A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (29 page)

“As I said, the topic is most unsavory. People simply prefer to close their eyes and stop up their ears. They don’t want to know, they don’t want to hear the talk. It is one of the worst aspects of human nature, to sacrifice others to save ourselves distress.”

Indignation and fear—yes, real, honest gut-wrenching fear—boiled out of him. Preston might not love him, but he was not so unfeeling as to consign her to a life that would be full of such horrors. “It is inexcusable to look the other way, no matter how unsavory.”

“Assuredly, the world would be a better place if everyone felt as you do, William. But they do not. Aldridge votes a certain way, or supports a certain cause, and people who should know better find a reason to look the other way.”

“Have you looked the other way?” God’s balls. His stomach roiled with disgust.

“Your ire is understandable, William, so I will do you the courtesy of telling you, no, I have never knowingly looked the other way. And I do not advise doing so now.”

“Good. Then you must tell her. You must apprise her of the facts. You must convince Mrs. Preston, so she can break the engagement before it is too late.”

“I? I think, my boy, that we are back to the original question of this discussion, which was, what do
you
propose to do?”

There was nothing else for it. “I have to go to her.” Now. This instant.

It was what he had wanted deep down inside, where he hid his heart of hearts, battened down and locked away, safe from the buffeting storms of life. But it was too late for safety.

“Good.” His father took his hand in pledge. “We’ll leave for London in the morning.”

Chapter Seventeen

London was not growing on her.

The city seemed to be one large, smoky, sooty room where everyone stood about waiting for something better to happen to them. Under Lady Barrington’s disapproving aegis, every evening there was a ball, or some engagement to attend where they were greeted by the hostess and then forced to endure the discomfort and tedium of milling about through the highly overdressed, or in many cases, highly undressed crowd. The inside of every ballroom began to look as alike as the last, and the gentlemen who bothered to talk to her—Lord Aldridge’s card-playing cronies—had the same hideously patronizing conversation at every one.

And she was to do the impossible—sit quietly and give every appearance of the demure, devoted betrothed. It was torture. Antigone had never had such a desire to knock heads together.

A fortnight, her mother had said. A month at most. Antigone counted down the days. Not that the passage of time mattered all that much. She would be as miserable and impatient and heartsore at home as she was in Lady Barrington’s Dover Street town house. But she wanted it all to be over and done with, so she could put the entirety of the experience since her father had died behind her. Every day, she prayed for the patience and strength to endure another night. And every morning she woke praying it would be her last.

And still, Viscount Jeffrey did not propose. And still Antigone remained engaged to Lord Evelyn Aldridge.

The only ray of happiness to light her dark was in knowing that her sister was utterly, incandescently happy. Though Viscount Jeffrey had not yet proposed marriage, he had quickly come to town, and had been everything attentive and thoughtful to Cassandra. He danced with her twice at every ball—sometimes adding up to six dances in one night if they found themselves going to several different events.

Lord Aldridge danced with Antigone for form’s sake only, and having discharged his duty, disappeared back into his card rooms. His perfunctory attention to her made Antigone want to follow him in, and shock him by fleecing the lords just as easily as she had the footmen. Cards were easier to count and keep track of than dice. It would serve him right if she beggared the lot of them.

But she was trying to be good, and behave, and think of Cassie. At least until his lordship the viscount came up to scratch.

And God help him, she thought grimly, if he didn’t. She’d knock out his daylights herself. And then she’d teach Cassandra how to shoot him. It would be gratifying, if a bit messy.

“My dance, I believe, Miss Antigone.” Lord Aldridge came to interrupt her pleasant fantasies, and retrieve her from where she sat, silent and unseen behind her mother and Lady Barrington, playing her appointed role as cipher in the elaborately costumed, elegant, expensive charade.

Antigone stood, but did not take his lordship’s hand. She would spare herself where she could. She might have to suffer his company, but she did not have to suffer his loathsome possesive touch. It helped her tenuous hold on her less ladylike instincts.

While she advanced by his side at a sedate, ladylike pace, she tried to imagine that she had wrapped herself in cotton wool—yards and yards, winding around her like a stole of clouds, buffering her from the world. People could look, but they would not be able to see her. They could speak, and she would not have to hear them. She could dance with herself, floating across the floor, dripping little puddles of condensation and condescension.

She tried out her remote air on Lord Aldridge. “Actually, my lord, I find myself out of countenance for dancing.”

“Oh.” He stopped, and began to turn. “Then I will return you to your mother.”

“I pray not. Why don’t we walk.” Antigone made it a statement instead of a question. Just for fun. Any small amusement to get her through the night. Anything to pass the interminable time.

They promenaded along the edge of the dancefloor, passing near the door to the room where refreshments had been laid out. “Do you care for some refreshment?” his lordship asked politely, if not enthusiastically.

“No. I thank you. I do not care for refreshment. What I care for, I think, this evening, is to understand why you want to marry me.” If it were all for Velocity, for his plan of a racing stable, she wanted to hear him say it. “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble just for a horse.”

Lord Aldridge’s step faltered for the barest moment, before he continued on. When he spoke, his tone was full of his usual careful deliberation. “Because I have selected you.”

Selected. Arranged. Put to a lot of trouble.

“Let me rephrase. Why have you selected
me
? Why me and not Cassandra? She is very beautiful, and certainly well behaved enough to be Lady Aldridge. She would not be embarrassing you by riding up with the huntsmen, and knocking heads together at balls, which I feel bound to tell you is going to happen one of these nights. There is only so much of this folderol I can endure.”

He ignored her provocation, and followed her gesture to where Cassandra stood listening attentively to Viscount Jeffrey. Usually, a man’s eyes grew soft and soporific when they gazed at her sister. But Aldridge’s expression did not change. He made not the slightest acknowledgment of her sister’s extraordinary beauty.

His lordship played his cards very close to his chest. It would behoove her to remember
that
while she was counting cards.

“Your sister is not … to my taste.”

“And I am?” She doused him in a witheringly wide smile. “Forgive me for observing that you don’t even like me.”

This time he did more than falter. He came to a complete stuttering stop, while she walked on. He had to step lively—which wasn’t exactly easy for a man of his age—to catch up. But his words were a study in smooth plausibility. “I don’t dislike you.”

“That is hardly a recommendation for matrimony, Lord Aldridge.” She carried on walking, as if they were discussing the weather and not the rest of her life. “Come, you must think of it. You must know that I will be in your life, every day. Always—breakfast and dinner every day, until the day you die. And I fear it’s only fair to warn you, I am not the kind of woman who can be managed.”

“Everyone can be managed.” The swiftness of his response, and the cutting surety with which he avowed it, sent little rabbits of alarm scurrying over her skin. “Everything can be bought.”

But she could not turn coward now. “But to what cost, sir? To what very high cost? What will it do to your peace to be always managing me and my love of misadventure?”

Her blithe serenity began to wear on him. When he turned to face her, she could see the lines of tense disapproval etched around his mouth. “You must not think we will be living in each other’s pockets, Antigone. I have only one major requirement of you. I want an heir.”

“An heir requires a certain amount of proximity, my lord. And I don’t think you like me enough for
proximity
.”

His crabby lordship chose neither to be amused by her inference, nor to talk about the issue at hand. “Is that what this is? Vanity? A foolish, childish wish to be courted, and fed the lies about love that are the current fashion?”

“No. I have no wish to be told any lies at all.”

“Then here is the truth. All I require from you is an heir. And discretion. I expect given your nature you would prefer to live quietly in the country. You may do so anywhere you like. Once I have an heir, I won’t bother you. You look to be a strong, healthy girl. Once you give me my heir, we will live our lives separately. We will not need to
like
each other.” He gave the word back to her with withering disdain. “We need only do what is required.”

It was cold, and calculating, and strangely comforting. And deeply disturbing. Because she could almost envision such a life. She could almost stomach the idea of having a home of her own, anywhere she liked. And discretion …

“Pray forgive me, but I want no misunderstanding. What do you imply by ‘discretion’?”

“I am not a young man, Antigone. It is not inconceivable that you will be a widow while you are still fairly young. And before that, once you have given me my heir, if you can manage to be discreet about your liaisons, and not embarrass me, or yourself with bastards, I see no reason to interfere.”

“I may have lovers?”

“Discreetly. No hysterical scenes. No rumors. No embarrassments. No bastards. You may have your life, and I will have mine. Do you understand?”

What Antigone understood was that once she had done the
thing
she still could not think about, and given him his heir, she might be able to see Will Jellicoe again. She might move somewhere more convenient to the sea, nearer Portsmouth perhaps—the Isle of Wight—so that if he chose, he might come and see her. He was away for years at a time at sea, he had said, and did not want a wife. But perhaps he would want some companionship.

Perhaps he would want a lover, however occasionally. Perhaps, if she made no claims upon him, nor he upon her, he would consent to be her friend again. Perhaps.

She had taunted Lord Aldridge with her vision of their future, because that loveless, empty future, stretching away into the years, had haunted her. But now, other than the magnificently obvious stumbling block of giving the man his heir, she could almost envision something different. Something infinitely more intriguing. Something immeasurably more palatable.

Almost.

But first, she would have to convince Will Jellicoe not to hate her.

*   *   *

It was not hard for Will to locate his family that evening. Mayfair, for all that it sat in the middle of one of Europe’s largest metropolises, was as close and gossipy as any country village. The
ton
lived in each other’s pockets just as closely as two High Street bakers’ wives.

He did not have an invitation to the dowager Duchess Lucan’s ball at her enormous house on Park Lane, but he did not need one—he was a son of the Earl and Countess Sanderson, he was a handsome young man in the prime of his life with hair and wit, and more charm than any hostess was like to be able to resist. He was immediately admitted.

James saw him at the door, and left the dance floor trailing his Madonna on his arm. “Will.” His brother took his hand. “Good to see you. I didn’t think you were coming to London. What are you doing here?”

“In this ballroom or in London?”

“Both.”

“Looking for employment in London. And as for this ballroom, I thought I might dance.” His eyes had been scanning the room the whole time, but he had yet to find any trace of her. So he turned to his future sister-in-law. “I thought I might find your sister, Miss Preston. I have not yet had a chance to wish her happy.”

Miss Preston’s luminous lavender gaze swung nervously across to the far side of the room.

And there she was. Walking away down the opposite side of the room, as still and stony as a statue—like the figurehead he had once thought her—long and tall and lithe, her long skirts flowing down to the ground in a waterfall of rustling silk. Silk now, not muslin. It suited her, the formal, expensive fabric. It made her look more remote, more physically commanding and uncompromising. But the easy confidence—the innate grace and within her own skin—was gone. Her chin was tossed up in her defiant pose, as she spoke with … Aldridge.

This was a laughing God’s punishment for years of devil-may-care existence, having to watch her with such a man. Watching him casually touch her elbow with his air of aloof possessiveness—a toy he didn’t want to play with, but wouldn’t let anyone else have. Watching her play at the cold goddess, instantly removing her arm, as if his touch pained her. Watching her brittle unhappiness as if it were a dark cloud that rained on her alone, leaving her dripping and gray.

Or perhaps he only imagined she was unhappy. Perhaps he only saw what he wanted to see.

Either way, the fact that Aldridge was with her left Will sullen and gray, and aching for a fight. Anything to appease the need to hurt. Anything to bruise the care out of him. Because knowing that she was unhappy, that she would always be unhappy as long as she was with Aldridge, left him gutted and hollow and mean, and as reckless as a loose cannon.

Ready to put his fist into the face of the first person who crossed him. Pray God it was Aldridge.

The thought calmed him slightly. For why should it not be Aldridge? Why should Will not expose Aldridge for the snake that he was, right then and now? Why should he not do Preston the honor of creating a scandal for her? Why not?