Scandal (20 page)

“Good day?” He drew back a bit at the formality of her greeting. “Why do you greet me so? And what the blazes is going on? Where are all the people? Did I miss the judging? For if I did, I am truly sorry, I had every intention—”

“You did not err.”

“Then what—” But in the next instant he understood. He drew himself up, the toes of the black boots he wore snapping at the deck in disbelief. “You told me the wrong time.”

“I wanted to do this on my own.”

“Why?”

“Because it is a journey I started on my own and one I wished to finish that way.”

And what could he say to that? Nothing, apparently, though he toyed with the notion of telling her how disappointed he felt. He’d had an interest in the outcome, too.

“Did you win?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“What?” he asked in horror. All that they’d gone through, all the work that she’d put into her sails…

She looked past him, out at the water and in the same direction where she’d been staring before. He followed her gaze, and it was then that he realized she stared at a ship moored on the next pier.

“She’s called the
Victoria,
after the wife of the man who designed and built her.”

“Someone built a ship?”

She nodded, still not looking at him. “The rules allowed for people to invent whatever they wished, but I never thought—I never imagined—someone would enter a ship they’d designed.”

He lifted a hand to her shoulder again. “Anna, I am terribly sorry.”

She seemed to startle beneath his touch. “No, ’tis I who am sorry. You should have been here. You are as much a part of this as Molly and Charlie and all the others. I should have realized that last eve, only as I looked around your study, as I stared at your wealth and then later spied your servants, I became frightened.”

Anna? Frightened? He didn’t think she knew the meaning of the word.

“You are a duke. A peer of the realm, and while I suspected you to be a gentleman, I never once dreamed, I never imagined—well, perhaps I imagined—but I never really believed you might be…”

A duke.

The words were unspoken, but he heard them nonetheless.

“The thought of your being a nobleman,” she said, “of being a member of the bloody
ton,
of living a life of balls and parties and impossible wealth… well, it seemed so implausible as to be laughable.”

“And this frightens you?”

The look in her eyes hit him so hard he almost took a step back.

“It has scared me half to death.”

“But why? It means nothing, the life I live. It is simply the way things are, much as you once said to me about your life in the rookery.”

She began to shake her head, and that was when Rein has his first inkling of the depth of this trouble. There was something in her gaze—a hint of the same fears he’d seen in her eyes yesterday, a look that had worried him all night.

“You cannot compare the two, Rein. You and I both know that. There are duties and obligations that go along with being who you are. One day you will be expected to take a wife. I tried last eve to glean how that would make me feel… goodness knows I tried, to understand, to comprehend what it would be like… but in the end the thought was too horrible to contemplate.”

“Then I shall never marry.”

Anna shook her head, the next words she had to say seeming to be difficult for her to speak. “I love you, Rein. Lord, if you only knew how much. But I’m wise enough to know that someday you will want an heir, and when that time comes, it will kill me to watch it happen.”

“Anna—”

“No, Rein. I thought I could be your mistress, told myself that it would be easy to live such a life, but I told myself a lie. I have too much pride for that now. Honor, you might call it. You taught me that, taught me that I have self-worth. And the irony of it is, the lessons you taught me made me realize that becoming your mistress would be beneath me now.”

“Anna,” he tried again.

“I’ve made my decision,” she cut him off. “I love you, but I can’t be with you.”

Chapter Twenty-four

Anna saw Rein’s eyes widen, saw emotions spin through them. “What are you saying?”

“I am…” She searched for words, knowing—oh, lord—knowing that her next words would be hard. “I’m breaking it off.”

“But… you can’t.”

“Yes, Rein, I can.”

“But you agreed—”

“That was before.”

“Nothing has changed,” he insisted.

“Yes, Rein, it has.”

He looked so taken aback, so thunderstruck, she found herself attempting to explain. “I told you once that I only ever rode in a carriage three times. Once on my way to London, and once when I traveled to visit my hometown, and that is true, but what I did not tell you was what happened to me when I returned home all those years ago.”

“Anna, whatever it is, it cannot be—”

“Rein, please, let me finish,” she said, reaching up and clutching his hand.

She thought he might ignore her request, but his green eyes held her own, the stubbornness in them gentling until at last he nodded.

“When I’d left to come to London, I vowed one day I’d return to Porthollow. The days I spent in St. Giles only made the urge grow. Porthollow became a dream. I’d been happy there before; I knew I would be again. But more than that, I wanted to return to Elliot.”

“Elliot?” Rein asked, rocking back on his heels.

“Aye, Elliot. I’d fancied him for years, thought, mayhap, he fancied me, too. Childish, silly dreams,” she said to reassure Rein, for he looked suddenly jealous. “I ought to have outgrown such feelings long before I turned sixteen. I didn’t. In my mind, Elliot became the boy that would rescue me from St. Giles. I even saved the coin to post him a letter. He posted one back. My heart soared. He talked of Porthollow and it only made my longing to return all the greater.

“So I scrimped and saved and somehow managed to gather the fare to ride post back home. I packed my satchel to the brim with all my most precious belongings. I didn’t intend to come back to St. Giles. Elliot would rescue me, and if not him, then I’d beg someone else to take me in. I said goodbye to my grandfather—he was better then, more lucid and self-sustaining—and off I went.”

“Obviously,” Rein said, “things did not go as planned.”

He didn’t say it with sarcasm; indeed, when she looked up at him, there was such sympathy in his eyes, for a moment she couldn’t go on. Rein. Her handsome and princely Rein, if he only knew how hard he made this for her.

“Aye,” she said. “The trip was a disaster from the start. I was forced to sit next to a woman who took up most of the seat, and who kept falling asleep and leaning on me. One passenger had a penchant for eating onions. Another carried his pig in his lap for a large part of the journey, and if you’ve never seen what happens when a pig becomes loose in a coach full of people, I assure you, ’tis not amusing. A long, arduous journey it was, and when I arrived, my one good dress, the dress I’d spent hours stitching by hand, had pig dung and onion juice all over it.” She smiled bitterly. “I must have looked and smelled a sight.”

“Anna, there is no need to continue. I can envision what happened next.”

“No, Rein,” she said with a snap of her chin and a sudden burning in her eyes. And oddly enough it wasn’t shame or horror or humiliation that made her eyes fill with tears, it was rage. “You cannot possibly understand what it was like. The wife of one of my father’s closest friends all but ran in the other direction when she realized who I was. People looked at me in horror and dismay and I think even a little bit of fear.
I
was what they could all become if fate dealt them an unkind blow.”

“Anna—”

She held up a hand that shook with anger. “But the worst was seeing Elliot. His family owned the mercantile and when I came into the place, likely with the sun and the moon and stars in my eyes, it was clear in an instant that my childish dreams were just that: dreams.” She looked down at the sparkling water, her hands clenching so that she could feel her calluses. “When customers came in who didn’t know me, he pretended I was a stranger, even tried to sell a cream for my hands.” She held her fingers out. “They were so worn and ruined. I had just started to push a barrow back then, you see, and my palms had sores on them.”

She met his gaze again, her hand dropping back to her side. “I remember what it was like, the expression on those customers’ faces. They looked at me like I was a pauper, one who’d found her way into a store only to escape the cold, or so they thought. They didn’t want me there. Not Elliot, not the town’s people, not anyone. I shan’t forget that moment. I shall never forget what it felt like to be an outsider, to hear the titters of the women my age, to listen to the matrons who insisted Elliot ignore me so that he could assist them instead.”

“That was long ago, Anna.”

Anna nodded. “Aye. And I know that mistresses are accepted in certain circles, but there will always be those looks—the looks of pity and condemnation, and, from members of society, scorn and derision. I don’t want that—not for me and not for our children.”

“Children,” he said. His eyes lit from within. “But I would take care of you, and our children, if we were so blessed.”

The look of love he gave her, the way he reached up and stroked the line of her jaw, brought fresh tears to her eyes. Yes, he would be there for her, for them. She had no doubt. But that didn’t erase the fear, nor the worries, nor her conviction that in the end it would prove too much. It would hurt too much, just those looks.

“Rein, please. Try to understand. I love you. Too much to put us through the eventual turmoil that would come.”

“Then what do you want to do?”

She almost said,
Marry me,
almost gave in to the riptide of longing that made her heart ache to say the words. “I don’t know,” she said in genuine anguish. “I just know that I cannot become your mistress.”

“Is it me? Is there something I’ve done to put you off staying with me?”

“No.” She shook her head.

He turned on his heel and began to walk away.

“Where are you going?”

He turned back to face her, his face so full of anger, she found herself stepping back.

“I am leaving. Obviously there is something more, something you do not wish to tell me.”

“No, Rein, there is not.”

“The least you could do is be honest with me.”

“I
am
being honest.”

“You mean to tell me that you, a woman who has lived her life in one of London’s worst slums, are afraid to believe in me, in our love?”

God help her, that was exactly the problem.

He waited for her to answer, green eyes nearly as stabbing as a sharp-tipped leaf. She nodded.

“Poppycock,” he said, turning.

“Rein, no. Do not leave.”

He turned back to face her again, his hands clenched at his sides. “Then be honest with me,” he said again. “If you do not find my intelligence on par with yours, you should have told me so directly.”

Intelligence? What the blazes…?

But then she knew, knew with a lurch in her heart. “No, Rein. That has nothing to do with it—”

He turned away again, she moved to follow him. “You are not a dunderhead—”

He reached the steps to the main deck; she followed him down.

“Your Grace,” Captain Jones cried, whether in a greeting or a plea, Anna didn’t know.

“Rein,” she called again, but by now he’d reached the gangplank, stepping upon the swaying board without a backward glance. Anna stopped as she reached the opening, looked down onto the dock.

And spied the most elegant, elaborate carriage she’d ever seen. For a moment the sight of that carriage held her rooted to the spot. Glossy brown in color, it held such a shine it looked almost black. Six dappled gray horses pulled it, two postilions riding the horses, just as they had last night. Only this was not the carriage she’d ridden home in, this was the ducal carriage, more grand, more elaborate, more… foreign.

Her feet suddenly wouldn’t move.

Let him go,
a voice urged.

I can’t,
her heart cried out.

But she must. Her mind, the part of it that was always so careful to reason things out, told her that to embark upon such a journey would be madness. Society would not welcome her into its fold. Indeed, such a scandal would fuel a storm of gossip that would see them both hurt. Nor did she want to immerse herself in the lifestyle of a mistress, most especially not a ducal mistress. It would be a public life, despite the lack of a ring, one reported on by periodicals, characterized in satirical drawings, drawings that would likely portray her as a sultry vixen and Rein the stupidly smitten lord. But most of all, the thing she feared absolutely was taking the step he asked, only to see their children suffer.

Rein reached the carriage. The tiger stepped down and opened the door. Rein paused, his back to her, as if waiting for her to call to him.

Don’t leave me.

She shook her head as if someone had said the words aloud.

He lurched into the carriage. Anna found herself taking a small step. The door snapped closed. Her shoulders slumped as a ball of emotion entwined itself around her heart—hopelessness, fear, longing—it swelled within her, making her eyes fill with tears as she watched his dappled gray horses pull away with tosses of their heads and a jangle of their traces.

It was either the most daft thing she’d ever done, or the wisest.

Chapter Twenty-five

It was not easy living with the repercussions of a decision made out of fear, especially when she knew that decision had hurt Rein.

She loved him. Like as not, she’d never love another.

“So you let him go.”

Anna turned on her bench, surprised to see Molly behind her. Her friend never came to her rooftop, preferring to keep her feet firmly rooted on the ground.

“Freddie told me you bade him goodbye.”

“Freddie?” Anna asked.

“Mr. Stills. The Runner what was keeping an eye on your man.”

Her man.
No, society’s man. The Crown’s man. Never
her
man.

“I had no choice,” Anna said. “You of all people should understand why. He wanted me to be his mistress. How many times have we made fun of the fancy pieces what come to market? How many times have we sworn not to become like them?”

“What in the blazes makes you think you’d be like them?” Molly asked, striding forward. “Lord, Anna, you’re nothing like those women.”

Anna shook her head, looking out over the horizon. “No, Molly, I’m not, not at first I wouldn’t be,” she said.

Her friend knelt by her, clutching her hands as she stared into her eyes. “Don’t think like that, Anna. Don’t be afraid to grasp what he offers. A life of luxury, of love, for no matter what you might think, that man loves you.”

“I know.”

“Then seize what he’s offering. Lord, Anna, you’ll be a mistress of a duke. As near to a lady as you’ll ever be.”

“But don’t you see?” Anna asked. “I won’t be a lady. Our children will never be lords. One day that will come between us, whether through my resentment or his disappointment in not having a legitimate heir, it will happen.”

Molly didn’t say anything. When Anna met her friend’s gaze, there was disillusionment in her green eyes.

“I can’t believe you, of all people, are too afeared to do this.”

“No?” Anna asked.

“If you loved him, you wouldn’t be afraid.”

“Easy for you to say, since you’re in love with a Bow Street Runner.”

“I wouldn’t care if he was the bleedin’ prince of Wales. If I loved him enough, I’d do whatever it took to be with him.”

“Even if it meant stepping into a world that scared you half to death? Because it does, Molly. I can’t imagine socializing with his lordly friends. Even if it meant losing that bit of yourself that was yours? That part of you that could say, do,
be
anything you like? I won’t be a lady, but I’ll still be judged, branded a tart, a whore. At least this way I retain my dignity.”

“Does it matter what people call you?”

“What society thinks would matter to Rein.”

Molly snorted. “You’re wrong.” She shook her head, her mouth tipping down. “But what disappoints me the most, what makes me wonder if I ever really knew you, is that you’ve always claimed you were better than the tarts what tittered behind their fancy fans at us maids. Here’s your opportunity to prove that a woman like that can behave like a lady, and yet you’re too blinded by fear to take on the task.”

“Molly—”

“No, Anna, I understand. You’re a coward.”

“Molly, you’re being too harsh.”

“No, I’m trying to be your friend.”

Anna closed her eyes, knowing in her heart of hearts that Molly spoke the truth.

Coward, coward, coward.

But she could see no way around that fear.

Molly stood, letting go of her hands. “See you at market on the morrow?”

Anna opened her eyes, nodded.

“Perhaps you’ll be less afraid then.”

The glass made a satisfying tinkle as it broke apart in the grate, a few crystals landing before the fire, glittering like the embers whose reflection they mimicked.

She’d left him.

Damn her. Damn all women. He had guarded himself against caring for women in the past, only to realize now that he did so out of fear of them not loving him back.

Imbecile.

Fool.

His father’s voice ran through his mind with the cadence of a raging river. He’d fought such insecurities before, had told himself he was being an even bigger fool for letting such thoughts enter his head, only he couldn’t seem to shake them. Not now. Not ever.

Useless young pup.

His fears played with him, taunting him to the point that he poured himself another glass of brandy, only to stop himself at the last moment. He would not do it. He would not drink himself into oblivion as he had so many times in his past—his drunken stupor having resulted in pranks no sober man would engage in. When his cousin had died, he had stopped. He would not let Anna’s loss start the cycle again. What he needed to do was think… think of ways to convince Anna that he was worth the risk, that as much as he wanted to, marriage would be an even bigger mistake than taking her on as his mistress.

Ought to have thrown you to the bloody dogs when you were born.

No,
Rein thought, shaking off the words like a fox shook off droplets off water. He would not let his father win this battle. He would not let Anna reduce him to the man he was before. No one would have that kind of control over him again, that much he’d learned during his time in St. Giles.

He just wished he knew what the blazes to do.

The next day, she’d lost none of her fear. And when Rein sent her a note at market, the other maids looking at her strangely when a liveried servant delivered the letter on a sparkling silver tray, she returned it unopened. What was the daft man thinking, to keep after her like he was? Didn’t he understand she’d made up her mind?

Apparently not, for when she arrived home a few days later, it was to spy his fancy brown carriage out in front of her building, every chimney sweep, costermonger and coal porter huddled around it as Rein spoke to the crowd, laughed with them, smiled. She watched from a distance, darted back around the corner she’d rounded so that she could peek around the edge and watch.

A duke.

She shook her head, marveling. He didn’t act like a duke. Indeed, he joked and jested with the crowd as he waited for her to return.

Anna backed her cart in the other direction and entered her building from behind, then used the rooftop route to gain access to her rooms. When he knocked on the door an hour later, she refused to see him. He went away eventually, Anna’s heart breaking all the more at the note he’d left behind. She hadn’t opened it. Molly had.

I love you. Don’t be afraid.

Rein.

She’d tipped her head back when Molly had read her the words, had felt tears fill her eyes.

I love you. Don’t be afraid.

But she was. Desperately. After Molly’s little speech, she could admit that now. Her mind had chewed over her friend’s words, tumbled them, assimilated them, and in the end, judged them to be true.

Afraid. Their future children had nothing to do with it.

“What are you going to do?”

“Go to market,” Anna had said, even though included in the note was a draft for twenty pounds, the money he owed her for living with them, though he hadn’t stayed for the full month.

“You could try living with him for a time,” Molly offered.

Anna nodded, going to the window in her attic and peering out. She could. The idea held more and more appeal with each day that passed.

“Anna?”

“I’m thinking on it,” Anna answered.

A week went by, a week that left her in such misery Anna knew she had no choice. With a shaking hand she wrote:

Dear Sir,

If the offer is still open, I should like to accept your offer of protection.

Yours, Anna.

It meant the end of her ideals. It meant living a life she truly didn’t want to lead, but it would be better than not having Rein at all. She knew that now, too.

Rein read the note, his relief so great that he found himself running to his writing table.

Only as he lifted a quill to begin writing his reply, something stopped him.

It felt as if the floor dropped out from beneath Anna’s feet when she heard Rein’s voice from belowstairs.

“Mr. Brooks, it is I… Wroxly.”

“Don’t know no Wroxly,” her grandfather said in an angry voice.

“Mr. Hemplewilt,” Rein corrected.

“Don’t know no Hemplewilt, either.”

“But I’ve lived with you… helped you bathe—”

“Bathe. I will not bathe with you, you bloody bugger.”

“Grandfather,” she interrupted as she climbed down her ladder. “Do not fret. I know this gentleman.”

“You do?” her grandfather asked. And it was hard to say what pained her more, Grandfather’s increasingly broken mind, or seeing Rein standing before her.

You should be happy to see him, Anna,
she told herself.
Obviously, he’s pleased you agreed to become his mistress, at least judging by the look of happiness on his face.

She swallowed. “Grandfather, if you please, I should like a word with Mr.—” The words died. “A word with Wroxly,” she finished.

Her grandfather looked ready to protest, but something in her expression must have nudged into his foggy mind. “Of course, my dear. Of course,” he said rather vaguely, turning toward his partitioned-off room. And as he turned his back on them, Anna’s breathing quickened. She turned toward Rein. This was it, then, the moment she’d been dreading—yes, dreading, for this was a moment that would seal her fate.

“Rein, I—”

“No, Anna,” he said softly. “Do not say a word.” He came before her, reached out and gently took her hand, then slowly bent down on one knee.

Bent down on one knee?

“What are you doing?”

“Anna Brooks,” he began softly, reaching into his pocket for something… a ring, she saw—

And she knew.

Her breath caught. She knew what he was about to do.

“Would you do me the honor, the very great honor, of becoming my wife?”

It sounded as if she heard the words from underwater, as if they came at her through a cold and dense filter. The waves hit her again, though in a way wholly different than before. These waves made her stomach clench, made her feel ill.

Becoming my wife.

The three words hit her.

“Are you daft?”

His expression slowly changed.

“I cannot marry you.” She pulled her hand from his grasp, stepping back from him. “Only think what society would say should you wed someone as common as I.”

Slowly, he came to his feet, his tall form dwarfing her. “I assure you, having watched my cousin marry beneath him, I have thought long and hard of exactly what marriage to you would entail.”

And the formality of his words, the clipped way in which he spoke them, twisted at Anna’s heart like two fists were clenched around it.

“Rein, you cannot be thinking straight. I explained to you what happened to me all those years ago when I went back home. If I were to wed you, it would be just like that all over again. People would shun me, only I’ve a feeling it’d be much, much worse.”

She waited for a look of understanding to enter his eyes, for an expression of relief that she refused his suit.

All she saw was a bitter pain.

“You are refusing me.”

She nodded. “At least people will not accuse me of overstepping myself should I become your mistress. That, at least, would be expected.”

“Overstepping yourself,” he said, his words spoken in a monotone.

“Yes, overstepping myself.” As she stared up at him, her heart began to beat even harder than before, her chest heaving to keep up with her racing pulse.

“Overstepping yourself,” he said, straightening, his hand flicking up the pocket of his black jacket and tucking the ring inside.

A diamond. A large, oval diamond that sparkled like the purest of water split by sunlight.

Oh, lord.

But it was that ring, that precious, rare gem that made her straighten her own spine, made her hold firm as she said, “Rein, you do me a great honor—”

“But you find you must refuse my suit,” he finished for her.

He was angry. And hurt. And so very disappointed.

“Yes, I must,” she said. “You are not thinking clearly—”

“Oh, I beg to differ,” he said. “I am thinking more clearly than I ever have in my life. Indeed, for the first time, I find myself knowing something intuitively, and that something tells me that if you refuse to wed me, it is over between us.”

“Over?”

He nodded. “You yourself said it, Anna. You deserve far more than to be my mistress. Thus, if you refuse my hand, I refuse the offer of your company, as charming as it may be.”

He stepped away from her.

Anna felt as if her world tilted all over again. What was he saying?

But as he bowed to her, just a short bow, one that conveyed a polite disregard for all that had happened between them in the smart, almost sarcastic tip of his head, she knew.

“I wish you well, my dear.” And for a moment, just after he straightened, something flashed through his eyes, a look of such emotion, Anna would be hard-pressed to name just which emotions she had seen.

He turned away.

“Rein—”

He ignored her. She followed him for a step, only to stop just shy of the door. He closed that door in her face.

What had just happened? He couldn’t be breaking things off simply because she’d refused his hand in marriage.

She went to the window.

Marriage.

Dear God, he’d asked her to marry him.

And as Anna stared out at his elegant carriage—as she observed the livery on the baby-faced footman who opened the door just before Rein flung himself inside—she admitted that Molly had been right. Indeed, she’d been spectacularly right, because while becoming Rein’s mistress had filled Anna with fear, the thought of becoming his duchess filled her with downright terror.