One Night Of Scandal (24 page)

Although Hayden's first instinct was to back out of the room before she saw him, some curious impulse made him clear his throat.

Allegra jerked her nose out of the book, her eyes widening and a guilty flush staining her cheeks. "Father! I didn't hear you come in. I was just… studying my lesson for tomorrow."

As Hayden approached, she attempted to slide the book behind her back.

Before she could succeed, he plucked it neatly from her hand. "What are you studying? History? Latin? Geography?" He held the book up to the firelight, recognizing the thin paperbound volume as one of the cheap chapbooks sold by vendors on the street corners of London. They'd succeeded in introducing the wicked pleasures of the Gothic to impoverished readers who couldn't afford genuine novels.

"
The Spectre of the Turret,
eh?" He thumbed through the pages. "Kidnapping, murder, ghosts, nefarious doings. It sounds very enlightening to me. And what's this?" he asked, spotting another volume tucked between cushion and chair arm. He picked up the book and flipped open the cover, studying a hand-colored engraving of a swordsman dressed as Death offering a severed head to his opponent. "Hmm?
The Cavern of Horrors.
Doesn't look like a place I'd care to visit."

Dumping a disgruntled Mirabella to the hearth rug, Allegra scrambled to her feet, snatching both books out of his hands. "I was just going to return these to Lottie. She must have left them here last night."

Hayden tucked his tongue into his cheek, silently applauding his wife's craftiness. If Lottie had left the chapbooks in the library, she had done so deliberately, hoping to whet Allegra's hunger for the printed word.

"Don't go!" he blurted out as Allegra turned away. "Please," he added softly to reassure her that it wasn't a command, but a request. "I was just looking for a book to wile away a few hours of the evening." He held out a hand, nodding toward
The Cavern of Horrors.
"May I?"

Still eyeing him warily, Allegra handed over the book and sank back into her chair. Hayden settled himself into the twin leather chair opposite hers, kicking off his shoes and propping his own stocking feet on an ottoman. He opened
The Cavern of Horrors,
pretending not to notice the bewildered scowls his daughter kept shooting him over the top of her own chapbook.

He didn't have to pretend for long. After only a few pages, he found himself curiously caught up in the convoluted tale of murder and mayhem.

Both Hayden and Allegra were so engrossed in their reading that they never saw Lottie pause in the doorway of the library to study the cozy tableau. With the rain beating against the mullioned windows and the cat dozing on the stone hearth, they could have been any father and daughter enjoying a quiet evening in each other's company.

Neither one of them heard Lottie go creeping away, still smiling to herself.

* * *

Although he didn't make the mistake of joining them again, not even Hayden's pride could stop him from wandering past the drawing room each day when Lottie, Harriet, and Allegra were taking tea. No matter how busy he was, he would find some excuse to linger in the doorway and drink in their merry chatter. His daughter might not welcome his company, but she did seem to be growing more accepting of it. She no longer sought to leave a room the minute he entered it.

As he strolled past one afternoon, he was surprised to find the expensive doll he'd had made for his daughter sitting across the table from Lottie's doll.

Apparently, Allegra was as surprised as he was. She was standing with hands on hips, surveying the new arrangement with an all too familiar scowl clouding her face. "What's
she
doing here?"

"Harriet's not feeling well this afternoon," Lottie informed her smoothly, taking a sip of tea from a bone china cup. "She has a touch of the ague. We needed a fourth for our table so I didn't see any harm in inviting our little friend here. She's been buried in that box ever since she arrived at Oakwylde. I dare say it's frightfully stuffy in there."

Allegra slumped into the empty chair, still glaring at the interloper. With her immaculate white gloves and exquisitely coiffed sable curls, the doll appeared to be looking down her patrician nose at them all. Lottie's doll leered back at her, her eye patch askew.

Hayden continued on his way, barricading himself in his study until curiosity got the best of him. He peered around the drawing room archway a short while later to find Allegra wagging a finger in the new doll's face. "I'll not have you hogging up all the tea cakes, you wicked girl," she scolded. "And any proper lady knows you never wear gloves while you're eating."

As Allegra proceeded to peel off the doll's gloves and thrust a crumbling jam cake into her dainty hand, dripping strawberry preserves down the front of her costly lavender frock, he felt an involuntary chuckle well up in his chest. As Lottie glanced at the door and lifted her teacup to him in a mocking toast, Hayden realized that she hadn't dug the neglected doll out of its trunk for Allegra.

She had done it for him.

* * *

By the next week both Lottie and Allegra had abandoned all pretense of lessons while Hayden had abandoned all pretense of believing they were still having lessons. When they decided to celebrate a rare appearance of the sun one morning by dragging Lottie's hobbyhorse out to the drive, Hayden lounged on the front stoop of the manor to watch, his eyes shamelessly drinking in his wife's every move.

The wheeled contraption was designed to be propelled by the rider straddling its wooden frame and taking long gliding strides until the vehicle reached a hill steep enough to coast down. It's wooden wheels had been fashioned for paved garden paths, not cobbled drives, so at the moment poor Miss Dimwinkle was rattling past at a pace guaranteed to jar her teeth from her head. Lottie and Allegra ran along on either side of her, laughing and shouting encouragement.

As they disappeared over a hill, Hayden leaned back on his elbows and turned his face to the sun, basking in its warmth. The fine, windy day seemed determined to prove that spring might come late to this corner of Cornwall, but it was well worth the wait. The air smelled of warming earth and things growing wild on the moor. Tender wisps of greenery were beginning to sprout on the branches of trees one would have sworn were dead only a few days ago. A snowy blanket of hawthorn blossoms draped every hill, while the cliffs were coming alive in a blaze of bluebells, sea campion and gorse. The colonies of young kittiwakes roosting in their sheltering crags heralded spring's arrival with their chiming calls.

The hobbyhorse reappeared, this time with Lottie astride it and Harriet and Allegra trotting after her. Lottie's strong, lithe legs soon propelled the contraption into a fast clip. As she reached the top of the hill, she settled her weight on its frame and went sailing down the drive, shrieking with laughter. Her bonnet flew out behind her, bound only by its velvet ribbons. Frowning, Hayden sat up, unnerved by her fearless flight.

Before he could call out a warning, the hobbyhorse struck a rough stone and went bouncing off the drive and into the grass. Lottie's eyes widened.

As she went hurtling toward a grassy bank, Hayden came to his feet. He was off the stoop and sprinting down the drive before Lottie even hit the clump of earth that sent her flying head over heels through the air.

As he ran, Hayden was nearly blinded by a stark image of Lottie lying utterly still in the grass, her neck twisted at an unnatural angle as the roses faded from her cheeks.

He reached her crumpled form at the same time as Harriet and Allegra. They knelt across from him in a puddle of skirts as he gathered Lottie's warm body into his arms, gripped by icy panic. "Lottie! Lottie! Can you hear me?"

Her eyes slowly fluttered open. She blinked up at him. "Of course I can hear you. You're shouting directly into my ear, aren't you?"

As a teasing smile dimpled the downy curve of her cheek, Hayden was torn between kissing her and shaking her senseless.

Keenly aware of Harriet and Allegra's avid scrutiny, he had to content himself with scolding her. "You careless little fool, what did you think you were doing? You could have broken your bloody neck."

Across from him, Allegra's eyes widened with horrified delight. Realizing it was the first time he'd ever cursed in front of his daughter, Hayden added, "Damn it all."

Lottie wiggled to a sitting position in his arms, but made no attempt to extricate herself from them. "Don't be silly. It's hardly the first tumble I've taken on this thing. You should have seen poor George the week Sterling brought it home from Germany. He took a dive right into a patch of thistles and couldn't sit down for a week."

Hayden hauled her to her feet, still glowering at her. "If I catch you pulling another stunt like that, you won't be able to sit down for a week either."

Harriet and Allegra exchanged a scandalized look.

The hobbyhorse was lying in an ungainly heap a few feet away in the grass. Lottie moved to rescue it.

As she rolled it back toward the drive, Hayden rested his hands on his hips. "Surely you're not going to get back on that contraption after it almost killed you."

"I most certainly am," she retorted. Awicked light dawned in her eyes. "Unless, of course, you'd care to take it for a whirl."

Hayden couldn't let such a challenge pass. "I've got an even better idea."

He marched over to her. She squealed in surprise as he closed his hands around her trim waist and lifted her, setting her sidesaddle on the narrow wooden seat. She clutched at the handlebars to keep her balance. Before she could protest, he threw one long leg over the vehicle's frame, reached around her to close his hands over hers on the handlebars and began to propel the hobbyhorse forward with long, powerful strides. When they reached the top of the next steep incline, he sank down on the seat behind Lottie and stuck his legs straight out before them, sending the vehicle hurtling down the hill at a breakneck pace.

Lottie's terrified squeals quickly became screams of laughter. Harriet and Allegra pelted along behind them for several steps before finally giving up the chase. Then there was only the wind in his hair, the sun in his face, and Lottie's lush, warm body tucked against his.

Hayden had driven his bay across the moor a hundred times since Justine's death, attempting to outpace the shadows of the past. But with Lottie in his arms, he felt as if he wasn't just running away from something, but racing toward something.

Unfortunately, that something proved to be a ditch.

He tugged frantically at the handlebars, but the hobbyhorse continued to shoot straight for the ditch. "Why isn't it steering?" he shouted, fighting to be heard over the rush of the wind.

"Steering?" Lottie shouted back over her shoulder. "What steering?"

Thinking he'd surely misheard her, he tried again. "How do I steer the confounded thing?"

Given the mounting gravity of their situation, Lottie sounded entirely too cheerful as she bellowed back at him, "If its inventor had bothered to equip it with steering, do you think I would have crashed the first time?"

There was no more time to debate the inventor's lack of foresight. The ditch was only a foot away from snagging their front wheel. Wrapping his arms around Lottie's waist, Hayden launched them both off of the hobbyhorse. As they went flying through the air, he curled his body around hers, determined to bear the brunt of their landing.

The next thing Hayden knew, his head was being cradled against something seductively soft and a woman was crooning his name. He opened his eyes a fraction of an inch only to discover that the something soft was Lottie. He was stretched out across her lap, his head cradled against her bosom. It was such a pleasant sensation he rather wished he could stay there all day.

"Oh, Hayden, I feel terrible! If you hadn't been so smug, I would have warned you about the steering. I never meant for you to take such a nasty tumble." She stroked his brow, her fingers tenderly sifting through the vexatious lock of hair that always hung in his eyes. "Can you hear me, you poor dear?"

"Of course I can hear you," he murmured, gazing up at her through his lashes. "You're crooning in my ear, aren't you?"

She stood up abruptly, dumping him unceremoniously to the ground.

"Ow!" Rubbing the back of his head, he sat up and gave her a wounded look. "I'm certainly glad the turf is soft here."

"So am I," she snapped, avoiding his eyes as she brushed tufts of grass from her skirt. "If you'd have broken your neck, the gossips would have blamed me and I would have been known as the 'Murderous Marchioness' for the rest of my life." She sniffed. "Or at least until I found a more affable husband."

As she turned to march away from him, her skirts swishing with indignation, Hayden sprang to his feet and grabbed her by the hand, tugging her around to face him. "Nothing's sacred to you, is it?"

When she realized he was laughing down at her instead of scowling, the wary look in her eyes deepened. "Only the things that deserve to be."

As Hayden reached to gently pluck a blade of grass from her hair, he wondered what might have happened in that moment had they been any other man and woman standing on that sun-drenched hill. If they had met under different circumstances in a different lifetime. If he had been allowed to tenderly woo her before making her his bride.

They might have found out if the mayblossom-scented breeze hadn't carried to their ears the rattle of wooden wheels on cobblestone. Hayden frowned, shading his eyes against the sun's glare as he peered up the hill. A carriage was just turning into the drive, its lacquered shell gleaming like a raven's wing.

Visitors to Oakwylde Manor were hardly a common occurrence. He hadn't extended a single invitation to any of his neighbors since the day Justine had been laid to rest.

The hobbyhorse forgotten, he and Lottie hurried up the hill to join Harriet and Allegra. The carriage was just rattling to a halt in front of the manor. A footman rushed forward to throw open the door and a tiny creature emerged from the vehicle's shadowy interior, dressed from bonnet to boots in stark, unrelenting black.