Once Upon a Scandal (16 page)

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Authors: Barbara Dawson Smith

Tags: #Romance

BOOK: Once Upon a Scandal
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Silk rustled as the dowager came closer. Her quivering, birdlike hand alighted on Emma’s shoulder. “My dear, if only you had confided in me, I would have helped you smooth things over with Lucas. The very moment I saw the girl I knew.” Anguish roughened the older woman’s voice. “Jenny is the daughter of my son Andrew.”
“You need only to identify him and leave the rest to me,” Lucas said, holding Shalimar’s cool hands. “Are you certain you’re ready?”
A white veil draping her dark hair, his mistress sat beside him in the Wortham coach. She kept her head bowed. “Yes, my lord. I am not afraid.”
Yet a tremor ran through her, and Lucas knew she feared not her former lover, but the fate of her only child, Sanjeev. Many months had passed since her son had been kidnapped by his ne’er-do-well sire. Today, they were investigating another actor who fit O’Hara’s description.
“Hajib, you’ll stay with Shalimar,” Lucas said. “Behind me.”
The servant’s chocolate eyes gleamed in woeful sympathy at her. “As you wish, master. It is an honor to escort the lovely Lotus of Kashmir.”
Lucas unlatched the door of the coach and stepped out into the bright sunshine. Drays and wagons rattled down the narrow street in the Covent Garden district. The sour smell of the gutters melded with the pungent odor of horse droppings. On the corner, a pieman shouted out his wares to the common folk passing by. A little boy dodged in and out of
the pedestrians, chasing after a squawking rooster. Across the street, on a seedy brick theater, the marquee announced a revival of the popular old play
The Way of the World.
Spotting a break in the traffic, Lucas struck out for the playhouse, Hajib and Shalimar at his heels. The pair in their foreign robes garnered a few stares from the passersby. To Lucas’s relief, one of the front doors was unlocked, and he led the way into the dimness of the deserted lobby.
The hollow sound of upraised voices echoed from the amphitheater. As Lucas motioned to his companions to be silent, the soreness in his arm made him grimace. He’d never have thought dainty little Emma capable of delivering such a blow. But then, he had underestimated her before.
Was she still in the library, classifying his artifacts? He gritted his teeth, thinking of her having free access to his priceless antiquities. What madness had seized hold of him?
He was a bloody fool to let the vixen into the proverbial chicken coop. Right now, she might be falsifying his records and pocketing a valuable relic. Not since he’d succumbed to her pretty pleading and married her posthaste had he made a decision with his loins rather than his logic. If Emma took it into her mind to have revenge on him, she could vandalize his life’s work.
But he had to trust her. Or at least pretend to do so. Because then, she might be inspired to trust
him
. In bed.
God, yes. In bed.
“Pssst, master,” Hajib whispered. “Look.”
With no memory of having entered the amphitheater, Lucas realized they stood in the shadows at the back of the immense room. Rows of seats formed a half-circle around the stage. Above the common area, the more expensive, giltpainted boxes were dark, empty of patrons. The curtains were lifted to reveal the wooden stage, where the drop scene showed the interior of a house. Lamps flickered over a small group of actors rehearsing their lines.
Bloody damn.
Lucas frowned. He didn’t know which one of them might be O’Hara. The actors wore elaborate costumes,
with the painted faces and white wigs of the previous century.
“‘Gad, my head begins to whim it about—why dost thou not speak?’” one man boomed. “‘Thou art both as drunk and as mute as a fish.’”
Another actor staggered out of the wings and swayed in front of an actress in a massive hooped gown. “‘Look you, Mrs. Millamant—if you can love me, dear nymph—say it …’”
The new actor gave a passable performance of an inebriated sot. Big and burly, he wore a powdered bagwig and old-fashioned breeches of shiny violet satin. A black patch dotted his cheek.
Shalimar made a sound of distress. Her anguished eyes were luminous in the gloom. Struck by concern, Lucas touched her smooth hand. The veil stirred around her dark features as she gave a jerky nod.
He felt a jolt of success, tempered by the grimness of anger. The bastard in the purple pants was O’Hara.
“Stay here,” Lucas muttered. “Both of you.”
Without a backward glance, he stalked along the perimeter of the theater until he came to a door in the shadows beside the stage. The actors were quarreling now in raised voices, and no one noticed him slip backstage. He threaded his way past piles of props, ropes for the curtains, and canvas backdrops. Musty smells hung in the air: sweat and cosmetics and smoke from the lamps. In the wings, he found a vantage point near a rickety screen that formed a dressing area. Costumes were flung over trunks and stools.
O’Hara minced around the stage in his role as a foppish drunk. Lucas knew better than to mistake the Irishman for a weakling. The villain had torn a son from his mother.
You intend to do the same to Emma,
his conscience jeered.
Lucas clenched his jaw. The circumstances were different for him. Worlds different. Emma knew—and agreed even before conception—that she would give up their son to him. So what if he’d coerced her into the bargain? She’d done her share of coercing
him.
Yet guilt fueled the violent rage within him.
On stage, O’Hara intoned, “‘Go flea dogs, and read romances! I’ll go to bed my maid.’” He hiccuped loudly and then reeled off into the wings.
Lucas stepped out of the shadows. “Patrick O’Hara.”
The actor’s demeanor sobered as he shed his onstage persona. He arched one bushy, white-powdered eyebrow. “That I am,” he said gruffly, looking Lucas up and down. “And just who might be askin’?”
“Your nemesis.”
Seizing the brawny man by his purple lapels, Lucas shoved him up against the back wall. His wig tumbled off and bits of broken plaster rained down on his short, carroty hair. “Here now!” O’Hara blustered. “If you’ve come to collect on a bill, you’ve only to ask—”
“Where is Sanjeev?”
O’Hara’s brown eyes narrowed warily. “Sanjeev?”
Lucas shook him. “Don’t play the dolt. He’s your son.”
“What’s he done now? I’ll have you know, I’m not liable for the brat anymore. Not since he run off.”
“Ran off. Where? When?”
“’Twas nigh on a month ago,” the actor whined. “Devil if I know where.”
“And you haven’t tried to find him? Bastard! You should never have taken him from Shalimar.”
O’Hara stared. “So you’ve been to India and met the harlot. Faith, a more tender piece of ass never warmed me bed—
ooph
!”
Lucas hurled him away. Arms wheeling, O’Hara staggered sideways into a dressing table and fell to the floor. Jars of cosmetics clattered and shattered. A snowstorm of spilled powder filtered down on his sprawled form. Gasps came from the other thespians who had gathered to watch.
For a moment O’Hara lay like a grotesque marionette with his arms and legs flung wide. Then, with a mighty bellow, he leapt to his feet.
Lucas met O’Hara with a fist to his belly. Pain blazed up Lucas’s bruised arm, but he scarcely noticed. He could think
only of punishing the man who had abandoned his own child, of silencing his own conscience. Props and people scattered until Lucas’s arm went numb and he found himself pinned to the wall by fifteen stone of angry Irishman.
“’Tis surprised I am that a fine gent like yourself would defend a strumpet,” O’Hara said between bursts of alestinking breath. “If you pay me well, I might just remember where you can find her brat.”
Lucas answered by bringing up his left fist from outside and jabbing O’Hara in the ear. The actor loosened his stranglehold for an instant. It was long enough for Lucas to throw him off balance and wrest him to the floor.
“If you value your life,” Lucas said, “you’ll tell me for free.”
“Yes,
sahib,
” said Hajib. “Or my blade will pierce your black heart.”
In a flutter of gray robes, the valet appeared out of nowhere to press a wickedly curved knife to O’Hara’s chest. A collective gasp eddied from the onlookers.
O’Hara went still, though he glowered at Hajib. “Who is this cheeky Hindoo?”
“I am no Hindu, but a follower of Mohammad. And you will meet your infidel God this day if you fail to tell the truth about Sanjeev.”
Several wheezing breaths came from O’Hara. “Faith, ’tis caught in a farce, I am, and a badly written one at that,” the actor grumbled. “The lad boasted of earning his passage back to that godfersaken hellhole he came from. After all the opportunity I gave him, bringing him to Mother England!”
“You let him look for work at the docks?” Lucas said.
“Aye. Though don’t blame me if the ungrateful wretch has taken ship already. Now get away from me, both you scurvy gents.”
Lucas sprang to his feet and stalked away. The group of actors parted to give them wide berth, especially when Hajib brandished his curving knife.
Shalimar stood waiting in the shadows outside the stage door. Her palms pressed together, she asked, “My son?”
Lucas gently took her by the arm and steered her up the aisle. “He’s gone to find work at the docks. So that he might return home to you.”
Her steps faltered. “My poor Sanjeev!”
“We’ll find him,” Lucas said gruffly. “I promise you that.”
“I will help,” Hajib said, sheathing his knife beneath his robe. “Even if the boy has stowed away aboard a ship, I will follow him to the ends of the world. For you, O Lotus of Kashmir.”
Lucas vowed to leave no stone unturned until Shalimar held her son in her arms again. He owed her that much and more. She had brought him out of the darkness of despair. She had taught a callow boy how a man pleases a woman. She had given him serenity. So why did he long for Emma?
As he crossed the busy street to his carriage, he felt no peace. Since the day Emma had sauntered back into his life with yet another scheme to manipulate him, he had been caught up in turmoil again—in an exhilarating tumult of passion and anger and yearning. Even now, he burned with impatience to return home and match wits with her.
Bloody hell
. He wanted a son, not a wife. He wouldn’t let Emma distract him. Except at night.
Ah, yes. At night.
A
ghast, Emma stared at her mother-in-law. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece. In the corridor outside the library, a servant walked by with a swift tapping of footsteps. Emma wanted to bolt out the door, but her legs wouldn’t move. They were as paralyzed as her tongue.
The dowager knew. She
knew.
Her blue eyes brimming with tears, the elder Lady Wortham groped for Emma’s hands. “Do not deny it,” she said in a pleading tone. “Have pity on an old mother. Tell me that little Jenny is really my Andrew’s daughter.”
The quivering of those gaunt fingers dissolved the wall around Emma’s emotions. In that moment she understood how deeply the dowager had loved her youngest son, how much she longed to know that a part of him lived on in Jenny. And Emma knew it was too late to withhold the truth.
She trudged to the door and closed it. Then she turned to the dowager. “Yes, it’s true,” she said in an anguished whisper. “How did you guess?”
“It was her laugh … I heard it from the corridor. I thought … I thought for a moment it was twenty years ago, and my sweet boy had come back to me. And then when I saw his blue-green eyes twinkling up at me … but it was Jenny.”
The dowager swayed alarmingly, and Emma hastened to help her across the library to the chaise. She was thin as a
cadaver, flesh on bones. “Madam, remember your health. I’ll ring for a tisane.”
“Never mind the tonics. This news is the best remedy for what ails me. Sit, my dear.” She patted the cushion beside her. “We have so very much to discuss.”
Weighted by a sense of doom, Emma sank to the chaise. Her heart thudded in painful strokes, and her eyes burned. She had imagined this moment a thousand times, when she could shout out the truth and vindicate herself to the Coulters. But oh, sweet Jesus. How could she shatter a mother’s cherished memories of her son? How could she accuse a war hero of so despicable an act? “There’s little to tell,” she said tonelessly. “Please, try to understand. It’s difficult for me to speak of … what happened.”
“Of course I understand. And I respect your privacy.” Haloed by the golden light that streamed through the window, the dowager smiled like a radiant madonna. “No lady would wish to make known a love affair that went on before she was married.”
Love affair?
A furious denial choked Emma’s throat.
No
, she wanted to scream.
No, you’re wrong, horribly wrong! I could never love such a monster.
Then it struck Emma that the dowager’s assumption gave her the perfect explanation. She had but to remain silent, to contradict nothing.
“It must have happened months before your betrothal to Lucas,” the older woman went on, a faraway look in her eyes. “It was the height of the Season. Andrew’s regiment was about to be deployed to that horrid war in Portugal. Lucas used his influence to obtain a few days’ leave for Andrew to visit us here in London.” She clasped her milk-white hands to her bosom. “Ah, how dashing and handsome he looked in his uniform. You must have seen him at one of our parties and fallen instantly in love. So many of the young ladies did, you know.”
Emma kept her eyes downcast. Yes, it had been a party.
A large, boisterous group at Vauxhall Gardens, and she had come upon him in the dark … .
“Oh, my dear, you look deathly pale,” exclaimed Lady Wortham. “Forgive me for asking so many painful questions, but I must know. Why did Andrew not offer for you? I can’t imagine my son dishonoring a lady and then not doing right by her.”
Emma plucked a bit of straw off her skirt and gave it a hard twist between her fingers. Clearly Andrew had hidden his true nature from his family. “I have no idea. We had … been together only once, the night before he left to rejoin his regiment. A month later, he died at Talavera. Before he knew about my delicate condition.”
“And you must have been terribly distraught. You married Lucas so that Andrew’s child would be raised a Coulter.” The dowager closed her eyes, her shoulders slumping. Faint blue veins showed on her lids, and a tear traced a path down her cheek. “To think I forced you to leave here. How cruel I’ve been. Can you ever forgive me?”
Emma told herself to feel a triumphant sense of vindication. Yet she merely felt drained and aching. “You didn’t know. You thought I’d brought shame on your family—on Lucas. And I was confused and frightened. I found … I couldn’t reveal the truth. Not to anyone.”
Her mother-in-law slowly straightened. An indomitable will shone in her eyes as she looked at Emma again. “You did right, my dear. This must remain our little secret. No scandal must tarnish Andrew’s memory.”
With a snap, the straw broke in Emma’s fingers. It galled her to think she was protecting that brute. In one act of violence, he had ruined her life.
Yet she couldn’t allow him to ruin Jenny’s life, too.
As if she’d read Emma’s mind, the dowager went on, “If word slips out, we will lose all hope of society ever receiving Lady Jenny. You must be accepted, too. Lady Jenny’s background must be unblemished.”
“I fear it’s already too late,” Emma said. “It was too late seven years ago when I left here in disgrace. At Lord Jasper
Putney’s party, many people avoided me, even though Lucas was there with me.” Regret wrenched her insides. “Everyone knows Jenny isn’t his.”
“Bah,” said the dowager, with a wave of her hand. “They know only rumors. My daughters and I were never so vulgar as to confirm the vicious tale-telling. Now, we shall convince the
ton
that you and Wortham had a falling-out over some inconsequential matter. The two of you have repaired your differences and are back together for good.”
Caught in a tangled web of deception, Emma stared at the array of exotic artifacts on the desk without really seeing them. Securing Jenny’s future was the answer to her prayers. Yet she couldn’t stay married to Lucas, not forever. They had made a bargain, and he expected her to leave after giving birth to his son. She would seek a bill of divorcement and marry Sir Woodrow. It was what she wanted. Wasn’t it?
“When
I
accompany you out into society,” the dowager added in a steely tone, “everyone will know you have my seal of approval. No one will dare to suggest Lady Jenny is not Wortham’s true daughter.”
Athough gratified by her ladyship’s offer of sponsorship, Emma foresaw a catastrophe. “What will Lucas say to that?”
“I’ll tell him we must be a family again, all of us. And Jenny must call me ‘Grandmama.’” The dowager nodded decisively. “Yes, that will do. It is past time there was harmony in this house.”
Uneasiness nipped at Emma’s stomach. “Surely you won’t expect Jenny to address him as Papa,” she said. “Lucas will never agree. And if you insist, he’ll wonder why. He might guess she’s his own niece.”
“The resemblance between Andrew and Jenny is some thing only a mother would notice. Wortham wouldn’t dream of looking for his brother’s features in her, I am certain of it.” The dowager smiled wryly. “Nevertheless, I take your point. My son has become a masterful man. Just as his dear father once was.”
Emma pressed her lips together.
Masterful?
Autocratic
was a more fitting description. Arrogant. Dictatorial.
Seductive. Persuasive.
Dangerous.
The dowager clung tightly to Emma’s arm. Those blue eyes burned into hers. “Heed me well. Wortham must never, ever know you had an affair with his brother. He would hate Andrew. That is the way men are; jealous and possessive of their women. If Wortham were to learn the truth, it would destroy him. And this family.”
She only confirmed what Emma already knew. That was why she had never been able to bring herself to hurl the ugly truth in his face.
She could have married any one of a score of ardent gentlemen. By choosing Lucas, she had planned to have her revenge on Andrew. She had intended to tell the Coulters that he was a beast, not a hero—and then force them to accept her child. But when the moment had come, when she had faced Lucas on their wedding night and realized how she had devastated his heart, the words of retribution had withered in her throat.
The memory stirred queasiness in her stomach. Now, more than ever, she must guard the secret of her attacker’s identity. Because Lucas knew what his mother did not. He knew that Emma’s innocence had been taken by force.
Everyone found a woman with a shady past fascinating; Lucas thought cynically.
In a foul mood, he stood in Lord Gerald Mannering’s town house and watched Emma waltz with yet another besotted gentleman. He fancied he could hear her throaty laughter over the lively tune played by the orchestra and the tapping of a hundred dancing feet. His wife was enjoying a popularity unparalleled even by her first Season. Mannering, in particular, was salivating over her. Already their host had danced twice with her.
Lucas wanted to land his fist into the lecher’s face.
By circling around Emma, these vultures hoped to feed off the carcass of scandal. He himself had had to direct his most
freezing glare at several guests who had asked too many probing questions about his long absence.
When his mother had announced her decision to see Emma accepted by society, he had been unable to deny her. She had suffered enough for one lifetime. Now, enthroned in a gilt chair at the end of the long room, she reigned over a court of matrons who sat out the dancing. Campaigning for peace in the family had brought the bloom of improved health to her cheeks. And when Emma left him for good, his mother would adjust to the shock of the divorce. She would have an infant grandson to fuss over.
Her abrupt turnabout still troubled him, though. She, who had held Emma in contempt, now treated her like a beloved daughter. Adroitly, his mother had proclaimed that since his marchioness was living with him, she could hardly remain a pariah. Yet he sensed there was something more, else why would she permit Jenny to address her as “Grandmama”?
The very notion set his teeth on edge. It was like announcing to the world that
he
was Jenny’s father.
Not that he despised me child. The animosity he had harbored toward Jenny had lessened upon meeting her. He remembered how fearlessly the little girl had faced him after he’d caught her rifling through his safe, how endearing was her gap-toothed smile. Yet he couldn’t—he wouldn’t—lay claim to her. She belonged to Emma, not to him. Never to him.
Lucas took a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing servant. Brandy was what he really craved. A decanter of the finest French reserve to drown the frustration gnawing at him. But he needed a clear head tonight. He needed to watch Emma. He didn’t believe for a minute that she’d given up on robbing Mannering in order to repay her grandfather’s debt.
Moodily, Lucas observed her from behind the screen of a potted fern. She was light on her feet, nimble and lovely as the saucy chit who had taken his youthful heart by storm. The misty blue skirt swirled around her, and he imagined those slim, white legs against a tangle of bedsheets.
It had taken him several nights of concentrated wooing to convince her to let him touch her again. Since he spent his days on the search for Sanjeev, he had not been able to devote much time to working with Emma in the library. But at night … ah, at night. Slowly he was stripping away her defenses and revealing her sensual nature. Soon she would lie naked with him, her moonbeam hair drifting over the pillow. He would take her with infinite patience, like a bridegroom loving his bride for the first time.
And like as not, she would clobber him with another candlestick.
Lucas balled his fingers into a fist. Damn the rogue who had despoiled her. Was he here tonight? Did he dare to mingle in decent company?
Lucas caught himself gazing into the face of every gentleman present, and forced himself to relax. It was ridiculous to torture himself. He had better things to do than to chase the demon of revenge.
The music ceased. On the other side of the assembly room, Emma took leave of her partner. She glided through the crush of attendees, pausing now and then to speak to someone. She made her way straight to Sir Woodrow Hickey, who stood talking with her grandfather. Emma looped her arm through Briggs’s and directed a warm smile at Hickey.
Lucas set down his empty glass before he could succumb to the urge to smash it. Damn it, he wanted her to come to
him
. She was his wife. They were supposed to be happily reconciled. Perhaps she needed to be reminded of that.
He had started across the crowded floor when a smiling, dark-haired lady stepped into his path. “Ah, Lord Wortham. What could there be to scowl about in such amiable company?”
She had a gypsy beauty, her black hair piled high and her wine-colored bodice cut low to show an expanse of dusky skin. She was exactly the sort of predatory female who would have launched him into a fit of the stutters as a youth. “Have we met?” he said with cold precision.
She sank into a graceful curtsy. “I am Mrs. Boswell, my
lord. There, the proprieties have been observed.” She stepped closer, giving him a whiff of her musky scent and a peek at her magnificent bosom. “I’m being terribly forward, I confess. But only because I’m curious. You’ve just returned from India, have you not?”

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