That Scandalous Evening Read online

  CHRISTINA

  DODD

  That

  Scandalous

  Evening

  Dedication

  To Chet Gilmore,

  a father and a friend to me

  And to Lillian Gilmore

  The Whole world took a vote

  and you’re the best and kindest lady

  we’ve ever had the privilege to know.

  I love you both.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  “Let us hope no one remembers the scandal.” Eleazer Morant…

  Chapter 2

  “London is so vast.” Since late afternoon, when they had…

  Chapter 3

  A month later, from the top of Lady Goodridge’s broad…

  Chapter 4

  Eleven years before…

  Chapter 5

  Laughter. Jane could almost hear its echo in Lady Goodridge’s…

  Chapter 6

  Jane viewed Blackburn’s white–gloved hand so disdainfully he was…

  Chapter 7

  Lady Goodridge had identified her, and seemingly without difficulty. Jane…

  Chapter 8

  Is your entire family driven to misadventure?

  Chapter 9

  Blackburn had seen the effects of hatred on other men.

  Chapter 10

  At three in the morning, Fitz leaned against the door-post…

  Chapter 11

  Eleven years before…

  Chapter 12

  The morning after an encounter with Blackburn, Jane thought blearily,…

  Chapter 13

  Jane put her finger to her lips, signifying silence.

  Chapter 14

  “Would everyone please stop smiling at me?” Jane glared at…

  Chapter 15

  One by one, multicolored kites caught the breeze and lifted…

  Chapter 16

  As de Sainte-Amand hurried away, Blackburn saw Jane place her…

  Chapter 17

  “I don’t know what you’re so angry about.” Attached to…

  Chapter 18

  “What do you want?” Jane whispered, paralyzed with fear and…

  Chapter 19

  Jane looked as startled and horrified as Blackburn felt, slapped…

  Chapter 20

  “Murdered?” Blackburn stopped beneath a large oak tree, which provided…

  Chapter 21

  “Stiff upper lip, my dear.” Lady Goodridge pressed her cheek…

  Chapter 22

  “Am I mad, sir? Do I see conspiracies where there…

  Chapter 23

  Jane missed the step off the curb. A grubby hand…

  Chapter 24

  Treason? Treachery? Disloyalty to England? All these thoughts flew out…

  Chapter 25

  Marriage. That horrific scene in the studio garret had meant…

  Chapter 26

  “You’re a good friend of Blackburn’s. You were his best…

  Chapter 27

  Blackburn filled a plate for Jane and started back across…

  Chapter 28

  A spy. Fitz couldn’t believe it. He was a spy—…

  Chapter 29

  Had she slept? Jane didn’t know. She only knew the…

  Chapter 30

  Fitz had never seen Blackburn fidget like this. He stood…

  Chapter 31

  “Jane. May I call you Jane?” Athowe smiled affably above…

  About the Author

  Praise

  By Christina Dodd

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  “Let us hope no one remembers the scandal.” Eleazer Morant stared down his quivering, rabbitlike nose at his sister-in-law. “I will not have my daughter’s good name tainted by the tincture of your disgrace.”

  Already dressed in her outmoded brown traveling garments, Miss Jane Higgenbothem sat upright in the hard chair. She was, she knew, the picture of dignity and tranquillity. She worked hard to achieve that image, and for just such moments as these. Eleazer had not summoned her to this dimly lit parlor just to whine again about that ancient scandal, she was sure. So why was she here?

  In well-modulated tones she answered, “I cannot imagine the ton will be interested in anything that happened so long ago. They are ever on to some new tidbit.”

  “Except that this scandal happened to Lord Blackburn.”

  She lowered her gaze to her gloved hands. The carriage was waiting. Adorna was waiting. London was waiting.

  And Eleazer droned on. “Lord Blackburn is one of the richest men in England. He sets the tone. Everything he does is copied.” His knuckles turned white as he gripped the back of an old-fashioned high-backed chair. “Yet despite all that, I understand there are some who still call him ‘Figgy.’ ”

  Jane winced. “My behavior has been exemplary since my return from London,” she answered stoutly.

  “You still sketch,” Eleazer said in a tone usually reserved for accusations of prostitution.

  “All ladies sketch.”

  “Your skill betrays you.”

  “I’ll try to do worse.”

  “Don’t be saucy, miss. Those portraits you do are scathing, as you well know.”

  Her portraits were really nothing more than quick outlines, impressions Jane gathered from the people around her. But Eleazer had once seen one she’d done of him, and he had recognized the parsimony shining in his eyes. He had not forgotten—or forgiven.

  Flipping open the fat book of accounts in his hand, he shook it at her. “I can scarcely yet believe I financed that ill-begotten season of yours. It was not my duty to stand the blunt, but I did it on my dear Melba’s urging. As I told her then, nothing good can come of this.” His fingernails scraped the leather binding. “I was correct, as usual. Nothing good did come of it.”

  She’d heard this refrain many times. Eleven years ago he had paid for her clothing and rented a house in a fashionable part of London. And how had she repaid him? With disaster. But he hadn’t done anything for her. He’d done it for Melba. For Melba, her sister and his wife, whom he had revered with all the meager passion of his mean-spirited heart.

  Jane had done it for Melba, too. For her beautiful older sister. Even at the age of eighteen Jane had known she was ill suited to society, but Melba had lightly dismissed her qualms. “Darling, you must marry. What else is there for a lady to do?”

  Looking back, Jane suspected Melba had known she was dying, and maneuvered to move Jane from her home to her own household. Now, faced with Melba’s widower, Jane knew her sister had been right. It would have been better to be any man’s wife than to be Eleazer’s mere dependent.

  “I’ve been your housekeeper. I’ve raised your daughter.” She took a quiet breath. “Now I’ll be her companion.”

  He turned to the window and stared out at the street, then leaned forward as if he saw something that interested him. “I could have hired someone else to do those things, and more cheaply.”

  From outside she heard a shout. Rising, she saw across the street. A rag-clad woman had stolen an apple, and now she cowered from the blows of a street-cart vendor. Jane flinched at the sight. Only Eleazer’s largesse stood between her and just such a scene.

  “I have never been invited to invest in Blackburn’s business concerns.” He tossed her a malicious glance. “Because you embarrassed him.”

  She had embarrassed him? Jane bit her tongue. No doubt that was true. But she wondered, sometimes, why no one cared that Lord Blackburn had ruined her. Why a female’s reputation could be held so cheap.

  Yet none of this mattered an
ymore. Eleven years had passed since she’d lost her respectability and her muse in one dreadful episode. “I question if Lord Blackburn’s consequence has suffered unduly from the incident.”

  “Lord Blackburn’s repute is ever growing.” Eleazer craned his neck to watch the constable drag the woman away. “When he outfitted a regiment and led them to the Peninsula, a dozen young lords imitated him. When he was wounded and returned wearing an eye patch, every modish buck took to wearing an eye patch.”

  Jane sank back into her chair. “He was wounded?”

  Eleazer turned from the window. “I said so, didn’t I?”

  She didn’t want to display interest, yet she couldn’t refrain. “Did he…lose the eye?”

  “I don’t know. How should I know? As I told you, we are not intimate.”

  She pressed her glove-clad palms together so tightly the muscles of her arms ached. Lord Blackburn’s health was of no concern to her. She chanted in her head.

  Yet in London she might see him, just from a distance, and despite her efforts, excitement wriggled along her nerves.

  And her nerves leaped when a timid knock sounded and a lanky, ill-dressed Frenchman poked his head in. Monsieur Chasseur, Adorna’s French tutor. He had arrived at last. Grateful for the interruption, Jane rose.

  Seeing her, he stepped into the chamber, shoulders hunched, clutching a cream-colored, rumpled sheet of paper. “Mademoiselle, I have come to say—”

  Eleazer gave a full-throated bellow. “What?”

  The cowed son of a gentleman immigrant who had lost everything in the French Revolution, Monsieur Chasseur knew well of the bloody Reign of Terror. Yet he blanched at the sight of his irate employer. “Je regrette, mademoiselle, je ne réalise—”

  “Oh, speak English, you stupid frog.” Eleazer glared until the youth blushed, then turned to Jane. “I’ve already spent three hundred pounds on this debut, and part of it on this milksop tutor!”

  “Eleazer, we have been through this before. Adorna must know how to dance, so we have a dancing tutor. She must know how to play an instrument, so we have an instructor for the pianoforte.” Jane smiled at Monsieur Chasseur. “And she must speak French, for civilized people speak French.”

  “Oui.” The young Frenchman laid his hand over his heart, straightened his shoulders, and struck a pose. “France and civilization are one.”

  Eleazer snorted rudely. “Frenchmen eat fungus dug up by pigs.”

  For a moment, Jane thought Monsieur Chasseur would erupt in a Gallic fury, for in spite of his poverty, he was very proud of his heritage. And should he speak insolently to Eleazer, she would lose the only tutor she could find who would willingly teach Adorna for a pittance—a matter of some importance to Eleazer—and one who had agreed to escort them to London and remain close to Adorna in a last ditch effort to bestow on her a sense of the French language.

  The maligned tutor clenched his fist. The paper crinkled in his hand. Recalled from his fury by the sound, he looked down at it. His ruddy color faded and his shoulders drooped. He crept closer to Jane and, keeping one eye on Eleazer, he said in a low voice, “Mademoiselle, I must apologize, but I cannot travel to London with you and stay as I promised.”

  “What?” Eleazer cupped his ear. “What’s that?”

  Jane stared at Monsieur Chasseur in dismay. “But you wanted to return to London. You said you found many pupils there during the Season.”

  He ducked his head even lower and waved the paper. “I have received this lettre. Mademoiselle Cunningham, one of my jeune pupils…she is dead.”

  Eleazer heard that, for he bellowed, “What has a dead girl got to do with Adorna?”

  The tutor confessed, “There is an investigation. They wish me to be there. She has been…murdered.”

  “Murdered?” Jane didn’t know the Cunninghams, but she imagined how she would feel if it were Adorna. “How horrible. How? Why?”

  He just stared at her, as if the sound of her voice could not quite penetrate his grief. Then his eyes focused, and he said, “Mademoiselle, I am only the tutor.”

  “If you’re only the tutor, what do they want you there for?” Eleazer asked shrewdly. “You’re a suspect, aren’t you?”

  Jane was horrified. “Oh, Eleazer! Really, can’t you see…?” See that the innocuous young man lived as most impoverished gentlemen lived, quietly, without hope, struggling for a trifling existence.

  “No, mademoiselle, he is right.” The tutor seemed to shrink even further. “But I do not know why. I taught her yesterday morning at her beautiful home. The sun was shining the last time I looked upon her visage belle, but the thick fog rolled in off the sea as I rode to my next lesson. It was so foreboding, I should have suspected I would never see her again.” He snuffled, pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped his nose. “And now there is this lettre from the constable…”

  Jane noticed his red-rimmed eyes. He was in pain, as would anyone be who knew a young woman’s life had been snuffed out, and he was worried because he was under suspicion for having been in the vicinity, and because he was French. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Merci, mademoiselle.” He snuffled again.

  “Well, that takes care of that.” Eleazer rubbed his hands in satisfaction. “We can’t have a murderer teaching Adorna. Think what that will save me.”

  Not a thing, Jane thought. Unlike Eleazer, she would wait to convict the tutor. She walked Monsieur Chasseur to the door and in a low tone said, “If you make your way back to London, call on us. We are staying with Lady Tarlin in Cavendish Square. There we will arrange for lessons.”

  Monsieur Chasseur bowed. “Bless you. I do so wish to teach Mademoiselle Morant.”

  “I know you do.” Adorna had once driven Monsieur Chasseur to frustrated tears over her inability to conjugate a simple verb. Still, despite his frustration, he had returned, again and again. Like all men, Monsieur Chasseur was in love with Adorna, and he now left reluctantly.

  “A murderer, huh? And here I thought he was nothing but an impudent frog.” Eleazer smirked, then scowled. “But for what I’ve paid him, Adorna should speak Chinese, too. Of course, she’s too much of a ninnyhammer.”

  Jane couldn’t argue with that, but Adorna’s wit was of no consequence. “Adorna is as beautiful as her mother was, and with the proper training, she can make an advantageous marriage. You want that, don’t you?”

  “Of course I want it,” he said irritably. “I need those benefits.”

  If Eleazer had ever displayed the least affection for his only child, Jane could have forgiven him much. But from the moment of her birth, he had entered Adorna in his debit column. Now he hoped to move her to the credit column, and his pettiness made Jane’s voice sharp. “Then look upon the money you spend as an investment. Through Adorna you’ll get the noble connections you want. The ones I failed to attain.”

  “Yes, you did fail miserably. I’ve placed the sum of ten thousand pounds in the Bank of England, but I expect an accounting of every cent.”

  “You shall have it. Adorna must have the best to outshine all the other debutantes.”

  “That’s another thing.” Eleazer poked his finger toward her. “You needn’t think I will buy you another wardrobe.”

  “Any clothing I have needed since my season, I have purchased myself,” Jane said proudly. “I will continue to do so.”

  Her reminder irritated Eleazer all over again. He didn’t know where she had come by her money. He would have preferred to have her beg him for every ha’penny. Any chance to wield power pleased Eleazer; thus Jane took every opportunity to thwart him.

  No matter that her small store of funds was almost depleted.

  “I still think you should stay here in Sittingbourne.”

  He didn’t have to tell Jane that. She knew he had wanted to keep her here, imprisoned in this tall, thin, somber house until everything bright and hopeful in her had withered.

  Sadly, she had wanted it, too. To go out and face the world aga
in, after what she had done…She pressed her hand to her side where a stitch of fear stabbed at her.

  She was twenty-eight years old, firmly on the shelf, and when she remembered The Disastrous Season in London, she knew she would rather beg on the streets than return to that scene of unspeakable humiliation.

  But she was returning.

  In these grim years of servitude, she had learned many lessons, not the least of which was a hard-won poise. So she would go to London. She would see the nobles who had peopled her nightmares. They would not even recognize her, but she would be there to witness Adorna’s triumph. It was Adorna who mattered now.

  “We told Lady Tarlin we would arrive this afternoon,” she said. “I think it would be best if we left.”

  Eleazer leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his chest. “Of course. Heaven forfend you leave your dear friend Lady Tarlin waiting.”

  “We are grateful to Lady Tarlin,” Jane reminded him. “She is sponsoring Adorna on the strength of a very tenuous connection.”

  “Yes, she’s your friend. Your noble friend,” he said, pettishly. “You pretend to respect me, and all the time making sure I never forget you are a noblewoman and I am a lowly merchant.”

  “That is not true,” Jane said in a clipped tone. She had not originally despised Eleazer; he earned her disdain.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter now.” He smirked as if he knew something she didn’t. “Go on. What are you waiting for?”

  Startled by his sudden dismissal, Jane walked toward the entrance. He had threatened not to send her to London, but she still didn’t understand why.

  “Go on,” he urged cordially.

  Would she at last discover the reason for this interview?

  As she opened the door, he asked, “Do you know Dame Olten?”

  She paused, her fingers pressing into the trim. “The butcher’s widow. Of course I know her.” A mean, pinch-mouthed woman who delighted in tormenting her customers.

  “She and I have come to an agreement. We will be married next month.” He sounded pleasant as he uttered the damning words she’d feared to hear every day since Melba’s death ten years ago. “You’ll have to find somewhere else to live.”