Season for Scandal (21 page)

“The lady has found the man she wants,” Edmund ground out. He wished he didn’t feel the old twinge of guilt as he said this. “There is no need for your presence.”

Jane piped up. “Oh, I’m sure this fellow is decent enough for a—”

“The lady is taken.” Edmund glared at Turner, but the eyeholes of his mask were still misaligned, and the black cloth probably received more of his fury than Turner’s own gaze.

As Edmund turned Jane away, she trod on his feet. “I beg your pardon,” she said sweetly. “I lost count of the steps while you were talking to that gentleman.”

“I sincerely doubt he’s a gentleman.”

“Edm—” Jane pressed her lips together, cutting off his name just in time. “What do you mean? We’ve just met this person.”

He raised his index finger to indicate that his reply must wait, then led her from the dancing area to a quieter alcove.

When he looked over his shoulder, Turner, turbaned and smiling, was right behind them.

So. He wanted a confrontation in Jane’s hearing. He wanted to break their peace, then flit away with no consequences. Never would Jane suspect that this was her favored Bellamy, or that he was really an Irish traitor.

Never must Jane suspect that Edmund’s father would have been one, too, but for a whisker of fate.

He turned to face the man at his heels, wondering if he could mask his words as surely as his face. “Perhaps I have reason to mistrust this person.”

“Aye, that’s so.” Turner’s teeth flashed bright in the candle glow. “And perhaps I’ve reason to resent this one. Perhaps we’ve known each other for decades.”

“Perhaps we have, and we’re none too glad to see one another again.”

Jane folded her arms and looked from one of them to another, but Edmund hardly noticed. He had Turner in his sights now, a Turner that no one knew by another name; that no one loved and admired. Finally, he could speak the truth.

“But perhaps,” said Turner behind his mask, “we must, because we’ve an old score to settle.”

“Perhaps the score ought to have been settled twenty years ago, if someone hadn’t been far too lenient.” The masks made Edmund reckless, the words slipping out as quickly as though they’d been straining against their bonds for some time. “Perhaps I am
not
so lenient, and my patience is running out.”

Turner grinned, as though he found this statement delightful. “Perhaps your patience has nothing to do with the matter, as you have far more to lose than I do.”

Slightly, so slightly, he tilted his head toward Jane. His smile grew.

One may smile, and smile, and be a villain
. Hamlet had spoken those words when he learned of the treachery of his uncle. The man who had brought about his father’s death, then slipped into his mother’s bed.

An apt verse. Very apt indeed.

“Perhaps I do not,” Edmund countered. “Your secrets are not a matter of life and death to me. But to one who narrowly avoided a sentence of—”

“Perhaps you’re forgetting how many reputations depend on yours.” Turner’s eyes had narrowed, but his damned wide smile remained bright as ever.

Jane had gone still during this exchange, her eyes darting from Edmund to Turner. Then she lifted her chin. “
Perhaps
”—she laid heavy stress on the word—“the two of you would like me to leave you alone to finish your conversation. The waltz is still going on, if you’d like to take to the floor with one another.”

She turned on her heel, but before she could take a step, Turner caught her hand. He bowed over it, his lips touching her short glove with dreadful familiarity. “Dear lass, there’s no one for me but you tonight. And if I can’t have you?” He straightened up, shrugging elaborately. “Well, there’s not much point in staying to play games, is there?”

With a nod to Edmund and another bow to Jane, he twirled his cloak around himself and strode off into the crowd. Quickly as that. Gone.

Edmund should have relaxed. Now that Turner had slipped away. Now,
now
, before Jane grew even more suspicious. But his heart was hammering, and his stomach clenched on acid sharp as a blade.
Not much point in staying to play games
, his old tutor had said. As if his every word wasn’t a lie. The game was what Turner lived for, and had for decades.

“I’m sorry about that, Jane.” Edmund squeezed his eyes shut, drew up the corners of his mouth. Around the silk of his demi-mask, he hoped it would somehow look like a smile. “Silly of me. Don’t know what got into me, arguing with a stranger.”

“Please. I am not an idiot. He was no more a stranger to you than I am.” She craned her neck, probably trying to locate the red turban in the crowd. “Who is he, Edmund? Are you in some trouble?”

“Bad investments? Angry mistress? Nothing of the sort.” Edmund spoke lightly. The dreadful moment was falling further away, and it was easier to force a smile.

“I didn’t think you had those types of trouble. But there are many others.”

“True.”

“And?
Are
you in trouble of a different sort? Edmund—is everything all right?”

Damn. It was so difficult to dodge one’s way through a conversation with Jane. She was quick to block his every evasion with another question.

“It’s fine,” he lied. “I just got caught up in the argument. Couldn’t bear to let him have you, whoever he was.”

“You’re not going to tell me what that was all about.” She sighed. “Edmund, that’s idiotic. You can trust me with whatever is wrong. I’ll always”—she paused—“care for you.”

So she said. But he was a man of verse and wispy compliments. He, better than most people on earth, knew how little words could mean.

He realized what Jane’s pause had meant; that she had bitten back a warmer word than
care
. But he also knew that no love was safe.

If he told Jane the truth about Turner, she’d piece together the rest in an instant. The old revolution; the treason that could have dragged down the family. The suspicious death of Edmund’s father; the questionable parentage of his sisters—once the Pandora’s box was opened, there was no end to the poison that would leak from it.

And then Jane would hate him. Not only for who he was, but for tying her to him under false pretenses. Though she had never repeated her declaration of love, her feelings for him were the truest he had to cling to. He could not bear to destroy them.

“Please don’t worry about it.” He kept his voice cheerful, though his insides wrenched with pain. “Please. I’ll take care of you, Jane, and everything will be fine.”

So many lies. If he were truly a naval officer, he would be court-martialed. Somehow, made to account for his wrongdoing.

That was Turner’s goal, wasn’t it? The destruction of trust. Yet Edmund could see no way around it; no way through; he had no idea where to go next.

Again, Jane sighed, and Edmund braced himself for a scathing protest.

Instead, she slid her hand up his forearm, then tucked it in the crook of his elbow. “Let’s walk out in the garden. There’s a full moon.”

The moon hung heavy and low, a silver ball lighting the garden paths. It turned the hedges to gray lace; it threw shadows in every corner.

There was darkness aplenty for those who sought it. It just wasn’t in the places Jane had expected.

She led Edmund to a bench beneath a trellis, its vines and blooms long since withered by cold. Sheltered from view and from the chilliest breezes by a wall of sharp-sweet evergreens, they could be alone here. And maybe she could get at the truth.

“Sit, please,” she said.

“After you.” He dusted the stone bench with his gloved hands.

“Always so polite,” she muttered. More loudly, she said, “No—please. You sit. I need to stand for a bit.”

He accepted this with a shrug and seated himself, then looked at her expectantly. “What’s this about?”

As if he didn’t know.

But she wouldn’t bother asking him again. Since he had hardly wanted to share smaller, bothersome truths, he would certainly not reveal a larger one. Not through words could she convince him to trust her. Every day, Edmund knit them up like lace, tossed them away like gilt paper. Words were beautiful, but frail.

Jane was neither. She was strong enough to share any burden he might be carrying. And she would show him through action that she wanted him; that though he wouldn’t trust her with his secrets, he
could
, because she would again trust him with her body.

She just had to think of the right way to do this. Not since the ball at Alleyneham House had they behaved as man and wife.

Summoning her thoughts, she concocted the perfect wife: confident, passionate, saucy, and sweet. She let this self fall over her like a second costume, a cloak over her tight kirtle and full skirts. It warmed her. When she closed the small distance between herself and Edmund, her walk was slow and sinuous.

“What do you fancy, milord?” Her accent was of the gutter, her voice throaty.

Wenchy, just as he wanted. All part of the game.

No other footfalls sounded this far from the house; there was nothing at this distant corner of the garden but night and sky and the faint scent of evergreen, the only plants that hadn’t curled away for the winter. Was it cold outside? She had no idea; she waited, rouge-darkened lips slightly parted, to see whether he would play along. All he need do was stretch out a hand, and she would go to him.

He stretched out a hand.

She paused, just out of reach. “How much, then?”

“How much . . . what?” His eyes were so intent on her that his ears seemed to be running a bit behind.

“How much do you want, and how much will you give?”

He shifted on the stone bench, rearranging the tails of his coat. “Well. Since you’re asking—everything.”

“And?”

“Everything.”

She plucked a sprig of evergreen, held it to her nose, then handed it to him. “You mustn’t have much, if you’re willing to give it all away.” It seemed right to drop her serving-wench voice; to throw a bit of crispness at him.

“I must want a great deal,” he answered quietly. “If I offer all I have for it.”

He dropped the fragrant needles, now crushed, and reached for her again. This time his hand caught hers, and he tugged her closer until she toppled onto his lap.

“Everything, Jane. I want—” He cut himself off. A shudder ran through his body; his arms encircled her.

“More than you can say,” she ventured, and he nodded.

She wanted to know what that was, but she wouldn’t ask any more. They both had their secrets: his, some darkness in his family’s past. And hers, that she had never succeeded in banishing her feelings as she wished. Maybe that was why she hadn’t been able to play a part since her wedding: every day, she inhabited the role of someone who was satisfied with her coolheaded marriage.

“You can have it,” she said. “You can have everything, Edmund.”

In an instant, Jane was straddling Edmund on the bench, her knees to either side of his legs on the stone, her skirts rucked up.

“Your knees will be cold,” he said. Why was he talking? Especially when her hands were doing things that a recently virgin baroness should never have imagined.

“I don’t feel a thing,” she murmured.

“I can change that.” His hands began to do things, too.

First they lifted her enough to arrange the broadcloth of his coat beneath her knees. Well. She wouldn’t enjoy herself properly if her knees were cold or sore.

But then, onward. She found the fall of his breeches and slipped the buttons free, and he returned the favor by exploring in her bodice. With a thumb, he reached beneath the edge of the fabric and scraped lightly over her skin. His other hand gripped her waist, but when she steadied herself by holding on to his shoulders, he sent that other hand exploring, too. Palming her breasts through the fabric, catching a nipple between the lengths of two fingers and tugging, lightly, until it tightened and she pressed herself into the cradle of his hand.

“More?”

“Yes. More.” Her eyes fell closed, and with her breasts in his hands, her naked flesh against his, she was the most erotic sight he could ever have imagined. Abandoned to pleasure, and finding it with him. Moonlight on her skin and in her hair; shadows between them to hide the depths of their desire. Surely there was nothing so sweet, so hot, so right as this woman, and he could not imagine how he could ever have thought her anything but beautiful.

He kissed the curve of her neck, let his fingers play with her nipples until she shivered. The skin was petal-soft, yet intriguingly firm, and he learned along with her what sort of touch she liked. They drifted in a pool of pleasure, letting their bodies wake to it, letting it build.

Jane let out a gasp; her hands cradled his face, their tongues in a tangle. She rolled her hips against his in unmistakable invitation, and he reached between their bodies to finish loosening his fall, to free himself and slide into her wet heat.

For a long moment, they were still, letting the closeness sink through them. Poised at the brink of sharp, shared pleasure, if only they were ready to dive.

They held each other, sinking and rising slowly at first. But soon it wasn’t slow anymore, and then there wasn’t even any thought; just heat and evergreen scent and the perfect shape of Jane. The pool of pleasure became wave-lashed and wild, its tide tugging them with greater and greater force until ecstasy washed over them like a gale, leaving them spent and gasping, shuddering in the aftermath.

It had only taken a few minutes. It had been the best few minutes of his life.

A wind Edmund hadn’t felt before whispered against his neck and throat, blowing at the perspiration there, pleasantly cool on his skin. Jane’s head found the hollow of his shoulder and rested there, as though he were everything solid in the world.

His heart gave a hearty thump of approval.

His heart. Not, for once, his ever-angry stomach. No, his roiling body had calmed in this honey-slow moment, and it was just him and Jane and the brutal joy of togetherness.

Not pleasure in having pleased her. Not pleasure in having won her. Just pleasure in . . . her.