How to Handle a Scandal (28 page)

Anna groaned. “That’s bound to be wicked.”

“And very likely the best treasure they’ve found,” Will pointed out with a chuckle.

“Should we find some way to get it away from them?” Eliza asked.

“No,” all three men said at once.

Heck scampered over, still wearing the hat. “I’m never going to take this off,” he announced. “I can’t wait to wear it to the bonfire tonight.”

“Bonfire?” Tommy turned accusatory eyes on Eliza.

She forced a cheery smile. “To celebrate our last night together.”

He gave her a look that said he didn’t appreciate her making plans without him, but with everyone there, he couldn’t complain.

“Can I burn a chair?” Heck asked.

“Hector Halifax! What a question,” his mother moaned.

Marcus and Rex also looked quite interested in the answer to that question. “Actually,” Eliza said, “I’ve put aside a number of worm-eaten chairs and things that can go on the bonfire.”

Heck let out a whoop.

“This all sounds quite exciting,” Ruby said dryly, but she was smiling.

“Doesn’t it?” Tommy said meaningfully, his eyes still on Eliza.

“And helpful, too,” Eliza said, pretending not to notice his simmering looks of doom. “We can get rid of broken old things. Could you see to the details, Tommy?”

She ignored the sound of his teeth grinding.

* * *

Tommy spent the afternoon directing the removal of furniture to a patch of open, mossy ground in the wilds and organizing the building of the base for Eliza’s bonfire, which he was perfectly aware she’d intended to be as much about offering their guests a happy final night as a way of avoiding him. Which he didn’t like at all. She’d told him she loved him—how could she just ignore him?

Her admission had startled him, and he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He would have expected to feel smothered, or as though she was trying to tie him down, but he didn’t, perhaps because she so clearly wasn’t. But also because the idea of her caring about him made him feel…good.

As he tossed an old chair on the growing pile, it occurred to him that maybe he’d been so focused on the life he thought he wanted that he hadn’t been able to see he might now want something different.

The moment darkness fell, the children exuberantly urged the adults out to the wilds. Louie, whose misspent youth had given him more experience lighting large fires than anyone should have, took charge of starting the fire, and soon a roaring blaze was lighting up the crisp autumn night.

Eliza was laughing with Ruby, Meg, and Will when Tommy moved next to her and took her hand. She tried to pull away, but he held on firmly.

“What are you doing?” she muttered at him.

“We need to talk.”

She frowned and glanced at Meg next to her, but Meg was staring off in the direction of Louie. “No, we don’t.”

“Yes, we do,” Tommy said, and tugged, leading her to the skimpy shelter of a small tree. She clasped her hands in front of her. In the glow from the enormous fire behind her, she looked wary.

“I’ve thought about it,” he said, “and I’ve decided that I will be back in England within three years.”

“What are you saying, Tommy?”

“That I want to have a family with you. I’m asking you to wait until I return home for good.”

She looked away. “Tommy, I’m your wife, and I’ll always fulfill my duties to run our affairs in England and take care of Rex. We will make a very good marriage of friends.”

“Dammit, Eliza, I’m talking about coming home to you. I’m talking about giving up my life in India within three years and coming to live in England for good. All I need is a little more time—just one more adventure. And then I’ll be done. I’ll want to be in England. I’ll want a home. With you.”

She looked maddeningly nonplussed. He’d just offered to change his life for her. He
cared
about her. Was she just going to stand there as though everything he’d just laid before her was nothing?

“You don’t
know
that you’ll want to give up your adventures, Tommy. Once you get to India, you might not want to. You might not be done. And where would that leave me and you and any family we might have?”

“Why wouldn’t I want to come home to you? We have a great time together.”

“I want better than that for myself,” she said, and her rejection of what he’d offered felt like a kick to the guts. Though she’d admitted she loved him, clearly she wasn’t going to let that rule her.

The bonfire raged behind her, turning the red of her hair to fire, but the effect seemed like nothing compared to the fire that burned within her. Somewhere along the line, the woman he’d once dismissed as hardly worth his time had revealed herself to be fierce and brilliant, and for the first time he began to accept that Eliza might have plans of her own that truly had nothing to do with him. It was a very unwelcome thought.

He shocked himself then by saying, “What if I don’t go back to India at all?”

“You have to. It’s your heart’s desire. And I have my own plans: I’m going to look for a house to buy outside Bath, where I can establish a much better place for the kinds of girls we were helping at Truehart Manor. Meg and I are going to call it Redstocking House. So you see, you and I will both be going back to lives we want.”

“Why won’t you believe I’ll come back to be with you?” he demanded. When she just left his words hanging there, he cursed himself. Why would she believe that when everything she’d heard from him had been about the life he wanted to live without her?

“I’m going to leave with Will and Anna tomorrow,” she said calmly. “They’ll see me back to London on their way to Stillwell.”

“
What?
” Panic raced through him. “You can’t just leave! We’re married.”

“We both know what would happen if I stayed with you, and I don’t want that.”

“But—things have changed.” His mind racing, he seized on the practical. “You can’t go. What about Hellfire Hall, and everything that still needs doing?”

“Mrs. Hatch will help you finish what we’ve set in motion. And then you can offer it to a renter.”

She didn’t want his house either? When, with her care and attention and that warmth that was uniquely hers, she’d made it into a home? How could she want to just abandon it to strangers?

“Eliza,” he bit off, “there’s a great deal more to say. I really want to be with you.” He knew he was going about this all wrong, that he was rushing to keep up with something that was shifting inside him, but he couldn’t seem to find solid ground.

While he’d been ready to admit that he loved her company, he’d refused to let himself see that there might be a very good reason for that. But now, as he watched the fire dance over her, he felt as though a whole new window on life was opening, letting in views he’d never dreamed he’d want.

“I understand that you believe that,” she said, and he nearly yelled with frustration. She didn’t believe she could trust him to truly care for her.

He pushed down the awareness that he just might lose her and focused on sounding reasonable. “We need to be together just the two of us, without everyone else around.” Then surely he could show her how he cared, show her she could trust him.

“That’s not a good idea,” she said. “And my mind is made up.”

She went back to their guests, effectively sealing herself off from him.

He muttered a curse. What could he say to make her see she could trust that he only wanted her?

He had to find some way to make her listen, but it certainly wasn’t going to be here, surrounded by their family and friends.

He stepped away from the light of the bonfire and made his way toward the manor, stopping inside to speak to Mrs. Hatch before he went to the stables for a horse. At least it was not yet too late at night to pay a call on Wallace Smythe. Time was of the essence.

As his horse picked its way quickly down the path to the Smythe manor, the sea beyond it glinted in the moonlight. The sea had always promised escape and adventure, but now Tommy was desperately hoping it might give him another chance with Eliza. He didn’t deserve another chance, but he finally understood how much he needed it.

How had he been such a fool? Accustomed to relying only on himself because it was easier than accepting the messiness that deeper connections with other people brought, he’d kept things light and charming and fun, never allowing anyone else’s needs to be more important than his own. Eliza had helped him see all that—and he’d seen a portrait of a man he didn’t want to be.

He’d allowed selfishness and mistrust and, yes, pessimism to blind him to the best thing that had ever happened to him: Eliza. She’d made him see that he needed love if he was ever going to be the man he was capable of being. He needed
her
.

God, she was brave. She’d had the courage to tell him she loved him, and the unshakable nobility to leave him because he didn’t deserve her.

He knew now that nothing could matter more than deserving her love.

His horse drew up in front of the Smythe manor, and Tommy jumped down and ran for the door. The butler was understandably surprised to see him at nearly ten o’clock at night, but he brought Tommy to his master, who was enjoying a quiet brandy at his library desk.

“Sir Tommy,” Smythe said, standing, “what a pleasant surprise.”

“I’ve come to ask a favor,” Tommy said, his heart pounding with the need for the answer to be yes. “It’s about that boat of yours that’s been standing off the coast for the last few days.”

As the time slipped by in the glow of the bonfire and the adults sipped mulled wine and laughed and talked and occasionally wondered where Tommy had gotten to, it finally dawned on Eliza that he’d left.

She supposed he’d been annoyed by their conversation, but still she was surprised.

“We had a disagreement,” she told Will when he asked after his brother.

He sucked his teeth. “Let me guess: you waited until tonight to tell him you were leaving.”

“Yes, but I’m sure that wasn’t it.”

“I wouldn’t be too certain. He can’t have been happy about it.”

She thought of how Tommy had left so abruptly years before when she’d laughed at him, but this was totally different. They were mature adults, and even though she knew she couldn’t count on him for the future, she didn’t think he was childish. Though she had to acknowledge that she hoped he might be hurt enough to need a few minutes to himself.

But when Mrs. Hatch appeared to tell her that Tommy had been called away on business, she reminded herself what a capacity for ignoring the truth had done for her in the past and refused to let herself think about him for even one more second.

When he hadn’t returned by the time she went to bed, she admitted she was extremely annoyed that he could be so inconsiderate to both her and his family. And she was hurt, too—why not admit it? They’d become
friends
, but clearly that meant nothing to him. She counted sheep furiously until she finally fell asleep.

She awoke some hours later, and from the low position of the moon in her window, she supposed it was very late, or rather very early the next day. Something had awakened her, some sound, but though she concentrated, she heard nothing and sensed nothing—until a hand came over her mouth!

She screamed, but her muffled cry came out as nothing but an insistent grunt. She thrashed, trying to throw the intruder off, her thoughts racing. Who was he, how had he gotten in, what did he want? She screamed again, just as uselessly.

“Before you try to wake the whole manor, it’s me.”

Tommy?
She stilled.

He took his hand away. She sat up, and the fury she’d battled at bedtime combined with her outrage at being treated thus infused her voice. “What on earth are you doing?” she demanded.

He sat on the edge of her bed. “I wanted to talk to you, but there are too many people around this place, and you’re set on avoiding me.”

Why couldn’t he just let this go? She’d made her hard decisions and her plans, but he wanted to nibble at her resolve with his charm and make everything so much harder. She sagged back against the pillow. “We’ve already said everything. You just don’t like that I’m leaving you, instead of letting you leave me.”

“I’ll admit your plans got my attention. But it’s not just that. I—um—love you,” he said in a rush, so that she could barely make out the words. They sent an initial thrill through her, but it died away just as quickly. They were just words, and they sounded awkward since he was only saying them because he thought they were what she wanted to hear.

“You don’t.”

“Yes, I do. I want to stay with you. I’ve decided not to go back to India at all.”

“What? No.” She sat up again. “You have to go. It’s what you’ve wanted all along.”

“What I want has changed.”

She crossed her arms. “I don’t believe you. And I don’t want you to stay,” she said, forcing the lie past her constricting throat. Anger warred with her hurt, and she stirred it up, needing the strength it could give her to protect her heart. “I have plans for a future that I can’t wait to get started on,” she told him bluntly, “and they have nothing to do with you. So you see, there’s no place for you in my life.”

He sighed, sounding as though the words that had cost her so much bored him. But what should she expect? He was used to looking out only for himself, and he didn’t want to be truly affected by other people.

“Right,” he said. She heard him fumbling for something.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Kidnapping you.” And before she could even squeak, he had a cloth tied over her mouth. She grunted angrily but he ignored her. He gave her legs a firm tug, pulling her flat on the bed, and then the demented man rolled her up in the blankets like a sausage in pastry!

He passed a rope around her body and tied it firmly though not uncomfortably, and then he picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder. With her arms and legs snuggly restrained inside the blankets, she couldn’t move anything but her head.

Had he lost his mind?

Apparently, because he proceeded to carry her out of her room, down the stairs, and out to the drive, where a cart was waiting in the moonlight. He placed her gently on the seat and got in next to her.

“The cart is a bit rustic, so I’m sorry to say it will be far less smooth than the coach, but the coach was too much trouble for my purposes.”

Too much trouble for a madman dragging a woman out into the cold, dark night?
she wanted to yell at him, but all she could do was grunt some more. He chuckled.

“You’re heaping curses on me, aren’t you? And wondering what the devil I’m doing and where I’m taking you.”

She grunted again, meaningfully.

“You’ll see,” he said unhelpfully. She felt almost certain he was smiling, and gnashed her teeth. Why was he doing this, the fiend? Was he trying to tease her into submission? She’d resist him to the end, if that was his goal, and she envisioned her brave refusal in the face of wicked seductions.

In a short time, she realized that they’d made their way down to the sea. She could hear the waves crashing against the beach.

Was he going to do away with her by dumping her, trussed up, in the waves? She didn’t really believe it, but she was maddeningly frustrated that she couldn’t talk.

He stopped the cart and got down and spoke to someone who’d apparently been waiting for him, instructing the man to return the cart to Hellfire Hall. Then Tommy picked her up and swung her over his shoulder again.

“I know it’s killing you that you can’t yell at me,” he said as he moved toward the waves, “but it’s only for a little longer. This last part will be a little tricky, though.”

Tricky?
Her whole marriage had apparently been a trick, because she hadn’t known she’d married a madman.

He stepped into the waves, and the salt spray hit her face. He shifted his hold and pulled her off his shoulder, and just when she thought she was going into the waves after all, she felt the wood of a boat beneath her. It was a small rowboat with two men in it, and as soon as Tommy got in, they began to row. She turned her head in the direction they were going, and that’s when she saw the ship, standing a little way off the shore.

The rowboat drew alongside and she was unceremoniously hoisted upward by means of some kind of chair, brought onto the deck, and propped up against the mast by gentle hands. Who
were
these men who were helping Tommy? Mercenaries he’d paid, who didn’t care that he was abducting some poor, helpless woman?

“Captain Mulholland at your service, Lady Halifax,” a calm, pleasant voice said amid the murky light. “Your husband will be along shortly.”

Before she could even ponder this bizarre encounter, Tommy came over the side of the boat, exchanged a few low words with the captain, then picked her up again and brought her below to a cabin.

Several lanterns were lit within, and she could see that the space was tidy, of modest size, and almost pleasant. He laid her on the bed, then locked the door, turned, and gave her the most outrageous grin. She was not a violent person, but in that moment, she dearly wanted to smack him.

“Sorry about all this—well, sorry about the uncomfortable parts. I’m not sorry I kidnapped you—at least, not yet.”

He grabbed the rope holding the blanket around her and unfastened it, then took the edge of the blanket and gave a jerk, rolling her toward the wall and out of her cocoon. As soon as her arms were free, she sat up and untied the gag.

“You beast!” she cried. “Are you out of your mind?”

He opened his mouth to speak and the ship jerked a little, as if a wave had hit it. He smiled. “Maybe, but only a little bit. I needed to talk to you.”

“You couldn’t have talked to me at Hellfire Hall?”

“Not with all those people around, and with you so studiously avoiding me and refusing to really listen.”

The boat jerked again, and this time Eliza realized why. “We’re moving!” She scrambled off the bed, making for the door, but he caught her around the waist. “Let go! I have to get back to Hellfire Hall. We have
guests
to see to, and they’re leaving in a few hours. And I’m leaving with them!”

“I left a note for Will,” Tommy said next to her ear. “Our guests had a fine send-off last night at the bonfire. My brother can explain our abrupt departure to them.” His mouth moved closer to her ear, and she tried not to shiver at the sensation, even though, despite everything, she craved it. “I’m entirely certain he and the rest of our family will be delighted that you and I have left for a honeymoon.”

She blinked, hardly able to believe what he’d just said. “A honeymoon?” she repeated dumbly.

“Yes.” He kissed the top curve of her ear. “We’ve had lots of time fixing up drafty old rooms, entertaining guests, and taking on the care of an orphaned boy, but we really haven’t had enough time to just enjoy being married.”

How could he do this to her? How could he tease her with the promise of a blissful honeymoon when he was going to India? But then she remembered what he’d said the night before, words she’d discounted as meaningless.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about how I’m not going back to India. At all. And before you tell me that I want to go—I don’t. It took me a long time to see it, and I’m sorry I was so blind.”

“To see what?” Her heart thumped wildly as she allowed herself to believe just a little bit that maybe he
had
changed.

He turned her to face him. His eyes held a look she’d never seen there before, and it made her heart race even faster. “That I don’t need to travel the world looking for adventure because it’s right here in England.”

Her breath caught at the vulnerability in his eyes. “It is?”

“Yes,” he said softly. “The thought of India used to give me a thrill, but I finally realized that you’d done something to that thrill.”

She frowned. “That doesn’t sound good. I would never want to stifle you.”

“I didn’t say you’d done something bad to the thrill,” he said, cupping her cheek. “What I meant was that the thrill has grown larger. The adventure has grown larger. The real adventure—what scares me the most but also draws me more than anything ever has—is you. I love you, Eliza Tarryton Truehart Halifax.”

Her mouth trembled. His words had gone right to her heart, like an arrow only he could shoot. “You do?”

He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “I do.” He shook his head ruefully. “I don’t know how I had convinced myself that despite having the time of my life with you, I needed to go back to India. But I was a pigheaded idiot who believed that the best way to go through life was not to get attached to anything with the power to truly touch me.”

She had the power to touch him? “But what about the work that’s been so important to you? How can you just give it up?”

His mouth tipped in a small grin. “In truth, my experience puts me in a unique position to advise those who craft our policy on India. I’ll have more than enough to do here in England.”

“And being in India?”

“It was wonderful, but the world is full of amazing places I’ve yet to see. And I’d love nothing more than to share them with you.”

Her heart melted a little more.

“You were right when you said I’d grown cynical underneath all the laughter and adventure,” he said. “But it’s not who I am.”

“No,” she said, a smile growing as she really started to absorb what all of this meant. “You’re a very good, swashbuckling man who’ll make the most amazing husband I ever could have wanted.” She lifted up on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck. “And the best man I could ever want to share a family with.”

He claimed her mouth in a kiss that told of hunger and love and promise, and she kissed him back for all she was worth.

When they broke apart, he said, “You’re the spring in my step and the wind in my sails, Eliza. And I can’t believe I have the amazing good luck to be already married to you.”

She arched her eyebrow at him. “If you’ll remember, it wasn’t luck. You swashbuckled me into this marriage, just as you’ve swashbuckled me into this honeymoon.”

A wicked light came into his eyes, and she nearly clicked her heels with happiness. “You’ve only just begun to experience my swashbuckling.” He scooped her into his arms, tossed her on the bed, and commenced doing deliciously wicked things to her.

Later, when they were lying sated on the bed and the sun had begun filtering in through the porthole, Eliza said, “Why did you sound so awkward when you told me you loved me just before you kidnapped me?”

“Because I’d never said it before,” he said. “It
felt
awkward, speaking those words for the first time. But now I want to say them all the time. I love you, Eliza.” He kissed her nose.

She’d never dreamed she could be so happy. “I love you, Tommy.” She kissed his adorable cheek, which had developed an ungentlemanly shadow of whiskers that was just perfect for the man who was her very own brigand. “So, where are you taking me for this honeymoon?”

“Hadn’t you guessed? Malta, of course.”

“Malta!” She rolled onto her side and kissed him exuberantly. “Oh, Tommy, I haven’t been since I was a girl! How incredibly thoughtful of you.”

He grinned and slipped an arm around her shoulders. “It is, isn’t it? I hear it’s warm and extremely fine there this time of year, and I think we could use a few weeks of sunshine before we return to chilly old England. Rex will stay with Anna and Will while we’re gone—I left him a note explaining about our surprise honeymoon.”