Lady Scandal (13 page)

The corner of his mouth tightened.
The
practical Lady Sandal had returned.
Well, he could wait.
He had
what he needed—that small opening.
He could work on that, widen it.
Play on her concern for him.
And when the moment arrived, he would
know just how to shatter the protection she wore around her heart.
He would then make certain that his Lady Scandal truly earn that
name he had given her.

#

By the time he had a fire built he had
exhausted the last of his strength.
Diana and Alexandria had
gathered wood at his direction, coming back with small armfuls of
slim branches instead of anything that would burn hot and long.
He
almost went off to handle the task himself, but he knew his limits.
He had reached them.
Instead, he used what they brought, pulled out
the blankets from the cart, and prayed for fair weather.

The fire crackled, doing more to cheer them
than it did to warm, and Diana's bright voice filled the evening as
they ate the meat pies.
The girl was a wonder.
She seemed to mind
nothing.
How had anyone in Alexandria's starched family ever
spawned such a changeling?
He had met Alexandria's younger brother,
a bookish fellow with no interest in anything much beyond the
towers of Oxford.
But Alexandria's parents had pushed him into
society, as they had their daughter.
Alexandria's brother had
dutifully gone and married as his family arranged.
Ah, how well
Alexandria's parents matched his own cold-blooded, English
relatives.

As if echoing his thoughts
of family, Diana asked suddenly, "Were your parents
émigrés
, Mr.
Marsett?"

He glanced at the girl, her face pale in the
firelight, hair glimmering like gold.
"If you mean did they flee
the Revolution as did so many, then no.
My mother was English, and
my father was dead long before the old regime vanished."

"Oh, I am sorry."

He smiled and stretched out
beside the fire, laying on his good side to ease the ache on the
other.
"Nothing to regret in that,
ma
petite fille
.
He was sixty when he married
my mother, and he died in his bed ten years later—a happy man, I
expect."

"Really, Paxten!"

At Alexandria's prim words, he grinned at
her.
"Yes, really.
Her family, however, did not find such a
marriage so nice.
A Frenchman, an older Frenchman, shocked them, I
think.
Even if he had land and titles—and he did.
She had a
child—me, of course—and had no idea how to manage without him, so
she went back to England.
Then came the Revolution, and the land
and titles went."

Diana leaned forward and firelight flickered
over the concern on her lovely face.
"How awful.
Have you never
wanted to get them back?"

He drank the last of the wine from the
bottle.
"Ah, but to do so I would have to become of use to the
current ruling power—that means Bonaparte.
And I think the only use
he might have for a half-English Frenchman is as a spy."

"That's ghastly!"

She sounded so genuinely appalled that he
smiled.
"But pragmatic, is it not?
The First Consul has ever been
that.
It is, however, too much work for my taste.
Besides, my
English cousins pay me well enough to stay far away from London,
and so I do."

"They pay you...but that is absurd."

"Why?
They dislike the scandal I stirred up,
and they want to make certain I do not come back to embarrass them
more.
Trying to force a man into a duel is not a nice thing, after
all.
But then neither is trying to run off with his wife."

"Thank you, Paxten, I think we have heard
enough on such an old and tired topic," Alexandra said, her words
clipped.

"Oh, but I haven't," Diana protested.
"It
sounds fascinating."

"There, you see, Andria.
Why do you not tell
her your part of that old and tired topic?
Surely it can serve as a
moral lesson if nothing else."

"There is no lesson to give, thank you very
much.
Diana, if you must know the story, Mr.
Marsett and I shared
a...a flirtation."

"Ah, yes, we did nothing but play
cards."

Alexandria shot him a warning stare.
"There
was talk, but there always is talk in London."

"And there was that duel that did not
happen—by the saints, I have never seen a man so determined to talk
his way out of a duel as was your Bertram.
I nearly shot him on the
spot just to make him stop talking."

Diana frowned.
"But that would have been
terribly unsporting."

"
Ma fille
, I did not harbor sporting
feelings towards Lord Sandal.
He was a bore.
And a...."

"Thank you, Paxten, for your kind assessment
of my late husband."

He grinned.
"Come, Andria, you never loved
him either.
You ought to be at least that honest with us—and
yourself."

"That may be, but I also do not care to
malign him now that he is passed on and unable to defend
himself."

"Ah, but he was unable, or
unwilling, to defend himself when alive.
The blunt truth,
ma fille
, is that your
aunt nearly ran off with me."

Diana smiled.
"Really?
How wonderfully
romantic."

He shook his head.
"No, not
very.
The word to remark is
nearly
.
She made the practical
choice, not the romantic one.
And—"

Alexandria's voice cut across his
flippant tone.
"I had a son to consider!"

Paxten sat up, the amusement gone from him.
"Your son wasn't your reason to stay—he was your excuse!
Admit it.
The boy was already gone from you.
He was sent to Eton.
You had
nothing to hold you, except that you could not give up your title
and position.
You let duty chain you to them!"

She glared at him, firelight reflecting hot
in her eyes.
"I stayed to keep my son from being shamed by me."

He met her stare, eyes black and shadowed,
and his voice dropped to a growl.
"You lied to me once.
Do not
expect another lie to find a home with me."

The fire crackled.
Sparks flew to the stars
overhead.
Paxten kept his stare locked on Alexandria, his eyes
narrowed.
Even in the light of the flame, he could see the patches
of angry red on her cheeks.

Diana rose suddenly, hugging herself, her
face shadowed, but strain in her voice as she spoke.
"Do you know,
I think I shall go to bed.
I've a pillow and blanket in the back of
the cart.
Good night, aunt.
Mr.
Marsett." She dropped a quick
curtsy and scooted away into the darkness, to where Paxten had left
the cart, its shafts propped up to keep the bed in the back of it
flat.

Blinking, Alexandria pushed a hand through
her hair and looked away from Paxten.
Now they had made a scene in
front of Diana.
How did the man managed to bring out the worst in
her?
And why was she attempting to defend a position that proved
her right for having had to hurt him?

"I beg your pardon," she muttered, staring
at the fire.

He let out a long breath, and his voice came
to her, sounding as weary as she felt.
"No, I should beg yours." He
gave a dry chuckle and she glanced at him.
"Every time I promise
myself I shall behave, and then I cannot wait to claw at you.
Ah,
but perhaps you were right not to come with me back then."

She wet her lips and said, her voice soft,
"I wanted to."

He said nothing.

She tucked her feet close to her and rested
her chin on her knees.
"I had even packed my things that night, to
leave with you just as we planned."

His voice came out of the darkness, low and
rough, but without accusation, just resignation.
"You changed your
mind?"

Pausing, she drew in a breath.
She kept her
stare fixed on the fire, seeing not the flames, but her younger
self.
A girl really, unhappy in her marriage and in love with a
dashing young man whom she adored.
He was right.
Her son had gone
off to Eton the year before.
The parting had been one of the things
that had left her life so hollow, and herself so vulnerable to
Paxten.
So in need of someone who might care for her.

Now she needed him to understand, as he had
not been able to when last they parted.

"Yes.
Yes, I did.
Perhaps I ought to have
pleaded a headache and not gone, but I had to be the hostess that
Bertram wanted—there to greet everyone.
To make the circuit around
the room with Bertram.
He always went into the card room as soon as
he could."

She pressed her lips tight.
Sap popped in
the fire.
She shook her head.
"He seemed not to have a sense of
anything being different.
I was terrified he might.
Not for fear he
would make a scene.
Chetwynds do not make scenes.
But that he would
discover my intent and simply refuse to allow it.
He could do that.
Just pretend it did not exist.
I had this irrational fear he would
do that with me—have me carried off to one of his country estates
and simply shut me up and forget me.
But he said nothing, just
smiled at everyone as we went around.
And then he went into the
card room.
And I left to meet you."

"To tell me good-bye, you mean."

She swallowed hard and could not look at
him.
She could not face the anguish she heard in his voice, could
not bear to see it on his face.

"That was not my intent, even then.
I—oh, it
is no excuse, and I do not expect forgiveness.
I cannot forgive
myself.
But I cannot change it either.
I stopped to look at myself
in the mirror.
I wanted to look good for you.
And so I stopped to
fuss with my hair and make certain my necklace lay straight.
I had
on the topaz that you had given me.
You know, Bertram never even
noticed, other than to remark that I ought to buy myself yellow
diamonds instead of such shabby gems."

She shook her head, the heartache so old, so
faded, but still there.
Such a silly little thing.
Was that how
one's life always changed?
In one single instant when the world
shifted?

"I heard them talking as I stood there.
I do
not even know who they were, other than they were two of the usual
catty sorts of ladies one meets in London.
Gossiping away as
ever."

"About you?"

"About Jules actually.
Do you know, I had
though it poetic fiction that one could be held still by fury.
But
I could not move for the anger.
I could only listen to them go on
and on about the 'poor boy' and how awful it would be for him.
They, of course, had scented something.
Bertram had not seen it in
me, but they had.

"'Do you think she'll run off with him?' one
of them said." She mimicked the voices she had heard that night.
"'Oh, Lady Scandal—of course she will.
But it will be little Lord
Scandal who grows up to bear his mother's shame.'"

She broke off the story, for her throat had
thickened.
How did she put into words the agony that had filled
her?
The shame.
She had seen exactly what her son would endure if
she put her desires first.
The gossip.
The taunting.
And he was
already so withdrawn and isolated.
So different from other boys.
If
only she had had other children, who....

There she was again, deep in regret.