That Scandalous Evening Read online

  Chapter 2

  “London is so vast.” Since late afternoon, when they had entered the city proper, Adorna had kept her pretty face pressed to the glass of the carriage window. Now she turned away and covered her nose with her gloved hand. “And it stinks!”

  “The Thames is quite pungent today.” Jane held a perfumed handkerchief to her nose as she smiled. None of her sketches could do Adorna justice. Adorna’s beauty was so bright it almost hurt the eyes. Her blond hair shone like platinum. Her piquant face was rounded. Her delft blue eyes slanted up at the corners, and her lids drooped over those eyes in a beckoning, come-hither way that drove men, both young and old, mad with desire.

  When Jane looked at Adorna, she saw Melba. She saw her own dear sister, and she didn’t comprehend how Eleazer could turn his back on the living incarnation of his wife. And to marry Dame Olten!

  “Is something wrong, Aunt Jane?” Head tilted, Adorna watched Jane. “You look as if you have dyspepsia.”

  “Would it be surprising after that meal at the inn?” Jane grimaced. “I own, the sausage meowed when we cut into it.”

  “How dreadful, Aunt Jane. Please don’t say so.”

  Adorna looked faintly queasy, and Jane wanted no carriage sickness now. Not when they were so close to their goal. “I was jesting, dear. I’m sure the sausage was probably bovine.”

  Adorna fell back against the seat, her mouth agape with horror. “Not bovine!”

  “That means a cow, dear,” Jane said hastily.

  “Oh. A cow. Why didn’t you say so?” Adorna sat back up and tidied the ruffle on her bonnet. “But I still think you look odd. It was my father, wasn’t it? He upset you.”

  Jane stared at Adorna, and wondered. How could the girl seem so simple, and yet at the same time be so shrewd?

  I’m homeless. The bitter words fought to be said.

  Yet she had ever protected Adorna from the worst of Eleazer’s faults, and she wouldn’t heap blame on the guileless girl for her father’s actions, nor would she ask for assurances for the future. She was homeless, not witless; somehow she would make her way in the world. “Your father is concerned about economy.”

  “As always! That’s never agitated you before.” Adorna took Jane’s gloved hand between her own. “Do tell me, Aunt Jane. Was it him, or is it me?”

  “You?” The carriage jolted along the cobblestones, but Jane scarcely noticed. “Why would I be upset with you?”

  Adorna’s head drooped. “You didn’t want to come, but I couldn’t have a season without my dearest aunt. I would have been frightened without you.”

  She glanced up through her long, dark eyelashes, but Jane shook her head in disbelief. “My dear, I would never desert you. And I don’t think anything frightens you.”

  Looking at her directly, Adorna said, “Then call it fondness, Aunt Jane. I love you too much to leave you behind.”

  Now, that, Jane did believe. Putting her arms around the affectionate girl, she said, “I couldn’t bear to be left behind, either. I would worry.”

  Adorna placed her head on Jane’s shoulder and hugged her back. “About what? This is the first step to a fabulous season!”

  As a girl, Jane, too, had seen London as a stepping-stone. After she would see Rome, Paris, and the New World. She would live an unorthodox lifestyle, wherein charm and beauty mattered little, and talent and dedication measured a woman’s worth.

  Nothing had turned out as she had imagined, and now, ironically, it was Jane’s responsibility to guide Adorna along a decorous path. “Do you not remember young Livermere and how he seized you when you refused his suit?”

  “Oh, that.” Adorna straightened and peered out the window once more. “He was a fool in love.”

  “The world is populated by just such fools,” Jane remembered the hours of worry when she thought Adorna had been kidnapped. “Men lose all sense when confronted with you.”

  “I can handle them. I can handle anything, and I can take care of you. She told me to take care of you.”

  “Who told you, dear?”

  “Why, my mother, of course, when she was so ill.” Adorna sounded matter-of-fact. “She talked to me about you a lot.”

  Jane’s head buzzed with confusion. “Why would Melba tell a child of eight such a thing?”

  “Because she loved you, of course.”

  Adorna seemed to think this explained everything, and while Jane longed to question her niece, she knew she would get no more coherent answer. “Why haven’t you told me this before?”

  “You never asked.” Adorna quivered as the horses slowed. “Is this it, Aunt Jane? Is this Cavendish Square? The houses here are very grand.”

  Jane took a breath and delved into her memories. “Lady Tarlin is very grand, also. Very charming.”

  The carriage drew to a halt in front of the tallest home with the grandest door. Adorna said, “Just from her home, I can tell she’s going to be charming.”

  Jane scarcely heard. With a flourish, Lady Tarlin’s young, freckle-faced footman placed the step against the carriage and flung wide the portal. When she stepped outside this carriage, she would officially be in London. In London, where the ton fed on scandal and the insignificant Jane Higgenbothem had once been the main course. When she set foot on the step, she would be committed.

  Then two things happened. Adorna took Jane’s wrist and placed the limp hand in the young footman’s white-gloved palm. And from the top of the stairs, Jane heard a call.

  “Jane, dearest Jane, you’re here at last!”

  Framed in the doorway of the town house stood a fashionable woman, joy lighting her face.

  A remembrance surfaced. Of a girl, tears streaming down her cheeks, crying out to Jane’s retreating form, “Come back to London as soon as you can. We’ll make Blackburn sorry, I promise you!”

  Jane trod lightly down. She dipped into a curtsy. “Lady Tarlin, what a pleasure to see you.”

  “Enough! Jane, don’t you start that ‘Lady Tarlin’ nonsense. I’m Violet.” Violet bounded down the stairs, took Jane’s arms, and looked into her face. “We are friends, are we not?”

  Relief flooded Jane, and she smiled. “I do hope so. I have clung to that thought when it seemed all light had…” As quickly as the pleasure came, it faded. When the season was over, would she have a place to go?

  Violet hugged her once, hard. “I’m glad to have you here after all these years of begging you to come.” The advent of three children had changed Violet’s petite figure from the perfect hourglass to one whose sand had run to the bottom. Her pale brown hair fell in ringlets around her full face, her brown eyes still sparkled with humor, and her thin lips were always tilted upward as if she found something secretly amusing in every situation.

  Her lips tilted upward now as she asked, “Where is your ward about whom I’ve heard so much?”

  Adorna had descended from the coach and waited. Now she stepped forward, curtsied, and said respectfully, “Lady Tarlin, my aunt and I are so grateful that you’ve consented to sponsor us for our season.”

  “She’s not sponsoring me,” Jane said. “My debut is long past.”

  Adorna spoke slowly and precisely. “I have planned a double wedding.”

  It took a minute for her meaning to sink in. Then, horrified and embarrassed, Jane exclaimed, “Adorna!”

  “An excellent objective.” Violet gave a chime of laughter at Jane’s grimace.

  “A ridiculous notion. I don’t know what gave her that idea.”

  “Maybe she thought of it herself.” With her hand under Adorna’s chin, Violet considered the innocent countenance turned up to her trustingly. “She’s lovely, and with a captivating manner, too. You were right, Jane. She’ll be the toast of the season.” Linking arms with both of them, she led them up the stairs. “We must get busy. We have less than a month to prepare.” With a sideways glance, she said, “You’ll both need new wardrobes.”

  “Not me,” Jane said.

  “New hair
styles,” Adorna said.

  “Dear, your father—” Jane began to remonstrate.

  Adorna’s chin jutted remarkably for such a rounded feature. “Papa’s not here.”

  “You would hate to have Lord Blackburn think you had fallen on hard times,” Violet interposed in what Jane thought was a quite unnecessary opinion.

  Jane glanced at Adorna, but as they reached the door her niece had swiveled and faced the street, giving the appearance of having forgotten her companions. Jane whispered, “Is Lord Blackburn well?”

  Violet tossed her head. “Better than he deserves, although I do my best to make him miserable. Do you really care?”

  Pressing her lips together, Jane shook her head. She shouldn’t care. She was a chaperone now. A spinster. A maiden aunt. Perhaps she’d wear a cap this season.

  “Come, dear,” she said to Adorna. “We mustn’t loiter on the steps.”

  But in a burst of exuberance, Adorna threw out her arms as if to embrace the whole city and declared, “I’ll take the ton by storm. I’ll make you both proud of me. I swear I will!”

  Her golden hair caught the rays of the setting sun, and Jane thought that with her arms outstretched and her cape tossed back, she looked like the embodiment of a triumphant goddess. Violet, too, gazed at her in appreciation, and murmured, “A pretty sentiment,” while below them, the young, heretofore deferential footman stood with his mouth undeferentially agape.

  Then their coachman shouted. On the street, a fashionable phaeton careened across the square. The gentleman driver sawed at the reins, his gaze still fastened to Adorna like a knight to the Holy Grail.

  “Oh, no,” Jane said. It had started already.

  As their coachman and footmen tried desperately to back their horses, the gentleman swerved. Just in time. He missed their carriage, but his wheel struck the curbstone. His rotation was too sharp. With a crack that reverberated up the narrow street, the phaeton overturned.

  Adorna squealed and averted her face.

  The driver went flying, landing with a somersault on the cobblestones.

  “Is he hurt?” Jane asked.

  But he came to his feet at once. Tugging once at his cravat, he brushed his hair off his forehead, then gave a formal bow that, even from a distance, was obviously directed at Adorna.

  As he hurried toward his struggling team, Adorna asked, “Are the horsies hurt?” She had her hands over her eyes.

  Jane watched as the gentleman went to his team’s heads and spoke to the creatures, calming them. “The horses are well. So is the man who drove them, although he deserves worse.”

  “I know.” Adorna turned to her aunt and frowned ferociously. “Why do men insist on driving those dangerous vehicles when they can’t control their horsies?”

  “I would say that the problem is, they can’t keep their eyes on the road,” Jane answered.

  “I don’t understand what happened.” Violet sounded truly bewildered. “Mr. Pennington is usually so careful with his team.”

  “Go on in, dear,” Jane said to Adorna. “I know how these incidents upset you.”

  “Thank you, Aunt.” Adorna glanced at Violet. “With your permission?”

  Violet waved her inside.

  Jane waited until the austere butler had bowed Adorna into the dim interior before saying meaningfully, “I did warn you.”

  Violet frowned. “You think Mr. Pennington saw Adorna and lost control of his team?”

  “It happens all the time.”

  Violet’s laughter chimed out. “This is all quite unbelievable. Between Adorna causing carriage wrecks and Blackburn’s first sighting of you, I contemplate a very entertaining season.”

  Chapter 3

  A month later, from the top of Lady Goodridge’s broad stairway, Ransom Quincy, Marquess of Blackburn, removed his silver quizzing glass from the pocket of his dark blue waistcoat and lifted it to his face. Below him on the main floor of the garish, pink-painted ballroom, a glittering crowd seeped in and around the pillars. They leaned over the balcony, they trickled between the banquet hall and the gaming chambers. Only the dance floor was free as they waited for the orchestra to begin.

  His sister Susan would be in ecstasy; not only had she succeeded in leading off with the season’s first huge success, but she had convinced her insufferable brother to attend.

  Or so she thought, and he had no intention of disillusioning her. He had his reasons for allowing himself to be so coerced, and they had nothing to do with making his sister happy.

  “Blackburn!” Gerald Fitzgerald came from behind. “What are you doing here? Thought you gave these up.”

  “I thought so, too. I was wrong.” Quizzing glass still up, Blackburn made a quick inspection of the former cavalry leader.

  They had met at Eton, Fitz sent by a widowed mother who sacrificed everything to ensure her son’s education, Ransom dispatched by a father determined to see his heir go through the phases of schooling required for a noble’s son. Despite their disparate backgrounds, or perhaps because of them, they had become fast friends. Through the death of Ransom’s father, through the early, frivolous years in society, through Mrs. Fitzgerald’s decline into invalidism, they had remained companions.

  Fitz wore his usual well tailored costume: a coat of claret velvet with high padded shoulders, a gleaming gold waistcoat, black trousers, and highly polished boots decorated with a gold metallic tassel. A bit garish, but Fitz wore it well. More important—“You seem healthy,” Ransom said in delicate inquiry.

  Fitz clapped his hand to his thigh. “Hardly giving me a twinge. Good surgeon you had with your unit. Thank you for loaning him to me.” Taking advantage of a friend’s privilege, he pushed Ransom’s quizzing glass away from his face.

  Ransom allowed it, turning his face toward Fitz so he could see as he wished. This was, after all, their first meeting since the battle of Talavera ten months ago.

  Fitz was tall, almost Ransom’s height, and apparently handsome if the reaction of the passing ladies was anything to go by. Yet when last Ransom had seen him, he’d been in a ragged hospital tent on the Spanish Peninsula, white with pain and afraid he would lose his leg to his “damnable heroics,” as he called them. He hadn’t, and Blackburn was glad to see him looking staunch and hearty.

  Fitz apparently felt much the same. “Shrapnel scarcely left a scar,” he observed.

  “Surgeon saved the eye.” Blackburn kept his expression impassive. “That’s all I care about.”

  “Naturally.” Fitz inspected the ballroom just as Ransom had a few moments earlier. “A crush! One can scarcely move down there.”

  “When the dancing starts, it’ll break up.” Blackburn lifted the quizzing glass again and stared at the teeming humanity below with the same affection he reserved for Spaniards and cockroaches. “I shall not dance, of course, and my sister will fret.”

  “Since when do you care what Lady Goodridge thinks?”

  There spoke a man who had no siblings, Blackburn thought. “She’s my sister, my eldest by ten years. She has her ways of making me uncomfortable.”

  Fitz smiled a small, secret smile. “She scares the good sense out of most people.”

  “But not you. You never had any.”

  Fitz laughed aloud this time, throwing back his head so that his fashionably curled hair bounced and the ton stared as they squirmed their way around.

  “I’m glad I can amuse you,” Blackburn said coolly, but he watched his friend carefully. Fitz was up to something. That febrile glitter in his eye signaled mischief, or worse.

  “So sorry! I’m the one who’s supposed to amuse you, aren’t I?” Fitz cuffed Blackburn on the arm. “What excuse will you give for not dancing?”

  Blackburn leaned closer. “Lend me your wound in the thigh.”

  “Will not, b’God,” Fitz said with equanimity. “Use it for sympathy from the ladies.”

  Ransom gave a bark of laughter. “You’re a knave.”

  “It’s better than being p
ositively grim.” Fitz stared meaningfully at his friend.

  “Me?” Blackburn touched his fingers to his chest. “Grim? I prefer to think of myself as conservative.”

  Fitz ran his gaze over Blackburn’s somber ensemble of black evening coat and trousers, black boots, snowy white shirt and cravat tied in the waterfall style. “Conservative. I’ll say. I heard stories you were at the Foreign Office every day.” He glowered. “Working.”

  “Really?” Forgetting he was supposed to encourage the gossip, Ransom allowed his voice to chill. “Who’s been reporting on me?”

  “Everyone. You were the talk of London, wearing clothing from last season and exercising your horse at odd hours. In the early morning!”

  Blackburn toyed with the silver chain that held his quizzing glass. “While on the continent, I discovered there were hours before noon.”

  “Speculation is, you’re working the spy game.”

  The fine silver chain snapped in Blackburn’s fingers, snapped as cleanly as a traitor’s neck in a hangman’s noose. “Spy?”

  Fitz watched as Blackburn detached the chain. “So I told them. Blackburn, a spy? I said. Nonsense! He’s too proper.”

  “Quite right.”

  “Too well-bred.”

  “I am a Quincy.”

  “Too…dull.”

  A faded blue eye. A quavering old voice. “England is depending on you, Lord Blackburn. That treacherous blighter’s out there somewhere.”

  In as insufferable a tone as he knew—and Blackburn knew well how to be insufferable—he said, “If dull is knowing the worth of propriety, then yes, I am dull.”

  “Except for that business of working at the Foreign Office.”

  “A whim, long vanquished.” Blackburn slipped the chain in his waistcoat pocket. “Or didn’t the gossips report that?”

  “I heard you were at Stockfish’s house party in Sussex and hunting with the MacLeods in Scotland.”

  “Keep your blinkers open and your blinders off. We know about de Sainte-Amand, but the one who planned the whole operation—that one we really need. So watch. Find out how the information is passed. Find out how the information is getting out of the Foreign Office. Find out who the leader is.”