How to Handle a Scandal (4 page)

Had he known she was about to apologize and not wanted to discuss the old incident? Or did he just not care about anything from so long ago, even something that had left such a big imprint on her?

Seeing him had made her feel like she was suddenly seventeen again, unsure and emotionally stormy, and she gave herself a sort of mental shake. She wasn’t that girl anymore, and her life now had meaning and purpose that had nothing to do with men.

* * *

Tommy strode away from Lizzie with Traveler trotting at his heels. He’d been to Whitehall that morning to deliver some sensitive documents he’d brought from India, and now he was headed to the house of his cousin Louie, the Earl of Gildenhall. He and Louie and Will planned to ride out of the city for a few hours. Tommy had only been in London for two weeks, and already he felt penned in by all the gentility, so a bruising ride seemed like the very thing.

It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy balls and dancing and lively dinner conversation; he did. It was just that he missed
action
—the kind of action that his life in India provided. Hell, even the boat trip over, while it had left him frequently pacing the decks like a caged animal, had at least offered the entertainment of pirates.

It was a shame his cousin Andrew was away, or the two of them might have found a way to jaunt off into the country for a week or so, sleeping rough and hiking the hills as they’d often done. But Andrew was in Switzerland, probably exploring the Alps, the lucky bastard.

Tommy was a little amused that Lizzie had wanted to bring up the proposal. Not that he wanted to talk about it, he thought with a shudder. What a fool he’d been. Idealistic, too trusting, and blind, as young men often were, to faults in the beautiful women who captured their attention.

He supposed she still lured unsuspecting males by the cartful. She was more gorgeous now than she’d been when he’d left, though she was dressed more demurely today than he’d ever seen her before. The years had sculpted her features with loveliness and enhanced her blue eyes with a gracious, if deceptive, warmth. The color of her hair had deepened to the rich golden red of sun-kissed autumn leaves, and her voice now had a pleasing hint of huskiness.

He’d known she’d married Gerard Truehart—Will had sent regular letters—and the news had at first made him furious. Even though the man had been a harmless older gentleman, Truehart had had what Tommy had not, and he’d hated him for it.

It was easier now to feel sorry for the man. Having been her victim once, Tommy could easily imagine how she’d beguiled Truehart. He could even conjure a little pity for the poor fool who would be her next victim, because if there was one thing he knew about Lizzie, it was that she’d never be without admirers.

It was almost comical now, how angry and bitterly disappointed he’d been six years ago. But finally, after a year in India pining for her while hating himself for being under her spell, he’d awoken to the awareness that the world was filled with lovely women.

He’d come to understand that she was simply a shallow person. Realizing that he’d only been one of the many admirers she’d been stringing along that season—and that Lizzie had been as addicted to the attention they gave her as an old sot was to drink—had finally freed Tommy of his enslavement to her.

It had also taught him the wisdom of never again listening to the whims of emotion. Now he knew that love—what he’d thought he’d known at twenty-two—was simply lust mingled with weakness and foolishness.

Oh, he knew that some people did find love, or what they believed to be love. He would never suggest that his brother and Anna weren’t going to be blissfully, mutually, and eternally happy. But that kind of thing was rare, and not for him.

Why would he need marriage, anyway, when the world was full of willing women? If he ever married, it would be years hence, after he’d done everything he wanted to do and there was little left but to surrender to domesticity.

At his side, Traveler bounced about excitedly, as though still happy about meeting Lizzie. Tommy ruffled the fur on his head.

“She’s a siren, old boy. You know what that means: lovely package, imminent doom. Most definitely to be avoided.”

When Tommy arrived at Louie’s town house, his cousin and Will were standing by the hearth in the drawing room.

“I see you’ve brought the beast,” Louie said dryly as Traveler bounded over to him. “Did Graves swoon on your way in?” he asked, referring to his butler.

“The merest flicker of an outraged eyelash,” Tommy reported. “He seems to be growing accustomed to us.”

“You say
us
as though the two of you were an old married couple,” Will said, dropping to his haunches to pet the dog.

Tommy had noticed that Will liked to insert references to marriage into his conversations with him, but he refused to rise to the bait of discussions he didn’t intend to have.

“You’re not meaning to bring the old fellow with us today, are you?” Louie said.

“He’s staying with me,” came a feminine voice from the doorway as Louie’s sister Ruby entered the room. She was dressed, as always, in a shade of red and in a gown so striking that it could only be the height of fashion.

At twenty-nine, Ruby had settled into a clearly contented existence that revolved, as far as Tommy could tell, around attending balls, buying clothes, and visiting friends. Her features were too strong to be called beautiful, but she was a very handsome woman, and as the sister of the Earl of Gildenhall, she would still be considered a catch. But marriage was not in her plans; once Louie had become earl and the pressure for her to find a husband was off, she’d declared that she’d remain single. “I’ll be the aunt all the children love best,” she liked to say.

Ruby took a seat on a yellow divan, and Traveler trotted over to be petted. She pulled a small biscuit out of her pocket and offered it to the dog, who took it with enthusiasm.

“Biscuits?” Tommy said. “You’ll make him soft.”

“Pish,” she said. “I’m sure any creature who’s been dragged all over the world by you and been half baked and half frozen on any number of occasions deserves a treat.” Tommy’s family had naturally been eager to hear more about the adventures he’d described so briefly in his occasional letters, and they’d reacted with varying shades of delight and horror to his escapades. “Why you wish to be hideously uncomfortable, dirty, and hungry most of the time when you might be sitting by a cozy English fire with a glass of brandy in your hand and a grateful dog by your feet, I’ll never understand.”

“Where’s your spirit of adventure, Ruby? Besides, Traveler loves voyages. Only consider his name.”

She gave Tommy a dry look.

He turned to Louie, mockery tweaking the corners of his mouth. “And you should watch whom you’re calling
old fellow
. Why, I almost feel I ought not to drag you two old men out on what will likely be a very punishing ride for you.”

It was true that Will was thirty-nine and Louie was thirty-seven, but no one looking at the men’s tall, firm physiques would have described either as old, let alone aging. Louie retained the air of the roguish golden boy he’d always been, and Will still moved with the athletic grace of a man who knew how to fix a roof and pound in a fence stake, and had done both on his estates on occasions too numerous to count. But what would be the fun in admitting any of that?

Louie’s eyes glittered. “Trying to cry off now that you’ve realized you won’t be able to keep up with us?”

“We’ll see who can keep up,” Tommy said.

This kind of banter had been going on for decades among the Halifax men. Riding out for hours at a punishing pace was something they’d done often when younger. Tommy spent plenty of time in the saddle in India, and while those long hours could be grueling, he missed them. When he was on horseback riding out beyond the outskirts of Hyderabad, the world was his oyster, and nothing was required of him but finding his own way.

Will sent his eyes heavenward and Ruby laughed softly. He was the oldest among all the cousins, and unlike Louie, who’d unexpectedly inherited his earldom and estates in his early twenties, Will had known from an early age that he would be viscount and responsible for much. Duty and honor had always been of utmost importance to him, and while Will was in no way humorless, there had always been something more serious about him.

“Racing?” Ruby said. “Name-calling? Will you boys ever grow up?”

“Who wants to grow up if it means abandoning races and name-calling?” Louie said.

Will gave an exaggerated sigh. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you, Louie, that an earl must have decorum?”

“You, about twenty times a month,” Louie said. “But as you
are
older, I suppose I ought to consider deferring to your wisdom.”

“You’ll be deferring to my dust,” Will said as they headed out of the room.

Tommy shot Ruby a grin on his way out. “See you at the Cowpers’ tonight?”

“If you have time to clean up—you do realize that it rained last night? Louie’s valet moaned about mud for days after the last time he and Will went riding. I believe he despairs of Louie ever really being the sort of fellow an earl ought to be.”

Tommy laughed as he passed through the door. After days cooped up in proper, tasteful drawing rooms, dashing across muddy fields with the autumn wind whipping at him sounded like bliss.

They rode sedately out of the city, then as soon as the houses fell away switched to a pace that would spare their horses but was nonetheless tiring for the riders. There was little chance for conversation over the beating of three sets of hooves, save for shouted taunts and masculine laughter. But they hadn’t come to chat anyway, and as they rode under a brilliant blue sky over open fields and past trees showing the first yellows and oranges of autumn, their grins grew wider.

Eventually they passed the edge of a wood, and before them in the distance gleamed the thin line of a stream.

“The tree on the left,” Tommy called out, indicating a pair of enormous oaks that stood by the stream’s edge. “Race you!” He kicked his horse into a gallop as his companions did the same.

First one of the men would seize the lead, then another, the sound of thundering hooves filling the air along with splats of mud. They held to no rules of politeness when going neck-or-nothing, so when Louie edged Will toward a cluster of small branches that whipped him as he passed, Tommy laughed and did the same to his cousin.

Will, however, took the dubious honor of most obnoxious when he thundered past both of them just as they drew near a puddle, showering them so liberally with mud that Tommy and Louie both got it in their hair.

Tommy saw his chance as the path narrowed between two stands of trees. He pushed his horse ahead and had made it almost to the oak tree, but Louie came from behind to cut him off at the last moment, arriving first, followed seconds later by Tommy and Will.

“Ha!” crowed Louie as his horse danced beneath him. “Victorious over His Majesty’s newest knight.”

Tommy snorted. “Enjoy it. It’s a long way back to Mayfair, and your old bones will be feeling it.”

“Nonsense,” Louie said. “I feel invincible. I’ve never been in better form, wouldn’t you say, Will?”

“I’d say that you’re within a whisper of sounding like the most conceited earl in the
ton
.”

Filthy and winded, the men dismounted and walked their horses along the stream and watered them. Louie handed out sandwiches his cook had packed.

Will said, “Last night, Heck thought it would be amusing to lean out a second-floor window and shoot pebbles at the flowers in our garden.”

“And he’s only six,” Tommy said with wicked glee. “Too bad I won’t be around to watch him vex you as you try to form him into the responsible heir of a viscount.”

Tommy felt his brother’s eyes lingering on him at the mention of not being around in coming years. He should have kept his mouth shut. “I suppose I’ll have a taste of what Father must have suffered when he was training me,” Will said. “I remember him telling Mother it couldn’t be done, but you know Mother—she was endlessly optimistic.”

“She was,” Tommy agreed with a trace of that old emptiness. She’d died when he was seven, their father a few years after. The world was full of dying, Tommy had discovered early on; he meant to
live
. To behave with no regard for risk—that was his way of thumbing his nose at death.

Louie polished off the last hunk of his sandwich. “So, Tommy, have you considered staying? You know the whole family is happy to have you back, and India won’t miss you for a year or two. Why take a long boat journey again after only a few months at home? It seems like pure madness.”

“Really,
madness
?” Tommy laughed. Though it was true that he wasn’t exactly looking forward to the long return voyage, and it
was
quite fine to be somewhere that had an autumn after all the years in India, where the seasons were more along the lines of either monsoon season or not monsoon season. But England was…tame. “I do have things awaiting my attention in India.”

He was, though, looking into buying an estate in England for the time—still far in the future—when he was ready to settle down. But he wasn’t going to mention this to his family yet, because he knew they’d see it as a sign he might stay, when it would simply be a place to put some of the considerable money he’d made.

“Anna wants cousins for Heck and Vic because she had none,” Will said. “She says she quite envies us Halifaxes, with there being so many of us.”

“If anyone should be busily filling a nursery with heirs,” Tommy said, “it’s the Earl of Gildenhall.”

“One more word about filling nurseries,” Louie said, “and both of you are going for a swim.”

Their brief repast completed, the men mounted and turned toward Town, guiding their horses at a walking pace to start.

“So,” Louie asked Tommy, “have you seen Eliza yet? Ruby and Anna are quite interested in the fact that the two of you have yet to be seen in the same room.”

Tommy knew he should have expected his family’s interest in how he and Lizzie would get on. Fortunately, he could now put this subject to rest. “Actually, I ran into Lizzie in Hyde Park earlier today.”