A Little Scandal (10 page)

“Lord Wingate?” Freddy had said, when he’d finally found his tongue. And by that time, they’d been twice around the park in his new phaeton, in which he’d insisted upon taking Kate driving, though she’d have preferred to spend their time together in a nice tea shop, and not whipping about in an open carriage.

“Lord Wingate?” Freddy had repeated. “Burke Traherne, you mean? The one you poked with your umbrella?”

“Yes,” Kate had replied. “That’s the one. Do watch where you’re going, Freddy. You nearly ran over that dog—”

“You’re going to go and live in Traherne’s house, and look after his daughter?”

“Yes, Freddy. That’s what I said. For three hundred pounds a year. Although I don’t imagine I’ll be there a year, since if the Lady Isabel is any bit as amiable as she is rich, she will probably be married by the end of the season, anyway. Freddy, must we go so fast?”

“But I told you about him, Katie! I told you all about him, didn’t I? About how he divorced his wife, and threw—”

“And threw her lover out a window, yes. Lord Wingate seems to have a propensity for throwing things out windows. He threw an atlas out the window, you know, when I said I wouldn’t work for him.”

“The devil he did!”

Kate was beginning to regret having mentioned it at all. She’d had to tell him, of course—he’d have found out eventually. She’d had to tell him. Only she couldn’t help wishing he would be a bit more understanding.

“I don’t like it,” Freddy said flatly. “Besides the fact that you’ll be living with him”—his dark expression explained, only too clearly, who he was—”you’ll be putting yourself in an impossible position. Think about it, Kate. You’ll be taking that girl places where just a few years ago, you were an invited guest. Only now you’ll be going as someone’s servant—”

“A few years ago,” Kate said with a sniff. “Try seven years ago, Freddy. No one will remember.”

“The devil they won’t! Kate, you were all anybody talked about for—”

“Seven years ago, Freddy. I’m an old lady now. Why, I found a grey hair the other day.”

Freddy scowled. “You may think you’ve changed, Katie, but believe me, you haven’t. They’ll recognize you—”

“Nobody notices a chaperone.” She hoped.

“—and then there’ll be those awkward questions you hate so much, and possibly even some pitying looks. All of those old biddies you so despised will talk of nothing else. ‘Would you believe who showed up at my place last night, Lavinia? The Mayhew girl. Only she was working, and as a chaperone, poor little thing.’ ”

Kate said, “You know, Freddy, I never realized it before, but you’re quite a fine mimic. That was Lady Hildengard, am I right?”

“The point,” Freddy said fiercely, “is that you’re going to hate it. You know you couldn’t stand those women—”

“Freddy, you are missing the point. Three hundred pounds is a lot of money. I can bear all the Lady Hildengards in the world for three hundred pounds. You know Papa left me nothing but debt—”

“You aren’t responsible for the debt your father left behind,” Freddy reminded her.

“No, but I can’t help but feel responsible for the people he left behind. You know Nanny hasn’t got a cent.”

“Nanny!” Freddy burst out. “Is that what this is about? Your old nanny?”

“Yes,” Kate said calmly. “Three hundred pounds could pay the rent on Nanny’s cottage for years to come. There’s no possible way I could say no, Freddy.”

“There’s no possible way you’re saying yes,” Freddy declared, pulling his horse to a violent stop. “Kate, you’re not going to work for Burke Traherne. I won’t have it!”

“Oh,” she said tartly. “And I suppose you’re going to pay the rent on Nanny’s cottage, then?”

“I said I would, if you’d only let me.”

“I won’t.” Kate shook her head. “I shall take care of Nanny myself.”

“I’ll find her address,” Freddy threatened, “and write to her and tell her what you’re doing. Then you’ll be sorry.”

Kate laughed at that. “Oh, and what will you tell her, Freddy? That I’ve accepted a position that pays me nine times what I was earning before, for less work? I’m going to be working as Lord Wingate’s daughter’s chaperone, Freddy. It’s a perfectly respectable position. Even Nanny would agree. It isn’t as if,” she added, “I’ve agreed to be his concubine, or something.”

“Damn it, Kate!” Freddy reached over and found one of her hands, then pressed her fingers, quite hard, with his own. “The man’s got a temper to beat the devil. Why, last week he put a bullet through some poor fellow over that Woodhart woman. He’s a profligate bounder, besides. He’s probably only hired you so he can have his fun debauching you, and then turn you out when he’s tired of you. He hasn’t a heart, you know.”

Kate blinked up at him astonishedly for a moment, then burst out into peals of laughter. Freddy did not share her amusement, and glared at her disapprovingly. But Kate couldn’t help it, and was gasping for breath by the time she’d calmed enough to ask, “Oh, Freddy, do you really think so? I’ve always wanted to be debauched by a profligate bounder! And he’s paying me for the honor, besides. However did I get so lucky?”

Freddy scowled. “It isn’t funny, Kate. I’m warning you, Traherne—”

“Yes, yes, yes.” Kate pulled her hand from his and patted him with it. “He’s an awful, dreadful man. Freddy, I know all that, believe me. And I shall be on my guard.”

“On your guard? Kate, it isn’t a matter of being on your guard. What if—”

“Besides, Freddy, it isn’t as if Lord Wingate has expressed the slightest interest in me that way.” She hadn’t dared, of course, to tell him that actually, the opposite was true. “He has Mrs. Woodhart to entertain him. What could he possibly see in me when he has her?”

Freddy said something, but under his breath, so she could not make it out.

“And while Lord Wingate very well might be a profligate bounder,” Kate went on, as much to convince herself as him, “you have to admit he cares a good deal for his daughter’s happiness. And how terrible can a man who loves his daughter be?”

“Kate—”

“And as for debauching me, Frederick Bishop, the marquis’s whole purpose in hiring me, as near as I can tell, is so that he can have his evenings free to go out and carry on with his debauching without his daughter finding out. Now what have you to say to that?”

Freddy slumped defeatedly against the phaeton seat. “Kate, won’t you just marry me? It would make everything so much simpler.”

Kate blinked at him. She so enjoyed Freddy’s company that she sometimes quite forgot that he considered her more than just that—a companion. She felt a pang of guilt as she realized she probably ought not to be accepting his invitations to tea and carriage rides. It wasn’t fair of her, she thought all at once, to continue to meet with him. It raised false hopes.

And yet he was the best—and only—friend remaining from her former life. She couldn’t see herself without him.

Unfortunately, she also couldn’t see herself with him … not the way he wanted her to be.

She sighed gustily. “Oh, Freddy,” she said. “It wouldn’t make things simpler. It really wouldn’t.”

Because, though she didn’t feel she needed to remind him of the fact that moment, there was no place for her anymore in Freddy’s world—a world in which she had once traveled with grace and ease. How could she possibly return to it, knowing, as she did, what people had said—were doubtless still saying—about her father? Ignorant hypocrisy, fatuous rumor-mongering. Lord, no. She’d sooner die than go back.

And of course, even if she could bring herself to embrace that world from which she’d fled—or rather, been banished—all those years before, she could not, in good conscience, have married Freddy. Not when she knew perfectly well she didn’t love him. Supposing—just supposing—she married Freddy, and then realized, as Isabel’s mother had, that she was actually in love with someone else. How horrible! She couldn’t do that to Freddy—not what Elisabeth Traherne had done to the marquis. Why, look how disastrously that had turned out for everyone.

A sweeping glance across the room she stood in told her it hadn’t turned out badly for everyone involved, however. This was the prettiest bedroom she’d been in since before her parents’ death—certainly the prettiest bedroom she’d had since she’d begun hiring herself out as a governess. The walls were covered in paper that matched the material that made up the canopy of her bed, white with pink and green bouquets. There was a matching set of deep green velvet armchairs before the fire, and a white dressing table with gilt knobs and a massive gilt-framed mirror above it. The room was nothing like the cubicle in which she’d frozen at the Sledges’, due to Phillips’s stinginess with the coal.

As for the rest of the house … well, Kate could not remember a time she’d been in a more elegant, yet eminently comfortable, home. Everything, from the paintings on the walls to the candles in their holders, was of the finest quality, and most pleasing design.

And she was being paid three hundred pounds a year to live in this luxury!

“I can’t,” Kate said now, to the girl stretched out on her bed every bit as languidly as Lady Babbie, “say that your father’s mentioned your gentleman friend to me.”

“Gentleman friend,” Isabel echoed, with a smirk. “Geoffrey would laugh if he’d heard you call him that. I say, Miss Mayhew, have you actually read all those books?”

Kate looked down at the crate at her feet. “Yes,” she replied. “Of course.”

“Why do you keep them?” Isabel wanted to know. “I mean, if you’ve already read them.”

“Because.” Kate lifted a well-used copy of
Pride and Prejudice
. “Some books are so good, you want to read them over and over again. You become attached to them. They become … well, they become like family.”

“Family?” Isabel echoed.

“Yes. When you’ve read them so many, times, you can’t help but start to think of them as relations—dependable, loving relations, who won’t ever let you down. Opening them again is like paying a visit to a favorite aunt, or … or crawling into the lap of a beloved grandfather.” Seeing that Isabel’s expression remained skeptical, Kate said, with a little laugh, “Well, I suppose to you, Lady Isabel, it may not sound like much, but you, after all, have a father who loves you, and I daresay some grandparents, too, who dote upon you. My books are all the family I have left.” She did not mean to sound melodramatic, and, realizing that her words might have been mistaken for being so, added jokingly, “Besides, the advantage of having books for your relations, instead of real people, is that they never borrow money from you, or drop by unexpectedly. The only real danger lies in accidentally leaving one on the omnibus, which I’m ashamed to admit I’ve done once or twice in the past ….”

Isabel wrinkled her nose. “Miss Mayhew,” she said. “It’s a very good thing you’re so pretty. It makes up for the fact that you are quite odd.” She looked up at the ceiling. “Besides which, I’ve never read a book like that. A book I cared to read more than once, I mean.”

“Haven’t you?” Kate held up
Pride and Prejudice
. “Have you read this one?”

Isabel squinted at the cover. “Oh” she said, disgustedly. “Papa is always trying to get me to read that.”

Kate said, “You ought to. You’d like it. It’s about girls your age, falling in love.”

Isabel lifted her face from the fist against which she’d sunk it. “Really? I thought it was about a war.”

“A war? What in heaven’s name made you think it was about a war?”

“Well, it’s called
Pride and Prejudice
, isn’t it?” Isabel said obliquely. But she actually got up off the bed and strode over to where Kate stood, took the book from her hand, and flipped through it, which Kate supposed was a start, anyway. “Besides, Papa’s always reading books, and they’re usually about wars, or the law, or something even more boring.”

Kate reached back into her crate. “Oh?” she asked casually. “Your father likes to read, then?”

Isabel grunted. “It’s all he ever does, practically. I mean, besides entertain women like that horrid Mrs. Woodhart.”

Kate coughed, but unfortunately, Isabel did not take the hint.

“I swear, Miss Mayhew,” she went on, with a sigh, “sometimes I think if it wasn’t for women like Mrs. Woodhart, Papa would never leave the house! Back at home—Wingate Abbey—he never lifts his face out of whatever book he’s reading, except to go riding once in a while. It’s embarrassing.”

Kate straightened. “Embarrassing?”

“Well, nobody else’s father does that. The girls I visited back when I was at school, their fathers would go out every day and hunt, and fish, and things like that. Not my father, though. My father is always home, reading. I tell him all the time that it isn’t natural, that he should go out more. I mean, he isn’t getting any younger, Miss Mayhew. He just turned thirty-six. He’s never going to meet someone at this rate, and settle down.”

“But I thought he had met someone,” Kate said innocently. “You mentioned a Mrs. Woodhart.”

“But he can’t many Sara Woodhart,” Isabel cried. “She’s an actress. Papa can’t marry an actress. It wouldn’t do. Besides, she’s already married.”

Kate raised her eyebrows. “Oh.”

“The fact of the matter is, Miss Mayhew, there isn’t much time left. Soon Geoffrey and I are going to be married, and Papa will be left all by himself.”

“Really?” Kate’s eyebrows rose even further. “You and Geoffrey?”

“Yes. I must find Papa a nice woman, Miss Mayhew, so he won’t be lonely when I’m gone. Not a woman like that Mrs. Woodhart, either. A nice woman”—Isabel’s gaze slid slyly toward her—”like you, Miss Mayhew.”

Kate had to stifle a peal of laughter. The idea of a man like the Marquis of Wingate stooping to marry his daughter’s chaperone was so preposterous that she wished she had someone to share it with. It was too bad Freddy was taking the whole thing so badly.

Reminded of Freddy’s remark that the marquis had sworn never again to marry, after his first disastrous match, she thought it might be best to change the subject before Isabel warmed to it too thoroughly.

“Has, um, Mr. Saunders actually asked you to marry him, Lady Isabel?”

The very mention of the name Geoffrey, it appeared, was enough to distract Isabel from any subject.