The Scandal Before Christmas (17 page)

“Oh, God.” But she made herself take the proffered square of precisely folded linen, though she reached for the handkerchief with trembling hands.

She pressed it to the part of her face that stung the most, and immediately withdrew it to see the dark staining of her blood. Her head began to ache as if someone were scratching at it with an out of tune violin. “How bad is it?”

He shook his head, a kind negation. “Not too bad,” he said, though the serious look in his dark eyes said the opposite. “But it were better if we removed ourselves immediately to a less dangerous, less illicit, and better lit position. Especially before he comes to.” He ducked his head out the open door of the boathouse, before he closed it and he looked back to her. “Can you move on your own?”

As if the Duke of Fenmore knew she would rather do anything than be touched. Claire stiffened her legs with several hundred years of inherited Jellicoe pride, and pushed herself away from the wall to walk past the still-unmoving Rosing. Only to find the ground shifting precariously underfoot. The enormity of it all—of what had just happened and what had yet to happen—rocked her back against the brick.

“No.” Heat built like a bonfire in her throat and behind her eyes, but she pushed the tears away with the back of her shaking hand.

“Stay there a moment. So you might recover. I will stand here, and make sure he doesn’t move.” He took a place near Rosing’s head, where he was at a more than respectful distance. If anyone should chance upon them in the boathouse at the bottom of the garden, they would only be seen to be conversing politely. Albeit across the unconscious form of her rapist.

Yet, tongues would wag even if she were seen to be only conversing politely with the Duke of Fenmore. The Duke of Fenmore did
not
converse politely with young ladies. He had never conversed politely with any young lady in all the time that Claire had observed him looming around the edges of ballrooms. He looked and he brooded and he judged, but he never conversed.

And he looked so intently now, she felt the need to explain how she had gotten herself into such a God-awful predicament. “His father asked me to dance a couple of country dances with Lord Peter. That’s who he is, Lord Peter Rosing.” Her voice sounded thin and small. “His father said he’d be obliged if I would make myself agreeable by dancing with his son. So I did. And then he asked—Rosing—if I’d like to take a turn on the terrace.”
To cool the roses in those beautiful cheeks
, he had said with just the right amount of warm feeling when he had offered Claire his arm. “I thought he might try to steal a kiss.”

The duke made an exceptionally unducal, rude sound of disgust. “Steal a kiss.” And then, “His father should be shot.” Fenmore’s gaze dropped to the inert man heaped on the floor. “Rosing was obviously intent upon larceny of an altogether grander design. As is his habit.”

His tone was strangely vehement. As if it were some sort of a personal affront to the dukedom, that Rosing had tried to rape her on his family’s property.

There it was again, the awful, horrible, brutal word.

“I said no to him. I said—” She could hear her voice climb higher on the icy chill that was just now creeping into her bones.

“I know,” he said shortly, though he did not look at her. “I heard you. And now I reckon, so will he have done. And past bloody time. He has grown altogether too brazen.”

In the strange fitful light that came from the wavering reflection of the moon off the water beneath the boathouse docks, she took a closer look at the duke’s face. At the rage she did not understand, that was only barely concealed behind the off-putting veneer. “Why are you so angry?”

“Ah.” His dark gaze flicked to hers only momentarily, before he looked away again. “I am not angry. I am
outraged
. Contrary to popular opinion, I happen to be a nice man. Rosing is
not
.” He snapped the word off as if he could break it as easily as he had Rosing’s leg. “And you needed help.”

Another ridiculous understatement. But she could only be grateful. “Yes. Yes, I did. Thank you.”

He waved off her thanks with a brusque gesture of his hand. “And you still need it. Your hair is coming down from its pins. You’ll want to restore yourself a bit before you return to the house. Or would you rather I brought your parents down here? I would have done—brought them, or sent them to find you—but I reckoned time was of the essence.”

It had been. A few moments more and— The realization hit Claire like a shovel. Fenmore must have anticipated—

The tight pressure in her chest grew strangling. “Did you
know
he was going to—” She stumbled over the detestable word.

“To rape you? Yes. I did. Rosing is a rapist, Lady Claire. Behind those angelic looks lies a dark, twisted heart of rapine. He has made a rather execrable habit of it.”

A
habit
. A hideous hive of an itch that had to be scratched. Lord Peter might have picked anyone, anyone else in the ballroom, but she had been foolish—and maybe even, if she were honest with herself,
desperate
—enough to smile at him, and consent to the dance. Even on the ballroom floor, Lord Peter Rosing must have been thinking and planning what he would do to her.

“If he were not the son of a peer, Rosing would have twisted at Tyburn long before now.” Fenmore brought his dark gaze back to hers, before he went on relentlessly, enunciating the words precisely, as though they left a bad taste in his mouth. “I do not know if it will comfort or disgust you to know that you are not the first young woman Lord Peter Rosing has raped, nor attempted to rape. But I do mean you to be the last.”

The calm surety with which he said the cold words drew a horrified gasp from her chilled lungs. “You mean to kill him.”

Again that obsidian gaze came back to hers, so sharp it was nearly cutting. “I meant to cripple him. I
mean
that in the future, if he isn’t hanged, he should find it so difficult to walk, that he will find it utterly impossible to shove young ladies up against brick walls.”

The same feeling of powerlessness, of helpless, hopeless, choking despair began to fill her chest. But she fought it back. It had not happened. Lord Peter had not
raped
her. But only because his grace, the chilly Duke of Fenmore had come in time.

She meant to thank him again, not only for herself, but also for the greater population of London’s women, it seemed. But she could not. The words were stuck in her throat, trapped there by the casual violence of both men’s actions.

Within her skull, her head began to ring like a church bell.

“You are not yet recovered.”

Again, she could not tell if the strange, dry ordinariness of his observation was an attempt at humor, or censure. But pride was the last refuge of the weak. And Claire felt desperately weak. So she put up her chin. “Yes. Thank you, your grace. You do have a penchant for the obvious.”

“And you have a penchant for the dangerous,” he shot back. Some of that vehemence had leapt back into his tone. “Planning to let a man like Rosing
steal
kisses.”

That
was
condemnation in his low voice. Claire felt the thoughtlessness of her action leave a trail of heat down her throat. She swallowed down the dry dust of her shame. “Yes. Stupid. But I think Lord Peter has cured me of stupidity.”

“Good.” Fenmore took an audibly deep breath, as if he were as fraught as she. “Though I suppose you could not be expected to know what he is.”

“No.” The admission gave her some small comfort. “Though if you
did
know what he is, why did you not tell anyone? Why is he still allowed to show his face in polite company? Why was he invited to your grandmother’s ball?”

“A mistake.” The vehemence was back. “One for which I will never forgive myself. Nor ever make again. And he was
not
invited.” He spoke with such low, savage heat, she was taken aback. But his anger was all for himself.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Wasn’t it?” He seemed unconvinced. “I should have anticipated they would come even uninvited.”

It gave her a small measure—a very small measure—of comfort to see him doubt himself. “You couldn’t have known. My parents would never dream of going someplace they weren’t invited.”

“Yes, parents. We ought to be getting you back to your mother, so she can take you home.”

“We’re not meant to go home. We’re meant to stay the night, as guests.” She wanted her mother. She wanted to be safe in her arms and forget this had ever happened. But it had.

The worry and doubt and shame and anger wrapped itself ever tighter in her gut. “Oh, God. I don’t think I can bear the questions.”

“No one will question you. I’ll make sure of that.”

“Will you?”

“Yes.” This time the vehemence sounded more like surety. More like a promise.

“Thank you.” Another small measure of comforting relief tiptoed its careful way into her lungs. And she took the opportunity to take a long look at him, this vehement man she had thought so aloof. “Contrary to popular opinion, you
are
a nice man.” A nice man who had crippled Rosing, still splayed upon the pavers. For her. “We can’t just leave him here, can we?”

“Yes. We can. I’m not
that
nice. Someone will find him. In fact—” He came to an alertness, livid with stillness, rather like one of her father’s hunting dogs scenting the air. And then he swore. “God’s balls. Someone is coming. Now.” He turned that implacable gaze upon her. “Lady Claire, you have approximately three seconds to decide what comes next. Stay here and be discovered with Rosing—and bear all the possible and different consequences of that. Or you can come with me.”

“What?” Claire pushed off the wall, and found she
needed
to move. To get air back into her lungs. To get away from Rosing. But not back to the house and the ball. Not with her face like this, still scratched and blotted with blood.

Fenmore had crossed to the narrow wooden decking that projected out over the water, and began to unwind a line to one of the boats from its cleat. “I can take you out in the skiff. We can slip away out onto the river with no one the wiser.”

The idea was astonishing. And she was truly astonished. Astonished to find the events and words and feelings of the past few minutes swirling and twisting through her head, trying to sort themselves out into something approaching logic.

Going in a boat with his grace, the Duke of Fenmore would undoubtedly be just as rash and stupid as walking into the garden with Lord Peter had been.

But the Duke of Fenmore was not Lord Peter. He looked across the narrow dock at her, and he understood. He reached behind his back, under the tail of his beautifully tailored coat, and pulled out an elegant, well-polished pistol. The shifting moonlight glanced off the slick metal as he held it out to her, handle first. “So you’ll feel safe. But choose. Now.”

Astonishment was too tame a word for the rush of alarm and something else—something unfamiliar and altogether off-kilter—that gripped her. “Is it loaded?”

“Yes. Do you know how to use it properly?”

Claire didn’t answer. But she did take the gun. Because it gave her her answer.

“Yes.” She scrambled into the narrow boat. “Let us go then and escape. Just for a little while, at least. Until I’m ready to come back.”

“Yes.” And the Duke of Fenmore gave her an oddly boyish smile that spread full across the width of his narrow face, and made him appear young, and almost vulnerable. As if he were taking as big a chance as she. “Yes. Just for a little while.”

Also by
Elizabeth Essex

ALMOST A SCANDAL

A BREATH OF SCANDAL

SCANDAL IN THE NIGHT

Available from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

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