Once Upon a Scandal (28 page)

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Authors: Barbara Dawson Smith

Tags: #Romance

BOOK: Once Upon a Scandal
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He fulfilled her wish, enclosing her in his embrace. “Emma? You frightened me. Why were you running? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Lucas, I saw it,” she whispered brokenly. “The place … where he forced me.”
Like a protective band, his arm muscles stiffened around her. The breath came out of him in a harsh gust. He pressed her cheek to his chest, his fingers stroking back the hood and threading into her hair, tilting her face up for his healing kiss. “My God. What possessed you to go there?”
“I—I just went for a walk … .” She couldn’t tell him what she had done. She could never tell him, though her shoulders drooped from the weight of her lies.
“Who was he?” Lucas said in a low, hard voice.
She shook her head in bitter despair. If only he knew, the truth was written on the ball of paper clutched in her hand. The terrible truth that would destroy him and his family. “Please, I beg of you. Don’t ask me anymore.”
A long moment passed. A lively tune played in the distance, where people laughed and danced and made merry. It seemed a world separate from this moonlit place in the trees. “I can’t help myself,” Lucas said gruffly, rubbing his cheek against the top of her head. “I wish to God I’d been there to protect you.”
“Yet if you had been, I wouldn’t have Jenny. She makes the memory bearable.”
“And us, Emma. Don’t forget that bastard’s act of violence brought you and me together.”
Radiance trickled into the darkness of her soul. Lucas spoke as if she mattered to him. Dare she hope he could forgive her? She lifted her head, searching out his dark gaze in the moonlight. “I owe so much to you,” she whispered. “You taught me how wonderful a man’s touch can be.” Emma paused, her heart overflowing as she reached up to
caress his hard jaw. “No, not any man. Only you. I love you, Lucas.”
The tightening of his hands on her back acknowledged her avowal. Yet his eyes were strangely watchful. “Then tell me.” The words sounded dragged from him. “What have you done with the tiger mask?”
The chill of reality invaded Emma. The burden of her secret weighed upon her conscience. She had intended to claim she’d been robbed and throw herself upon his mercy. But the lie died on her lips. She lowered her head in shameful despair, praying he would never find out, even if it meant him losing faith in her, never trusting her again.
He let go of her abruptly. As she looked up, he brushed past her and plunged down the path toward the distant temple. Her heart leapt into her throat. A pinprick of light moved in the gloom of the shrine.
The blackmailer.
“
No.
” The wind caught her whispered moan as she ran after Lucas. A stone cut into her slipper. Heedless, she followed him, but it was too late. He pounded up the steps of the temple. A moment later, he hauled out a man clad all in black and holding a lantern in his gloved hand.
She knew him at once, though a dark cap covered his sandy hair. “Woodrow,” she said in anguish.
He gazed at her across the small, moonlit clearing. The music of the fountain played into the quiet night air. His shoulders were bowed, his chin lowered. “Emma,” he said, holding out his hand in supplication. “My dear Emma.”
Sickened by his betrayal, she stood mute. He had put her through hell. Because he wanted to shatter her marriage.
Lucas gave him a hard shake. “Tell me what this is all about. Has my wife been passing stolen goods to you?”
“Good God! No!” Woodrow paused, his chest heaving. With slow, thoughtful movements, he set down the lantern on the marble step. “I—I wanted you to blame her. If you must know … I was blackmailing her.”
“On what grounds?”
“I was in possession of a letter”—he paused as if the
admission pained him—“from the man who had dishonored her.”
“No,” Emma moaned.
“Please.”
Willing him not to go on, she crushed the balled-up letter.
Neither man seemed to notice her distress. They faced each other like combatants on a battlefield.
“A letter,” Lucas repeated in a strange, raw voice. “From whom? Damn it, man,
who?”
Woodrow’s expression took on a certain satisfaction. “I’m afraid … it was written by your brother. Lord Andrew.”
Turning her head away, Emma squeezed her eyes shut. She could not bear to look at Lucas. To see the pain on his beloved face. She could sense his agony as if it were her own.
“You lie.
You lie.
I’ll kill you for that.” Then his harsh tone was directed at her. “Emma? Is this true?”
She opened her eyes. He stood in the moonlight, his features stark and noble, the man she had grown to love. The last time he’d been betrayed, he had fled England for seven years. And in a cruel flash of insight, she realized that without honesty she was unworthy of him.
Wordlessly, she held out the crumpled letter.
He took it from her, walked away, and propped his foot on the step, smoothing out the wrinkled paper against his thigh. By the light of the lantern, he read silently, shadows hollowing his cheekbones. It seemed an eternity passed before he lifted his head and turned his haunted eyes to her.
“My brother … did that to you … here.” His voice sounded lost, bewildered, ashamed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t.” The barrier of the past stood between them now. Gazing at him, she felt his torment along with her own helpless anger. Damn Woodrow. He had succeeded in his plot. How could he, when she had trusted him for so long?
Lucas looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. As if realizing all she had suffered. And then without touching her, he turned to Woodrow. “Why did you have this letter?”
“Andrew gave it to me. At Talavera. As he lay dying …
in my arms.” His voice broke as if from the strain of emotion. “I would have cut off my right arm to save him. He was my life … my love.”
Mired in disbelief, Emma stared at him.
He’s a sodomite. He prefers men to women.
Lucas seized Woodrow by the black lapels of his coat. “You bastard! What the hell are you saying?”
“I loved him. I loved your brother with all my heart and soul.”
“And with your body?”
“With all that I was.”
Lucas released him abruptly and stepped back. Pacing in agitation, he rubbed his brow. “No. Surely I would have known.”
“Not about that.” A trace of smugness on his face, Woodrow sat down on the step. “It started when we became friends at Eton. One night, we had a bit much to drink … and it just happened. Neither of us planned to make love. Neither of us had any experience, either.” He paused, his head in his hands. “Forgive me, Emma. I shouldn’t speak of such things with a lady present.”
His misery touched Emma in spite of her shock. But she resisted feeling sympathy for him. For all his pain, Woodrow had knowingly betrayed her. “Never mind propriety,” she said sharply. “I would hear your explanation for Andrew’s treatment of me.”
“It’s my fault, I fear, though inadvertently so. You see, I fell deeply in love with him and wanted to continue the … the affair. But Andrew fought against his own nature. He feared his family discovering such a secret. Until that night here at Vauxhall.” Woodrow’s voice shook. “Yes, we met that night. We had a brief encounter here … but the struggle within him was too great. He ordered me to leave him. And so I did.”
Emma tasted the saltiness of blood. She had bitten her lip. Numbness shrouded her body. In her mind’s eye, she could see Andrew sitting on the bench, his face buried in his hands. She could hear his wrenching sobs. And this time, she could
sense his despair, too. His hopelessness. He had been in the grips of a monstrous dilemma, torn by a love and longing that society considered to be evil, deviant, punishable by death.
Lucas’s shoes crunched on the gravel around the fountain. “So,” he said in an oppressive voice, “you let him rape an innocent girl.”
“
No.
” Woodrow sat up straight. Repugnance darkened his voice. “I didn’t know what had happened until later, much later. We were due to depart for our regiment early the next morning. Andrew arrived drunk, scarcely able to walk, and in so desolate a temper I feared he would harm himself. And he did, in the end.”
“What do you mean?” Emma whispered.
“He was withdrawn for the next month, in the blackest of moods. I blamed myself, of course. And I feared the worst when we met the French at Talavera. Andrew wanted to die. We were separated during the fighting, yet whenever I caught a glimpse of him, I saw him take chance after chance, riding into the thickest of the fighting, until at last he went down, felled by a French saber.” Woodrow bowed his head a moment before continuing. “He confessed all to me as he lay dying. That he had forced himself on you. That he had been frantic to prove his virility with a woman. Any woman. And you had the misfortune to be there.” Woodrow fell silent, weeping soundlessly, his face contorted.
Emma sank to her heels. Andrew’s actions made a tragic sense now. And knowing the story brought a certain lifting of relief inside her. “You should have given me his letter. Why did you keep it from me?”
“It was wrong of me. I beg your forgiveness. You see, I couldn’t bear to relinquish the last words he had written.” Woodrow paused, wiping his eyes while gazing beseechingly at her. “When I found out you were carrying his child, I befriended you. At first, I wanted to assuage my own guilt over the terrible turn of events. But when Jenny was born, she brought light into my bereavement. Andrew lives on in her. Surely you can understand how precious she is to me.”
“And so you threatened my wife,” Lucas stated harshly. “You pretended to leave town, and then sent her a blackmail note—you would give me the letter if she did not steal the tiger mask. Either way she would be forced to betray me.”
Woodrow gave a jerky nod. “When Emma said she wished to stay with you, I could not bear it. I had no choice but to win her back however I could. Otherwise, it meant losing Jenny. Perhaps forever.”
“There is no ‘perhaps’ about it. You are never to come near my wife—or my child—again.”
Desolation twisted Woodrow’s face. He sprang up from the step, the starkness of horror in his wild eyes. “No. Please. You can’t mean that—”
“I do, indeed.”
Hearing the cold rage in his voice, Emma stood up. “Lucas, there’s no need to be so severe. Jenny regards Woodrow as a father—”
“I am her father now. By the blood of my brother.”
Emma hugged her arms to her breast. She had never heard him speak in so flat and icy a manner, not even on the night of their wedding. It was as if all warmth in him had died. There was no joy in his claim to Jenny. Nor had he mentioned he was also Jenny’s father by virtue of his marriage.
He opened the glass door of the lantern and set the letter ablaze. The paper curled and darkened in his hand. He did not release it until the flame burnt down to his fingers and surely blistered him. Then he dropped the charred letter to the ground and crushed it beneath his heel.
He looked at Woodrow, who stood with his face in his hands. “The tiger mask. Where is it?”
Woodrow lifted his head slowly, his eyes dull. “I—I don’t know.”
“The devil you don’t. Emma must have left it for you.”
“It wasn’t here.” He spread his hands wide in obvious bewilderment. “I—I looked all over the temple, but someone else must have gotten to it first.”
Lucas grabbed the lantern and stalked up the steps. Emma hastened after him. The shrine was small, the statue of
Daphne at one end and the bench at the other.
“I remember dropping the mask right there.” Emma pointed to the base of the pedestal. The white marble glowed softly through the darkness.
“There’s nothing back here but a few dead leaves.” Lucas held up the lamp, lighting the gloom behind the statue. “Damn. He must be lying.”
Emma tagged behind him onto the steps. Only to see Sir Woodrow trudging away, his shoulders slumped, his posture one of abject misery.
Lucas made a move to pursue him, but Emma stopped her husband with a hand on his rigid arm. “Let him go,” she said. “Woodrow doesn’t have the mask. Someone else must have taken it.”
H
e was aware of her following close behind him.
The patter of Emma’s soft footfalls echoed his slow, heavier steps. Dry leaves crunched beneath his heels. The music in the distance had ended and an unearthly silence enveloped the wooded gardens, as if the very air braced itself for the noise of the fireworks display. Only an hour ago, Lucas had looked forward to watching Emma’s joy as the dazzling show lit up the night sky.
He had no stomach for amusements now. He doubted she did, either. Their relationship had altered irrevocably.
He had condemned her as a coldhearted conniver. But their marriage was not her fault, not really. She had chosen him of all men to be her husband because, as head of the family, he was accountable for the actions of his brother. It was as simple as that.
Lucas couldn’t blame her for fighting back the only way she knew how. She’d had an unborn child to protect. And he understood why she had withheld the truth. It had been an act of selfless mercy. She had wanted to spare him the pain that now corroded his soul.
God! Andrew had had her first. Witty, irreverent Andrew, always smiling, the youngest of the family, and the light of their mother’s heart. The hero of Talavera was a villain and a coward. He had forced himself on Emma. He had hurt her, ruined her, then left her alone to raise his child.
Lucas blinked away a stinging heat. Jenny. Little Jenny was not the daughter of a stranger, but his niece. He should have recognized those distinctive blue-green eyes … Andrew’s eyes.
But Lucas had been too caught up in his own selfish needs to notice. He had barred Jenny and Emma from his house for seven years. He had compelled them to live in poverty, the subject of scorn.
The dark knowledge assaulted him. Was he so much better than his brother? He too had run away. He had left Emma to fend for herself. He had abandoned her in her time of need, when she carried his brother’s child in her womb. Not knowing didn’t excuse his actions.
And upon his return to England, he had treated her with contempt. Granted, he hadn’t used violence to force her into his bed, but he
had
coerced her. He had threatened to turn her over to the law if she did not bear him a son. A son whom he intended to wrench from her arms.
The cruelty of his terms shamed him. He could only imagine the suffering his arrogant demands had inflicted on her. Emma, who deserved so much more than a brutal, compassionless husband.
As they neared the edge of the gardens, he slowed his steps so she might catch up to him. It wouldn’t do for anyone to spy him striding ahead of his wife, as if she were a servant trailing after her master. Yet even as he silently offered her his arm, and her small fingers curled around his sleeve, he sensed an insurmountable barrier between them. It seemed as if a thick glass wall separated them. And he was suffocating slowly, unable to seek the comfort of his wife. He needed Emma as much as he needed air to breathe.
A boom resounded through the gardens. Over the trees appeared a shower of twinkling, colored lights against the night sky. “The fireworks,” Emma murmured.
She stood beside him, the brightness reflected on her wistful, uptilted face. Fierce regret seized him. She should still be innocent of the evil in life. She should never have known
the dark side of human nature. But it was too late to erase the past.
They had reached the line of carriages. It was a cold night, and few guests had come by boat across the river. Here, the coachmen and footmen held their own celebration, singing boisterously around a huge bonfire. The ribald song ceased when someone spied the approach of Lord and Lady Wortham. Their burly coachman set down his mug of beer and hastened to their carriage.
“Where is Hajib?” Emma asked.
The coachman tipped his hat. “Don’t know, m’lady. ’Em foreigners, they don’t be interested in our English celebrations, I trow.”
As they entered the dark confines of the coach, Emma said, “Lucas, wasn’t Hajib to wait here for you to bring him the tiger mask? He must be around somewhere. Shouldn’t we go and look for him?”
“He’ll find his way home.”
“And what of the mask? Perhaps we should tell Clive Youngblood—”
“To hell with the mask,” Lucas said savagely.
She went quiet, and the directness of her gaze chastised him. Despite his remorse, a choking sense of unworthiness kept him from touching her. “Forgive me,” he said, though words seemed inadequate to span the chasm between them. “I should not have snapped at you.”
“You’ve every right to be angry,” she said in a soft, sad voice. “Now that you know I married you for revenge.”
“Andrew gave you no choice.” To Lucas’s chagrin, tears blurred his vision. He denied the weakness with a violent slash of his hand. “God damn him.
God damn him.”
“He damned himself. Must you damn him, too?”
“Don’t defend the bastard. He might have offered for you. He might have made reparations. He did nothing. Nothing to rectify the depravity of his actions toward you.”
“I’m not defending him. But Andrew is dead. For me, that’s retribution enough.” She leaned forward, groping for his hands. “Let it be enough for you, too. Don’t let his mistake ruin your life.”
It was too late for forgiveness, too late to salvage any love for his brother. Lucas drew his hands out of hers. “I believed Andrew a man of valor. But he was a craven beast.” With iron effort, Lucas kept his voice steady, though emotion seared his chest. “Were he alive today, I would call him out for what he did to you. I would kill him.”
The chill fingers of horror crept down Emma’s back. Lucas couldn’t mean that. He couldn’t. But the finality in his voice convinced her, as did the terrible expression on his face. Through the darkness, his features appeared hewn from stone, cold and dead and implacable. Then he turned his head toward the window and stared out into the night.
It was just as the dowager had predicted.
If Wortham were to learn the truth, it would destroy him.
And his ability to love.
The sounds of revelry on the streets contrasted with the bleakness inside her. So her secret was out. How gladly she would resume the burden of it if only to bring back the teasing, carefree Lucas, the man who had learned to laugh again. But the damage had been done. And now a dark fear haunted her. Could he tolerate seeing her every day, being reminded that his brother had brutalized her? Could Lucas regard her with anything but pity and repugnance? Andrew’s ghost would always stand between them. Andrew’s child would always bring to mind the violence of her conception.
Dear God. Overwhelmed by pain, Lucas might seek refuge in the arms of his foreign mistress. The woman to whom he had run once before.
Emma’s throat tightened with raw anguish. It hurt to think of him devoting himself to another woman. But if she truly loved him, she must let him go. He could never find peace of mind with the wife who embodied the tragic mistakes of the past.
Surreptitiously she pressed her hands to her belly. She and Lucas had created a precious new life through the beauty of their passion. This child, at least, was no mistake.
Tonight, she would tell Lucas about the baby. He needed to know the terms of their bargain had been met, that he was
free to leave her bed. But she would not give up their son. She would raise him with love and teach him to be as fine a man as his father. And if she bore a daughter instead, she would treasure the little girl and tell her stories about her wonderful papa.
Unencumbered by the duties of a parent, Lucas could leave England with his mistress. He could escape the constant reminders of the past.
They arrived at Wortham House. Stepping out of the carriage, she looked up at the stately, torch-lit entrance with its tall columns and shiny brass door fittings. A sharp ache throbbed in her breast. Strange, how in the space of a few weeks she had begun to think of this house as her home. Perhaps, when he went away, Lucas would allow her to stay here. Yes. She would insist upon that. It was only fitting that Jenny and the baby took their rightful places as proud members of the Coulter family.
As she and Lucas entered the foyer, Stafford rushed forward in a state of unusual agitation. “M’lord,” he said, wringing his white-gloved hands. “That plaguey Runner from Bow Street Station is here again. He’s waiting in the library.”
“Send him away.”
“But m’lord, you don’t understand. He’s arrested your man, Hajib.”
Emma’s mind reeled in confusion. What absurdity did Clive Youngblood entertain this time? Lucas’s valet had no knowledge of the Bond Street Burglar.
She hastened after Lucas, who was already halfway down the corridor, his bootheels ringing on the marble floor. Sweet heaven. She and Lucas needed no more complications in their lives. She wanted only to be alone with him, to spend one last night in the arms of her beloved husband.
The moment she entered the library, Emma faced the impossibility of that wish.
Brandishing a truncheon in his hand, Clive Youngblood stood before the hapless servant, whose hands were bound behind the straight-backed chair in which he sat. To one side
of Hajib huddled a lovely, dark-skinned woman who hugged a half-grown boy.
Youngblood spun around and doffed his dented top hat. His thin lips were curved in oily triumph, the self-important smile making his drooping eyelid more prominent.
“Ah, m’lord and lady. I reckoned you’d like to meet the Burglar afore I took ’im off to the magistrate. It h’ain’t Lord Briggs, after all. I caught this sneaky foreigner wid the goods meself.”
“What goods?” Lucas demanded.
“Why, the tiger mask, o’ course.” With a flourish, Youngblood stepped back and pointed at the desk, where the mask glowed in savage glory. Backlit by a branch of candles, the emerald-rimmed eyes seemed eerily alive.
Gasping, Emma swung toward the valet. “It was you, then. You took the mask from the temple.”
Hajib raised his turbaned head and turned his mournful gaze to her. “Yes, O Great Lady. I followed you through the gardens. You do not need the mask anymore. It has already worked its magic on you.”
“What the devil are you saying?” Lucas snapped.
“She bears your child in her womb, master.”
Emma stood paralyzed as Lucas wheeled toward her. “Is this true?” he said hoarsely.
She could only nod. How had Hajib guessed? Her throat was too choked for speech as she searched Lucas’s face for a sign of gladness. But his expression was remote, unreadable.
“A toast to m’lord’s prowess,” declared Youngblood, raising his billy club in the air. “We both ’ave cause to celebrate, me fer following the Burglar to the ‘ouse of his ’arlot, and you fer—”
“My mother is no harlot,” the boy shouted. “You are a demon for saying so.”
He rushed at Youngblood, all flailing arms and brown fists and kicking feet. With a cry of surprise, the Runner lurched backward, but the boy kept at him, landing blows to Youngblood’s jaw and chest, and kneeing him in the groin. Yowling,
the officer doubled over a moment before coming up with his wooden club raised.
“Sanjeev, get back!” Lucas bellowed. He leapt forward and caught the truncheon before it could crack open the boy’s skull. And then he used the length of wood to pin the Runner by his throat to the wall.
Books tumbled from the shelf behind Youngblood. His face turned purple. He sputtered and gasped for air.
Emma hastened forward. “Lucas, no! You’ll kill him.”
“The weasel deserves to die.”
She pulled at his steely arm, but couldn’t budge him, couldn’t stop him from committing murder. To her alarm, he was driven by a force greater than his fury at the Runner. All the pent-up emotion of the night incited him to violence.
“Please,” she said over her shoulder at the foreign woman, who comforted her son. “Help me.”
She came at once, a willowy beauty with sultry dark eyes. “My lord,” she said, touching his straining arm. “Think of your child. You have been blessed by the gods. Just as I said you would be.”
His strident breathing rent the air. Then he released Youngblood and hurled away the truncheon. The officer slid to the floor, where he lay panting and choking.
Emma watched in dawning shock as Lucas turned to speak to the woman, his voice too low to discern his words. Like a humble supplicant, she sank to her knees before him, a length of white silk draping her black hair. She was more than a friend to Hajib. This enchanting, graceful foreigner was Lucas’s mistress. The woman he loved.
“Rise,” Lucas said, before turning to Hajib. “So she begs for your worthless life. And you, a thief. How well you hid your greed.”
“Shalimar has become beloved of me, and I wish to take her as my wife,” Hajib said proudly. “The tiger mask will bring us many children, brothers and sisters for Sanjeev.”
“Please, my lord, he meant no harm,” Shalimar said in her smoky-soft voice. “We must take the mask back to our
homeland. It is a treasure of my people. It was never meant to molder in an English museum.”

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