Helene is twofold, Mrs. Fountain: to protect her from such ugly realities, and to ensure she is equipped to make a magnificent marriage and never want for a thing.”

Something wistful and lovely flickered over Mrs. Fountain’s face, a surge of emotion he couldn’t quite identify, but on the whole, women as a species were irritating him at the moment.

“Wasn’t the revolution one long ugly reality?” she asked.

This brought him up short.

“Yes,” he said curtly, after a moment.

She paused, thoughtfully, plucking up the quill again and tapping the feather end of it against her lips.

White quill against those red lips. Mesmerizing.

“Did Marie-Helene not lose a father and a brother, too? And perhaps friends and other relatives?”

He narrowed his eyes at her again.

And then at last he heaved a long, long sigh and swiped his hands down his face.

“That is why,” he said wearily, “I don’t want her to know what happened to me. She has been through enough. And watching her experience the other things . . . when I could not stop them, or protect her from them . . .”

They regarded each other wordlessly.

What have you been through, Mrs. Fountain, to understand such things?
he wanted to ask then.

“Whereas you have been frolicking in meadows for the past decade,” she pointed out.

“It is my responsibility, Mrs. Fountain,” he said again, slowly, as if she was an idiot child. “What I’ve been doing to uphold them is none of her concern, either.”

“Have you considered she might be concerned about you? That her tone may be anxious because she misses you? And perhaps she is stronger than you know?”

“Pah,” he shrugged with one shoulder. “She is a young girl. She is spoiled, and should remain so.”

But he was less angry now.

He hadn’t told a soul any of this before, and something in the mere articulation of it lightened him, as if one more layer of weight had been lifted from his chest, freeing his breathing.

“How old is she?” Mrs. Fountain pressed.

“Eighteen.”

“A grown woman.”

“A grown woman who ought to be married by now, but for a dowry befitting her family name. And her dowry is my responsibility. I will not see my sister a spinster, or married to someone below her station.”

His voice escalated until that last word echoed in the room.

The unspoken, throbbing word, of course, was that Mrs. Fountain was
well
below their station.

But there was nothing English people understood better than “station.”

“She is old enough to make a few decisions of her own,” Elise pressed gently.

“She has not been raised to ‘make decisions,’ Mrs. Fountain.” He said this dryly.

“If she is anything like you . . .”

He straightened to his full height.

And gave a humorless laugh. “Even you may not be rash enough to finish that sentence,” he warned grimly.

Her spine straightened and her chin went up. “ . . . if she is anything like you, she is a survivor,” Mrs. Fountain said. “May I just say this? Women are often more resilient than men credit us with. And often much stronger than you know. And that is all I will say.”

“For now,” Philippe said grimly.

She gave a one-shouldered shrug. She was clearly trying not to laugh. The cheek of her.

He studied her a moment in silence. “Do you perhaps speak from experience, Mrs. Fountain?”

She simply regarded him evenly. Which was answer enough.

He paced again.

And then he turned and began haltingly. Because for some reason he wanted her to know.

“I am not angry at her. I am angry at myself. I am angry at fate. I am angry at this”—he thrust his healing hand into the air—“and I am angry at the limbo that prevents me from earning the money I need to
buy back my own home
and provide my sister with a dowry and every bloody ball gown her heart desires. I am angry that my family was smashed to smithereens by revolution and I am left to pick up the pieces. The best cure for anger is constructive action, Mrs. Fountain. The time is ticking away from me. I can marry well and swiftly, or I can accept another assignment from the crown, or I can, feasibly, do both. But I need to decide which it will be before the winter is over, because Les Pierres d’Argent will be sold out from under me if I do not.”