Season for Scandal (25 page)

Well. She wasn’t forgotten by society anymore, was she? The thought brought a grim smile to her face.

As her cousin’s carriage brought her back to Xavier House, silent and shaded, she realized that she’d been wrong about the feel of scandal. It was nothing so light and bright as red silk; nothing so bracing as starched linen.

Being draped in scandal wasn’t even like wearing a sodden pelisse, suffocating and heavy, or a fussy, choking organdy such as those Jane’s mother used to choose for her.

In truth, it made her feel naked.

By the time she returned to Xavier House, Jane realized two dreadful things.

First: that the only attention she wanted was from the person she’d left.

Second: that, if her guess was right, the only doors that weren’t closed to her were the one she now entered, and the one through which she had left her husband.

Jane had always cared what people thought. She also cared that they didn’t think of her at all. But now— now she was an ingrate and a scandal, her indiscretion unknown but assumed. Kirkpatrick must have thrown her out for some reason, for who would leave lovely, kind, handsome, wonderful Lord Kirkpatrick?

A woman sick of his polite indifference, that was who.

Before her marriage, she’d been so good at playing a part. But the effort of being Lady Kirkpatrick, serene and cosseted and utterly useless, not even permitted to love—well, that had sapped her. She had no energy now for other roles.

“Tea, please,” she requested from a servant as she settled herself in Louisa’s morning room. The countess was out paying calls, Xavier was trapped in Parliament, and Jane was alone in this sunny room, now gone gray in the weak afternoon light.

A maid entered to light a lamp, then a branch of candles, from the low fire in the hearth. Holding up her hands before the tiny flames, Jane heard a footman enter with a tray. It was a relief to feel something so normal as hungry.

“My lady,” whispered the maid as the footman set down the tray. “You’ve a caller. I just saw him speaking with the butler.”

“Kirkpatrick?” Senseless for her heart to leap in that fashion, when she’d sent him away so decisively the day before.

“Can’t say, I’m sure, my lady. He’s ever so handsome, though.” The young woman ducked her head, then both servants bowed from the room.

Kirkpatrick.

Triumph rose inside her body like a small sun, warming her from the inside out. What did words matter? Only action would prove how he felt. And if he kept coming back for her, maybe he cared that she had left. Enough to ignore her angry words. Enough to be able to tell that they
were
angry, even when spoken with determined calm.

She arranged herself gracefully in one of Louisa’s tapestry-covered chairs. Ankles crossed, hand over hand. At the last instant, she decided to be caught in the act of pouring out tea; unconcern would suit her better than expectation.

To her lack of surprise, someone scratched at the door a moment later. Jane swooped for the teapot and set out the cups. When she bade the servant enter, he announced her caller.

“A Mr. Bellamy to see you, my lady.”

Jane’s hand wobbled; tea sloshed into a saucer. “Mr. Bellamy? Are you certain?”

“Indeed, my lady. Shall I show him in?”

“Yes. Yes, you may. Thank you.” She set down the teapot, and in the servant’s absence, allowed herself five seconds to feel desolate.

Foolish Jane. If one chased a man away, one shouldn’t be surprised when he stayed away.

By the time Bellamy entered the morning room, her hand hardly trembled on the spoon. “What a pleasant surprise,” she said. “May I offer you some tea? I’m just in from a few calls myself and wanted to warm up.”

“No need, no need. I never get cold.” He seated himself with a smile, looking like a Christmas portrait from her parents’ generation: a coat of red velvet, with hair in a queue and snowy lace at his throat and wrists.

Jane took a sip of her own tea. She usually preferred it sweeter, but the burnt-sugar smell in Gunter’s had put her off for the moment. “Living in India as you did for so long? I’d have expected the English cold would get into your bones.”

“Now, now, Lady Kirkpatrick. You wouldn’t be trying to make an old man of me, would you?” He winked, settling back in the chair Louisa usually occupied.

“Not at all.” She sipped her tea in silence, feeling too bruised for easy conversation. Still wounded from the social cuts she’d received earlier, and wary of this man, always so pleasant, whom Edmund liked so little.

A suspicion crossed her mind; just a flash. The figure at Lord Weatherwax’s ball had been the right height. But no, the voice had been wrong. A brogue, where Bellamy’s accent was flat.

But a voice could be changed. So easily, Jane had become a serving wench for a short time.

“Mr. Bellamy,” she spoke up. “What sort of accent do the English have who live in India?”

“Just like this, my lady.” He beamed at her. “After twenty years away, I couldn’t help but pick it up, could I?”

“But now that you’re back in England, you’re not around that way of speaking anymore. How did you speak before?”

He tilted his head. “Why, I can’t rightly say. I’ve been all over the world. I speak however I need to speak, I suppose.”

“That’s a gift.” As Jane stirred her unsweetened tea, her hand was steady.

But she wondered.

“Speaking of gifts,” he said jovially, “I may be leaving London soon. Had to track you down, didn’t I? I couldn’t go without telling you good-bye and giving you a little present. Tut, tut, Lady Kay; you’re a hard woman to find.”

“Nonsense,” she said in a colorless voice. “All London knows where I am.”

He took a small parcel from an inside pocket of his velvet coat. “It’s a bit early for Christmas, I know, but I couldn’t wait.”

“How kind of you.” Gifts. Damn gifts. Even as she undid the parcel, Jane wanted to throw whatever it was into the chamber pot.

Oh.
No, she didn’t, after all: a glossy black figurine fell into her hand. A carved column, three inches high, capped with a pierced crown, all atop what looked like a galleried vase.

“It’s beautiful,” she murmured. “A chess piece?”

“A queen.”

She turned it in her hand. “Where is it from?”

“France. This is how they like to carve their pieces there. Elegant, isn’t it?”

“Very.” Without possessing a face—or any human attributes at all—this little figure seemed regal. It had traveled across the Channel, only to rest in Jane’s hand. “What is it made of? This isn’t wood.”

“It’s bone. The black pieces are stained. I’ve the rest of the set at my lodging, if you care to play?”

“I don’t know how.” She clutched the bone-sculpted piece tight in her hand; once it had been part of a living creature. “I wish I knew how.”

“The game is easy enough to learn. I can bring the set another time, if you wish.”

Something about the way he said
the game—
yes, she wondered.

She handed the piece back to him. “You must keep the black queen with her friends until it’s time for our game, Mr. Bellamy. I couldn’t be so cruel as to separate her.”

“Ah, but she’s a queen, my lady. The most powerful piece of all. She’ll do fine on her own. She can move any direction, as far as she wishes.”

“It’s the king that wins the game, though, isn’t it?”

“Very true.” He reached for her hand, but instead of taking the chess piece, he folded her fingers over it. “Very true. If the king is lost, so is the game. I see you know a little of chess after all.”

“A very little. Only a bit about how to win.” She held the queen tightly, liking the way its time-smoothed contours pressed into her fist. Delicate and strong at once. Perhaps a woman had created the game of chess, to grant so much power to the queen.

Bellamy took his leave soon afterward, though promising to return soon with his full chess set “so we can have a proper game of it.”

Jane smiled and accepted his kiss on her hand. She drank her tea quickly after he left, wishing she could feel warm again.

The game, the game. There was a game being played, if Jane was not mistaken, and somehow she was a part of it.

That was a bit of an adventure. But it felt just as dreadful as being draped in scandal. Bellamy might think the queen was fine on her own, but Jane was no queen, graceful and strong. She was barely a baroness. And she was lonely, and tired, and hurt.

And there was only one person she wanted to be with.

Edmund had, no doubt, been embarrassed by her behavior. His pride might be wounded, or he might be resentful. She had stolen her own dowry from him, then left him with neither wife nor money nor heir.

When she thought of it like that, he’d had reason to lose his good humor with her the day before. And she shouldn’t have been quite so forceful when she said she’d never return to his house again.

But he wasn’t just her abandoned husband. He was also Lord Kirkpatrick, who had never failed to help a woman in need—whether a stranger whose favorite hat had been wind-whipped away, or an old friend who had lost ten thousand pounds.

How desperately she wanted to see a friendly face. Just for a while. A very short while, until she remembered how to be strong again.

Surely he would not turn her away now.

Chapter 19

Concerning Toast

Late that night, Edmund arrived home from the House of Lords. Hungry and bone-weary, he piled his cloak, hat, and gloves into Pye’s waiting hands. “Have some bread sent round to the drawing room, would you? I’ll make a bit of toast before I turn in.”

Instead of the usual “yes, my lord,” Pye’s mouth simply opened and closed several times. Anxiety gnawed Edmund’s insides, but he tried for levity. “You look a bit ghastly, Pye. What has happened? Surely my wife cannot have left me again.”

“No, my lord. Your wife”—the butler gulped—“is decorating the drawing room.”

Edmund’s walking stick clattered to the floor. He wasn’t sure which of them had dropped it. “The devil, you say.”

Pounding up the stairs, he wasn’t sure what sight would greet his eyes. Jane, penitent, hanging wallpaper and begging to be received under his roof again? Jane, saucy as a serving wench, shoving the furniture about?

Actually, it was neither. Jane, oblivious, was standing on a sofa to hang a sprig of holly atop a painting. This was apparently not her first athletic feat, since every painting in the room was trimmed with holly, and a garland swooped across the front of the mantel.

Edmund cleared his throat loudly. Jane peeked over her shoulder. “Oh, hullo, Edmund. I thought you’d be home ages ago.”

She hopped down, still holding a sprig of holly in one hand. Her simple blue gown was dusty, and her straight hair was falling from its pins.

“Yes. Well.” His throat felt uncommonly dry. “The Lord Chancellor wasn’t particularly concerned with being concise. Devil of a long day. But Parliament won’t be in session over the weekend, so I’ll have a little time to recover.”

She blinked up at him. He blinked down at her. “You win, Jane. I’ll ask: what are you doing here? Are you—back?”

“Only for a visit. I thought you needed a bit of holiday cheer around. Doesn’t it look nice?” She gestured widely at the drawing room.

“You came back because you thought we needed holly shoved up onto our paintings.”

“
Your
paintings,” she muttered. “I shouldn’t have come.”

She made as though to brush by him, but luckily, a servant knocked at the door just then. Edmund accepted the platter of bread and toasting fork he had requested, then dragged a footstool close to the hearth and settled himself.

All the while, his mind outraced his body, wondering how to treat his unexpected guest who should never have been a guest at all. He had to tread carefully, as one would when trying to lay a snare for a fox.

Well. A vixen, to be more accurate.

He speared a piece of bread on the long fork, then extended it over the flames. “Do you want some toast, Jane? I don’t see a tea tray in here. If you’ve been waiting a while, you must be hungry.”

Not looking away from the bread, which was turning a lovely brown at the corners, he sensed her drawing a bit closer. “I didn’t mean to stay so long.”

“Oh, well. As I said, I didn’t mean to be gone so long. Glad we bumped into one another.”

She was silent for rather a long time. “Yes.”

Pulling the fork from the fire, he examined his handiwork. “Needs a bit more toasting on the one side, doesn’t it? Would you ring for tea?”

He hid a smile as Jane sighed and trudged over to the bell rope. But she located a few manners for the servant who answered the summons, requesting tea for the pair of them. She then came to stand by Edmund’s footstool. “There. Your bidding has been done.”

“Would you like some toast?” he asked mildly. “Sometimes I get grumpy when I haven’t eaten for a long time.”

“You are horrid. Shove over.” She grabbed the toast—perfectly browned, if he said so himself—from the extended fork, then wedged herself onto the footstool next to him.

He began the process of toasting all over again as Jane crunched away. He mustn’t forget that this closeness was only temporary; some odd impulse of hers to bedeck the room with holly and pine-sharp garland, then take herself away again. Because the scent of warm bread, fresh and slightly sweet, and the soapy-clean scent of Jane at his side were making him ache in a new and dreadful way: not in his stomach, but his heart.

“You make very good toast,” Jane said gruffly.

“Thank you. You do very nice things with holly.”

She snorted. “I knew it was stupid. I just had a rather bad day. It seems I’ve caused a scandal by leaving you.”

“You always wanted a scandal,” he commented. “Should I offer congratulations?”

Her shoulders shifted. “No. It’s—well. It’s not so nice. So I wanted to come put a few homey things around you, since I knew you wouldn’t have anyone with you at Christmas.”

“Ah, you can twist the knife a bit harder than that.”

He sensed her grow still. “I’m sorry, Edmund. I felt like I should do something to help.”