Duke of Scandal (4 page)

If she'd surprised him with that announcement, he seemed as staid about it as she was proud. His brows drew together slightly and he glanced up and down her sitting form again, this time with calculation. That made her warm beneath her silk gown, her face flush with heat, but Olivia ignored it, hoping her cheeks weren't overly pink.

Finally he drew in a long, slow breath. “So, I'm assuming you—or rather your business—makes a perfume for the Empress Eugenie?”

“Exactly,” she replied. “We serve the French elite along with three or four other good quality fragrance houses in France. However, the one the empress frequents is always considered the finest, even if it isn't actually so. Until just recently, her choice for her fragrance
purchases was the House of Nivan; she'd been with us for nearly a decade. And when she patronized us exclusively, she brought with her other fashionable clientele. Of course she is free to choose a different house at any time, if any one of them creates a scent she prefers, and so we try very hard to remain competitive. Because of your brother, your grace, my business has lost that competitive edge.” She leaned forward a little, staring into his eyes intently. “I want that edge returned to me.”

The duke adjusted his large body on the settee a bit, relaxing as he more or less analyzed her. “I'm impressed,” he said at last.

Olivia blinked, unsure whether he meant that truthfully or sarcastically, or what it might be, exactly, that impressed him. He didn't seem at all interested in the art of creating fragrances, but he continued to watch her closely, as if expecting her to get to whatever it might be that she considered the point.

He began to drum his fingertips along the top of the settee. “I'm guessing Edmund stole funds from you that you insist are for keeping the princess adorned in fragrance?”

She crossed her arms over her breasts. “That's a bit simplistic. But yes, he stole much of the money I had saved to invest in the business after my mother's death two years ago. If I don't repay the debts I owe to keep running it, I will be forced to close the House of Nivan.” She paused, then with a gentle lift of her chin added bitterly, “I believe Edmund used me for this purpose, and planned it from the day he met me.”

The Duke of Durham remained silent for a long time it seemed, watching her, his dark eyes narrowed in
speculation. Then he leaned forward, elbows on knees, his hands clasped together in front of him. “How, exactly, did my brother manage to steal from you?”

She gazed at him as if he were daft. “He married me.”

He snickered. “Yes, apparently, but I can't imagine a woman of your obvious intelligence and…business sense just giving him the money should he simply ask for it. I'm curious as to how he planned this.”

His words and tone conveyed sincerity, and Olivia felt warm to her bones from such a compliment, though she was careful not to beam. She didn't think a man, aside from perhaps her father, had ever called her intelligent before. “Edmund took copies of our marriage documents and withdrew money from my bank as only a husband can, with the help of my banker, of course.”

“I see,” he replied, expressionless. “How awfully convenient.”

Olivia wasn't sure if that comment annoyed her or not. “Is there some reason you don't believe me?”

He inhaled deeply again and sat back a little. “I have no reason
not
to believe you, Lady Olivia, because I know Edmund. I would never steal funds from my wife and then leave her, but he—the brother I remember—very well might. As I said before, Edmund and I are very different. Our personalities are as opposite as our appearance is similar.”

She couldn't argue that. Standing side by side she wasn't certain she would be able to tell them apart.

“You don't wear a fragrance,” she said aloud without thought, studying him.

He did look genuinely surprised by that unexpected
comment. “I'd rather bathe. I loathe cologne.”

Smiling, she countered, “In our modern society a person no longer wears a scent simply to hide offensive human odor, your grace. A man's choice of cologne tells much about his personality, his style, and he wears it to express that part of him.”

He grunted at that. “You're saying I lack personality and style, madam?”

“Of course not,” she scoffed. “You just haven't found the fragrance to match yours yet.”

For the first time the Duke of Durham actually grinned at her, and the look, so magnificently handsome and balanced with charm, nearly melted her in her chair.

“As you have found yours?”

Olivia felt perspiration break out on the back of her neck, her upper lip, and she fought the urge to pat it. Why on earth did he seem so…cool? “I wear many fragrances,” she replied neutrally. “I usually choose one to fit my mood.”

“Ah. So I noticed.”

“You noticed?” was all she could think of to say in response.

He shrugged as if his comment had meant nothing. “You smell different today.” His expression turning grave once more, he added, “I'm very perceptive when I need to be, Lady Olivia.”

That warning struck home, and with it an uncomfortable silence grew. For a moment or two he continued to watch her with keen eyes, and to her credit, she remained composed, forthright in her bearing, though certainly blushing terribly from the fact that he thought
about how she
smelled.
She just prayed he wouldn't notice her embarrassment—even if he was as perceptive as he claimed to be.

Then at last he rubbed his chin with long fingers and stood again. She did the same, as gracefully as she could under the circumstances.

“I'll need to see the copies of your marriage documents,” he said.

“Of course; I'll get them.”

He pulled a face of surprise, and Olivia reined in a smile of satisfaction as she lifted her skirts and walked past him toward the small oak secretary near the window.

“I've had copies made. Edmund certainly has one. But this is the original document that I do need returned to me.”

She glanced up to him and he smiled dryly. “You seem to have thought of everything, Lady Olivia.”

“Yes,” she replied at once, handing him a quilled pen. “I also need your signature, should you decide not to return this.”

He walked up to stand very close beside her. She couldn't help it this time, she refused to drop her gaze from his, but she instinctively took a step back from his amazing height and overbearing stance.

“Of course, Lady Olivia,” he consented, looking down to her flushed face, his tone deep and sincerely amused.

She forced herself not to fidget as she handed him the pen. “You'll note that the top paper states that I'm giving you my marriage certificate, to be returned to me after you've had adequate time to evaluate it.”

He finally glanced down to the paper. Then taking the pen from her fingertips, he dipped it in ink and scribbled his signature on it.

“Thank you, your grace,” she said after he slipped the pen back into the inkwell.

“It's been my pleasure to accommodate you, madam,” he drawled, standing tall again and staring down at her.

Olivia couldn't take any more of the oppressive heat in Lady Abethnot's drawing room, or maybe it was just his oppressive closeness. It didn't matter; she was done with him for today.

Quickly, she gathered up the paperwork and handed him the appropriate certificate.

“Thank you, sir, for your promptness in this matter,” she offered pleasantly.

“Of course,” he replied without extrapolating.

For a discomfiting moment neither of them moved. Then he tilted his head to the side a fraction and asked, “What do you consider yourself, Lady Olivia, French or English?”

She pulled back in surprise, lacing her fingers together behind her. “I am both.”

He continued to gaze into her eyes for several long seconds, then nodded vaguely. “Of course you are.”

She had no idea how to take that, and he supplied no other explanation.

Another awkward moment passed. Then he took a small step away from her and bowed his head once.

“I shall be in touch with you within a matter of days, madam, at which time we will discuss what we're going to do about my wayward brother.”

“Thank you, your grace.”

He lowered his gaze down her form one final time and, she thought, paused far too long at her breasts. She didn't move.

“Good day, Lady Olivia,” he said flatly before he turned on his heel and walked out of the drawing room.

Her heartbeat raced for a long time, it seemed, after she'd heard Lady Abethnot's front door close behind him. Then she collapsed into the settee without thought to wrinkling her billowing skirts, staring out the window at the sprinkling rain, only one thought in her mind:

He might prove more dangerous than Edmund…

I
am both.

She'd said it the night of the ball, too, and he'd thought it just as ridiculous then. How could one be both French
and
English? It was true that one could be born of both, as in Lady Olivia's case—an English father and a French mother. But it was beyond his comprehension how a person could choose to be of both heritages. One was either French
or
English. Not both.

She was a most annoying woman, in more ways than he could name, possessing a remarkably strong intellect for an Englishwoman of aristocratic background, coupled with a face and body that defied description. That bothered him most of all.

Yet it shouldn't, he admonished himself, shifting his large frame in the carriage as he rode along Upper Rhine Street toward Colin's town house. That she still
looked like the French goddess he'd seen in her the night of the ball was really not her
fault.
He'd hoped she'd be less appealing under the telling light of afternoon, but nothing about her, or her clothing, could be considered remotely ordinary. True, she wore much less formal attire today—a day gown in…blue? He couldn't remember. Even so it remained obvious how remarkable she looked in or out of clothes, making it extremely difficult for him to concentrate on anything she actually said. And he hated admitting that he was attracted to her—his brother's
wife,
for God's sake. What a nightmare this could turn out to be.

The morning had been stormy, gloomy and gray, but as evening approached the rain began to ease somewhat, allowing him to alight from his carriage at the front gate of Colin's home without getting drenched. He marched quickly to the tall black door and knocked hard, twice. After a long moment a silver-haired butler he'd never seen before answered and moved aside immediately for him to enter. Sam stifled a chuckle. Colin changed employees like he changed his drawers. He'd never seen the same servants twice, and each time he visited, he wondered if his friend rotated the help so much because of his clandestine work for the Crown. But then he didn't really care and he'd never thought to ask. Right now he had more important issues on his mind.

After walking swiftly through the parlor and down the entire length of the long, dimly lit hallway, Sam rapped twice on the door to Colin's spacious study, where he'd been told his friend awaited him, then opened it without waiting for reply. The warmth of the
low burning fire struck him immediately, as did the strong odor of tobacco that encircled Colin's head as he sat behind his enormous oak desk.

Sir Walter Stemmons of Scotland Yard, a hard, broad-shouldered man with a pockmarked face and keen eyes that missed nothing, stood beside his friend, peering down to paperwork in which they were both obviously engrossed, until Colin glanced up and grinned dryly at him.

Sam snorted as he stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He knew what was coming.

“So, the damsel tie you down?” Colin asked with a flick of his head.

“Literally or figuratively?” he returned nonchalantly, walking toward a black leather chair beside the fireplace.

Sir Walter chuckled and stood upright, pulling down hard on his sleeves. “If my wife had any notion of the things bachelors discuss—”

“She'd tie you down?” Sam cut in.

“I'm deathly afraid so, yes,” Sir Walter said with a nod and a crooked grin that made his features look remarkably young for his nearly sixty years. “Colin has been explaining your unusual dilemma, your grace. I'll be happy to help in any way I can, of course.”

Sam nodded a silent thanks to the man as he sat heavily on the cushioned leather, leaning slightly to the side and stretching the opposite leg out in front of him. “It could get rather complicated, I'm afraid. I don't want to take too much of your time away from the Yard.”

With a toss of his hand, Sir Walter balked at that and
leaned his hip against the edge of the desk. “I'm nearly retired at this point,” he maintained, his voice gruffly proud. “My time is generally my own, meaning that I can take my own cases, and frankly, any threat to the peerage
is
my business.”

Sam didn't know if he'd call Olivia Shea a threat to the peerage, unless one considered her striking appearance.

Dammit.

“She didn't seem very threatening to me,” Colin said lightly.

He groaned inwardly and rubbed his tired eyes with his fingers and thumb. “She claims Edmund married her then disappeared, taking her fortune with him.”

Sir Walter grunted. Colin let out a low whistle then mumbled, “Unbelievable.”

Sam looked directly at the two men. “Really? I don't think so. This is Edmund we're discussing. I'd only be more surprised if he'd married and cheated a homely girl. But true to form, Olivia isn't homely in the least.”

“No, not in the least,” Colin repeated through a grin. He sat forward, forearms atop the papers and notes on his cluttered desk. “What did you bring me?”

“Her marriage license.” Sam waved the paper in front of him but remained sitting, wanting to talk the situation through before he gave it to his friend to scrutinize.

Colin raised his brows. “Indeed. The original? She trusted you with it?”

His lips thinned into a line of annoyance. “She made me sign for it.”

Both men chuckled, and Sam felt a certain flush creep up his neck.

“She's thought of everything, hasn't she?” Colin remarked.

Sam's eyes narrowed. “She's apparently something of a perfumer, and manages a business called the House of Nivan in Paris.”

Sir Walter remained silent, kneading his chin with his fingers and thumb as he absorbed the information like a good detective would.

“Fascinating,” Colin said seconds later, bemused. “And I gather she's come here looking for her wayward scoundrel of a husband but found you instead.”

Sam tendered no response to that. Instead, he bluntly asked, “What did you think of her?”

Colin shrugged minutely. “She's amazing; well-spoken, well-dressed, stunning to look at.”

He sighed. “Besides the physical.”

Colin's chair creaked as he sat back fully and relaxed again. “I don't know.”

“That doesn't help me,” he said through a snort. “I need more of your first impression of the woman. Just…ideas, thoughts that come to mind, however seemingly insignificant.”

After a long moment of a more serious contemplation, Colin expounded. “She's…clever, and obviously spirited. A woman of passions, which, I suppose, is typical of the French.”

So very true, Sam thought, in
every
respect, which worried him, frankly.

“Under the right circumstances,” Colin continued, “she might prove to be an engaging confidante; she seems genuinely quick with words and…sophisticated, probably due to her travels and apparently good
upbringing. However, these are my impressions from only talking to her briefly, Sam.”

“May I suggest she's probably also extremely organized?” Sir Walter piped in. He pushed himself away from the desk edge to stand straight again, crossing his arms over his chest as he began to pace to the side of it, staring down to the hardwood floor. “I realize I've never met her personally, but if she truly oversees a thriving perfume business—and I say thriving because if Edmund indeed stole her money, she had to have enough for him to spend the time devising this enormous scheme—then she can certainly plan and execute operations. She was clearly determined and independent enough to come to England on her own in search of her missing husband. Most ladies would never dream of such a thing.”

“Organized, determined, independent. The worst qualities in a female,” Sam said, wiping his palm down his face in feigned pain.

Sir Walter laughed. “I'm sure there are worse.”

“Like stupidity,” Colin interjected, his tone rather sober in light of the discussion. “It should be noted that if she
did
marry your brother, Sam, such an action was obviously unwise. She didn't seem at all dense to me, or shy. She's certainly sensual, but not obviously a frivolous romantic, so there's no telling what he might have told her, or how he might have charmed her, to get her to wed him.” Colin drew a long breath and let it out slowly. “There's also the possibility that she devised this scheme all by herself after meeting Edmund and learning his twin brother is a wealthy man of the British nobility. I think she's probably that smart.”

He'd thought so, too, and added, “It's also possible that she and Edmund are lovers, married or not, and that they're working together to extort money from me by playing on my sympathies for an abandoned female and my contempt for my brother.” He gave the two men a sideways glance. “Her showing at the ball three nights ago might have been the first act in a very long play of wit and games and devious calculation. I don't know her, but I wouldn't put anything past Edmund. And she
is
half French.”

“Doesn't that also make her half English?” Sir Walter asked carefully.

Sam chose not to respond to what he knew was a rhetorical question. Both Colin and a few he knew well at the Yard, Sir Walter included, were very much aware of his past relations with one particular Frenchwoman. Some scandals never died, however one tried to forget them, or however one's friends tried to put past mistakes in a positive light.

Colin drummed his fingertips on the top of a pile of tossed papers. “It doesn't help that she's beautiful also, does it?”

Tightening his jaw, he softly replied, “No, that doesn't help at all.”

Silence droned for a few seconds. Then Colin said, “Let me see the document.”

Sam stood warily and walked to the desk, holding the marriage license in his outstretched hand.

Colin reached for it gingerly, then lighting a lamp on his desk, he placed the paper beneath it and began to scrutinize it inch by inch.

Sir Walter stood behind his friend, staring down at
the document, his thick brows crinkled. Sam waited with as much patience as he could muster under the circumstances, trying not to ask Colin questions before he'd finished his evaluation. This was what he did for a living, and the man was quite possibly the greatest forger—and the greatest detector of forged documents—that had ever lived in England. He'd been caught at the age of twenty-four, sentenced to work for the Crown, and this he'd readily done for more than twelve years. But very few people knew of his work. To everybody outside a small circle of friends and colleagues, Colin was simply the dashing, but rather lazy, Duke of Newark who spent his time attending parties and flirting with the ladies. The fact that his line of work remained a tightly held secret was their government's greatest asset.

Colin started to chuckle and his head popped up. “This is marvelous.”

Sam frowned and leaned over the desk. “How so?”

His friend leaned on the armrest of his rocker and tapped the document. “It's an
excellent
forgery. Well…it's not a forgery exactly, but it's not a legitimate license of marriage, either.”

“What does that mean?” Sir Walter asked, peering closer.

“That the document is real, but it's been altered. Look here.”

Sam turned his neck aslant to better view the area at the bottom right edge of the document where Colin ran the pad of his thumb over the indented seal.

“The document itself is legal, meaning this is the actual document used to record civil marriages in whichever parish they were married in the country of
France.” Colin raised an old steel magnifying glass and analyzed the bottom right corner. “However, the seal height is off—it's pressed in too high. It's also got one or two tiny indentations on the bottom of it that aren't normally there.”

“You've seen other marriage documents enough to know this?” Sam asked.

Colin shot him a quick, perplexed glance. “Of course.”

He had nothing to say to that.

“And as I look at the entire document now enlarged,” Colin continued, “there are letters printed off center, perhaps one-twentieth of an inch. See that?”

Sam squinted, staring hard where Colin traced the supposed falsity with a fingertip, yet saw nothing that appeared less than perfect. “No, I don't.”

Colin didn't offer a clarification. Instead, he flipped the paper over for a second or two, then back again. Finally, he lifted the magnifying glass again and slowly followed the edges of the document, then moved in to the lettering, tracing each one attentively.

Moments later he straightened once more and tossed the counterfeit license of marriage on top of his own pile of paperwork. “I'd have to see a recent signature from Edmund to know if he actually signed this. But aside from that, this document is real, and it's been altered, making it a forgery, and a very expensive one. Of that I'm sure.”

Silence prevailed for a second or two, then Sam said thoughtfully, “Meaning someone spent a lot of money to enact this scam. Do you know anyone who could do this kind of work?”

“Personally?” Colin frowned, shaking his head. “No, not offhand. But I'll think on it, check with some of my contacts if you'd like. It might take some time.”

Unfortunately, time was a luxury Sam was afraid he might not have. He ran his fingers roughly through his hair. “Do what you can. It might help.”

“So,” Sir Walter chimed in, turning his back on them and rounding the desk to stare out the window, hands clasped behind him, “are they not married, then? Or would it still be a legal marriage if done in the eyes of the Church, regardless of the signed document? I would think so.”

Sam's stomach suddenly clenched uncomfortably; it had been the one question he'd been hesitating to ask.

Colin thought about that for a moment. “I think so, too, but it would depend upon who performed the ceremony. The name on this document means nothing.” He leaned forward to read the license. “Jean-Pierre Savant. I'm sure that's a very common name in France, and it could be entirely made up.”