A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal (26 page)

“Tomorrow,” he said as he lifted his head to look into her face. The curve of his mouth bespoke satisfaction—and a promise he underscored by the
light touch he traced over her bottom lip. “I have the license,” he said, his slumberous gaze intent on hers. “We’ll be wed, and then …” His smile tipped into a lazy angle. “You’ll decide which you like better: this table, or my bed.”

S
imon’s way to the wedding led through a house that appeared deserted. Rushden’s ghost was no doubt raging about the rafters: the coming ceremony would, in most respects, seem a perfect specimen of revenge on him. Had it not been for his shenanigans, Simon would have married long ago, and been unavailable to missing daughters who turned up in the night.

Alas, Rushden had offered a bribe and Maria had taken it, removing herself from Simon’s reach.

His steps slowed as he turned through the entry hall. He hadn’t given real thought to Maria in years, but after speaking of her last night, her face seemed newly vivid. Turning a profit off love was a trickier endeavor in a parlor than on a street corner, but she’d managed it.

She’d managed, also, to make a fool of him. Naturally he hadn’t thought of her in years. Thinking of her entailed remembering how he’d chased after her, demanded and then begged her to reconsider her decision—heedless of his own pride, careless of the humiliation. He’d spent years building his immunity to Rushden’s jibes, but one sneer from her and he’d been flattened.

Well. Long ago. That boy—for he’d been very young—seemed a stranger to him, now. Yet in letting go of Maria and of the part of himself that had loved her, Simon also had abandoned—forever, he’d imagined—a certain vision of himself: as someone’s husband, a man
obligated. Only natural, then, that this coming moment should seem surreal.

Not that he’d be
obligated
to Nell, precisely. He made himself smile as he turned down the corridor toward the formal drawing room. These sober reflections were ludicrously inappropriate. If the courts denied Nell her birthright, he would break the connection, easily as snapping a twig. He’d have no other choice.

Nevertheless, as he caught sight through the open door of the waiting deacon—and beside him, Nell, her eyes on the carpet, her back rigidly straight—he came to a stop, struck by something that he hadn’t been prepared to feel. He drew a sharp breath and stepped behind the doorjamb, out of sight, where a laugh escaped him: What on earth? Why was he hiding like a guilty schoolboy?

He looked down at himself, dressed in a morning coat of dove gray, freshly brushed, with diamond cuff links at his wrists. An uninformed observer would have called him the very picture of the well-dressed groom.

Perhaps he should have told Nell that this marriage need not be permanent. It had been Rushden’s way to bully a person with lies and threats, but his own specialty was different: he pushed unpalatable truths on people and made them like it. Marrying her without telling her the whole of it felt like … poor sport.

But she was skittish. Oh, underneath him on a billiards table, she was … the most perfect picture of soft, scented, willing compliance that any man could imagine. But when on her feet, she still examined his claims skeptically, from every angle available. Her trust was new, fragile, and undependable.

Meanwhile, whether permanent or not, this
marriage would serve her best interests. If everything worked out, they
would
remain wed. And if everything… did not work out, he’d find some happy settlement to send her into a rosier future than the past she’d left behind.

A factory girl, for God’s sake.

No, he’d find some way—somehow—to give her a sum that would see her well settled.

On credit, perhaps, he’d raise that sum.

But no doubt it would work out. Daughtry’s men were on the case. Now it was his turn to take the crucial next step. And if he’d gambled correctly—well, then despite the informal setting, this ceremony would be binding. A momentous occasion. Twenty years from now, he would look back on this moment in the hallway as the last of his bachelorhood.

He reached up to tug at his ascot. His valet had knotted it too tightly.

The marriage would change nothing, of course. Both bride and groom entered into it with dreams of pounds and pennies, nothing lofty or noble. Pounds, pennies, and pleasure. Nell was a sensible woman; it would never occur to her to demand more of him than that. What else could a cynic desire?

And he
was
a cynic, he reminded himself.

He tugged down his long coattails—feeling foolish, suddenly, to have dressed so formally—and entered the room.

The hush that greeted his appearance felt not so much suspenseful as weary: it had started out as puzzlement, perhaps, but had since collapsed into boredom. Along one wall, a line of neatly starched mobcaps disguised the down-turned faces of the six upstairs maids, who bobbed in unison for him. His
butler bowed staidly. Mrs. Collins’s creaking knees popped as she straightened.

Not for the first time, he wondered why he had so many damned servants. He could have raised a fortune simply by firing them, but decency continued to impede that temptation.

By the window, Nell looked up from her study of the carpet. The afternoon light cast her in gold. Madame Debordes had delivered the new gowns four days ago, and for this occasion, his bride had chosen to don what must be the soberest of the lot: a steel-gray silk walking dress shot through with black.

The dress was darker than his coat by several shades, and to his distracted mind, the choice seemed significant. A darker gray, a paler face, her expression impassive, her square jaw set. The lady’s maid had trammeled her bangs, sleeking her hair straight back from her brow. She looked calmer than he felt; she was outdoing him somehow.

The thought made no sense. He let it go as he walked to her side. “My lady.”

She bent her knee in reply. “Lord Rushden.”

The slight curtsy was appropriate and perfectly accomplished. He saw not a single sign that she remembered where he’d put his hands and mouth last night, although memories of it had kept him up almost until dawn.

The absurd sense of inadequacy deepened. He had the fleeting idea that her ragged clothing and gutter accents had been a disguise, and the face she presented now, serene and composed, was her true demeanor. That perhaps this, too, was another bad joke pulled off at his expense, and designed by her late, unlamented father.

What a singular, nonsensical idea. He dismissed it, but its effect continued to register in the sudden tightness in his throat. He had a premonition, real and unshakable: complications, unforeseen consequences, a cost to himself …

The next second, he was marveling at the misfiring of his brain. He nodded to the Reverend Dawkins, who stood a few paces away, Bible in hand. When they had spoken earlier in Simon’s study, Dawkins had done a poor job of disguising his curiosity. This made him well suited to the task at hand: within an hour, despite Grimston’s best efforts to trammel it, word would spread that Lord Rushden had married.

The notion settled the last of Simon’s nerves. It would be an interesting night at the dinner tables in Mayfair. The game, as they said, was afoot.

Dawkins cleared his throat. “Your lordship, if you would take the bride’s hands.”

Her small fingers were cold and steady. Not by a flicker of her lashes did she react to his touch. Simon fought back the impulse to squeeze, to tighten his grip until she reacted. She should be more nervous than he. She thought this marriage was unbreakable.

Ridiculous, this sudden guilt.

She lifted her brow now. Questioning his stare. He mustered a smile, which she readily returned. He focused on that glimpse of tooth where her lips did not quite meet—that gap that had seemed such a provocation when he’d first spied it, a baring of something unmeant to be seen.

But almost immediately, her smile changed, her lips tightening, shutting her teeth away. She deliberately restrained her smile. No doubt someone had told her that ladies were not meant to grin so broadly. And
she’d believed this advice, as of course she should, since it was true.

The thought drove a pang through him. What a pity it would be if her uniqueness was flattened into the regular ways of the herd.

But wasn’t that the aim?

“Marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately,” Dawkins intoned. The right words, nothing in them to mark that this marriage ultimately might be a sham.

Nell’s smile yet lingered, very slight, the look of a woman lost in private thoughts. She had ideas and Simon could not guess at what they might be. Was she envisioning a happy future for them? He hadn’t bothered to discuss with her what their marriage of convenience might entail. He’d never imagined it would be necessary to enlighten her: her cynicism, after all, seemed a match for his own.

The liturgy unfolded. As she spoke her vow in a clear, strong voice, he felt a frown creeping over his brow. He felt restless, suddenly, as though her grip were the only thing holding him in this room. Marrying a woman in rags would have rendered this occasion more transparent. But an onlooker, right now, might mistake this for something other than it was. They might mistake it as a romance.

They might think he actually cared for this woman.

“I will,” Simon had just said. That meant they were married. The fat man was about to pronounce them husband and wife. Nell cut another wary look toward the deacon: a fraud, perhaps? And yet … all these witnesses: the entire staff lined up against the wall. The lawyer, Daughtry, stood beside the butler,
straight-faced, earnestly observant. Would a man of the law show up to witness a fraud’s ceremony? Maybe if Simon paid him enough.

For himself, Simon looked genuinely puzzled as the deacon spoke the conclusion: “Those whom God has joined together let no one put asunder,” he said, and Simon’s frown deepened, as no doubt did her own: this shared look between them was taking on the flavor of mutual confusion, as though each of them had been waiting for the other to break first—
All right, you got me, I didn’t mean it—
and now found themselves baffled, stunned: had this really just happened?

As the deacon began the closing prayer, a hysterical feeling tickled her throat, the beginning of a lunatic laugh. After the dreams she’d had last night—one nightmare right after another, in all of which Simon had mocked her, scorned her as a slum rat—she’d woken convinced that something awful was going to happen today. Simon was kind but not an idiot. He wouldn’t marry her before her inheritance was guaranteed. They’d all but tupped last night on his billiards table—and afterward, she’d been ready and willing for
more
. No peer of the realm took such a woman to wife! Since she’d walked into this room, she’d been braced for the joke: he would pull away, shake his head, wave everybody out, simply flick them away like flies off a pastry, as went his usual style.
Changed my mind. Let’s call it off
.

But he hadn’t. She could barely comprehend it. They were
married
.

“You may kiss the bride,” said the reverend—to confirm her thoughts or maybe to prompt them both to action: they were staring at each other like proper dolts.

She heard a cough from the servants’ side. A murmur ran through the room.

Simon blinked. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.” His face cleared; kissing, he was not confused about. “By all means.” He leaned down. She waited, watching him, slack-mouthed still with surprise.

His lips brushed hers. Instantly, he retreated.

A snort escaped her.
Oops
. She put her fingers to her lips. His frown returned. He scowled down at her, the master of the house, his dignity offended.

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. Lord High and Mighty had just
pecked
her like a fussy aunt.

“There you go,” she said, all but brimming with hilarity. He looked so bloody disgruntled, glaring down at her. At least the servants were getting a good show! Her laughter sounded giddy, drunk.

The murmur behind her rose to a mutter. Yes, she thought, that’s right: the new countess, she’s off her rocker.

The deacon cleared his throat. Dutiful, godly, he attempted to recall her to the audience. “Your ladyship, your lordship, allow me to convey my best wishes.”

Simon’s lips pressed together; he took an audible breath through his nose. “Our thanks,” he said. Perhaps a bit of a tremble on that last syllable.

“Yes,” she said, locking eyes with her new husband. Lifting her brow. “Our thanks.”

His cheek hollowed, as though he were biting the inside of it. “Lady Rushden, then.” Definitely a tremble. And then suddenly he was grinning at her. “My
lady
.”

She pressed her knuckles to her mouth. Nodded. “Apparently,” she said.

“So it seems,” he agreed, and then laughed, a
short, somewhat wild sound. “It suits you,” he said. “Countess.”

Her breath caught.
Countess
. Had a choir of angels appeared to sing it, the word couldn’t have amazed her more.