Season for Scandal (31 page)

Revulsion clamped Edmund’s hand tight at the collar of Turner’s coat. “Out. I won’t listen to another word.”

“I’ve said my piece.” Again, Turner freed himself, and he opened the study door. “I’ll return tomorrow.”

“Out.” Edmund shoved the door shut behind him, hoping it caught him in the arse.

The sudden quiet roared in his ears; the study’s book-lined walls closed in on him. Blackness crept into the edges of his vision, speckled with bright colors. The world twisted and vanished.

Fumbling his way back around his desk, Edmund sank into his chair. He shut his eyes and waited. Waited for hearing and sight to return; for sense to filter through Turner’s words.

After a minute, or an hour, Edmund opened his eyes. The dark wood paneling, the neat rows of leather-bound spines on the bookshelves, the warm glow of the lamp and fire were all back in their accustomed place.

The world appeared calm and prosaic, yet one way or another, his life as he’d known it would soon come to an end.

His family estate in Cornwall had more skeletons in its closets than any Gothic novel. For years, Edmund had hidden those dreadful truths from the world. He’d built a life in London, and he had done his best to make it a good one. All the while, he kept his silence, kept up his fortune, found good hands to care for his land. He did this for his mother and sisters, and now for Jane. The women whom the law bound to his protection.

He even left them, or let them leave, to save them pain. Always, he ended up alone.

Only now did it occur to him that their dependence on him surely brought its own kind of pain. Or that he stayed apart, aloof from any deeper emotion, to spare himself, too.

His family knew why. They knew what he was worth. Jane didn’t, and that was why she’d been able to fancy herself in love with him.

That was done now, because he could see no way to protect her except by giving her the truth. Turner would thus be disarmed, his greatest weapon placed in Jane’s hands. Every scrap of feeling she had for Edmund would be killed, but she herself would be safe.

The idea was not wholly bleak. What might someone as bloodthirsty and ingenious as Jane do with the knowledge of Turner’s identity? His crimes?

Edmund could not imagine. But it was time to find out. Though he had asked Jane not to call on him again for a visit, she had made no such restriction on him.

He rang for his carriage to be brought round.

Chapter 23

Concerning That Long-Ago Winter

The hour was far too late for a caller.

So said Xavier, as he, Louisa, and Jane sat in the Xavier House drawing room. “The house isn’t on fire. So who the devil would be hammering on the door at this time of evening?”

Jane had an idea, but she wasn’t going to admit it. “It’s a Bow Street Runner. To arrest you for tying your cravat in a preposterous way.”

“Or to clap you in irons for disrespecting your elders.”

Louisa smiled. “You can’t think of anyone who might be calling now? Does no one in this room have a wayward spouse?”

“Everyone in this room has a wayward spouse,” Jane said. “You two just prefer the term ‘strong-willed.’”

“Yes. Well. The proper term can make a great deal of difference.” Xavier set aside his quizzing glass and newspaper, then threaded his way through the furniture. Opening the door to the drawing room, he came face-to-face with his butler, whose hand was upraised to knock. “Ah. Hollis. We theorize that the racket at the door is somehow related to Lady Kirkpatrick. Is this correct?”

“Indeed, my lord.”

“Naturally,” Xavier sighed. “Since her birth, Lady Kirkpatrick has been the cause of most of the disorder in my life.”

“My lord, Lord Kirkpatrick wishes to speak to his wife in private.”

“Very well, show him up.”

Louisa cleared her throat. “If, that is, Lady Kirkpatrick wishes?”

“Yes.” Jane’s insides seemed to be practicing a Scotch reel. “Yes, I’ll see him.”

With a fake-looking yawn and stretch, Louisa stood. “We’re remarkably tired, aren’t we, Alex? We’ll just be headed off upstairs.”

“Show Lord Kirkpatrick up,” Xavier said to the butler. “I’m not tired in the least, though,” he added for Louisa’s benefit. “I think I ought to remain in the room during this call. Jane is under my protection.”

“No, she’s under your
roof.
She’s under
Kirkpatrick’s
protection. And she’s hardly going to have her reputation damaged by a visit from her husband in her cousin’s home. Come, we’re two people too many for this call.”

Louisa gave Jane a quick hug. “Good luck. Ring for a servant to fetch us if need be.” Then, grabbing Xavier’s arm—ugh, no, a few other parts of his form—she bustled her husband from the drawing room.

And Jane sat.

She had only a few moments to compose herself before Edmund entered, looking like winter itself. He must have come hatless, for his dark hair was beaded with droplets of water where snow had melted; his eyes reflected the frost-blue of his waistcoat, and his coat was dark as the ice of a pond.

His expression, too, was frozen. Jane could not tell what had brought him to her in such a tearing hurry.

“You look horrid,” she said. “I mean, cold and worried and—here, come sit by the fire.”

Lamplight picked out the gilt on yellow-papered walls; the fire cast a halo onto a wing chair of dark red velvet. With more determination than grace, Jane shoved Edmund into it.

“I wish you’d sit, too,” he protested. “I have a lot to tell you.”

Jane sat, facing him. Of newborn habit, her fingers found the chess queen in the pocket of her striped sarcenet gown; all hues of green, and unfashionably simple in its cut. “Tell me, then.”

“Once I’ve done, you’ll never want to return to me.”

“I’ll go home with you this very minute if you can say that you love me. I know you won’t lie.”

He stared at her.

“That’s what I thought.”

“No, you misunderstand. I didn’t realize there was any chance you would return. Ever.” His gaze became fixed on something far away. “But before you make such an offer, I owe you the truth about my family. I’ve never told anyone before. Yet I must trust you.” He caught Jane’s eye. “I
do
trust you.”

Jane forgave him for not professing love right away. She knew he meant to be kind, and she could ignore the nearly-right-but-not-quite things he said when he was kind. Especially when he tossed the word
trust
to her, sweeter and richer than a plum pudding.

“I don’t know how to begin, though.”

Her insides had abandoned their Scotch reel in favor of a waltz, and she sank, slow, into the promise of understanding. A few coals tumbled in the fireplace, breaking the silence. Then she suggested, “How about with ‘once upon a time’?”

“Yes. That will do.” He loosened his cravat, then with a strange, tight smile, he began. “Once upon a time, a little over thirty years ago now, an Irish woman married a baron from Cornwall. It was an arranged marriage, and to the home of the husband she’d never met, she brought a manservant named Thomas Turner. He was charming and brilliant, and he soon became the baron’s steward and trusted friend. The couple had a son, and when that son grew old enough to behave like a reasonable human, Turner became the son’s tutor, too.”

“What a versatile fellow.”

“Yes, he was.” Edmund watched the coals flare and crumble. “He certainly was that. You see, he was also the baroness’s lover. Most likely the father of her daughters, born in the years following her son’s birth. And he was a thief.”

Goose bumps raced down Jane’s arms within her sleeves. She slapped a hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t say anything. She had to let him speak. Finish. Tell her everything.

His words came faster now, as though a wound had been lanced and was bleeding freely. “In 1798, there was a rebellion in Ireland. Irish Catholics rising up against the English, the old battle. It’s been fought many times, but rarely in so bloody a way. It was eventually crushed, the leaders executed, and the movement disbanded. Or so it seemed.

“Turner was a Catholic, and a steadfast Irishman. So steadfast that he wanted to fund the cause, to revive it in its most militant form. He didn’t describe it that way, though. He talked about justice and freedom. Played on the baron’s fascination with his chilly Irish wife. The poor baron had never known how to touch his wife’s heart—did you say something?”

“No. No, nothing.” Jane wished she could feel numb. She wanted to cry for him, but it would be selfish to demand his attention for her tears.

Besides which, she didn’t cry. “Go on, please.”

“Yes, well, I think he loved his wife, though he didn’t understand her. Maybe that was what kept him in thrall to her. Or Turner. They needed my father not at all; their confidence fascinated him.”

“But they did need him,” said Jane. “At least, they needed his money.”

“True. They needed his money very much. And so Turner talked the baron into providing aid for the revolutionaries. Money, jewels, what have you. If the packet had been sent, it would have represented treason.”

Jane’s insides felt far too heavy for any sort of dance now. She seemed leaden as she listened, as Edmund’s story twisted down darker and darker paths.

“The baron was weak and credulous. Besotted with his wife; besotted with the idea of being needed for once. He surely could not have understood what he was doing, because traitors are executed, and their families are stripped of everything. Titles, lands . . .”

“What have you,” Jane finished.

With a thin smile, Edmund nodded. “Right. What did Turner care if the baron was found to be a traitor? He could marry the baroness and run off to Ireland with her. And damn-all to the children who bore the baron’s name. Or to his servants and tenants, or his distant heirs. Everything would go to the Crown.

“For all Turner’s other faults, the son had been tutored well, and by the age of nine, he knew a bit about law. Like many boys, he was fascinated by crimes and gruesome punishments. Also like many boys, he was fond of prying into the business of his elders.”

“He sounds delightful,” Jane said in a bracing tone.

“He was a dreadful little nuisance. First he realized that his mother and Turner were lovers, and he never trusted his tutor—or his mother, for that matter—again. He had no one left to worship but his father, and he certainly tried to. But not every story has a hero. On the night Turner was to depart for Ireland with the casket of money and jewels, the baron was detained. He ordered his son to take a message to Turner. And the son . . . didn’t. He took it to the magistrate instead. He betrayed his own parent.”

“A small betrayal to stop a larger one.”

“There is nothing small,” Edmund murmured, “about a betrayal of one’s parent. But the rest can be told quickly. Turner was found with his employer’s jewels and taken up for theft. The baron pled for leniency, and instead of being executed, Turner was transported for twenty years. The baron must have burned any incriminating papers. He must have known about his wife’s infidelity, too, because he died in a solitary hunting accident that no one looked into too deeply.”

“And the son?” Jane’s throat closed tight on the words.

“The son never made amends or received them. He inherited a barony from a father who had never again spoken to him after that night.” He paused. “When his father died, the family was destroyed. The son blamed himself for this. He soon went off to school and never returned home again.”

“And—Turner?”

“After twenty years in Australia, his sentence was done. He stole and cheated his way back to England somehow, vengeance on his mind. He hated the boy—now a man—who had been born of his lover’s husband. Who had ruined his dreams of rebellion, or destruction.”

Blue eyes gone tawny in the firelight, he gazed at Jane. “You know him as Daniel Bellamy.”

For a moment, nothing in the world seemed to make sense. The movement of Edmund’s lips seemed foreign, forming words that scrambled in Jane’s ears.

“Huh.” She stood, took a step toward Edmund, then sank down again, missing the seat of her chair. “Huh. Bellamy.”

“Jane. Are you all right?”

She looked up; Edmund loomed over her, his brow creased with concern.

This was enough to snap her world back to normal. Edmund’s story was done. He was being kind.

Ridiculous man.

She shoved herself to her feet. “
Me
? I am fine. Just surprised. How are
you
?”

He took her hand. Helping her back into her chair, he rubbed his roughened fingers lightly over hers. “It’s not a good story. But I’m glad you know it.”

“It’s a horrible story.” She lifted his hand to her face, pressing her cheek against the warm bumps of his knuckles. “There was only one good thing about it.”

“You heard something good in that story?”

“Yes. The hero.”

He tugged his hand free. “There’s no hero in that story.”

“The boy who saved his family’s good name, title, and fortune?”

“The boy who betrayed his father and grew up distant from all of his relatives, you mean. A hell of a paragon.” He walked his fingers down the swooping wing of Jane’s chair, then crouched to sit at her feet. “I didn’t know my father would die. But with his wife and most trusted servant betraying him—oh, and his son; let us not forget his son—he had nothing left to live for.”

He shrugged, as though the matter of this loss was of no consequence.

But Jane read the rest of his body; he couldn’t hide the truth from someone so skilled at lying. The flex of his jaw, the pressure of his fingers; the tightness of the cords of his neck above his loosened cravat. He worked so hard, so terribly hard, to hold himself together. It was a habit of years.

He’d already broken her heart so many times. This time, it broke on its own for him.

“My father wasn’t a strong man,” Edmund said. “He must have thought escape easier than brazening through one’s problems.”

“Yes,” Jane said faintly. She laced her fingers in his hair; the snow melt had left it gently waving, fine as silk thread. “Yes, it certainly is.”