A Hint of Scandal (13 page)

“Why don’t we all repair to the drawing room? It would be ever so much cozier, and we ladies would miss your masculine company too dreadfully if you stayed.” She cast irresistible, beseeching blue eyes to her father and Lord Crayton, who both instantly agreed with her plan.

As they all rose and began migrating to the drawing room, Bella lagged back with the duke, allowing the others to move well ahead of them.

“Your grace, I fear this evening is proving too arduous for you,” she told him gently.

The duke looked down into Bella’s anxious eyes. In truth, he felt as if he were about to humiliate himself by fainting.

“Dash it, Bella, I hate being a bother, but I would like to return to the manor.”

“Of course, your grace,” Bella said quickly as Triss approached.

As if from a distance Westlake heard Lady Beatrice say, “Leave everything to me, Bella. Bring his grace into the antechamber across the hall to rest while I have the coach brought around.”

Placing her arm around the duke’s waist, thereby forcing him to lean upon her, Bella led Westlake into the antechamber. Soon he found himself lying on a soft leather couch in a room with burgundy velvet drapery.

“Please make my apologies to Lord and Lady Penninghurst.”

Bella looked down at the duke’s waxen features as his words faded away.

“He has fainted,” Bella said worriedly to Triss. “I had a very bad feeling about this evening. It was much too soon for him to be out like this. It has only been a week since he was shot. And for the first few days he was barely conscious.”

“As usual, you are right, Bella,” Triss replied, chewing her bottom lip. “I still think it best that you return to the manor. It is obviously what he wants, and this way he will not be waking up in a strange place.”

“You are right,” Bella agreed, too distracted by her worry for the duke to catch the mischievous gleam in her cousin’s eye.

“I will make your apologies to everyone, so do not worry.”

“Thank you, Triss.” Bella seated herself on the couch next to the duke’s hip.

Triss stood by the door, watching the deep worry on her cousin’s face, and a look of determination settled on her own features as she quietly slipped from the room.

Bella put her hand gently to the duke’s forehead to check for fever, and was dismayed to feel how warm he was. His eyelids fluttered open and her gaze met the full intensity of his.

“I am sorry to be such a damned bother, Bella,” he said, attempting a small grin.

“Hush,” Bella said softly. “You are no bother. You are very brave. It was just too soon for you to attempt something this strenuous. You must listen to me and not be so stubborn in the future.”

“I should like to listen to you in all things, Arabella,” the duke said solemnly after a pause.

Inexplicably, Bella’s heart seemed to skip a beat. After
a moment she found she could not pull her eyes from the intense beauty of his gray-green gaze.

Bella stayed very still for a very long moment. Suddenly she was keenly aware of every little thing about him. The clean angles of his handsome, chiseled features. The impossible length of his dark lashes. The heat of his hip pressed against hers.

His lips parted as if he were about to say something when a gentle knock intruded on the moment.

He watched with a feeling of satisfaction as a flush crept up the ivory of her cheeks while she breathlessly bade whomever was at the door to enter.

A footman opened the door and bowed quickly. “Lady Beatrice said I was to help his grace to the coach, miss.”

“Thank you,” Bella said as she rose from the couch. “We shall be home soon, your grace,” she told the duke as she helped him to a sitting position.

The footman was young and strong and had no trouble helping the large yet weakened man from the house and into the waiting coach. As Bella and the duke settled in, Triss appeared at the open coach door.

“I will send Uncle Alfred and Tommy home later. Do not worry about anything,” she said, and stepped back before nodding to the coachman to close the door.

As she watched the coach leave the drive, Lady Beatrice finally allowed the satisfied smile she had been keeping in check to escape.

Picking up the skirt of her beautiful pink evening gown, she skipped up the steps back into the house and to the salon, where her papa was watching Uncle Alfred and Lord Crayton play chess by the fireplace. Her mama and Lady Crayton were seated at the card table, playing piquet.

She did not concern herself with Tommy; he had disappeared a while ago, and she assumed he was in the stable, as usual.

“Mother, dear,” she said, “his grace has asked me to extend his apologies, but as he is feeling quite fatigued you will have to continue to enjoy your evening without him.”

“Oh? Oh!” Lady Penninghurst said, startled by this turn of events, and not sure how to proceed.

“Not to worry, Mother,” Triss continued. “I have taken care of everything. The duke is safely tucked away in the blue guest chamber upstairs,” she lied cheerfully.

“Oh,” Lady Penninghurst said again, and laid her cards down on the table. “Shall I go to him?” She hesitated.

“No need,” Triss said, seating herself on a small settee near the card table. “He said he did not wish to disturb your evening, as the night is still young. He shall ring if he needs anything. I have sent Mrs. Harris to him with a hot brick. You and Lady Crayton continue your game. His grace would be embarrassed if he thought he was causing a disturbance.”

Biting her lip, Lady Penninghurst looked over to her husband, still not sure of how to proceed when hosting a duke.

“He did look peaked at dinner, my dear. Let him rest,” Lord Penninghurst said, and turned his attention back to the game.

“I agree, Elizabeth,” Lady Crayton said. “Besides, it’s your turn,” she said pointedly, for she was keen on cards.

Lady Penninghurst smiled her relief and picked up her hand of cards. “Thank you, Beatrice, for seeing to the duke’s comfort.”

“You are welcome, Mother.” Triss smiled sweetly at her mother and Lady Crayton.

“I must say, the duke is certainly not what I expected,” Lady Crayton said after making another discard.

“How so?” Triss asked with keen interest.

“Lord Crayton and I were in London several Seasons ago, and the town was full of gossip about the dukes of Westlake and Severly. They are purported to be the best of chums, you know. Anyway, Lord Crayton and I do not move in the same circles as the duke, but the tales were very clear that the duke had a shocking reputation as a highflier and a rogue. Am I not correct, Crayton?” she called across the room to her husband.

“What? Oh, yes, m’dear,” Lord Crayton said, glancing up briefly from the chessboard. “Veritable rakehell was the consensus.”

“That so?” Alfred Tichley asked. “Well, he certainly has been a complete gentleman since we have known him.”

The conversation ceased while the chess game continued
and the ladies became involved in their card game. Triss remained silent.

“Beatrice, where is my daughter?” Uncle Alfred called a little while later, pausing before making his next move.

“Bella?” Triss said with supreme innocence. “She decided to return to the manor. She’s been very tired of late, what with taking care of the duke and all.”

“She did not wish to say good-bye?” Lady Penninghurst frowned at her daughter over her cards, for she found this lack of attention to manners very unlike Arabella.

Squelching her growing nervousness, Triss turned her clear blue eyes to her mother. “I told her I would say her good-byes. She did not want Uncle Alfred to feel he had to return home early also, so she just decided to slip out. You know Uncle rarely has the pleasure of playing chess with Papa or Lord Crayton.” She whispered this last bit to the ladies for good measure.

“Of course.” Lady Penninghurst nodded her understanding. “My niece is the most thoughtful of creatures,” she stated to Lady Crayton, who agreed wholeheartedly before discarding a card.

Triss sat back in her chair, doing her very best to suppress a self-satisfied smile.

T
he next morning was clear and bright at Penninghurst Park as Lady Beatrice breezed into the large and formally appointed breakfast room.

She was humming a happy little tune as she first kissed her mother’s cheek, then moved to her father and kissed him on the top of his head, as he was engrossed in his newspaper.

Continuing to hum, she went farther down the highly polished table to kiss her uncle good morning and give a cheery wave to Tommy.

Just as the footman was about to pull out a chair for her, Lady Triss suddenly gave such a piercing shriek that her mother dropped her teacup and Tommy covered his ears.

“Good heavens! What is the matter with you, Triss?” Lord Penninghurst shouted at his only offspring as she stood staring at her astonished uncle with an expression of growing horror.

“Uncle Alfred! What are you doing here?” she exclaimed.

Alfred looked from his niece’s horrified expression to his brother and sister-in-law, then back to his niece.

“What has you so upset, my dear?”

“Never tell me that you did not return home last night!”

“No, I stayed here last night,” her uncle said calmly. “Our chess game went quite late, and as the duke is staying at the Park, I decided I might as well stay too.”

“Oh, no! Oh, no!” Triss sank down into the side chair as the enormity of the disaster began to sink in.

Lady Penninghurst slowly rose from her chair, now quite worried at this unprecedented behavior from her daughter.

“Triss, you are worrying us. What is the matter?” her mother begged.

“The duke… The duke…” Triss stopped, for she did not even know how to begin.

“The duke has not rung yet this morning. Aunt says to let him rest,” Tommy informed her in an attempt to be helpful.

Drawing her hands up to her cheeks, Triss looked at each one of her relatives. They in turn were looking at her as if she were a Bedlamite. Her thoughts went in circles until she was almost dizzy with trying to come up with some story—any story, save the truth.

But after a moment she realized there was nothing else she could do but confess her shocking behavior.

“I thought you would return home last night,” she began a little desperately. “I thought I would give Bella and the duke an hour or two to speak with each other.” She paused for a breath.

“Triss, whatever are you babbling about? Just tell us what is wrong,” her father demanded.

“I saw no harm.… I never thought you would stay the night, Uncle Alfred,” she stressed.

“Get to the point, young lady,” Lord Penninghurst cut in with uncharacteristic harshness.

Taking a huge breath, Triss plunged ahead. “I sent Bella and the duke home in the coach after dinner last night. I told a whopping falsehood when I said the duke was upstairs. But truly, it never occurred to me that Uncle Alfred and Tommy would not go home as well,” she said in a rush.

Complete silence fell on the room as each of her relatives took in her statement.

Triss looked at the dawning shock and accusation on their faces. Her eyes silently beseeched them to understand and forgive.

In the dead silence, Uncle Alfred laid his napkin very precisely next to his plate. Then he pushed back his chair and slowly stood. He looked at his niece, and she saw the
red flush rising from his cheeks to the tops of his ears. “Do you mean to say that my daughter has spent the entire night alone with the duke?”

His tone was so sharply cold that Triss shivered. She could only nod her response. For once in her life, her voice failed her.

“David.” Alfred turned to his brother. “Please have a horse waiting for me in five minutes.” He began to stride to the breakfast room door when Tommy jumped up and started to follow. “No, Thomas, you must remain here,” his father told the boy.

Tommy sat back down in his chair and looked at Triss with tear-filled, reproachful eyes before turning to look pleadingly at his aunt. “Is Bella in very bad trouble, Aunt Elizabeth?”

Lady Penninghurst did not answer her nephew, but instead turned to her husband. “David, go with him,” she urged. “You must try to keep tempers from getting out of hand.

“Of course I’m going with him,” the earl said, and quickly followed his brother out of the room.

“Aunt Elizabeth?” Tommy said again, beginning to sniffle.

Lady Penninghurst turned outraged eyes to her daughter.

“Why, for the love of heaven, would you want to do something like this? Do you want to see Bella ruined?”

“No, Mother, of course not! I just wanted Bella and the duke to have a chance to talk. I am so sorry.”

“Sorry! I can listen to you no longer. Leave my sight!” her mother said vehemently. “You have always been spoiled and selfish, and that, I admit, is the fault of me and your father. But until this moment I never thought that you were actually bad. Go to your room, and for once do not think of yourself and make excuses. Think on what your foolish actions have wrought.”

Triss stood before her mother with her head bowed. She was thinking of Bella as she closed her eyes in shame. A moment later she lifted her head and looked again at her mother’s outraged face. “Yes, Mother,” she said quietly, and fled the room.

B
ella awakened that morning a little later than was her usual time. Sitting up in bed, she smiled at the bright morning sunlight streaming into the bedchamber.

For reasons she refused to examine, Bella felt happier than she had in months. Maybe because she sensed a hint of spring in the air, she decided.

After rising and donning a plain gray dress, she left the room without bothering to put her hair up, simply tying it back with a ribbon. Entering the kitchen, she decided to make everyone a hearty breakfast, and set about rattling pots and pans. But upon hearing a noise coming from the other room, she went to investigate.

It was the duke, dressed in breeches, white lawn shirt, blue waistcoat, and shiny black Hessian boots.

“Good morning, your grace,” Bella said a little shyly as she curtsied.