Julia London - [Scandalous 02] (27 page)

I
f she’d had a rope, Lizzie might have bound Gavin and tossed him in a closet. What cheek, to go into London society as if they were part of it! Did he not understand they would be ridiculed?

Somehow he’d managed to wrangle an invitation from Lady Fiona to attend a supper party as her guests. Lizzie had balked, but Gavin had been insistent and demanded that she attend.

Lizzie was hardly in the mood for anyone’s society, much less that of anyone even remotely attached to Jack. She had alternately fumed and despaired all afternoon over Jack’s treatment of her. She supposed she ought to be thankful that the moment they arrived in London, he had indeed shown his true colors. He was quite right—he was
precisely
what she’d suspected from the beginning, a man with no moral compass, a reprehensible rake!

Jack had used her ill, and the clench in Lizzie’s belly made her weak.
She loved him.
She loved him, and she was devastated to discover that she’d given herself to a man who held such little regard for her in return. He’d made a game of her, a fool, and worse, she’d made herself a wanton. The pain was almost more than she could bear.

What hurt most of all was that she did want love, a
soul-searing, breathless love. She wanted it above the security Gavin offered her. She wanted it above life, and all the hope she’d put into the one man who could give that to her had been crushed.

Now, to have to go out into London society, broken and used, was not to be borne.

She readied herself woodenly, her arms and hands performing the motions of her toilette. She remained dressed in her teal gown, for it was the only gown she owned that was suitable for such an evening. The very gown she’d once believed so beautiful now seemed so plain.

She couldn’t help but stare in the mirror as Lucy gamely attempted to dress her hair. Lizzie had cut it several months ago, for she had no one to dress it at Thorntree, and she could hardly contend with it, what with everything else she had to do in a day’s time.

But as Lucy bit her lower lip and cocked her head, studying the curls, Lizzie very much regretted the decision now. She unclasped the string of pearls she’d wrapped around her neck, hoping to spruce up the dull gown a bit. “Perhaps this might help, then,” she said.

“Ah!” Lucy smiled brightly and wrapped the pearls through her hair, tucking up the curls, leaving two or three to hang gracefully down her neck. “That will do very well, mu’um,” Lucy said, smiling at her handiwork. “Shall I fetch you a wrap?”

She had nothing for warmth but the thick wool shawls she wore about Thorntree. “No, thank you,” Lizzie said on a sigh. “I shall wear a cloak.”

“Very good, mu’um,” Lucy said.

It wasn’t very good at all, Lizzie thought as she made her way down to the entrance hall. She felt entirely conspicuous, an obvious rustic in an unfashionable gown, a woman who had given her heart to a man who had
smashed it into bits. She was fairly certain that was all quite noticeable to the sophisticated townspeople of London.

There was no one in the entrance hall, Lizzie noted irritably, and glanced at the tall grandfather clock. It read ten past seven, which she supposed meant the clock on the mantel in her room was fast. Lizzie sighed; twenty minutes of waiting meant twenty minutes of moping, and she absently wandered the length of the entrance hall, her fingers trailing along the wainscoting, her mind’s eye filled with Jack.

Jack.

Jack was walking across the house on his way to the red salon, where he would meet Christie and Lord Lindsey, who was up from the country. His footfall was silent on the carpet that lined his halls and, he realized, as he neared the entrance hall and caught sight of her, that Lizzie had not heard him. He paused just inside the corridor and watched her wandering aimlessly about, glancing up at the paintings he’d had sent back from Italy and mindlessly touching an empty, hand-painted porcelain vase.

How was it that she seemed lovelier to him each time? She dressed plainly, nothing to adorn her gown but her eyes. Her hair was prettily bound up with a string of pearls. But as she turned slightly to look up at another painting, he noticed a sadness about her eyes, a pain, he imagined, like that he felt rather deep in himself.

But his pain came from knowing he’d put the sadness in her eyes. He’d hurt her in a way he’d hoped himself incapable of, yet it had seemed the only way. How else could he make her understand him? He’d made a horrible, cruel mistake with Lizzie. He’d given a woman he
loved a hope he could not fulfill. It was little wonder the entire populace of Scotland had found him so untrustworthy at first glance. They’d seen something in him he hadn’t seen in himself.

She suddenly turned, as if sensing his presence, blinking those clear blue eyes that haunted his every moment. “Jack,” she said, her voice soft and uncertain.

“Lizzie.” He bowed politely.

They stood only feet apart, but the breach between them seemed so wide that he was mildly surprised he could see her at all. She moved forward a step or two, as if she believed he would speak. Hardly aware of it, Jack moved too, his gaze taking in every lovely curving inch. When his gaze reached her eyes, his chest tightened painfully. “You are going out,” he remarked flatly.

“Aye. With Mr. Gordon and your sister,” she said. “She insisted.”

And she had protested, but Jack had been firm with Fiona—remove this woman from his sight. He had not told Fiona that he could not bear to be near Lizzie and not touch her, that he could not breathe the same air as her and not feel as if he were gasping for breath. “My sister is the consummate hostess.”

“That is rather surprising, really, given that her brother is no’.”

“Touché,”
he muttered.
Walk on,
he told himself.
The damage is done. Just go.

“You look…” She clasped her hands behind her back and let her gaze wander over him. He was dressed in a new suit of clothing, one that had arrived from the tailor shortly after he departed England. “Very handsome. London obviously agrees with you.”

Jack hesitated. He wanted to tell her she looked beautiful in any location, that he could scarcely take his eyes
from her, that the glimmer in her eye alone made his heart beat a thousand times faster. “Thank you,” he said simply.

“I beg your pardon, but I have no’ had the opportunity to tell you how…” She glanced around her. “How beautiful is your home. I’ve never even dreamed of something so fine. It’s little wonder you were anxious to come back, even with your troubles.”

The band around Jack’s chest tightened. His home seemed like an opulent monstrosity. He was beginning to think that a home was a wee bit more like Lizzie’s house.

“I thank you, Jack,” she said. “You’ve done me an enormous favor, really. I fooled myself into believing I could trust you, but, as you pointed out, my instincts about you were quite right. You would no’ have changed for me and Thorntree. My only true regret is that I was…I was foolish enough to have fallen in
love,
” she said, gasping a little with the word.

“Lizzie—”

“But that I did, and I only have myself to blame. So thank you,” she said, inclining her head, “for so clearly disabusing me of the notion that you might have returned that affection. Surely one day I shall look back and know that in your cruelty, you spared me immeasurable sorrow. And how odd it is yet, that I can no’ thank you enough for it, for you have saved my life while stealing my heart.”

“
Diah,
Lizzie—”

“Please, please, donna say a word,” she said, throwing up her hand to stop him at the same moment someone knocked on the front door. “I canna bear to hear another word but that you’ve arranged to see the king so that I might go,” she said, her voice breaking. “Go home to Thorntree, where I belong.”

A footman opened the door behind her.

“No’ as yet,” he said.

Christie swept in, Lindsey in tow. “Lambourne!” Lindsey said jovially. “Christ be to saints, I was certain I’d never see you again!”

Lizzie walked forward, away from the door and passing so close to Jack that she brushed his arm, sending a charge through him. By the time Christie and Lindsey had handed over their cloaks and gloves, she had disappeared.

“There is much to tell you,” Lindsey said as he greeted Jack with a handshake. “It would seem the entire world has gone mad, lad.”

Lindsey had no idea just how mad.

Jack spent the better part of the night hearing the news from Lindsey and Christie. His shock over Wilkes was not diminished when Lindsey told him all who had been involved in the failed plot to murder Princess Caroline so that when George ascended the throne, he did so without the haze of the awful scandal hanging over his head. Evelyn, Lady Lindsey, had been targeted when they suspected her purported lover might have told her about the plot.

The men—they called themselves the prince’s coterie—included some of the most prominent men in England. It was shocking, unbelievable.

Jack found himself missing his own little Highland scandal, which seemed almost laughably sedate in comparison to what he was hearing.

They talked quite a lot about Jack’s fate. Neither Christie nor Lindsey seemed to think it mattered if Jack was guilty of bedding the princess or not. “What matters is that His Grace believes it to be true,” Christie said. But neither man thought Jack would hang. However, they were not confident he’d emerge unscathed, either.

“A repossession of lands,” Christie suggested. “That would be a fitting punishment.”

Jack cringed. “But I never touched her!”

“No,” Lindsey said, shaking his head. “The prince doesn’t have the funds for the upkeep of a castle in the middle of bloody Scotland. Prison is more likely.”

“That hardly eases me,” Jack groused.

“You mustn’t fret, old chum,” Lindsey said solemnly. “We shall visit you.”

“What of an audience with the king?” Jack asked Christie.

“Bloody hell, Lambourne,
why
?” Lindsey insisted. “Is there no other way you might help the lass?”

Jack shook his head.

Lindsey suddenly surged forward. “You need not see the king. We can help you, band together—”

“Can you void a handfasting vow?” Jack asked angrily. “Can you keep her land safe from her uncle? Rein in a Highland laird?”

Lindsey and Christie looked at each other.

“Believe me when I tell you that if there were any other way, I’d be quite pleased to do it, for I do no’ relish twisting at the end of a rope.” Jack slowly leaned back. “Have you requested the audience?” he asked, his voice calmer.

“I am waiting,” Christie said solemnly. “It is not the easy matter it might once have been.”

“How long might it take?” Jack demanded impatiently.

Christie shrugged. “A day. A week. A month. One cannot predict.”

“I canna remain trapped like an animal in this house!” Jack said testily, thinking of his close proximity to Lizzie. “I’ve told Winston no one may mention I am in residence, but how long might I expect before someone slips?”

“That is the risk,” Lindsey said. “You may leave London yet, Jack. No one knows you are here.”

That was sorely tempting, but the image that popped into Jack’s head was the one of Lizzie standing in the entrance hall tonight, and the unbearable hurt in her eyes. “I can no’,” he said shortly, and tossed back a tot of whisky.

The gentlemen left well after midnight, but Jack remained in the red salon, nursing a whisky and mulling over the many changes his life had undergone in the last three months and the many changes he was facing.

Fiona found him ruminating when she returned from the supper party to which she’d dragged Lizzie and Gordon. She entered in grand fashion, tossing her shawl onto the settee and helping herself to a bit of whisky before bending at the waist to peck Jack on the cheek.

“Your guests have gone so soon?” she asked with some surprise. “I fully expected to see you with cards in hand.”

A game of cards seemed an empty and frivolous activity to Jack now, but that is precisely what he might have done three months ago. “I’ve little patience for card games, given the circumstances. Lindsey informs me I shall have quite a lot of time for it in Newgate.”

“Jack! You will no’ go to prison! I suspect they will banish you from England. That seems far more likely, aye?”

Only in the fairy tales Fiona had read as a girl, but he had no desire to frighten his sister with the truth. “How was your evening, then?”

“Oh!” she exclaimed with a roll of her eyes. “Lady Gilbert had her awful little mongrel in tow.
Diah,
but that thing is incorrigible, and Lady Gilbert completely blind to it! Oh, and did you know, then, that Mrs. Kirkland has
been having an illicit association with Lord Howard?” she asked excitedly.

“No,” Jack drawled. He hardly cared. There were such weightier matters at hand.

Fiona nodded eagerly. “They’ve been scandalously open about it, too. I heard from Victoria Runsgate that they attended the opera! Can you imagine it, attending the opera with your lover, in plain view of your husband?”

“No,” he said again. How did people fill their days with such prattle? “How did our guests find the evening?”

“Oh, very well, I suppose. Mr. Gordon was quite animated and engaging. I do believe Lady Gilbert’s sister, Miss Handlesman, was
quite
taken with him. And he with her. He’s handsome, which puts him in good stead in London. Has he any fortune?”

As if fortune were the true measure of a man. He could hardly fault Fiona—that was the
ton
’s way of thinking. Certainly that had been his measure all these years. “I would no’ know,” Jack said. “And Miss Beal?”

“She was rather subdued. But honestly, Jack, you canna expect her to go out in the same gown night after night.”

“Pardon?”

“Her
gown,
” Fiona said impatiently. “I should think it a lovely summer frock, but it is no’ suitable for London, and it is so plain.”

“I am sure she will wear another one,” he said, chafing at this bit of shallow conversation.