The Book Of Scandal (16 page)

“Tea?” Wilkes scoffed. “A pint or a whiskey, Benton, something that will truly warm us. It’s bloody cold out.”

“Very good, sir,” Benton said with a bow of his head. “You may wish to join lords Lambourne and Donnelly in the billiard room.”

Nathan could hear their laughter echoing down the hall. “Have the ale sent there,” he said, and looked at Wilkes. “I should see to the post before joining you.”

“It is in the family study, my lord, awaiting your attention,” Benton said perfunctorily.

“We’ll keep a pint warm for you, Lindsey,” Wilkes said as he headed in the opposite direction. “And I’ll save the news for Lambourne until you can join us.”

Nathan was really in no mood for his guests now, and frankly, he wondered if they ever intended to leave the abbey or if he should designate spots in the family graveyard for each of them.

A footman reached the study door before Nathan and opened it, but the action hardly registered on Nathan. He strode across the threshold, looked toward his desk, and faltered.

Evelyn was sitting at the Louis XIV cherrywood desk. She made a sound of surprise at his sudden entrance and dropped the pen she was holding.

Nathan instantly felt ill at ease and mentally stumbled—he was unaccustomed to rejection, unaccustomed to being looked at as if he were a monster. He was accustomed to feeling like one, perhaps, but not being perceived as one.

Evelyn scrambled to her feet and tried to gather the papers on which she was writing, almost frantic to escape him.

“Leave them!” he said roughly.

She clutched the papers to her chest and stepped around the desk. “I will not.”

“And just who are you writing, madam, that you must take it from my sight?” he snapped.

Evelyn’s brows dipped into a dangerous vee. “Not that it’s any of your concern, sir, but I am writing my sister.” She thrust the letter forward.

Nathan strode across the room and took it. He read the first sentence. My dearest Clarissa, it read.

He thrust the letter back at her and brushed past her as he stepped around to his desk. He caught the fragrant scent of lavender, and it slowed him a step or two; but with a quick look at her face, he continued on and took his seat behind his desk.

She had spilled ink on the blotter and the point of his pen was flattened.

“Why are you here?” he asked brusquely as he examined the pen. “I made paper and pen available to you.”

“You made foolscap available to me. Not vellum. And the pen was old and brittle. The tip of it broke.”

It broke because she wrote long and passionate letters. He remembered that about her, too.

“And I didn’t realize I required your permission to use the study.”

“You do not require my permission,” he said, glancing up, “but given your utter loathing of me, I rather thought you’d want to keep a safe distance.”

She sighed irritably. “Really, Nathan, I do not loathe you.”

“No? When a woman asks her husband to grant her a divorce, what else might he assume?”

Evelyn opened her mouth. Then closed it again. He could almost hear the wheels turning in her head as she worked out her response.

“Don’t fret, darling,” he drawled. “I won’t force you to reveal the reason why. I think your little secret is apparent to both of us.”

“My secret?”

He rolled his eyes. “France?”

“France? What are you talking about?”

He was in no mood for her prevaricating. “You and Dunhill! He bought passage for two to France.”

She at least had the grace to feign astonishment. “I have no idea what you are talking about,” she said curtly.

“Honestly, Evelyn.”

“I don’t! And how would you know if he had? Do you have spies in London?”

“Spies!” he scoffed. “No, Evelyn, I don’t have spies. It’s precisely what I warned you about—everyone is talking. Everyone watches everyone else. There are no secrets, and if you were fool enough to believe there were, then heaven help you.”

“I never claimed to have any secrets!” she snapped. “On my honor, I know nothing of France. And before you accuse me of having secrets, what of your secrets, Lindsey? You seem perfectly willing to keep them.”

He leaned back in his chair and cast his arms wide. “I’m no saint, love, but my life is an open book.”

Her eyes went wide with surprise. And then she laughed. “I beg your pardon, but you are perhaps the most taciturn man I have ever known!”

“Taciturn! I am most certainly not!”

“Indeed you are!” she said, as if she found it all very amusing—which he did not. “I cannot begin to recount the many times I would attempt to engage you in conversation, and you would answer, ‘yes, darling,’ ‘no, darling,’ and little else!”

“You make no sense,” he said gruffly.

Evelyn suddenly braced her hands against the desk and leaned forward. “There are things you should have told me and did not, such as your deep and abiding friendship with Mrs. DuPaul,” she said irritably. “On the anniversary of our son’s death, you never told me you and Mrs. DuPaul would…would…” She made a gesture with her hand.

Nathan knew very well to what she referred. “Hold a private memorial?” he said. “Only because you were in no state to mark the date of our son’s death. However, I needed to mark it.”

“With Mrs. DuPaul?”

His eyes narrowed. “You and I were hardly speaking at the time,” he reminded her. “Can you honestly stand there and pretend you might have humored me that day? No, Evelyn, you would not have done so, and I could not cope with your anger on a day I very much needed to cope with my grief.”

Something like confusion passed over her eyes, and she suddenly reared back, folding her arms. “You might have coped with your grief without your ever-present friend. Nevertheless, you said you were an open book, Nathan, yet that is surely at least one occasion when you neglected to tell me what you were thinking or planning. Did you consider it from my viewpoint? I was very distressed by the anniversary, and to add to my grief was the knowledge that my husband was at the church where we buried our son with another woman!”

Praying for us, Nathan thought, and gained his feet. This time, it was he who leaned across the desk. “I did tell you what I was thinking, Evie,” he said calmly. “I told you I was thinking we should memorialize our son, but you flatly refused. You said you could not bear to think of it, remember? You could not bear much of anything. I beg your forgiveness if I did not feel the tragedy of your loss as sharply as I felt my own.”

She blinked her big hazel eyes. “You…you are willfully misunderstanding me.”

“I assure you I am not. And lest you think you are so forthcoming, you never gave me the slightest hint you would ask for a divorce.”

“What did you think would come of our estrangement?”

“Not that,” he snapped.

“All right, then,” she said, nodding. “What about your botanical interests, hmm?” At his puzzled look, she exclaimed wildly, “You are an open book, Nathan! Yet I have never heard of your interest in botany! I should think that the medicinal properties of lavender oil might be worth at least a brief mention.”

He couldn’t imagine why she might be interested in his little hobby. Frankly, he’d worked at it on and off for years—more off than on, really. He’d only picked it up again in the last two years as something he might share with Frances.

Evelyn was glaring at him, munching on the canary she obviously thought she’d captured and stuffed into her mouth.

“Why?” he asked simply.

Evelyn gaped at him. “Why? It seems rather significant to me, sir! Your work is renowned among the scientists!”

He scoffed at that with a flick of his wrist. “That sort of work is always renowned among certain scientists. They have such a small body of work on which to rely.”

“Nathan, this is precisely what I have tried to convey!” she exclaimed, flinging her hand at him. “I scarcely know you any longer!”

“You don’t know me?” he shot back, coming around the desk to stand before her, towering over her.

Unfazed, Evelyn tilted her head back. “Oh, I may have guessed at certain things, but I am beginning to suspect I never really knew you. I certainly never knew about your work in botany!”

“This has become a favorite theme of yours, this silly notion that we do not know each other!”

“You have just proven it is so!”

“If I failed to tell you about a bloody hobby—again, my apologies. But you know me, Evie. We shared a bed! We conceived a child! There are certain things one gleans from the other in such intimate circumstances.”

She could not argue with that, and in fact, she blushed like a girl. She pressed her lips together and looked down at the carpet. “Why didn’t you tell me about the botany?” she asked softly.

“Evelyn!” he said, flustered. “It didn’t bear mentioning!”

She looked up again, and the tears in her eyes startled him. “One can only wonder what else you thought didn’t bear mentioning through the years that might have made a difference to me.”

She started for the door. Nathan went after her, catching her with a hand to her shoulder, forcing her to turn around. She tried to resist him, but he caught her by the waist, put his hand to the side of her face. “Do not,” he said low, “use your pique as some foolish excuse to dissolve this marriage.”

“Marriage? What marriage?” She pushed out of his clutch and marched from the room.

E velyn knew her husband was right, of course. She was looking for an excuse to bolster her request for a divorce…instead of congratulating him on his botanical work as she ought to have done.

Frankly, as she sat next to the hearth in her rooms now, watching the flames dance against the brick, it seemed unreal that the word divorce had ever passed her lips. Perhaps she’d thought it many times…but to say it aloud now seemed unfathomable, even to her.

Damn him! He’d confused her last night with his kiss and his hands! Her pulse had been racing, her skin tingling, and she’d scarcely been able to draw a breath into her lungs! All she could think was that she had to do something, for when the glow of pleasure abated, she would still be trapped in this marriage from which she had detached herself years ago.

Detached. Severed, disengaged, dismembered. In the aftermath of Robbie’s death, something inside her had fundamentally changed…hadn’t it?

Heaven help her, she was suddenly uncertain what was truly changed and what had perhaps just lain dormant. But her view of life was forever altered, and for so long now she’d felt unsettled and restive, always seeking…

But there was a certain steadiness to her here, she realized. At first, she’d believed it was her determination not to feel again, but now…now she could not help but wonder if it was something much deeper than that. This was the place she’d become a woman, a wife, a mother. Nathan had made her all those things. Despite their differences, they were inexorably bound to one another. She didn’t hate him. She wasn’t really even angry anymore. But she was done with that part of her life.

And Nathan did care for her, or believed he did. She could see it in his expression today. She’d seen it in the fierce way he’d protected her when the highwaymen had attacked them. And she’d definitely seen it in the look in his eyes last night, that intoxicating mix of desire and affection and bewilderment shimmering in them. Perhaps their separation had dimmed his memory. Familiarity would inevitably rekindle the proverbial contempt after a time, she’d wager.

It was best to somehow end the marriage before the contempt crept in. They simply couldn’t go back.

Yet while she was ready to end their marriage, she did not want to play games with Nathan. Tonight, she wanted nothing more than to make amends for having been so peevish about his accomplishments. His botanical interests were something to be admired, not brought down by his failure to tell her about them.

“Therefore,” she said, rising from her seat at the hearth, “you must resolve to be the lady you were bred to be, Evelyn.” She resolved to approach her delicate situation with more decorum and grace than perhaps she had shown him thus far.

Evelyn called for Harriet, who helped her dress for supper. She dressed in a pale blue gown with soft pleats that bled into a dark green.

“Oh my,” Kathleen said approvingly as she admired Evelyn after arranging her hair. “You look like a princess, mu’um.”

Evelyn laughed. “I assure you, I am no princess.” She leaned over, pinched her cheeks in the mirror to bring some color to them. Kathleen had outdone herself—her hair was swept up in an artful chignon, held in place with tiny crystal pins that caught the candlelight.

Satisfied with her appearance, she put out her hand to Harriet. “Shall we make your presence known to my husband?”

Evelyn took the wrap Kathleen offered her and wore it loosely around her arms. With Harriet in tow, she made her way to the main dining room, careful not to look left or right, careful not to see those places that would spark a memory of her son, careful not to think or feel. She smiled at the servants she passed and pretended not to see the looks of obvious curiosity directed at her or Harriet.

A footman stood at the entrance to the dining room and opened the door for them. Evelyn took a deep breath, lifted her chin, and walked across the threshold.

Into an empty dining room, save the two footmen standing next to the sideboard. Two place settings graced one end of the mahogany table that had been a wedding gift from Lord Donnelly, handcrafted in Ireland and brought over in large pieces to England.

Evelyn glanced apprehensively at the two footmen as she walked to the end of the table, her fingers trailing along the backs of the chairs pushed up to the table and perfectly spaced. As she reached the end of the table, Benton came through an adjoining door as if he’d been waiting for her, and quickly moved to hold out her chair as a footman seated Harriet.

“Where is everyone?” she said as she took her chair.

“The others have already dined, madam.”

Already dined? Evelyn glanced at the clock on the buffet. It was a quarter to eight. In all the time she’d been married, supper was served at precisely eight o’clock. “I don’t understand,” she said as one footman poured wine and the other ladled soup into their bowls.