It Started with a Scandal (25 page)
Read It Started with a Scandal Online
Authors: Julie Anne Long
W
INTER WA
S SHOWING A
little willingness to give way to spring, and as evidence, the sun poured into the cozy kitchen of the Fountain house. Toasted bread and kippers and eggs and sausages were heaped on platters, and the pot of coffee placed in the center of the table by the maid was enthusiastically greeted.
Jack had already found a few new friends in Northumberland, but he yearned after a church with a proper bell.
He was lunging across the table for the marmalade when he looked out the window and—
“It’s the Giant!” he bellowed, and Elise’s father’s scrambled eggs shot into the air on the way to his mouth, much like that fateful morning when Elise had told them she was pregnant.
Jack dashed out the door, leaving it wide open, and ran like a shot up the path, hurtling himself into Lavay’s thighs.
Lavay hoisted him easily and strode up the path with Jack, big as he was now, tucked in the crook of his arm, almost as if he were in fact real, not a hallucination or a dream, which would really be the only reason he was striding up the path to this little house in Northumberland nearly a month after she’d left him, she thought, for good.
She froze and waited for him to disappear. Surely he must be a dream.
Her parents stared at Lord Lavay as if he were indeed a giant.
Then rotated in unison to stare at Elise.
“Don’t worry, it’s nothing like the last time,” she said distantly.
Which really didn’t do much to reassure them.
Lavay stood in the open doorway, Jack in his arms.
Elise couldn’t speak. Her heart had leaped up and flown away like a dove released from a cage, and clearly it had taken her voice with it.
Centuries of breeding all but rolled off him in waves. He was still the vast, hard, arrogant, beautiful man, and he somehow both dwarfed and elevated everything in the house.
“The Giant is here, Mama,” Jack said quite redundantly.
“So I see,” she said softly.
He was wildly out of context in this quiet Northumberland doctor’s home.
“Mother, Father, this is . . . this is . . . my former employer. Lord Lavay.”
“What a pleasure it is to meet you,” he said to them.
His voice echoed for a time all by itself in the kitchen, that familiar, much-beloved baritone, the soft
s
’s, the exquisitely constructed consonants, like diamonds.
Finally her parents bowed and curtsied like toys wound and set loose.
“If I may have a private word with your daughter,” Philippe said in that pleasant way of his that made people reflexively leap to do his bidding. Her parents collided with each other in an effort to leave the room. “Jack, will you go with your
grand-mère
and
grand-père
?”
He lowered Jack to the ground with a little grunt, and Jack dashed after them up the stairs.
They heard his voice following his grandparents up the stairs. “He gave me a
lion
!”
“Come outside with me, if you will, Elise.”
She would have gone straight to Hades with him if he’d asked, but she couldn’t quite find her voice. She followed him.
They stood outside, blinking in the clean sunlight, surrounded by the land of her birth, by everything she’d known and loved.
They simply stared at each other for a time.
“I like your ribbon,” he said. “Is it new?”
She smiled faintly. “This is your conversation?”
He didn’t laugh. He was looking at her as if he’d located the grail.
“I think your laugh is my favorite sound in the world.”
Oh. Well, that went straight into her heart.
He looked so deadly serious when he said it.
“That, and that little gasp you made when I first kissed you. And the sound you make when you—”
“Philippe, you must tell me why you’re here.” Her entire body was covered in a sort of soft, feverish heat that he could inspire so quickly. Her heart was slamming against her breastbone.
“My sister has arrived in Pennryoyal Green.”
“Oh, she
came
?” Elise was delighted.
“That was quite a risk you took with that letter, Mrs. Fountain. But then you have always known me better than I know myself.”
She was silent.
So was he.
“Did you come here to tell me that, Philippe?”
“No.”
“To complain about your sister?”
“No.”
She still seemed unable to make him smile. She realized he was tense as a drum skin.
If he were any more still, he’d grow roots like a tree, and the birds would come to sit on his shoulders.
“It’s just . . .” He took a deep breath and thrust his hands into his pockets. “I am here because there is life, and there is death, but they are one and the same without you, Elise.”
Oh
.
She gave her head a little shake, because the tears had begun.
“I thought I needed everything I once had . . . I thought I owed it to my family to preserve it as it was. But the only thing that gave those places meaning was love. My family has scattered or died, gone on to make new lives elsewhere. All the memories I wish to keep were comprised of love. And home, Elise, is anywhere love is.” He stepped toward her urgently and looked down. “And you are my love.”
He was blurry now. She dashed tears away from her eyelashes. The breeze lashed at her hair and whipped it about gaily, and she almost missed her hairpins, because she didn’t want to miss a second of his face during this moment.
“I love you, Elise. You knew even
that
before I did.”
He still didn’t smile.
The short remaining distance between them had begun to seem unbearable.
But there was more to know before he crossed it.
“What of Alexandra?”
“She will prosper wherever and with whomever she pleases.” He airily waved away Alexandra as if she hadn’t been the cloud over Elise’s world. “It will not be me. I have told her how I feel about you. I even thanked her for bringing you into my life, for now I know what happened.”
Elise said nothing. Happiness had rendered her mute. For the moment, she wanted only to feel this way forever, as if she was made of light and peace.
“We can make our
own
history. Our own house, our own dynasty, if we choose. If . . .” His voice was a husk, and nearly broke. “If you love me.”
She didn’t want to torture him, but her voice couldn’t yet find its way to the surface, so stupefied with happiness was she.
“I love you.” She choked the words, and they sounded so small, when they ought to have been delivered accompanied by celestial trumpets.
He drew in a long breath, like a man who’d just been released from a locked box. He released it, and closed his eyes.
In seconds, he had closed the distance between them, and suddenly she was in his arms as if she’d never left them.
He murmured things to her in French, nonsense words, endearments, as he brushed away her tears so she could see his beautiful face, and remember forever how he looked the moment she’d told him she loved him.
He looked into her eyes. “And will you be my wife?”
“And I will be your wife.”
“Are you certain of that,
chérie
?”
“Oh, yes. As you pointed out, I’m a gambler.”
“Ah, very good. And I have learned how to play the long game.”
“Perfect. Between us, we are certain to always win.”
It was then he kissed her, tentatively at first, as if it had been the very first time he’d kissed her.
And then he claimed her with a kiss so thorough and passionate that birds were flushed from nearby trees, as if a fire had begun below.
Her parents and Jack had, in fact, watched and heard the entire thing from the upper-story windows.
“She takes after you,” her father said to her mother, who was dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, and her mother elbowed him in the ribs.
T
HEY W
ERE MARRIED
in the church in Pennyroyal Green by the Reverend Sylvaine. The wedding was attended by a very surprised but surprisingly sentimental Earl and Countess of Ardmay, and witnessed by happily weeping family members and servants.
And when they burst triumphantly from the church to the cheers of gathered onlookers, Philippe and Jack promptly climbed the bell tower together.
And then Philippe hoisted Jack up, and together they made that bell peal so joyfully it was heard in nearly every corner of Sussex.
And at the great celebration in the hall after the wedding, some noted that Seamus Duggan was a trifle more subdued than usual, and that his fiddle sounded a little more plaintive whilst playing the “Sussex Waltz.”
I
N
L
ONDON,
L
YON
Redmond, also known as Mr. Hardesty, a successful trader, was preparing to board his ship when a man in midnight blue, silver-trimmed livery strode up the gangplank.
All around their captain, hands went to swords and pistols, and the footman, to his astonishment, met a bristling phalanx of hard-faced men.
The footman bowed. “I seek Mr. Hardesty.”
“I am he.”
He bowed.
“For you, sir.” The footman extended the message.
“Hold,” Lyon said to the footman, who had, with great but unfounded optimism, turned to leave.
Poor Ramsey, who had won the coin toss, remained obediently motionless, face admirably impassive, while the tips of a half dozen swords glinted in the sun at him.
Lyon broke the seal.
He went still.
“Pay the man,” he said absently.
Someone flicked a guinea at Ramsey. He caught it neatly.
Nine words.
She’s getting married on the second Saturday in May.
And thusly, Lavay discharged his debt to Lyon Redmond.
USA Today
bestselling author JULIE ANNE LONG originally set out to be a rock star when she grew up (and she has the guitars and fringed clothing stuffed in the back of her closet to prove it), but writing was always her first love. Since hanging up her guitar for the computer keyboard, she has written books that frequently top reader and critic polls and have been nominated for numerous awards, including the RITA®,
Romantic Times
Reviewer’s Choice, and The Quills, and reviewers have been known to use words like “dazzling,” “brilliant,” and “impossible to put down” when describing them. Julie lives in Northern California.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
IT STARTED WITH A SCANDAL.
Copyright © 2015 by Julie Anne Long. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition APRIL 2015 ISBN: 9780062334848
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062334824
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