Secrets of a Scandalous Heiress (14 page)

“He was being far too harsh. Indeed, he sounds like the sort of fellow who is often more harsh than he ought to be.”

“He is honest,” Augusta said. “Which I have come to…to value.”

A smile touched his lips; he felt as though she had touched him far more deeply. “What would you like, then? A story? Perhaps one about a kind fairy who gives kid gloves to everyone, at least until fairyland's supply of kidskin is exhausted.”

“No, no fairy stories. I want an answer. An honest answer to just one question.”

The
answer
doesn't matter as much as the question
. Chatfield's calm words rang in his ears. In this corner, hidden behind a wall of sound and bustle, they were nearly as alone as if the room were empty. “One answer, then.” What her question might be, he could not imagine.

She scooted her chair nearer until she could whisper below the din. Breathing deeply, she shut her eyes. “Why do you wear sandalwood oil?”

When her eyes opened, she was so close—close enough, almost, to capture.

He did not know the name of his favorite flower. He did not even know if it was a real fragrance or something concocted by a gifted perfumer. He only knew that its scent lay sweetly in the hollow of her throat, and that he wanted to lean closer. Breathe her in, take her in his arms, make her some part of him and himself a part of her.

But it was impossible. Not only because of honor—an efficient summation of thirty-one years of difficult decisions—but because he belonged nowhere but alone. Always alone, outside the clique of society or the camaraderie of the servants. Part English and part alien; part respectable and part scandal.

He did not want to be alone.

He traced a crack in the tabletop, where the old, time-rubbed wood had long ago split apart.

“I choose sandalwood,” he said, “because it reminds me of my birth. You see, my grandmother was born in India, and my mother was half-Indian.”

Her elbow slid on the table; her sleepy-looking eyes flew open. “You're of Indian descent?”

As he had expected, she sounded surprised—though somehow, he had hoped the truth wouldn't matter. “In part. Yes.” Joss leaned away from her in his chair.

“I had no idea.”

“What would you have me do? Write ‘Josiah Everett, possesses Indian blood' in the Pump Room guest book?”

“That would be intriguing.”

“Please note,” he said loftily, “that I am glaring at you. Because I am not amused.”

“All right, all right.” She picked at the edge of her cloak, wadded over a chair, then let it fall again. “It just seems unfair that your secret is hidden and mine is obvious.”

“It's not obvious that you're not a widow. And how could it be hidden that I have mixed blood? I wear it all over my skin. Figuratively,” he added when her nose wrinkled.

“I didn't think about it, honestly. I've seen Welshmen as dark as you, so your coloring does not seem unusual. Have you ever been thought Welsh?”

Joss snorted, folding his arms tight about himself for what seemed like the thousandth time since this odd dinner began.

Augusta arched a brow. “Don't fly into a rage. I'm merely interested. You've given me new information, much like if you told me you had a twin. I just need to add it to my mental list of things that I know about you.”

Despite his wariness, this piqued his curiosity. “Indeed? What else is on the list?”

She considered. “Sharp tongue. Two eyes, nose, mouth. Shoulders, arms—”

“Ah. So your list is concerned with my body.”

She turned red, a deep brick shade that argued with the color of her hair. “Ah—never mind. I wish I had bargained for more than one question. Because right now, I really want to know whether this is why you don't lodge with your cousin in Queen Square.”

“What, the fact that my grandmother was born on a different continent?” He spoke the words lightly, as though the question was ludicrous.

But the truth was: he didn't know.

His fraction of noble blood opened the narrow corners of the
ton
to him, but he was far too angular and sharp to slot neatly into them. What caused him not to fit? Was it his relative poverty? The scandal surrounding his parents' almost-too-late marriage? Or was it his Indian blood? His conception represented so many sins against society that he could never be completely absolved.

Did that matter, though? He had a seat in Lady Tallant's drawing room when he wanted it. Once, he had even had been invited by the countess's dear friend—now the Duchess of Wyverne—to visit the Duke of Wyverne's estate in Lancashire.

Surely it was not necessary to win over all of society as long as one could rely on a few friendly faces. Surely it was not even necessary to be treated as family by a man like Sutcliffe, who had little feeling for anyone other than himself. A man so shallow ought not to be able to inflict a deep wound.

Ought
not. And yet. “My Indian blood doesn't affect who I am,” he said. “It doesn't matter to me.”

This was not true, of course. As he had just admitted to Augusta, he thought of it every time he opened his last vial of sandalwood oil and breathed its faraway scent. Every time he looked at his grandmother's worn botanical ledger and wondered when
somalata
had first grown in the Sutcliffe Hall conservatory.

Every time Sutcliffe spoke to him as a servant rather than a relative.

Still. He meant to be reassuring, so Augusta would once again see him as a proper English gentleman.

Well. Semiproper. Somewhat gentlemanly.

But as he had once observed, the course of conversation never ran smoothly around Augusta. Far from appearing reassured, she looked appalled. “I hope you don't mean that. Or even
think
you mean that.”

“Why? What possible argument could you make with my determination to be English?”

“That is not the part that bothers me. It's the fact that you just said you would cut away one of your grandparents. As if she doesn't matter to you.”

Guilt tugged at him. “I never knew her,” he excused. “She died before I was born.”

“But you would never have been born at all if she hadn't given birth to your mother. Your grandmother is
part
of you.”

He stared at her, surprised by this vehemence. Fiddling with one of her hairpins, she added, “Do you suppose I was never embarrassed by my parents? My father had the broadest Portsmouth accent you could imagine. Every word was clipped off, every vowel an ‘ay.' My mother always thought more lace, more trim, more bugles were better on every gown. They'd been born poor and became wealthy. They wanted better for me, and they didn't always pursue it the right way. But don't you see? They
made
me. If they had been a lord and lady, they'd have been ashamed of my unfashionable red hair. If I had been raised the daughter of an earl, I would never have been allowed to learn so much about business.”

At some point in this speech, Joss realized that Augusta's outpouring of feeling was directed less toward him than to some wound in her own heart. Something at which she had hinted, some loss that still lanced her.

He toyed with the idea of making some serious reply.
Tell
me
something
else
you
remember
about
your
parents.
Augusta had had more than two decades with her parents. Long enough to hoard memories by the hundreds—the thousands. Happy, everyday memories. The sort other people seemed to take for granted. The sort of which Joss possessed far too few.

But no, that reply would be too dangerous. It would wrap them in an intimacy even deeper than when they had kissed: the intimacy of memory revealed.

So he settled upon flippancy instead. “I thought you wanted to listen, not speak.”

She grimaced at him. “I did, yes. But I needed to say that. And maybe you needed to hear it.”

Blunt-spoken woman, wasn't she? Yet her carrying speech about family creating one—personality as well as body, behavior along with soul—made sense. So long, he had taken for granted that the mixing of races had made him different from everyone else he met. This was true, but she was right: it had made
him.
And rarity alone was no cause for shame. There was only one king, after all. One prime minister. One yearly winner of the Epsom Derby.

Such comparisons made him smile with their unlikeliness. “Thank you.” He stroked back a strand of Augusta's hair that had tumbled free from her pins. “I suppose I did need to hear it. You give me a new way to think about the matter.”

For a moment, she leaned into his touch, catlike, shutting her eyes. Then she was all clipped energy again. “Think of this, too, Joss: the prime minister has Indian blood. Lord Liverpool. He is welcomed everywhere in society. He's powerful.”

Joss drew his hand away, then picked up the knife and stabbed at their remaining cheddar. “Lord Liverpool is also wealthy and titled. He could speak to Parliament dressed in petticoats and a bonnet, and no one would think the less of him. I do not set my sights at the level of the prime minister. Tutored commoners of indifferent birth, such as I am, are thick on the ground.”

“Maybe so, but you are the only Joss Everett.” She tilted her head, setting the loose curl free again. “Are you doing what you wish?”

Doing what he wished? No, of course he wasn't. Right now he wished he could make her smile as she had when giving away her gloves. He wished he could dispense with his conscience and plead for her to take him as a lover. He wished he could pluck the pins from her sunset hair and send it tumbling over her naked skin, wished he could stop kissing her only to make her cry out in pleasure.

But always, in the face of a wish, came prosaic reality. A scarred wooden table, a plate of mutton and potatoes, a wedge of cheese. An adequate fire and a roof over one's head. Such a reality was perfectly acceptable, even if it didn't hold the luster of a gemlike fantasy.

“I try to wish,” he said in a calm voice, “for what I know I might attain. For respectable employment for a reasonable wage. For a reasonable employer.”

This brought a faint smile to her features, but the expression fell away in another instant. “That seems a very small dream.”

“What on
earth
do you mean by that? It's a very suitable dream.”

“But it's not really a dream, is it? It's what you have now, just shuffled about a bit.”

Again, he folded his arms. She lifted her hands, placating. “As you say, it's perfectly suitable. And if you insist that it's exactly what you want, then I suppose it is a dream, after all.”

Of
course
it wasn't a dream. It was good sense. It was practicality. “I don't know what else I ought to wish for. This is my life. I am a man of business for a nobleman.” Remembering Chatfield's words, he added, “I am not in bodily danger, nor in mortal peril. It could be far worse.”

“It could be. But if you want it to be better…”

“Not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to buy happiness.”

“No one is fortunate enough for that.” She turned over her fork and scratched the tines into the surface of the table. “That's not what I meant. I know happiness can't be bought, or I would have bought it.”

Whatever clouded her mind, here was the muddy base of it. He seized the chance to turn the conversation from himself. “Are you recalling the loss of your lover?”

The fork in her hand skidded; four tiny notches were gouged in the wood.

He expected a heated retort, the sort of fiery response that got them both a bit too flustered for sense. Instead, though, her auburn brows knit. “We probably should not refer to him with that word. There wasn't any love involved, as I eventually learned. Lord Chatfield told you something of him, I suppose.”

As she did not present this as a question, Joss thought he was safe from having to provide an answer.

Her lips tightened. “I thought he might. Chatfield loves to know things, and to him, much of the fun of knowing is telling what he knows.” With a harsh laugh, she added, “That's how I knew he could not be a blackmailer. He doesn't hoard secrets for money, only for other types of gain.”

You
must
come
and
work
for
me.
Chatfield wished to turn Joss into an extension of himself. But that was what a man of business always became, if he had any sort of competence.

Against his silence, Augusta gave a faint sigh. “The man you called lover, for lack of a better word, always assumed he could find someone better than me. I must have been his insurance against a life of poverty. But people hope never to need their insurance, isn't that so?”

“Do forgive me if I am being dull-witted.”
Slice. Slice.
Joss made a neat tower of Cheddar cheese. “But you have told me you seek a lover. It seems as though you want to replace someone who, when you felt terrible, made you feel worse.”

“Exactly.” The fervor in her voice made him look up, puzzled. “I shall
replace
him. If someone else is in that role—someone of my choosing, whom I control—then he will be gone from my thoughts.”

Such a vain hope on which to toss away one's heart and body. Joss's insides twisted at the thought. “That is not the only possible outcome.”

Tipping back her tankard, she drained it. A hard look was on her face when she set the mug down. “Very well,
not
replace. I don't want someone to pretend he wants anything more from me than sex. I know now that love and sex and marriage have nothing to do with one another.”

“I wish you did not.”

“Why? Because I'm too fragile?”

He hesitated. “Because I wish no one had ever treated you badly.”

Her brows drew together. “You are serious?”

“Rarely.”

She rolled her eyes. “Right now, I mean. You—mean that?”

“It would be unkind of me to wish the opposite.”

“True.” She pursed her lips and studied him; the sinking light from the windows painted her face in rosy tints. “I am coming to think of you as quite a good man.”

“I am nothing of the sort.” Somehow, he managed to feign a haughty tone, though warmth shot through his chest.
Good
. He had never been called that before.
Clever
, maybe.
Amusing
.
Damned
useful
, even. But never
good
. It was an old word, and a simple one, and a very deep one.

“Well, Joss, here's what I want. Here is my dream.” She spoke the words delicately, as though testing their sound in a foreign tongue. “When my parents died, there was no one left who loved me just as I was. I want to have that again someday. Though I know it's impossible, I want to be listened to without having to play any games or tricks. I want people to know my mind without being distracted by my—”

“Dockyard?” He could not resist.

“Yes. Right.” Setting down the fork, she traced her forefinger over the holes left behind in the table. “Or my money. Or this pestilential femininity that makes most men assume there's nothing on my mind but a bonnet. I certainly
like
bonnets, but I should hate to have my entire person reduced to what I was wearing.”

“Is that why you gave away your gloves to the barmaid who admired your appearance?”

She frowned. “Maybe. Damnation, that would make it a selfish act instead of a kind one, wouldn't it?”

He had thought exactly this, but he liked her all the better for it. “No matter why you did it, the gift made her smile.”