A Little Scandal (3 page)

And he would certainly never forgive Kate. No, it was all quite finished between the two of them. The fact that she had brought a cat with her into the house—an unforgivable offense, in Phillips’s eyes, cats being, in his opinion, filthy creatures, fit only for rat-catching duties belowstairs—had been bad enough. But now she had humiliated him, too.

She might as well start looking for another position.

“Honestly, Mr. Phillips,” Kate began, knowing it was futile, but determined to try at least to make amends. “If I’d had any idea, I—”

“Don’t apologize to me, Miss Mayhew,” the butler said stiffly. “It’s the master who’s been at his wit’s end, trying to entertain the earl these past few hours you’ve been away.”

Kate frowned. It wasn’t her fault Freddy was so scatterbrained he couldn’t remember a simple address. And it wasn’t her fault he’d chosen to park himself in the Sledges’ drawing room to wait for her. And how dare Phillips imply, with his “these past few hours you’ve been away” that she was off lollygagging about, when it was, after all, her night out. Surely, on her one night out, she should be allowed …

But there was no use arguing. Not with a man like Mr. Phillips.

Lifting her skirts, Kate started up the stairs toward the baize door. She had to brush past Phillips as she climbed the narrow staircase, but he stonily ignored her, which, she decided, was just as well, because if he’d said another word; she was just in the sort of mood to do something rash, like point out to the odious man that she knew perfectly well he’d replaced the good claret with an inferior brand, yet had presented their employer with a bill for the former.

Or worse, poke a finger into the gut he sucked in so carefully, as she’d witnessed her young charges do upon occasion.

Outside the door to the front drawing room, Mr. Sledge was, as Posie had said, wearing a hole through the thick pile of the Oriental runner. He looked up when he heard Kate’s step, and then rushed to her side.

“Oh, Miss Mayhew, I’m so very glad you’ve returned,” he gushed. “The earl—the Earl of Palmer, don’t you know. He’s right inside there, waiting for you. I brought him today’s newspaper. I hadn’t thrown it out, you see. I thought he might enjoy it.”

Kate smiled up at her employer. Cyrus Sledge, despite his unfortunate name, was not a bad man. He was only a rather dull man, who had married an ugly cousin without the slightest idea that she might one day inherit a fortune—the fortune that was currently supplying Kate a salary, as well as keeping several missionaries, and hundreds of natives in Papua New Guinea, in shoes and Bibles.

“I thought,” Mr. Sledge whispered, “about giving his lordship one of the Reverend Billings’s tracts, you know, about the mission. Do you think he would be interested, Miss Mayhew? Many of our country’s finest young men, I’ve found, are not particularly interested in the less fortunate. Their heads are full of hunting and the theatre. But I often wonder if that is only because they don’t know. They often haven’t been made aware, you see, of just how badly off the Papua New Guineans are, having neither hunting nor theater, let alone any sort of decent appreciation for the Lord—”

Kate nodded. “I quite agree with you, Mr. Sledge. Next time his lordship comes to call, be sure to speak to him about it. I believe he’ll be quite fascinated.”

Mr. Sledge’s ordinarily pale face flushed with pleasure. “Really, Miss Mayhew? Do you really think so?”

“I really do.” Kate took him by the arm and steered him away from the drawing room door. “In fact, I think you and Mrs. Sledge should put together a bundle of Reverend Billings’s tracts for Freddy—I mean, his lordship—to read tonight, and then the next time he calls, you should both quiz him on their contents.”

Mr. Sledge gasped. “Splendid idea! I shall tell Mrs. Sledge at once. We have some lovely new ones, don’t you know, Miss Mayhew, all about the wretched conditions under which the average Papua New Guinean woman gives birth, and how the Reverend Billings has been working feverishly to improve those conditions—”

“Oh,” Kate said. “That will be perfect for his lordship.”

Mr. Sledge hurried away, eagerly rubbing his hands together. Kate, smothering a laugh, threw open the doors to the drawing room and said, “Well, Freddy, you’re in for it now. Mr. Sledge is getting his tracts out. The childbirth ones, no less.”

The tall, fair-haired man standing before the fire spun around guiltily. A second later, Kate saw why. He had made good use of her employer’s newspaper, twisting pieces of it into small balls, then flinging the balls into the fire, where they burst into flame before being carried up the chimney by the draft from the flue. He had worked his way through the social pages, and had just started on the financial section when Kate happened to walk in.

“Really, Freddy,” she said, looking down at the wreckage of the newspaper which had, only that morning, been neatly pressed—with a hot iron, no less—by Phillips, in order to dry the still-tacky ink. “You’re far worse than Jonathan Sledge, you know, and he’s five years old.”

Frederick Bishop, ninth Earl of Palmer, stuck out his formidable chin and said, “Well, you were forever coming, Katie. I had to occupy myself somehow.”

“And it wouldn’t occur to you actually to read a paper,” she said, bending down and attempting to straighten the pile of crinkled newsprint. “Tear it to pieces, certainly, but never actually look at it.”

“What’s to look at?” Freddy wanted to know. “Just boring bits about the trouble in India, and whatnot. I say, Kate, what kept you? I’ve been here for hours and hours. I went to that church, and there wasn’t any concert going on. There was just the vicar’s wife—a horrid, nasty thing, fastening dead sticks to the wall for some festival or other. She was downright rude when I asked when the Mahler was starting. Looked like a dead stick herself, now that I think of it.”

“You went to the wrong church again. And it wasn’t Mahler, it was Bach.” Kate sank down onto one of the Sledges’ hard, formal chairs. “The polonaise was lovely.”

“Bugger the polonaise,” the Earl of Palmer said, quite violently.

“Really, Freddy,” Kate said with a laugh.

“I don’t care.” Freddy flung himself onto the chair opposite hers. “I missed the concert, and now it’s too late to take you to supper. The Sledges will be retiring soon, the stupid sods, and you’ll have to go. And you don’t have another night off until next week. So bugger the polonaise!”

Kate laughed again. “It’s your own fault, you know. When are you going to start writing addresses down so that you’ll remember them?”

The earl said, with sudden slyness, “If you’d only quit being so bullheaded, and marry me, I wouldn’t need to write addresses down, because you’d always be around to remind me.”

“Well,” Kate said cheerfully, “you’re certainly going about it the right way. I don’t imagine there’s a girl in London who could resist a man who calls her bullheaded.”

Freddy pulled at one end of his thick golden mustache. “You know what I mean. Why d’you have to be so stubborn?”

“I’m not being stubborn, Freddy,” Kate said. “You know I love you. Just not as a wife should love a husband. I mean—I’m not in love with you.”

“How do you know?” Freddy demanded. “You’ve never been in love before.”

“No,” Kate admitted candidly enough. “But I’ve certainly read about it in books, and—”

Freddy made a rude noise. “You and your books!”

“You ought to try reading one once, Freddy,” Kate said mildly. “You might actually like it.”

“I doubt it. Anyway, what does it matter whether or not you’re in love with me? I’m in love with you, and that’s all that matters. You could always learn to be in love with me,” Freddy said, warming to his subject. “Wives do it all the time. And you ought to be better at it than most of my friends’ wives. You’re a quick study, after all. Everyone said you’d never last a minute at this governessing business, but look how well you’ve done for yourself.”

“Who said I’d never last a minute at governessing?” Kate demanded, but the earl waved her indignation aside.

“I can be quite lovable, you know,” Freddy informed her. “Virginia Chittenhouse was mad for me last spring. I assure you she cried dreadfully when I was forced to admit that my heart would always belong to you, even though you haven’t a penny to your name anymore, and that in your old age, you’d developed an acid tongue in that head of yours.”

“You ought not to have put Virginia Chittenhouse off,” Kate said, with some effrontery. “She’s hardly acid-tongued, and I understand she’s just come into fifty thousand pounds.”

The Earl of Palmer got up again, and made a dramatic gesture. “I don’t need fifty thousand pounds. I need you, Katherine Mayhew!”

“Precisely how many glasses of Mr. Sledge’s brandy did you consume while you were waiting for me, Freddy?” Kate asked suspiciously.

“You’re to give up this governessing slavery at once,” Freddy declared, “and run away with me to Paris.”

“Lord, Freddy, we’d be at one another’s throat by Calais, and you know it. I sincerely hope you’re drunk. It’s the only logical explanation for this extremely perverse behavior.”

The earl sank back down into his chair defeatedly. “I’m not drunk. I just got so wild with boredom waiting for you. That fool Sledge kept looking in every five minutes, asking me if there was anything I needed. He tried to talk to me about those popping new guineas.”

“Papua New Guineans,” Kate said, correcting him with a smile.

Freddy made a dismissive gesture. “Whatever. Where were you, Kate? The concert was supposed to end by nine.”

Kate said, “I got back as quickly as I could. I had to take the omnibus, you know, as I hadn’t the luxury of the use of your carriage, since you never appeared.” She shot him a reproving look, and was bracing herself for more marriage proposals, when she suddenly straightened and added, “Oh, and I nearly forgot. I ran into the most extraordinary scene on my way home. Right outside—right on Park Lane—I saw a man fling a young woman over his shoulder and attempt to stuff her into a chaise-and-four.”

The Earl of Palmer stirred in his seat, and his truculent expression darkened. “You’re making it up. You’re making it up to put me off the subject of marrying me. Well, Kate, it won’t work. I’m absolutely determined this time. I even told Mother. She wasn’t for it, but she said if I wanted to make a fool of myself, she couldn’t stop me.”

Kate chose to ignore his last sentence. “I swear to you I’m telling the truth. It was perfectly astonishing. I had to threaten the fellow with the tip of my umbrella before he’d put her down again.”

Freddy blinked. “Was he an Arab?”

“Certainly not. He was a gentleman—or at least, he professed to be. He was dressed like one, in any case, in evening clothes, and he had a number of rather dim-witted lackeys about him. He was quite tall, and very broad-shouldered, and had a lot of very wild, very dark hair, and an olive complexion—”

“An Arab!” Freddy cried excitedly.

“Oh, Freddy, he wasn’t an Arab.”

“How do you know? He might have been.”

“First of all, he spoke to me in perfect Queen’s English, without the slightest accent. And secondly, one of his idiot servants addressed him as ‘my lord.’ And he had the most extraordinarily green eyes I have ever seen. Arabs have dark eyes. His were light, almost glowing, like a cat’s.”

Freddy set his jaw. “You certainly got a good look at him.”

“Well, of course I did. He was standing not four feet away from me. The fog wasn’t that thick tonight. Besides, there was light falling from the house.”

“Which house?”

“Not two doors down.” Kate pointed at the wall to their left.

The Earl of Palmer relaxed visibly. “Oh,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Traherne.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Traherne. He’s taken old Kellogg’s place for the season. His daughter’s first.”

“Yes, the girl he’d been abusing so abominably turned out to be his daughter. A very headstrong young person.”

“Isabel,” Freddy said, stifling a yawn. “Yes, I’ve seen her about quite a bit. She’s every bit as wild as her father, from what I understand. Made a spectacle throwing herself at some penniless second son of someone or other at the opera the other night. It was excruciatingly embarrassing, even for a jaded observer of human behavior like myself. It isn’t any wonder the old man was playing a bit rough with her.”

Kate knit her brow. “Traherne? I’ve never heard of a Lord Traherne. I’ve been out of society for quite a little bit, I know, but—”

“Not Traherne. Wingate. Burke Traherne’s the second Marquis of Wingate. Or the third, or something. How a fellow’s supposed to keep track of all that, I still haven’t—”

“Wingate? That sounds familiar.”

“Well, it should. The man created quite a scandal—though now that I think of it, you were probably in the schoolroom at the time. I was was still at Eton. I remember your mater and pater talking about it once, over dinner with my own ma and pa. Well, things like that can’t help but get round—”

“Things like what?” Kate was not fond of gossip, having been the subject of more than a little of it in her time. Still, those eyes weren’t easily forgotten.

“The Wingate divorce. It was all anybody talked of for months. It was in all the papers—” Freddy frowned. “Not that I read them, of course, but you can’t help glancing at the stories as you tear them up, you know.”

“Divorce?” Kate shook her head. “Oh, no. You must be mistaken. The young lady—Isabel—told me her mother was dead.”

“And she is. Died penniless on the Continent after Traherne was finished dragging her and her lover through the courts.”

“Lover?” Kate stared. She couldn’t help it. “Freddy!”

“Oh, yes, it was quite the scandal,” Freddy said pleasantly. “Married absurdly young, Traherne did—a love match, with the only daughter of the Duke of Wallace. Elisabeth, I think her name was. Anyway, it turned out to be a love match on his side only. Not a year after Isabel was born, Traherne caught her—Elisabeth, I mean—in a clinch with some sort of Irish poet or something, at a ball in his very own house. Traherne’s house, I mean. Threw the fellow out a second-story window, from what I understand, and headed straight for his lawyer’s office the next day.”