One Touch of Scandal (35 page)

“It
was
Crane Shipping, you little fool!” Fenella hissed. “The word
Holding
was just an appeasement—to her and to Ethan!” She thrust a tremulous finger at her stepmother's portrait.

“And who is going to run it?” Grace cried. “You?
Mon Dieu,
have you any notion how ludicrous that sounds?”

It was the one thing Grace should not have said.

“Do you think for one moment I cannot?” Fenella's
visage blazed with hatred. “By God, I can keep a set of books in my sleep, but Papa and Ethan thought me good for nothing save marrying off—or worse, hosting dinner parties and writing his prattling letters to people I could not have given a damn about.”

She lurched almost threateningly nearer, and realization struck Grace like a hurtling knife. Fenella was insane—perhaps had been so for a long while. “I did not say you weren't capable.” She held one hand out almost defensively. “Fenella, calm yourself. I am your friend, remember? I never said you were incapable.”

“No, but like everyone else, you thought it,” Fenella raged. “Papa would rather have had another man's get at the helm than to hand the family jewels to his own daughter.”

“Fenella, Ethan was your brother,” Grace whispered. “He gave you
everything
. He loved you.”

“He was
not
my brother!” she cried. “And Mrs. Holding—my dear stepmamma with her knitting and tatting and ‘a-woman's-place-is-in-the-home' nonsense! After she came round, I wasn't allowed to put so much as a toe over the threshold of Swan Lane. And look what has come of it!”

“Swan Lane,” Grace muttered. “That's where you were last week.”

“That's where I've been
every
week, for God's sake,” said Fenella. “Someone has to be at the head of this business! Between Josiah gaming it away and Ethan draining the coffers on tomfoolery, the company hasn't two sous to rub together. And you have the audacity to suggest I cannot manage my own family's business? That I should stand idly by while I am passed over again and again, and one man after another allowed to run it to ruin?”

Grace was beginning to feel genuine fear. She cut a
glance over one shoulder, hoping to see Trenton in the corridor. She realized a little sickly that she was backing her way out the door.

“Fenella,” she said. “You are very bright. Have I not always said so? I am perfectly sure you could manage on your own.”

“Oh, don't you patronize me, you fancy French broodmare!” Fenella's eyes blazed. “That's all you ever were to Ethan, Grace—just a means to an end. He wanted an heir off you—a male heir—because a female would be worthless. Well, I shan't have it, do you hear? Another man without an ounce of Crane blood, sitting in my grandfather's chair and leaving me with nothing but cast-off scraps and platitudes? Just as Ethan did these last ten years. Just as my father did when he married
that woman.
Well, I have had enough of it.”

Grace felt her knees sag. Good God, it was true. Fenella had killed Ethan. She had killed him to prevent him from marrying. To keep them from having children.

She set her hand on the doorjamb to steady herself. “Fenella, you should think of Josiah,” she said. “He can help you. He is a Crane.”

“Yes, but
he's weak
,” she spat. “Just like his father before him.”

Grace had backed into the corridor now, almost onto the balcony. A horrific thought struck her. “Fenella, where is Josiah?” she asked, almost tripping over her hems. “
Tell me.
What have you done to him?”

Fenella's full mouth turned up into an almost beatific smile. “Poor Josiah is ill,” she said. “So ill. Too ill to be out gaming—or even to be in the office. But someone must go, mustn't they? I think the staff will grow accustomed to me. After all, I own the controlling interest.”

Grace could not get her breath. She felt the balustrade
strike the small of her back. “You put that note under my door!” she whispered. “You wrote that letter and hid it in my things!”

“Live by the sword, die by the sword, Grace!” Fenella laughed richly. “Ethan should have written his own bloody letters, shouldn't he? Well, I have sent his regrets to his last little tea party ever.”

Grace cut a glance to her left. The stairs were but twenty paces away. “
Mon Dieu,
Fenella, why now?” she whispered.

Fenella seized her by the shoulders. “Because this time I wasn't going to wait and risk it,” she hissed, giving Grace a vicious shake. “You'd have been with child soon enough, by the look of you. No, this time I could not wait.”

“You…oh, Lord.” Grace's hand came up to cover her mouth. “You killed her! You pushed Ethan's wife down those stairs.”

“It was a terrible, terrible accident.” Fenella's face was so close Grace could see the spittle hanging off her lip as she rasped out the words. “But she had to go. The silly cow was with child. It was to be a surprise for Ethan. Well, I surprised
her
!”

With that, Grace found herself shoved hard. She fought for balance. “Stop, Fenella!” She grabbed Fenella by the arm with all her strength. But the black bombazine tore, and Grace's hand struck a cracking blow across Fenella's jaw.

“You little bitch!” Fenella's mouth twisted with hatred. “You were never my friend! You weren't even Ethan's—”

“Stop!” shouted a voice from below. “Miss Crane, unhand her now! This is the Metropolitan Police.”

Fenella's eyes narrowed to inky slits. “You bitch!” she hissed, seizing Grace's throat.

“Fenella Crane!” The booming voice was Royden Na
pier's. Grace could hear his feet starting up the staircase. “You are under arrest. Release her and step away. I am armed.”

“No!” cried Fenella, tightening her grip and shaking Grace like a rag doll.

Just then, from one corner of her eye, Grace saw movement in the shadows.
Someone creeping up the back stairs.
Trenton?

Grace clawed back, one hand finding Fenella's jet brooch and ripping it away. The second caught at the front of her gown, tearing it again. Frantically Grace fought, but the black was edging round her vision.

Fenella's strength was driven by madness. She was pushing Grace, the balustrade like a fulcrum at the base of her spine. She felt herself tipping backward and flailed out with one arm, finding nothing but empty air.

Grace could see nothing but the white of the ceiling above. She forced down the panic. She was not going over.
She was not.
Not without a bloody fight, by God.

Ruthlessly, Grace seized a fistful of Fenella's hair and dragged her face back until they were nose to nose again. “If I go,” she gritted, “then by God, you go, too, Fenella!”

With that, she lashed one arm about Fenella's waist. Suddenly, there was a mighty crack of wood. Something snatched Grace, dragging her back from nothingness. The balcony gave way, and Grace let Fenella go. Grace hit the floor, landing with an arm and a leg dangling in thin air.

“Hold tight, I've got you,” a voice rasped against her ear.

“
Nooo!
” screamed Fenella. It was a cry wrenched straight from hell.

Grace blinked away the blackness. Fenella hung two
feet below the splintered rails, dangling from Adrian's arm, her feet flailing like some crazed marionette.

“Hold still, damn it!” Adrian grunted, clutching Grace round the waist and Fenella by the wrist.

But Fenella did not hold still, and it was an impossible predicament anyway. She jerked again, her eyes wide with fear, or perhaps with hate. And then her hand slipped from Adrian's. She sailed down to the marble foyer in a voluminous cloud of black bombazine, her head landing with a crack, then bouncing to strike again.

Grace screamed. Adrian's other arm came round her, dragging her back from the edge. Somehow, she got to her feet, shivering, and threw herself into his arms.

“I have you, love, I have you.” He buried his face against her but an instant.

“Adrian!” she cried. “Oh, thank God.”

“I have you,” he rasped. “I will never let go. Don't even ask it of me.”

Blinking back tears, Grace drew back, still shaking. “Fenella?” she whispered.

Adrian craned his neck over what was left of the balcony. “Napier,” he said over the edge, “is she…?”

But Royden Napier had already knelt in the middle of the white marble floor, two fingers beneath Fenella's ear. Her arms were spread high, like an angel unfurling her wings, her rich red hair fanned out between them.

Together they hastened down the stairs. Blood glistened like gemstones in a crescent-shaped spatter, one droplet running down Napier's cheek. He looked up as they approached, his eyes bleak and knowing.

“She is gone,” he said.

Without releasing Grace's hand, Ruthveyn bent to one knee and felt Fenella's wrist for a long, uncertain moment.
Then he let it go. The back of the hand bounced a little as it struck the marble, the fingers splaying open to reveal a knot of Grace's hair.

“Snow, Napier,” said Adrian hollowly, staring down at the white, blood-spattered marble. “White, white snow. And rubies glistening all around.”

The Wedding Gift

L
ord Ruthveyn suffered the interminable months until his wedding day with his usual burning impatience, even as he appeared as outwardly calm and unruffled as ever. At his intended's insistence, nothing was said of their betrothal to the greater world, while amongst friends and family, the ceremony was tentatively set for “sometime in the spring,” ostensibly to allow the worst of the weather to clear—even as one or two less charitable people maintained it would likely take that long for his bride to reconcile herself to her fate.

Grace, however, had already embraced her fate, and perhaps a little too exuberantly, for as March edged toward April, and that dreaded window to the soul remained blessedly shut, she clambered hastily from bed one morning to be greeted by the sight of her chamber
pot—the bottom of it, specifically—and to the vision of her morning chocolate coming up again.

She sat back down on the edge of her bed, clammy, colly-wobbled, and almost deliriously happy. Grace might manage to be patient, but the heir to the marquessate of Ruthveyn clearly could not. Lady Anisha—already on record as having predicted a son born hale and healthy in the autumn—chortled with glee upon being summoned to her brother's study to consult the charts at last in order to choose the most auspicious wedding date.

As soon as the door shut after his sister, Ruthveyn helped Grace gingerly to her feet and pulled her into his arms as if she were made of spun glass. “
Grace,
” he whispered. “Oh, my love. The die is cast.”

Grace merely laughed and kissed him hard.

“I hope, Adrian, that you don't mean to pack me in cotton wool for the next few months,” she said long moments later, “for I had other—far more
exuberant
—notions.”

But his solemnity did not lift even as he brushed his lips lightly over her cheek. “You have made me,” he said, “the happiest man on earth—and a fortnight hence, I shall be twice as happy as that.”

At that, a mood of seriousness fell across them both. “
Alors,
you are resolved, then?” she asked, a ghost of a smile passing over her face. “You are not afraid?”

“I have been resolved, I think, since almost the moment we met,” he said, staring down into her eyes. “Whatever happens, Grace, wherever life takes us,
we
were meant to be. We simply were. Because this is fate.”

And so it was that on a sunny, mid-April morning, the newly minted Marchioness of Ruthveyn found herself caught in one embrace after another as the wedding
guests flooded up the steps of her husband's Mayfair mansion, where the wedding breakfast was to be held.

The last to arrive was Royden Napier, who came a little sheepishly up the stairs, his dark brows in a knot. Lady Ruthveyn received his felicitations with all the grace she could muster, then politely excused herself to attend to two of her most important guests.

“Well, Ruthveyn, you have done it,” said Napier, as they made their way toward the grand ballroom, which had been set with tables and festooned with flowers for the occasion. “My heartiest congratulations.”

“Don't look so solemn, old chap,” said Ruthveyn evenly. “The honeymoon phase never lasts long, does it? There is yet hope, I daresay, that she will stab me in my sleep and make all your dreams come true.”

“I rather doubt it,” said Napier glumly. “She looks radiantly happy.”

Together they watched as Grace, still in her wedding finery, knelt to kiss Anne and Eliza on their cheeks while Mrs. Lester stood smilingly, if a little stiffly, in the background.

“She is reconciled with the family, then?” Napier murmured. “I confess I am relieved. They made a pretty pair of angels, those two, tossing their rose petals up the aisle at St. George's.”

“It was Grace's dearest wish to have them in attendance,” said Ruthveyn solemnly. “Not that she isn't fond of Tom and Teddy, mind. But angelic they will never be.”

Just then, Lord Bessett approached, a glass of champagne already in hand, a lovely blonde on his arm. “Afternoon, Napier,” he said coolly. “I think you've not met my mother, Lady Madeleine MacLachlan.”

The introductions were swiftly made, with Napier bowing politely over Lady Madeleine's hand. Geoff was
polite but stiffly formal, Ruthveyn noted, with all the cold hauteur a wealthy young nobleman could muster. He still mistrusted Napier, as did Ruthveyn himself. Still, there was yet something of the diplomat left in Ruthveyn, and he knew no better balm to Grace's reputation than to have the assistant police commissioner on the guest list at her wedding.

“So is it true, Mr. Napier, that Josiah Crane has returned from the Mediterranean?” asked Lady Madeleine, as if to fill the awkward silence. “What a fright that poor man has had.”

“Indeed, he returned just this week, ma'am, his health much recovered by warmer climes,” said Napier. “It seems the small doses of arsenic his cousin was using to debilitate him have done no permanent damage. I beg your pardon, Ruthveyn. I have not had an opportunity to mention his return to your bride. I should hate her to meet him unawares.”

“You needn't worry about it in the least,” said the marquess. “Grace has always liked and trusted Crane. Only my sister—misguidedly, as it happens—was able to convince her he might be a cold-blooded killer.”

“Perhaps Lady Ruthveyn did not believe it of him,” said Napier charitably. “But she did not believe it of Fenella Crane, either—nor did I, come to that.”

“Ah, well.” Ruthveyn kept his voice equivocal. “Grace has a gift for judging men's characters. With women, she is less certain.”

“Aren't we all,” muttered Napier under his breath.

Geoff, whose gaze had been scanning the crowd, seemed to return himself to the present. “That reminds me, Ruthveyn,” he said. “I was supposed to tell you that Sutherland wishes to speak with you and Grace if you have a moment before the meal and the toasting begin?
Something important, I believe. You will find him near the dais.”

“Thank you,” said Ruthveyn smoothly. “Lady Madeleine. Gentlemen. If you will excuse me.”

He bowed and took his leave of them, suddenly anxious to return to his bride. He found Grace by the head table with Anisha, who was helping Safiyah Belkadi shore up a floral arrangement that was listing starboard and threatening to topple into an ocean of table linen.

He slid a hand beneath Grace's elbow. “Let Nish deal with that,” he said under his breath. “Sutherland wishes to speak with us.”

“Yes, of course.”

Grace went willingly across the ballroom with him, her hand warm and secure upon his arm. He knew, even if she did not, that they were soul mates. That they had been destined for this, and that nothing, not even the Gift, would ever come between them. Still, he wished he could have proven it to Grace—or at least have proven to her that it did not matter to him what their future held. They were as one, and this was their destiny.

“Ah, there you are!” The Reverend Mr. Sutherland beamed at them in what could only be called avuncular joy. “May I offer again my felicitations, and my best wishes for a long, happy, and fruitful union.”

“I am sure it will be,” said Ruthveyn, clasping the Preost's hand in his. “Thank you, sir, for all your help and encouragement.”

“Dear me, that sounds rather fainthearted, Ruthveyn! I intend you to have something more enduring than encouragement.” He held a roll-shaped parcel wrapped in colorful paper behind his back. “So, you sail soon for Calcutta! You will be going home at last.”

“Yes, for a time,” said Ruthveyn, casting an affection
ate glance down at Grace. “My bride—in collusion with my sister—insists we leave straightaway.”

Grace wished to leave at once, he knew, before she was too far gone with child to go at all. And though Ruthveyn scarcely shared his sister's certainty that in India he would find the sort of guidance that would enable him to control the Gift, he was more than willing to try it. He was also oddly pleased to know his son and heir would be born there, in the same house in which he'd grown up.

“Well, I wished you both to have this before you left England,” said Sutherland, presenting the roll to Grace with a dramatic flourish. “It will make, I daresay, for some interesting conversation during the long weeks at sea. And I believe you will take much comfort in it, too, Ruthveyn. I finished it just yesterday.”

“You finished it?” said Grace, smiling at him. “But this looks like a print. Or a rolled drawing. Have you some artistic bent, Mr. Sutherland, that you have been hiding from us?”

“No, indeed!” Sutherland's eyes twinkled. “No talent at all, save for persistence and keen eyesight! Now, I know it is a little odd—and it isn't properly framed as yet—but I wish you to go ahead and open it.”

“Why not?” Grace cast an uncertain look at her husband. “My love, will you do the honors?”

A few amongst the chattering throng turned at the sound of the paper tearing. Paying them no heed, Ruthveyn laid it on the nearest table and gingerly rolled out a thick sheet of parchment.

“My God,” he said, his eyes trailing over the branches and columns of neatly etched names. “It is…why, it is a family tree.”

“Look, Adrian!” said Grace, setting her finger down
upon their linked names. “It's
our
family tree! Here we are—and forevermore shall be.”

“Yes, but here is perhaps the second-most-interesting marriage on the page, my dears.” Mr. Sutherland leaned across the table and pointed at a set of lines near the top.

“The devil!” said Ruthveyn. “Why, it is Sir Angus Muirhead.”

“Just so!” Sutherland paused to beam at them both. “And it shows us where, in 1660, Sir Angus married one Anne Forsythe—and it shows that they, too, were distant cousins.”

Grace's eyes widened. “
Mon Dieu,
you found him!” she said. “You finally found him!”

“Indeed, but more importantly, if you trace this line back—” Here, his index finger did precisely that, following the names almost all the way back to the top, “—then you will see that both Anne and Angus were descended from the same line as was Lady Jane McKenzie.”

“Lady Jane McKenzie?” Grace had narrowed her gaze, trying to follow the small print up the document.

“Sibylla's mother,” he clarified. “You can see all just here.”

It took Grace a moment to digest everything, her wide blue gaze locked with Ruthveyn's. “
Mon Dieu,
we are cousins!” she said, grabbing both her husband's hands.

“Well, perhaps eighth cousins three times removed,” Sutherland clarified. “I'm not at all sure that constitutes kinship in any real sense.”

But when the happy couple did not break their locked gazes, he cleared his throat sharply. “Well, I see Bessett motioning for me,” he murmured. “I know you will wish a moment to yourselves before the festivities begin.”

Grace snapped from the trance first. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Sutherland!” she cried, turning to plant a firm kiss on
his cheek. “Oh, I could not have—indeed,
we
could not have—” She halted, set a hand to her belly, and blinked back tears, “—we
none
of us could have had a better, more meaningful wedding gift than this.”

As Ruthveyn cleared the strange knot from his throat, Sutherland looked suddenly awkward, his gaze going back and forth between them. “I knew you were both fretting over it,” he confessed. “And finally—with a big magnifying glass and a long night—I found him.”

“But where?” asked Ruthveyn.

He knew Sutherland had searched high and low for the records of Sir Angus and traveled twice back to Scotland in his efforts—once in the dead of winter, which was madness. He had pieced together much of Grace's family history over the months, both French and Scottish, but the final link had eluded him.

“I finally found his name written in the margin of one of the old Forsythe family Bibles, on a page with its corner turned back such that it looked like Angus
Muir,
” said Sutherland. “And he hadn't a title then, so it was easy to miss. But when I turned the corner up, there was the rest of it. It seems that after the bridge collapse, he healed, returned briefly to Scotland to marry, and must then have been knighted later. It isn't at all clear.”

“But it
is
he?” Grace whispered. “You are sure? It is certain?”

“Aye, it's he, my lady,” said Mr. Sutherland. “And he was your great-grandfather many times over. Once I had the name right, everything else fell into place. We had most of it—just not in pieces we could put together.”

At that, Ruthveyn snatched up the drawing and took Grace by the hand. “Sutherland, you are a prince among men,” he said, setting off toward the ballroom doors.

Grace cast an eye over her shoulders at the guests, who
seemed already to be enjoying themselves. “Wait, where are we slipping off to?” she asked.

“To the conservatory for a moment,” said Ruthveyn fervently, relief and joy flooding through him. “I want to look at this in a good light.”

Once inside the glass walls, Ruthveyn spread the parchment back out on the tea table near Milo's cage. The parakeet toddled back and forth on his perch, cocking his head to survey the document with one beady eye.

They sat down together, tucked snugly on the rattan chaise, their eyes reading up and down the columns and branches of impossibly small names, many of whom were as familiar to Ruthveyn as his own. It looked right to him. It looked
perfect.
And now it was clear to see just how Grace's family branched off, with Sir Angus and Lady Anne the last Scots above a long line of French descendants.

At last, Ruthveyn turned to her, happier in that moment than he had ever been in the whole of his life. “Do you realize what this means, my Grace?”